Paula Pant and What It Takes to Build Wealth

0:00You know, Gang I was once a small business owner and running a small business comes with plenty of challenges, but managing your numbers shouldn't be one of them. That's where zero, that's XERO, comes in. A financial management platform designed to take the overwhelming tasks out of your daily operations. You don't need multiple tools and spreadsheets to get a clear view of your cash flow. Zero connects your accounting, payments, payroll, and analytics all in one place, using automated workflows that can save you hours of busy work. Instead of getting buried in complicated details, you get intuitive visual dashboards, forecasts, and smart insights that help you make confident decisions. While most software tries to sound smart, zero is built to make you feel smart by turning complex financial tasks into simple routines. Over 5 million customers worldwide, trust hit to keep their operations moving. From a 2024 survey, 91% of customers across the US, UK, and Australia agreed that zero

1:03is easy to use. Stay ahead of what's coming in, what's going out, and what's next. So you can spend less time on paperwork and more time growing your business. Learn more at xero.com. I want to tell you about a podcast I've been relying on to help guide my charitable giving decisions. Having done right from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, covers how to make an impact with your giving and tackles the question every donor is asking, how can I make the biggest difference right now? This season of giving done right comes at a time when federal policy shifts continue to upend the landscape for domestic nonprofits, civil society, and international aid alike. Leaving donors facing urgent questions about where and how to give, hosted by Phil Buchanan from the Center for Effective Philanthropy, the show highlights philanthropic and nonprofit leaders to explore what effective giving looks like in a moment of real strain and real opportunity.

2:04Together, these conversations dig into the questions donors are asking today. How to give when trust and partnership matter more than ever, the tension between short-term needs and a long-term view, and what good stewardship really demands of those with the resources to act. Phil here candid, urgent, and ultimately hopeful conversations about how to make your charitable giving as effective and as meaningful as it can be. Listen to Giving Done Right Wherever You Get Your Podcasts. Welcome to the Jill on Money Show. It's Friday, October 9th, and we are here trying to help you navigate your financial journey wherever you find yourself on that journey. If you'd like to get in touch with us, just go to JillOnMoney.com. Click the contact us button right as a note, and of course check the audio box if you'd like to come on the air with us. If you want to join us on our sister broadcast, which is our YouTube show called Money Moves, check the video box. We want to see how pretty you are. Yeah, pretty you are.

3:06And we'd love to have you. And it's a blast. If you have not listened to that show, you can subscribe to it wherever you get this program or just subscribe on YouTube because the overlords that own that show, not this one, they want a lot of YouTube subscribers. And today we're going to learn how we get more YouTube subscribers from our guests because she is the queen. Her name is Paula Pant. She is the host of the Afford Anything Podcast and YouTube show. She is just a delight. She had me on her program. Paula, welcome to the program. Oh, thank you. Thank you so much. I'm so happy to be here. And actually, my own website is incorrect. It's 45 million downloads now. Oh, come on. Let's get that. Okay, get on that. You came at this from the journalism side. You are a newspaper reporter. And so let's go back in time. Okay. First of all, Paula Pant, queen of personal finance of your YouTube empire.

4:09Tell us where did you grow up? So I was born in Kathmandu, Nepal, raised in Cincinnati, Ohio. That might make me sound worldly, but in truth, my whole worldview was that the globe was no bigger than Ohio and Nepal, which may not have been in a sentence before together. I'm just saying possibly. Wait, how old were you when you came? I was a baby when I came, but then during the summers, I would spend my school years in Cincinnati. And then I would spend every other summer in Kathmandu because that's where my grandparents, uncles, aunts, cousins, all of them were there. Wow. And so was that, that sort of is an interesting thing. Like how did that inform you? Were you like always an outsider because you were like this, had this other half of your life in, in no matter where you were, you weren't fully part of. So how did that play out for like developing you as a human? That's a great question. There's definitely an element of that.

5:10I was always at school. I was a little bit too napali to fit in with the rest of the kids. And of course, in Kathmandu, I was way too American to fit in with my cousins. Yeah. So yeah, I didn't quite feel as a child. I didn't quite feel like I fully belonged in either world, but it did make me very good at being able to just roll into any environment and adapt. And I think that that, you know, throughout my life, adaptation, rolling with the punches, is that's a skill that can take you into any environment. I think it's one of the most important skills a person can develop. So I'm very grateful to be able to do that. I love that because I think that it sort of feels daunting for some of the folks out there who have either have kids or themselves listening and they're like, oh my God, my job is going away with AI, my business is all happening. And I keep thinking that adaptability and curiosity, I might add, those are two very

6:13key factors in navigating these things. So I think that actually having that, you know, some of my friends, like I had this friend, Maureen, who sadly passed away four years ago, but she used to say that the best part of like her upbringing was that she said, you know, some people call it code switching. She called it adapting to the environment and reading the room. So you know, she would be like in one place, she would have, you know, she, it's not even that she acted so differently, but it's like her brain kind of was reformatted in some ways. I think that's super important that you are able to adapt to what your surroundings are, your true to yourself. Like I'm not saying don't be who you are. I'm just saying, understand who's in that room and what you need to deliver. Absolutely. And it's, you know, we have mirror neurons. So when two people are together in the same room, if one person crosses their leg, right leg over the left, it's actually natural. And in fact, often subconscious that the other person will also cross that same leg, right

7:15leg over the left and just kind of mirror that person. So mirror neurons are a way that people connect. If one person scratches their head, another person without even realizing it unconsciously might also scratch their head. And so that's just, it's a way that people connect. It's, um, it's a way of relating to one another. You go to college in Colorado and it says here, graduated magna cum laude from the honors program at the University of Colorado at Boulder. Yep. I was a nerd. I remember being at the University of Colorado at Boulder and it is a party school. It is. Okay. So I had a friend from Denver and during college, we were college friends. I went there. I went to ski cheesers. All my friends having a party in Boulder. Let's go up to Boulder. And it was insane. So what's it like being a nerd at a party school? Well, it's also fortunately a very large school that has about 30,000 undergrads. So you can find your niche. And I've always been a nerd, which is to say, you know, what is a nerd?

8:18It's somebody who's intensely passionate about areas, subject matters. But, you know, so there are some people who will define themselves as a nerd because they're really into technology and other people are really into science. And I've just always been very into learning. I was more, you know, history, philosophy, just but general curiosity about the world and the way it works. And in a student body that is that large, you know, the tribe. You'll find the tribe. Yeah. You'll always find your tribe. Like you can find those people. So. What was your major? I majored in sociology, minored in philosophy. What did you do with that degree of learning how to think deeply? I, you know, I learned the skill set of critical thinking, but otherwise I graduated with no skills. I, a smart gal with no skills. Exactly. I love that. You could have put that as your first line of your cover letter.

9:19Yeah. That musical avenue cue where there's the song. The first lyric is what do you do with a BA in English? And then the song goes on to say, I can't pay the bills yet because I have no skills yet. Oh, and that. See there you go. That absolutely rang true. So what I did, I thought initially when I was an undergrad, I thought that I would go through and get a PhD and become a professor. My father was a professor. So I figured I would follow in those footsteps. And my senior year, I wrote an honors thesis. And I thought absolutely not, I do not want to write a dissertation. So PhD is out. And so as a senior of spring semester senior, I was like, all right, the thing I thought I was going to do, I've decided against. But I, I loved reading the newspaper. It was like I just absolutely sometimes I would, like, I would be eager to get home from class so that I could read the newspaper. This is back when people were reading physical print paper.

10:20And so I thought, you know what, if I'm this passionate about reading the news, maybe I would enjoy writing it. And I noticed to these flyers on campus, I'm really dating myself with this story, but they're paper flyers hanging up on campus that were promoting what they called a media mixer, which was a night that journalism industry professionals would come and be graduating seniors from the journalism school. And you technically had to be a graduating senior from the journalism school in order to go. And it was a $5 cover charge. And I remember thinking, you know what, I'm a graduating senior, not from the J school. But if I, I bet if I walk in there and just walk in there looking confident in hand and five bucks, no one's going to question me. And sure enough, that's exactly what happened. So I go to this mixer, I walk up to, at the time Boulder, Colorado had two newspapers, I walked up to the owner of the smaller of the two papers, figuring that might be an easier place to start, introduced myself, told him I did not major in journalism and asked how I could get started, and he told me to get lost.

11:21No way. I was, I thought this was going a totally different route. Oh, it is. It is. It is. You offered me a job on the spot. Okay, continue. So then I just went one step beneath him. Okay. I went to the managing editor of that same paper and introduced myself, gave the same spiel. And the managing editor of that paper recognized my name from a letter to the editor that I had written about three weeks prior. And he said, I remember that letter to the editor, you're a good writer. He said, I'll tell you what, I will assign you three freelance articles. I'll pay you $75 per article. And let's see how you do. By the way, $75 more than you were making. So, okay. Exactly. And so then I went to the website, because I didn't, I was like, I left there going crap. Now I need to learn how to write a news article. So I went to the website of the junior level practicum class, looked up the syllabus, the

12:25textbook was written on the syllabus. I found the text, so I learned what textbook they were using, bought the textbook, read it, covered a cover, used that information to write three news articles. And the editor loved what I did. So he offered me an unpaid internship. So as soon as I graduated, I started a summer unpaid internship. At the end of the summer, he converted that into a paid internship, did a paid internship throughout the fall. And then at the end of the fall, he offered me a full-time job. So that was how I got started as a news reporter. Okay. So when you were in it, you did it for a bunch of years. What was your sense of like the news business, because you're younger than I am. So you're already at a point now. I presume we're talking in the 2000s ish, right? Yeah. We're, I graduated undergrad in 2005. Okay. So now we are already talking about the decline of newspapers at that point. Yeah. Oh yeah. Big time. So how did you absorb that as a young pop reporter?

13:26And there are parallels, as I tell this story, there are going to be a lot of parallels to that era and the era that we're in right now with new college grads coming into the world of AI. Sure. Anyone listening, think about how these, these lessons apply. So it was clear that I was in a declining industry and that the conventional path was no longer going to work. At that time, when I was a young reporter, that was right in the era where Craigslist came out. And for those of us who are old enough to remember life prior to Craigslist, there was this thing called classified ads. And classified ad revenue was about 25% of the revenue of local print newspapers. So when Craigslist came out, it destroyed classified ad revenue, which meant all of these local print newspapers suddenly were just seeing huge, huge, huge hits. And they had to respond to that by firing reporters, going on hiring freezes. At the time that I was a young reporter, the Seattle Post Intelligence Center went to

14:31online only the Rocky Mountain new shutdown. So McClatchy, which is one of the big, you know, they went on a hiring freeze. And so it was obvious with the death of classified ads and the shutdown of papers, it was obvious that like print journalism was not going to be the way of the future. And so I started going to two different types of conferences at that time to see what the zeitgeist was. I would go to these journalism conferences where everyone was pessimistic and sat around lamenting about how they didn't like the future that was unfolding and how much value they felt that there was in the tactile feel of holding a print newspaper. And they were sad that that was going away. And that was basically like the dominant mood of these journalism conferences. And I would go to these blogger conferences. And there was this like unabashed optimism because everyone was like, wow, the development of the internet.

15:32And now, you know, the development of WordPress, which means you no longer have to hard code every if you want to write a post, you don't have to hard code the page from scratch. You can just, you can have no technical skill and just type stuff in and hit publish and you're done. Like that opened the door for all of these people to create content online, which then opened the door for ranking in search and being able to sell products and like it just unleashed all of this opportunity. So you had these people at least blogger conferences with no training in how to write, how to report like absolutely no training in how to create content. But they were just lit up by all of the opportunity that they saw, despite the fact that they didn't have the training that journalists had. And I was sitting there going to both conferences and thinking this is crazy. It is absolutely bananas to me that the people who are best qualified to write articles are

16:33the ones who are not taking the initiative to do it. And so I think the success of a Ford anything, because Ford anything as a blog started in 2011. So it was a blog for five years before it was a podcast. I attribute it to the fact that I was one of the print newspaper journalists who were just embraced blogging early. You know what? It's so interesting about that is that I was thinking about one of the people who I think is sort of like the pod father, the godfather of podcast Bill Simmons. And I'm a big sports person. I'm a big movie person. So I love the ringer. But he started as a sports writer. And he went from a sports writer to then being a commentator on ESPN, but always had a blog. And then, but he sort of has told that story in a similar way, which is you're still doing the same thing. You're just meeting people where they are. Right. You know, if they're no longer going to be reading the actual physical newspaper or people are going to be reading different things that like you go there. And obviously as we're climbed, humongous success story, who is a blogger.

17:36Now we started as a blogger for the Washington Post. So you know, all these things make so much sense to me. I guess I'm also wondering when you were covering things as a journalist, it's different than writing about whatever you want. Yeah. So what was the, like, what did you want to cover that you weren't able to do as the person who's just like the assignment editor says, do this? And you're like, okay, great. You know, like for me, this is like honest to God. If I ever, if I never do a black Friday segment ever again in my life, it would be great. Mark knows how much I hate these. I hate it. I completely hate it. Okay. And I know we have to do it because it's a thing, right? Or cyber Monday. Right. So what were the things you had to do or what are the things that you wanted to do that you weren't able to do at that time? So the things that I did get to do back then that I don't get to do anymore, like the fun parts of the job that I left behind, breaking news slash spot news. So the John Bainé Ramsey, there was a, so I was in Boulder, Colorado.

18:37John Bainé Ramsey, this six year old beauty queen that got murdered. There was an arrest made for her murder. This guy was extradited from Thailand, came brought back to Boulder, he confessed to the killing, and then it turned out he didn't do it. There was no physical evidence that tied him to the murder. So I was the reporter that covered that, the local reporter, a print reporter that covered that. Wow. The highlight of my time at the print newspaper. So I am sad that I don't get to do, like, I guess I guess I could be a true crime podcaster. So you told me. You know, when I was at the paper, I was general assignment. I didn't have a particular beat. And when I left the paper, I knew that I was going to need to specialize in something if I was to be independent, but I didn't know what that would be. And I actually spent some time thinking about it. I went to, I would just often go to conferences, just to meet people in order to swing in at these conferences. What's happening? I hate conferences. I find them to be just agonizing, but sometimes I can speak at them.

19:38I hate it. I like it. I like it. Yeah. And I'm an extrovert. So I love being in the room with people. And I remember I went to the Association of Healthcare Journalists, which is, you know, and they, you know, I was in my 20, they had this program where they would pair young reporters with like more established like mentors. And so I was discussing with him. I was, this was right when I was making the jump from W2 Employment to building out my own brand. And I didn't know what I was going to cover. And I was trying to be tactical or strategic about it, you know, like where is the demand going to be? And he looked at me and he was like, don't try to do that. Don't try to forecast demand. Demand is going to change. He said, what do you enjoy reading the most? Cover whatever it is that you enjoy reading the most. And I thought about it. And I realized anytime I walk into a Barnes and Noble, the first thing I do, I go to the magazine rack and I pick up money magazine.

20:40I pick up Kiplinger's personal finance. Like when I walk into a Barnes and Noble, I go straight for the personal finance session. You know what? I'm never going to get you a date if you continue with the sign. You're never going to happen. I got to be honest with you. This makes you sound like not just a nerd, but like a personal finance nerd, which is a whole separate part of the equation. OK. So you're ever and drawn to the physical magazine, which is funny also. OK. So you love that. And then I got to do this. This is what I got to do. Exactly. Exactly. And so that's the thing that I enjoy most about what I do now is that I've always loved reading about personal finance. I never covered that when I was at the print newspaper. And that's what I get to do every day now. OK. So now you got, so you launched your own pot, your own blog. You got your podcast started up. And you also, oh, I should have mentioned that you also went back to school. You went to Columbia, you know, Humble, Bragg, whatever. And got and did that. And so you started this. So you now are full on into this world.

21:45So now that you've done it for 10 years and you've done the personal finance thing, I mean, one of the things that Jason's why he said to me when I first got started and, you know, had to have Jason's why Gwell Street Journal, we love him. I was, I was starting at CBS and he knew that I had a background as a financial planner and I had a background as a trader and you knew kind of like my, like my bio. And he said, I said, you have any tips? And he said, listen, everything that you're going to about to cover in the personal side, not the breaking news side, but the personal side, like 85% is the exact same thing. Your challenge is to make it interesting every single time you write about it. So do you agree with that? Do you think that 85% of what we're writing about is pretty much the same I'm talking about? I, I, okay, I think thematically many of the same themes come up, but the themes present themselves in different ways. And so when I say themes, like the underlying emotion behind money, anxiety, fear, hyper vigilance, you know, like money is, is money is just, it's fascinating.

22:49It's a deeply, deeply emotional topic. It is a deeply behavioral topic. In addition to like the raw emotion of it, there's also the element of habit and habit formation. There's the element of lessons that we learn from society that, you know, money is evil. There's like that money negativity that we often learn, you know, in movies, in media, the Simpsons, Montgomery Burns is, is the villain, right? The rich guy is the, is so, so there's the villainy of it. And that creates a little bit of a, like a money aversion. And so the psychology, the psychology and the sociology and the behavioral element, like that is, it's the same story. It's omnipresent, but it expresses itself in all of these different environments. And so when we talk about how do you get a job or how do you think about the work that you do as we move into the era of AI, all of those under the underlying psychology and

23:52behavioral elements are still there. But now it's being applied to a very different circumstance. So if that's the case, how do you feel like you can break through given that all the, like all that swirling stuff, which is like you know the baseline of what you're trying to cover. You know what's going to come up, but there's different ways, but there's also more competition for attention. So how do you think you break through? So I think of attention in online in two ways. There is discoverability and there's loyalty. Discoverability often happens on platforms where people exhibit scroll behavior. So Instagram, TikTok, anywhere where you are just rapidly and absentmindedly scrolling. That's where you discover new things and in those elements and I'm not a strong in the discoverability vectors. In those elements, you need a compelling hook. You need something that stops the scroll and grabs their attention.

24:52And I will admit, that is the area in which I am weak. Do you want to be better in that or not? I would like to hire a team of people who are better at that. You just said the words that like make the hair on the back of my neck go up, hire a team. That's like a whole thing. You have a team. I have a team. I do. I do. I have a small team. I have a core team of five. But we need more people on the team, especially people who are excellent at hooks. That's an area in which I like to grow. To answer your question, how do you capture attention? The discoverability, the areas, the platforms where people have scroll behavior, that's where discoverability happens. That's where you grab attention. That's where you meet new audiences who don't know you yet. But then that deep long term relationship, that happens in long form content.

25:53That happens here on these podcasts where someone spends 30 minutes, 60 minutes, 90 minutes with your voice in their earbuds. And that's how a relationship forms. That's how you go deep. And in this era of TikTok, I think people are hungry for depth, for long form, for nuance. Like in this era where everything is trying to distract you, I think there really is this hunger for depth. And that's where that's the beauty of podcasting, of lengthy articles, of newsletter articles, like any vector in which you can really go long form, that's where the relationship develops. And that's the area where I'm strongest. And I mean, I think that's because you have, okay, this is, I'm going to sound kind of nasty when I say it this way. It's because I think you have depth and you have a brain, meaning that if you're drawn to something that you not only excel in, but that you have, you need depth as a human being

26:53to be able to do this, to talk about this, you're a subject matter expert now as I'm I, and that you need to have a brain to be able to talk to people about these things in a way that they can absorb it. And you do that. And I hope I do that. And I think that the reality is that if you're, if you're just throwing crap up on TikTok or Reels and yeah, it might be discoverable, but there has to be the goods behind it. And the vast majority of people don't have the goods behind it. And that's, that's my frustration. Right, right, exactly. And so to anyone who wants to become a creator and and it doesn't have to be about money, it could be about anything. Like if if there's a topic that you have expertise in or that you have opinions or ideas about that you want to cover, I mean, I think the framework of decide which direction from which you want to approach it. Like do you want to first form the goods, like form that in depth, long form, like really,

27:58really form that muscle behind it. Fewer people will find you, fewer people will know who you are. But the ones who do will be committed super fans. You can either start that way or you can start with the discoverability and the short form and the grabbing attention. But I think regardless, like pick which way you want to start, start there and then once you get really strong in either the loyalty vector or the discoverability vector, then you can make inroads towards the other direction. Growing up, we spoke pretty freely about money, but I know that's not most people's experience. In fact, for a lot of folks, money is taboo and it's stress inducing and it might leave you clueless when you first start managing your own finances as an adult. Maybe for many of you, your money story was guess work and anxiety producing. But there's an answer to that when you start using monarch. Monarch completely changes the narrative by giving you the clearest picture of your financial

29:01life. Instead of just showing you what you've already spent, monarch actually helps you plan ahead. Map out big goals and make sure that you're staying on track before the month ends. And their game changer is an AI assistant where you can literally ask questions like, how much did I spend on dining out last month or can I afford this trip and you'll get an instant clear answer. It even sends an AI weekly recap to flag spending spikes and net worth shifts so you can catch issues early. Monarch makes you feel like you have a personal financial advisor right in your pocket, taking the mental load off your plate. Write your own money story with monarch. Use code jillonmoney at monarch.com to get your first year of monarch core half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with code Jill on money. I wake up so early in the morning and I don't like to put on an overhead light but I need a little bit more illumination for all of my writing.

30:02So I longed on to Wayfair and bought these LED rechargeable table lamps and they've got a charging dock and it's just the right kind of illumination. It's kind of soft but plenty of light and it solved my problem. Shopping was completely stress free thanks to Wayfair which offers endless options for every style and budget. You can easily scroll through customer photos and read from over 20 million verified five star reviews to buy with total confidence. Whether you're buying a lamp or redecorating your entire house for the holiday season, they make home upgrades simple. Find pieces made for real life and get even more value with Wayfair rewards. Join Wayfair rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's w-a-y-f-a-i-r.com. Wayfair every style every home. Do you scroll? You're younger than I am. I've said that already but do you find yourself sort of scrolling and-

31:05So I haven't- I haven't installed a blocker. So without the blocker I do. But I haven't installed a blocker. It's called Opal. It's a paid platform. I think it's like $100 a year. But it's on both my phone and my laptop. And it allows me to only access social media after 8pm and before 10.30pm. And I've played with the windows of time. It used to be only 8 to 9. So I've extended it a little bit. But because oftentimes like I would look at the clock and it would be 907 and I'm like, man, I didn't get to social media at all today. What are you finding on there? But that- Okay, so now I'm going to just like- So what are you looking at? Is it like what's your area of interest? What's your algorithm feeding you? Oh, you know, it depends on the platform. My team and I, we use social media to connect with our audience. So you know, we-

32:06As a podcast, we put out clips of our podcast on social media. And so because of that, a lot of my social platforms are feeding me personal finance content. That's also what we're releasing on there. Outside of personal finance material, Nepal, of course, recently had the big floods. So there was a lot of Nepal news on there. And cats. Are you a cat lady? I am a cat lady. Okay. Fair enough. I'm also a dog person. I'm both. Okay. So I guess I should expand to animals. But- Okay. I get a lot of cats. But you still are a journalist and you are still getting your source material I imagine from like real sources and- And you have a habit of reading different things. I guess that I am, you know, always interested in understanding, you know, how people get their information. Obviously I'm in the shrinking media business for however long more at last. I'll be there. You know, at least through December, when the overlords will make their decision about

33:09whether or not to renew me, or I will make my decision about to renew with them. I think that it's quite fascinating when you read surveys and you see how many people in the United States and around the world are getting their news from those short form scrolling sessions, which turn into seven hours a day, I guess. And it sort of depresses me. I'm not like anti that. I just feel like it's not good for me personally. I don't go there because I don't think like I don't like not that I've like an addictive personality, but it's like I feel like it's a waste of time. That's how I feel about it. Am I wrong? If it's unintentional, I think the delineating factor is intentionality. And the way that you test for that is on a social platform. Are you going to one person's profile to read what it is that they have written today? Or are you absentmindedly scrolling and letting the algorithm serve you whatever the algorithm wants to serve you?

34:09And so on Twitter now known as X, for example, there are a few people who I find them to be in a world full of noise, they are signal. I will actually seek out their platform. I will seek out their profile and I will look up or what is it that they have posted today? And I don't necessarily do that every day, but I actually I do have a list of people that I want to catch up with. You know, I want to catch up with what they're posting about on X. When it's done with that level of intentionality, it's useful. And one of the benefits of installing a block or particularly if you give yourself a very, very narrow band of time is that if you've got your list of people that you really want to read, you're kind of fighting against the clock. You know, you're like, I got 12 minutes left and I want to check this person and this person and this person. And so then you're actually deliberately going to those profiles rather than just absentmindedly letting the algorithm serve you.

35:10Now you are, you have expanded well beyond the social media realm. You also have a workbook, a free downloadable workbook. So talk to us about how that developed and why you do it. Like what was the, was there a need out there? What's, what are you providing folks in this workbook or workbooks? I don't know if you have more than one that they can't just go online and get. So I've spent a lot of time having covered personal finance for since 2011 as, when I started, afford anything as a blog. I've spent a lot of time thinking about what are the fundamental building blocks that a person needs in order to get good with their money? And the first piece of it is the psychology of it, which we've talked about, the fear, the anxiety, the hyper vigilance, the money negativity that we absorb, get developing an internally healthy relationship with money. Financial psychology is like the foundational piece. After that, if you're not making enough, you have to increase your income.

36:14My starting salary, first year out of college, when I, when I initially took that job at the print newspaper, if you were to adjust that for inflation in today's dollars, it was around $31,000, $32,000 in today's dollars. In today's dollars. In today's dollars. Okay. Let's, let's, I'm going to do the same thing. Hold on, I only look at my, my, I'm going to do these. I'm going on to the CPI inflation calculator from the US Bureau of Labor Statistics. And I'm going to go back to, let me see if it goes back that far. Yes, here it is. My graduation month. I'm going to tell you what it was. And then we're going to laugh together. Okay. Graduated in May. All right. And, okay. So mine is, so I made $15,000. That was when I first graduated, which is now $44,000. However, I, unlike you, I had already sold that. I was trading. And they said as soon as you become a trader, not a clerk, we're going to double your salary.

37:17And so the doubled salary is kind of where it is right now. So this is good. It's $88,854. Is we like, as a trader, young out of college trader, that happened in the summer. So I remember it happened that we all started trading actively in July, sooner than the bosses thought. So I was making $88,000. That's pretty good. What did you do to survive based on your poultry shackles that you were earning at the journalists? Right. So at the time, I was obsessed with frugality. Because I was making so little, I was, I mean, clutching onto every penny. Now I thought, at the time, I thought that was good financial practice. And what I now know with hindsight is that I should have been focused, I should have focused on earning more. And so that is when I think through the five kind of five pillars of what to do to really get good with your money, the psychology element is foundational.

38:20And then after that increasing your income, especially if you're a low income earner, you can't shrink your weight of wealth. Frugality is not, is necessary, but not sufficient. So financial psychology, increasing your income, and then after that invest comes investing, because that's what you do with that increased income. And you know in the fire movement how like financial independence is the thing that you're really going for, but in the entire early part is optional. Yeah. I say the same thing with the double eye fire, like financial psychology, increasing your income and investing, that part is critical. And then the next two steps, real estate and entrepreneurship, those are optional. If you want to get involved in those, you can, and it's like a nice booster, but you don't have to. Okay. So yeah. And I know that you did that, and that was like very important for you. But I guess that I'm wondering like from now doing this like 15 years, right, and looking ahead, you know, what does Paul want to do?

39:21Like you, you've made a bunch of money, not necessarily from the podcasting world, but because you've done really well investing in yourself and also in real estate. What do you see is like your vision going forward besides hiring a quote unquote team of people or as I think as a team of problems. How do you, what do you want to do Paul? You're so young. Afford anything is my absolute focus, like my passion and my focus and my love. What excites me about building out a team and continuing to grow for anything is like, I love everyone that I work with. It's like, I wake up and I'm like, I get to build something incredible with incredible people. I get that. Yeah. Do you like the team aspect? I love that. I get that. I love the team aspect. But like reaching out to the, you have a community of people who love you.

40:22Does that juice you up a little bit? Does that like, does that propel you? It, you know, honestly, it's, it actually makes me a little uncomfortable because I don't want it to be about me. It shouldn't be about me. Like I, it's about them and their relationship with money and what is money? Money is a physical representation of your values, right? Every time that you're allocating any limited resource, whether it's your time or your attention or your money, you are because that resource is so limited because you can't do everything. You can do anything but not everything. You have to choose what your anything is. What is the thing that you value so much that you would say no to alternatives, to other alternatives so that you can say yes to that. So to me, the conversation around money, just like the conversation around time and attention is a conversation about values and that, that's where the focus should be.

41:23Like, this has nothing to do with me. I'm just the messenger. That's so interesting. I mean, it's very odd for people to hear that. And I'm going to tell you how odd it is, which is so for anyone in this industry and like you talk to people, whether it's your podcast platform or your YouTube people, they're all like it. So I'm out you and you've got to build your thing and you, you, you, you, I agree. If you don't, if you put the focus on the audience, I think that's why you've been so successful, frankly, I really do. And we are so delighted that you joined us. I know you have to catch a plane and I would feel terrible if we didn't allow you to do so. So Hall of Pant, the queen of afford anything. The woman who has created these five pillar workbooks and who is just a delight to talk to. Thank you enough for joining us. And for everyone out there, we'll have links to Paula's show and to the downloadable workbook. It's free and we'll have Paula back. I know you're going to love her.

42:23She's right up the alley of the money. I was going to say of the money moves audience, but also the Jill on money audience. Like you, you're just fantastic. And I'm so grateful that you took the time to spend with us. We are so, so delighted. So here we go. We're going to do our outro because gang, she got to catch her plane. If you have questions for Paula, head on over to her website, which is affordanything.com. And Paula Pant is the queen of all things social media, YouTube, workbooks, everything. Check her out for us. If you have a question for us, you can always go to JillOnMoney.com, click the contact us button, get in touch with us and make sure that you make you are able to do things like sign up for the free weekly newsletter. That will entitle you to our blog. Check out JillOnMoney Live. All the fun stuff that lives on the website. Okay, it's Friday and you know what that means. I got to thank people. Our music is composed by Joel Goodman, Mark Tlaersio, is the executive producer, the king of all things media, web, everything.

43:25He's not my employee, by the way. We work together. I never call him my employee. Certainly don't do the IRS. And he is the best. And I couldn't do any of this without him. We are delighted that the folks at Odyssey keep propelling us forward. That's what we do here. We love to hear from them and from you. And don't forget, you've got to make sure that if you do have a question, just book more on our website. It's so much easier to do that, isn't it? Yes. And subscribe to us wherever you get your podcasts. And do check out our other program. It's called Money Moves. That's our YouTube show. Change your work. Change your wealth. Change your life. Have a great weekend. We'll talk to you on Monday. Using Central's AI receptionist uses voice AI to answer on the first ring, so you'll never miss a call again. In just a few minutes, you can personalize your own AI receptionist to answer questions, route calls, schedule appointments, and even send texts in multiple languages. Plus, it's easy to scale.

44:25Create unlimited AI receptionists across any phone system. It's all powered by one reliable platform for effortless AI communications. See for yourself at ringcentral.com. Ring Central. Use of your business. G'day, I'm Justin Mouffos, host of the Platypus Economics Podcast. If there's one thing I've learned from a career teaching economics, it's that your life is shaped by economic currents you'll never see. A single price tag can explain things a thousand experts can't. People who understand economics, they make better decisions in their careers, their finances, their relationships, and their communities, and I want that for you. Listen to and follow Platypus Economics, available now wherever you get your podcasts.