Q&A: $1 Million Invested, $100K a Year to Live On. Do We Ever Need to Save Again?

Paula Pant (0:00)

Joe, if a person lives in an expensive city and they have not yet bought a home, do you think there's any hope for them?

SPEAKER_2 (0:07)

No, nope, all hope's gone.

Joe Salsi (0:11)

It's over, just.

Paula Pant (0:13)

Farewell.

SPEAKER_2 (0:14)

You're done.

Paula Pant (0:14)

Sucks to be you, sucks to suck.

Joe Salsi (0:17)

Hate that you lost the game. Yeah, of course there's hope, come on. There's always hope.

Paula Pant (0:22)

Well, we are going to be answering a question from a younger millennial who has precisely that question, but that's not coming until the end of the show.

Because first, we have a deeper financial planning question, you know, a family financial planning question. We're going to kick off with that. And then in the middle of the show, we're going to talk about college admissions. So we've got a very well-rounded show today.

Joe Salsi (0:47)

I guess so. We have to admit we're part of the college admissions discussion.

Paula Pant (0:53)

We have to admit it? Were we like surreptitiously discussing college?

Joe Salsi (0:58)

I was just wondering what admissions we were going to admit about college. I had no idea.

Paula Pant (1:02)

Oh, yes, yes, yes. I see. We have to admit. I think that's admittance and not admish.

Joe Salsi (1:11)

Oh, tomato, tomato. Who knows?

Paula Pant (1:15)

Well, welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything. This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate, and entrepreneurship acronym, Double Eye Fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia. Every other episode-ish, we answer questions that come from you.

I do so with my buddy, the former financial planner, Joe Salsi. Hi. What's up, Joe?

Joe Salsi (1:41)

Not much, Paula. Man, I am so excited about these questions.

I mean, real estate, financial planning, and college. Like we're covering the gamut.

Paula Pant (1:51)

Yeah, this is true personal finance day. Before we get started, a couple of quick notes. Number one, if you have a question you want to submit, affordanything.com/voicemail is the place to do it.

And number two, we recently got a voicemail from somebody who was asking, where was your October 1st Friday episode? We realized, because I think Joe, you and I talked last time, that we did Rob Berger's interview as the latter half of the 1st Friday episode. We did not title it 1st Friday. So to anyone who's listening, who's like, whatever happened to it?

Joe Salsi (2:24)

You actually got it.

Paula Pant (2:26)

Yeah, yeah, yes. So if you go and you just find the Rob Berger interview, that was our October 1st Friday episode. We didn't follow our normal titling nomenclature, and so that was one of the voicemails we got.

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Let's get to our first caller, Beth.

Beth (4:03)

Hi Paula, long time listener here. I'd love your take on a Coast Fire question. My husband and I are in our late 30s and early 40s. He's in tech and I'm an accountant. We have two kids, one in preschool and one in elementary school, and our day-to-day support is limited. We're both working full-time and we'd love more time to rest and recharge. We also want more quality time with our kids because they're only little ones. My husband is pretty burned out and work stress has been affecting his sleep and health. He has a chronic health condition, so health insurance is a huge factor in our plan. My job isn't super stressful, but I'd love to keep it low stress. I don't want a higher level role than I have now, and I want more flexibility. In a perfect world, one of us would stay full time or close to it, in a low stress role to carry benefits for the family, and the other would work part time and take on more of the kid and home management, hopefully freeing up more time for both of us.