So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

We are rounding out our series today with a Penn State grad, a fellow Penn State grad. I didn't know he was a Penn State grad until after we booked him, but very excited to introduce all of you to Jeff Johnson. He is a millionaire next-door at the ripe age of 37. He and his wife, Amanda follow disciplined, pragmatic and balanced financial behaviors, and they've acquired a net worth of more than a million dollars. They simply live a rather modest lifestyle in a two-bedroom townhouse in New Jersey, they enjoy the simple life experiences with their family and friends. Jeff and Amanda met while they were at Penn State University, similar to my husband and I. After graduating, they had a five-year long distance relationship. Amanda actually completed her doctorate of Clinical Psychology during that time frame and during the relationship while they were long distance, they had become each accustomed to certain conservative spending habits that they now continue to follow during their marriage. It's really nice to find your financial soulmate. That's Jeff and Amanda. Since getting married nine years ago, they've been able to successfully eliminate all their debt including car loan and student loans. They do still have a modest mortgage and as I said in the process, they have earned themselves over a million dollars. They reached that at age 34. They are 37 now. Jeff currently works at a pharmaceutical company, Amanda worked as a staff psychologist at a local college before taking a leave of absence to raise their 2-year-old son.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome to the fourth episode of Millionaires Next Door! Today I’m chatting with Julie Rains, a freelance writer specializing in investing and mortgages from North Carolina! She has a finance degree from UNC Chapel Hill and has had experience working in financial analysis and accounting for Fortune 500 corporations, as well as personal experience in stock investing and paying off a mortgage.She shares her financial advice based on her own experiences and expertise on her blog Investing to Thrive, and she’s joining to today to tell us how she and her husband became millionaires.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Welcome back to So Money. I'm your host Farnoosh Torabi. Thanks for joining me. Doing something special this week. If you've been listening since Monday, you know it is millionaire's next door week. Dedicating the week to people across the country, in some cases across the globe, who are millionaires and you wouldn't really know it. They're frugal, they save their money wisely, they don't buy material things necessarily, they have sacred financial philosophies and we're gonna learn all about it this week. So inspired to introduce today's couple, we have a couple on So Money today. Jeremy Jacobson and Winnie Tseng. They run the personal finance blog Gocurrycracker.com. They are two normal people from lower income families, chasing the American dream, until they realized, you know what? The chase wasn't making them so happy. They sold their house, they sold their car, and started saving 70%, or more than 70% of their combined income. And in a short 10 years, while still in their 30's, they became financially independent and said "buh-bye" to the working world to then start a family and travel the world. Three years now into a hopefully 60 plus year journey, they're living their own nomadic dream with their newborn son, Julian. The two have now multiple millions of dollars, they keep that money pretty much invested in index funds, they tell me. And they're living off about $4,000 a month and they are soon about to embark on their world wide journey. First stop, Mexico! Lots to learn from this couple, our millionaires next door.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today is the second installment of the “Millionaires Next Door Series,” with another great guest Luann Abrams from Bend, OR. Two years ago she and her husband hit the $1mil mark, and are almost 2/3 of the way to the second million already! She is a former aerospace engineer, and is now a stay at home mom (but has a few side-hustles). And now that the couple has made it this far, her husband will be quitting his job soon to be a part of a start-up. He wont be making a salary for some time…So how are they going to manage?Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

We’re kicking off ‘Millionaire Next Door Week’ on So Money today.  We’ve been revving up for this spectacular week for some time, I’ve been enlisting your help to either nominate yourself or people you know and excited to say that we received many more entries than we could record for this first week…But perhaps we’ll do a second week later in the fall. So many nuggets of wisdom to share… Our first guest is Darrow Kirkpatrick, the author of Retiring Sooner: How to Accelerate your Financial Independence and who runs the blog Can I Retire Yet? And the answer for Darrow, at least is, YES. He, in fact retired when he was 50 years old with over a million in the bank. You wouldn’t really know…He has a modest home, rides his bike most places…And when I visited at his home a few years ago on a story for Yahoo News, I don't recall seeing a TV in his living room. Darrow graduated from the University of Virginia with a degree in Civil Engineering. He started and sold his own business…After 29 years of programming, designing and managing computer software, Darrow was able to retire at the ripe age of 50. How did he do it? Well we’ll discuss this in the show momentarily but he attributes a lot of his financial success to good ol’ hard work, frugality, serious saving and certain investing strategies. Patience helped along the way, too.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode of Ask Farnoosh I answer your biggest questions about rewards credit cards, paying off loans, saving for retirement, financial issues with your partner and credit scores.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

In today's episode of Ask Farnoosh I answer your biggest financial questions about creating money boundaries with family, rebuilding credit, real estate, crowdfunding, how to invest your inheritance, 401(k)s, pre-nups and compound interest.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is Ryan Holiday. I had this wonderful guest on earlier this Spring and Ryan is a thought-provoking media strategist, bestselling author of three books, and he's not even 30 yet - I'm so jealous! Most recently his very successful books is called, The Obstacle is the Way: The Timeless Art of Turning Trials into Triumph. He has been responsible for a number of manipulative stunts and media controversies, and has been accused of being a "media manipulator" which he writes about in his first book Trust Me, I'm Lying. And he’s only 27 years old! After dropping out from University of California at 19 to apprentice under Robert Greene, author of The 48 Laws of Power, he went on to advise many bestselling authors and multiplatinum musicians, including 50 Cent and Tim Ferriss, whom I had the honor of interviewing earlier this year (check out episode 60).Ryan also served as Director of Marketing at American Apparel for many years, where his campaigns ended up being used as case studies by Twitter, YouTube, and Google and written about in AdAge, the New York Times, and Fast Company. Ryan now works as the media columnist for the New York Observer. And his work has appeared in Forbes, Fast Company, The Huffington Post, The Columbia Journalism Review, ThoughtCatalog and Medium.com.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today’s guest has a really interesting story and is a woman after my own heart, helping young professionals navigate debt while teaching financial independence and what it means to be “financially fit.” Shannon McLay is a financial planner who left a stable job at a traditional financial services firm to start her own company, The Financial Gym. She felt that all traditional financial services firms did not offer the proper tools or resources to help young people in their 20s and 30s who are looking to build assets while also managing debt. Shannon believes that the key to long-term personal financial success is commitment to financial fitness and making smart financial choices. Well, amen to that! Through her company, Financially Blonde blog, her first book, “Train Your Way To Financial Fitness” and podcast, Martinis and Your Money, Shannon is covering all platforms so that financial fitness can be fun, easy and accessible to everyone! You can tune into her podcast every Friday to hear more from her.Three takeaways from our interview today include:The risks she took to leaver her job at Merrill Lynch and start her own company.How she’s going about raising capital to grow her financial planning business. As she says she’d like to someday like to do for the financial planning world what H&R Block has done for accounting services.How to win a free SIGNED copy of Shannon’s book Train Your Way to Financial Fitness. Shannon is giving away 5! Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Today's guest is Dorie Clark. She's a frequent contributor to Harvard Business Review, Time and Entrepreneur. She's been recognized as a branding expert by The Associated Press, Inc, and Fortune.What's a brand? Yeah we're gonna talk about that with Dorie. I believe I have a brand; sometimes I hesitate to admit it because I think it sounds, sometimes, a little snobby to say that I have a brand. But she puts it in a way that really democratizes this concept of having a personal brand. You have a brand, whether you're working at a company, an entrepreneur, a mom staying at home with your kids raising them, you have a brand! And so the earlier you recognize that, and nurture that, and cultivate that, the better off you can be.Now Dorie also serves as a marketing strategy consultant and speaker for many notable clients, including Google, Microsoft, Yale University, Fidelity, and World Bank among others. She's the author of two great books; the first is called "Reinventing You", and more recently she's the author of "Stand Out: How to Find Your Breakthrough Idea and Build a Following Around It". She currently is an adjunct professor of business administration at Duke University's Fuqua School of Business, and a visiting professor for IE Business School in Madrid.Dorie was also featured on Huffington Post as a 100 Must Follow on Twitter in 2013 and 2014. She's also on the Nifty 50 list of top women on Twitter, and most notably she was named on of Inc Magazine's 100 Great Leadership Speakers for Your Next Conference, and recognized in Forbes as one of 25 professional networking experts to watch in 2015. So she is, as it pertains to branding and leadership, she's your go-to and she's on the show today. So I'm very honored.Learn more about Farnoosh's upcoming literary workshop Book to Brand. Early bird registration is now open! Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.