Think Like an Investor When You Buy a Home

Summary

Episode Overview

Podcast: A Better Way to Money
Episode: Think Like an Investor When You Buy a Home
Host: Jennifer Bourget (B)
Guest: Henry Washington, Real Estate Investor & Author
Release Date: April 30, 2026

This episode dives into the mindset shift needed to turn your home from a mere place to live into a true wealth-building asset. Host Jennifer Bourget interviews real estate investor Henry Washington, exploring how both new and existing homeowners can approach real estate decisions with an investor’s eye, avoid common pitfalls, and unlock financial opportunities most people overlook.

---

Key Discussion Points and Insights

1. Henry’s Origin Story: From IT to 100+ Properties

Timestamp: 01:17–04:05

• Henry’s pivot: He began as an IT worker at Walmart and started exploring real estate after a personal financial panic post-marriage.
• Motivation: “I was single… living paycheck to paycheck and realizing that now I have a wife who does not want to live paycheck to paycheck. And I had to do something about that fairly quickly.” (Henry, 01:29)
• First steps: Intensive research online, networking with real estate investors, boldly declaring himself an investor (“I started telling everybody I was a real estate investor”), and making offers led to his first property deal within 90 days.

---

2. Why Think Like an Investor—Even If You’re Buying to Live In

Timestamp: 04:14–06:38

• Think ahead: Don’t just buy based on emotion; ask, “What does this property do when I’m done living in it?" (Henry, 04:32)
• End-game mentality: “One of my mentors recently told me to think about every situation that you’re getting into: How does it end?” (Henry, 04:42)
• Practical research: Study potential rental income, rent appreciation, and property value trends to predict how quickly you could break even or profit—even if you plan to live there initially.

---

3. Learning from Mistakes: The Accidental Landlord Story

Timestamp: 06:38–10:02

• Jennifer shares: Bought a condo pre-2008 crash, couldn’t sell, became an “accidental landlord,” and barely broke even after 10 years—a situation Henry also experienced.
• Predicting returns: Henry suggests researching if rental income will cover your mortgage plus 30% extra (“…it needs to cover your mortgage plus 30%”) to allow for maintenance, taxes, and management. (Henry, 07:55)
• Long-term outlook: Even with economic downturns, real estate generally appreciates, stressing due diligence and having a plan: “You make the best decision you can with the information that you have at the time.” (Henry, 09:31)

---

4. What to Look For: Neighborhoods, Amenities, and Asset Types

Timestamp: 10:49–14:44

• Neighborhood selection: Target areas with steady, consistent appreciation (“…has gone up in value year over year”), prioritize median not average price data, and follow where business growth is happening (the “Chick-fil-A method”: “They don’t put Chick-fil-A’s in neighborhoods that are going down in value.” (Henry, 11:41)).
• Walkability/Amenities: Check city planning sites for new developments and amenities being added.
• Property preferences for investing:
  • Best bet: Multifamily properties for “house hacking” (live in one unit, rent out the rest). Allows using lower down payments and leveraging rental income to reduce living expenses.
  • Single-family: Look for homes built '60s or newer—and ideally '70s or newer—to avoid high maintenance costs from older homes. Concrete foundation preferred over crawlspaces.
  • Red flags: Very old homes (costlier maintenance, harder re-sale), homes where the neighborhood is losing amenities.

---

5. Using Leverage and Equity: Building Wealth with What You Own

Timestamp: 14:44–17:05

• Leverage via HELOCs: Home Equity Lines of Credit let you tap up to 75% of your equity to finance upgrades or other investments.
• Practical advice: Only use equity for improvements if the projected value increase exceeds your investment (“…you want your value to be somewhere around $30,000 or $40,000 for doing that work.” (Henry, 16:04)).
• Deciding to sell or rent: If finances allow, it’s better long-term to keep and rent old homes rather than sell, using HELOCs to finance the next purchase—if the rent will cover the mortgage and extra payments.

---

6. Balancing Emotion With Financial Logic

Timestamp: 18:10–19:34

• Henry’s take: “If it don’t make sense on paper, then you just let it go.” But recognizes some emotion is natural when buying a home—just keep it in check with the numbers.
• Jennifer: Asks how to avoid letting emotion totally overrule financial judgment.

---

7. Action Steps & Takeaways

Timestamp: 19:34–22:36

• For first-time buyers:
  • Big homework: Research every down payment or assistance program you can find (“Call banks, ask your agent what programs they’re aware of, call your city... Ask ChatGPT a million questions.” (Henry, 19:45))
• For current homeowners:
  • Ultimate tip: “The longer you own the home, the more wealth you’re going to create. So if you’ve got a home, try not to sell it. Try to be able to keep that thing and rent it out.” (Henry, 20:45)
  • Only tap equity if there’s a clear, financially sound plan for its use.
  • Emphasizes that “wealth is not built inside of a comfort zone. If it was, everybody would be wealthy.” (Henry, 21:28)

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• On getting started:
  • “I started telling everybody I was a real estate investor. I wanted anybody that was looking to sell something at a discount to reach out to me.” (Henry, 03:22)
• On mindset:
  • “You want to own a home? The longer you own it, the more wealth and value that home's gonna provide you in the future.” (Henry, 20:47)
  • “Wealth is not built inside of a comfort zone. If it was, everybody would be wealthy.” (Henry, 21:28)
• On risk and reward:
  • “Do you want to be wealthy or do you want to be comfortable? If you want to be comfortable, keep doing what you're doing. That's fine, that's okay... At some point. It's going to get uncomfortable though, if you're not investing right.” (Henry, 21:44)

---

Key Timestamps for Reference

• 01:17 – Henry’s personal financial wake-up call and the power of self-education
• 04:14 – Why even owner-occupied homebuyers should think like investors
• 06:38 – Accidental landlord stories and lessons from the Great Recession
• 10:49 – What to look for in a neighborhood and the “Chick-fil-A method”
• 14:52 – How to use, access, and optimize your home equity
• 18:10 – Keeping emotion from overruling logic in big home decisions
• 19:45 – Immediate action steps for buyers and owners
• 20:45 – Why holding onto real estate tends to build more wealth over time

---

Flow and Tone

The conversation is relatable, practical, and encouraging, blending Henry’s personal journey and setbacks with actionable strategies for any stage of homeownership. There’s an emphasis on due diligence, creative approaches, and learning from both data and experience.

---

Quick Action Checklist

• Research local down payment/assistance programs before shopping for homes.
• Analyze every home purchase—even those you plan to live in—as if you might one day rent it or sell it, including projected appreciation and rental rates.
• Prefer neighborhoods and property types with solid, demonstrated growth and demand—look for “paths of progress.”
• Consider multi-family homes and house hacking as a powerful first step.
• When tapping home equity, ensure improvements will increase home value significantly.
• Strive to retain properties and become a landlord when possible—it’s a key pathway to long-term wealth.
• Balance emotion with informed, number-driven decision-making.

---

Final Words

“Do you want to be wealthy or do you want to be comfortable? ... We all want both. But at some point, you’ve got to get a little uncomfortable to build wealth.” (Henry, 21:44)

This episode equips you to view homeownership through a more strategic, long-term, and ultimately profitable lens—making “thinking like an investor” attainable for anyone, not just the pros.

Transcript

[A]

What's the property going to rent for in the future? What's it going to sell for in the future? How long do I have to live here before I can actually make money for living here? What does this property do when I'm done living in it?

[B]

Welcome back to A Better Way to Money. I'm Jennifer Bourget. According to Northwestern Mutual's 2026 Planning and Progress Study, 75% of Americans say homeownership is essential for building wealth. But as we learned in our last episode, knowing what to do and actually doing it are two very different things. So how do you turn that belief into reality? And how do you make sure your home becomes a wealth generator instead of a financial anchor? Today I'm joined by Henry Washington, real estate investor, author of Real Estate Dealmaker, and co host of Bigger Pockets on the Market podcast. Whether you're buying, planning your next move, or already own, Henry is going to show you what separates a smart deal from an expensive mistake and how to unlock the wealth most homeowners leave on the table. Looking for more step by step guidance on home buying? Grab our free Family finances [e-mail] podcast. All right, let's dig in. Henry, thank you so much for joining us today.

[A]

Thank you for having me. I'm happy to be here.

[B]

I just want you to take me back. First of all, how did you go from working in IT at Walmart to now owning more than a hundred properties?

[A]

I got married and I needed to make money. Long story short, I needed to figure something out fast. No, no, in all serious, that is the baseline of the truth. I was single prior to starting to invest in real estate and then I got married. We got married very quickly, a year after the day we met. So I went from somebody who was single living paycheck to paycheck and realizing that now I have a wife who does not want to live paycheck to paycheck. And I had to do something about that fairly quickly. I actually, true story. Had a panic attack in the middle of the night one night after my wife and I were having a conversation about our financial future. And when I started to realize that I couldn't give her the life that I felt like she deserved. And in that panic attack, I started googling how to make extra money. And through that Google search, I learned about real estate investing. And something in my brain said, you should buy houses as a fix to your poor financial situation. And I don't know, I can't explain to you why that just made sense. To me. But it did. And that's literally what happened. I decided to go full steam ahead.

[B]

Wow. I mean that takes a lot of bravery. I think gumption, because I mean, how many people think like, okay, I want to get into real estate or I want to do something and then maybe it doesn't work out or whatever, you know. So you had to from a Google search, what then from there, just magic

[A]

and you buy a house. Yeah. So yes, there was something comforting about the thought process of doing it. And most of that comfort, I think just came from as I was researching, seeing how many people had figured it out. Like it was the first time that I paid attention to people who owned real estate. In my head before, before I researched any of this, I just thought super rich people and businesses owned real estate. I didn't think that like the person that lives next door to you might have some rental properties. But the more I researched, the more I saw that was like, it's just regular folks. And I just thought if all these people figured it out, there's gotta be a way to do it. So I'm just gonna figure, go figure out how to do it. And so my first step was to surround myself with people who were doing it and I'll just go hang out with them and worst case scenario is I'll learn something, you know. You know, best case scenario is I'll actually start buying property. So I just, it was like a win win situation for me. The next thing I did was I started telling everybody I was a real estate investor. I wanted anybody that was looking to sell something at a discount to reach out to me and call me. And then you have to start analyzing properties and making offers, whether that's on the market. Or you can start marketing for off market deals, which is a whole nother conversation. Most people are just going to make offers on the market. And about 90 days into my research, I got my first lead from my very first deal.

[B]

Wow. Okay, so all this knowledge that you have, we're gonna try to like pick your brain and figure out like how to get into it in 30 minutes.

[A]

Got you. I got you.

[B]

Okay, so let's say someone I know, you approach every property like an investor. Why should someone buying a house that maybe they're not wanting to invest it, maybe they want to live in it, but why shouldn't they think about it in that same way?

[A]

I think, don't get me wrong, like buying a house for personal use is a very emotional decision and it should be right. You're going to Live there. You probably have a family, your family's going to live there, right? You want to live someplace safe. You want to live someplace where you're going to feel comfortable. Like, those things shouldn't change as a normal home buyer. But the ways in which you should think about buying your first home to live in like an investor is you should think about, what does this property do when I'm done living in it? And you think about that from the front side. One of my mentors recently told me to think about every situation that you're getting into. How does it end? And you approach it with that in mind. In the beginning, not that you're saying everything's going to fail, but everything does come to an end. And when you're dealing in investments in business, you want to think about what the end looks like so that you can be prepared for the front side. So most people, when they're buying their first home in particular, they don't plan on living there forever. Some do, and that's great, if that's cool. That's the, that you should do that. But most people are planning to use the first home as a stepping stone to get to wherever the next or the dream home is, right? And so think about what the end game looks like from an investment perspective. So research what rents are in the area and research what the average rate of rent increases is historically for your area. So you have some idea of what this property could rent for in, you know, one, three, five years. Research what the average rate of appreciation is for homes in your area. Just to have an understanding and conservatively predict what, what this home could be valued at in the future to help you have an understanding of, okay, well, how long would I have to live here if I want to get out? Right? Because you could move there and hate it. And if you buy and you're going to pay retail value, typically if you're buying your first home, but if you move there and you hate it, if you're not going to be upside down when you want to get out, you could have to stay there for two years, three years, five years. So just a little bit of understanding. I'm not saying those things should stop you from buying the house, but I am saying they're good things that you should understand on the front side that can help you make a more informed financial decision when it comes to buying your first home.

[B]

Interesting, but funny in my situation because our first home that we bought was a condo and we lived in it for two years. It was, it was during the boom, like, I'm trying to think it was like 2006, 2007.

[A]

Pre. Pre crash.

[B]

Yeah.

[A]

Oh, man.

[B]

Yeah. So, yes, we bought our condo. It was when everyone was like, oh, get into real estate. It's the perfect time. And then I got a job out of state and we could not sell it. And we became accidental landlords.

[A]

I did, too.

[B]

Oh, okay. So you know this. Look at 10 years. I think. Was it 10 years? I think it was about 10 years. We lost like a few hundred dollars because our hoa, you know, we had to pay the management company, like, all this. And we finally sold it before we bought into this house, which is our third house.

[A]

Yeah.

[B]

And then everything, like, went up and I was like, boom. Had we held on to a little bit longer. But I mean, but that's kind of like, I don't know. I mean, obviously no one has a magic ball to see the future, but I mean, are there any good indicators to know, like, all right, is this a good one to hang on to? Right. And to try to rent it out, or should I just try to sell it?

[A]

Yeah, absolutely. And that's part of the research that I was just talking about. So what you want to be able to do is rent the property out and have it cover not just your mortgage, but it needs to cover your mortgage plus 30%. Right. Because you've got your mortgage, you've got your taxes and your insurance, you've got your maintenance. So things break, you got to fix them, and then you've got property management. So I would say you budget about 30% of your monthly rent to go towards those. Those expenses. So just being able to understand what some of those numbers are, what's the total rent? How much do I set aside? Then what's left is my net number. So that's why it's important to research. And this isn't like deep research that people need to be doing. Like, you can literally ask chat GPT, what's the average Ren. What's the average rent growth for Rogers, Arkansas over the last 20 years? Pull 20 years of history and find out what the average is. And if it's going up 1% or 2% a year, then that's fairly easy for you to. To estimate what rents might be at that time, and then you can make a more informed decision about. About what may happen in the future. And to your question, right, like, you couldn't have predicted the real estate crash of 2008, and you couldn't have predicted in 2020, but what we can predict Is that outside of those outliers, real estate typically goes up in value some percentage each year. So that might have been able to give you some comfort to let you know, like, if I just sit on this, this is how long I'd have to sit on it for it to make sense. And you probably made the right decision. 2% a year is not a ton. You couldn't predict a crash that big. And so you make the best decision you can with the information that you have at the. I mean, I've. I've sold things that I. That, you know, hindsight's 20 20, and I wish I would have kept, but at the time, that was the only information I had to make the decision. So I pulled the trigger.

[B]

All right, Henry's helping us understand what separates a wealth building home from a liability. But here's the thing. Homeownership isn't an isolated decision. It's connected to everything else in your financial life. Your retirement savings, your kid's education, your emergency fund. And that's where Northwestern Mutual Advisor makes, makes the difference. They help you build a plan that keeps all your goals on track, whether you're buying your first home, downsizing, or refinancing to pull out equity, because there's room for everything when you plan for it. Coming up, Henry's going to talk about how current homeowners can unlock more value from what they already have. Okay, so let's go through this like, we're buying a house that we want to live in, but we're thinking about this like an investor. What are we looking for? Like, let's start with, like, neighborhood. What kind of neighborhood are we looking for?

[A]

Yeah, you want a neighborhood that's got year over year appreciation. So you don't want something where people are moving out of and not moving back into, because that could be a sign that values are declining slowly, are going to decline over time. So you want something that has gone up in value year over year. You're going to have outliers, though, so you got to be able to factor out the outlier. So you're looking for median, not average. You want the median value increase. It doesn't have to be a hockey stick up. Just we know it's going up in value year over year. You're also looking for amenities. Are there things in the neighborhood that people like? And are there more things coming in the future? Are they building? Are they rearranging and adding more amenities? Or are amenities moving away to other parts of town? And so one of the things that you can do is just go on your city's website and typically like right on their homepage, they'll tell you what planning and development projects are coming to the area where they're planning on building things for the future. People call it the Chick Fil A method. So there are businesses and companies who are very good at market research. So you don't have to be. You can just follow what they do. They don't put Chick Fil A's in neighborhoods that are going down in value. Right. They're looking to put those things in in paths of progress. So follow the companies.

[B]

All right? Look for the radius of a Chick Fil A that could be a good indicator of a nice neighborhood. All right? And then when you're looking at a house, what are some types of properties that you particularly like and maybe red flags that you try to stay away from?

[A]

If you're trying to buy your next property and you're trying to think about it like an investor, then let's get into it. Let's be an investor, right? There's a whole lot of value in buying a multifamily to live in and living in one of the units and renting it out. They call it house hacking. But it is the best way to start building wealth. Several reasons. One, multifamily are typically valued higher than single family homes. So it's great for resale in the future because there's a lot of people who a want to house hack or B, want to own multifamily homes. If you can get into one, live in one of the units and rent the other unit out, you can not only buy an asset that is going to go up in value a little faster than a single family home, but you can use home occupancy loans just like you would for a single family. So you can only put 5% down and buy a duplex. You can only put 3 1/2% down with an FHA and buy a duplex. And then you offset your highest expense because most people's highest expense is typically their mortgage. And since you'll be renting out one of the units, that will cover the majority of your mortgage, which drastically decreases what you pay to live every month and allows you to start saving money while owning a home. Also, when you're applying for loans for these, the banks will consider the rents the property produces as additional income for you to help you qualify for more. So it's kind of a cheat code if you really want to think like an investor. House hacking is an amazing way to build wealth, reduce your highest expense and start building equity in a higher value asset. Now set that aside. If you're just looking for that single family home, as I've learned through the years, things that I would be looking for are concrete foundation, not a crawl space. I would be looking for something built 60s or newer, nothing older than that. It's just you're going to get a ton of maintenance that comes with those things. Yes, there's lots of character in those old homes and it's so fun and you get to restore the Victorian house, but you got a lot of expenses that come with owning those really old homes. So 60s or newer, preferably 70s or newer, it's going to save you a ton of headache to own an asset like that. Also, it's going to help you a ton when you go to sell that asset because an older home just gets older. So the older you buy, the older the home gets when you're looking to sell it. And you could start losing value in that home. So you want to look for something that's going to stand the test of time. Yeah.

[B]

As an investor, I know you use leverage and equity strategically. How should like regular homeowners think about something like this?

[A]

Oh, man. Your, your equity is your, is your wealth. Right. So you can leverage equity, improve your home and push the value of the home up. Right. So if you're buying a house, or if you've bought a house and you've lived in it for a few years and it's got some equity, but you've got some work you want to do to the property, then you can take out a home equity line of credit so you can tap into the equity, you know, very quickly. What that means is your bank will do an assessment of the property and they will determine the value of the property. And then based on what you owe, they'll give you access to a percentage of the equities.

[B]

HELOCs, right?

[A]

Yes, HELOC. Yes, that's correct. So for really, really ease of numbers sake, cause I'm very bad at math in my head. If your house comes in at a value of $200,000 and you owe $100,000, that means you have $100,000 of equity in the property. Most home equity lines of credit are going to give you access to somewhere around 75% of the equity, which means you would have access to $75,000 on a line of credit. And you don't have pay anything for that money unless you use the money. And so if you don't take out any other line of credit, then you don't have an interest payment. But let's say you take out 20 grand to do an improvement project, well, then you're paying interest only payments on $20,000 of that $75,000 on the line of credit. So if you want to improve the property, let's say you're going to add a, you know, you're going to make your kitchen bigger and you're going to add a bathroom. Well, those things do cost money, but they also add value. So it may cost you $25,000 to do that, but you don't want to do those improvements unless A, you're going to live in the house for a very long time, or B, the value of the home will increase more than what you cost to fix it. So if you spend 20 grand, I would say you want your value to be somewhere around 30 or $40,000 for doing that work. So that way you get your money back and you get to put some money in your pocket if you decide to sell.

[B]

Let's say someone is, has been in their home for like three to four years, they're thinking about selling it. What should they do now?

[A]

Depends on what's the next move? It's all about what's your cash position? What do you need to improve your family's life? So if you need to buy this next property and you don't have the cash for the down payment, then, and you have to sell the house to get the cash for the down payment, well, then you got to sell the house, right? Like, if that's the move for your family, the better move, in my opinion, is to keep the house and rent it out. And so you have some options at that point. If you need the cash for the down payment and you don't want to sell the house, then you can consider doing a HELOC on the first house. Right? And so we talked through what that process means, but you can get access to a percentage of that equity. Then you can take the money from that HELOC and use it as your down payment to buy the next property, as long as what you're able to rent your property out for, once you move out, we'll cover the rent, we'll cover the HELOC payment, and we'll cover paying back some of the HELOC payment, plus your expenses. So it really, truly depends on if those numbers work out.

[B]

And I know we talked a little bit about emotional decisions and things like that. How do you keep your emotions from clouding your Financial judgment, that one's always tough.

[A]

As an investor, you just learn that, that if it don't make sense on paper, then you just let it go. But as a traditional home buyer, I mean I do, I think some emotion is, is important. Right? Like I said, this is going to be where your family lives. But you do have to keep it in check. That's why it's important to understand what financial aspects you need to pay attention to to help keep you in check from making a poor financial decision just because you love a house. Yes, there should be some emotion tied to it, but there should also be some financials tied to it it and both should make sense. And if one doesn't work out in your favor, then the other side needs to be so skewed that it makes sense for you to give up one side. Like if you're going to make a emotional decision to buy a home, even though it's a poor financial decision, what are you getting in the home or on the home side that skews it so much that it doesn't matter. Maybe it's just the location is so ridiculously good that it's, it's just gonna make your life so much better. Or you're getting so much more house for your money. Like the house is, you just, it's such an amazing big property that it makes sense for you to give up some of the financial aspects.

[B]

Okay, I have a couple of like just takeaway questions. First one is for someone maybe just starting their home buying journey, what is one thing they should do this week?

[A]

People. There are so many, so many first time home buyer. Even if it's not a first time home buyer, there are down payment assistance programs, there are grants, there are so many opportunities you need to be researching down payment assistance or just home buying assistance programs. There are tons of them out there, but you've got to go looking for them. So call banks, ask your agent what programs they're aware of. Call your city. Sometimes there's certain parts of town that they're trying to develop. Find out, do the research, ask ChatGPT a million questions, put it on that deep research mode and ask it to go look for home buying assistance programs. So just do the research on these assistance programs and look for opportunities to buy at a discount.

[B]

Okay. And then for current homeowners listening, what's the one move they can make to better use their home as a wealth building tool?

[A]

The longer you own the home, the more wealth you're going to create. So if you've got a home, Try not to sell it. Try to be able to keep that thing and rent it out. I know it doesn't sound fun, but the longer you own a home, the more wealth and value that that home's gonna provide you in the future. So you can look into tapping into equity, but only do that if you have a plan for that equity. If you have a plan for what your next move is gonna be, then you might consider tapping into that equity. But it's just a matter of how long can you hold onto the property. The longer you hold onto your financial position is going to be because equity is essentially buying power. At some point you may want to invest in something and the equity in your home can allow you to be able to do that. I will just tell people, I, I, I get that being a landlord can be overwhelming and I get that investing in real estate can be overwhelming, but you have to decide. I'm not saying everybody needs to be a real estate investor, but I am saying if you're wanting to build wealth, like something in this conversation was like, yeah, this, this seems like something I would look into, but it's scary. You're right, it is scary. But wealth is not built inside of a comfort zone. If it was, everybody would be wealthy. You're going to have to be willing to get a little uncomfortable if you want to build wealth, and that's in any industry. Whatever you want to invest in, it's going to take you being uncomfortable. So do you want to be wealthy or do you want to be comfortable? And if you want to be comfortable, keep doing what you're doing. That's fine, that's okay. You can live a very comfortable life and not invest. At some point. It's going to get uncomfortable though, if you're not investing right at some point, if you don't have something saved up to supplement your retirement, it's going to get uncomfortable. I know 0 people who retired on their 401k and are living a very comfortable life. So at some point you got to figure it out.

[B]

Fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us today.

[A]

Happy to do it. Great to talk to you.

[B]

That's Henry Washington, author of Real Estate Dealmaker and co host of the on the Market podcast from Bigger Pockets. So there you have it. How to think like an investor about your primary residence. Spot the decisions that actually pay off and turn your home into a wealth building asset instead of a financial drain. And turning these ideas into a personalized plan is exactly what a Northwestern mutual advisor helps you do. They help you see how this purchase fits into your bigger financial picture and build a plan where there's room for homeownership and all your other goals. Ready to take the next step? Step Download our free family financial planning [e-mail] podcast. It's a step by step guide to navigating life's biggest money decisions. Next time on A Better Way to Money.

[A]

I think the most important thing about work is that it pays you enough to live the life that you want to live. And it may sound crass to talk about work this way because we're told that work should be a calling or a vocation. But I actually think this clear eyed perspective can be incredibly empowering.

[B]

Your job will change, your industry will evolve. So how do you build a sense of self that doesn't crumble with it? Author Simone Stolzoff shows the way. Tap follow in your podcast app to tune in. Northwestern Mutual is the marketing name for Northwestern Mutual Life Insurance Co. NM and its subsidiaries, including Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. NM WMC Investment Advisory Services and Federal Savings Bank. NM and its subsidiaries are in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. Not all Northwestern Mutual representatives are advisors. Only those representatives with advisor in the title or who otherwise disclose their status as an advisor of Northwestern Mutual Wealth Management Co. NMWMC are credentialed as NMWMC representatives to provide advisory services. Henry Washington is not affiliated with Northwestern Mutual and the views expressed by Henry Washington do not necessarily represent those of Northwestern Mutual or its subsidiaries. All investments carry some level of risk, including loss of principal invested.