You can afford anything but not everything.

Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else.

And that's true, not just for how you spend your money, but also how you spend your

time, your focus, your energy, how you spend your attention.

It's really about how you spend anything in your life that is a scarce or limited resource.

And so the questions become twofold.

Number one, what matters most to you?

And number two, how do you align your daily decisions to reflect that?

Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice.

And that is what this podcast is here to explore.

My name is Paula Pan.

I'm the host of the Affordable Care Podcast.

And today, we have it New York Times writer, Paulette Perhatch, on the show with us.

Now there are several things about Paulette that are fascinating.

First of all, let's get her resume out of the way.

She's been published in the New York Times, Slate, L. Marie Claire, Cosmos, so she's a very

well-known acclaimed journalist.

She catapulted to fame as a bit of an accidental personal finance writer after she wrote this

article called The Story of an F-Off Fund.

And the article that she wrote tells the same narrative twice.

In Scenario A, the protagonist of the story doesn't have an emergency fund.

And in Scenario B, the protagonist of the story does.

...