Why Taking a Year Off Might Be Your Smartest Money Move, with David Bach

Afford Anything

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 12 December 2025

⏱️ 115 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#668: We’re joined in-studio by David Bach, bestselling author of The Automatic Millionaire and The Latte Factor. He’s updated his most popular book (over two million copies sold) and this is his last big launch as he heads into retirement. Together, we wrestle with a problem our listeners know well: what happens when you’ve built the habit of saving, investing, optimizing … and then feel weirdly unable to spend. We talk about mini-retirements, the psychology of “spend and enjoy,” and why waiting to touch retirement money can be its own kind of risk. Key Takeaways Think about retirement as a series of deliberate mini-retirements, not one finish line you might reach with less energy than you expected. If you’re a dedicated saver, build a plan for the “spend and enjoy” phase so you do not accidentally optimize away the years you wanted freedom for. Run the numbers on “small” spending habits, not to guilt yourself, but to see which choices actually buy future optionality. Treat withdrawals, benefits, and deadlines as part of the strategy, not a paperwork problem you’ll deal with later. If your finances feel out of reach, anchor yourself with a simple projection and one automated action, momentum beats motivation. Resources and Links David Bach’s website: http://davidbach.com/ David Bach’s books The Automatic Millionaire (updated edition) The Latte Factor Smart Women Finish Rich Chapters Note: Timestamps are approximate and may vary greatly across listening platforms due to dynamically inserted ads. (0:00) Introducing David Bach (4:50) Radical sabbaticals, Florence and rethinking retirement (9:10) Health scares, widowhood stats and enjoying life earlier (11:00) Updating The Automatic Millionaire for 24 million millionaires (15:30) Social Security strategy, RMD parties and claiming earlier (31:30) The latte factor, avocado toast and $10 dollar decisions (33:00) How $10 a day turns into $678,000 (34:20) Oprah behind the scenes, bricks of cash and an audience gasp (47:10) Tiffany Aliche, $75,000 dollars of debt and other success stories (54:25) A $53,000 income couple who retired as multimillionaires (1:25:40) Careers in advising, hiring trends and women advisors (1:28:37) Social Security taxes, new ideas and an eight year tax window (1:41:27) Remembering the “why,” values based choices and using money well Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, and the "automatitions" in your life: https://affordanything.com/episode668 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today's guest is David Bach. He's one of the most famous names in personal finance. Have you ever heard the expression, don't buy lattes? That's from David Bach. He's the author of The Latte Factor, which became an instant New York Times bestseller. He wrote The Automatic Millionaire, which has sold more than two million copies and spent 31 weeks on the New York Times bestseller list.
0:21.7	He wrote Smart Women Finish Rich, which has sold over a million copies.
0:25.1	All in all, he's written 10 consecutive New York Times bestsellers.
0:29.9	His books have sold more than 7 million copies around the world and have been translated into 20 languages.
0:36.9	He's made more than 100 appearances on the Today Show.
0:40.9	He's made six visits to the Oprah Winfrey show, six appearances.
0:46.1	And through his books, his seminars, his newsletter, through thousands of media appearances,
0:51.4	he has reached over 100 million people with one very
0:55.9	clear message, which is automate your finances. And then his other message, of course,
1:03.3	don't buy lattes. We talk about that in the upcoming interview because don't buy
1:07.7	lattes has generated a lot of memes and a lot of discussion, and we unpack all of it.
1:13.0	In the upcoming interview that you're about to hear, we're going to talk about why people, even with people with six-figure incomes, feel financially strained.
1:21.5	There are six-figure income earners who are living paycheck to paycheck. We're going to discuss that.
1:26.6	We're going to discuss the. We're going to discuss the
1:28.2	importance of taking time off and reassessing your priorities and reinventing your relationship
1:33.9	with work, money, and time because money is a tool for living a richer life. And so we talk a lot
1:41.2	about the richness of life, of having experiences when you're healthy enough to still do so.
1:47.8	And we talk about enjoying what you've built.
1:50.7	Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything.
1:55.8	This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing real estate and entrepreneurship.
2:01.8	It's double-eye fire. I'm your host, Paula Pant, and today's episode covers really all five
2:08.2	of those letters. Oftentimes in these intros, I kind of pick out one or two letters.
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