The Embassy Wealth Podcast

The Embassy Wealth Podcast is kicking off the new 2023 season with our favorite topic: money!  On this episode, certified Trauma of Money coach and financial wellness practitioner, Sherrette Garate-Estes challenges us to dig deep for an introspective look at our relationship with money. 

Do you overspend when you shouldn’t? Hoard money? Avoid looking at bills? Overwork because you feel stressed there won’t be enough money?  Or ma...

Financial coach and planner extraordinaire Acquania Escarne returns to the podcast to explain how listeners can begin organizing and planning to reach their goals in 2023!  Having a clear picture about where you want to be starts with a solid plan: as we finish up 2022, it’s a great time to reflect on what you’ve accomplished this year, and think about what you’d like to achieve in 2023. Sitting down with a pen and paper to map out...

Nate Carter returns to the Embassy Wealth podcast to discuss life one year after retiring from the Foreign Service at the young age of 50! While this might seem like an impossible feat, Nate successfully transitioned and has had an amazing first year post-FS: consulting for foreign governments, adding more investment properties to his portfolio, starting new business ventures, and - most importantly - finding more time to be with h...

Preparing for retirement doesn’t need to be scary.  After 36 years as a federal employee with multiple federal government agencies, Abraham Grungold retired with a hefty sum in his Thrift Savings Plan and a passion for helping other retiring federal employees. In this episode, Abe shares the key to a successful retirement and how one can continue their career while still receiving social security.  Receiving a 20+ page retirement p...

Stephanie Toler is the CEO of Nest, a property management company servicing DC.  With over 1,400 homes under management and 40+ employees, Nest handles all of the headaches that come with property management – from tenant placement to maintenance requests to organizing property upgrades and other make-ready services.  Being a landlord isn’t easy anywhere, but D.C. can be especially complex due to its landlord-tenant laws and city r...

With a Master of Fine Arts degree in Creative Nonfiction Writing from The New School in New York City and an interest in travel, Tim Tranchilla’s three year assignment in Tel Aviv inspired him to write his guidebook, the Bucket! Guide to the Holy Land: A DIY Travel Planner to Create a Bucket List-Filled Dream Trip to Israel, Jordan, Palestine, and the Egyptian Sinai.  Tim shares his journey of self-publishing and marketing his guid...

In this second part of a two part series, Tanya dives deeper into her decision to leave the Foreign Service and blaze her own path in the world of real estate.  After being a solo agent for several years, Tanya discusses her experience going from single agent to team leader of Stateside Residential, a real estate team serving the DC area, as well as her most recent journey into launching a property management franchise.  

Hear Ta...

Time to meet the host!  In this episode, Tanya Salseth shares how she went from working for the U.S. government to full-time real estate investor and agent serving the diplomatic community.  Investing in real estate isn’t always pretty and can be scary, but once you learn the market and how to make the numbers work, the money will start to work for you. Tanya now owns 20 doors across the DC area, is a team lead for a real estate gr...

Sam Dogen, author of the instant Wall Street Journal bestseller “Buy This, Not That: How to Spend Your Way to Wealth and Freedom,” grew up thinking about money.  After spending his childhood as a Foreign Service kid at posts around Asia, he studied economics at William & Mary, and then took a job working at Goldman Sachs, where he dived head first into the world of finance.  In the midst of the 2009 global financial crisis, Sam sta...

After 8 years and multiple tours in the Foreign Service, Patrick Branco left the Department to run for public office. He immediately entered the race for Hawaii State Representative for District 50 (Kailua & Kāne‘ohe Bay) and found himself campaigning during COVID-19, running vaccination centers, and knocking on nearly four thousand doors while wearing a lei and a mask to show the dedication he had to his community.  Hear Patrick’s...

Brandon Possin got his first taste of investing in tech at the tender age of 13, when he purchased stock in Apple with his lemonade stand money. His interest in financial technology deepened further after joining the Foreign Service, when he was posted to Pakistan. There, he found that e-commerce entrepreneurs were disadvantaged by their lack of access to platforms like PayPal, as the options available for transferring money and re...

Greg Stoneberg began working for the U.S. government fresh out of college.  Nearly 18 years later, he and his wife Tracy find themselves on track to be TSP millionaires despite being a single income family for over a decade.  Although this may sound like the work of a one-off miracle, it is actually the result of budgeting, investing, and financial planning.  The journey to financial stability and personal wealth may look more like...

EFM Tim Robinson returns to share his insights on making the leap from real estate investor to full-time real estate salesperson and entrepreneur, as well as his perspective on investing in real estate and other asset classes in a market characterized by rising interest rates. 

Hear Tim discuss:

• The pros, cons, and costs of a career in real estate
• Working as a solo age...

When Marcelle Yeager left behind a career she loved and found herself in Uzbekistan struggling to find work, she began reviewing the resumes of her friends and family and coaching them on job transitions. She found a niche in helping talented people transition into the job they wanted, not just the job that was the logical next step to a promotion in their current field. Seeing how much talent was in the Foreign Service EFM communi...

Talking about money has always been somewhat taboo in today’s society, so when Malene Carr’s father sat her down to discuss her Thrift Savings Plan when she first started at the State Department, she appreciated how open her father was to discussing financial matters.  Now Malene is starting financial literacy groups at every embassy or consulate where she serves, with the goal of promoting open and frank discussions on investments...

Time with family and friends is something you can never get enough of, but it is something Foreign Service employees struggle to find even during R&R.  Shopping, organizing, and handling the pack out for your consumables shipment is time consuming, draining, and not a favorable way to be spending your time in between PCSes.  The frustration Christine Lusk felt when she was spending time shopping and packing instead of seeing her fa...

Courtney and Matt Glass have discovered not one but two niches of the real estate investing world for themselves. After joining the Foreign Service and becoming accidental landlords, Courtney and Matt learned about the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement and promptly began investing in short-term rentals in 2019. Since then, they have expanded their real estate portfolio and begun investing in self-storage facilitie...

Courtney and Matt Glass have discovered not one, but two niches of the real estate investing world for themselves. After joining the Foreign Service and becoming accidental landlords, Courtney and Matt learned about the FIRE (financial independence retire early) movement and promptly began investing in short term rentals in 2019. Since then, they have expanded their real estate portfolio and begun investing in self-storage faciliti...

After several wonderful assignments in Europe, Dillon Banerjee wanted to see how he could continue living in Europe after retiring from the Foreign Service. A tourist passport only allows Americans up to a 90 day stay in the Schengen Area, and Dillon wanted to be able to enjoy retirement with his family without geographic limits. 

While researching options, he found another Foreign Service officer who had used the Golden Visa pro...