The Spectrum of Financial Independence and Tools to Track Your Progress with Brad Barrett

00:00:00.000 | I'm going to run through types of financial independence.

00:00:02.080 | Traditional FIRE is have enough money to quit your job and never work again.

00:00:06.080 | Lean FIRE, which would be the retiring early, but bringing your expenses way down.

00:00:10.560 | Coast FIRE, it's saving up enough money so that you can stop contributing towards retirement.

00:00:16.080 | Barista FIRE, which is you could choose to just have a side job that only covers the expenses.

00:00:21.280 | And then the last one that I'll mention is...

00:00:23.520 | Most people, if they had the wherewithal to reach financial independence,

00:00:26.960 | they are going to do fantastic things.

00:00:29.200 | They're going to add value to the world.

00:00:30.640 | They're going to do interesting and varied things.

00:00:33.840 | What I actually would care about more than quitting my job is having the flexibility to work,

00:00:39.600 | but also I would like to save up enough money so that I'm not beholden to a job,

00:00:44.800 | but I don't want to sacrifice.

00:00:45.920 | I want to be able to go on really nice vacations,

00:00:48.000 | eat at whatever restaurants and spend money and live in a nice house.

00:00:51.360 | Can you give a little more detail on that, how people are doing this?

00:00:54.240 | Yeah, I mean, I think...

00:00:58.080 | Brad, thanks for joining me.

00:00:59.920 | Yeah, man, this should be fun.

00:01:01.360 | I always love chatting with you, whether online or off.

00:01:04.160 | So this should be a good time.

00:01:05.680 | We did our first conversation.

00:01:07.280 | Well, first one was many years ago on your podcast.

00:01:10.480 | Yeah, you first joined me on April for what became episode two of All The Hacks.

00:01:17.760 | And then we did it again for episode 100.

00:01:20.000 | And we talked a little bit about FIRE at the beginning.

00:01:24.400 | But I think both you and I have had an evolution of perspective on financial independence.

00:01:29.680 | So much so that in researching this episode,

00:01:33.920 | I found out that I didn't even know what "coast fire" was.

00:01:37.360 | And it turns out that that's actually the thing I'm probably most in tuned with myself.

00:01:42.400 | So lots of stuff to talk about when it comes to financial independence

00:01:46.480 | and how our perspectives have changed.

00:01:48.400 | Yeah, agreed.

00:01:49.280 | Going way back to episode 71 on Choose FI.

00:01:52.880 | So that was almost six years ago when we recorded this.

00:01:55.680 | I think, yeah, unquestionably, both of our perspectives have changed significantly.

00:01:59.920 | And I think, frankly, changed for the better in a lot of senses

00:02:04.080 | and changed for the healthier, certainly.

00:02:06.720 | I think both of us probably veered a little bit too much towards the frugality

00:02:12.880 | and over-optimizing at the expense of maybe enjoyment of life sometimes.

00:02:18.080 | And I think there's been an evolution, certainly for both of us, clearly.

00:02:24.880 | But I think, frankly, in the greater financial independence world.

00:02:28.800 | And this is one of the very few things that I will

00:02:31.520 | pat ourselves on the back for at Choose FI is, I mean, we, for a very large degree,

00:02:37.280 | and we have really been the center of the FI world for, I mean, the last handful of years.

00:02:44.080 | And we have made this very strongly anti that, like the miserliness,

00:02:51.600 | the just, "Hey, let's race to some number at the expense of life."

00:02:56.800 | And I think we've tried really, really, really hard to make it about,

00:03:01.040 | "Hey, what are you running towards, not what are you running away from?"

00:03:04.880 | And I think just that little shift in orientation

00:03:09.200 | has made a big difference in a lot of people's lives.

00:03:11.920 | Now, for anyone who didn't listen to the hundreds of episodes you've done,

00:03:17.440 | the few we've done, hasn't ever introduced themselves to FIRE,

00:03:21.200 | which will maybe only be a few people.

00:03:22.720 | So briefly, briefly, since you're the pro, for anyone out there,

00:03:26.400 | how would you just define financial independence

00:03:28.560 | and the difference between financial independence and FIRE?

00:03:32.160 | Yeah, well, that's a great question.

00:03:35.360 | So, okay, FIRE, the definition, so we're financial independence, retire early.

00:03:41.760 | And now that was en vogue certainly five to 10 years ago.

00:03:47.520 | It was this really, there's an allure to it.

00:03:50.960 | And frankly, Chris, it's that cute little acronym, right?

00:03:54.400 | Like FIRE just sounds cool.

00:03:56.240 | Like, "Hey, I'm pursuing FIRE."

00:03:58.720 | But honestly, there was so much overemphasis on the retire early

00:04:05.280 | that it just became this horrible distraction.

00:04:09.360 | And there are just people really just crapping on,

00:04:14.400 | hold on, I don't want to say this, Andrew, cut that.

00:04:16.720 | And there are just people who love to rip on the FIRE movement

00:04:22.800 | because all they hear is that R-E.

00:04:26.160 | And it really takes away from people who are pursuing

00:04:30.880 | financial independence to live a better life.

00:04:33.440 | And that is how I see, I see financial independence as a universal good

00:04:38.800 | in that people are resting control of their lives back from this elusive they, right?

00:04:46.160 | Like you always hear the doom and gloom of you can never retire.

00:04:49.360 | It's impossible.

00:04:50.480 | You need 10 to $20 million to retire.

00:04:53.680 | Healthcare is going to be unaffordable.

00:04:55.600 | Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:04:56.880 | You can't do this.

00:04:57.600 | You can't do this.

00:04:58.320 | It's impossible.

00:04:59.520 | As opposed to reorienting around what can you control?

00:05:05.040 | And you, to a large degree, can control your expenses.

00:05:08.960 | And now, again, this is probably where people overemphasize just the cutting.

00:05:13.840 | And Chris, obviously we'll talk about that in depth here today,

00:05:16.800 | but you can control what does your life cost?

00:05:20.720 | And then essentially you can say, okay, I take, what does my life cost per year?

00:05:25.520 | And then multiply by some number.

00:05:27.520 | It's usually by 25.

00:05:29.440 | So let's say your life costs $80,000 a year.

00:05:32.240 | Multiply by 25, that's $2 million.

00:05:34.640 | That's your five number, your financial independence number.

00:05:38.960 | Because I think many of us, most of us have heard of the 4% rule

00:05:42.880 | where we're not going to get into this really in-depth here today.

00:05:46.400 | But in essence, you can pull 4% out of your investable assets.

00:05:52.640 | So again, we'll turn it around and say that $2 million times 0.04 is $80,000, right?

00:06:00.000 | So it's just the inverse of where we started at 80,000 for the expenses.

00:06:05.360 | So that $2 million can spit off 80K to cover your living expenses.

00:06:11.760 | Now it is indexed for inflation, normal inflation, not the inflation we've seen recently.

00:06:17.120 | So there are some potential adjustments, but I think some people have some people adjust

00:06:22.320 | for that is say, okay, maybe I want to be a little more conservative and make it 30 times

00:06:27.680 | my expenses or 33 times something, something like that.

00:06:31.040 | Right.

00:06:31.360 | So you can, you can play with this at the margins, because I think really the essence

00:06:36.960 | of it is you actually have some degree of certainty and you have something to shoot

00:06:42.720 | for maybe for the first time in your life.

00:06:44.720 | And it's not just this doom and gloom of, oh, you can never do this.

00:06:48.160 | You can never do that.

00:06:49.440 | There's some elusive day that's going to impact you.

00:06:52.160 | It's you can control that.

00:06:54.160 | So yeah, how does that sound for a rough definition?

00:06:58.880 | No, no, it makes sense.

00:07:00.240 | And I will come back at some point to the 4% rule because I have some thoughts.

00:07:05.120 | But, you know, when I think about financial independence on one perspective, it doesn't

00:07:10.960 | even have to get that detailed.

00:07:13.280 | It's, you know, you could have a large emergency fund and that's a form of financial independence

00:07:18.800 | because it gives you time to look for the right job.

00:07:21.680 | You know, every bit of savings that gives you some flexibility is layering in financial

00:07:28.000 | independence.

00:07:29.040 | And sure, when you get to the point that your savings can cover your entire life and you

00:07:33.520 | can choose not to work, to work, to work for free, obviously, you know, that's even more

00:07:38.880 | independence.

00:07:39.520 | And if you truly could replace your entire income, then yeah, you could retire early

00:07:44.240 | per se.

00:07:44.740 | The irony is that most people end up using their free time to do things that very much

00:07:50.640 | resemble work and very often generate income and they're not truly retiring early.

00:07:55.200 | But I think that's why it's actually helpful.

00:07:59.520 | As much as I thought it was confusing that there are many different types of fire, it

00:08:04.480 | was actually helpful to look at them and talk about what they are because it gave some perspective

00:08:10.400 | to the concept that it's not all about one particular style, which I think historically

00:08:17.360 | it has been.

00:08:17.840 | It's always been saving up enough money so you have 25 times your income and don't think

00:08:22.480 | about anything else.

00:08:23.280 | Yeah, I think you're spot on.

00:08:25.600 | I think that's exactly right.

00:08:27.120 | And that is why that caricature existed, right?

00:08:31.280 | It's like this was for a very specific type of person is what it seemed like high income,

00:08:37.360 | maybe in a tech job, maybe a white guy in his 30s, right?

00:08:40.880 | Because some of the very famous early fire bloggers, I guess I even have a hard time

00:08:46.640 | saying it at this point, Chris, the early fire bloggers were fit that caricature, right?

00:08:51.680 | Or fit that profile, let's say.

00:08:52.960 | So I agree with you that A, nobody that I know of actually just sits on their butt and

00:08:59.520 | retires and doesn't do anything.

00:09:01.440 | Most people, if they had the wherewithal to reach financial independence at some fairly

00:09:06.480 | early point or expedited time, they are going to do fantastic things.

00:09:12.320 | Like you said, they're going to earn money somehow.

00:09:15.120 | They're going to add value to the world.

00:09:16.720 | They're going to do interesting and varied things.

00:09:20.800 | And to imagine this again, you can tell I get bothered by this, right?

00:09:24.640 | So like that, they're just going to sit there and do nothing and sip umbrella drinks.

00:09:29.120 | It's like, it's just so silly and laughable, which is why like to focus on the RE makes

00:09:33.680 | no sense.

00:09:34.480 | And then, like you said, the power starts accruing essentially from day one, right?

00:09:40.400 | It's like that first time, if you're living paycheck to paycheck and you're now all of

00:09:45.680 | a sudden you found out about ChooseFI and you're pursuing financial independence,

00:09:50.960 | okay, maybe it's not going to take you 10 years to get to five.

00:09:54.960 | Maybe it's going to take you 20 years.

00:09:56.160 | Maybe it's going to take you how many every year?

00:09:58.320 | It almost doesn't even matter.

00:09:59.440 | But your life is vastly better that first time you have $5,000 saved up.

00:10:05.680 | Even $1,000, right?

00:10:07.040 | Like, Chris, how many people live paycheck to paycheck and think that an emergency is

00:10:12.320 | a $200 expense that came out of the blue, but was perfectly foreseeable in a given year?

00:10:19.120 | But that to them is an emergency.

00:10:21.600 | But it's really not, right?

00:10:22.960 | Like, it's just life is lumpy.

00:10:24.880 | Expenses are lumpy.

00:10:25.920 | That's the way it works.

00:10:27.280 | But man, that first time they have $1,000 saved up, $5,000 saved up, like their life

00:10:32.000 | is dramatically better.

00:10:33.600 | So yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.

00:10:34.800 | Like the FI journey starts from day one.

00:10:38.000 | And I think that power starts accruing from day one.

00:10:41.280 | And I think it really radically transforms people and their entire mindset.

00:10:45.680 | Yeah, I think a handful of people I knew, myself included, probably went off the deep

00:10:49.520 | end with one version of it in our minds.

00:10:52.240 | I'm going to run through because there's an unlimited number of types of financial

00:10:56.320 | independence, right?

00:10:57.360 | They're ones that I will leave off and maybe they're ones you're excited about.

00:11:00.800 | But I'm just going to share a few of the ones.

00:11:03.200 | I wrote down a couple quick definitions, because I think having a few options of what

00:11:08.640 | financial independence could be actually gives you more flexibility.

00:11:15.200 | So the one we talked about, just traditional fire is have enough money to quit your job

00:11:21.200 | and never work again.

00:11:22.400 | But the other 4 are pretty interesting.

00:11:24.080 | So I'm going to talk about first with lean fire, which would be the very tight end of

00:11:29.280 | the spectrum, which is retiring early, but bringing your expectation for expenses way

00:11:35.200 | down, really tightening your belt so that you can do it even earlier.

00:11:38.640 | And I would say this one probably gets a lot more flack than practically shows up.

00:11:45.280 | But this is I am going to change where I live, change what I eat, change the activities I

00:11:50.960 | do so I can stop working.

00:11:52.400 | And I don't know.

00:11:54.160 | I'll run through them all and we can talk about them.

00:11:57.200 | The next one, which is interesting, is kind of coast fire.

00:12:02.240 | And it's most interesting to me because I didn't really actually understand what it

00:12:05.280 | meant.

00:12:05.780 | I thought it was a version of fire for people who live on the coasts where cost of living

00:12:11.280 | is higher.

00:12:12.080 | But it turns out it's actually instead of focusing on saving up enough money so that

00:12:17.520 | you can stop working, it's saving up enough money so that you can stop contributing towards

00:12:24.480 | retirement, whatever time in the future that might be.

00:12:27.840 | So let's say you're fine working till you're 65, fill up your retirement accounts enough

00:12:34.000 | early on so that all of your income each year can just go to life and not go towards savings,

00:12:40.960 | which dovetails into another option, which is called barista fire, which is...

00:12:45.120 | And then you could choose to make a lot of money and spend a lot of money, or you could

00:12:49.680 | choose to just have a side job that only covers the expenses because you don't need to contribute

00:12:55.600 | to your savings.

00:12:56.400 | And so you could take a less stressful job.

00:12:58.960 | You could take a job that earns less income.

00:13:01.040 | And by the way, this is all a spectrum, right?

00:13:03.600 | If in order to meet your retirement needs, you need to save $30,000 a year, it's not

00:13:08.880 | zero or 30, you could lower your income.

00:13:11.600 | There's stops along the way.

00:13:14.000 | And then the last one that I'll mention is Fatfire, which has a wonderful Reddit community

00:13:19.840 | and Facebook group, which is really just not sacrificing, right?

00:13:25.040 | It's like, "I would like to save up enough money so that I'm not beholden to a job.

00:13:30.400 | I'm not beholden to anything.

00:13:32.240 | But I don't want to sacrifice.

00:13:33.440 | I want to be able to go on really nice vacations.

00:13:35.600 | I want to be able to travel around the world, eat at whatever restaurants I want to and

00:13:40.720 | spend money and live in a nice house and choose to live in the Bay Area, even if I'm not working

00:13:45.040 | or wherever it is for you."

00:13:46.400 | So I think that's like, "I want to live whatever life I want on my savings and not

00:13:52.400 | stress out about it."

00:13:53.280 | And I don't know, I'm curious what you think when you hear all of these things, whether

00:13:56.640 | you're like, "This is silly.

00:13:57.840 | This is helpful."

00:13:58.640 | Yeah, I think it's helpful.

00:14:01.360 | I think it's mostly helpful.

00:14:02.880 | And like you said, there are a lot of these different ones.

00:14:04.960 | I think these are the four probably main ones that I've heard of.

00:14:08.000 | I suspect there are some that you and I have never even heard of at this point.

00:14:11.440 | But yeah, I think, like you said, lean fire is probably the one that appeals to me least.

00:14:21.440 | But I suspect it's maybe, I don't know.

00:14:25.520 | The easiest to achieve.

00:14:26.880 | It's easy.

00:14:27.440 | It's certainly easiest to achieve.

00:14:28.960 | Yeah, it's the old school.

00:14:30.880 | It's like essentially how little could you humanly spend more or less to live?

00:14:37.360 | And then have you achieved FI based on probably the 25 times rule based on that?

00:14:45.200 | So let's say your life, maybe just your actual structural expenses and some food to get by

00:14:51.920 | costs $30,000, right?

00:14:54.720 | Well, okay, then your lean FI is $750,000, which is very doable for a lot of people.

00:15:00.880 | I mean, Chris, I can't imagine that sounds like a very appealing life to either me or

00:15:06.400 | you, but I can understand why people potentially pursue this.

00:15:10.800 | What I think is interesting, and it's something I've actually said a lot, and I guess maybe

00:15:15.360 | I've been describing lean fire, is that it's helpful for me to have the security to know

00:15:21.840 | that I've saved enough money, that there is a lifestyle I could live, especially once

00:15:26.880 | you have a family and children.

00:15:28.160 | If you have that $750,000, and something happens, you lose your ability to work.

00:15:35.120 | Knowing that there is a place in the world that you could live, maybe even in the US,

00:15:40.800 | maybe even nearby, there is an ability to buy food, feed your family.

00:15:47.840 | That's a lot of security.

00:15:50.000 | It gives you the flexibility to do a lot of things in your life and be a lot less worried.

00:15:55.040 | Now, it's not enough money to live in a major city and go out and take expensive vacations,

00:16:01.280 | but it will give you some peace of mind.

00:16:03.520 | I think the challenge is, when you get to the point that you hit it, do you really want

00:16:07.680 | to stop, do nothing for the rest of your life, and live that life or keep going?

00:16:11.840 | So to me, there are stops along the journey that start with being out of debt, start with

00:16:17.920 | being able to pay off... Well, let's skip that.

00:16:21.760 | It starts with being out of debt, building up savings and whatnot.

00:16:25.120 | But I think what I've seen in my life, leaving to start this podcast, my wife leaving to

00:16:30.480 | join me, those were things we were able to do because we have savings.

00:16:34.960 | Do we have enough savings that we could live off of it in our current lifestyle with zero

00:16:39.200 | income?

00:16:39.680 | Probably not.

00:16:40.640 | But do we have enough savings that we could adapt our lifestyle, move somewhere else and

00:16:44.320 | live off it?

00:16:44.960 | Yes.

00:16:45.600 | And that gives us a lot of comfort.

00:16:47.600 | Yeah.

00:16:48.240 | Yeah, the security.

00:16:49.360 | I mean, there's a real allure to that, certainly.

00:16:51.840 | And I don't think any of these are all or nothing, I mean, especially something like

00:16:56.720 | LeanFi.

00:16:57.520 | So I mean, I can use the example of my brother and his wife and family.

00:17:02.160 | They, I mean, maybe you could call it a mini-retirement, but there's some intersection of a mini-retirement

00:17:10.800 | and LeanFi in that they just had a daughter and she's a year old now.

00:17:18.480 | And basically, he was staying home to raise her for the first year.

00:17:24.160 | And then his wife, Kristen, realized, "Hey, I don't want to miss this time.

00:17:30.240 | This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

00:17:32.560 | We're not at Fi, but we're certainly at a LeanFi number where we could easily live off

00:17:40.480 | the 4% rule based on earning zero income."

00:17:44.320 | So they wound up almost doing exactly what you described, Chris, which was, "Hey, maybe

00:17:48.960 | you could even do this within the United States."

00:17:51.520 | They moved to Wisconsin, where she's from.

00:17:54.400 | They bought a condo, don't have a mortgage on it.

00:17:59.040 | And they're living for a year or two or maybe even more in this LeanFi style.

00:18:05.680 | But the benefit they're getting is they're seeing those first formative years of their

00:18:12.800 | daughter's life as a family.

00:18:15.040 | And the three of them are there every single day.

00:18:17.040 | So you talk about security, but you also talk about benefits of something.

00:18:21.040 | I mean, that is literally priceless.

00:18:23.840 | And I mean, I don't know precisely what's going on in their lives, but are they going

00:18:27.600 | out to fancy dinners all the time?

00:18:29.840 | Are they doing this and that?

00:18:31.040 | No, but man, they're there with their daughter every single day.

00:18:36.400 | And that's an astonishing, astonishing thing.

00:18:39.280 | I think you could choose what you want to do with your financial independence.

00:18:43.920 | You could choose how it exists.

00:18:45.760 | But let's come back to CoastFi because it's the most interesting one to me because it

00:18:49.760 | feels like what I'm interested in and what I actually would care about more than quitting

00:18:54.400 | my job is having the flexibility to work, but also save.

00:18:59.600 | I'm curious what you think.

00:19:00.880 | Yeah.

00:19:02.160 | So it's funny, actually, that today is the day you found CoastFi, right?

00:19:06.320 | And you realized, oh, wow, this is interesting to me.

00:19:09.120 | This is what I'm living at this point.

00:19:10.640 | And yeah, I mean, I think this has a real appeal to a lot of people.

00:19:15.760 | This is maybe one of the newer of these flavors of Fi, but it was one of those aha moments

00:19:21.360 | for a lot of people in that, yeah, I mean, essentially, and Chris, obviously, there's

00:19:25.840 | the intersection of like the rule of 72 and compounding money.

00:19:30.480 | So just to take a quick sidebar and explain that is I think most people understand that,

00:19:35.920 | okay, you have some investable net worth saved up, right?

00:19:40.160 | And while we can't guarantee what a stock market return is, I think you have a general

00:19:49.120 | annual return over a long period of time.

00:19:51.600 | Like at ChooseFi, we generally say 8%.

00:19:54.160 | We use that as the back of the envelope.

00:19:55.760 | So using what's known as the rule of 72, and I don't want to get in the weeds here, but

00:20:00.880 | this is actually a really useful and pretty easy thing to figure out is it basically tells

00:20:06.080 | you how long it'll take for your assets to double based on a certain rate of return.

00:20:14.080 | So more or less, you just take the number 72 and then divide by your expected rate of

00:20:20.080 | return.

00:20:21.080 | If we're saying 8%, so 72 divided by 8 very simply is 9.

00:20:25.120 | That's the number of years it'll take your money to double.

00:20:27.920 | So that's really, really important for CoastFi in that basically how CoastFi works is let's

00:20:34.960 | say you've saved up, I don't know, 300,000, let's start there.

00:20:39.520 | Something that's reasonable and is certainly a nice net worth, but is not going to get

00:20:44.800 | just about anybody to buy, right?

00:20:46.680 | So you've saved up 300,000 and now you want to not save any more money.

00:20:54.240 | That's the part of coasting.

00:20:56.520 | You're not saving additional money into your, hold on, sorry, let me say that again.

00:21:01.840 | So that's the point where coasting comes in is essentially your money is working for you

00:21:06.200 | in the background and you are not adding anything to those assets.

00:21:10.440 | You're not saving.

00:21:11.440 | You are either earning less and spending it all or potentially spending more money, right?

00:21:18.600 | Or potentially spending more money and just increasing your lifestyle to meet where your

00:21:23.560 | income is.

00:21:24.560 | So either way, not a bad option, right?

00:21:27.640 | And basically using that rule of 72, let's say your actual fine number was, I don't know,

00:21:35.000 | 1.2 million just to make the math easy.

00:21:37.160 | So that 300,000 will double to 600,000 in nine years.

00:21:42.960 | And then that 600 will double again to 1.2 million in 18 years total.

00:21:49.080 | So 18 years from now, if you had a $300,000 net worth, again, in theory, we're not saying

00:21:54.280 | this is a guarantee, but assuming an 8% annual return, it would be 1.2 million in about 18

00:21:59.760 | years.

00:22:00.760 | And at that point you would be fine.

00:22:02.720 | So you're more or less coasting into it based on the work that you've done previously by

00:22:09.040 | saving in this concerted manner to get your current net worth.

00:22:13.080 | And yeah, I mean, Chris, I think there really is a great allure to that.

00:22:17.560 | I know, again, this is something that you're thinking about in your own life, right?

00:22:22.160 | You clearly have a nice net worth, but I think you are not at fi as you would traditionally

00:22:28.400 | define it, right?

00:22:29.640 | I mean, it's funny because 10 years ago, I probably would have said yes.

00:22:33.640 | Then you have children, you move into the Bay Area, and you spend a lot...

00:22:37.560 | You realize how much more money you're spending and you come out of it.

00:22:40.280 | So it's like you can come into it, you can come out of it.

00:22:42.760 | For me, I think we've saved enough that it'll cover retirement if it continues to grow.

00:22:49.400 | And that we can not focus as much on saving in the short term.

00:22:53.840 | But we do need to focus on covering our expenses.

00:22:56.080 | And so that's where I think it seems like, "Oh, I could do whatever I want."

00:23:00.200 | No, no, no.

00:23:01.200 | Can't do whatever we want.

00:23:02.640 | Still need a reasonably high pre-tax income to cover where we live and how much we spend

00:23:07.400 | each year and probably will save more.

00:23:11.320 | But in a strange way, for me, it's weird to ever withdraw money from your savings.

00:23:19.760 | So for me, the money we put away in our brokerage account, our retirement accounts, that's for

00:23:24.320 | retirement.

00:23:25.320 | That starts TBD.

00:23:27.460 | I feel weird taking money out of it.

00:23:29.440 | The strange thing in this new kind of Coast Fi world that I'm hours into is this idea

00:23:35.520 | that, "Well, maybe it makes sense to withdraw some of it so that we can put other money

00:23:40.280 | we make into more tax-advantaged accounts."

00:23:43.560 | So I could actually see a start to draw down on our long-term savings, which for us is

00:23:48.700 | in our Wealthfront account, so that we can increase our solo 401(k) contributions because

00:23:56.080 | there's just a more tax advantage to doing that.

00:23:59.020 | That's something that we'll probably still do.

00:24:00.720 | So we're still going to save, but we're going to also withdraw at the same time, which I'm

00:24:06.240 | sure will make some financial model confused.

00:24:09.720 | But I think for us, this feels...

00:24:12.960 | It feels like the first time I found a part of the FIRE movement, if you will, that I'm

00:24:16.440 | like, "Oh, this makes sense now."

00:24:18.440 | I don't necessarily want to quit my job.

00:24:20.200 | And I think a lot of people I talk to don't want to quit their job, or at least don't

00:24:23.720 | want to stop working.

00:24:25.880 | And so the one nuance to calculating this is thinking, "When do I want to stop working?"

00:24:32.160 | Work backwards from there to figure out how much you need now.

00:24:35.940 | So like you said, if you want to stop working in 18 years, I'm a bit more conservative.

00:24:40.360 | I probably use 6%.

00:24:42.160 | So for me, that takes your 18 to 25.

00:24:45.380 | So if you're cool with a 65-year retirement age, and you want to work backwards, by 40,

00:24:53.520 | you need one-fourth of what you think you need to live on in retirement.

00:24:56.800 | So if that number is $1 million, you need $250 because you're not going to touch it.

00:25:00.960 | It's just going to grow until that day.

00:25:03.000 | I don't know.

00:25:04.000 | We could go down a lot of rabbit holes here.

00:25:06.980 | But I've been really intrigued.

00:25:08.500 | I will say, I will just take a quick tackle on the 4% rule because I went down the Early

00:25:15.620 | Retirement Now website, which had this great whole thing on safe withdrawal rates and sequence

00:25:24.240 | of return risk and everything.

00:25:25.240 | It was like a 60-part blog post series, which I will just say is a lot.

00:25:29.480 | I'll link to the first one in the show notes.

00:25:32.720 | But I think the 4% rule often gets misinterpreted because it was truly built for a 30-year cycle

00:25:40.180 | to end at zero.

00:25:41.940 | And so if you're using the 4% rule, starting at age 30, the certainty with which it has

00:25:49.300 | worked in the Trinity study that it was based off of would have only gotten you to age 60.

00:25:54.700 | However, if you look at a lot of the calculations and the Early Retirement Now blog actually

00:25:59.100 | has a lot of them, you'll notice that if you just reduce it to 3.5% or even 3%, it works

00:26:07.460 | in perpetuity.

00:26:08.460 | So if you want to be really safe, which is what I do in all my projections, I use the

00:26:13.020 | 3% rule.

00:26:14.140 | I'm probably underselling things.

00:26:16.300 | I'm also not factoring in Social Security or anything else.

00:26:20.900 | But that's where I come out with on the 4% rule.

00:26:24.740 | I think for a handful of reasons, it's probably both too aggressive to be certain and too

00:26:31.140 | conservative for what I imagine we will see with returns.

00:26:34.380 | Yeah.

00:26:35.380 | Isn't that interesting?

00:26:36.380 | Right?

00:26:37.380 | And yeah, Karsten.

00:26:38.540 | So listeners of ChooseFI will be very familiar with Karsten from Early Retirement Now.

00:26:43.460 | He is just an amazing, amazing intellect.

00:26:47.100 | And yeah, like you said, if you're looking to dive deep on safe withdrawal rates, his

00:26:51.020 | 60-part series, it's almost laughable to say 60-part series out loud, but yeah, it is amazing.

00:26:56.740 | And yeah.

00:26:57.740 | And by the way, each part is not like three paragraphs.

00:26:59.460 | Each part is like seven pages of content.

00:27:02.060 | Right.

00:27:03.060 | Thousands of words and graphs and charts and stuff.

00:27:05.580 | Yeah.

00:27:06.580 | But right.

00:27:07.580 | I think on our show, he basically has said it's almost a guarantee, and he would never

00:27:12.180 | use the word guarantee, but in every Monte Carlo simulation he's come up with, that 3.25%

00:27:19.220 | will get you there in virtually every single scenario.

00:27:22.060 | So like you said, using a 3% safe withdrawal rate is very, very conservative and not including

00:27:27.740 | social security.

00:27:28.740 | I mean, we're all, I think those of us that are inclined to think that way, and I am as

00:27:33.900 | well, because I mean, I use that 33 times.

00:27:36.380 | So that's the 3% rule, 33 times your annual expenses.

00:27:41.140 | I think we all understand we're being ultra, ultra conservative, but again, a lot of this,

00:27:47.260 | a lot of personal finance is psychology.

00:27:49.780 | It's more than it is numbers.

00:27:51.220 | And I think if that helps you sleep well at night, because again, that word security,

00:27:56.460 | right?

00:27:57.460 | We'll come back to that.

00:27:58.460 | I think that is a really important word.

00:27:59.820 | It's a really important concept.

00:28:01.460 | And if that helps you sleep well at night, then so be it.

00:28:04.020 | It's fine.

00:28:05.020 | Like, but you have to understand like, what's the opportunity cost, right?

00:28:07.900 | So the opportunity costs potentially are years of your life that you're working.

00:28:14.020 | Now, if like you, you're doing something that you love, and again, I just wrote down as

00:28:19.780 | you were talking, like, who says you have to stop working as if you need to stop working

00:28:25.240 | to be part of the fire movement or something like that nonsense is gone.

00:28:30.740 | It was gone years ago.

00:28:31.940 | Like, that's not a prerequisite to being a member of the financial independence movement,

00:28:36.460 | certainly.

00:28:37.460 | And like, you can do what you want.

00:28:38.700 | That's the whole beauty of this, Chris, right?

00:28:40.340 | Like, you have the freedom to do what you want in life.

00:28:43.020 | And if that means you want to work because you love it, then do it.

00:28:46.660 | That's great.

00:28:47.660 | But do it on your own terms.

00:28:48.660 | Right?

00:28:49.660 | So I think, again, we're being a little conservative, but that's okay.

00:28:55.660 | Again, understanding what's the opportunity cost and for people who are working in jobs

00:28:59.860 | that they don't love, and that it's that one more year syndrome, how many people fall prey

00:29:04.900 | to that?

00:29:05.900 | Like, oh, I don't feel safe enough yet.

00:29:07.380 | I don't feel safe enough.

00:29:08.500 | What if I need the 2.5% safe withdrawal rate?

00:29:11.940 | What about 2.25%?

00:29:13.660 | And I don't think Social Security is going to be here.

00:29:15.980 | You know, you can come up with all of this stuff that will keep you working in a job

00:29:20.660 | that you potentially hate forever.

00:29:23.380 | And that's not a good alternative either.

00:29:25.340 | So clearly, I'm kind of setting up almost like a straw man ridiculous argument here,

00:29:30.020 | Chris.

00:29:31.020 | But like, but maybe not, because I fear there are people that could fall prey to that.

00:29:37.300 | I think the one thing that you got to remember is that it's not binary.

00:29:41.800 | If you have a job you hate, you don't have to just quit that job and never work again

00:29:46.860 | and be able to replace your income for the next 30 to 60 years.

00:29:52.220 | If you build up enough to get you by for a year, then you can go try to find another

00:29:58.580 | job that you might like more.

00:30:00.700 | And it turns out, if you love it more, you might be able to advance better, negotiate

00:30:04.220 | a salary better, be more productive.

00:30:06.820 | You might end up making more money in the long run.

00:30:09.140 | I know a lot of people that find themselves sometimes in their career not happy with their

00:30:13.520 | job.

00:30:14.520 | And if I look back now that I've kind of had the professional experience, most of them

00:30:17.920 | found other things pretty quickly that they loved.

00:30:20.980 | Some took longer than they needed.

00:30:22.940 | So a lot of them worried that they couldn't quit their job because they needed enough

00:30:27.060 | money, millions of dollars to cover their income forever.

00:30:30.420 | And I know that because I was one of them.

00:30:32.540 | But I quickly found other things that I loved.

00:30:35.780 | And so, put together, that's more of an emergency fund issue than a financial independence issue.

00:30:42.180 | You don't need to have your entire life covered in costs before you can take time to find

00:30:49.100 | something you love.

00:30:50.100 | And I have a good friend who did this.

00:30:52.340 | He knew he was ready to find something new and knew that it might take a year and had

00:30:57.200 | enough savings to do that.

00:30:59.060 | Didn't think he needed financial independence, retire early money.

00:31:02.960 | And about six months in, he found a thing that he's really, really excited about.

00:31:06.720 | And it took time, but he's going to be much happier.

00:31:09.540 | And I think his career will flourish because of it.

00:31:12.360 | So I don't know, that's just one perspective I have.

00:31:15.720 | No, that's really cool.

00:31:16.720 | I mean, that resonates with me in my own life, frankly, and you as well, right?

00:31:21.920 | We both did this with our own entrepreneurial ventures.

00:31:25.800 | And it's cool to have options.

00:31:27.920 | And I think that's what pursuing FI gives you.

00:31:31.000 | It gives you options that if, I mean, for me, if I didn't have any type of side business

00:31:37.640 | and I was just, I mean, I was a middle manager at doing corporate state tax returns.

00:31:42.200 | I was a CPA and I was on the path to FI.

00:31:45.480 | I was still a number of years away and I had built businesses on the side.

00:31:50.920 | I mean, Chris, they weren't bringing in a ton of money, but it was something that like

00:31:53.920 | I had proved the concept to myself.

00:31:56.880 | And I said, Oh, if I could actually do this full time, maybe I could turn this into something.

00:32:01.760 | And it's, you know, in the points and miles world, you didn't even realize, I don't think

00:32:05.760 | all this time that we've known each other, that that was really my first foray into entrepreneurship

00:32:11.680 | was through points and miles.

00:32:12.680 | And it was for basically regular people.

00:32:15.600 | I was helping people get to Disney world, take Disney world trips, not first class on

00:32:20.680 | Singapore suites or anything like that.

00:32:22.520 | But literally trips to Disney world, because I figured if they were, if I, if I could save

00:32:28.720 | $4,000 for my family, there were millions of other families who want to go to Disney

00:32:33.360 | world.

00:32:34.360 | And yeah.

00:32:35.360 | Is that super attractive to a 24 year old kid who's looking to fly first class and,

00:32:39.040 | and do all the travel hacking type of stuff?

00:32:41.560 | No.

00:32:42.560 | But is that appealing to tens of millions of families who want to go to Disney world?

00:32:45.520 | Yeah, you bet.

00:32:46.720 | And then I kind of scaled that with my next business travel miles one-on-one and, and

00:32:50.680 | it was just, I wouldn't have had that opportunity.

00:32:52.720 | I wouldn't have had the guts, frankly, to leave my job, my nice safe job when I had

00:32:57.560 | two daughters and a wife.

00:33:00.360 | If I didn't, if I wasn't pursuing fine, if I wasn't 80% of the way to my fine number,

00:33:05.840 | it was that, that security blanket, it made a massive difference, you know?

00:33:10.080 | So you said 80%.

00:33:11.600 | So I'm curious, how are you tracking this?

00:33:14.240 | I downloaded Karsten's toolkit, which is a spreadsheet that I didn't even...

00:33:21.080 | I spent about 20 minutes on it and I made it about 10% or less the way there, which

00:33:25.000 | is not to say it's not a helpful tool.

00:33:27.280 | But I think there's a world where you can go down a lot of rabbit holes.

00:33:30.280 | So just to be clear, his tool is incredible, especially when it comes to modeling a lot

00:33:34.160 | of the things he talks about.

00:33:35.440 | If you want to nerd out, I'll also link to that in the show notes.

00:33:39.320 | But high level, what are the tools you're using on a daily basis to kind of manage your

00:33:43.440 | money and track your financial independence journey?

00:33:48.160 | Yeah.

00:33:49.160 | Well, you, the AllTheHacks guy, are going to be very disappointed in me.

00:33:52.960 | I am as low-key and low-tech with this as one could possibly be.

00:33:59.000 | I still use the Excel, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that I've been using for like my entire FI

00:34:07.240 | journey.

00:34:08.240 | I have it literally quarter by quarter saved, my net worth saved for the last 10 plus years

00:34:15.920 | now.

00:34:16.920 | And which is actually a really cool exercise.

00:34:18.200 | I just love, and I know our good friend Paula Pant does this as well, just loves really

00:34:23.920 | getting into the nitty gritty of like, I know it sounds silly, but entering those numbers

00:34:30.720 | into the spreadsheet, there's something really visceral about it that is better for me personally

00:34:38.220 | than using some fancy tool or some fancy projection software.

00:34:42.280 | And I know you've dove into a whole bunch of these things.

00:34:46.200 | So I want to get back to you on this because you have a better answer.

00:34:49.200 | But yeah, I mean, I very simply, I have my CPA's brain.

00:34:53.120 | So I've come up with like income statements and net worth statements that I just track

00:34:57.720 | in Excel.

00:34:59.280 | And I basically maybe spend an hour every month just kind of really tying everything

00:35:04.680 | out to, I run everything through my checking account.

00:35:09.000 | So I use that as the account that I run everything off of and then any transfers into other accounts.

00:35:14.920 | And then obviously increases or decreases in the account balances at Vanguard or Fidelity

00:35:21.040 | or Schwab or Wealthfront or wherever it may be.

00:35:24.200 | And that then ties out to my net worth.

00:35:27.480 | So basically I'm doing this probably, like I said, about an hour a month, give or take

00:35:33.000 | to track my checking account.

00:35:35.200 | And then at the end of every quarter, I spend probably no more than 30 minutes logging into

00:35:41.280 | every account that I own, that I have assets at and just jotting down in this Excel spreadsheet

00:35:47.960 | my balance there.

00:35:49.520 | So it ultimately then ties out to my, I get my net worth.

00:35:53.120 | So it's been, yeah, I know it sounds like a lot of work.

00:35:56.280 | It's really not.

00:35:57.480 | And there's something, there is something fun about it.

00:36:00.120 | So I know that doesn't appeal to you at all.

00:36:02.680 | But yeah, tell us about where the rabbit holes you've dove down.

00:36:07.740 | Obviously I took a more tech forward approach than a spreadsheet, although I used the spreadsheet

00:36:12.800 | for a long time.

00:36:13.800 | But I just found that if I didn't update it for 6 months, it was just a lot of work.

00:36:19.600 | So I think that for everyone, there's 2 to 3 tools.

00:36:24.760 | And I think for a lot of people, it can just be 2.

00:36:27.680 | And all of the stuff we've talked about this entire episode really comes down to knowing

00:36:31.580 | 2 things.

00:36:32.880 | It's knowing how much you're spending and knowing how much you have.

00:36:37.520 | And I guess knowing how much you make also, but that's usually a lot easier number for

00:36:41.240 | a lot of people to peg.

00:36:43.380 | And so it's how do you track your spending and how do you track your net worth?

00:36:47.920 | And how do you project from that would be the third piece of the puzzle.

00:36:52.800 | I used to try to track spending in Mint along many years ago.

00:36:58.120 | I've done an entire episode where I broke down...

00:37:01.160 | I actually went and used all the tools.

00:37:03.520 | Mint, YNAB, Monarch Money, Copilot, the one that Quicken launched, Simplify, and a couple

00:37:11.840 | others.

00:37:12.840 | And I played with all of them.

00:37:13.840 | I synced all my 2022 transactions, looked at everything.

00:37:18.700 | And the end goal was like, "I'm going to pick the best one."

00:37:21.800 | I had some ideas of what it would be.

00:37:23.660 | But at the end of the day, I went with Copilot.

00:37:26.200 | I think it's for anyone who's on Apple products, it's the best.

00:37:31.380 | If you're on Android or Windows, it's an iOS, Mac, iPad-only adventure.

00:37:38.320 | But for me, it almost makes it so easy and fun and simple and that's just what I've chosen.

00:37:48.000 | Right after I reached out to them and I was like, "Hey guys, I've been pitched by a handful

00:37:52.460 | of companies in this space to work with them as sponsors of the podcast.

00:37:57.200 | But at the end of the day, I want to work with the products I use."

00:38:01.200 | And that's how I've actually done most of the sponsorships we have.

00:38:03.680 | So I did end up working with them.

00:38:05.120 | So full disclosure, they are a partner of the show.

00:38:07.840 | And if you go to allthehacks.com/copilot, you'll get a discount.

00:38:11.640 | But I think that is how I manage how much I spend.

00:38:16.080 | I did a whole episode on all that, so I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.

00:38:19.760 | Then for how much money I have generally, Wealthfront has a free version of linking

00:38:25.800 | your accounts, seeing how it's going, doing some light projections.

00:38:29.520 | I'd put it in the "I don't want to play around a lot.

00:38:32.640 | I want you to give me best practices on everything."

00:38:37.820 | What I think goes a step further than that is a product called Kubera, which I first

00:38:43.640 | heard about at FinCon, when they presented on stage, I later started using.

00:38:49.760 | And then later, I would say partnered with, they're not a sponsor of the show.

00:38:54.800 | But we worked together on the All The Hacks membership.

00:38:57.240 | So All The Hacks members get their first year of Kubera free.

00:39:00.700 | Both of these tools are not free.

00:39:02.560 | So your option of a spreadsheet is free.

00:39:04.880 | My option of 2 apps, I pay for both of them.

00:39:08.360 | They're not huge expenses.

00:39:10.320 | But I think Kubera is like, imagine if someone wanted to build the website version of the

00:39:17.120 | spreadsheet you have, where you can put it in categories, you can look at...

00:39:22.040 | Especially on the investment side, you can look at cost bases or IRRs.

00:39:26.280 | But they're calculating it all for you.

00:39:28.560 | They're pulling all the info.

00:39:30.440 | And then they just launched recently this fast forward feature, where you can put in

00:39:34.160 | a set of simple rules in multiple scenarios and be able to just see what happens.

00:39:39.240 | So this isn't the full on financial projection tool that you could go down every rabbit hole

00:39:45.560 | of tax assumptions and everything.

00:39:47.980 | But you could say...

00:39:48.980 | And I'm looking at mine.

00:39:49.980 | It's like, let's say my assets grow by 3% factoring in inflation.

00:39:56.320 | Let's say my salary continues for this many years.

00:39:59.400 | Let's say inflation is this.

00:40:01.420 | Let's say I have a future expense for college starting in this year, lasting for 4 years.

00:40:06.280 | Kind of some simple rules.

00:40:08.240 | On mine, I have 6.

00:40:09.240 | And it'll project forward and say, "Here's your net worth in a year, 5 years, 10 years,

00:40:13.880 | 20 years, and what that will generally look like."

00:40:17.520 | So I think Kubera...

00:40:19.000 | I've abandoned my spreadsheet for Kubera for tracking net worth and everything.

00:40:24.880 | It syncs with...

00:40:26.520 | The thing that I think has always been the problem is there are a handful of providers

00:40:31.560 | of linking services, meaning where you'd log into your bank account and they'll pull data

00:40:36.920 | on a read-only basis.

00:40:38.920 | And most apps use one and Kubera works with 2 or 3 of the top ones.

00:40:43.820 | So they know that if you're trying to sync that obscure Vanguard, a census retirement

00:40:49.600 | account that I have, they know to make sure you use Yodlee instead of Plaid because it

00:40:53.760 | syncs better.

00:40:54.760 | So I love that.

00:40:58.320 | And so Kubera.

00:41:00.440 | And then the third one is one that I recently started playing with after a bunch of listeners

00:41:05.960 | emailed in and said, "Hey, you haven't included Projection Lab."

00:41:09.520 | And so I said, "Oh, you're right.

00:41:10.600 | I haven't included Projection Lab.

00:41:12.960 | I'll make sure at some point to go look into it."

00:41:16.560 | And I had a call actually with Kyle, the CEO or the founder of this company.

00:41:21.320 | And it's really interesting.

00:41:22.520 | I think if you're the kind of person that wants to model out a lot of scenarios, toggle

00:41:26.960 | things on and off, look at the tax implications, look at the flow of capital on a year-by-year

00:41:32.640 | basis, Projection Lab is amazing.

00:41:37.160 | I will say, I think jumping into it, it's not going to be the "I want to set up 3 simple

00:41:42.600 | rules."

00:41:43.600 | There's an onboarding and you walk through a lot of stuff.

00:41:46.480 | But once you're done, the flexibility you have is really cool.

00:41:50.360 | And you can define steps along the way like, "I want to get to...

00:41:53.840 | When will I get to financial independence at 33 times income?

00:41:58.520 | When might I get to fat fire at 50 times income?"

00:42:01.760 | You can set these milestones and see these projections.

00:42:04.480 | So I would say if someone needs an app to track their spending, I'm a fan of Copilot.

00:42:11.560 | If someone wants to track their net worth, I'm a big fan of Kubera.

00:42:15.760 | And if you're an All The Hacks member or want to be, it's free for your first year, which

00:42:19.640 | is cool.

00:42:21.240 | And then finally, I would say if you want to go really deep in the weeds, you can use

00:42:26.480 | Projection Lab.

00:42:27.480 | And I don't say "deep in the weeds" like it's not interesting for most people.

00:42:30.760 | I just...

00:42:31.760 | You're going to spend more time on it and if your money is important.

00:42:35.200 | Some people...

00:42:36.200 | I love putting my money on autopilot.

00:42:37.200 | But if I'm trying to figure out big decisions, I like having all the data.

00:42:40.200 | And so right now, we're looking at school.

00:42:45.800 | If we ended up paying for college or doing private school, what are those huge costs

00:42:51.200 | what kind of impact do they have?

00:42:53.080 | And I think those are really interesting questions to ask.

00:42:56.960 | And when you want to factor in the taxes of it, and you want to factor in required minimum

00:43:00.760 | distributions from retirement accounts, it's pretty interesting.

00:43:04.680 | Yeah, you showed it to me right before we jumped on.

00:43:07.880 | And yeah, it looked fantastic.

00:43:10.000 | And there is a spectrum, right?

00:43:11.640 | I mean, clearly, I think we are the spectrum here of mine is aside from people who aren't

00:43:17.360 | tracking anything, which please, please, please, please track something.

00:43:20.880 | You just need to at the very least, what do you spend?

00:43:24.240 | What's your net worth?

00:43:25.360 | You need to do that.

00:43:26.360 | Up to you who are trying out all these different tools and want to get it.

00:43:32.560 | I would say by any measure, you are being more accurate than I am, right?

00:43:36.520 | And having these major expenses, like just seeing that, "Oh, hey, from, in my case, 2026

00:43:44.400 | to 2034, I'm going to have college for each of my daughters.

00:43:49.760 | It's going to be eight straight years of college."

00:43:52.760 | That clearly needs to be factored in somehow, right?

00:43:55.760 | And if I was earning $0, then we would potentially have an issue.

00:44:01.320 | Am I really at phi?

00:44:02.560 | And I think it's an interesting thought experiment in my case, but for a lot of people, hey,

00:44:08.520 | if you've "reach phi" and you're not, maybe you're earning a fraction of what you were,

00:44:15.120 | and you have these massive expenses coming up that you haven't modeled, well, there are

00:44:19.200 | many of these software options.

00:44:21.160 | I know there's a new retirement.

00:44:22.720 | I think there's on trajectory.

00:44:24.560 | I've just loosely seen those in the past, but yeah, this Projection Lab looks amazing.

00:44:29.240 | Yeah.

00:44:30.240 | And just to be clear, normally when I want to do an episode on this, I'll go play with

00:44:33.840 | every tool.

00:44:35.060 | And so Projection Lab does not get the seal of, "I have gone and played with every tool."

00:44:41.700 | But I just got so many emails from listeners to check it out.

00:44:44.240 | And many of those people have gone and played with every tool that I thought it was worth

00:44:47.560 | looking at.

00:44:48.680 | But honestly, I say that because I enjoyed spending an afternoon going to enter it in,

00:44:55.880 | but I equally enjoyed, on Kubera, creating 4 or 5 or I guess 6 rules.

00:45:02.040 | It's like "To college", "Growth", "Inflation", "When does my income end?" and "How do my

00:45:06.240 | expenses change?"

00:45:07.840 | And just having a very simple form of "How do things project out to the future?"

00:45:12.200 | So I care more about people being aware of the circumstance than I do about them going

00:45:19.360 | deep, deep down rabbit holes.

00:45:21.120 | But those are the 3 tools that I say all of my financial life lives through.

00:45:27.400 | It's not related to business.

00:45:28.840 | There's quick books for business and all that stuff.

00:45:30.840 | But for me, it's those 3 tools are how I'm doing almost all the tracking.

00:45:36.840 | And we'll see where Projection Lab fits in, in the long run, whether it's a thing I check

00:45:41.360 | every month, every year, or whether it's a thing I use to make big decisions.

00:45:45.520 | No, that makes perfect sense.

00:45:47.640 | And Chris, I actually wanted to double back to something you said before, because I think

00:45:51.480 | there might be some people who are looking for some additional clarity on this.

00:45:55.300 | So we were talking about LeanFi.

00:45:57.920 | You were saying that you were potentially going to be taking money out of some accounts.

00:46:04.040 | It sounded like your taxable brokerage account, but you're going to be putting money in also

00:46:09.320 | into let's say, solo 401(k) or some other pre-tax options.

00:46:14.200 | You mentioned that very much in passing.

00:46:15.960 | And I always love to close the loop on things.

00:46:18.960 | Can you give a little more detail on that?

00:46:20.400 | Because I think there are going to be a lot of people who are like, "Chris, I want more

00:46:22.880 | info on this."

00:46:23.880 | Like the real nuts and bolts of how people are doing this.

00:46:26.800 | Yeah.

00:46:27.800 | I mean, I think I did some aggressive saving early on and built up a good taxable brokerage

00:46:34.920 | account.

00:46:35.920 | Now, we could have a whole conversation about what was the deprivation of skipping dinners,

00:46:43.120 | not ordering appetizers, like was all that worth it?

00:46:47.400 | Conversation for another day.

00:46:50.040 | So now, most of my savings is non-retirement savings.

00:46:55.880 | However, and our expenses have gone up.

00:46:58.840 | And right now, with Amy leaving her job to work on all the hacks, I would say our income

00:47:04.060 | has gone down.

00:47:06.120 | Twelve months ago, we had two jobs and a podcast and now we have zero jobs and a podcast.

00:47:11.240 | And so, we just frankly do not have the income right now to both live and contribute to retirement

00:47:21.800 | accounts.

00:47:22.800 | And that's not to say we're in a...

00:47:24.600 | You should feel bad.

00:47:25.600 | No, we're in a fine financial position.

00:47:27.860 | It's just if you look practically at the dollars coming in, all the expenses we have related

00:47:32.600 | to the podcast, employee, we have a full-time employee, all this stuff, practically, we

00:47:40.400 | want to cover our expenses and there's just not a big buffer left over to fund retirement

00:47:45.560 | accounts.

00:47:46.560 | However, there are a lot of great options, whether it's Backdoor Roth IRAs, or Solo 401Ks,

00:47:53.480 | or...

00:47:54.480 | I just got this cool email about this option that I'm not entirely sure how it works, but

00:48:00.800 | something that goes one step even further than just Solo 401Ks, it was called a Cash

00:48:07.840 | Balance Plan.

00:48:09.800 | So I just read this description.

00:48:10.800 | I'm just going to read this description.

00:48:12.620 | This is an advanced retirement plan for business owners that are making mid-hundreds of thousands

00:48:17.260 | of dollars a year in profit and want to put away more than the $66,000 a year Solo 401K

00:48:22.840 | plan allows.

00:48:23.840 | It costs considerably more to set up, about $2,000 to set up and maintain each year.

00:48:29.560 | But it's unparalleled in the size of the benefit, and it can be combined with the Solo 401K.

00:48:34.680 | So I don't even think...

00:48:37.200 | When I read this, I wasn't thinking, "This is for me."

00:48:39.240 | I was just thinking, it made me realize that there are a lot of things as a business owner,

00:48:45.520 | or even if you were just an employee, that you could use your money to be more tax-efficient

00:48:51.160 | in the future.

00:48:52.160 | But if you don't have the spare cash, what do you do?

00:48:55.540 | It's always been crazy for me to think, "Let's withdraw from our long-term savings."

00:48:59.780 | If you look at our wealth front balance for the last, I don't know, 5 years, it has not

00:49:03.540 | been touched.

00:49:04.540 | We don't withdraw from it ever.

00:49:06.580 | It's our long-term retirement plan.

00:49:10.760 | But now I'm like, "Psychologically, I'm talking about pulling money out of it so that I can

00:49:15.700 | take income somewhere else and put it somewhere else."

00:49:18.500 | Which in turn might mean investing my savings into the business, and then the business contributing

00:49:26.260 | to a retirement plan.

00:49:27.900 | It's a little complicated and we're working with our accountant to make sure we don't

00:49:32.260 | mess it all up.

00:49:34.140 | But it's just something that we're considering right now in that interim stage.

00:49:39.380 | Once you go full, quit your job, financial independence, you tap into your savings all

00:49:43.340 | the time.

00:49:44.380 | But now that I'm living this "Coast Five" thing, which is so funny to say, having misunderstood

00:49:52.220 | what it even meant as early as this morning, it's like, "Well, I don't want to touch my

00:49:55.900 | savings anymore."

00:49:57.620 | Even though I had that attitude, now I have a name to define why I'm not touching that

00:50:01.620 | savings.

00:50:02.620 | And then almost immediately, I'm like, "No, no, no.

00:50:04.060 | I'm going to touch it, but I'm going to replenish it through another door."

00:50:06.580 | Yeah.

00:50:07.580 | I love that.

00:50:08.580 | So you're right.

00:50:09.580 | You are, in essence, you're netting to zero in the sense that you would be pulling money

00:50:15.180 | out of your taxable brokerage account to cover your life expenses, but also contributing

00:50:21.100 | to retirement accounts, whatever they may be, whether it's this crazy cash balance thingamajig

00:50:26.260 | or 401k, etc.

00:50:28.980 | But in essence, what you're doing then is getting the tax benefit from those contributions.

00:50:34.060 | Yeah, it's like I'm basically shifting my after-tax, subject-to-tax-in-the-future investments

00:50:42.560 | to tax-advantaged investment accounts, which will reduce my income and give me more growth

00:50:50.040 | in the future.

00:50:51.040 | So it actually is not a zero sum.

00:50:54.060 | It's actually a net positive sum other than the short-term capital gains hits of selling

00:51:00.580 | my portfolio, which fortunately, because we've been keeping this money and wealth front for

00:51:05.220 | a while, we built up a ton of tax loss harvesting.

00:51:07.760 | So I think I can actually mitigate most of the capital gains with built-up capital losses.

00:51:15.020 | So yeah, it'll be a net positive.

00:51:18.020 | And for anyone listening, I think, "Look, you might not be a business owner.

00:51:21.320 | You might not be in a situation in any way similar to Brad or mine.

00:51:25.480 | But if you work at a company, and you're not maxing out your 401(k) because maybe you just

00:51:30.840 | had two children and you decided to quit one of your jobs, and you're in a situation where

00:51:35.200 | cash is tight, but you do have savings in a taxable account, just a standard brokerage

00:51:41.800 | account, I'm not going to talk about what you should do.

00:51:45.060 | I'm not going to give personalized financial advice, but definitely worth considering using

00:51:50.620 | some of your long-term savings to live on so that you can put some of your income into

00:51:54.900 | a more tax-efficient vehicle for long-term savings.

00:51:58.700 | And it's important just for people to be cognizant of just this concept.

00:52:02.520 | So yeah, it's very cool that you're doing this in real life.

00:52:05.460 | And welcome to the Coast 5 world.

00:52:10.260 | So one thing we haven't touched on, now that we've evolved our thinking on financial independence

00:52:15.480 | over the course of, for you, probably a decade, for me, probably a handful of years, I'm curious

00:52:21.380 | to hear some of the changes you've made.

00:52:24.060 | I think we both kind of went from more deprivation, less spending, to training ourselves to spend.

00:52:33.540 | So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about how did you learn this skill of

00:52:36.380 | spending and what have you been using it for?

00:52:38.580 | Yeah, the skill of spending is such a great way to put it and yeah, Mr. Money Mustache

00:52:43.300 | had come up with this earlier in the year as a phrase that really just appeals to me.

00:52:48.500 | I think a skill of spending on the front side of FII is largely, okay, you do have to be

00:52:54.860 | more optimized, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck or getting into debt

00:52:58.260 | every month.

00:52:59.260 | Okay, you have to cut, you have to be a little more efficient.

00:53:02.140 | And that doesn't mean deprivation necessarily, but it means being smarter with your money.

00:53:06.380 | But yeah, Chris, you and I are now at points where I think we've evolved the other side

00:53:10.740 | of the skill of spending is learning how to spend for life benefit, for memory dividends,

00:53:19.220 | for just enjoyment and for connection, for what we talked about last time, something

00:53:25.060 | that you're working on is trying to buy back your time in a lot of senses, right?

00:53:29.580 | Like there's lots of ways to spend and to spend well that can really help your life.

00:53:34.980 | So yeah, I mean, I am really thinking about this in a lot of ways.

00:53:38.420 | There's certainly spending to get time back just in little ways.

00:53:43.500 | Even something like that is very obvious to most people, getting a cleaning service at

00:53:48.580 | our house, which we never did forever, spending more on food now than we ever have because

00:53:55.900 | we just spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning and it doesn't really make that much sense

00:54:02.380 | anymore.

00:54:03.380 | I think we're at a point in our lives where, okay, the ease, especially with having two

00:54:08.260 | daughters now in middle and high school, and we're driving them all over the place and

00:54:13.940 | to spend an hour cooking and 20 or 30 minutes cleaning up, it just, it doesn't make any

00:54:19.340 | sense for a couple of dollars.

00:54:20.980 | So clearly spending more money there.

00:54:23.020 | I mean, Chris, the biggest thing is like experiences.

00:54:26.780 | I think this is something that I've been honestly like really proud of myself this year.

00:54:32.580 | And this also comes back to like the memory dividends and Die With Zero and Bill Perkins.

00:54:38.620 | I love music.

00:54:41.360 | And this is like a part of my life that has really not been an important part of my life

00:54:46.220 | for the last 10 years because I've let it kind of fall by the wayside.

00:54:51.060 | And I think in a lot of senses, like since my daughters were born, like I lost myself.

00:54:58.260 | Might be hyperbolic, but I lost myself in a lot of like the things that I love doing.

00:55:02.100 | I used to love watching like the English Premier League on Saturdays and going to concerts

00:55:07.500 | and doing just like a lot of fun stuff that I just had let, like I said, slip away.

00:55:13.300 | And this year I challenged myself to really make moves on this and see what I can do.

00:55:19.140 | And I actually planned like an impromptu last minute solo trip to New York City to see Bono

00:55:27.420 | from U2.

00:55:28.620 | So he was doing this like really small concert at the Beacon Theatre that was partially a

00:55:36.180 | book tour.

00:55:37.180 | So it was like half one-man show, half book tour/concert.

00:55:42.700 | It was very, very interesting.

00:55:44.580 | But I bought tickets on StubHub, bought flights, got a hotel, and it was like the week before.

00:55:50.940 | And I just, I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever.

00:55:53.260 | I'm going to take a trip to New York.

00:55:54.800 | And it was, I mean, Chris, it was really awesome.

00:55:57.420 | And that is something I never would have done in my entire life before reorienting this,

00:56:04.060 | before reorienting this, this skill of spending.

00:56:06.700 | And how did you do that reorientation?

00:56:08.700 | Because I think I'm not, I'm not quite there yet.

00:56:12.300 | What do you think changed that made it possible now when it wouldn't have been possible in

00:56:16.060 | the past?

00:56:17.060 | It is understanding that time is finite.

00:56:23.100 | And maybe that's that I'm 44 years old and not getting any younger and my kids are growing

00:56:30.540 | up.

00:56:31.780 | And like I said, I might have, you know, lost some part of myself over the last 10 years

00:56:38.380 | where I haven't focused on, on things that bring joy.

00:56:43.340 | And I just really want to do that.

00:56:48.260 | There was no moment.

00:56:49.340 | It was just understanding that you got to do it.

00:56:54.260 | You got to live life.

00:56:55.420 | You can't be worried about saving money all the time.

00:56:59.140 | And even just little challenges, Chris, like as silly as this sounds, like the Richmond

00:57:04.040 | airport is like, it's not very expensive long-term parking or even like the short-term parking.

00:57:08.460 | But I was like on this trip to New York city, I'm like, what would, what would doing this

00:57:12.300 | trip like a rich person look like?

00:57:15.500 | And it was almost like a Ramit Sethi kind of thing.

00:57:17.900 | And it was not parking in economy parking.

00:57:21.280 | It was parking in the daily lot that was right there.

00:57:24.360 | And I could just walk over to the airport.

00:57:26.540 | It was like, and Chris, this cost me like nine extra dollars because I was, it was 24,

00:57:30.860 | 24 hour trip.

00:57:31.860 | So this is not that big of a deal, but, and it might've even been less than that, frankly,

00:57:37.380 | but it just felt great.

00:57:38.700 | It was just, it was really cool.

00:57:40.620 | And it was like, okay, how can you find these little things that actually make a difference?

00:57:45.020 | And going back to the food, it was like, we get these amazing, hold on, let me say that

00:57:51.500 | again.

00:57:52.500 | And going back to the food, like we're now getting these amazing meals brought into the

00:57:56.140 | house and it's like, it's just a couple of dollars more, but it's just reorienting to

00:58:01.620 | what's the value here.

00:58:02.940 | So it's like this valuist play is like this term valuist is how I've always, I've talked

00:58:08.380 | about this on the podcast for so many years, but I never really embodied it in, in actuality.

00:58:15.940 | I think I did to some degree, but I didn't get there.

00:58:18.820 | And now it's just, all right, look, like I said, and I know it sounds a little morbid,

00:58:23.300 | but I, but I think it's important is understanding the finite nature of your life, right?

00:58:28.980 | And like the finite nature of seasons of your life.

00:58:32.500 | You know, I, I took a trip to see Taylor Swift to in Pittsburgh with my older daughter and

00:58:38.540 | we bought very, very expensive tickets on, on secondary and man, Chris, we had the time

00:58:44.660 | of our lives.

00:58:45.660 | And like that we'll, we'll be talking about that 30 years from now, it was amazing.

00:58:50.860 | And I don't regret any single one of those dollars I spent on that trip.

00:58:55.060 | It was astonishing.

00:58:57.620 | And I think it's, I I'm just, I'm really fortunate to be in this position, but I'm really proud

00:59:03.340 | of myself that, that I've made these changes in that shorter period of time.

00:59:08.380 | I mean, a lot of the language you're using, memory dividends, seasons of life were, were

00:59:14.620 | languages from Bill Perkins' book, Die With Zero.

00:59:18.500 | I know, you know, I had him on for, I want to say episode 91, but I can't quite remember

00:59:25.740 | the number.

00:59:28.300 | Did that have a big impact on you?

00:59:29.620 | Yeah.

00:59:30.620 | It was episode 91.

00:59:31.620 | Yeah.

00:59:32.620 | That book had a massive impact on me.

00:59:33.620 | It really did.

00:59:34.620 | And it was just the, the conceptual framework.

00:59:37.140 | And I mean, Chris, I knew all this stuff, right?

00:59:39.740 | Like sometimes it just crystallizes and hits in a moment when it matters.

00:59:46.340 | And I think that's, what's also interesting about taking in a lot of different content.

00:59:51.300 | Like I probably listen to way more podcasts and read more books than I, than I probably

00:59:54.940 | should frankly.

00:59:55.940 | But like, but sometimes you just, you hit on something like this, where it is just a

01:00:00.620 | life-changing thing.

01:00:02.700 | And I, and I don't know what it was, but, but again, like I'm even doing like little

01:00:07.380 | things now.

01:00:08.380 | Like I went to a yoga and meditation retreat last month that like, that's something I never

01:00:14.660 | would have done.

01:00:15.660 | I never would have had the guts to like, just go off for two days by myself and just be.

01:00:24.860 | And it was awesome.

01:00:25.860 | It was just really fantastic.

01:00:27.220 | I'm like, again, just trying to build these things into life.

01:00:30.700 | Like I'm part of a mastermind group where it's about 24, 25 of those guys.

01:00:38.140 | And now we're trying to do more in-person events and like, Chris, I always had an excuse.

01:00:43.180 | I always had, it was always like, oh, it's too far.

01:00:45.780 | Oh, I need to be home for the weekend with my wife and my daughters.

01:00:49.140 | Like it's selfish to leave.

01:00:51.780 | Like that's how, this is the script that I always had running in my head.

01:00:55.460 | Like it's selfish to leave, but you know, it's really important to take care of yourself

01:01:00.340 | too and to find joy in little ways.

01:01:03.060 | And like, we had this day of fun at one of my buddy's house, 12 of us kind of converged

01:01:07.660 | on his house and in New Jersey.

01:01:09.900 | And we had like eight hours of playing like this, like Olympics of games.

01:01:14.700 | And it was just, cause it was the most fun I've had in years.

01:01:17.700 | And like one of the guys cooked this amazing like Michelin star-esque dinner.

01:01:22.580 | It was just like one of those days I'll remember forever.

01:01:25.380 | And like, I know I could tell you for certain a year ago, I would have said no to that weekend.

01:01:31.300 | I would have just said out of hand, no.

01:01:34.300 | And so again, this reorientation.

01:01:36.700 | So I think, yeah, I mean, a lot of things have changed in my life and I think they've

01:01:40.880 | changed for the better.

01:01:42.180 | I don't think it's selfish to take care of yourself.

01:01:44.140 | I think it's selfish if you don't encourage your partner to also do the same.

01:01:47.660 | So I'm sure you found that balance as well.

01:01:50.660 | And I think that's the important thing.

01:01:53.140 | I had a similar moment, which was more serendipitous in that it wasn't something I would have said

01:01:57.820 | no to.

01:01:59.300 | But we had this moment where we invited some friends up to a house we were staying at in

01:02:03.180 | Napa, not ours.

01:02:04.780 | And there was a volleyball court.

01:02:06.220 | And for like two hours, we were all just playing outdoor volleyball, probably getting sunburned.

01:02:11.140 | But we're blasting some good 80s rock.

01:02:16.260 | And I just had this moment where I was like, "Wow, this is...

01:02:18.460 | I want more moments like this."

01:02:21.020 | And the downside is that with kids and stuff, you have to really plan them.

01:02:25.100 | You can't just expect to text five friends and be like, "Hey, do you want to go do this

01:02:28.660 | thing an hour away right now?"

01:02:30.260 | No.

01:02:31.260 | It's just...

01:02:32.260 | It's not practical anymore.

01:02:34.160 | Maybe when I get a little older and my peers and friends or kids are a little older and

01:02:38.740 | easier to travel with, maybe it'll get a little better.

01:02:41.620 | But you have to plan ahead and you have to commit earlier.

01:02:45.340 | And I think I'm still learning, but you've got a couple years on me and your kids do

01:02:48.940 | as well.

01:02:49.940 | So I hope I get to that place where you are.

01:02:53.260 | But I had the same impact when I talked to Bill Perkins and I made that episode.

01:02:58.460 | And we actually planned a trip to London and Paris.

01:03:01.860 | I talked about it in the episode and then we just booked it.

01:03:04.460 | And we were like, "We just have to do it."

01:03:06.800 | And in a weird way, we stopped tracking our net worth after that episode.

01:03:10.180 | We stopped caring about whether it went up.

01:03:12.340 | And we started focusing on "Do we just have enough now?

01:03:16.660 | And when do we want to spend our money?

01:03:17.860 | Do we want to spend it later?

01:03:18.860 | Do we want to stop working?"

01:03:20.340 | And for us, now we've both found something we like doing.

01:03:24.020 | So I don't know.

01:03:25.340 | It changed a lot for me.

01:03:27.980 | I encourage anyone to go pick it up and read it.

01:03:30.140 | Or if you want a preview, the hour version, I interviewed him in episode 91, which we

01:03:35.820 | can link to in the show notes.

01:03:37.080 | But yeah, that changed a lot for me.

01:03:39.660 | And we started spending a little bit more on things that some have an ROI, some don't.

01:03:46.880 | But I actually am surprised at how much we've been able to accomplish with the podcast,

01:03:54.980 | now that we have a little more free time, because we've spent a little bit of money

01:03:59.840 | on other things.

01:04:01.600 | Whether that's someone to clean or someone to help with food, or that's hiring an assistant

01:04:08.120 | or an employee for your company.

01:04:10.040 | These things that felt like they were big expenses we were nervous about.

01:04:15.740 | But now that we have them, they've unlocked a little bit more creativity, a little bit

01:04:19.560 | more time.

01:04:21.080 | And we've been good in our career at turning that into opportunity.

01:04:25.080 | And so you'll never know unless you try.

01:04:29.120 | That's some expenses, right?

01:04:31.000 | A Taylor Swift concert is probably not one that's going to make you more money in the

01:04:34.160 | long run.

01:04:35.160 | But it's certainly one that's going to give you memories that far exceed that.

01:04:39.400 | And whatever version of that exists when our daughters are a little older, I'm very excited

01:04:45.280 | to do the same thing.

01:04:46.280 | Yeah.

01:04:47.280 | And it's important to prioritize it.

01:04:49.040 | And I think just it being in your mind and like you said, going back and listening to

01:04:53.360 | that episode 91 of All The Hacks, that episode was more impactful to me than the book was,

01:05:00.760 | honestly, hearing him talk it through.

01:05:02.960 | So yeah, I think that's a perfect starting point for people.

01:05:07.240 | And...

01:05:08.240 | Well, to go back to the Early Retirement Now blog, he gave a review of that book.

01:05:12.560 | Yeah, that was part 60, right?

01:05:14.560 | Yeah.

01:05:15.560 | And what was interesting was, he justifiably said, "A lot of these things aren't new."

01:05:21.640 | And I think the thing that Bill Perkins did was he took a bunch of concepts that we've

01:05:26.760 | all known.

01:05:28.080 | We've all known that experiences are valuable.

01:05:30.840 | We all know that money diminishes or health diminishes.

01:05:36.840 | But if you could package it in a good way, ultimately, a lot of things are just storytelling.

01:05:41.660 | And I will say that when it comes to telling a story about money, most people aren't that

01:05:46.120 | great at it.

01:05:47.120 | It's something that a lot of people get bored with, aren't interested in, and Bill Perkins

01:05:50.320 | weaves a story around it that I think just comes alive when you hear him talk more than

01:05:57.280 | when you read the book, though.

01:05:59.840 | You'll hear a reminder if you go listen to it.

01:06:02.080 | And I'll give it to you here.

01:06:03.520 | It is not an episode to listen to with young children in the room.

01:06:07.140 | He has a very colorful vocabulary.

01:06:13.960 | He does indeed.

01:06:14.960 | And yeah, I mean, even like you said, talking about health and longevity and vitality, spending

01:06:22.800 | money on that is important.

01:06:24.080 | I think we both have become a little more cognizant of that.

01:06:27.600 | I know this year I hired a personal trainer who I met through Twitter, actually, which

01:06:34.480 | was kind of wild.

01:06:35.560 | But that again is something I can guarantee you two years ago, there was no chance that

01:06:42.840 | I would have done that, 0% chance.

01:06:45.600 | And it has been the best money I've ever spent on my health in my entire life.

01:06:50.280 | I was watching this video that a past guest of mine, Nisar Yasin, Nas Daily made.

01:06:56.320 | And he hired a personal trainer in India from this company called Fitter.

01:07:00.920 | And I haven't done it yet.

01:07:01.920 | I haven't pulled the trigger on this service yet.

01:07:04.480 | But I was thinking about it and I want your perspective.

01:07:08.200 | So your personal trainer is remote, right?

01:07:11.420 | They're not located where you are.

01:07:12.560 | You don't see them in person.

01:07:13.560 | They don't come to the gym with you.

01:07:15.180 | Is there a reason that they need to be in the US?

01:07:19.680 | Because if you look at the cost of living around the world, if someone could motivate

01:07:24.040 | you just as well, but in India, they can certainly live on less.

01:07:28.000 | And I was blown away.

01:07:29.000 | And by the way, I have no connection to this company.

01:07:31.360 | So I don't want to endorse it at all.

01:07:33.280 | But I was looking at it and the personal training sessions were like $5 a session.

01:07:39.440 | And you could do it in 5 days a week, monthly for like $100 a month or something in that

01:07:45.440 | ballpark.

01:07:46.440 | I don't want to quote the prices because I'm not an expert here.

01:07:48.900 | But I was just surprised.

01:07:50.240 | And then it just got me thinking there are some services and practices that are really

01:07:54.920 | tied into our system, right?

01:07:57.220 | Hiring a tax accountant, you want someone who's really familiar with the rules and the

01:08:00.140 | regulations here.

01:08:01.140 | But I was like, "Ah, personal trainer, someone to just throw on a tripod and motivate me

01:08:07.620 | to work out and whatnot, live video sessions every time.

01:08:11.680 | Why couldn't that person be overseas?"

01:08:13.860 | So I want to hear your perspective on whether you think that you could get a similar output

01:08:21.900 | from that.

01:08:22.900 | And if so, how does that change your thinking?

01:08:25.780 | Yeah, that is really interesting.

01:08:29.320 | I definitely think that you could hire someone from anywhere in the world.

01:08:34.820 | So it depends what you're looking for, right?

01:08:38.700 | So how you described it, if you're looking for somebody to be there with you or just

01:08:46.020 | create a video or whatever, 5 days a week, motivation, a little accountability, absolutely.

01:08:51.460 | It makes no difference where they are.

01:08:52.700 | Yeah, my guy, Dean Turner is my personal trainer.

01:08:59.780 | And he's fantastic.

01:09:01.900 | Deanturnertraining.com is where he's located.

01:09:04.380 | But, you know, he's in Philadelphia, which is not that far from me, but I'm never going

01:09:10.460 | to meet him in person in all likelihood.

01:09:12.500 | So yeah, he could be in India, he could be in Australia, it would make no difference

01:09:15.420 | whatsoever.

01:09:16.420 | I am paying for his expertise though, not for the motivation.

01:09:23.140 | So yeah, clearly, if I was paying for motivation, I would move to that service you just mentioned.

01:09:31.660 | That sounds like a slam dunk.

01:09:32.660 | I mean, that actually sounds amazing.

01:09:33.980 | I suspect a lot of people would benefit from them.

01:09:36.020 | You could even pair the two, right?

01:09:37.260 | You could probably find Dean and be like, "Help me come up with the curriculum."

01:09:41.420 | And then say, "Great.

01:09:43.140 | Now someone else..."

01:09:45.380 | This is my big challenge with a lot of services is that you want to pay for experience and

01:09:51.100 | execution.

01:09:52.300 | And a lot of times, you hire the person...

01:09:54.540 | And you can't get good experience without paying for it.

01:10:00.500 | People charge a lot more for their time when they have experience.

01:10:03.160 | But then it doesn't make sense to pay for the execution also.

01:10:06.700 | And I think about this with financial planning, right?

01:10:08.620 | Like a human financial planner will give you a better financial plan that connects your

01:10:13.660 | emotions and stuff.

01:10:14.740 | And I'm not against people paying a fixed price for that.

01:10:17.740 | I think that's really valuable.

01:10:19.380 | It's just if you then on top of that tack on an ongoing 1% of your assets forever fee

01:10:25.020 | to manage the investments, that's where I'm like, "Oh, I don't know."

01:10:29.460 | So I wonder if there's a hybrid approach here where I think it's totally fine to pay financial

01:10:34.120 | planning fixed fee annually, and then a much smaller fee for investments.

01:10:39.740 | Is there a Dean Turner + fitter super combo where you get daily motivation and workout

01:10:46.720 | regimens following the curriculum of someone who has a lot more experience and personalization?

01:10:52.820 | Yeah, that's fascinating.

01:10:54.660 | So this now is turning into a business lesson for Dean, I think.

01:10:59.220 | So because, yeah, I wonder if he could scale his business more that way, if he used his

01:11:06.260 | expertise to create the programming, but then he found these people wherever they may be,

01:11:13.260 | and certainly a lower cost area.

01:11:16.380 | And he could then potentially outsource part of the day-to-day with knowledgeable people

01:11:22.780 | who are well-versed in his methodology.

01:11:29.620 | That would actually be really interesting.

01:11:31.020 | Dean, if you're listening, at a minimum, if you go down this path, I'd love to give it

01:11:35.700 | a try.

01:11:36.700 | That would be really cool.

01:11:37.700 | I bet he'd be super interested in that.

01:11:39.580 | So yeah, to be continued on that, but yeah, I think accountability is important.

01:11:46.420 | I think that's why people like group exercise classes also, right?

01:11:51.300 | Everybody else is waiting for them, whether it's CrossFit or yoga or whatever it may be,

01:11:55.700 | Orange Theory Fitness, all these things.

01:11:58.220 | When you have people waiting for you and, oh, they text you when you're not there, why?

01:12:02.360 | It's so easy to fall out of an exercise routine.

01:12:05.660 | And I think, to me, accountability and motivation are really, really important.

01:12:11.300 | That's why I thought this was so interesting, because I was like, you know what, I would

01:12:14.220 | work out to avoid losing $5.

01:12:19.300 | I might have gotten comfortable in my life spending money, but I have not gotten comfortable

01:12:24.100 | losing money.

01:12:26.380 | It seems so much harder to be comfortable just giving up money, even though you probably,

01:12:32.660 | in some cases, should.

01:12:34.180 | So in this particular case, I'm like, it would almost be worth it just to say, "I'm going

01:12:38.180 | to work out 3 days a week from 8 to 8.30 and I'm going to book it with a person, just any

01:12:43.260 | person."

01:12:44.260 | It could even be non-existent.

01:12:45.260 | I'm like, I'm going to pay this money and my wife gets to throw it, light it on fire

01:12:50.180 | if I don't work out.

01:12:51.500 | But even better if you have someone that can sit there and motivate you along the way.

01:12:57.720 | Anything else you've been doing in health that's worth covering?

01:13:00.060 | I know the last time you were on, you said 2023 is going to be your year to get healthy.

01:13:05.700 | Yeah.

01:13:06.700 | It's definitely, yeah, my bold move was healthiest year ever.

01:13:10.500 | So yeah, I mean, a lot of it has, I talked last time, last episode about DNS that I have

01:13:19.140 | been doing to kind of maybe deal with some nagging shoulder and hip issues that I had.

01:13:27.460 | And that's helped dramatically.

01:13:28.980 | I think I've just been much more open again to spending money on massage.

01:13:35.220 | I go, I get a massage in that cupping thing.

01:13:38.980 | I don't know if you've ever seen that on swimmers at the Olympics.

01:13:42.060 | So I do that once a month.

01:13:44.100 | I found something in a Tony Robbins book that he was talking about this thing called fascial

01:13:50.420 | counter strain, and it's like a massage slash fascial release, which I really, really enjoy.

01:13:57.340 | It winds up, what's so funny is the guy who owns the business here in Richmond is in the

01:14:03.940 | financial independence world.

01:14:05.260 | He's like, "Are you by any chance Brad from choose a vibe?"

01:14:08.940 | It was hilarious.

01:14:09.940 | So yeah, I mean, I've been doing that.

01:14:12.620 | I bought an aura ring to track my sleep.

01:14:15.400 | So I've been really focusing and trying to dial in in my sleep a lot.

01:14:22.420 | I think I mentioned to you that I bought a hot tub and I just bought a cold plunge, but

01:14:28.740 | it was actually not one of those super duper expensive ones.

01:14:32.180 | One of our listeners, a guy named Mitch, reached out to me and told me about this thing called

01:14:37.140 | the ice pod.

01:14:38.140 | Oh, I thought you were going to go down the path of the ice barrel, but the ice pod.

01:14:41.980 | No, no, no.

01:14:42.980 | Yeah.

01:14:43.980 | It is something you can buy.

01:14:46.200 | So it's by the pod company.

01:14:47.740 | It looks like podcompany.com.

01:14:49.940 | This thing's like 150 bucks.

01:14:50.940 | I mean, honestly, Chris, it's nothing special.

01:14:53.660 | It's just kind of like an insulated little...

01:14:56.700 | If you've ever seen one of those like blow up hot tubs that cost like 500 bucks.

01:15:02.100 | This is something similar for cold plunge, but the last handful of nights, we just got

01:15:07.220 | it up and running.

01:15:09.380 | My two daughters and I have gone out after dinner.

01:15:13.500 | It's getting dark now because it's getting later in the year.

01:15:16.740 | So darkness, we go out, go in the hot tub, go in the cold plunge, back in the hot tub.

01:15:21.820 | And it's just like this cool little experience together.

01:15:25.740 | And I mean, this cold plunge thing, like I said, it was like 150 bucks.

01:15:28.500 | It was fantastic.

01:15:29.780 | So even if we don't use it much beyond the next month or two, it would be well worth

01:15:35.060 | it.

01:15:36.060 | So, yeah, just all these little things that I'm just trying to add to my life.

01:15:39.580 | And some of the stuff is really cool, like these experiences that I'm having now with

01:15:43.980 | my family.

01:15:44.980 | I love it.

01:15:45.980 | Yeah.

01:15:46.980 | One of ours will be a sauna, which is days from now, we're getting added on, which will

01:15:52.680 | finally, I think, get our cold plunge more usage.

01:15:55.660 | For as much as I enjoy hot tubs, I enjoy saunas a lot more.

01:15:59.580 | Yeah.

01:16:00.580 | Is it an infrared sauna or a barrel sauna?

01:16:02.900 | It is neither.

01:16:03.900 | It is a full kind of finish.

01:16:05.860 | I've been working with this company that I'm not ready to share.

01:16:10.020 | But when I am, they're building like...

01:16:14.860 | They might be like the best sauna makers in the U.S., at least making it accessible.

01:16:21.740 | So it's kind of a much more finished sauna experience.

01:16:25.180 | I went really deep down the rabbit hole of saunas.

01:16:27.980 | (laughs) Surprise, surprise.

01:16:29.700 | And there's this Trumpkin guide to saunas, which is like this crazy guide.

01:16:35.860 | And barrel saunas have plenty of critique.

01:16:41.380 | And so I was on the fence about it.

01:16:43.420 | And I actually met someone who's like, "No, no, no.

01:16:45.300 | I'm building this company and we're going to make the best saunas.

01:16:48.900 | And we're going to do it in a way that is modular and easy for people to order and set

01:16:52.660 | up at their home and build something really nice."

01:16:54.940 | And yeah, I'm very excited.

01:16:58.500 | But this is like a proper finish sauna style experience that gets hot.

01:17:05.740 | And so, I don't know, Amy and I are very excited to add this to our routine.

01:17:10.700 | And ideally, it'll be like, put the girls to bed and have a little time together in

01:17:14.860 | the sauna, dip out to the cold plunge, finish off in the sauna and sleep better.

01:17:19.900 | Heck, yeah.

01:17:20.900 | I love it.

01:17:21.900 | Oh, that's really cool.

01:17:22.900 | All right.

01:17:23.900 | To be continued on that one, for sure.

01:17:24.900 | To be continued.

01:17:27.100 | Maybe the fourth edition of Brad and Chris record a podcast together.

01:17:32.940 | If you make it out to the West Coast, we can see if the audio equipment handles the heat.

01:17:37.540 | Sounds good.

01:17:38.540 | Might not be a video version, but you know...

01:17:42.260 | 2024 goals.

01:17:43.260 | I like it.

01:17:44.260 | This has been great.

01:17:46.540 | The emails I got after the last time we did it, I think I got 20 emails that were just

01:17:50.140 | like subject more Brad.

01:17:52.780 | So for the 20 people who wrote in asking for more Brad, here you are.

01:17:57.100 | Hopefully, there was at least a more Chris email in your inbox too.

01:17:59.940 | I'll just pretend there was.

01:18:00.940 | Yeah, no.

01:18:01.940 | You know we got flooded with them.

01:18:02.940 | I copied you on all the responses, so you know they came in.

01:18:05.340 | Awesome.

01:18:06.340 | Well, this has been great.

01:18:07.660 | I am excited for your healthiest year ever.

01:18:10.300 | I hope you finish it out strong and we'll chat soon.

01:18:14.100 | Yeah.

01:18:15.100 | Thank you, my friend.

01:18:16.100 | As always, it's good to chat with you and yeah, until next time.

The Spectrum of Financial Independence and Tools to Track Your Progress with Brad Barrett

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