ATHLLC5822665257

00:00:00.000 | (upbeat music)

00:00:02.720 | - Hello, and welcome to another episode of All The Hacks,

00:00:05.800 | a show about upgrading your life, money, and travel.

00:00:08.680 | I'm your host, Chris Hutchins,

00:00:09.880 | and today we're gonna talk about financial independence

00:00:12.920 | and the intricacies of the financial independence

00:00:15.160 | retire early or FIRE movement and its evolution.

00:00:19.320 | We're gonna delve into forms of FIRE

00:00:20.820 | like lean FIRE, fat FIRE, or coast FIRE,

00:00:24.080 | which it turns out isn't what I actually thought it was

00:00:26.400 | and is actually pretty close

00:00:27.600 | to how Amy and I are living our lives.

00:00:29.800 | We're also gonna talk about the implications

00:00:31.580 | of the 4% rule, strategies for effective investing

00:00:34.880 | and retirement planning,

00:00:36.280 | the psychological aspects of financial decision-making,

00:00:39.400 | and some of the tools that can aid in tracking

00:00:41.700 | and managing your finances.

00:00:43.400 | And who better to join me for this episode

00:00:45.280 | than Brad Barrett, a three-time All The Hacks guest

00:00:48.040 | and host of the number one

00:00:49.560 | financial independence podcast, Choose FI.

00:00:52.360 | Brad is a wealth of knowledge here,

00:00:54.160 | and if you haven't already listened to Choose FI,

00:00:56.120 | you absolutely should.

00:00:57.600 | And not just because I've been a guest a few times,

00:01:00.520 | but because it's an incredible podcast

00:01:02.480 | and I am pretty sure he has an entire episode

00:01:05.060 | to cover just about every financial independence topic

00:01:08.240 | you can think of.

00:01:09.200 | But that's enough intro, we have a lot to cover,

00:01:11.280 | so let's jump in right after this.

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00:02:46.040 | Brad, thanks for joining me again.

00:02:50.020 | - Yeah, man, this should be fun.

00:02:51.220 | I always love chatting with you, whether online or off.

00:02:54.220 | - We did our first conversation,

00:02:55.960 | well, first one was many years ago on your podcast.

00:02:58.580 | You first joined me for what became episode two

00:03:01.840 | of "All the Hacks," and then we did it again

00:03:03.600 | for episode 100.

00:03:04.840 | And we talked a little bit about fire at the beginning,

00:03:07.440 | but both you and I have had an evolution of perspective

00:03:10.920 | on financial independence.

00:03:12.280 | So much so that in researching this episode,

00:03:14.920 | I found out that I didn't even know what coast fire was.

00:03:18.320 | And it turns out that's actually the thing

00:03:19.660 | I'm probably most in tuned with myself.

00:03:21.880 | So lots of stuff to talk about when it comes

00:03:24.360 | to financial independence

00:03:25.360 | and how our perspectives have changed.

00:03:27.080 | - Going way back to episode 71 on ChooseFI.

00:03:30.440 | So that was almost six years ago when we recorded this.

00:03:33.160 | Unquestionably, both of our perspectives have changed

00:03:36.000 | for the better in a lot of senses

00:03:37.840 | and changed for the healthier.

00:03:39.560 | Both of us probably veered a little bit too much

00:03:42.080 | towards the frugality and over-optimizing

00:03:45.480 | at the expense of enjoyment of life sometimes.

00:03:48.360 | There's been an evolution, certainly for both of us,

00:03:51.360 | but in greater financial independence world.

00:03:53.680 | This is one of the very few things

00:03:55.120 | that I will pat ourselves on the back for at ChooseFI.

00:03:57.560 | We have really been the center of the fi world

00:04:00.320 | for the last handful of years.

00:04:02.000 | And we have made this very strongly anti miserliness.

00:04:06.640 | The let's race to some number at the expense of life.

00:04:10.120 | We've tried really hard to make it about,

00:04:12.400 | hey, what are you running towards?

00:04:14.040 | Not what are you running away from?

00:04:15.520 | That little shift in orientation has made a big difference

00:04:18.960 | in a lot of people's lives.

00:04:20.040 | - For anyone who didn't listen to the hundreds of episodes

00:04:22.560 | you've done, the few we've done,

00:04:24.280 | hasn't ever introduced themselves to FIRE,

00:04:26.440 | which will maybe only be a few people.

00:04:27.960 | So briefly, since you're the pro,

00:04:29.720 | how would you just define financial independence

00:04:32.000 | and the difference between financial independence and FIRE?

00:04:34.440 | - That's a great question.

00:04:35.280 | FIRE, the definition, financial independence, retire early.

00:04:39.160 | That was en vogue five to 10 years ago.

00:04:42.440 | There's an allure to it.

00:04:43.400 | And frankly, Chris, that cute little acronym,

00:04:45.600 | FIRE just sounds cool.

00:04:46.960 | Hey, I'm pursuing FIRE.

00:04:48.240 | But honestly, there are just people

00:04:49.880 | who love to rip on the FIRE movement

00:04:52.360 | because all they hear is that R-E.

00:04:54.680 | It really takes away from people

00:04:57.240 | who are pursuing financial independence

00:04:59.480 | to live a better life.

00:05:00.560 | I see financial independence as a universal good

00:05:03.160 | in that people are wresting control of their lives back

00:05:06.760 | from this elusive they.

00:05:08.840 | You always hear the doom and gloom of,

00:05:10.560 | you can never retire, it's impossible.

00:05:12.600 | You need 10 to $20 million to retire.

00:05:15.320 | Healthcare is gonna be unaffordable.

00:05:16.760 | Boom, boom, boom, boom.

00:05:17.720 | You can't do this, you can't do this.

00:05:19.120 | It's impossible.

00:05:19.960 | As opposed to reorienting around what can you control?

00:05:23.200 | And you, to a large degree, can control your expenses.

00:05:26.440 | And now again, this is probably

00:05:27.640 | where people overemphasize just the cutting.

00:05:30.480 | But you can control what does your life cost?

00:05:33.040 | And then essentially, you can take

00:05:34.680 | what does my life cost per year

00:05:36.440 | and then multiply it by some number.

00:05:38.000 | It's usually by 25.

00:05:39.760 | So let's say your life costs $80,000 a year.

00:05:42.240 | Multiply by 25, that's $2 million.

00:05:44.800 | That's your FIRE number,

00:05:46.560 | your financial independence number.

00:05:48.160 | Most of us have heard of the 4% rule.

00:05:50.240 | We're not gonna get into this really in depth here today,

00:05:52.440 | but in essence, you can pull 4%

00:05:55.440 | out of your investable assets.

00:05:57.640 | So again, we'll turn it around

00:05:59.040 | and say that $2 million times 0.04 is $80,000, right?

00:06:03.760 | So it's just the inverse of where we started

00:06:05.760 | at 80,000 for the expenses.

00:06:07.560 | So that $2 million can spit off 80K

00:06:10.640 | to cover your living expenses.

00:06:12.200 | Now, it is indexed for inflation, normal inflation,

00:06:15.320 | not the inflation we've seen recently.

00:06:17.160 | So there are some potential adjustments,

00:06:19.240 | but some people say,

00:06:20.520 | "Okay, maybe I want to be a little more conservative

00:06:22.920 | "and make it 30 times my expenses

00:06:25.000 | "or 33 times," something like that.

00:06:27.080 | You can play with this at the margins

00:06:28.960 | because really the essence of it

00:06:30.600 | is you actually have some degree of certainty

00:06:33.920 | and you have something to shoot for,

00:06:35.440 | maybe for the first time in your life.

00:06:36.880 | And it's not just this doom and gloom of,

00:06:38.840 | "Oh, you can never do this.

00:06:39.960 | "You can never do that.

00:06:41.080 | "There's some elusive day that's gonna impact you."

00:06:43.440 | You can control that.

00:06:44.640 | I will come back at some point to the 4% rule

00:06:47.280 | 'cause I have some thoughts.

00:06:48.120 | When I think about financial independence on one perspective,

00:06:51.040 | it doesn't even have to get that detailed.

00:06:53.440 | You could have a large emergency fund

00:06:55.320 | and that's a form of financial independence

00:06:57.520 | because it gives you time to look for the right job.

00:07:00.520 | Every bit of savings that gives you some flexibility

00:07:03.720 | is layering in financial independence.

00:07:05.760 | And sure, when you get to the point

00:07:07.440 | that your savings can cover your entire life

00:07:09.800 | and you can choose not to work for free,

00:07:11.840 | obviously that's even more independence.

00:07:14.120 | And if you truly could replace your entire income,

00:07:16.680 | then yeah, you could retire early per se.

00:07:18.840 | The irony is that most people end up using their free time

00:07:21.720 | to do things that very much resemble work

00:07:24.040 | and very often generate income

00:07:25.840 | and they're not truly retiring early.

00:07:27.640 | But I think that's why it's actually helpful.

00:07:30.480 | As much as I thought it was confusing

00:07:32.040 | that there are many different types of fire,

00:07:34.320 | it was actually helpful to look at them

00:07:36.840 | and talk about what they are

00:07:38.360 | because it gave some perspective to the concept

00:07:40.800 | that it's not all about one particular style,

00:07:43.680 | which I think historically it has been.

00:07:45.040 | It's always been saving up money

00:07:46.840 | so you have 25 times your income

00:07:48.560 | and don't think about anything else.

00:07:50.000 | - I think you're spot on.

00:07:50.840 | That's exactly right.

00:07:51.920 | And that is why that caricature existed.

00:07:54.760 | This was for a very specific type of person

00:07:57.480 | is what it seemed like.

00:07:58.440 | High income, maybe in a tech job,

00:08:00.680 | maybe a white guy in his 30s, right?

00:08:02.720 | Because some of the very famous early fire bloggers,

00:08:05.960 | I guess, fit that caricature.

00:08:07.280 | So I agree with you that A, nobody that I know of

00:08:10.520 | actually just sits on their butt and retires

00:08:13.160 | and doesn't do anything.

00:08:14.280 | Most people, if they had the wherewithal

00:08:16.040 | to reach financial independence

00:08:17.640 | at some fairly early point,

00:08:19.320 | they are going to do fantastic things.

00:08:21.360 | Like you said, they're going to earn money somehow.

00:08:22.920 | They're going to add value to the world.

00:08:24.440 | They're going to do interesting and varied things.

00:08:27.240 | And to imagine this again,

00:08:28.720 | you can tell I get bothered by this, right?

00:08:30.440 | They're just going to sit there and do nothing

00:08:32.280 | and sip umbrella drinks.

00:08:33.520 | It's just so silly and laughable,

00:08:34.920 | which is why to focus on the RE makes no sense.

00:08:37.760 | And then like you said,

00:08:38.680 | the power starts accruing essentially from day one.

00:08:41.680 | That first time, if you're living paycheck to paycheck

00:08:44.360 | and you're now, all of a sudden,

00:08:45.800 | you found out about choose a FI

00:08:47.520 | and you're pursuing financial independence.

00:08:49.200 | Okay, maybe it's not going to take you 10 years

00:08:51.640 | to get to FI.

00:08:52.480 | Maybe it's going to take you 20 years.

00:08:53.480 | Maybe it's going to take you how many ever years?

00:08:55.440 | It almost doesn't even matter.

00:08:56.480 | But your life is vastly better

00:08:58.600 | that first time you have $5,000 saved up, even $1,000.

00:09:02.000 | How many people live paycheck to paycheck

00:09:03.600 | and think that an emergency is a $200 expense

00:09:07.320 | that came out of the blue,

00:09:08.400 | but was perfectly foreseeable in a given year.

00:09:11.080 | But that to them is an emergency, but it's really not.

00:09:13.840 | Life is lumpy.

00:09:14.800 | Expenses are lumpy.

00:09:15.840 | That's the way it works.

00:09:16.720 | But man, that first time they have a thousand bucks

00:09:18.480 | saved up, $5,000 saved up,

00:09:19.960 | their life is dramatically better.

00:09:21.560 | The FI journey starts from day one

00:09:23.480 | and that power starts accruing from day one.

00:09:26.200 | It really radically transforms people

00:09:28.200 | and their entire mindset.

00:09:29.360 | - A handful of people I knew, myself included,

00:09:31.200 | probably went off the deep end

00:09:32.720 | with one version of it in our minds.

00:09:34.800 | There's an unlimited number

00:09:36.120 | of types of financial independence.

00:09:37.640 | There are ones that I will leave off

00:09:39.000 | and maybe they're ones you're excited about,

00:09:41.040 | but I'm just gonna share a few of the ones.

00:09:42.800 | I wrote down a couple quick definitions

00:09:44.840 | because having a few options

00:09:47.000 | of what financial independence could be

00:09:48.960 | actually gives you more flexibility.

00:09:51.680 | So the one we talked about,

00:09:53.040 | just traditional fire is have enough money

00:09:55.720 | to quit your job and never work again.

00:09:57.240 | But the other four are pretty interesting.

00:09:58.880 | So I'm gonna talk about first with lean fire,

00:10:01.160 | which would be the very tight end of the spectrum,

00:10:03.240 | which is retiring early,

00:10:04.640 | but bringing your expectation for expenses way down,

00:10:07.640 | really tightening your belt

00:10:09.160 | so that you can do it even earlier.

00:10:10.800 | And I would say this one probably gets a lot more flack

00:10:13.560 | than practically shows up,

00:10:15.080 | but this is, I am going to change where I live,

00:10:18.360 | change what I eat, change the activities I do

00:10:20.920 | so I can stop working.

00:10:22.360 | The next one, which is interesting, is coast fire.

00:10:25.800 | And it's most interesting to me

00:10:26.840 | because I didn't really actually understand what it meant.

00:10:29.000 | I thought it was a version of fire

00:10:31.360 | for people who live on the coasts

00:10:33.000 | where cost of living is higher.

00:10:34.480 | But it turns out it's actually,

00:10:36.080 | instead of focusing on saving up enough money

00:10:38.760 | so that you can stop working,

00:10:40.880 | it's saving up enough money

00:10:42.480 | so that you can stop contributing towards retirement,

00:10:45.800 | whatever time in the future that might be.

00:10:48.080 | So let's say you're fine working till you're 65,

00:10:51.040 | fill up your retirement accounts enough early on

00:10:53.600 | so that all of your income each year

00:10:56.160 | can just go to life and not go towards savings,

00:10:58.920 | which dovetails into another option,

00:11:00.720 | which is called barista fire,

00:11:02.160 | which is you could choose to make a lot of money

00:11:04.520 | and spend a lot of money,

00:11:05.560 | or you could choose to just have a side job

00:11:08.080 | that only covers the expenses

00:11:09.840 | because you don't need to contribute to your savings.

00:11:12.680 | And so you could take a less stressful job,

00:11:14.400 | you could take a job that earns less income.

00:11:16.240 | And by the way, this is all a spectrum, right?

00:11:18.160 | If in order to meet your retirement needs,

00:11:20.000 | you need to save $30,000 a year,

00:11:22.040 | it's not zero or 30, there's stops along the way.

00:11:24.800 | And then the last one that I'll mention is fat fire,

00:11:27.720 | which has a wonderful Reddit community and Facebook group,

00:11:31.080 | which is really just not sacrificing.

00:11:33.200 | I would like to save up enough money

00:11:35.720 | so that I'm not beholden to a job,

00:11:37.520 | I'm not beholden to anything,

00:11:39.120 | but I don't wanna sacrifice.

00:11:40.120 | I wanna be able to go on really nice vacations.

00:11:42.120 | I wanna be able to travel around the world,

00:11:44.320 | eat at whatever restaurants I want to,

00:11:46.240 | and spend money and live in a nice house

00:11:48.160 | and choose to live in the Bay Area,

00:11:49.720 | even if I'm not working or wherever it is for you.

00:11:52.040 | So I wanna live whatever life I want on my savings

00:11:55.080 | and not stress out about it.

00:11:56.440 | And I don't know, I'm curious what you think

00:11:57.840 | when you hear all of these things,

00:11:59.200 | whether you're like, this is silly, this is helpful.

00:12:01.440 | - I think it's helpful.

00:12:02.360 | I think it's mostly helpful.

00:12:03.680 | And like you said, there are a lot of these different ones.

00:12:05.880 | I think these are the four probably main ones

00:12:08.360 | that I've heard of.

00:12:09.200 | I suspect there are some that you and I

00:12:10.640 | have never even heard of at this point.

00:12:12.040 | But like you said, lean fire is probably the one

00:12:15.400 | that appeals to me least,

00:12:16.920 | but I suspect it's maybe,

00:12:19.480 | essentially how little could you humanly spend

00:12:22.360 | more or less to live?

00:12:24.160 | And then have you achieved PHI

00:12:26.760 | based on probably the 25 times rule based on that?

00:12:29.960 | So let's say your actual structural expenses

00:12:32.640 | and some food to get by cost $30,000.

00:12:35.920 | Well, okay, then your lean PHI is 750,000,

00:12:38.760 | which is very doable for a lot of people.

00:12:41.080 | Chris, I can't imagine that sounds like a very appealing

00:12:43.200 | life to either me or you,

00:12:44.520 | but I can understand why people potentially pursue this.

00:12:47.720 | - What I think is interesting,

00:12:48.920 | and it's something I've actually said a lot,

00:12:50.920 | and I guess maybe I've been bribing lean fire,

00:12:53.080 | is that it's helpful for me to have the security

00:12:55.880 | to know that I've saved enough money,

00:12:57.680 | that there is a lifestyle I could live,

00:13:00.000 | especially once you have a family and children.

00:13:02.160 | If you have that $750,000 and something happens,

00:13:05.440 | you lose your ability to work.

00:13:07.480 | Knowing that there is a place in the world

00:13:10.000 | that you could live,

00:13:11.320 | maybe even in the US, maybe even nearby,

00:13:13.400 | there is a ability to buy food, feed your family.

00:13:16.680 | That's a lot of security.

00:13:18.160 | It gives you the flexibility to do a lot of things

00:13:20.880 | in your life and be a lot less worried.

00:13:22.920 | Now, it's not enough money to live in a major city

00:13:25.920 | and go out and take expensive vacations,

00:13:28.020 | but it will give you some peace of mind.

00:13:29.880 | The challenge is, when you get to the point that you hit it,

00:13:32.240 | do you really want to stop,

00:13:33.720 | do nothing for the rest of your life,

00:13:35.160 | and live that life or keep going?

00:13:37.040 | It starts with being out of debt,

00:13:38.440 | building up savings and whatnot,

00:13:39.880 | but I think what I've seen in my life,

00:13:42.240 | leaving to start this podcast,

00:13:43.440 | my wife leaving to join me,

00:13:45.160 | those were things we were able to do

00:13:46.840 | because we have savings.

00:13:48.200 | Do we have enough savings that we could live off of it

00:13:50.440 | in our current lifestyle with zero income?

00:13:52.600 | Probably not, but do we have enough savings

00:13:54.200 | that we could adapt our lifestyle,

00:13:55.760 | move somewhere else and live off it?

00:13:57.120 | Yes, and that gives us a lot of comfort.

00:13:59.000 | Security, there's a real allure to that, certainly,

00:14:01.680 | and I don't think any of these are all or nothing,

00:14:04.480 | especially something like LeanFi.

00:14:06.160 | I can use the example of my brother and his wife and family.

00:14:09.760 | Maybe you could call it a mini-retirement,

00:14:12.240 | but there's some intersection of a mini-retirement

00:14:14.720 | and LeanFi in that they just had a daughter

00:14:18.520 | and she's a year old now,

00:14:20.640 | and basically, he was staying home

00:14:22.640 | to raise her for the first year,

00:14:24.140 | and then his wife Kristen realized,

00:14:25.880 | hey, I don't want to miss this time.

00:14:27.360 | This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing.

00:14:28.880 | We're not at fi, but we're certainly at a LeanFi number

00:14:32.760 | where we could easily live off the 4% rule

00:14:35.920 | based on earning zero income.

00:14:38.120 | So they wound up almost doing

00:14:39.520 | exactly what you described, Chris,

00:14:41.080 | which was, hey, maybe you could even do this

00:14:43.120 | within the United States.

00:14:44.440 | They moved to Wisconsin, where she's from.

00:14:46.600 | They bought a condo, don't have a mortgage on it,

00:14:49.520 | and they're living for a year or two

00:14:52.200 | or maybe even more in this LeanFi style,

00:14:55.360 | but the benefit they're getting

00:14:56.760 | is they're seeing those first formative years

00:14:59.880 | of their daughter's life as a family,

00:15:01.800 | and the three of them are there every single day.

00:15:03.840 | You talk about security,

00:15:05.080 | but you also talk about benefits of something.

00:15:06.800 | That is literally priceless,

00:15:08.800 | and I mean, I don't know precisely

00:15:10.920 | what's going on in their lives,

00:15:11.820 | but are they going out to fancy dinners all the time?

00:15:14.640 | Are they doing this and that?

00:15:15.800 | Like, no, but they're there with their daughter

00:15:17.900 | every single day, and that's an astonishing thing.

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00:17:52.560 | I think you could choose what you want

00:17:54.680 | to do with your financial independence.

00:17:56.080 | You can choose how it exists.

00:17:57.400 | Let's come back to Coast 5

00:17:58.640 | because it's the most interesting one to me

00:18:00.400 | because it feels like what I'm interested in

00:18:02.800 | and what I actually would care about

00:18:04.560 | more than quitting my job is having the flexibility to work,

00:18:08.520 | but also save.

00:18:09.680 | I'm curious what you think.

00:18:10.800 | - It's funny, actually,

00:18:11.640 | that today is the day you found Coast 5

00:18:13.960 | and you realized, "Oh, wow, this is interesting to me.

00:18:15.960 | "This is what I'm living."

00:18:17.120 | This has a real appeal to a lot of people.

00:18:19.920 | This is maybe one of the newer of these flavors of 5,

00:18:23.000 | but it was one of those aha moments for a lot of people.

00:18:25.520 | There's the intersection of the rule of 72

00:18:28.040 | and compounding money.

00:18:29.520 | So a quick sidebar and explain that is

00:18:31.640 | I think most people understand that,

00:18:33.280 | okay, you have some investable net worth saved up, right?

00:18:37.160 | And while we can't guarantee what a stock market return is,

00:18:41.120 | you have a general annual return over a long period of time.

00:18:45.360 | We generally say 8%.

00:18:47.000 | We use that as the back of the envelope.

00:18:48.520 | So using what's known as the rule of 72,

00:18:51.720 | and I don't wanna get in the weeds here,

00:18:52.800 | but this is actually a really useful

00:18:54.680 | and pretty easy thing to figure out,

00:18:56.320 | is it basically tells you how long it'll take

00:18:59.360 | for your assets to double based on a certain rate of return.

00:19:03.000 | So more or less, you just take the number 72

00:19:05.960 | and then divide by your expected rate of return.

00:19:08.240 | If we're saying 8%, so 72 divided by eight,

00:19:10.680 | very simply is nine,

00:19:11.920 | that's the number of years it'll take your money to double.

00:19:14.440 | So that's really, really important for Coase FI.

00:19:17.720 | Basically how Coase FI works is,

00:19:19.440 | let's say you've saved up, I don't know, 300,000.

00:19:22.040 | Let's start there.

00:19:22.880 | Something that's reasonable

00:19:24.120 | and is certainly a nice net worth,

00:19:25.600 | but is not gonna get just about anybody to FI, right?

00:19:28.480 | So you've saved up 300 grand

00:19:30.360 | and now you want to not save any more money.

00:19:33.720 | So that's the point where Coasting comes in

00:19:35.520 | is essentially your money is working for you

00:19:37.720 | in the background and you are not adding anything

00:19:39.920 | to those assets, you're not saving.

00:19:41.320 | You are either earning less and spending it all

00:19:44.320 | or potentially spending more money

00:19:45.920 | and increasing your lifestyle to meet where your income is.

00:19:48.960 | So either way, not a bad option.

00:19:50.840 | Basically using that rule of 72,

00:19:53.200 | let's say your actual FI number was, I don't know,

00:19:56.640 | 1.2 million, just to make the math easy.

00:19:58.720 | So that 300,000 will double to 600,000 in nine years

00:20:03.720 | and then that 600 will double again

00:20:05.880 | to 1.2 million in 18 years total.

00:20:08.720 | So 18 years from now, if you had a $300,000 net worth,

00:20:12.080 | again, in theory, we're not saying this is a guarantee,

00:20:14.240 | but assuming an 8% annual return,

00:20:16.280 | it would be 1.2 million in about 18 years.

00:20:18.760 | And at that point you would be FI.

00:20:20.920 | So you're more or less Coasting into it

00:20:23.240 | based on the work that you've done previously

00:20:26.280 | by saving in this concerted manner

00:20:28.240 | to get your current net worth.

00:20:29.840 | There really is a great allure to that.

00:20:32.080 | I know this is something that you're thinking about

00:20:34.320 | in your own life, right?

00:20:35.160 | Like you clearly have a nice net worth,

00:20:37.400 | but I think you are not at FI

00:20:39.680 | as you would traditionally define it, right?

00:20:41.360 | - It's funny 'cause 10 years ago,

00:20:42.680 | I probably would have said yes.

00:20:44.000 | Then you have children, you move into the Bay Area

00:20:47.000 | and you realize how much more money you're spending

00:20:48.960 | and you come out of it.

00:20:49.840 | So it's like you can come into it, you can come out of it.

00:20:52.040 | For me, I think we've saved enough

00:20:53.520 | that it'll cover retirement if it continues to grow

00:20:56.320 | and that we can not focus as much on saving

00:20:59.120 | in the short term,

00:21:00.120 | but we do need to focus on covering our expenses.

00:21:02.040 | And so that's where it seems like,

00:21:04.200 | oh, I can do whatever I want.

00:21:05.080 | Can't do whatever we want.

00:21:06.480 | We still need a reasonably high pre-tax income

00:21:08.960 | to cover where we live and how much we spend each year

00:21:11.600 | and probably we'll save more.

00:21:13.960 | But in a strange way, for me,

00:21:15.920 | it's weird to ever withdraw money from your savings.

00:21:19.160 | So for me, the money we put away in our brokerage account,

00:21:21.600 | our retirement accounts, that's for retirement.

00:21:23.720 | Whatever year that starts TBD,

00:21:25.680 | I feel weird taking money out of it.

00:21:27.280 | The strange thing in this new Coast Fi world

00:21:29.960 | that I'm hours into is this idea that,

00:21:32.560 | well, maybe it makes sense to withdraw some of it

00:21:34.960 | so that we can put other money we make

00:21:37.000 | into more tax advantaged accounts.

00:21:39.160 | So I could actually see a start to draw down

00:21:41.600 | on our long-term savings,

00:21:43.840 | which for us is in our Wealthfront account,

00:21:45.360 | so that we can increase our solo 401k contributions

00:21:49.320 | because there's more tax advantage to doing that.

00:21:51.520 | That's something that we'll probably still do.

00:21:53.480 | We're still gonna save,

00:21:54.680 | but we're gonna also withdraw at the same time,

00:21:57.360 | which I'm sure will make some financial model confused.

00:22:00.080 | But for us, it feels like the first time

00:22:02.120 | I found a part of the fire movement, if you will,

00:22:04.440 | that I'm like, oh, this kind of makes sense now.

00:22:06.000 | Like, I don't necessarily wanna quit my job.

00:22:07.800 | And I think a lot of people I talk to

00:22:09.000 | don't wanna quit their job,

00:22:10.200 | or at least don't want to stop working.

00:22:12.520 | The one nuance to calculating this is thinking,

00:22:14.960 | when do I wanna stop working?

00:22:16.480 | Work backwards from there

00:22:17.960 | to figure out how much you need now.

00:22:19.680 | So like you said, if you wanna stop working in 18 years,

00:22:22.520 | I'm a bit more conservative.

00:22:23.760 | I probably use 6%.

00:22:25.040 | So for me, that takes your 18 to 25.

00:22:28.000 | If you're cool with a 65-year retirement age

00:22:31.200 | and you wanna work backwards by 40,

00:22:33.880 | you need 1/4 of what you think

00:22:35.600 | you need to live on in retirement.

00:22:36.880 | So if that number is a million dollars, you need 250

00:22:39.040 | because you're not gonna touch it.

00:22:40.320 | It's just gonna grow until that day.

00:22:42.360 | I don't know.

00:22:43.200 | We could go down a lot of rabbit holes here.

00:22:44.480 | I've been really intrigued.

00:22:45.680 | I will just take a quick tackle on the 4% rule

00:22:48.480 | because I went down the Early Retirement Now website,

00:22:51.840 | which had this great whole thing on safe withdrawal rate,

00:22:55.560 | sequence of return risk and everything.

00:22:56.760 | It was like a 60-part blog post series,

00:22:58.960 | which I will just say is a lot.

00:23:00.600 | I'll link to the first one in the show notes.

00:23:02.440 | But I think the 4% rule often gets misinterpreted

00:23:05.880 | because it was truly built for a 30-year cycle

00:23:09.040 | to end at zero.

00:23:10.200 | And so if you're using the 4% rule starting at age 30,

00:23:14.400 | the certainty with which it has worked

00:23:16.720 | in the Trinity study that it was based off of

00:23:18.760 | would have only gotten you to age 60.

00:23:20.480 | However, if you look at a lot of the calculations

00:23:22.880 | and the Early Retirement Now blog actually has a lot of them,

00:23:25.680 | you'll notice that if you just reduce it to 3 1/2

00:23:28.840 | or even 3%, it works in perpetuity.

00:23:31.600 | So if you wanna be really safe,

00:23:33.240 | which is what I do in all my projections,

00:23:35.040 | I use the 3% rule.

00:23:36.400 | I'm probably underselling things.

00:23:38.200 | I'm also not factoring in social security or anything else,

00:23:41.880 | but that's where I come out with on the 4% rule.

00:23:44.640 | I think for a handful of reasons,

00:23:46.520 | it's probably both too aggressive to be certain

00:23:49.400 | and too conservative for what I imagine

00:23:51.600 | we will see with returns.

00:23:53.160 | - Isn't that interesting?

00:23:54.000 | So listeners of Choose FI will be very familiar

00:23:56.600 | with Karsten from Early Retirement Now.

00:23:58.520 | He is just an amazing, amazing intellect.

00:24:01.440 | And yeah, like you said,

00:24:02.280 | if you're looking to dive deep on safe withdrawal rates,

00:24:04.480 | his 60-part series,

00:24:05.680 | it's almost laughable to say 60-part series out loud.

00:24:07.960 | - And by the way, each part is not like three paragraphs.

00:24:10.360 | Each part is like seven pages of content.

00:24:13.280 | - Right, thousands of words and graphs and charts and stuff.

00:24:16.320 | On our show, he basically has said it's almost a guarantee,

00:24:20.440 | and he would never use the word guarantee,

00:24:22.000 | but in every Monte Carlo simulation he's come up with,

00:24:24.800 | that 3.25% will get you there

00:24:27.560 | in virtually every single scenario.

00:24:29.600 | So like you said, using a 3% safe withdrawal rate

00:24:32.240 | is very, very conservative

00:24:33.800 | and not including social security.

00:24:35.240 | Those of us that are inclined to think that way,

00:24:37.600 | and I am as well, 'cause I mean, I use that 33 times.

00:24:40.680 | So that's the 3% rule, 33 times your annual expenses.

00:24:44.040 | We all understand we're being ultra, ultra conservative,

00:24:47.360 | but again, a lot of personal finance is psychology.

00:24:49.840 | It's more than it is numbers.

00:24:51.320 | And I think if that helps you sleep well at night,

00:24:53.560 | because again, that word security, right?

00:24:55.320 | We'll come back to that.

00:24:56.160 | That is a really important word.

00:24:57.720 | It's a really important concept,

00:24:59.120 | but you have to understand what's the opportunity cost.

00:25:01.280 | So the opportunity costs potentially

00:25:03.040 | are years of your life that you're working.

00:25:05.800 | Now, if like you, you're doing something that you love,

00:25:08.840 | and again, I just wrote down as you were talking,

00:25:11.080 | who says you have to stop working?

00:25:13.120 | As if you need to stop working

00:25:15.000 | to be part of the FIRA movement.

00:25:17.000 | That nonsense is gone.

00:25:18.520 | It was gone years ago.

00:25:19.640 | That's not a prerequisite to being a member

00:25:21.840 | of the financial independence movement, certainly.

00:25:23.840 | You can do what you want.

00:25:24.960 | That's the whole beauty of this, Chris.

00:25:26.440 | You have the freedom to do what you want in life.

00:25:28.760 | And if that means you want to work

00:25:29.760 | because you love it, then do it.

00:25:31.480 | That's great, but do it on your own terms.

00:25:33.200 | Again, we're being a little conservative,

00:25:35.560 | but that's okay.

00:25:36.440 | Understanding what's the opportunity cost.

00:25:38.440 | And for people who are working in jobs that they don't love,

00:25:41.040 | it's that one more year syndrome.

00:25:42.560 | How many people fall prey to that?

00:25:43.920 | Like, oh, I don't feel safe enough yet.

00:25:45.560 | I don't feel safe enough.

00:25:46.520 | What if I need the 2.5% safe withdrawal rate?

00:25:49.560 | What about 2.25?

00:25:51.080 | And I don't think social security is going to be here.

00:25:52.960 | And you can come up with all of this stuff

00:25:54.920 | that will keep you working in a job

00:25:56.560 | that you potentially hate forever.

00:25:58.240 | And that's not a good alternative either.

00:26:00.240 | So clearly I'm kind of setting up

00:26:01.880 | a straw man ridiculous argument here,

00:26:03.640 | but maybe not because I fear there are people

00:26:06.440 | that could fall prey to that.

00:26:07.840 | - The one thing that you got to remember

00:26:09.200 | is that it's not binary.

00:26:10.880 | If you have a job you hate,

00:26:12.080 | you don't have to just quit that job and never work again

00:26:14.880 | and be able to replace your income

00:26:16.720 | for the next 30 to 60 years.

00:26:18.880 | If you build up enough to get you by for a year,

00:26:21.720 | then you can go try to find another job

00:26:23.880 | that you might like more.

00:26:24.920 | And it turns out if you love it more,

00:26:26.360 | you might be able to advance better,

00:26:27.880 | negotiate a salary better, be more productive.

00:26:30.240 | You might end up making more money in the long run.

00:26:32.320 | So I just want to highlight that.

00:26:33.440 | I know a lot of people that find themselves

00:26:35.240 | sometimes in their career, not happy with their job.

00:26:37.560 | And if I look back,

00:26:38.640 | now that I've kind of had the professional experience,

00:26:40.760 | most of them found other things

00:26:42.440 | pretty quickly that they loved.

00:26:43.760 | Some took longer than they needed.

00:26:45.440 | A lot of them worried that they couldn't quit their job

00:26:47.640 | because they needed enough money,

00:26:49.160 | millions of dollars to cover their income forever.

00:26:51.640 | And I know that because I was one of them,

00:26:53.200 | but I quickly found other things that I loved.

00:26:56.040 | And that's more of an emergency fund issue

00:26:58.440 | than a financial independence issue.

00:27:00.320 | You don't need to have your entire life covered in costs

00:27:03.920 | before you can take time to find something you love.

00:27:06.840 | And I have a good friend who did this.

00:27:08.240 | He knew he was ready to find something new

00:27:10.200 | and knew that it might take a year

00:27:12.240 | and had enough savings to do that.

00:27:13.760 | Didn't think he needed financial independence,

00:27:15.920 | retire early money.

00:27:17.200 | And about six months in,

00:27:18.600 | he found a thing that he's really excited about.

00:27:20.560 | And it took time, but he's going to be much happier.

00:27:23.040 | And I think his career will flourish because of it.

00:27:25.640 | So that's just one perspective I have.

00:27:27.440 | - No, that's really cool.

00:27:28.280 | I mean, that resonates with me in my own life, frankly,

00:27:30.520 | and you as well, right?

00:27:32.320 | We both did this with our own entrepreneurial ventures

00:27:35.480 | and it's cool to have options.

00:27:37.040 | That's what pursuing FI gives you.

00:27:38.880 | It gives you options.

00:27:39.720 | For me, I was a CPA and I was on the path to FI.

00:27:42.840 | I was still a number of years away

00:27:44.240 | and I had built businesses on the side.

00:27:46.640 | They weren't bringing in a ton of money,

00:27:47.840 | but I had proved the concept to myself.

00:27:50.120 | And then I said, oh, if I could actually do this full time,

00:27:53.000 | maybe I could turn this into something.

00:27:54.320 | In the points and miles world,

00:27:55.520 | you didn't even realize all this time

00:27:56.880 | that we've known each other

00:27:57.720 | that that was really my first foray into entrepreneurship

00:28:01.120 | was through points and miles.

00:28:02.320 | I was helping people get to Disney World,

00:28:04.560 | take Disney World trips,

00:28:05.480 | not first class on Singapore Suites or anything like that,

00:28:08.280 | just literally trips to Disney World.

00:28:09.560 | Because I figured if I could save $4,000 for my family,

00:28:13.040 | there are millions of other families

00:28:14.480 | who want to go to Disney World.

00:28:15.640 | And is that super attractive to a 24 year old kid

00:28:18.280 | who's looking to fly first class

00:28:19.960 | and do all the travel hacking type of stuff?

00:28:21.800 | No, but is that appealing to tens of millions of families

00:28:24.600 | who want to go to Disney World?

00:28:25.640 | Yeah, you bet.

00:28:26.480 | And then I scaled that with my next business,

00:28:28.240 | Travel Miles 101.

00:28:29.280 | And it was just, I wouldn't have had that opportunity.

00:28:31.280 | I wouldn't have had the guts, frankly,

00:28:33.080 | to leave my nice safe job

00:28:34.600 | when I had two daughters and a wife

00:28:36.200 | if I wasn't pursuing fine,

00:28:37.560 | if I wasn't 80% of the way to my fine number.

00:28:40.040 | It was that security blank.

00:28:41.400 | It made a massive difference.

00:28:42.800 | - So you said 80%.

00:28:43.880 | So I'm curious, how are you tracking this?

00:28:46.120 | What are the tools that you use?

00:28:47.760 | I downloaded Karsten's toolkit,

00:28:49.920 | which is a spreadsheet that I spent about 20 minutes on it

00:28:52.400 | and I made it about 10% or less the way there,

00:28:54.640 | which is not to say it's not a helpful tool,

00:28:56.600 | but I think there's a world

00:28:57.760 | where you can go down a lot of rabbit holes.

00:28:59.440 | So to be clear, his tool is incredible,

00:29:01.640 | especially when it comes to modeling

00:29:03.200 | a lot of the things he talks about.

00:29:04.600 | And if you want to nerd out,

00:29:05.520 | I'll also link to that in the show notes.

00:29:07.120 | But high level, what are the tools you're using

00:29:09.160 | on a daily basis to manage your money

00:29:11.360 | and track your financial independence journey?

00:29:13.640 | - You, the all the hacks guy

00:29:15.400 | are going to be very disappointed in me.

00:29:17.040 | I am as low key and low tech with this

00:29:19.920 | as one could possibly be.

00:29:21.320 | I still use the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

00:29:24.920 | that I've been using for my entire FI journey.

00:29:27.480 | I have it literally quarter by quarter saved,

00:29:30.520 | my net worth saved for the last 10 plus years now.

00:29:33.760 | And which is actually a really cool exercise.

00:29:35.800 | And I know our good friend Paula Pant does this as well,

00:29:38.240 | just loves really getting into the nitty gritty.

00:29:40.800 | I know it sounds silly,

00:29:41.640 | but entering those numbers into the spreadsheet,

00:29:43.720 | there's something like really visceral about it

00:29:45.960 | that like is better for me personally

00:29:48.360 | than using some fancy tool

00:29:50.200 | or some fancy projection software.

00:29:51.760 | And I know you have dove into a whole bunch of these things.

00:29:54.320 | So I want to get back to you on this

00:29:55.560 | 'cause you have a better answer.

00:29:56.480 | But very simply, I have my CPA's brain.

00:29:59.320 | So I've come up with income statements

00:30:01.280 | and net worth statements that I just track in Excel.

00:30:04.280 | And I maybe spend an hour every month

00:30:06.880 | really tying everything out to,

00:30:09.320 | I run everything through my checking account.

00:30:11.640 | So I use that as the account that I run everything off of.

00:30:14.600 | And then any transfers into other accounts,

00:30:17.240 | increases or decreases in the account balances

00:30:20.120 | at Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab

00:30:21.840 | or Wealthfront or wherever it may be.

00:30:23.600 | And that then ties out to my net worth.

00:30:26.880 | So I'm doing this about an hour a month, give or take,

00:30:30.040 | to track my checking account.

00:30:31.760 | And then at the end of every quarter,

00:30:33.480 | I spend probably no more than 30 minutes

00:30:35.720 | logging into every account that I own,

00:30:39.080 | that I have assets at,

00:30:40.120 | and just jotting down in this Excel spreadsheet,

00:30:42.720 | my balance there.

00:30:43.880 | So it ultimately then ties out to my net worth.

00:30:46.240 | So I know it sounds like a lot of work.

00:30:47.720 | It's really not.

00:30:48.560 | And there is something fun about it.

00:30:50.120 | So I know that doesn't appeal to you at all,

00:30:52.320 | but tell us about where the rabbit holes you've dove down.

00:30:54.920 | - Obviously I took a more tech forward approach

00:30:57.160 | than the spreadsheet.

00:30:58.000 | Although I used the spreadsheet for a long time,

00:30:59.560 | but I just found that if I didn't update it for six months,

00:31:02.280 | it was just a lot of work.

00:31:03.240 | So there's two to three tools.

00:31:05.160 | For a lot of people, it can just be two.

00:31:06.960 | All of the stuff we've talked about this entire episode

00:31:09.320 | really comes down to knowing two things,

00:31:11.280 | knowing how much you're spending

00:31:12.600 | and knowing how much you have.

00:31:14.200 | And I guess knowing how much you make also,

00:31:16.400 | but that's usually a lot easier number

00:31:17.840 | for a lot of people to peg.

00:31:19.000 | And so it's how do you track your spending

00:31:20.840 | and how do you track your net worth?

00:31:22.120 | And how do you project from that

00:31:23.960 | would be the third piece of the puzzle.

00:31:25.560 | I used to try to track spending in Mint many years ago.

00:31:29.760 | I've done an entire episode

00:31:31.480 | where I actually went and used all the tools.

00:31:33.200 | Mint, YNAB, Monarch Money, Copilot,

00:31:36.120 | the one that Quicken launched, Simplify,

00:31:38.440 | and a couple others.

00:31:39.360 | And I played with all of them.

00:31:40.280 | I synced all my 2022 transactions, looked at everything.

00:31:43.640 | And the end goal was like, I'm gonna pick the best one.

00:31:46.040 | And I had some ideas of what it would be.

00:31:48.240 | But at the end of the day, I went with Copilot.

00:31:50.040 | I think it's for anyone who's on Apple products,

00:31:53.160 | it's the best.

00:31:54.000 | If you're on Android or Windows,

00:31:55.320 | it's an iOS, Mac, iPad only adventure.

00:31:58.640 | But for me, it almost makes it so easy and fun and simple.

00:32:03.640 | That's just like what I've chosen.

00:32:05.480 | Then after I reached out to them and I was like,

00:32:07.160 | hey guys, I've been pitched by a handful of companies

00:32:09.440 | in this space to work with them as sponsors of the podcast.

00:32:12.840 | But at the end of the day,

00:32:14.000 | I wanna work with the products I use.

00:32:15.680 | And that's how I've actually done

00:32:16.920 | most of the sponsorships we have.

00:32:18.360 | So I did end up working with them.

00:32:19.560 | So full disclosure, they are a partner of the show.

00:32:22.080 | And if you go to allthehacks.com/copilot,

00:32:24.280 | you'll get a discount.

00:32:25.120 | But I think that is how I manage how much I spend.

00:32:27.920 | I did a whole episode on all that.

00:32:29.280 | So I'm not gonna go down that rabbit hole.

00:32:30.760 | Then for how much money I have generally,

00:32:33.040 | Wealthfront has a free version of linking your accounts,

00:32:35.680 | seeing how it's going, doing some light projections.

00:32:38.160 | I'd put it in the, I don't wanna play around a lot.

00:32:40.840 | I want you to give me best practices on everything.

00:32:44.040 | What I think goes a step further than that

00:32:46.280 | is a product called Kubera,

00:32:47.760 | which I first heard about at FinCon

00:32:50.320 | when they presented on stage, I later started using.

00:32:53.360 | And then later, I would say partnered with,

00:32:55.400 | they're not a sponsor of the show,

00:32:56.840 | but we've worked together on the All The Hacks membership.

00:32:58.960 | So All The Hacks members get

00:33:00.240 | their first year of Kubera free.

00:33:01.720 | Both of these tools are not free.

00:33:03.520 | So your option of a spreadsheet is free.

00:33:05.560 | My option of two apps, I paid for both of them.

00:33:07.880 | They're not huge expenses,

00:33:09.320 | but Kubera is like, imagine if someone wanted to build

00:33:13.120 | the website version of the spreadsheet you have,

00:33:15.360 | where you can put it in categories,

00:33:16.880 | especially on the investment side,

00:33:18.280 | you can look at cost bases or IRRs,

00:33:20.480 | but they're calculating it all for you.

00:33:21.960 | They're pulling all the info.

00:33:23.200 | And then they just launched recently

00:33:24.560 | this fast forward feature

00:33:26.040 | where you can put in a set of simple rules

00:33:28.480 | in multiple scenarios

00:33:29.840 | and be able to just see what happens.

00:33:31.280 | So this isn't the full on financial projection tool

00:33:35.240 | that you could go down every rabbit hole

00:33:37.520 | of tax assumptions and everything,

00:33:39.200 | but you could say, and I'm looking at mine,

00:33:40.920 | let's say my assets grow by 3% factoring in inflation.

00:33:45.560 | Let's say my salary continues for this many years.

00:33:48.520 | Let's say inflation is this.

00:33:50.240 | Let's say I have a future expense for college

00:33:52.680 | starting in this year, lasting for four years.

00:33:55.040 | Kind of some simple rules.

00:33:56.000 | On mine, I have six.

00:33:57.000 | And it'll project forward and say,

00:33:58.600 | here's your net worth in a year,

00:33:59.960 | five years, 10 years, 20 years,

00:34:01.640 | and what that'll generally look like.

00:34:03.200 | So I've abandoned my spreadsheet for Kubera

00:34:05.880 | for tracking net worth and everything.

00:34:08.040 | The thing that I think has always been the problem

00:34:09.720 | is there are a handful of providers of linking services,

00:34:13.720 | meaning where you'd log into your bank account

00:34:16.040 | and they'll pull data on a read-only basis.

00:34:18.040 | And most apps use one

00:34:19.840 | and Kubera works with two or three of the top ones

00:34:22.600 | so that they know that if you're trying to sync

00:34:24.480 | that obscure Vanguard,

00:34:26.200 | a census retirement account that I have,

00:34:28.320 | they know to make sure you use Yodlee

00:34:30.000 | instead of Plaid because it syncs better.

00:34:31.880 | So Kubera.

00:34:32.840 | And then the third one is one

00:34:35.080 | that I recently started playing with

00:34:36.560 | after a bunch of listeners emailed in and said,

00:34:38.680 | hey, you haven't included Projection Lab.

00:34:40.640 | And so I said, oh, you're right.

00:34:41.760 | I haven't included Projection Lab.

00:34:43.280 | I'll make sure at some point to go look into it.

00:34:46.320 | And I had a call actually with Kyle, the CEO

00:34:48.720 | or the founder of this company.

00:34:50.000 | And it's really interesting.

00:34:51.200 | If you're the kind of person that wants to model out

00:34:53.600 | a lot of scenarios, toggle things on and off,

00:34:56.160 | look at the tax implications,

00:34:58.080 | look at the flow of capital on a year-by-year basis,

00:35:01.240 | Projection Lab is amazing.

00:35:02.920 | I will say, I think jumping into it,

00:35:05.200 | I wanna set up three simple rules.

00:35:07.040 | There's an onboarding and you walk through a lot of stuff,

00:35:10.040 | but once you're done,

00:35:11.160 | the flexibility you have is really cool.

00:35:13.400 | And you can define steps along the way,

00:35:15.320 | like when will I get to financial independence

00:35:18.080 | at 33 times income?

00:35:19.800 | When might I get to fat fire at 50 times income?

00:35:22.800 | You can set these milestones and see these projections.

00:35:25.680 | So I would say if someone needs a app

00:35:28.720 | to track their spending, I'm a fan of Copilot.

00:35:31.200 | If someone wants to track their net worth,

00:35:32.880 | I'm a big fan of Kubera.

00:35:34.200 | And if you're an All The Hacks member or want to be,

00:35:36.400 | it's free for your first year, which is cool.

00:35:38.200 | And then finally, I would say,

00:35:40.640 | if you wanna go really deep in the weeds,

00:35:42.640 | you can use Projection Lab.

00:35:43.840 | And I don't say deep in the weeds,

00:35:45.000 | like it's not interesting for most people.

00:35:47.000 | You're gonna spend more time on it.

00:35:48.280 | I love putting my money on Autopilot,

00:35:49.800 | but if I'm trying to figure out big decisions,

00:35:51.520 | I like having all the data.

00:35:52.680 | And so right now we're looking at school.

00:35:55.280 | If we ended up paying for college or doing private school,

00:35:58.000 | what are those huge costs?

00:35:59.880 | What kind of impact do they have?

00:36:01.320 | And I think those are really interesting questions to ask.

00:36:04.240 | And when you wanna factor in the taxes of it

00:36:06.520 | and you wanna factor in required minimum distributions

00:36:08.920 | from retirement account, it's pretty interesting.

00:36:10.920 | - Yeah, you showed it to me right before we jumped on

00:36:13.480 | and yeah, it looked fantastic.

00:36:14.920 | And there is a spectrum.

00:36:16.440 | Clearly, I think we are the spectrum here,

00:36:18.800 | aside from people who aren't tracking anything,

00:36:20.960 | which please track something at the very least.

00:36:23.240 | What do you spend?

00:36:24.160 | What's your net worth?

00:36:25.000 | You just, you need to do that.

00:36:26.080 | Up to you who are trying out all these different tools.

00:36:29.040 | - I would say by any measure,

00:36:30.480 | you are being more accurate than I.

00:36:31.880 | Having these major expenses, like just seeing that.

00:36:34.480 | In my case, 2026 to 2034,

00:36:38.800 | I'm going to have college for each of my daughters.

00:36:41.280 | It's gonna be eight straight years of college.

00:36:43.440 | That clearly needs to be factored in somehow, right?

00:36:45.880 | And if I was earning zero dollars,

00:36:48.360 | then we would potentially have an issue.

00:36:50.480 | Am I really at five?

00:36:51.840 | It's an interesting thought experiment in my case,

00:36:54.120 | but for a lot of people,

00:36:55.480 | hey, if you've quote unquote reach five

00:36:57.600 | and maybe you're earning a fraction of what you were

00:37:00.560 | and you have these massive expenses coming up

00:37:02.440 | that you haven't modeled,

00:37:03.640 | there are many of these software options.

00:37:05.880 | I know there's a new retirement.

00:37:07.440 | I think there's on trajectory.

00:37:08.720 | I've just loosely seen those in the past,

00:37:11.400 | but yeah, this Projection Lab looks amazing.

00:37:14.160 | - When I want to do an episode on this,

00:37:15.600 | I'll go play with every tool.

00:37:17.080 | Projection Lab does not get the seal of,

00:37:19.360 | I have gone and played with every tool,

00:37:21.480 | but I just got so many emails from listeners

00:37:23.440 | to check it out.

00:37:24.280 | And many of those people have gone

00:37:25.480 | and played with every tool

00:37:26.480 | that I thought it was worth looking at.

00:37:28.000 | But honestly, I say that

00:37:29.800 | because I enjoyed spending an afternoon

00:37:32.120 | going to enter it in,

00:37:33.200 | but I equally enjoyed on Kubera

00:37:35.760 | creating four or five,

00:37:37.160 | or I guess six rules,

00:37:38.560 | to college, growth, inflation,

00:37:40.840 | when does my income end

00:37:42.160 | and how do my expenses change?

00:37:43.560 | And just having a very simple form

00:37:45.800 | of how do things project out to the future?

00:37:47.680 | So I care more about people being aware of the circumstance

00:37:51.560 | than I do about them going deep, deep down rabbit holes.

00:37:54.680 | But those are the three tools that I say

00:37:57.120 | all of my financial life lives through.

00:37:59.200 | It's not related to business, right?

00:38:00.680 | There's like quick books for business and all that stuff.

00:38:02.600 | But for me, those three tools are how I'm doing

00:38:05.200 | almost all the tracking.

00:38:06.640 | We'll see where Projection Lab fits in the long run,

00:38:09.000 | whether it's a thing I check every month, every year,

00:38:11.320 | or whether it's a thing I use to make big decisions.

00:38:14.280 | - No, that makes perfect sense.

00:38:15.840 | - There is nothing better

00:38:18.560 | than finding a brand of clothing

00:38:20.080 | that's comfortable, functional, and looks good.

00:38:22.720 | And that's exactly how I feel

00:38:24.320 | about our sponsor today, Viori.

00:38:26.440 | If you saw me in person, you'd know I believe it

00:38:28.600 | because there are very few days that go by

00:38:30.600 | where I'm not wearing one, two,

00:38:32.000 | or even three pieces of Viori.

00:38:34.080 | They make performance apparel for men and women

00:38:36.440 | that's incredibly versatile.

00:38:38.160 | Everything is designed to work out in

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00:38:42.120 | And it is so comfortable,

00:38:43.440 | you'll wanna wear it all the time.

00:38:45.240 | I've long said that Sunday performance joggers

00:38:47.440 | were my favorites and don't get me wrong,

00:38:49.240 | I have at least three pairs

00:38:50.800 | and they are the most comfortable pants I've owned,

00:38:53.000 | but I've been running a lot more

00:38:54.360 | and it's still warm in California,

00:38:56.080 | so I'm wearing my core shorts all the time.

00:38:59.000 | Their products are incredibly versatile

00:39:00.840 | and can be used for just about any activity,

00:39:02.880 | whether it's running, training, yoga,

00:39:05.120 | but they're also great for lounging and running around town.

00:39:08.160 | Honestly, I think Viori is an investment in your happiness

00:39:10.920 | and for all the Hacks listeners,

00:39:12.240 | they're offering 20% off your first purchase

00:39:14.800 | as well as free shipping and returns on US orders over $75.

00:39:19.000 | So you should definitely check them out

00:39:21.000 | at allthehacks.com/viori.

00:39:23.440 | Again, go to allthehacks.com/v-u-o-r-i

00:39:27.840 | and get yourself some of the most comfortable

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00:39:39.480 | causing so much pain and hassle,

00:39:41.720 | and it's just not something I want in my life.

00:39:44.240 | And I feel like we have the right to stay private

00:39:46.640 | and protect our personal data.

00:39:49.080 | One of the biggest reasons a lot of this happens

00:39:51.160 | is that there are dozens of data broker sites out there

00:39:53.780 | selling and sharing our personal information online.

00:39:56.760 | When I first looked up OurFamily,

00:39:58.120 | there were hundreds of pieces of our personal info out there

00:40:01.320 | but thankfully, I started using Delete.me

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00:40:54.800 | and get 20% off a plan for you or your entire family.

00:40:59.240 | Again, that's allthehacks.com/deleteme.

00:41:03.240 | I just wanna thank you quick for listening to

00:41:06.840 | and supporting the show.

00:41:08.320 | Your support is what keeps this show going.

00:41:11.160 | To get all of the URLs, codes, deals,

00:41:13.860 | and discounts from our partners,

00:41:15.620 | you can go to allthehacks.com/deals,

00:41:19.180 | so please consider supporting those who support us.

00:41:22.300 | - And Chris, I actually wanted to double back

00:41:23.780 | to something you said before,

00:41:24.740 | 'cause I think there might be some people

00:41:26.220 | who are looking for some additional clarity on this.

00:41:28.860 | So, we were talking about LeanFi.

00:41:30.980 | You were saying that you were potentially going to be

00:41:34.020 | taking money out of some accounts.

00:41:36.340 | It sounded like your taxable brokerage account,

00:41:38.740 | but you're gonna be putting money in also

00:41:40.980 | into, let's say, Solo 401k or some other pre-tax options.

00:41:44.960 | You mentioned that very much in passing,

00:41:46.640 | and I always love to close the loop on things.

00:41:49.000 | Can you give a little more detail on that?

00:41:50.440 | Because I think there are gonna be a lot of people

00:41:51.920 | who are like, "Chris, I want more info on this,"

00:41:53.320 | like the real nuts and bolts of how people are doing this.

00:41:56.120 | - I did some aggressive saving early on

00:41:58.640 | and built up a good taxable brokerage account.

00:42:01.680 | Now, we could have a whole conversation about

00:42:03.800 | was the deprivation of skipping dinners,

00:42:07.200 | not ordering appetizers, was all that worth it?

00:42:09.880 | The miso soup?

00:42:10.820 | - Conversation for another day.

00:42:12.220 | So now, most of my savings is non-retirement savings,

00:42:16.460 | and our expenses have gone up.

00:42:17.880 | And right now, with Amy leaving her job

00:42:20.760 | to work on all the hacks,

00:42:22.180 | I would say our income has gone down.

00:42:23.940 | 12 months ago, we had two jobs and a podcast,

00:42:26.720 | and now we have zero jobs and a podcast.

00:42:28.680 | And so, we just frankly do not have the income right now

00:42:33.680 | to both live and contribute to retirement accounts.

00:42:37.520 | And that's not to say you should feel bad.

00:42:39.420 | We're in a fine financial position.

00:42:41.060 | It's just if you look practically at the dollars coming in,

00:42:43.720 | all the expenses we have related to the podcast,

00:42:46.940 | we have full-time employee, like all this stuff,

00:42:49.080 | practically, we wanna cover our expenses,

00:42:50.860 | and there's just not a big buffer left over

00:42:53.020 | to fund retirement accounts.

00:42:54.580 | However, there are a lot of great options,

00:42:56.760 | whether it's Backdoor Roth IRAs or Solo 401ks,

00:43:00.980 | or I just got this cool email about this option

00:43:03.380 | that I'm not entirely sure how it works,

00:43:06.020 | but something that goes one step even further

00:43:09.140 | than just Solo 401ks, it was called a Cash Balance Plan.

00:43:13.460 | I'm just gonna read this description.

00:43:14.660 | "This is an advanced retirement plan for business owners

00:43:17.700 | "that are making mid-hundreds of thousands of dollars

00:43:19.860 | "a year in profit and wanna put away more

00:43:22.060 | "than the 66,000 a year Solo 401k plan allows.

00:43:25.300 | "It costs considerably more to set up,

00:43:27.280 | "about $2,000 to set up and maintain each year,

00:43:30.640 | "but it's unparalleled in the size of the benefit,

00:43:32.900 | "and it can be combined with the Solo 401k."

00:43:35.380 | When I read this, I wasn't thinking, this is for me.

00:43:37.500 | It made me realize that there are a lot of things

00:43:40.100 | as a business owner, or even if you were just an employee,

00:43:43.060 | that you could use your money

00:43:44.620 | to be more tax-efficient in the future.

00:43:46.300 | But if you don't have the spare cash, what do you do?

00:43:49.180 | It's always been crazy for me to think,

00:43:50.980 | let's withdraw from our long-term savings.

00:43:53.320 | If you look at our wealth front balance

00:43:54.880 | for the last five years, it has not been touched.

00:43:57.520 | We don't withdraw from it ever.

00:43:58.860 | It's our long-term retirement plan.

00:44:01.740 | But now I'm like, psychologically,

00:44:03.780 | I'm talking about pulling money out of it

00:44:05.500 | so that I can take income somewhere else

00:44:07.420 | and put it somewhere else,

00:44:08.340 | which in turn might mean investing my savings

00:44:11.380 | into the business,

00:44:12.220 | and then the business contributing to a retirement plan.

00:44:14.960 | It's a little complicated,

00:44:16.180 | and we're working with our accountant

00:44:17.780 | to make sure we don't mess it all up,

00:44:19.260 | but it's just something that we're considering right now

00:44:22.340 | in that interim stage, right?

00:44:23.580 | Once you go full quit-your-job financial independence,

00:44:26.140 | you tap into your savings all the time.

00:44:27.980 | But now that I'm living this coast-fi thing,

00:44:30.500 | which is so funny to say,

00:44:32.460 | having misunderstood what it even meant

00:44:34.300 | as early as this morning,

00:44:35.620 | it's like, well, I don't wanna touch my savings anymore.

00:44:37.560 | Even though I had that attitude,

00:44:38.860 | now I have a name to define

00:44:40.580 | why I'm not touching that savings.

00:44:42.220 | And then almost immediately, I'm like, no, no, no,

00:44:43.820 | I'm gonna touch it,

00:44:44.660 | but I'm gonna replenish it through another door.

00:44:46.460 | - I love that.

00:44:47.300 | You are, in essence, you're netting to zero

00:44:50.060 | in the sense that you would be pulling money

00:44:52.740 | out of your taxable brokerage account

00:44:54.740 | to cover your life expenses,

00:44:56.140 | but also contributing to retirement accounts,

00:44:59.060 | whatever they may be,

00:44:59.900 | whether it's this crazy cash balance thingamajig,

00:45:02.380 | or 401k, et cetera.

00:45:03.900 | But in essence, what you're doing then

00:45:05.860 | is getting the tax benefit from those contributions.

00:45:09.100 | - I'm basically shifting my after-tax,

00:45:12.860 | subject-to-tax-in-the-future investments

00:45:15.460 | to tax-advantaged investment accounts,

00:45:17.560 | which will reduce my income

00:45:19.620 | and give me more growth in the future.

00:45:21.780 | So it actually is not a zero sum,

00:45:24.060 | it's actually a net positive sum,

00:45:25.980 | other than the short-term capital gains hits

00:45:28.760 | of selling my portfolio,

00:45:29.940 | which fortunately,

00:45:31.140 | because we've been keeping this money in Wealthfront

00:45:32.740 | for a while, we've built up a ton of tax loss harvesting.

00:45:35.220 | So I think I can actually mitigate most of the capital gains

00:45:38.980 | with kind of built-up capital losses.

00:45:40.860 | So yeah, it'll be a net positive.

00:45:42.860 | And for anyone listening, I think,

00:45:44.380 | look, you might not be a business owner,

00:45:45.720 | you might not be in a situation

00:45:47.340 | in any way similar to Brad or mine,

00:45:49.180 | but if you work at a company

00:45:50.500 | and you're not maxing out your 401k

00:45:52.660 | because maybe you just had two children

00:45:54.860 | and you decided to quit one of your jobs

00:45:56.980 | and you're in a situation where cash is tight,

00:45:59.020 | but you do have savings in a taxable account,

00:46:02.060 | just a standard brokerage account,

00:46:03.620 | I'm not gonna talk about what you should do,

00:46:05.300 | I'm not gonna give personalized financial advice,

00:46:07.420 | but definitely worth considering

00:46:09.620 | using some of your long-term savings to live on

00:46:12.180 | so that you can put some of your income

00:46:13.940 | into a more tax-efficient vehicle for long-term savings.

00:46:17.300 | - And it's important just for people

00:46:18.700 | to be cognizant of just this concept.

00:46:20.900 | It's very cool that you're doing this in real life

00:46:22.820 | and welcome to the Coast 5 world, I like it.

00:46:25.060 | - So one thing we haven't touched on,

00:46:27.180 | now that we've evolved our thinking

00:46:28.900 | on financial independence over the course of,

00:46:31.100 | for you, probably a decade,

00:46:32.220 | for me, probably a handful of years,

00:46:34.380 | I'm curious to hear some of the changes you've made.

00:46:36.700 | We both kind of went from more deprivation, less spending,

00:46:40.180 | to training ourselves to spend.

00:46:42.300 | So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about

00:46:43.780 | how did you learn the skill of spending

00:46:45.380 | and what have you been using it for?

00:46:46.660 | - The skill of spending is such a great way to put it.

00:46:48.900 | Mr. Money Mustache had come up with this

00:46:50.780 | earlier in the year as a phrase

00:46:52.700 | that really just appeals to me.

00:46:54.340 | I think skill of spending on the front side of fi

00:46:57.460 | is largely, okay, you do have to be more optimized,

00:47:00.420 | especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck

00:47:02.260 | or getting into debt every month, you have to cut,

00:47:04.100 | you have to be a little more efficient.

00:47:05.780 | And that doesn't mean deprivation necessarily,

00:47:07.740 | but it means being smarter with your money.

00:47:09.340 | But yeah, Chris, you and I are now at points

00:47:11.340 | where we've evolved the other side of the skill of spending

00:47:14.060 | is learning how to spend for life benefit,

00:47:17.420 | for memory dividends, for enjoyment and connection,

00:47:21.380 | for what we talked about last time,

00:47:23.180 | something that you're working on

00:47:24.380 | is trying to buy back your time in a lot of senses.

00:47:27.060 | There's lots of ways to spend and to spend well

00:47:30.340 | that can really help your life.

00:47:31.420 | I am really thinking about this in a lot of ways.

00:47:33.700 | We're certainly spending to get time back

00:47:36.940 | just in little ways,

00:47:38.020 | even something very obvious to most people,

00:47:40.420 | getting a cleaning service at our house,

00:47:42.540 | which we never did forever,

00:47:44.060 | spending more on food now than we ever have

00:47:47.140 | because we just spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning

00:47:50.420 | and it doesn't really make that much sense anymore.

00:47:53.620 | And we're at a point in our lives where the ease,

00:47:56.540 | especially with having two daughters

00:47:58.180 | now in middle and high school,

00:47:59.700 | and we're driving them all over the place

00:48:01.420 | and to spend an hour cooking

00:48:03.460 | and 20 or 30 minutes cleaning up,

00:48:05.780 | it just doesn't make any sense for a couple dollars.

00:48:08.180 | So clearly spending more money there.

00:48:10.020 | The biggest thing is like experiences.

00:48:12.140 | This is something that I've been honestly

00:48:13.900 | really proud of myself this year.

00:48:15.300 | And this also comes back to the memory dividends

00:48:17.460 | and I was zero and Bill Perkins.

00:48:19.340 | I love music and this is like a part of my life

00:48:22.780 | that has really not been an important part of my life

00:48:25.540 | for the last 10 years

00:48:26.740 | because I've let it fall by the wayside in a lot of senses.

00:48:29.700 | Since my daughters were born,

00:48:31.020 | I lost myself.

00:48:32.980 | That might be hyperbolic,

00:48:34.180 | but I lost myself in a lot of the things that I love doing.

00:48:36.660 | I used to love watching the English Premier League

00:48:39.020 | on Saturdays and going to concerts

00:48:41.420 | and doing just like a lot of fun stuff

00:48:43.260 | that I just had let, like I said, slip away.

00:48:45.380 | And this year I challenged myself

00:48:47.780 | to really make moves on this and see what I can do.

00:48:50.580 | And I actually planned like an impromptu last minute

00:48:53.940 | solo trip to New York City to see Bono from U2.

00:48:58.500 | So he was doing this like really small concert

00:49:01.740 | at the Beacon Theater that was partially a book tour.

00:49:05.060 | So it was like half one man show,

00:49:07.100 | half book tour/concert.

00:49:09.220 | It was very interesting.

00:49:10.180 | But I bought tickets on StubHub,

00:49:12.220 | bought flights, got a hotel,

00:49:13.660 | and it was like the week before.

00:49:15.140 | And I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever.

00:49:16.660 | I'm gonna take a trip to New York.

00:49:17.860 | I mean, Chris, it was really awesome.

00:49:19.700 | And that is something I never would have done

00:49:21.900 | in my entire life before reorienting the skill of spending.

00:49:25.420 | - And how did you do that reorientation?

00:49:26.980 | I'm not quite there yet.

00:49:28.100 | What do you think changed that made it possible now

00:49:30.820 | when it wouldn't have been possible in the past?

00:49:32.380 | - In a weird way, it is understanding that time is finite.

00:49:36.620 | And maybe that I'm 44 years old, not getting any younger,

00:49:40.940 | and my kids are growing up.

00:49:42.820 | And like I said, I might have lost some part of myself

00:49:46.700 | over the last 10 years where I haven't focused

00:49:48.820 | on things that bring joy.

00:49:50.500 | And I just really want to do that.

00:49:52.660 | There was no moment.

00:49:53.740 | It was just understanding that you gotta do it.

00:49:56.780 | You gotta live life.

00:49:57.780 | You can't be worried about saving money all the time.

00:50:00.660 | And even just little challenges, Chris,

00:50:02.620 | like as silly as this sounds,

00:50:03.940 | the Richmond Airport is not very expensive,

00:50:05.900 | long-term parking, or even like the short-term parking.

00:50:08.180 | But I was like, on this trip to New York City,

00:50:09.660 | what would doing this trip like a rich person look like?

00:50:12.540 | And it was almost like a Ramit Sethi kind of thing.

00:50:15.180 | And it was not parking in economy parking.

00:50:17.660 | It was parking in the daily lot that was right there.

00:50:20.420 | And I could just walk over to the airport.

00:50:22.260 | And Chris, this cost me like nine extra dollars

00:50:24.500 | 'cause it was a 24-hour trip.

00:50:25.780 | So this is not that big of a deal.

00:50:27.340 | And it might've even been less than that, frankly.

00:50:28.980 | But it just felt great.

00:50:30.020 | It was really cool.

00:50:31.420 | And it was like, okay, how can you find these little things

00:50:34.100 | that actually make a difference?

00:50:35.260 | And going back to the food,

00:50:36.340 | like we're now getting these amazing meals

00:50:38.580 | brought into the house, and it's just a couple dollars more,

00:50:41.100 | but it's just reorienting to what's the value here?

00:50:44.060 | So it's this valuist play, is like this term valuist.

00:50:47.620 | I've talked about this on the podcast for so many years,

00:50:49.660 | but I never really embodied it in actuality.

00:50:53.300 | I think I did to some degree, but I didn't get there.

00:50:55.860 | And I know it sounds a little morbid,

00:50:57.260 | but I think it's important,

00:50:58.780 | is understanding the finite nature of your life,

00:51:01.340 | the finite nature of seasons of your life.

00:51:03.660 | I took a trip to see Taylor Swift in Pittsburgh

00:51:06.600 | with my older daughter,

00:51:07.860 | and we bought very expensive tickets on secondary.

00:51:10.860 | And man, Chris, we had the time of our lives.

00:51:13.140 | We'll be talking about that 30 years from now.

00:51:15.140 | It was amazing.

00:51:16.140 | And I don't regret any single one of those dollars

00:51:18.660 | I spent on that trip.

00:51:19.580 | It was astonishing.

00:51:20.540 | And I'm really fortunate to be in this position,

00:51:23.060 | but I'm really proud of myself that made these changes

00:51:26.300 | in that shorter period of time.

00:51:27.380 | - A lot of the language you're using,

00:51:28.820 | memory dividends, seasons of life,

00:51:31.300 | were languages from Bill Perkins' book, "Die With Zero."

00:51:34.900 | I had him on episode 91, but I can't quite remember.

00:51:38.340 | Did that have a big impact on you?

00:51:39.940 | - That book had a massive impact on me.

00:51:41.660 | It really did.

00:51:42.500 | And it was just the conceptual framework.

00:51:44.300 | Chris, I knew all this stuff.

00:51:45.460 | Sometimes it just crystallizes and hits

00:51:48.060 | in a moment when it matters.

00:51:49.580 | And I think that's what's also interesting

00:51:51.740 | about taking in a lot of different content.

00:51:53.700 | I probably listen to way more podcasts and read more books

00:51:56.020 | than I probably should, frankly,

00:51:57.340 | but sometimes you hit on something like this

00:51:59.340 | where it is just a life-changing thing,

00:52:01.980 | and I don't know what it was.

00:52:03.780 | But again, I'm even doing little things now.

00:52:06.140 | I went to a yoga and meditation retreat last month.

00:52:09.540 | That's something I never would have done.

00:52:10.780 | I never would have had the guts

00:52:11.940 | to just go off for two days by myself and just be.

00:52:16.020 | And it was awesome.

00:52:16.980 | It was just really fantastic.

00:52:18.460 | Again, just trying to build these things into life.

00:52:21.020 | I'm part of a mastermind group

00:52:22.460 | where it's about 24, 25 of us guys,

00:52:26.180 | and now we're trying to do more in-person events.

00:52:28.740 | And Chris, I always had an excuse.

00:52:30.380 | It was always like, oh, it's too far.

00:52:32.180 | Oh, I need to be home for the weekend

00:52:33.940 | with my wife and my daughters.

00:52:35.500 | It's selfish to leave.

00:52:37.100 | That's a script that I always had running in my head.

00:52:39.100 | It's selfish to leave.

00:52:40.260 | But you know, it's really important

00:52:41.580 | to take care of yourself too,

00:52:43.020 | and to find joy in little ways.

00:52:44.820 | We had this day of fun at one of my buddy's house.

00:52:47.260 | 12 of us kind of converged on his house in New Jersey,

00:52:50.020 | and we had eight hours of playing this Olympics of games

00:52:54.100 | 'cause it was the most fun I've had in years.

00:52:56.180 | One of the guys cooked

00:52:57.100 | this amazing Michelin star-esque dinner.

00:53:00.180 | One of those days I'll remember forever.

00:53:02.020 | I know, I could tell you for certain.

00:53:04.460 | A year ago, I would have said no to that weekend.

00:53:06.500 | I would have just said out of hand, no.

00:53:08.340 | So again, this reorientation.

00:53:10.060 | So a lot of things have changed in my life,

00:53:12.100 | and I think they've changed for the better.

00:53:13.340 | - I don't think it's selfish to take care of yourself.

00:53:15.180 | I think it's selfish if you don't encourage your partner

00:53:17.300 | to also do the same.

00:53:18.340 | So I'm sure you found that balance as well,

00:53:20.700 | and I think that's the important thing.

00:53:22.420 | I had a similar moment, which was more serendipitous

00:53:24.980 | in that it wasn't something I would have said no to,

00:53:27.380 | but we had this moment where we invited some friends up

00:53:29.820 | to a house we were staying at in Napa, not ours,

00:53:32.380 | and there was a volleyball court.

00:53:33.740 | And for like two hours,

00:53:34.860 | we were all just playing outdoor volleyball,

00:53:36.820 | probably getting sunburned,

00:53:38.140 | but we're blasting some good '80s rock.

00:53:40.900 | And I just had this moment where I was like,

00:53:42.100 | wow, I want more moments like this.

00:53:43.980 | And the downside is that with kids and stuff,

00:53:46.740 | you have to really plan them.

00:53:47.980 | You can't just expect to text five friends and be like,

00:53:50.500 | hey, do you all want to go do this thing

00:53:51.620 | an hour away right now?

00:53:52.780 | No, it's not practical anymore.

00:53:54.180 | Maybe when I get a little older and my peers and friends

00:53:56.980 | or kids are a little older and easier to travel with,

00:53:59.420 | maybe it'll get a little better,

00:54:00.620 | but you have to plan ahead and you have to commit earlier.

00:54:03.140 | And I think I'm still learning,

00:54:04.820 | but you've got a couple of years on me

00:54:06.380 | and your kids do as well.

00:54:07.420 | So I hope I get to that place where you are.

00:54:09.780 | But I had the same impact when I talked to Bill Perkins

00:54:12.900 | and I made that episode.

00:54:14.060 | And we actually planned a trip to London and Paris.

00:54:17.020 | I talked about it in the episode

00:54:18.420 | and then we just booked it.

00:54:19.260 | And we were like, we just have to do it.

00:54:20.740 | And in a weird way,

00:54:21.740 | we stopped tracking our net worth after that episode.

00:54:24.180 | We stopped caring about whether it went up

00:54:25.980 | and we started focusing on, do we just have enough now?

00:54:29.220 | And when do we want to spend our money?

00:54:30.620 | Do we want to spend it later?

00:54:31.700 | Do we want to stop working?

00:54:32.900 | And for us, now we've both found something we like doing.

00:54:35.900 | So I don't know, it changed a lot for me.

00:54:38.260 | I'd encourage anyone to go pick it up and read it.

00:54:40.180 | Or if you want to preview the hour version,

00:54:43.140 | I interviewed him in episode 91,

00:54:44.980 | which I can link to in the show notes.

00:54:46.300 | But yeah, that changed a lot for me.

00:54:47.740 | And we started spending a little bit more on things

00:54:50.060 | that some have an ROI, some don't.

00:54:52.780 | But I actually am surprised at how much

00:54:55.540 | we've been able to accomplish with the podcast

00:54:59.100 | now that we have a little more free time

00:55:00.780 | because we've spent a little bit of money on other things.

00:55:04.220 | Whether that's someone to clean or someone to help with food,

00:55:07.380 | or that's hiring an assistant or an employee for your company,

00:55:10.500 | these things that felt like they were big expenses

00:55:13.460 | we were nervous about, but now that we have them,

00:55:16.220 | they've unlocked a little bit more creativity,

00:55:18.140 | a little bit more time.

00:55:19.380 | And we've been good in our career

00:55:21.180 | at turning that into opportunity.

00:55:23.100 | And so you'll never know unless you try.

00:55:25.220 | That's some expenses, right?

00:55:26.460 | The Taylor Swift concert is probably not one

00:55:28.220 | that's going to make you more money in the long run,

00:55:30.300 | but it's certainly one that's going to give you

00:55:32.220 | memories that far exceed that.

00:55:34.140 | Whatever version of that exists

00:55:35.740 | when our daughters are a little older,

00:55:37.380 | I'm very excited to do the same thing.

00:55:39.580 | - Yeah, and it's important to prioritize it,

00:55:41.460 | just it being in your mind.

00:55:42.740 | And like you said, going back and listening

00:55:44.220 | to that episode 91 of "All the Hacks,"

00:55:46.140 | that episode was more impactful to me than the book was.

00:55:48.900 | Honestly, hearing him talk it through,

00:55:50.700 | that's a perfect starting point for people.

00:55:52.820 | - To go back to the "Early Retirement Now" blog,

00:55:54.860 | he gave a review of that book.

00:55:56.740 | - Yeah, that was part 60, right?

00:55:57.900 | - Yeah, and what was interesting was he justifiably said,

00:56:01.020 | "A lot of these things aren't new."

00:56:02.220 | And I think the thing that Bill Perkins did

00:56:05.340 | was he took a bunch of concepts

00:56:06.980 | that we've all known, right?

00:56:08.700 | We've all known that experiences are valuable.

00:56:11.260 | We all know that money diminishes, our health diminishes,

00:56:15.100 | but if you could package it in a good way,

00:56:16.940 | ultimately a lot of things are just storytelling.

00:56:19.060 | And I will say that when it comes to telling a story

00:56:21.260 | about money, most people aren't that great at it.

00:56:23.460 | Like it's something that a lot of people get bored with,

00:56:25.300 | aren't interested in,

00:56:26.140 | and Bill Perkins weaves a story around it

00:56:28.260 | that I think just comes alive when you hear him talk

00:56:31.500 | more than when you read the book.

00:56:33.460 | You'll hear a reminder if you go listen to it,

00:56:35.540 | and I'll give it to you here.

00:56:36.780 | It is not an episode to listen to

00:56:38.700 | with young children in the room.

00:56:40.340 | He has a very colorful vocabulary.

00:56:43.860 | - He does indeed.

00:56:44.900 | And yeah, I mean, even like you said,

00:56:46.820 | talking about health, right?

00:56:47.980 | And health and longevity and vitality,

00:56:50.180 | spending money on that is important.

00:56:51.820 | I think we both have become a little more cognizant of that.

00:56:54.740 | I know this year I hired a personal trainer

00:56:57.420 | who I met through Twitter, which was kind of wild,

00:56:59.660 | but that again is something I can guarantee you.

00:57:02.580 | Two years ago, there was no chance

00:57:04.300 | that I would have done that, 0% chance.

00:57:06.140 | And it has been the best money I've ever spent

00:57:08.460 | on my health in my entire life.

00:57:09.700 | - I got a question about this.

00:57:10.780 | - Yeah, shoot.

00:57:11.620 | - So I was watching this video that a past guest of mine,

00:57:14.900 | Nisair Yasin, Nas Daily made,

00:57:17.380 | and he hired a personal trainer in India

00:57:19.220 | from this company called Fitter.

00:57:20.540 | And I haven't done it yet.

00:57:22.020 | I haven't pulled the trigger on this service yet,

00:57:23.940 | but I was thinking about it and I want your perspective.

00:57:26.820 | So your personal trainer's remote, right?

00:57:28.980 | They're not located where you are.

00:57:30.100 | You don't see them in person.

00:57:31.060 | They don't come to the gym with you, right?

00:57:32.900 | Is there a reason that they need to be in the US?

00:57:35.460 | Because if you look at the cost of living around the world,

00:57:38.740 | if someone could motivate you just as well,

00:57:41.420 | but in India, they can certainly live on less.

00:57:43.500 | And I was blown away.

00:57:44.660 | And by the way, I have no connection to this company,

00:57:46.940 | so I don't want to endorse it at all.

00:57:48.380 | But I was looking at it and the personal training sessions

00:57:51.500 | were like $5 a session.

00:57:53.380 | And you could do it five days a week,

00:57:55.460 | monthly for $100 a month or something in that ballpark.

00:57:59.100 | I don't want to quote the prices

00:58:00.300 | 'cause I'm not an expert here,

00:58:01.540 | but I was just surprised.

00:58:02.820 | And then it just got me thinking

00:58:04.580 | there are some services and practices

00:58:06.820 | that are really tied into our system, right?

00:58:09.020 | Hiring a tax accountant,

00:58:10.220 | you want someone who's really familiar with the rules

00:58:12.100 | and the regulations here.

00:58:13.100 | But I was like, ah, personal trainer,

00:58:14.420 | someone to just throw on a tripod

00:58:16.260 | and motivate me to work out and whatnot.

00:58:19.180 | Live video sessions every time.

00:58:21.180 | Why couldn't that person be overseas?

00:58:22.740 | So I want to hear your perspective

00:58:24.220 | on whether you think that you could get

00:58:25.940 | a similar output from that.

00:58:27.860 | And if so, how does that change your thinking?

00:58:30.100 | - Yeah, that is really interesting.

00:58:32.540 | I definitely think that you could hire someone

00:58:35.780 | from anywhere in the world.

00:58:36.940 | So it depends what you're looking for, right?

00:58:38.780 | So how you described it,

00:58:40.220 | if you're looking for somebody to be there with you

00:58:43.660 | or just create a video or whatever,

00:58:45.500 | five days a week, motivation, a little accountability,

00:58:48.020 | absolutely, it makes no difference where they are.

00:58:49.860 | Dean Turner is my personal trainer and he's fantastic.

00:58:52.900 | DeanTurnerTraining.com is where he's located in.

00:58:55.620 | But he's in Philadelphia, which is not that far from me,

00:58:58.100 | but I'm never going to meet him in person in all likelihood.

00:59:00.340 | So yeah, he could be in India, he could be in Australia,

00:59:02.460 | it would make no difference whatsoever.

00:59:03.740 | I am paying for his expertise though,

00:59:06.340 | not for the motivation.

00:59:08.260 | Clearly, if I was paying for motivation,

00:59:11.140 | I would move to that service you just mentioned.

00:59:13.940 | That sounds like a slam dunk.

00:59:14.980 | That actually sounds amazing.

00:59:15.940 | I suspect a lot of people would benefit from them.

00:59:18.020 | - You could even pair the two, right?

00:59:19.300 | You could probably find Dean and be like,

00:59:20.740 | help me come up with the curriculum.

00:59:22.740 | And then say, great, now someone else that like,

00:59:26.180 | this is my big challenge with a lot of services

00:59:28.420 | is that you wanna pay for experience and execution.

00:59:31.940 | And you can't get good experience without paying for it.

00:59:35.060 | People charge a lot more for their time

00:59:36.580 | when they have experience.

00:59:37.420 | It doesn't make sense to pay for the execution also.

00:59:40.140 | And I think about this with financial planning.

00:59:41.780 | A human financial planner will give you

00:59:43.260 | a better financial plan that kind of connects

00:59:45.340 | to your emotions and stuff.

00:59:46.180 | And I'm not against people paying a fixed price for that.

00:59:49.300 | I think that's really valuable.

00:59:50.500 | It's just, if you then on top of that,

00:59:52.300 | tack on a ongoing 1% of your assets forever fee

00:59:56.620 | to manage the investments.

00:59:58.180 | That's where I'm like, I don't know.

00:59:59.700 | So I wonder if there's a hybrid approach here

01:00:01.740 | where I think it's totally fine to pay financial planning,

01:00:04.820 | fixed fee annually, and then a much smaller fee

01:00:07.980 | for investments.

01:00:08.820 | Is there a Dean Turner plus fitter like super combo

01:00:12.740 | where you get daily motivation and workout regimens

01:00:15.900 | following the curriculum of someone

01:00:18.100 | who has a lot more experience and personalization?

01:00:20.420 | - That's fascinating.

01:00:21.260 | So this now is turning into a business lesson for Dean.

01:00:24.700 | I wonder if he could scale his business more that way,

01:00:27.940 | if he used his expertise to create the programming,

01:00:30.860 | but then he found these people wherever they may be

01:00:34.660 | and it's certainly a lower cost area.

01:00:37.020 | And he could then potentially outsource

01:00:39.540 | part of the day-to-day with knowledgeable people

01:00:42.180 | who are well-versed in his methodology.

01:00:44.900 | That would actually be really interesting.

01:00:46.540 | - Dean, if you're listening at a minimum,

01:00:49.020 | if you go down this path, I'd love to give it a try.

01:00:51.580 | - That would be really cool.

01:00:52.980 | I bet he'd be super interested in that,

01:00:54.660 | to be continuing on that.

01:00:55.660 | But I think accountability is important.

01:00:57.340 | I think that's why people like group exercise classes also.

01:01:00.660 | Somebody else is waiting for them,

01:01:02.140 | whether it's CrossFit or yoga or whatever it may be.

01:01:04.700 | When you have people waiting for you,

01:01:06.140 | it's so easy to fall out of an exercise routine.

01:01:08.700 | To me, accountability and motivation

01:01:10.420 | are really, really important.

01:01:12.220 | - That's why I thought this was so interesting

01:01:13.540 | 'cause I was like, you know what?

01:01:14.500 | I would work out to avoid losing $5.

01:01:17.340 | I might've gotten comfortable in my life spending money,

01:01:20.140 | but I have not gotten comfortable losing money.

01:01:22.260 | It seems so much harder to be comfortable

01:01:24.580 | just giving up money,

01:01:25.820 | even though you probably, in some cases, should.

01:01:28.860 | So in this particular case, I'm like,

01:01:30.700 | it would almost be worth it just to say,

01:01:32.540 | I'm gonna work out three days a week from eight to 8.30,

01:01:34.980 | and I'm gonna book it with a person, just any person.

01:01:37.620 | It could even be non-existent.

01:01:39.060 | I'm gonna pay this money,

01:01:40.380 | and my wife gets to light it on fire if I don't work out.

01:01:43.620 | But even better if you have someone that can sit there

01:01:45.780 | and kind of motivate you along the way.

01:01:47.540 | Anything else you've been doing in health

01:01:48.900 | that's worth covering?

01:01:49.740 | I know the last time you were on,

01:01:51.260 | you said 2023 is gonna be your year to get healthy.

01:01:54.180 | - My bold move was healthiest year ever.

01:01:56.620 | I talked last episode about DNS that I have been doing

01:02:00.940 | to deal with some nagging shoulder and hip issues

01:02:04.420 | that I had, and that's helped dramatically.

01:02:06.660 | I think I've just been much more open, again,

01:02:08.540 | to spending money on massage.

01:02:10.860 | I get a massage in that cupping thing.

01:02:12.980 | I don't know if you've ever seen that,

01:02:14.100 | on swimmers at the Olympics.

01:02:15.540 | So I do that once a month.

01:02:16.700 | I found something in a Tony Robbins book

01:02:19.140 | that he was talking about,

01:02:20.060 | this thing called fascial counter strain,

01:02:22.820 | and it's like a massage/fascial release,

01:02:26.700 | which I really, really enjoy.

01:02:28.220 | What's so funny is the guy who owns the business

01:02:30.860 | here in Richmond is in the financial independence world.

01:02:33.740 | He's like, "Are you by any chance Brad from Choose a--?"

01:02:36.780 | It was hilarious.

01:02:37.620 | So yeah, I mean, I've been doing that.

01:02:39.380 | I bought an Oura ring to track my sleep.

01:02:41.860 | So I've been really focusing

01:02:43.740 | and trying to dial in my sleep a lot.

01:02:46.140 | I think I mentioned to you that I bought a hot tub,

01:02:49.660 | and I just bought a cold plunge,

01:02:51.820 | but it was actually not one of those

01:02:53.060 | super-duper expensive ones.

01:02:54.580 | One of our listeners, a guy named Mitch,

01:02:56.420 | reached out to me and told me about this thing

01:02:58.340 | called IcePod, so it's by the--

01:03:01.020 | - Oh, I thought you were gonna go down the path

01:03:02.500 | of the ice barrel, but the IcePod.

01:03:04.460 | - It is something you can buy.

01:03:05.500 | So it's by The Pod Company.

01:03:07.060 | It looks like podcompany.com.

01:03:08.540 | This thing's 150 bucks.

01:03:10.100 | Honestly, Chris, it's nothing special.

01:03:11.580 | It's an insulated little,

01:03:13.260 | if you've ever seen one of those blow-up hot tubs

01:03:15.900 | that cost like 500 bucks,

01:03:17.260 | this is something similar for cold plunge,

01:03:19.100 | but the last handful of nights,

01:03:21.020 | we just got it up and running.

01:03:22.300 | My two daughters and I have gone out after dinner.

01:03:25.740 | It's getting dark now, getting later in the year.

01:03:27.900 | We go out, go in the hot tub, go in the cold plunge,

01:03:30.300 | back in the hot tub, and it's just like

01:03:31.580 | this cool little experience together.

01:03:33.740 | I mean, this cold plunge thing, like I said,

01:03:35.220 | it was like 150 bucks.

01:03:36.340 | It was fantastic.

01:03:37.220 | So even if we don't use it much beyond

01:03:39.460 | the next month or two, it would be well worth it.

01:03:41.420 | Just all these little things

01:03:42.660 | that I'm just trying to add to my life.

01:03:44.220 | Some of the stuff is really cool,

01:03:45.380 | like these experiences that I'm having now with my family.

01:03:48.060 | - One of ours will be a sauna.

01:03:49.940 | Days from now, we're getting added on,

01:03:52.180 | which will finally, I think,

01:03:53.340 | get our cold plunge more usage.

01:03:54.820 | For as much as I enjoy hot tubs,

01:03:57.180 | I enjoy saunas a lot more.

01:03:58.820 | - Is it an infrared sauna or a barrel sauna?

01:04:01.260 | - It is neither.

01:04:02.100 | It is a full kind of finish.

01:04:04.100 | I've been working with this company

01:04:05.100 | that I'm not ready to share,

01:04:06.460 | but when I am, they might be like

01:04:08.580 | the best sauna makers in the US,

01:04:11.260 | at least making it accessible.

01:04:12.780 | A much more finished sauna experience.

01:04:15.140 | I went really deep down the rabbit hole of saunas,

01:04:18.220 | and there's this Trumpkin guide to saunas,

01:04:21.220 | which is this crazy guide,

01:04:23.100 | and barrel saunas have plenty of critique.

01:04:25.700 | So I was on the fence about it,

01:04:27.340 | and I actually met someone who was like,

01:04:28.660 | "I'm building this company,

01:04:29.820 | "and we're gonna make the best saunas,

01:04:31.460 | "and we're gonna do it in a way that is modular

01:04:33.820 | "and easy for people to order and set up at their home

01:04:36.100 | "and build something really nice."

01:04:37.420 | And I'm very excited,

01:04:38.700 | but this is like a proper finish sauna style experience.

01:04:43.380 | Amy and I are very excited to add this to our routine,

01:04:46.900 | and ideally it'll be like a put the girls to bed

01:04:49.460 | and have a little time together in the sauna,

01:04:51.260 | dip out to the cold plunge,

01:04:52.780 | finish off in the sauna, and sleep better.

01:04:55.140 | - Heck yeah, I love it.

01:04:56.100 | Oh, that's really cool.

01:04:57.100 | All right, so to be continued on that one, for sure.

01:04:59.180 | - Maybe the fourth edition of Brad and Chris

01:05:03.100 | record a podcast together.

01:05:04.500 | If you make it out to the West Coast,

01:05:05.940 | we can see if the audio equipment handles the heat.

01:05:08.420 | Might not be a video version, but you know.

01:05:10.740 | (laughing)

01:05:12.020 | - 2024 goals, I like it.

01:05:13.540 | - Awesome, this has been great.

01:05:14.780 | The emails I got after the last time we did it,

01:05:16.820 | I think I got 20 emails that were just like,

01:05:18.580 | "Subject, more Brad."

01:05:20.100 | So for the 20 people who wrote in asking for more Brad,

01:05:23.020 | here you are.

01:05:23.860 | Hopefully there was at least a more Chris email

01:05:25.500 | in your inbox too, I'll just pretend there was.

01:05:27.700 | - Yeah, no, you know we got flooded with them.

01:05:30.180 | I copied you on all the responses,

01:05:32.100 | so you know they came in.

01:05:33.380 | - Awesome, well, this has been great.

01:05:34.980 | I'm excited for your healthiest year ever.

01:05:36.860 | I hope you finish it out strong,

01:05:38.220 | and we'll chat soon.

01:05:39.500 | - Thank you, my friend.

01:05:40.340 | As always, it's good to chat with you.

01:05:41.620 | Until next time.

01:05:42.460 | - I always enjoy having Brad on the show,

01:05:46.180 | and I know you do too,

01:05:47.300 | because the last time I did an episode like this with Brad,

01:05:50.220 | I asked if you wanted more,

01:05:51.580 | and a bunch of you sent in an email saying,

01:05:53.780 | "Do more episodes with Brad."

01:05:55.220 | So I really hope you enjoyed it.

01:05:56.780 | I know I did.

01:05:57.860 | If you have any topics or questions

01:05:59.700 | for the next time we do this,

01:06:01.220 | or really anything at all,

01:06:02.540 | you can send it to podcast@allthehacks.com.

01:06:05.580 | I read every email that comes my way,

01:06:07.580 | even if I don't get a chance to reply.

01:06:10.020 | Thank you so much for joining this week.

01:06:12.140 | I will see you next week.

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