RPF-0064-Interview_with_Go_Curry_Cracker
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00:00:29.640 | Ever wanted to save some money,
00:00:31.640 | retire in your early 30s, and then spend the rest of your life traveling the world with your spouse?
00:00:38.060 | Maybe that's just me.
00:00:41.800 | If it is just me, skip today's show. If you're interested in at least conceptually finding out how that might be possible,
00:00:48.320 | enjoy today's interview with a couple who has done exactly that.
00:00:54.040 | [Music]
00:01:10.040 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. I'm your host and guide
00:01:16.120 | through the financial swamps that we all walk through every day.
00:01:21.960 | Today's show is an interview with Jeremy and Winnie, who are travelers, writers, early retirees.
00:01:28.480 | They retired in their 30s and are now traveling the world together.
00:01:33.440 | [Music]
00:01:42.640 | Their website is called GoCurryCracker, and they write quite a bit.
00:01:47.680 | They put out a lot of content, and it is all helpful, valuable content. And in today's show,
00:01:52.440 | you are going to enjoy hearing at the beginning their story,
00:01:55.400 | and then you're going to enjoy hearing some information as far as some of the actual
00:01:59.000 | strategies that they have put into place to be able to allow them to retire at a very early age.
00:02:04.280 | I think you're really going to benefit a lot. And at the end, I mean all throughout, obviously,
00:02:10.600 | I'm going to encourage you to go over and check out their writing. Some of the content is really great in a written format as
00:02:16.080 | well, especially when we get into some of the nitty-gritty with taxes and financial planning stuff as well.
00:02:20.480 | Go and check out some of the information that they have published on their website as far as that information.
00:02:27.080 | As you listen to this, I am currently in New Orleans, Louisiana, or at least I hope I am.
00:02:31.080 | This show is pre-scheduled long before that, so hopefully that's where I am at the FinCon session.
00:02:37.280 | So all these shows are pre-recorded. I hope you enjoy them. If you have any questions, shoot me a note.
00:02:42.320 | Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com is my email address. One quick note.
00:02:47.280 | Jeremy was in Taiwan, and the Skype connection that we were on got a little bit funky towards the middle of the interview.
00:02:55.080 | I let it go for a little bit, and so you should be able to just pick out the words,
00:03:00.600 | but then it got so bad, and I waited for a time, and then I interrupted him and
00:03:04.720 | paused the recorder, interrupted him, and then asked him to reset. So then after we reset, then it got better.
00:03:10.400 | So don't give up and discuss in the middle when it gets a little bit
00:03:14.200 | mixed up. I think you'll appreciate it. Just keep on listening, and then the connection will get better. Enjoy the interview.
00:03:20.080 | So Jeremy, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. I appreciate your being with me.
00:03:26.920 | So thank you for the work that you've done to build out your website at gocurrycracker.com.
00:03:34.800 | I have enjoyed your writing over the last couple of years,
00:03:36.800 | and I think that it can't possibly be
00:03:40.400 | overstated how valuable travelogues and information like yours is for people who are looking to pursue a similar path.
00:03:48.160 | It's such a wonderful thing that today we can access the information so easily of other people's stories.
00:03:53.880 | Would you share with us just a little bit about your background and your story,
00:03:57.480 | especially as it relates to your journey through and to financial independence?
00:04:05.400 | Sure. So
00:04:07.400 | my wife and I, we retired in our 30s and we started traveling around the world.
00:04:12.560 | We started that about two years ago.
00:04:17.360 | The whole savings path, from when we decided really that
00:04:23.320 | early retirement and permanent travel was something we were interested in, took us about 10 years.
00:04:31.280 | From when we formally committed to the plan until the day that I submitted my resignation.
00:04:36.440 | And since then, we've been slowly moving from place to place.
00:04:41.320 | We worked our way through Mexico and Central America, and we're in Asia now.
00:04:48.240 | We kind of started the blog a little bit to keep in touch with friends and family, and also to
00:04:59.080 | answer the question that I got from a lot of my co-workers about, "You can really do that? How did you do it?"
00:05:05.040 | Also to share what we thought was a whole when we were looking for information.
00:05:10.560 | How much does it cost to do it? We publish all of our expenses on a monthly basis.
00:05:16.320 | Every penny we spend.
00:05:19.080 | Yeah, that's probably one of the most helpful resources.
00:05:23.080 | I know that I'm interested in long-term travels,
00:05:25.160 | taking a year abroad type of thing, and the most valuable thing in the world is when you can find someone who accurately tracks their expenses.
00:05:32.080 | And says, "Here's what it actually cost us."
00:05:35.800 | And so you can have an idea of what you need to put together your adventure.
00:05:40.480 | So from the beginning, this was a plan? Did you bumble into it?
00:05:44.560 | Most people, if you said you retired in your early 30s, and you said it was a 10-year plan,
00:05:49.040 | that would mean sometime in your early to mid 20s, you came up with the idea.
00:05:52.440 | I've rarely met someone in the early mid 20s that's working towards early retirement. How did you come up with the idea?
00:05:57.960 | Well, there was some time when...
00:06:01.640 | Like the phase from basically graduating from college, paying off student loans,
00:06:06.880 | until the time when the plans started, I was pretty much a workaholic.
00:06:14.360 | You know, I was doing
00:06:16.840 | 60 plus hours a week,
00:06:19.640 | plus take home work and so on.
00:06:22.640 | And the day, a time came when I had an opportunity to take my first adult vacation.
00:06:29.480 | Three weeks long, the first week, I really just checked email, thought about work, exchanged email with people at work.
00:06:37.400 | The second week, I started to think, "Hey, this is kind of nice."
00:06:42.040 | And by the end of week three, I was asking, "How can I do this every day for the rest of my life?"
00:06:48.960 | So I kind of went back home and
00:06:51.680 | started asking questions. "How much would it cost? How would I do it? Is this realistic?"
00:06:59.800 | I wrote sort of... It came out to be roughly like a 50-page
00:07:04.680 | business plan at that time of how to get there.
00:07:07.600 | And I think if I were to go back and look at it right now, I would think, "Wow, I was a very naive person."
00:07:14.120 | Right.
00:07:15.800 | But it got me started.
00:07:18.400 | And
00:07:19.960 | from there, it was very much an active process.
00:07:23.640 | How do I save a greater and greater percentage of income? And how do I invest it?
00:07:30.520 | What about medical care? You know, just all the kind of the questions that people ask.
00:07:36.960 | "Can I ever go back to work? What would that look like? How much money do I need?"
00:07:43.040 | Over that 10-year period, as the money accumulated, the knowledge accumulated as well.
00:07:49.400 | Did you find any books or mentors or resources that were particularly helpful for you?
00:07:55.480 | Yeah, so there were a lot of different things I read. Pretty much if there was any book on personal finance
00:08:01.840 | that I saw in the library or whatever, I would pick it up.
00:08:05.520 | You know, most of it wasn't very practical for somebody aiming at early retirement.
00:08:11.160 | It's generic advice of somebody aiming for a 65-year-old retirement.
00:08:16.480 | But there was a website, like Early Retirement Forum.
00:08:20.640 | You know, the Boggleheads Forum.
00:08:25.160 | You know, later, after we were already sort of financially independent, we see some great sites like Mr. Money Mustache,
00:08:35.520 | Early Retirement Extreme,
00:08:37.600 | JL Collins, NH.com.
00:08:40.560 | Yeah.
00:08:42.560 | Did...
00:08:45.680 | In kind of pursuing, it's interesting, with regard to the personal finance literature, that's always the...
00:08:51.600 | That's always kind of the trick that I found.
00:08:54.760 | Because when I was younger, I consumed a lot of personal finance literature, and I thought, "Oh, I'm doing great.
00:08:59.520 | I'm saving 15% of my income, obviously, so therefore I'm on track. I don't have any debt.
00:09:04.280 | You know, I'm investing well, so therefore I'm on good shape."
00:09:08.480 | I'm in good shape toward reaching my goals.
00:09:11.000 | But sometimes I feel like I got a little gypped, because if I had found someone who'd give me the ideas, you know, if I had read
00:09:18.000 | Jacob Lund Fisker's book when I was in my teens, I would have saved 75 or 80 percent of my income.
00:09:24.600 | And so I'm so glad that some of those resources are coming out now and are more and more prominent and are being more and more
00:09:32.440 | accepted. And then I feel like, "Man, what did I miss?"
00:09:36.040 | And somehow you got something that I didn't get 10 or 15 years ago, because we were both reading the same books, and somehow
00:09:41.520 | you had the goal and figured out how to make it happen, and I just didn't even think of it as being a possibility.
00:09:46.560 | Well, you know, we all come to it in our own way and in our own time.
00:09:52.000 | You know, the question is, you know, are we able to kind of make the connection of how do you break away from the mainstream?
00:09:59.960 | Right.
00:10:02.000 | So you saved for 10 years. What percentage of your income? You figured out what percentage of your income you saved over that period of time?
00:10:09.760 | Yeah, it was...
00:10:12.360 | You know, in the beginning it was less, but
00:10:16.160 | we hit 70-ish percent in the later years, and then
00:10:21.040 | in hindsight, the last three years we were contributing 100 percent.
00:10:26.720 | That's great.
00:10:28.320 | I just kind of broke the
00:10:31.160 | financial independence barrier before we actually left, and so we were able to save every penny that came in for a few years.
00:10:38.060 | So you followed Jacob's seven-year plan.
00:10:40.700 | If you contributed 100 percent for the last three years, you did about the seven-year plan like he talks about.
00:10:46.660 | How did you do it?
00:10:49.820 | Well, there are basically three pieces, right? Like, if you look at any of
00:10:55.740 | either like the US Census data or
00:10:58.300 | what is any analysis that looks at kind of average spending for people,
00:11:02.860 | the three things that they spend the most money on are
00:11:06.260 | housing, transportation, and food, and
00:11:09.820 | we
00:11:12.460 | we didn't own a car.
00:11:14.700 | We basically
00:11:16.700 | very carefully found the place that we lived, which was a small apartment near a university.
00:11:22.040 | We had all the great amenities nearby. We were a block from the grocery store, a block from the farmer's market, a couple blocks from a library,
00:11:29.740 | a couple blocks from a park, so we could walk everywhere.
00:11:32.740 | We were also on major
00:11:35.300 | public transportation routes for busing, so if we needed to get anywhere else, we could take a bus.
00:11:41.140 | Then I started biking to work.
00:11:44.900 | I had three different routes I could take.
00:11:48.620 | There's somewhere between 8 and 23 miles one way, and
00:11:52.500 | you know, it's kind of, at first it wasn't that
00:11:56.740 | it took a while to become accustomed to it, but by the end, you know, if there's one thing I miss about
00:12:02.940 | having my job was that I had that daily bike ride.
00:12:07.100 | And then, you know, now that we had basically our transportation costs way down and our housing costs way down,
00:12:16.940 | we started basically working through
00:12:18.940 | how do we spend as little money as possible on food.
00:12:22.900 | And what we, you know, Winnie basically,
00:12:26.420 | she picked a couple cookbooks, like a French cookbook and an Italian cookbook, and she just started working through them.
00:12:34.660 | You know, the quality of the food that she prepared just got better and better, and eventually we're just like,
00:12:41.460 | why are we gonna go to a restaurant when the food we can have at home is of this quality?
00:12:46.980 | And when you get to that point where those three things basically become
00:12:51.180 | kind of a low percentage of your budget,
00:12:55.100 | or a low percentage of your income, it becomes quite easy to save a large percentage of income.
00:12:59.820 | I'm glad you bring out the food thing. I've observed if you look at most of the cuisines of at least
00:13:05.500 | ethnics,
00:13:08.140 | excuse me, ethnicities or
00:13:10.140 | countries that are known for their cuisine, if you think about it,
00:13:14.100 | it's very likely that their cuisine was not just by the rich.
00:13:17.060 | So the, you know, Italian cuisine or French cuisine or Chinese
00:13:23.220 | cuisine is not just because this is what the rich people ate.
00:13:27.020 | This is probably what most of the people ate, and there is a cultural
00:13:30.860 | treasure in looking to see how did people eat in an affordable way. A loaf of wonderful French bread fresh out of the oven
00:13:40.940 | costs about 15 or 20 cents worth of ingredients to make, but you have to make it and you have to do it right to
00:13:47.220 | get the same experience. Or, you know, an Italian pasta dish, the pasta is not that expensive.
00:13:51.700 | But learning how to spice it up comes with the skill.
00:13:55.700 | So you can either go and buy it and hire somebody to cook for you, or you can learn to do it yourself and
00:14:01.060 | recreate with skill what most people would have to spend money on.
00:14:04.780 | And you know Chinese eat the
00:14:08.340 | weird part of the meat, so it's really cheap. Right, right.
00:14:11.780 | Well, you know, one of the popular posts on GoCurryCracker is
00:14:17.460 | about making bread.
00:14:20.900 | You know, you can go buy this
00:14:24.260 | artisan loaf of bread at like the farmers market or a specialty market for six or seven dollars,
00:14:30.500 | or you make it home for a few pennies.
00:14:33.580 | And we have a whole post about how
00:14:37.780 | we basically made this fantastic bread for
00:14:40.500 | a post of fruit.
00:14:42.660 | Yeah, I'll have to check that out and read it. I haven't read that post of yours, but I had the same experience.
00:14:46.980 | I read on, I was reading on some
00:14:48.740 | frugality blog and they were talking about how easy it was to make French bread. And they had the, I think it was French bread,
00:14:53.900 | and they had their ingredients and it was basically just flour, salt, and
00:14:57.300 | water, I guess, maybe a little bit of yeast or whatever it was. And that was it.
00:15:01.900 | That was the whole ingredients. And I made I think four or five loaves and it was delicious,
00:15:06.260 | right out of the oven. And the cost was just pennies, absolute pennies.
00:15:10.180 | So that's great. And Winnie, I like your point about the Chinese cuisine.
00:15:14.820 | We also often forget about that in the US culture. One of the things, I haven't learned how to cook Chinese food,
00:15:20.340 | but I love to eat it. And one of the things that I enjoy, you guys are in China now, you're in Taiwan, right?
00:15:25.420 | Okay, so I haven't been to Taiwan, but I went to China one time.
00:15:29.140 | We would go to the street markets and you see all of just these amazing,
00:15:34.180 | to me, weird foods. And you think, wow, you can eat that, you can eat that, you can eat that. And you see how,
00:15:39.940 | especially in Asian cuisine, you know, a lot of times the meat is chopped up very small.
00:15:44.220 | So we're in the in the US, we'll have a steak for dinner and you need a big, nice cut of meat.
00:15:49.580 | But if you're only using little bits of meat to flavor the dish,
00:15:53.340 | I mean, you can use the, you can use the jowls of the pig to be that meat source and stretch it a lot farther.
00:16:01.540 | So that's a neat observation.
00:16:04.020 | So once you left, do you have any plans to ever return to the US or you guys think we're gonna be international forever?
00:16:10.980 | No, we'll return to the US.
00:16:13.780 | You know, we have a baby on the way.
00:16:17.020 | Congratulations.
00:16:19.020 | Thank you.
00:16:21.020 | And one of the things that we would like to do is kind of RV around to all the national parks.
00:16:29.060 | And so we'll be back in the US.
00:16:32.100 | I don't know if that'll be like a permanent destination or just a trip that we do, but we'll be back.
00:16:37.940 | So far, Central America and
00:16:41.100 | you also said Southeast Asia or Central America and then you flew straight to Taiwan.
00:16:45.460 | Yeah, we flew straight to Taiwan.
00:16:48.340 | So, you know, together
00:16:50.420 | we've been to about 40 different countries.
00:16:54.820 | But we, you know, since I left work, we basically
00:16:59.060 | have been doing this very slow form of travel and I think we've been to like six or seven.
00:17:04.900 | But Mexico for a long period,
00:17:08.340 | Guatemala, Belize and then over to Taiwan.
00:17:13.340 | What have you learned about how much it actually costs you to live this slow travel lifestyle?
00:17:18.380 | Well, it could cost a lot less than we pay now.
00:17:24.700 | But we basically live a very luxurious lifestyle for about $3,000 a month.
00:17:30.020 | You know, that includes everything.
00:17:35.460 | And, you know, we sort of set up place.
00:17:40.500 | Set up, you know, we go to a new place.
00:17:42.500 | If we like it, we'll find a longer term rental.
00:17:46.300 | And then we usually get kind of immersed in the local culture, local
00:17:52.900 | you know, if there's something educational that we can study in that place, we'll do so.
00:17:58.260 | So we studied Spanish, I'm studying Chinese.
00:18:00.380 | When he's been studying oil painting.
00:18:02.780 | And we just kind of we live there for a while.
00:18:07.340 | And then when we're ready, we we go on to the next place.
00:18:10.180 | And when you do kind of that, that live local,
00:18:13.860 | slow travel sort of style, it costs us less than what we were
00:18:19.180 | what we would pay for the equivalent in the US by far.
00:18:22.620 | What do you think is the primary difference that drives the lower cost?
00:18:26.180 | Is it the cost of housing?
00:18:27.980 | Is it the cost of taxes?
00:18:29.260 | That what would you from living because you you came from Seattle, right?
00:18:32.700 | Yeah. So what would you say is the primary difference between why is it so expensive
00:18:37.740 | to live in the United States versus some of the other places that so far you've traveled?
00:18:41.740 | Let's see here, you know, for the for the exact same thing,
00:18:50.420 | everything costs more in the US.
00:18:53.780 | So even even.
00:18:55.420 | Yeah, yeah.
00:18:59.700 | When we were in our heavy savings, when we were in our heavy saving mode,
00:19:03.100 | we were we were spending only about three thousand dollars in Seattle, too.
00:19:06.540 | We live a much, much, much more luxurious lifestyle now.
00:19:12.340 | Like we literally eat two to three meals a day at restaurants every day.
00:19:19.220 | But the the cost of real estate
00:19:23.540 | is much higher in the US, and so rent is higher.
00:19:27.100 | And all the businesses paying rent like restaurants
00:19:30.500 | have to charge higher prices and the cost of labor is substantially higher.
00:19:34.820 | And so those two things make make everything effectively more expensive.
00:19:38.980 | Like in the in the US, people, people go for
00:19:44.660 | for businesses, go for massive scale to reduce costs.
00:19:47.900 | Your Wal-Mart, your Costco, you know,
00:19:50.220 | in a lot of sort of Central America, Mexico, Taiwan,
00:19:56.220 | you have people go the other direction.
00:19:59.820 | You know, it'll be an individual owned store
00:20:02.660 | where you'll see four generations of people hanging out and living in the shop.
00:20:07.740 | And so a bowl of noodles is very cheap.
00:20:11.220 | It's because grandma opened the business 40 years ago
00:20:14.740 | and the whole family is still running. Right.
00:20:16.580 | I've wondered about this issue because my wife and I enjoy, enjoy traveling.
00:20:21.980 | And to me, it seems like there's a bit of a nuance between it.
00:20:26.340 | And it seems to me like the experience that you have of traveling in the US
00:20:30.620 | or traveling in another place will depend on the type of traveling that you're doing.
00:20:34.100 | And it seems as though different regions of the world have different expenses.
00:20:38.460 | And so the example that I think of is I think you're right about rental costs.
00:20:42.780 | It seems if you come to the US and especially in a large city,
00:20:45.820 | your rental costs are higher.
00:20:48.060 | You know, rental costs in New York City is dramatically different
00:20:50.420 | different than Chattanooga, Tennessee, or, you know,
00:20:53.700 | so you've got to deal with your regional preferences.
00:20:56.060 | But so that is one thing.
00:20:58.780 | But the other thing just seems to be labor costs.
00:21:00.540 | So there are things in the US that are substantially cheaper than abroad.
00:21:04.540 | In my observation, things like vehicles, most places in the world,
00:21:08.860 | even in places that are have a have a lower per capita income.
00:21:14.420 | The cost of acquiring and maintaining a car is is is extremely high
00:21:18.860 | as compared to the cost of acquiring and maintaining a car in the United States.
00:21:21.740 | Now, it's still a big expense, but it's it's you can get a good car
00:21:25.140 | for a few thousand bucks and the cost of of operating it is not not such a big deal.
00:21:30.140 | But when you switch to things like labor intensive things,
00:21:32.860 | the prices in restaurants would be a good example.
00:21:35.900 | The labor costs are so high that I remember traveling in Hong Kong.
00:21:39.660 | It seems like everybody in Hong Kong eats out two to three meals a day.
00:21:43.020 | Nobody cooks because the cost of eating out is just extremely low,
00:21:46.740 | lower labor costs, and the kitchens are not set up in such a way that,
00:21:52.300 | you know, it's small, so it's a little harder to have this massive kitchen.
00:21:55.300 | So if you're willing to adjust with the regional differences,
00:21:58.700 | then I think you could probably live a frugal and fulfilled life.
00:22:03.140 | It wherever.
00:22:04.660 | But the key would be knowing what's important to you and knowing,
00:22:09.260 | you know, hey, we're foodies, so the the beautiful restaurants to eat out,
00:22:13.300 | that's important to us.
00:22:14.220 | So then we're going to pull back in another place.
00:22:16.500 | So I'll be interested to continue watching your expenses as you as you continue
00:22:20.420 | traveling and see if they adjust or they change as you're in different regions.
00:22:24.180 | I've noticed you've stayed out of Western Europe, for example.
00:22:26.420 | Was that intentional or or you haven't gotten around to it yet?
00:22:30.100 | Yeah, we haven't gotten around to it, but it's conscious, right?
00:22:33.300 | People have to go through a mental, mental transition
00:22:38.540 | when they go from earning a paycheck to living off their investments.
00:22:41.860 | And, you know, we we've saved enough where we could go to Western Europe,
00:22:47.940 | but we wanted to kind of make that,
00:22:50.500 | you know, jumping off the ledge sort of thing.
00:22:53.980 | Right. As shallow as possible.
00:22:56.820 | And so we started out in places that we knew were going to cost us.
00:23:01.540 | And then we'll work our way over to to to Europe whenever we get there.
00:23:06.180 | Right. And I think it's brilliant that you have that flexibility and
00:23:11.540 | that that can bring, you know,
00:23:14.260 | especially as you get used to living off of a portfolio,
00:23:16.900 | there'll be fluctuations in the value of the portfolio as time goes on.
00:23:20.780 | And it's certainly if you can adjust your expenses
00:23:24.380 | based upon your actual experience of your portfolio can make a huge difference.
00:23:28.540 | And I think the same thing for all of us.
00:23:29.940 | You know, tell my wife in our we're still in the accumulation phase of our lives.
00:23:34.140 | We're not yet we're not yet financially independent.
00:23:36.780 | But I talk with her and we just talk about
00:23:38.820 | there's no reason for us to cut back on the fun and the joy of life.
00:23:42.380 | We you know, I don't know if I'll make it to 10 years from now,
00:23:45.780 | but I don't have any desire to try to go into Scotland right now
00:23:50.300 | or go to the UK and and go to London.
00:23:54.540 | We enjoy traveling in the less expensive parts of the world now.
00:23:57.460 | And so we can still satisfy the desire for travel
00:24:01.220 | or the desire to experience new things.
00:24:03.380 | And then later, as we accumulate more and more assets
00:24:07.580 | and it's a lot easier out of the surplus to go to the more expensive parts
00:24:11.060 | of the world, then I think that's when we'll start we'll start doing that.
00:24:14.020 | So you've got an amazing amount of flexibility there.
00:24:15.980 | And I think that's a really valuable financial strategy
00:24:18.020 | that we don't talk enough about.
00:24:19.220 | You know, I I've been to I don't know exactly
00:24:23.620 | for some countries, not adventure, Western Europe.
00:24:26.060 | But my my favorite places that I've been
00:24:31.740 | is one of them, you know, stand out is like Guatemala.
00:24:35.100 | And it just so happens that it's also incredibly dirt cheap. Right.
00:24:38.700 | It's just the quality of life there and the natural environment.
00:24:43.260 | They're incredible. And I love it.
00:24:44.780 | Right. Paris is nice.
00:24:46.940 | But if I were to choose like a long term place to live,
00:24:50.900 | I think I'd be more towards Guatemala than Paris.
00:24:53.620 | Right. It's not not because of the pricing, just because of the quality of life.
00:24:58.340 | Do you factor currency fluctuations into your planning at all at this point?
00:25:05.340 | I would assume that your portfolio being from the US
00:25:08.420 | is probably primarily denominated in US dollars.
00:25:10.980 | Have you factored exchange rates and currency fluctuations
00:25:13.780 | into your planning at all?
00:25:14.540 | Not really.
00:25:16.660 | Don't really worry about it.
00:25:19.780 | Like when we spent, I don't know, almost nine months in Mexico last year.
00:25:25.820 | And during that time, I think the peso fell against the dollar like 10 percent.
00:25:31.820 | You know, so we were paying 10 percent more at the end of the trip
00:25:35.020 | than we were in the beginning.
00:25:36.420 | But, you know, it's 10 percent of a pretty low number already.
00:25:40.860 | So I don't really worry about it.
00:25:42.300 | What strategy did you use as far as accumulating accounts?
00:25:48.340 | Did you and especially with retiring early, did you fund retirement accounts?
00:25:51.660 | Did you fund taxable accounts?
00:25:53.820 | Did you buy real estate?
00:25:55.780 | Did you buy mutual funds?
00:25:57.020 | What investment strategy did you pursue while working through to financial independence?
00:26:02.140 | All of that.
00:26:04.020 | Good. Yeah.
00:26:06.900 | And, you know, some of it better than others.
00:26:09.500 | But if you're going to save enough, you know, basically 25 times your annual expenses,
00:26:18.140 | and less than 10 years, you have to use taxable accounts.
00:26:23.900 | There's just the legal limits for how much you can put in tax deferred accounts
00:26:29.700 | preventing you from saving enough there.
00:26:31.220 | And so I put money into 401K first.
00:26:36.180 | We funded a HSA later when that became an options report.
00:26:45.740 | And then it was everything into taxable accounts.
00:26:49.100 | And so at this point, are you drawing down on your taxable accounts?
00:26:53.740 | Are you doing like a Roth conversion strategy?
00:26:58.300 | What are you doing right now for your tax planning?
00:27:01.220 | Yeah, so probably the most popular post on GoCurricular is never pay taxes again.
00:27:08.180 | Walk us through that one.
00:27:11.300 | Yeah, so there are basically four things that we do, four rules to follow,
00:27:17.460 | which I'm probably going to forget that right now.
00:27:19.540 | But rule number one is be lazy.
00:27:22.980 | Don't work for a living because there's basically social security taxes and such.
00:27:29.660 | There's no way to avoid those when you're working.
00:27:31.780 | Then somewhere in there, there's live well for less.
00:27:40.540 | We don't own a car.
00:27:44.060 | We don't own a 3,000 square foot house with an ocean view.
00:27:47.900 | But we live very well on much less than what it would cost to own those things.
00:27:53.780 | And by keeping your annual spending low and therefore your required income low,
00:27:59.780 | you are able to pay next to nothing in taxes.
00:28:05.260 | And then we try to live primarily off of dividends and long-term capital gains
00:28:10.620 | because it's like the US government wants you to retire early and live off of those
00:28:16.140 | forms of investments.
00:28:17.100 | So you effectively pay zero tax when you're able to live on less than like
00:28:23.540 | $70,000 a year or so as a married couple.
00:28:26.780 | So we basically then follow those three things.
00:28:34.940 | And then we try to minimize future taxes by following two strategies, and that's
00:28:40.540 | Roth IRA conversions.
00:28:42.100 | So we're taking my 401(k) and then slowly converting that into a Roth IRA.
00:28:49.980 | Because our sort of earned income is so low, we're allowed to roll over up to $20k
00:29:00.940 | total a year in total money from the IRA into a Roth at zero tax.
00:29:07.660 | And then that money will be later taken out tax-free.
00:29:10.540 | And then we also harvest capital gains.
00:29:15.980 | So last year I sold something like a $40,000 gain and then invested it
00:29:22.820 | immediately in another fund.
00:29:25.500 | And that 40k was effectively tax-free as well and not tax-free forever.
00:29:30.020 | How did you learn about tax planning?
00:29:35.100 | I did my own taxes for a decade.
00:29:40.100 | And there are great tools like you can pay somebody an accountant $300 to do
00:29:50.820 | your taxes.
00:29:51.420 | And they'll give you a bill that you owe this much or you get this much of a
00:29:56.220 | refund.
00:29:56.620 | And they'll give you some advice.
00:29:58.300 | Usually probably buy a house.
00:29:59.540 | And you'll never learn anything.
00:30:01.660 | You can use a tool like TurboTax.
00:30:05.340 | And it'll walk you through.
00:30:07.540 | It'll ask you some questions and give you some clues.
00:30:09.980 | But again, you probably won't learn very much.
00:30:13.380 | When you get down and actually go through all the forms yourself by hand and read
00:30:21.140 | the instructions and follow the documents that the instructions refer to, you start
00:30:28.260 | to really figure out, wait a second, if I modify what I'm doing here in this way,
00:30:34.900 | then this becomes tax-free.
00:30:36.660 | Or if I do this other thing, I can get a tax refund.
00:30:41.140 | And when you build up the knowledge over a long period of time, like doing my
00:30:47.380 | taxes for 10 years, it always became clear.
00:30:50.700 | And then some of the ideas in general, I paid attention to the Bobbohead
00:30:58.020 | Tax Forum.
00:30:59.260 | And through there, people ask, kind of beginner investors, they'll ask questions.
00:31:05.140 | And I love seeing beginner questions because when you're old and crotchety like
00:31:10.580 | me, you kind of assume you know a lot of things.
00:31:13.100 | And then when you see it through the beginner's eyes, you realize you didn't
00:31:15.380 | know very much at all.
00:31:16.620 | And some of those questions kind of pointed me to it.
00:31:19.420 | Wait a second.
00:31:20.220 | If I sell a stock with a big gain and not have to pay any tax on it, and then I
00:31:27.980 | buy something similar on the same day, I've effectively harvested that gain
00:31:35.220 | forever.
00:31:36.340 | I never would have thought that without having seen it on the forum.
00:31:39.700 | - Right.
00:31:40.460 | And I want to add one point, and I'm sure you could make this point, but it's
00:31:43.820 | something I've often heard, is that people often, when you describe tax gain
00:31:48.220 | harvesting, oftentimes people say, "Well, doesn't that run afoul of the wash sale
00:31:53.860 | rule?"
00:31:54.620 | And there's a rule colloquially known as the wash sale rule, which basically means
00:31:59.700 | that if you have a loss on an investment, you can't sell it and then purchase in
00:32:04.180 | order to take the loss and then purchase the same investment, either the identical
00:32:10.140 | or the substantially equivalent investment, in order to take that loss.
00:32:16.820 | But the key that people often forget about is that only applies to losses.
00:32:20.460 | So at any point in time, you can go ahead and lock in a gain.
00:32:24.660 | And one of the major misconceptions that I see happening right now among tax
00:32:29.100 | planning is that everyone's so excited about harvesting tax losses, saying, "Okay,
00:32:34.660 | here's how we can figure out how to harvest these losses."
00:32:37.740 | But the problem is that every time you harvest a loss, in some ways, you're
00:32:41.020 | building up a higher deferred gain.
00:32:43.740 | And so effective tax planning is about moderating that gain, taking your losses
00:32:49.060 | when you're able to take them in a way that makes sense, but also ratcheting up
00:32:53.260 | those gains to increase your cost basis.
00:32:55.940 | So if you can increase your cost basis by selling the investment, taking the gain,
00:33:00.620 | recognizing it for tax purposes, and then buying exactly the same investment, if
00:33:05.980 | you're able to control that, you can wipe out a massive amount of your tax liability
00:33:10.980 | by doing it intelligently.
00:33:12.060 | But it's not something that really someone else can do for you because
00:33:15.100 | everything is based upon what do you need, what are your spending, what is your
00:33:18.660 | limits, and those will change every year based upon what your income is and what
00:33:21.700 | the makeup of your income is.
00:33:23.340 | So I'm glad to hear you correcting that and talking about that for people.
00:33:27.900 | - And that's where doing taxes takes me a couple hours.
00:33:32.540 | I try to do them before the end of the year.
00:33:37.140 | So rather than April 15th, 2015, I'll do our taxes in December of this year.
00:33:43.780 | And then I know what to do with the portfolio at the end of the year.
00:33:48.940 | But technically, there is a rule that if you sell a stock or a fund, harvest the
00:33:58.980 | gain, and then immediately buy back the exact same fund, technically, the IRS does
00:34:07.980 | have a rule that if you're performing an action specifically for the purpose of
00:34:16.220 | impacting your taxes, they could decide through a review that they think that
00:34:24.340 | that action can be wiped out.
00:34:27.660 | As far as I know, it's never been done for tax gain harvesting, but I try to avoid,
00:34:34.860 | say, buying and selling the exact same fund on the same day.
00:34:38.820 | But the way to kind of work your way around that is if you buy, say, like an
00:34:46.940 | index tracking fund, and it just happens to track a different index, so you could,
00:34:52.380 | say, sell an S&P 500 fund and then buy something that tracks, like, small stock
00:34:58.820 | index or something, and that is considered a substantially different invest.
00:35:05.820 | If you were to say, sell Berkshire Hathaway, harvest the gain, and buy Berkshire
00:35:12.220 | Hathaway the same day, the IRS could get a stick up their butt.
00:35:18.500 | You're referring to the substance over form doctrine that any transaction that's
00:35:22.380 | specifically for the purpose of tax planning, technically, they're going to look
00:35:27.260 | at what's the actual substance of the transaction, not just what was the form of
00:35:32.140 | the transaction, right?
00:35:33.140 | That sounds correct.
00:35:34.140 | I'm not sure exactly what they're calling it anymore.
00:35:39.140 | Sorry, I'm throwing financial planner lingo in.
00:35:42.700 | That's what the doctrine is that I'm aware of.
00:35:44.860 | I'm not aware of a wash—I could be mistaken, so if I'm mistaken, somebody can
00:35:50.140 | let us know in the comments.
00:35:52.060 | But you are 100% correct, is that there is a doctrine that basically says that all tax
00:36:00.940 | rules are bound by what is the economic substance of a transaction, even if that actual
00:36:06.220 | substance varies a little bit from the legal form.
00:36:09.700 | If listeners are interested, check out episode 41, radicalpersonalfinance.com/41,
00:36:15.140 | and I mention that doctrine in there and kind of go into it a little bit in detail.
00:36:18.580 | But you are right.
00:36:19.580 | I think that's an important point to keep in mind, is that you always want to be
00:36:25.020 | careful to avoid some of those pitfalls with tax planning.
00:36:30.100 | It's so easy to avoid just by doing something that's slightly different, and you
00:36:35.700 | have your evidence illustrating your point.
00:36:43.740 | You released on your site your 2013 tax return equivalently, basically, right?
00:36:49.500 | Yeah, I put our 2013 1040 out there.
00:36:54.300 | It's just something effective, like 90-some thousand dollars in just gross income and
00:37:01.940 | zero tax.
00:37:02.940 | So I'm going to repeat that again, because over the connection it was just a little
00:37:07.820 | crackled, 90-something thousand dollars of gross income and zero dollars of tax.
00:37:15.180 | That is correct.
00:37:18.420 | How did you do it?
00:37:19.420 | It actually, the principles I mentioned, I don't have a job, so there's no social security
00:37:30.620 | tax.
00:37:31.620 | We get most of our income from dividend and long-term capital gains.
00:37:39.140 | So those are for our level of income taxed at zero percent.
00:37:44.780 | And because our income is considered low, about $60,000 of maybe $60,000 of that $90,000
00:37:54.740 | of imaginary income, it was harvested from a long-term capital gain, and it was doing
00:38:00.020 | the Roth IRA conversion.
00:38:01.900 | So I created income on paper that was effectively just moving money around that we found existed.
00:38:10.580 | But it eliminated future tax.
00:38:12.580 | It reduced our future tax.
00:38:15.580 | And it's just a $90,000 number, it's just roughly what you can legally earn from investment
00:38:24.900 | income when still considered bad, like future tax.
00:38:30.820 | I think it's awesome.
00:38:31.820 | And I'm so glad you put the actual return up so that people could see how it works.
00:38:35.420 | And if you can control your expenses, there's a huge, huge opportunity.
00:38:41.300 | I love the early retirement financial independence community, because one of the key components
00:38:46.140 | of this community is having control over expenses and learning how to live well for less.
00:38:53.020 | And one of the things that's ironic about the way that U.S. income taxes work is that
00:38:58.580 | you are penalized for productivity.
00:39:02.380 | And it's not really a political statement, although I don't mind getting into politics.
00:39:06.940 | It's just simply a fact, is that the more productive you are, because we tax income,
00:39:11.100 | the more productive that you are, the more your penalty is.
00:39:14.620 | The more productive that somebody is at creating income, the higher the tax rates, the higher
00:39:19.500 | the tax base, the higher the total amount of tax.
00:39:22.940 | And we, as a society, we've decided that that is morally just to have that type of
00:39:29.540 | income tax system.
00:39:30.540 | It's not the system that I would choose, but that's what we as a society have decided.
00:39:35.340 | But what it opens up is that because everything is based upon this class warfare, this idea
00:39:40.900 | of, well, we're supposed to penalize the rich, and then the middle class, we're supposed
00:39:45.100 | to give everything to the middle class, there's kind of a sweet spot.
00:39:48.140 | And you've hit it exactly with your expenses.
00:39:50.980 | If you can control your expenses to a moderate amount, and you can increase your income to
00:39:55.340 | a substantial level, you can avoid a massive amount of tax, but not if you need the income
00:40:00.940 | for consumption.
00:40:02.100 | I was having a conversation with an early retiree the other day, and I was illustrating
00:40:07.580 | how this person doesn't need a substantial amount of income from their income.
00:40:11.260 | And I was showing them how they can shelter basically $100,000 in tax-deferred accounts,
00:40:18.860 | and then how they could pursue some strategies to shelter their money going forward.
00:40:24.820 | But all of that is based upon not needing the money to spend now.
00:40:28.500 | If you need the money to spend now, this is where you're in the worst possible situation.
00:40:33.140 | If you need to spend the money now on lifestyle, then that means you need to earn it.
00:40:37.300 | And so the high earners and the high spenders are the ones who pay a massive amount of the
00:40:41.220 | tax.
00:40:43.500 | But what I love about your return and your story is you're illustrating how you can
00:40:47.860 | get good tax planning on your side, and it can massively increase your time scale.
00:40:57.300 | So I thank you for working so hard.
00:40:58.900 | It's not easy to put numbers out there.
00:41:01.060 | It's not easy to work through the detailed definition.
00:41:03.860 | I thank you for putting the information out there for people.
00:41:05.860 | I want to express my apologies and stuff aside.
00:41:08.860 | But the main thing is what it all comes down to, where everything comes from, is just being
00:41:18.540 | able to live what you consider a wonderful life, something that you're more than happy
00:41:24.300 | with for very little money.
00:41:26.700 | And most of that is just what you've become accustomed to and how you choose to do the
00:41:32.340 | things you love.
00:41:39.340 | And 99% of people in the United States, that's like saying I hate baseball and apple pie,
00:41:47.620 | which I kind of do.
00:41:49.620 | Me too.
00:41:52.620 | But when I was living in Seattle, I wanted to go do anything.
00:42:01.940 | I wanted to go get some ice cream at the grocery store.
00:42:05.340 | Most people, okay, well, I'll walk up to the garage, start the car, I'll drive 10 minutes
00:42:10.340 | to the grocery store, find a parking space, walk inside, oh crap, I've got to get some
00:42:15.940 | gas, so I'll stop at the gas station and go home.
00:42:19.940 | And they do that whole 40 minute journey, and the oil light comes on, and I'm like,
00:42:25.740 | oh, that's right, I need to change the oil, I'll schedule that, and it all goes off.
00:42:29.540 | I walk downstairs across the street, start the car, and go back home, and that's five
00:42:35.340 | minutes.
00:42:36.340 | And by designing life to not have the car, it will just hit on the car.
00:42:41.940 | My life kicks ass, because I never have to get in the car, I never have to park, I never
00:42:45.500 | have to get gas, I never have to change the oil, I never have to change all that baggage
00:42:49.900 | that comes with owning something.
00:42:50.900 | I just naturally do it.
00:42:51.900 | It's a powerful concept, because a lot of times what happens, especially in our society,
00:43:02.620 | is that we don't necessarily consciously choose, and certain things are sewn into us and put
00:43:08.860 | into us by other people, usually unintentionally, I think.
00:43:12.800 | But for example, in the United States, we have a car culture, a car-centric culture.
00:43:16.900 | So if you're a young person, it's often, usually, maybe it's your father.
00:43:19.940 | A lot of times your father admires a nice car, and if your father admires a nice car,
00:43:24.700 | then you want to emulate your father, and so you naturally take on that desire and that
00:43:29.020 | attraction for cars.
00:43:30.260 | And that may be for a beautiful, fast BMW M5, or it may be for a big, giant four-wheel
00:43:38.660 | drive pickup truck with mud tires, or it may be a sleek, fast, imported Honda racing car,
00:43:45.740 | or whatever it is.
00:43:47.580 | What happens is that oftentimes we don't fully grasp, at a young age, we don't fully grasp
00:43:54.260 | the impact of certain things that we feed.
00:43:56.360 | So we feed that appetite.
00:43:57.580 | When I was a kid, I fed the appetite with magazines, car magazines, and four-wheeler
00:44:01.020 | magazines, and as we feed that appetite, it grows and it grows and it grows and it grows,
00:44:06.300 | and then we feel like, "Well, this is what I've got to do to be happy," or whether it's
00:44:10.220 | things like boats, or whether it's things like any hobby or something that we feed.
00:44:15.500 | And me personally, I would like to leave every person free to live their life as they want,
00:44:20.900 | but I've found that if I actually look and do some self-examination and understand why
00:44:25.220 | is it that I'm so committed to this love of the car, where does this come from?
00:44:31.540 | It wasn't something that I actually went and chose and said, "This would serve me and serve
00:44:35.520 | my goals and be beneficial to me."
00:44:37.380 | It's largely something that's influenced into me.
00:44:40.740 | And so by rejecting that and seeing that, "You know what?
00:44:43.580 | I'd rather have the free time to not have to deal with—I was dealing with fixing my
00:44:47.220 | car this weekend, and I'd rather have the free time to not have to deal with the car,
00:44:51.180 | and I'd rather just take a taxi when I need one and ride the bus and walk," if you can
00:44:55.340 | set your lifestyle up on that, it's powerful because you can take back control.
00:44:58.820 | And that taking back control leads, I believe, to taking back control in every area and leads
00:45:04.460 | to long-term goal achievement.
00:45:05.980 | Don't forget the bicycle.
00:45:07.980 | Right.
00:45:08.980 | I forgot.
00:45:09.980 | My bicycle was stolen a few months ago and I haven't gotten around to buying a new one,
00:45:13.980 | so I forgot about the bicycle.
00:45:15.300 | I need to get another one.
00:45:17.180 | On the car thing, I'm kind of—I have a cool new one in my family.
00:45:23.300 | My mom has five brothers, four of them in the appendix, my grandfather was in the appendix,
00:45:27.780 | and I had a bunch of—you know, the four mustangs that they had souped up and everything,
00:45:31.860 | and they rode motorcycles, whatever.
00:45:32.860 | I remember—well, I don't remember, my father told me many years later, but sometime when
00:45:38.080 | I was 12 or so, he was changing the rail and he was like, "Hey, I'm going to teach you
00:45:43.700 | to change the rail today," and I said something like, "Dad, when I'm older, I'll pay somebody
00:45:48.580 | to do that."
00:45:49.580 | And so I was the only person, like, the whole time in anywhere that doesn't know how to
00:45:54.740 | change the rail.
00:45:59.580 | I used to have the same exact thought, and I regret it now because I didn't learn the
00:46:04.140 | skills that I needed to learn, and I've had to, as an adult, go back and say, "Why was
00:46:08.380 | I such a dumb-dumb?
00:46:09.380 | Now I need to learn those skills."
00:46:12.060 | But I don't think there—one comment on the car thing.
00:46:14.220 | I don't think that—these things are not mutually exclusive, meaning that you don't
00:46:18.380 | have to walk away from an enjoyment of automobiles just to retire early.
00:46:24.180 | An example that would occur to me is I think that very few people necessarily love commuting.
00:46:30.660 | So you can implement the lifestyle that you've talked about where you don't need to drive
00:46:35.540 | a four-door sedan every day and still indulge in enjoyment of cars, but if you'll free
00:46:41.540 | up the money that you spend on the four-door sedan that you destroy every day with an hour
00:46:45.180 | on the road commuting, and if you can make an adjustment there, that can open up the
00:46:50.420 | kind of thing where you can take a trip to Europe and you can rent a beautiful brand
00:46:55.100 | new BMW M5 or M6 or whatever they're on these days, a fast car, and you can rent it
00:47:02.020 | and you can enjoy the Autobahn, or you can go and you can lease a beautiful—you go
00:47:07.820 | to Spain and you can lease a beautiful Aston Martin or Ferrari for a month.
00:47:12.140 | And the cost of doing those things is really not so significant when they're done for
00:47:16.740 | a temporary period of time.
00:47:18.380 | So go and lease a Ferrari for a week or for a month or something like that and get that
00:47:21.940 | experience.
00:47:22.940 | But the majority of middle-class people will never get there because they're destroying
00:47:26.980 | their money with the four-door sedan that we put 30,000 miles a year on to cover our
00:47:32.940 | commute.
00:47:33.940 | They're not incompatible.
00:47:34.940 | When it comes back to—I try to follow the philosophy, "There's no one right way
00:47:42.940 | to live."
00:47:43.940 | So spend your money however you like.
00:47:44.940 | Everybody has those choices.
00:47:45.940 | I don't think there's any way that's better than the other.
00:47:53.660 | But if early retirement is your goal, then saving upwards of 70% of your income is the
00:48:00.340 | goal.
00:48:01.660 | And if you can save a lot and have a car, then fantastic.
00:48:11.580 | Maybe you'll spend less money somewhere else.
00:48:13.780 | But we do spend more on food.
00:48:16.020 | Maybe you'll spend less on food and more on car.
00:48:20.460 | We both got there.
00:48:22.020 | >> Right.
00:48:23.020 | Absolutely.
00:48:24.020 | So let's switch gears.
00:48:26.620 | And the other thing that you've been writing recently about on your blog, which is of great
00:48:30.620 | interest of mine, is about medical costs.
00:48:34.020 | And when I've talked with people who are—whether that's traditional retirement, the 60, 65
00:48:39.780 | age retirement, or whether that's early retirement, one of the major fears that people have is
00:48:44.860 | how to handle any potential healthcare costs.
00:48:48.300 | What has been your experience since retiring?
00:48:51.900 | And what have you practically done, for example, with health insurance coverage, things like
00:48:56.620 | that?
00:48:57.620 | And what has been your experience with handling that?
00:48:59.580 | Because I know you've recently had some pretty significant medical events going on.
00:49:07.540 | >> Yeah, so when we left the US two years ago, we purchased a high deductible health
00:49:16.140 | plan.
00:49:18.180 | And we paid the premium on that for like 11 months, and then we got rid of it.
00:49:25.300 | And we went to the dentist in Mexico.
00:49:29.300 | I went to the doctor in Mexico.
00:49:31.420 | Let's see here.
00:49:35.060 | We both went to the doctor in Taiwan.
00:49:38.420 | And then we went through a whole process of in vitro fertilization here in Taiwan.
00:49:46.260 | So that's how we're going to have the baby.
00:49:51.020 | All of that, everything, we just paid cash.
00:49:54.860 | And just as a kind of interesting thing, have you or do you know anybody who's been to the
00:50:03.660 | emergency room in the US recently?
00:50:05.380 | >> I just had some friends go there recently.
00:50:07.740 | A three-day hospital stay just last night, was talking with a friend last night.
00:50:11.820 | Three-day hospital stay, went to the emergency room, wound up being appendicitis.
00:50:16.620 | The hospital bill was $81,000.
00:50:23.020 | >> So we went to the emergency room the other night, saw the doctor, had a couple tests,
00:50:31.660 | left after about an hour.
00:50:33.500 | The total bill, $30.
00:50:39.220 | So when a system is set up in such a way that you can't know the prices in advance, you
00:50:48.620 | can't compare prices between places, and you don't get a bill for like two weeks to six
00:50:54.900 | months later because of all the processing through the different insurance systems and
00:50:59.260 | that, you end up with a bill like $81,000 for whatever the case was.
00:51:10.420 | In Taiwan at least, it's a single payer healthcare system.
00:51:14.620 | I can ask in advance, how much am I going to have to pay for this?
00:51:18.340 | I pay in advance for the procedure, and I can make decisions, like is that worth it
00:51:23.940 | or not?
00:51:24.940 | With all that transparency, it just effectively comes out to be a more efficient system, $30.
00:51:33.420 | >> Wow.
00:51:34.420 | The strange thing about it is that $81,000 bill, my friend was looking at what the insurance
00:51:41.100 | company actually paid.
00:51:42.540 | So $81,000 was what was billed, but the negotiated rate for the insurance company that they actually
00:51:48.520 | paid was $10,000.
00:51:51.300 | So you have this just nuts differential between these things, and that's what makes it so
00:51:56.340 | confusing and so complicated.
00:51:58.300 | How much did your dental work in Mexico cost, and how much is the in vitro fertilization
00:52:03.740 | process in Taiwan costing you?
00:52:07.140 | >> So let's see here.
00:52:09.380 | I don't remember what the dental trip in Mexico 500 pieces was, so like 35 bucks, something
00:52:18.740 | like that.
00:52:19.740 | And then I went to, I had like a high fever and stuff, and I kind of knew I had bronchitis,
00:52:29.500 | and I went to the doctor in Mexico, and I think it was three bucks.
00:52:35.780 | But then of course I had to pay for the prescription, right?
00:52:38.540 | Which you know, some antibiotics, and I think that was like $8.
00:52:44.420 | So they get you on the way out is basically how they get you, right?
00:52:49.300 | Three bucks for the doctor, eight bucks for the pills.
00:52:53.420 | And yeah, go ahead.
00:52:54.420 | >> I was going to say, how about the IVF?
00:52:58.700 | >> So we kind of chose Taiwan for that by doing some cost research, and then Winnie's
00:53:04.300 | from here, so we kind of get the double bonus of being able to see family and whatnot while
00:53:09.540 | we're here.
00:53:11.820 | I think the online calculator that I used for estimating the US price was something like
00:53:18.500 | $35,000 it would have cost us.
00:53:22.020 | And in Taiwan that cost us about seven.
00:53:27.340 | >> Is your sense that that is because of the general subsidy, meaning that the general
00:53:31.900 | taxpayer, the tax base and the general tax that's being collected is being distributed,
00:53:38.980 | and so therefore the cost is lower in that way?
00:53:40.940 | Or is it generally, do you feel, in your experience, do you feel it's more just the cost of the
00:53:45.820 | care is lower, the actual cost is lower?
00:53:48.940 | >> I think it's the cost of the care is lower, right?
00:53:52.740 | Because we're effectively operating outside of the subsidized system.
00:54:00.180 | If I had Taiwan-based insurance, I would be inside the national health plan.
00:54:06.220 | We basically, like, "Hey, you're the white guy.
00:54:11.700 | Come talk to us over here.
00:54:12.700 | Okay, this is what it's going to cost.
00:54:14.020 | You need to pay in advance.
00:54:15.820 | You need to pay cash."
00:54:18.460 | Okay.
00:54:19.460 | As part of the process, I had to get a chest x-ray and an EKG and stuff because I had to
00:54:27.980 | go under anesthesia for part of the process.
00:54:32.620 | And just that portion of chest x-ray, EKG, I walk in.
00:54:37.900 | It takes like 10 seconds to do both of those things individually.
00:54:41.260 | There's a nurse waiting there to run the x-ray machine and another nurse ready to run the
00:54:45.620 | EKG.
00:54:46.620 | Go back to the doctor.
00:54:47.620 | He's already got the results on his computer.
00:54:50.300 | And they're like, "Okay, you're healthy enough to go under anesthesia.
00:54:53.060 | Just leave them off."
00:54:54.820 | I walk downstairs, hit the box or something like that.
00:54:58.580 | >> Wow.
00:54:59.580 | It's definitely something I'm slow to talk much about, health insurance and healthcare
00:55:05.020 | systems.
00:55:06.020 | And I studied for a financial planning designation called a registered health underwriter designation
00:55:11.100 | and as part of that, I read this like about a 500-page textbook on the history of the
00:55:16.380 | healthcare industry in the United States and the managed healthcare industry.
00:55:19.900 | And what it opened up to me was how many moving parts there are and what a complicated situation
00:55:28.740 | it is.
00:55:29.820 | And so at this point, I've kind of--you know, I have my own opinions about how I would like
00:55:32.940 | to live but I've kind of set aside any of my opinions for the general public and just
00:55:37.220 | said, "Well, here's how--let me just look for the ways that I can work my way through
00:55:40.780 | the system."
00:55:41.780 | And I think that medical tourism is a tremendous--is a tremendous opportunity.
00:55:48.900 | And as I've worked with a couple of people who are setting up destination medical tourist
00:55:55.420 | facilities in Central America and I think that, you know, people will often get--when
00:56:00.580 | they have a serious--when they need something, it's not uncommon for people who with the
00:56:04.380 | means to get on an airplane and go to another city where there's a well-known health clinic.
00:56:08.980 | And in a world where I can get on an airplane and be in Costa Rica or be in Nicaragua or
00:56:12.940 | be in Guatemala in two or three hours, it's really no different for me doing that versus
00:56:16.340 | flying to Cleveland.
00:56:17.980 | But yet if the cost can be massively lower, it's certainly worth pursuing.
00:56:23.260 | >> I agree.
00:56:25.420 | >> So as far as last kind of thought I had, last question that I was curious about and
00:56:33.340 | then any of the--and you can share anything else that you would like to share.
00:56:37.420 | But have you thought about--now that you're expecting a baby, have you thought about doing
00:56:41.700 | any kind of fun like international arbitrage with your future son or daughter as far as
00:56:47.780 | where they're born and citizenship and some of those--some of the fun things that you
00:56:51.180 | could do?
00:56:52.180 | Do you plan to have a baby abroad in Taiwan for Taiwanese citizenship?
00:56:56.220 | Have you researched any of that stuff yet?
00:56:59.020 | >> Well, it'll have US and Taiwanese citizenship just through parents.
00:57:05.580 | >> Okay.
00:57:06.580 | >> Yeah.
00:57:07.580 | >> Neat.
00:57:08.580 | >> But we had talked about trying to get, you know, if it would make sense to have another
00:57:13.740 | passport and that's another citizenship.
00:57:17.100 | And it turns out that there just aren't very many countries anymore that give citizenship
00:57:23.300 | on birth.
00:57:24.300 | You know, the--let's see here, Australia and New Zealand did up until about 10 years ago.
00:57:33.980 | Most of Europe has basically changed their laws and so just by being born there, you
00:57:39.740 | don't get citizenship.
00:57:41.860 | And then--so you're kind of looking at like Mexico, the US and Canada, probably the three
00:57:47.260 | biggest countries that still have that option.
00:57:49.980 | Well, we were thinking originally, like it'd be great to say have like a baby in Spain,
00:57:54.900 | Italy, you know, get the EU passport.
00:57:58.460 | Our child could work across Europe later if they chose to, you know, or a commonwealth
00:58:02.980 | passport from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK, and then have the option to work across
00:58:09.540 | the commonwealth.
00:58:10.540 | But neither of those options really look viable anymore.
00:58:14.660 | But I still have to do it.
00:58:15.660 | >> Interesting.
00:58:16.660 | >> A destination birth still might be an option.
00:58:19.660 | >> Interesting.
00:58:20.660 | It's such an interesting just thing to think about.
00:58:23.220 | It really is.
00:58:24.380 | When you are free of the need to be in one specific place, it opens up a world of possibilities
00:58:30.860 | that frankly I never considered when I was younger.
00:58:34.900 | And my wife and I talked about that with our--we have a one-year-old son and we talked about
00:58:38.660 | that a little bit.
00:58:39.660 | But, you know, I just thought through it and it wasn't appropriate for our lifestyle at
00:58:43.660 | that time but with your kind of traveling lifestyle at the moment.
00:58:47.300 | But at any rate, Taiwanese citizenship and it sounds like you'll both be--your wife is
00:58:52.820 | multilingual and it sounds like you are working on it if you're studying Chinese.
00:58:57.140 | That'll be a tremendous advantage for your child as well.
00:58:59.940 | >> That's right.
00:59:00.940 | >> Anything else?
00:59:02.300 | If you were going to--let's close with this.
00:59:04.460 | If you were going to give an exhortation, an encouragement and a little bit of inspiration
00:59:11.900 | to other people who are interested in following a similar path to early retirement and who
00:59:18.460 | are interested in pursuing a similar lifestyle to the one that you've created, what would
00:59:24.980 | you share with others who are working on that path?
00:59:28.460 | >> So, it's a lot easier and a lot faster than most people think.
00:59:37.380 | If you're accustomed to save 10% retire at 65 by making a few relatively minor adjustments
00:59:46.060 | to life, learning to love your bicycle, learning to cook great food at home and learning to
00:59:52.260 | be happy in a smaller space where you can walk everywhere instead of driving a car.
00:59:57.300 | You can get there in just a few short years and then everything in the world effectively
01:00:05.340 | opens up to you.
01:00:06.700 | So the rewards of spending a little less now give you the world.
01:00:16.060 | >> Well said.
01:00:17.060 | Thank you for the work that you do on your blog which is gocurrycracker.com.
01:00:21.500 | I appreciate it because I know it's not--it would probably be easier and more fun to not
01:00:26.020 | have to write on a blog but it's a valuable source of information and inspiration to other
01:00:30.700 | people and I thank you for putting so much work into it because it really will help many,
01:00:35.940 | many, many people uncover the strategies and the ideas and have the encouragement as they
01:00:40.860 | walk through their path to be able to achieve it.
01:00:45.460 | What is--I forgot to ask you this.
01:00:48.140 | Where does Go Curry Cracker come from?
01:00:53.100 | >> So for our honeymoon, I think we spent about $0.
01:00:59.820 | We went on a--what was it?
01:01:02.620 | A 100-mile hike around Mount Rainier outside Seattle.
01:01:09.820 | You carry all your own food.
01:01:13.580 | You shower by plunging into some glacial runoff.
01:01:17.260 | >> You cry every night.
01:01:21.100 | >> You cry every night.
01:01:28.860 | It's not easy every day.
01:01:29.860 | You're hiking 10 miles a day up massive elevation gains and whatnot.
01:01:35.480 | We had these little curry crackers that Winnie had handmade with love and care.
01:01:46.460 | One day in a moment of delirium and frustration, we were trying to find some motivation and
01:01:51.420 | we looked at each other and said something like, "Go, go, go, curry cracker."
01:01:59.460 | That's kind of been--anytime that we need a moment of motivation or something to basically
01:02:06.740 | say, "Hey, we can accomplish this and go forward," that's what we'll say to each other.
01:02:11.820 | It'll just kind of bring us back and give us a little laugh and push us forward again.
01:02:18.220 | >> It's a memorable name.
01:02:19.220 | It's a memorable name.
01:02:20.220 | I wanted to make sure we included that.
01:02:22.420 | Winnie, I feel like I neglected you.
01:02:24.700 | I apologize.
01:02:25.700 | Is there something that--would you like to share as we close here?
01:02:30.260 | Would you like to share a bit of encouragement and inspiration for those who are listening
01:02:34.240 | from your perspective?
01:02:35.240 | >> I think Matt has been talked about already.
01:02:36.240 | I just took a few pills so I feel a little dizzy tonight.
01:02:47.240 | >> Understood.
01:02:48.240 | >> I just passed your bedtime.
01:02:51.200 | >> The kind of work that you guys have done and to stay together and to commit to your
01:02:57.120 | goals does not happen unless you are united in it.
01:03:02.800 | It has to be a team effort because if one spouse says, "We're going to go live on a
01:03:09.840 | sailboat or live in a tent in the woods," and the other spouse says, "No, I want to
01:03:14.800 | own a boat, but that's just for the weekends and why can't we have a big house?"
01:03:19.360 | The whole plan falls apart.
01:03:20.840 | >> That's why you need an obedient Asian wife.
01:03:23.840 | >> Excuse me.
01:03:24.840 | I didn't quite hear that.
01:03:26.200 | Say that again, please.
01:03:27.200 | >> That's why you need an obedient Asian wife.
01:03:30.200 | >> Right.
01:03:31.200 | I think I got a feeling that there's a little bit of a tongue in cheek there.
01:03:34.760 | >> Yeah.
01:03:35.760 | Can I?
01:03:36.760 | I want to refund that.
01:03:39.760 | I don't think that was in the contract at the beginning.
01:03:42.400 | Or it was in the contract maybe at the beginning, but I don't think you can follow it.
01:03:47.920 | >> Did you guys learn something as far as going through that?
01:03:52.880 | How did you, Jeremy, was it your idea originally, your wife's idea?
01:03:57.040 | How did you talk together?
01:03:58.720 | I wish maybe we'd ... Let's explore that real quick.
01:04:01.240 | How did you talk together and learn how to be on the same page?
01:04:05.480 | What was the process?
01:04:08.000 | >> About the early retirement and travel?
01:04:12.840 | That's a good question.
01:04:23.840 | Travel?
01:04:25.840 | If you look back at our individual goals from before we met, seeing the world was one of
01:04:34.320 | them that we shared and shared strongly.
01:04:41.440 | We both grew up in relatively low income environments and never really felt the need to strive for
01:04:50.200 | consumer items and so on.
01:04:52.200 | So not having things that people consider needs, we just never really missed them.
01:05:02.720 | When income started rising, we were able to be like, "Hey, would I rather buy a blender
01:05:08.920 | or go live in Thailand for a year?"
01:05:13.320 | There was no question.
01:05:16.440 | It wasn't ever really a long conversation.
01:05:19.080 | It was just like, "Well, obviously this is what we should do."
01:05:24.400 | >> Interesting.
01:05:26.720 | It certainly is a challenge.
01:05:29.360 | I've heard from various readers and I've seen in forums and things like that, "How do I
01:05:35.640 | get my spouse on board with this idea?"
01:05:38.480 | So it's good to hear that you guys were naturally aligned.
01:05:43.080 | I think that can make a lot of difference.
01:05:46.640 | That goes back to if we didn't click on those things early on, we wouldn't be together.
01:06:01.400 | We were living in two different countries, speaking two different native languages and
01:06:05.720 | different cultures.
01:06:06.720 | >> Maybe that's why we get along.
01:06:07.720 | I don't understand what you're saying.
01:06:08.720 | >> When I said, "Hey, do you want to live frugally and travel the world?"
01:06:16.000 | You were like, "I don't understand that."
01:06:18.040 | I thought you said yes.
01:06:22.040 | >> You confused the language.
01:06:23.840 | I like it.
01:06:24.840 | Thank you guys so much for coming on.
01:06:26.720 | I appreciate you making the time.
01:06:29.280 | I thank you for the insight and I thank you for the work that you're doing.
01:06:33.000 | >> Thank you, Joshua.
01:06:35.000 | I appreciate it.
01:06:39.000 | >> Normal people, extraordinary results.
01:06:43.880 | Anything in their story that you or I couldn't do?
01:06:48.960 | Probably nothing.
01:06:49.960 | I didn't ask him exactly how much they were making.
01:06:52.160 | I know that they're professionals, but you and I could learn to do that.
01:06:59.160 | Notice the guild, as Jacob Lundfisker and I figured out is a good word for it, using
01:07:06.880 | a permaculture word of guild, is a good word for it to apply to financial planning.
01:07:10.920 | Notice the trio of things, like he said, focusing on the biggest expenses, housing, transportation,
01:07:17.840 | and food.
01:07:18.840 | So what do you do?
01:07:19.840 | Number one, housing.
01:07:20.840 | Try to find the least expensive housing option that is satisfactory for your needs.
01:07:26.280 | If your needs are simple, then your solution that satisfies those will be simpler.
01:07:32.880 | Think about it.
01:07:34.140 | Not enough people think about and locate their housing strategically.
01:07:38.880 | Because we live in such an automobile-centric culture, we're accustomed to just driving
01:07:44.920 | anywhere.
01:07:45.920 | So that's why we have miles and miles of suburbs around every large city.
01:07:49.120 | It's almost impossible when you live in the suburbs to not have a car.
01:07:53.100 | But if you're willing to do as they did and live in the city, live in an apartment, you
01:07:56.400 | can be strategic about it.
01:07:58.640 | You can get yourself close to shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, libraries.
01:08:03.460 | You can get yourself close to a main transit terminal, so where you're quickly on that
01:08:08.600 | main transit terminal.
01:08:10.360 | And especially if you're in a city where that's not so popular, I think you could do it anywhere.
01:08:14.480 | But there are some cities where, in the US and around the world, where people are much
01:08:18.600 | more tuned in to those ideas of, "How do I figure out a strategic location for my business,
01:08:25.600 | excuse me, for my house?"
01:08:28.120 | Maybe more difficult.
01:08:29.160 | But there are many cities in which you could exploit that.
01:08:32.000 | And it's cheaper to, if you can get rid of, so A, if you can get a good housing cost,
01:08:35.640 | low cost, small amount of stuff, inexpensive apartment.
01:08:39.200 | B, if you can reduce or eliminate your transportation costs, that will free up so much money.
01:08:45.520 | And then as I said, if you can reduce or eliminate your food, you can't eliminate your food costs,
01:08:49.880 | excuse me.
01:08:50.880 | If you can reduce and right size your food costs, that can make a major difference.
01:08:56.080 | And sometimes that stuff can free up so much money for you to pursue other things that
01:09:00.600 | are important.
01:09:01.960 | Choose consciously.
01:09:02.960 | If you want a big house in the suburbs, go for it.
01:09:04.880 | If you want a big house on the water and a big four-wheel drive pickup truck, fine.
01:09:09.120 | But notice what your options are and make sure that you're going in knowing that my
01:09:13.200 | opportunity cost for this money is fill in the blank for what's right for you.
01:09:20.080 | I love to hear stories like that because it just illustrates how doable so many things
01:09:24.600 | are.
01:09:25.600 | And your results will vary depending on how hardcore you are.
01:09:28.680 | If you make more money than they did and spend less, you could do it faster.
01:09:32.840 | If you make less money and spend more, it doesn't mean you can't do it.
01:09:36.120 | You're just going to do it slower.
01:09:38.000 | Custom design your own plan that will work for you.
01:09:41.160 | Consider also the medical tourism ideas.
01:09:43.360 | I'm not an expert on that area.
01:09:44.840 | I've read a couple of books on it, but some books from the library about people who have
01:09:49.840 | written about it.
01:09:50.840 | But I got a feeling that stuff changes so much.
01:09:52.960 | I'd love to know if you know somebody who's an expert on medical tourism, I'd love to
01:09:57.520 | interview one.
01:09:58.600 | I don't know who to interview at this point.
01:10:00.360 | But if you know somebody that you've read, maybe they have a blog or a business in that
01:10:03.440 | market or they're really an expert, shoot me a note, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com
01:10:08.080 | and let me know who they are.
01:10:09.080 | Or even better, get in touch with them and ask them to reach out to me for an interview.
01:10:12.880 | I would be thrilled to bring them on the show because I think that's a really valuable resource
01:10:16.960 | that we could learn together.
01:10:18.840 | I've intentionally stayed away from talking about most of the healthcare issues just because
01:10:23.960 | it's an overwhelming world and people are so emotionally tied up.
01:10:28.320 | At some point maybe I'll talk about it, but it's just about my least interesting thing
01:10:33.400 | to talk about.
01:10:35.360 | But medical tourism is something that I think has a lot of potential benefit, especially
01:10:39.680 | if you need an expensive root canal or something like that, consider taking a trip abroad.
01:10:44.680 | It may be worth it.
01:10:45.680 | It may not be worth it, but a lot of those times those types of expenses are simply not
01:10:49.360 | covered with insurance.
01:10:50.360 | And if it's not covered with insurance, then why bother?
01:10:54.320 | Why not just go ahead and book yourself a trip to Thailand or Taiwan or Costa Rica or
01:10:58.960 | something like that, or Mexico, and try to enjoy your experience a little bit.
01:11:02.880 | You've got to be careful.
01:11:03.880 | I have no experience in that world, but I have known enough people who have done it
01:11:06.960 | successfully to at least consider it as a strategy.
01:11:12.640 | That's it for today.
01:11:13.640 | I'll be back with you tomorrow.
01:11:15.520 | Have a great day, everybody.
01:11:22.520 | Thank you for listening to today's show.
01:11:47.240 | This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment.
01:11:55.240 | Your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything
01:12:01.520 | about you.
01:12:03.240 | This show is not and is not intended to be any form of financial advice.
01:12:10.600 | Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and
01:12:18.960 | trustworthy and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific
01:12:24.960 | needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions.
01:12:32.000 | Hold them accountable for your results.
01:12:34.720 | I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person
01:12:39.720 | and I make mistakes.
01:12:41.280 | If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment so
01:12:45.880 | we can all learn together.
01:12:48.080 | Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.
01:13:17.400 | (upbeat music)