RPF0245-Scott_Alan_Turner_Interview
00:00:00.000 | My guest today on Radical Personal Finance is a dude who did it.
00:00:03.960 | He charted out a path to financial independence at a young age and worked like a maniac, saved
00:00:09.520 | like a crazy guy, and he did it.
00:00:14.600 | He's now financially independent.
00:00:15.680 | He's going to share with us a little bit about his story, what worked, what didn't, and was
00:00:21.680 | it worth it.
00:00:22.680 | [Music]
00:00:23.680 | Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast.
00:00:40.880 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:00:42.520 | Thank you for being with me today.
00:00:43.920 | Today I bring you an interview with Scott Alan Turner.
00:00:48.480 | Recorded this one at Podcast Movement in Fort Worth, Texas back in August.
00:00:51.920 | Scott's a really young, really awesome guy.
00:00:53.880 | I thought he was young, but I don't think he's quite that young.
00:00:56.880 | But he's a really cool guy and I'm thrilled to make his acquaintance.
00:01:01.080 | You're basically going to hear me learn about his story, but he's where most of us want
00:01:05.520 | to get to.
00:01:07.080 | He's the guy to learn from.
00:01:11.600 | One of the consistent themes on Radical Personal Finance is financial independence.
00:01:15.680 | I believe that should be a goal for most of us.
00:01:18.880 | Now what that looks like will vary depending on our background, our circumstances, the
00:01:24.000 | type of lifestyle that we envision for ourselves.
00:01:25.880 | The numbers will be very different depending on what aspect.
00:01:30.360 | Financial independence for some is $3,000 a month and financial independence for others
00:01:33.660 | is $30,000 a month.
00:01:35.440 | I don't think personally, my own opinion, take it as simply an opinion, my own opinion
00:01:40.360 | is that financial independence isn't really the ultimate goal.
00:01:43.880 | It's just a step on the way and it's a worthy goal.
00:01:47.580 | If you're working, you might as well work towards something and if you're saving, you
00:01:50.680 | might as well save towards financial independence.
00:01:54.360 | It's possible to do it faster than some other people have done and there's many ways to
00:01:58.480 | reach financial independence.
00:01:59.480 | But today, I'm going to bring you this story with Scott Alan Turner and he's going to share
00:02:03.440 | with us his experience because the reality is he's a pretty normal dude who did some
00:02:10.600 | things that most people don't do and achieved a place that very few people will ever achieve.
00:02:19.920 | That's the kind of guy we should sit back and learn from.
00:02:22.760 | Scott, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:26.560 | Thank you, Joshua.
00:02:27.560 | Great to be here.
00:02:28.560 | This has been fun.
00:02:29.560 | We're sitting here at Podcast Movement and one of the opportunities of a conference like
00:02:33.320 | this is I've been able to talk to a lot of people who are in the financial media space.
00:02:39.520 | One of the coolest things about financial media is that a lot of people in this space
00:02:44.920 | are what I think of as just normal people.
00:02:47.520 | I love to bring those types of stories and that type of advice to the Radical Personal
00:02:51.080 | Finance community because it's often much more accessible.
00:02:54.400 | Kick us off with, share with us a little bit about your story, especially as it pertains
00:02:58.640 | to money.
00:02:59.640 | Sure.
00:03:00.640 | My story, as I like to say, I was a money moron coming out of college.
00:03:04.520 | I was for many, many years until I started learning about personal finance.
00:03:09.520 | My first exposure to personal finance was a guy on the radio by the name of Clark Howard.
00:03:13.120 | Nice.
00:03:14.120 | Love Clark.
00:03:15.120 | Consumer advocate who's been doing it for a number of years.
00:03:16.880 | Saw his billboard up on a sign, started listening to his radio show.
00:03:21.360 | Really it was a pivoting point in my life realizing all the stupid stuff I had done
00:03:28.320 | thus far and really got me thinking about, "Oh, here's how you should really handle money."
00:03:33.400 | When I was growing up, the only lessons I got from my parents about learning about money
00:03:36.720 | was save some of what you earn.
00:03:38.920 | I mean, that was it.
00:03:40.160 | Hey, at least they taught you that.
00:03:41.640 | That's not the most normal lesson.
00:03:43.800 | Right.
00:03:44.800 | I got that bit, but nothing about, "Here's what compound interest is.
00:03:48.000 | Here's how you go take out a loan."
00:03:49.800 | They rented their entire lives, so there was nothing about, "Here's how to buy a house,"
00:03:53.680 | or anything along that lines.
00:03:57.040 | From learning about Clark Howard, listening to him, I started correcting some of my mistakes
00:04:01.840 | that I had made coming out of college, having credit card debt, having student loan debt,
00:04:06.880 | paying way too much money for automobiles, and really getting under my head and taking
00:04:11.840 | it from there and turning my life around.
00:04:13.320 | Isn't it cool how a radio guy like Clark Howard can be just such a constant source of advice
00:04:18.560 | and encouragement as you're making changes?
00:04:22.040 | He's been doing this for a long time, and he has impact.
00:04:25.280 | I don't know how big his footprint is, but he's impacted so many lives.
00:04:29.080 | I just love it because with radio, oftentimes people get intrigued.
00:04:35.360 | They can choose when to tune in, and over time, they're probably at first saying, "What's
00:04:39.480 | this guy going on and on about?"
00:04:41.480 | As with anything, the average of the five people that you spend the most time with,
00:04:45.520 | and oftentimes with media, that can turn into a radio person.
00:04:49.840 | What was it about his message that captured you?
00:04:54.240 | He's really a down-to-earth guy.
00:04:56.000 | People who listen to him for a period of time, they will always relate that to you.
00:04:59.600 | You can connect with him.
00:05:00.840 | He's not influenced by products or services.
00:05:04.740 | He doesn't take any endorsements.
00:05:06.360 | He's just telling it like it is from his standpoint.
00:05:09.060 | He's very frugal.
00:05:10.060 | He's called America's cheapskate, I believe, is what people refer to him as.
00:05:15.560 | Really there's just a lot that you can take away from him, how to get the best deals on
00:05:20.160 | how to buy stuff, where to go to get your insurance, how to get started investing.
00:05:24.920 | He's just so knowledgeable and has such a breadth of experience, and he's been doing
00:05:28.200 | it for so long.
00:05:29.280 | He's one of the guys on my list I'd like to get on Radical Personal Finance at some point
00:05:32.320 | because from my understanding, he has a pretty cool financial independence story.
00:05:36.600 | He worked hard, grew a travel agency, sold that and retired, as I understand it.
00:05:42.120 | Then he went on and built the Clark Howard community, I guess I'll say, the show and
00:05:46.760 | all the associated things.
00:05:48.360 | I heard him mention one time when I was listening to his show that he doesn't spend any of the
00:05:52.960 | money that he makes with Clark Howard.
00:05:55.280 | He basically saves either all of it or 70% of it or just some massive percentage of it.
00:06:01.400 | He doesn't do it because he has to.
00:06:02.400 | He does it because he loves it.
00:06:03.480 | Right.
00:06:04.480 | It's cool.
00:06:05.480 | I can't stand how slow he talks.
00:06:06.480 | I have to listen to him as quick of a speed as possible.
00:06:09.600 | He knows that.
00:06:11.240 | He gets that feedback on his show sometimes, but if I listen to him at normal speed, it's
00:06:16.360 | like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.
00:06:18.880 | Sure.
00:06:19.880 | One of the other complaints about people had, it's not really a complaint, it's more of
00:06:22.320 | a funny story that people have about him over the years.
00:06:24.440 | It's like, "Here's how you can make a living answering the same five questions for three
00:06:27.960 | hours a day for decades."
00:06:30.680 | Which is not true.
00:06:31.680 | He goes into a lot more information.
00:06:32.680 | What I enjoy about his show is it's not just straight up personal finance.
00:06:36.600 | It's open a retirement account, do that.
00:06:38.400 | I enjoy his little travel tips.
00:06:41.000 | He's actually tuned into the cell phone marketplace.
00:06:44.360 | This consumer scam information is interesting.
00:06:47.280 | It's an interesting show.
00:06:48.280 | It's very different than some of the other shows.
00:06:50.640 | Very different than Edelman, very different than Ramsey.
00:06:53.200 | It's a unique show and a really cool resource for people.
00:06:56.280 | What have those changes meant in your life?
00:06:58.320 | Where have you come, what's the path from college to where you are today?
00:07:02.720 | Coming out of college, I had a lot of student loans.
00:07:06.720 | The key of my original change when I came out of college was when I got the first student
00:07:13.600 | loan bill started rolling in nine months after I got out of college.
00:07:18.360 | I got the first bill.
00:07:19.360 | It's like, "All right, you owe 100 bucks.
00:07:20.840 | Okay, pay that."
00:07:21.840 | Then the second one comes in and I look at it and it says, "Two dollars that we sent
00:07:27.920 | in last month was applied to principal and $100 went to interest."
00:07:34.080 | I'm like, "What?
00:07:35.240 | I sent you $100 and my bill has only been deduced by or deducted by two bucks?"
00:07:40.280 | I was floored.
00:07:42.640 | At that point, when you have these situations in your life, you can either get angry or
00:07:47.080 | upset.
00:07:48.080 | I got angry.
00:07:49.080 | I was like, "Whoa."
00:07:50.080 | At that point, I was like, "All right, I'm going to pay off these bills as fast as I
00:07:53.000 | possibly can."
00:07:54.000 | I ended up knocking them out in about two and a half years even though they gave me
00:07:56.720 | 10 to pay them all off.
00:07:59.720 | Your story, I read about what you had on your website where you paid off your loans before
00:08:03.700 | you even got out of college.
00:08:04.700 | Awesome for you.
00:08:05.700 | Thanks.
00:08:06.700 | Congratulations on that.
00:08:07.700 | For me, it took a longer period of time to do that, but it was that realization, well,
00:08:12.760 | this interest thing, got to pay attention to that.
00:08:16.840 | What did you do for work?
00:08:19.520 | Because you've done a number of different things and now you're starting to get into
00:08:21.720 | the personal finance discussion space.
00:08:23.560 | Sure.
00:08:24.560 | I have a computer science degree.
00:08:26.280 | I was in the technology world for a number of years.
00:08:29.120 | I worked for a dot-com startup as well.
00:08:31.720 | Then I moved over to the more entrepreneurial role, having some business partners, still
00:08:36.400 | working in technology and the online business world.
00:08:39.400 | I've been doing that since then.
00:08:41.320 | My story is, I wouldn't say it's identical to Clark Howard's, but I sold a business last
00:08:46.040 | year and it enabled me to "retire."
00:08:50.960 | At this point in my life, I'm able to do what I want, kind of like what Clark did.
00:08:54.560 | His story is, I retired, I was sitting on the beach, and then I got this travel show.
00:08:58.640 | For me, it was, "Well, I have this opportunity.
00:09:00.680 | Let's do something I really love."
00:09:03.160 | Talking about personal finance, because I've been so interested in it since I came across
00:09:06.600 | him many, many years ago.
00:09:09.200 | Let's talk about the business.
00:09:10.800 | What was the business journey like?
00:09:13.560 | It was very difficult.
00:09:15.120 | It was a lot of hours.
00:09:18.520 | People should know when you're running your own business, let's not sugarcoat it.
00:09:21.280 | It's tough.
00:09:22.280 | It's a lot of hours.
00:09:23.400 | My success came from holding down a full-time job during the day, and then I would build
00:09:29.000 | my online business at night, on the weekends, taking vacations, and spending time on my
00:09:34.440 | business.
00:09:35.440 | Throughout over the years, I've had eight companies total, but the pattern would always
00:09:39.600 | be the same.
00:09:40.600 | I'd build one company, then I would work on that during the daytime, and I'd start a second
00:09:44.400 | company in the evening, or on the weekends, and on vacations.
00:09:48.680 | Keep on doing that over and over again.
00:09:51.400 | You're being very vague with the online marketing.
00:09:53.080 | Are you not allowed to talk about it?
00:09:54.080 | No, I can tell you about it.
00:09:55.080 | Can you give me some more specifics?
00:09:56.080 | Sure.
00:09:57.080 | The first company I started was a couple business partners.
00:09:58.320 | We taught people about wireless networking, computer networks, taught them to go into
00:10:02.840 | hospitals and schools, office buildings, how to hook up a wireless network.
00:10:08.100 | Another company I had, the most successful one, the one I sold last year, was green building
00:10:12.120 | education training.
00:10:13.120 | We taught architects about green building, energy efficiency design, continuing education.
00:10:18.120 | That was all online as well.
00:10:20.600 | Had a couple off-shoot weird companies as well.
00:10:24.080 | My wife and I produced a DVD on how to toilet train your cat.
00:10:26.960 | Wow.
00:10:27.960 | Did you make money?
00:10:30.040 | We made a little bit.
00:10:31.040 | Not enough to call it a success.
00:10:32.700 | We learned a lot.
00:10:33.700 | Do your cats actually get on the toilet seat and sit up?
00:10:36.480 | They used to, yes.
00:10:37.540 | They used to.
00:10:38.540 | We moved around a number of times, and now they're outdoor cats for part of the day,
00:10:41.560 | so that makes it a little bit easier.
00:10:43.280 | I have a certified financial planner myself, and he says, "You didn't fail at the business.
00:10:47.240 | You got an education."
00:10:48.240 | There you go.
00:10:49.240 | So, very positive spin on it.
00:10:50.560 | I do often think about that.
00:10:52.240 | If we were to take the amount of money that we put into tuition at colleges and schools,
00:11:00.640 | formal schools, if we were to take that and we were to invest that money into a business
00:11:06.520 | or starting a series of businesses, recognizing that we might lose it all, and then at the
00:11:11.160 | end of, say, five years, we were to compare the amount of knowledge and wisdom that we
00:11:15.360 | gained from five years in school or five years in business, I'd put my money behind the business
00:11:21.700 | being a pretty good use of the money for the price of the education, even if it was all
00:11:25.440 | lost.
00:11:26.440 | Yes.
00:11:27.440 | Nowadays, especially with the cost of tuition skyrocketing, I mean, it's crazy from when
00:11:30.720 | I went to school.
00:11:31.720 | As my wife says, my wife went to TCU, Texas Christian University, which is here in Fort
00:11:36.840 | Worth, and she likes to say, "I couldn't afford to go to TCU now because the cost has gone
00:11:42.080 | up so much."
00:11:43.080 | Yeah, especially the private schools, definitely.
00:11:44.520 | Yeah.
00:11:45.520 | So, how old are you now?
00:11:46.520 | I am 42.
00:11:47.520 | And you consider yourself financially independent?
00:11:49.280 | Absolutely, yes.
00:11:50.280 | That is awesome.
00:11:51.640 | So from not paying attention at 21, 22, you graduated to 42, about 20 years, you've been
00:11:59.440 | able to build it.
00:12:00.640 | How does it feel, man?
00:12:02.280 | It's amazing.
00:12:03.280 | I get to work because I want to work, which is...
00:12:06.920 | Hey, pickle man.
00:12:07.920 | There's a giant green pickle standing in front of our table from the Podtainment magazine.
00:12:16.200 | Financial freedom is amazing.
00:12:17.960 | I get to...
00:12:18.960 | I don't call what I do now work, and I haven't for a long time because I do what I'm passionate
00:12:22.640 | about, but I get to work because I want to work, not because I have to work.
00:12:27.520 | That's my definition of financial freedom or "retirement."
00:12:31.160 | It's different for everybody.
00:12:33.040 | I get to hang out with my kids during the day.
00:12:35.080 | I have twins.
00:12:36.080 | How old are they?
00:12:37.080 | I have twins, and they're about to turn two in October.
00:12:40.240 | So I get to get them up in the bed in the morning.
00:12:42.480 | We get to hang out during the day.
00:12:43.840 | They are in daycare a few days a week to get them out of our hair, and so they can learn
00:12:47.440 | Spanish and other little things that they teach them at daycare, make a mess so that
00:12:52.080 | we don't have to clean it up.
00:12:53.440 | But we get to do stuff during the day.
00:12:55.120 | I get to see my wife.
00:12:56.520 | I've worked from home for 12 years now, being an entrepreneur, which has been great.
00:13:02.160 | You save a ton of money working from home.
00:13:04.080 | You can make your own lunch every day.
00:13:06.600 | At what stage of your business journey did you start to think about financial independence?
00:13:15.400 | The interesting thing is I never did because when I started my first company with the business
00:13:21.000 | partners that approached me, I had a specific set of skills they needed to build their business.
00:13:25.480 | I knew how to build websites, and they did not, so they gave me part of the company in
00:13:29.440 | order to join it and work on the website.
00:13:32.240 | I was just so ecstatic and happy to be building websites, and there was no money.
00:13:37.240 | We had no money to start coming into the company.
00:13:39.960 | It wasn't, "Well, I'm doing this to make more money.
00:13:42.840 | I was doing this because, oh, I get to build websites."
00:13:45.320 | That's exciting.
00:13:46.320 | Really, through the years, it was always, "Oh, I get to start a new company," or, "We've
00:13:49.880 | got this new idea.
00:13:50.880 | Well, we might make money, but we can go have fun in doing it anyways."
00:13:55.200 | It was really the passion that drove it to me, and the money was just a byproduct.
00:13:58.840 | It wasn't, "All right, we're going to start this.
00:14:02.120 | In 12 months from now, we're going to be making X dollars or trying to be making X dollars."
00:14:06.480 | Never even crossed my mind.
00:14:08.080 | Some businesses I had were successful.
00:14:10.720 | Some were not, but they were always because I wanted to do it, and it was fun.
00:14:16.320 | What's your plan now?
00:14:18.000 | Setting up the finances to provide for an income from 42 is very different than doing
00:14:22.060 | it at 72.
00:14:23.540 | What's your big picture financial plan for how you're going to provide your income off
00:14:27.680 | of your nest egg?
00:14:29.160 | Sure.
00:14:30.160 | Some of that, right now, we do not have any rental homes, so we're looking at getting
00:14:34.680 | some rental homes, be able to have some passive income from that later on in life.
00:14:39.560 | We've accumulated enough and invested enough and done enough smart things.
00:14:43.840 | We've lived way below our means.
00:14:46.200 | I've been married for 10 years, and I say, "So we."
00:14:47.760 | I'm talking about my wife and I.
00:14:49.200 | We've always lived way below our means from the income that we've had over those years,
00:14:54.400 | been able to save it up.
00:14:56.240 | So really, we can live off what we have for a really, really long time and not have to
00:15:02.880 | tap into that for decades if we didn't want to.
00:15:09.280 | During the time you've been married for 10 years, so you would have been partway through
00:15:12.780 | this journey of building these businesses, did your wife have money when you married?
00:15:17.840 | No, she did not.
00:15:19.720 | Myself, when we met, I was working full-time at a corporate job, and then I was building
00:15:26.760 | my business on the side.
00:15:28.160 | Right before I met her, I decided I was going to go full-time on my own business, and I
00:15:33.240 | took a 65% pay cut in order to do that.
00:15:36.340 | So when I met her, I was actually not making hardly any money at all.
00:15:39.400 | I mean, it was making really not much.
00:15:42.800 | And then she had just graduated from college.
00:15:45.200 | Her grandparents paid for her schooling, but she had an auto loan.
00:15:48.240 | Other than that, she didn't come into the relationship with any money either.
00:15:51.240 | So we're kind of starting it with not much when we got married.
00:15:54.720 | Did you have money at that time?
00:15:56.560 | Did you have savings, or you were still in the, "It's all in the business, and maybe
00:15:59.400 | I'll sell these things one day"?
00:16:00.760 | I had an emergency fund because I had been listening to Clark Howard for probably a couple
00:16:04.880 | years at that point.
00:16:07.360 | So I had my six-month emergency fund.
00:16:09.900 | When we got married, she had a townhouse.
00:16:11.640 | I owned a house, and we decided, "All right, I'm going to sell my house, and I'll move
00:16:14.680 | in with you," so she could be closer to her work.
00:16:17.520 | From the sale of that house, I had a good chunk of money that came in from that because
00:16:24.520 | the housing market was huge at that time.
00:16:26.760 | People were overpaying for houses, kind of like they are now.
00:16:29.280 | It was prior to the housing bubble burst.
00:16:35.600 | Did she share the financial independence vision with you?
00:16:39.800 | What was it like working through that?
00:16:41.800 | Because I just know that even in talking with my wife, as we talk about our financial plans
00:16:46.160 | and goals, it's unusual that couples share the financial independence vision, at least
00:16:52.000 | in the beginning.
00:16:53.000 | Usually, it's often one person, and then we're going to do it.
00:16:54.680 | There's a lot of work involved.
00:16:55.680 | I mean, you've been working your tail off for two decades, or at least a decade and
00:16:59.960 | a half, once you kind of started to get things established.
00:17:03.280 | It's not easy to live a life where all your friends are going out every night, and everyone's
00:17:09.200 | hanging out, and here you are working 40 hours, and then at this time, you quit.
00:17:12.920 | But here you are working morning, noon, and weekend.
00:17:17.000 | What was that like as far as your relationship?
00:17:19.680 | Part of what helped us is we had similar backgrounds and upbringing.
00:17:23.760 | We both came from small, rural towns, population 2,000, each of us different parts of the country.
00:17:30.600 | Our parents were generally middle class.
00:17:33.440 | My wife's dad was a pastor.
00:17:35.480 | My dad worked for, we called him the road boss.
00:17:37.640 | He worked for the town for a number of years, so very modest backgrounds.
00:17:41.640 | Neither of us grew up with a lot of money.
00:17:43.840 | We had beater cars during high school.
00:17:48.240 | So from that standpoint, we came from a background of we don't have fancy clothes, we don't have
00:17:53.640 | fancy cars, and we're used to not going out to eat or going on expensive vacations.
00:17:59.600 | And that's the mindset we had when we came into the marriage, very similar backgrounds.
00:18:04.360 | We're kind of comparable.
00:18:07.000 | Now after I sold my house and we were combining incomes, we did have a pretty good chunk of
00:18:11.440 | savings from that.
00:18:13.960 | I think my wife, we won't call it that she nagged me, but for several months she said,
00:18:19.400 | "We need to get somebody to help us with this.
00:18:21.320 | We need to get a third party involved to help us, guide us, and manage our finances."
00:18:27.280 | And at that point we met with a certified financial planner who agreed to take us on
00:18:32.000 | even though we were nowhere near the income level that they typically require, the level
00:18:38.280 | of wealth that people want to manage.
00:18:40.640 | He was fairly new to his company as well, I think that helped with the situation.
00:18:45.880 | And we sat down with him.
00:18:47.000 | He really helped us lay out our goals, say, "Here's what you can do with your money."
00:18:52.400 | I learned about nesting, how women need to nest and make the house look nice.
00:18:56.960 | So he said, "You can afford to give Katie $1,000 to decorate."
00:19:00.880 | I was like, "All right, well, we can keep this ugly looking couch and why do we need
00:19:06.520 | pictures on the wall?
00:19:07.520 | We don't need pictures on the wall."
00:19:09.840 | I think how you learn that when you move into a place and you're settled there and you learn
00:19:14.320 | that it's not all about how many dollars in the bank account.
00:19:18.000 | It's also about how beautiful your house looks and that the level of contentment that comes
00:19:25.320 | in a marriage from that is worth far more than a thousand bucks.
00:19:29.160 | Happy wife, happy life.
00:19:31.280 | Absolutely.
00:19:32.280 | If you were going back, what's your message?
00:19:35.680 | What's your core message now?
00:19:36.840 | You're moving into this space of talking about finance.
00:19:39.840 | What do you have to share that you think is missing out there?
00:19:43.760 | I'm trying to educate the people that were in my position early on.
00:19:48.360 | They don't know about money.
00:19:49.760 | They don't know about debt.
00:19:50.920 | They're not familiar with interest rates, how to go out and buy a car.
00:19:56.020 | I got into trouble with car loans, so I try to teach people, "Pay for a car with cash
00:20:01.080 | if you can, but if you're not, here's how to at least get the best interest rate."
00:20:05.600 | I'm trying to reach out to the younger Scott Turners that are out there that might be listening,
00:20:10.300 | but they don't want to hear from a guy who's wearing a suit and tie or a collar shirt and
00:20:15.480 | jacket, which is just not my style.
00:20:21.620 | If you were going to go back and speak to the 18-year-old you, what would be the specific
00:20:26.640 | steps that you would give them to say, "Do these things to achieve financial independence
00:20:31.780 | by 40"?
00:20:33.440 | The first thing I like to tell people is you've got to have goals, and they've really got
00:20:37.500 | to be written down.
00:20:39.920 | Our financial planner asked us to do this when we first got married.
00:20:43.220 | He said, "Write down a bunch of goals.
00:20:45.640 | What are your five-year goals?
00:20:46.640 | What are your 10-year goals?"
00:20:47.640 | We did.
00:20:48.640 | It wasn't until a couple years ago, I actually went back and pulled them out and realized,
00:20:51.840 | "Holy cow, we've actually achieved these goals."
00:20:53.840 | Isn't that the craziest thing?
00:20:54.840 | I know.
00:20:55.840 | Some of them were just off the wall.
00:20:56.960 | I had always wanted to go to Egypt, and I had completely forgotten about it.
00:21:00.600 | I'm pulling out this thing.
00:21:01.600 | It's like, "Oh, we actually went to Egypt."
00:21:05.760 | Writing down goals, and there's been studies about when you write down goals, you review
00:21:08.760 | them, you're more likely to achieve them.
00:21:11.240 | I know it's hard for everybody because it seems like such a weird concept.
00:21:14.040 | "What do you mean I've got to write stuff down?
00:21:15.520 | Why can't I just do it?"
00:21:16.520 | There's this strange power in doing that.
00:21:19.400 | It does something in your mind.
00:21:21.160 | The chemicals do something.
00:21:22.840 | Whatever happens.
00:21:23.840 | When you're writing it down, you look at it periodically, even if it's once a month, every
00:21:26.760 | six months, you're more likely to accomplish those things.
00:21:29.840 | Number one is just write down your goals.
00:21:33.200 | Number two is, and it's thrown around all the time, it's really spend less than you
00:21:37.880 | earn, live below your means, don't wipe out every paycheck as it comes in.
00:21:44.000 | Do it.
00:21:45.000 | Automate your savings.
00:21:47.040 | If you've got a 401(k), put money in your 401(k).
00:21:49.400 | If not, go out and set up an individual retirement account.
00:21:52.920 | Get started with a Roth IRA.
00:21:54.720 | You don't have to have the nicest clothes.
00:21:56.960 | You don't have to drive a BMW as soon as you get out of college, or a brand new Toyota,
00:22:01.560 | or a brand new car at all.
00:22:03.280 | You can drive your Beater for a number of years.
00:22:06.520 | If you do just those couple things, that puts you ahead of half the country, half the world,
00:22:11.960 | who just blows all their money.
00:22:15.680 | Did you shoot for a specific percentage of your income to save?
00:22:20.000 | I did.
00:22:21.000 | When I first started listening to Clark Howard, his message was, "Save 15% of your income."
00:22:25.600 | That's what I tried to set aside, 15 to 20%.
00:22:28.520 | As I got bonuses or raises, I would try to increase that because I had a very modest
00:22:33.880 | level of living when I was single.
00:22:36.440 | I did have a home and a mortgage, but I brought my lunch to work every day.
00:22:41.680 | I didn't go out to eat a whole lot.
00:22:44.120 | Part of that ties into working all the time.
00:22:45.640 | I didn't have a ton of friends, but really, from the time I got out of college, throughout
00:22:50.780 | my entire corporate life, I can count on two hands the number of times I actually went
00:22:54.600 | out and bought lunch.
00:22:56.480 | I brought my lunch to work every day and it allowed me to save thousands and thousands
00:23:01.320 | of dollars.
00:23:03.200 | Your life sounds absolutely miserable to many people.
00:23:08.400 | How do you answer them?
00:23:10.760 | It may, but I always did what I loved.
00:23:14.200 | I loved to program.
00:23:15.740 | Even though I was working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, I never considered work.
00:23:19.760 | If you think, maybe you're a musician and you love playing music, and you play music
00:23:24.600 | and get to practice that all day long, is it really work?
00:23:27.400 | If you're in a symphony or something, if that's your job, or whatever else you may happen
00:23:32.160 | to do, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that they hate.
00:23:35.680 | For you to say, "Well, you got to work 60, 70, 80 hours of work."
00:23:39.880 | Yeah, if you're in a miserable job, it does sound miserable, but if you're doing what
00:23:43.120 | you love, it's not miserable at all.
00:23:45.560 | It's not work.
00:23:47.160 | To me, it was never work.
00:23:48.840 | When I started these companies on the side, and I would not make any money for years at
00:23:53.560 | a time, I didn't care because I was doing what I loved.
00:23:56.400 | I was sitting at a computer, writing code, which is not for everybody, but I have the
00:24:00.800 | mindset of, to me, it wasn't work.
00:24:02.440 | I was solving puzzles.
00:24:03.960 | I was playing games.
00:24:05.400 | I was making creative things, using my creative mind, which is what I was wired for.
00:24:10.320 | Like what I'm doing now, I spend my days writing blog posts or working on podcasts, tweaking
00:24:15.900 | my website or doing the graphics around social media.
00:24:19.140 | It's not work.
00:24:20.140 | If I thought it was work, I wouldn't do it.
00:24:21.140 | I'd go sit on a beach and drink margaritas.
00:24:23.360 | Scott, thanks for coming on.
00:24:26.040 | This has been awesome.
00:24:27.480 | Give everyone your website, your podcast.
00:24:30.040 | Give everyone any info that you want to share with them.
00:24:32.480 | Sure.
00:24:33.480 | My website is ScottAllenTurner.com, A-L-A-N, and I can be reached on Twitter @ScottAllenTurner
00:24:39.040 | as well.
00:24:40.040 | So, it is @ScottAllenTurner on Twitter?
00:24:44.680 | Yes, it is.
00:24:45.680 | Cool, man.
00:24:46.680 | Thanks so much.
00:24:47.680 | Thank you, Joshua.
00:24:51.000 | Mix a little hard work with a little entrepreneurism, entrepreneurialism, entrepreneurship.
00:24:56.720 | I'm not sure of the right word.
00:24:59.520 | But mix a little hard work in with some entrepreneurial endeavors.
00:25:03.700 | Mix a lot of savings and some careful spending decisions in and you can set yourself up in
00:25:08.400 | a pretty cool place.
00:25:09.400 | I'll tell you, I'm 30 years old.
00:25:11.720 | I wish I'd done it when I was 20.
00:25:13.120 | I wish I was sitting here financially independent.
00:25:15.920 | Plan is by 40 or sooner, I think I'll be there.
00:25:20.280 | But right now, I'm not there.
00:25:22.360 | Kind of wish I were.
00:25:23.800 | So if you're 20 years old and you're listening to Radical Personal Finance or if you're 13
00:25:27.680 | and I'll have one 13-year-old listener who emailed me or shot me a message one time and
00:25:32.480 | said they listened, pay attention to stories like this.
00:25:36.160 | And hey, guess what?
00:25:37.160 | If you're 30 or 60 or 70, pay attention to stories like this.
00:25:45.040 | You take it from there.
00:25:46.040 | I guess paying attention isn't the only step.
00:25:47.960 | You got to actually do something.
00:25:49.320 | But hey, do something, would you?
00:25:54.160 | I'll let you decide today what you want to do.
00:25:56.700 | Thank you all for listening to these interviews.
00:25:59.160 | We'll be back from the Interview Blitz starting in October.
00:26:02.840 | It's the Interview Blitz while I am away out of town at XYPN and FinCon.
00:26:09.440 | Also while I'm working with my family and kind of getting some things caught up with
00:26:12.560 | the show.
00:26:13.560 | My plan is October we should be back to the more normal ebb and flow of the show with
00:26:18.400 | fewer interview shows.
00:26:19.880 | We'll see if that happens, but that's the plan as this is being pre-recorded.
00:26:23.680 | It's going to happen.
00:26:24.680 | Of course, no good plan survives contact with the enemy.
00:26:27.720 | So I guess tune in in October and you'll see.
00:26:31.240 | Thank you to each and every one of you who support the show.
00:26:32.680 | Please consider if you're not, please consider going to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron,
00:26:36.760 | signing up to be a patron of the show, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron.
00:26:40.160 | The big goal around here is 250 patrons total by the date of September.
00:26:46.560 | By the way, in case you think that your contribution there doesn't matter, you might know that
00:26:51.960 | fewer than 5% of you listening actually support the show.
00:26:56.480 | So most of you just listen, which is fine, but very few of you support the show.
00:27:01.200 | So each and every one of you who does makes a huge difference for me and my ability to
00:27:05.640 | continue to bring you in-depth, high-quality content.
00:27:09.000 | I'd really love to keep doing that.
00:27:10.520 | So please go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron and support the show.