RPF0413-Camp_Mustache_SE_2017_speech
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00:01:23.000 | I've just returned from Gainesville, Florida,
00:01:25.000 | where I was speaking at Camp Mustache Southeast 2017.
00:01:29.000 | And today I share with you the audio from the speech
00:01:32.000 | that I gave on Saturday evening.
00:01:34.000 | Please forgive the difficult start.
00:01:37.000 | I had some, even though I'd gotten there early
00:01:39.000 | and practiced it all, all of a sudden in the moment
00:01:42.000 | I had some technical details that messed everything up
00:01:45.000 | and you'll hear as I begin, I'm a bit flustered
00:01:48.000 | and it takes me a few minutes to settle down.
00:01:50.000 | But the topic is why wait until you're financially independent
00:01:54.000 | to live like you're financially independent?
00:01:56.000 | Hey, if you can start early, why not start now?
00:01:59.000 | Live from Camp Mustache Southeast 2017,
00:02:03.000 | it's Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:05.000 | (upbeat music)
00:02:09.000 | I'll leave the mic open this time.
00:02:11.000 | For those on the podcast,
00:02:12.000 | I just did this whole beautiful introduction
00:02:13.000 | with the mic on and off,
00:02:14.000 | but somehow with this jury rigged process
00:02:16.000 | to be able to record a live show in front of you,
00:02:20.000 | we messed the whole thing up.
00:02:21.000 | So welcome to real world.
00:02:22.000 | This is Radical Personal Finance,
00:02:23.000 | the show dedicated to providing you with the insight,
00:02:26.000 | the intelligence, and the fun, and the education,
00:02:29.000 | and everything that you need to live a rich life now
00:02:31.000 | while also building a plan for financial freedom
00:02:33.000 | in 10 years or less.
00:02:34.000 | My name is Joshua Sheets, we're recording live here tonight
00:02:37.000 | in front of an audience of about 45
00:02:39.000 | hardcore mustachians, that's what you all call yourself, right?
00:02:43.000 | (audience cheering)
00:02:44.000 | Hardcore mustachians at Camp Mustache 2017,
00:02:49.000 | including we have Mr. Money Mustache himself right here.
00:02:53.000 | So we're gonna do a couple things here.
00:02:56.000 | I'm gonna first just share a little bit with you,
00:02:58.000 | and then this will go out as a live podcast as well.
00:03:01.000 | So we're gonna first start a little bit with my journey,
00:03:03.000 | talk with you a little bit about financial independence,
00:03:05.000 | and the talk tonight is entitled
00:03:06.000 | Why Wait to Be Financially Independent,
00:03:08.000 | excuse me, Why Wait to Live
00:03:10.000 | Like You're Financially Independent Until You Are.
00:03:13.000 | Why should you wait until you are financially independent
00:03:16.000 | to live like you're financially independent?
00:03:18.000 | That's the point, third time's a charm.
00:03:21.000 | Technology, a little rule of thumb,
00:03:22.000 | is technology will always mess you up as a public speaker,
00:03:25.000 | so especially when you're trying something new.
00:03:28.000 | For those of you who don't know me,
00:03:30.000 | my path with financial independence and personal finance
00:03:33.000 | is very different probably than many of yours.
00:03:36.000 | As I tell the story, I was the 13-year-old nerd
00:03:38.000 | who was reading books on personal finance and investing.
00:03:41.000 | I always loved the personal finance section of the bookstore.
00:03:44.000 | That was my favorite place to be.
00:03:46.000 | And I always wanted to be rich.
00:03:48.000 | That was goal number one, was I wanted to be rich.
00:03:51.000 | Now, I always defined rich not as financially independent.
00:03:54.000 | I defined it as rich.
00:03:55.000 | I wanted to be a big, kind of big-shot business tycoon.
00:03:57.000 | That was always the goal.
00:03:58.000 | When I went into college, it was to go in and study business
00:04:01.000 | so that I would become the Fortune 500 CEO
00:04:03.000 | in the corner office.
00:04:05.000 | Well, I worked my way through,
00:04:07.000 | and at 18 years old, I started the proper steps.
00:04:09.000 | I remember on my 18th birthday, I bought my first mutual fund,
00:04:12.000 | and I opened my first credit cards on my 18th birthday.
00:04:15.000 | So I sat there at my kitchen table, and I said,
00:04:17.000 | "Okay, we're going to get things started."
00:04:19.000 | I opened a Roth IRA and decided that I was going to get things started.
00:04:23.000 | Worked my way through college, and during college,
00:04:25.000 | I continued my interest in personal finance.
00:04:27.000 | My first year of--freshman year of college,
00:04:30.000 | I worked my way through.
00:04:31.000 | My sophomore year of college, I decided I had been working too hard,
00:04:34.000 | so I decided to start borrowing money.
00:04:36.000 | It's a lot easier to borrow money.
00:04:38.000 | And what's interesting is, in order to graduate from college debt-free,
00:04:42.000 | my first year, I worked a total of three jobs concurrently,
00:04:46.000 | and I was able to get through debt-free.
00:04:48.000 | I did pretty well.
00:04:49.000 | I took 18 hours of class, and I did pretty well.
00:04:52.000 | My second year of college, I started borrowing money on student loans,
00:04:56.000 | and in order to make sure that I could have more fun,
00:05:00.000 | I didn't work, and my grades went way down.
00:05:02.000 | So I dropped classes, stopped working, and my grades went down.
00:05:05.000 | Theoretically, I had a good time, but looking back on it,
00:05:07.000 | I don't know that it was all that good.
00:05:09.000 | My junior year, I studied abroad, continued borrowing money,
00:05:12.000 | dropped out of school after coming back from Costa Rica
00:05:14.000 | because I didn't know what I wanted to do.
00:05:15.000 | Why am I spending all this money going into debt to get a college degree?
00:05:19.000 | And then my senior year, after my brother had given me a copy
00:05:22.000 | of Dave Ramsey's book, My Total Money Makeover,
00:05:24.000 | I decided that it was time to get serious,
00:05:26.000 | and after reading it, disagreeing with him, reading it,
00:05:29.000 | disagreeing with him, reading it, finally saying,
00:05:31.000 | "You know what? If I had no payments, how much money would I have?"
00:05:35.000 | I decided that I would go ahead and do what he had to say.
00:05:39.000 | So my senior year, I worked full-time, worked 40 hours a week,
00:05:42.000 | took 19 hours of class, and was able to graduate on time in my four years,
00:05:48.000 | and I was also able to pay off all my student loans,
00:05:50.000 | graduate completely debt-free, while also having cash flow
00:05:53.000 | in my senior year.
00:05:54.000 | And so I experienced kind of the benefit of focus,
00:05:56.000 | and also that year I got the best grades I had gotten in college,
00:06:00.000 | straight A's all the way through.
00:06:02.000 | So that was really a watershed moment in my life,
00:06:05.000 | to realize how, with focus and attention, we can make a tremendous difference.
00:06:10.000 | When I went past there, I was in the corporate world.
00:06:13.000 | I got laid off from the job that I worked in college.
00:06:16.000 | I mentioned that the other night when we were doing introductions.
00:06:19.000 | I was doing well, but I wound up getting laid off,
00:06:21.000 | and I thought, "Wow, I thought this only happened to other people."
00:06:25.000 | Very good and humbling experience.
00:06:27.000 | But I didn't know what I wanted to do.
00:06:29.000 | I knew there were a number of things that I wanted in a job,
00:06:32.000 | but I didn't know how to achieve them.
00:06:34.000 | So a couple weeks later I was meeting with--having lunch with my former boss,
00:06:38.000 | and he said, "Have you considered the financial services industry?"
00:06:41.000 | I said, "No, not really."
00:06:43.000 | I was a hardcore index fund guy.
00:06:45.000 | I hated whole life insurance.
00:06:47.000 | I thought brokers were out to make you broker.
00:06:49.000 | Everything's a total scam and a total waste of money.
00:06:52.000 | So I said, "I can't do that."
00:06:55.000 | But I decided to go ahead and start doing some interviews.
00:06:58.000 | So he sent me to a friend of his who was actually his financial advisor,
00:07:01.000 | and I sat down with the man for my initial conversation.
00:07:05.000 | I was really impressed with him.
00:07:06.000 | He was a Navy nuclear engineer.
00:07:08.000 | He was a certified financial planner,
00:07:10.000 | chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant,
00:07:12.000 | and I sat down, and the whole time we argued about whole life insurance.
00:07:15.000 | Basically I always set out to convince him
00:07:17.000 | that whole life insurance was the biggest scam in the history of financial products,
00:07:20.000 | and he started telling me things that I didn't know.
00:07:23.000 | And I realized, "Wait a second.
00:07:25.000 | Maybe I'm not as smart as I think I am.
00:07:27.000 | Maybe there's another side to this type of story."
00:07:30.000 | So that opened my eyes.
00:07:31.000 | Just the other aspects of the business opened my eyes,
00:07:33.000 | and I realized that if I worked as a financial advisor,
00:07:36.000 | I could get a lot of the lifestyle benefits that I wanted to get.
00:07:39.000 | I could get a flexible schedule, a flexible business,
00:07:42.000 | doing work that I cared about, helping people,
00:07:44.000 | and make a lot of money doing it.
00:07:46.000 | I went and interviewed around the business.
00:07:47.000 | I ultimately wound up with that same company,
00:07:49.000 | a company called Northwestern Mutual,
00:07:52.000 | and I started with them at 23 years old,
00:07:54.000 | and I was a fresh-faced, believe it or not.
00:07:57.000 | I have a baby face hidden under this beard.
00:07:59.000 | And I was 23 years old, and I was driving a $2,000 Honda Accord
00:08:02.000 | with 220,000 miles on it, going out and said,
00:08:05.000 | "Okay, now I've got to learn the ropes in the financial services business."
00:08:09.000 | So I started off selling life insurance, disability insurance,
00:08:11.000 | long-term care insurance, and health insurance.
00:08:15.000 | And I went to school and just started studying.
00:08:18.000 | And over the years I transitioned my practice from an insurance primary practice
00:08:22.000 | to an investment and a retirement planning practice.
00:08:25.000 | Along the way, I got my certified financial planner designation,
00:08:28.000 | chartered life underwriter, chartered financial consultant.
00:08:31.000 | I went on and got a master's degree in financial planning
00:08:33.000 | and a number of other industry designations,
00:08:35.000 | because the amount you know is important.
00:08:39.000 | So along the way, I grew very frustrated
00:08:42.000 | with the world of personal finance and the world of financial advice.
00:08:45.000 | And I got frustrated how so much with my learning,
00:08:49.000 | how much of the financial advice that I heard out in the world of punditry
00:08:53.000 | was not wrong, it just wasn't right in every situation.
00:08:58.000 | How there are more elegant solutions,
00:09:00.000 | how there are ways to use different aspects of the tax code,
00:09:03.000 | there are ways to use different financial products in different situations.
00:09:07.000 | And I also grew frustrated with how there was this really exciting world
00:09:11.000 | of early retirement, financial independence, stuff that made me click,
00:09:15.000 | and yet it wasn't working in the mainstream.
00:09:18.000 | And as a financial advisor, I sat down and asked hundreds of people,
00:09:22.000 | "What do you want to do when you retire? What age do you want to retire?"
00:09:25.000 | And the same standard answer, 65. "Well, what do you want to do? People don't know."
00:09:28.000 | And I said, "Somebody should go and try to cross this chasm."
00:09:32.000 | So in July of 2013, I sat down in the middle of my bed
00:09:35.000 | with a digital voice recorder and I said,
00:09:38.000 | "Okay, hey, this is Joshua," and I talked for 45 minutes.
00:09:41.000 | And if you ever want to hear what I said, it's still in my podcast feed.
00:09:44.000 | It's the very first episode of the podcast.
00:09:46.000 | Just sat there and just talked and turned it off, and I listened to it later.
00:09:49.000 | I said, "Would I listen to that?" And I said, "I would listen to that."
00:09:52.000 | It wasn't great, but it was interesting.
00:09:54.000 | There were some interesting concepts that would be helpful.
00:09:56.000 | And as a financial advisor, I spent a lot of time on the road.
00:09:59.000 | So I've always been a--read a lot, but I also drove a lot.
00:10:02.000 | And so I would probably listen to about 50 to 60 hours of audio per week
00:10:07.000 | on 2x speed. So I've consumed hundreds of hours of audio.
00:10:11.000 | And I'm a verbal person, so I think verbally as well.
00:10:14.000 | So I looked around at the world of blogging and I said,
00:10:17.000 | "There's lots of great voices there."
00:10:19.000 | I have no particular talent or skill to add,
00:10:22.000 | but I couldn't find the type of podcast that I wanted to listen to.
00:10:25.000 | So I said, "Well, maybe I should create it."
00:10:28.000 | So the first three weeks, I created ten episodes, and I just really enjoyed it.
00:10:32.000 | And then I went to my company and I submitted to them and I said,
00:10:34.000 | "Okay, here's my outside business activity."
00:10:37.000 | And I get a phone call and they said,
00:10:40.000 | "Take the show down or leave one of the two."
00:10:44.000 | Well, my wife was, as I remember, six, seven, eight--
00:10:46.000 | six months pregnant with our first baby.
00:10:49.000 | I had just bought a house.
00:10:51.000 | Now I was very proud--if I told you what my name was in the Mustachian forums,
00:10:55.000 | I could go show you my house purchase.
00:10:59.000 | But I had just bought a house. It was a beautiful purchase.
00:11:02.000 | It was right next to my office. I could walk to work.
00:11:05.000 | It was two-thirds of a mile from my office.
00:11:07.000 | We had gotten rid of our second car and were in this situation.
00:11:09.000 | But still, I wasn't financially in a position to where I could just walk away
00:11:13.000 | from what I had spent five years building.
00:11:15.000 | So I reluctantly shut the website down.
00:11:18.000 | And I spent the next six months trying to decide
00:11:20.000 | if there was some way that I could make a change,
00:11:22.000 | because I saw a hunger for people, for information, and for education
00:11:27.000 | that was presented in a straightforward way--
00:11:29.000 | to treat people like adults, not to say, "You have to do this
00:11:31.000 | because this is the only way to do it,"
00:11:33.000 | but to say, "Here are the different options, and you can choose.
00:11:35.000 | Here's how this works. Now make a choice."
00:11:38.000 | So I spent six months deciding whether or not I was going to do it,
00:11:41.000 | and then I spent six more months deciding how.
00:11:44.000 | And the reason was I had to actually completely leave my industry
00:11:48.000 | in order to make the jump.
00:11:50.000 | There was no way for me to stay in the industry.
00:11:53.000 | I called around. I talked to people like Jeff Rose,
00:11:55.000 | some of you guys would know, or some of the financial advisors
00:11:57.000 | that are in the media space, and I concluded that there was no way
00:12:00.000 | for me to stay in the industry and do what I wanted to do.
00:12:02.000 | So it took me a while to figure out the plan.
00:12:04.000 | But I figured out the plan. I said, "If I just leave
00:12:06.000 | and go get a bird-brain job that doesn't require any kind of long-term thing,
00:12:09.000 | I can run my bills and pay for my expenses
00:12:12.000 | and not have to dip into savings for that while building the business."
00:12:15.000 | And on July 1, 2014, I launched Radical Personal Finance.
00:12:18.000 | Fast forward, we're two and a half years later,
00:12:21.000 | and I worked part-time doing that--
00:12:26.000 | I worked part-time and created the show full-time for the first year,
00:12:31.000 | and then after a year, I was able to make enough money
00:12:33.000 | from the show and my associated business
00:12:35.000 | to where since then I've been living on the income
00:12:37.000 | from Radical Personal Finance.
00:12:39.000 | So...
00:12:40.000 | - What was your bird-brain job?
00:12:42.000 | - [laughs]
00:12:43.000 | So at first, I thought, "Well, maybe I can go and deliver pizzas,"
00:12:47.000 | because I heard you could make $20 an hour,
00:12:49.000 | and I needed about $2,500 a month of income.
00:12:51.000 | I figured if I did it at night and delivered pizzas,
00:12:53.000 | then I could listen to podcasts, I could compose shows
00:12:56.000 | while I'm doing it, and I could make $20 an hour.
00:12:58.000 | Well, I did it for a week, and I found out
00:13:00.000 | you can't make $20 an hour delivering pizzas.
00:13:02.000 | No matter how hard you hustle, you make $10.73 an hour.
00:13:06.000 | [laughter]
00:13:07.000 | So it wasn't worth it.
00:13:08.000 | So then I thought, "Well, maybe I should go and sell cars.
00:13:10.000 | I like sales."
00:13:11.000 | What I ultimately did was I found a consulting role
00:13:13.000 | using my background in financial planning.
00:13:15.000 | So I worked as a back-office consultant
00:13:17.000 | making financial plans for financial advisors
00:13:20.000 | and then training them on how to present them to the clients
00:13:22.000 | in a way that the clients would actually get it.
00:13:24.000 | There are some financial advisors who understand financial planning,
00:13:27.000 | but the majority of people whose name says "financial advisor"
00:13:29.000 | on their card don't actually get financial planning.
00:13:32.000 | So my job was to educate the advisors
00:13:34.000 | so that they could do a better job for their clients.
00:13:36.000 | So that worked great.
00:13:37.000 | It was completely on my own schedule.
00:13:38.000 | I did it on off hours.
00:13:40.000 | So my number one job was radical personal finance.
00:13:42.000 | I did the show every single day,
00:13:44.000 | and that was how I financed my transition.
00:13:47.000 | Soon after I left--story I mentioned last night--
00:13:50.000 | I went out to--flew out to Colorado
00:13:52.000 | and was driving up to Wyoming to visit my 100-year-old grandmother,
00:13:54.000 | and I was able to swing by, and I emailed Pete,
00:13:58.000 | and I said, "Hey, I'm coming through Colorado. Are you around?"
00:14:00.000 | And he invited me by and graciously spent the evening
00:14:03.000 | with him and his wife, and another--he was hosting a meetup.
00:14:05.000 | And then he actually very graciously hosted me in his attic for the night.
00:14:09.000 | So that was a very gracious thing.
00:14:12.000 | But it was funny. As I told him, I said, "Here's what I'm going to do."
00:14:14.000 | I don't know if you remember. I said, "I'm going to create this podcast.
00:14:16.000 | It's going to be five days a week.
00:14:17.000 | It's going to be just hardcore financial information,
00:14:20.000 | really interesting."
00:14:21.000 | He said, "Who would listen to that?
00:14:23.000 | Why would anyone listen to that much?"
00:14:24.000 | So I guess podcasts don't fit into the retirement lifestyle.
00:14:27.000 | But that's been my journey so far.
00:14:29.000 | Now, in that process, I feel like I have a unique perspective.
00:14:33.000 | And I have a unique perspective based partly on my professional background.
00:14:37.000 | Remember, I came from the world of personal finance.
00:14:39.000 | Then I went to the world of professional financial advice,
00:14:41.000 | and now I'm back in the world of personal finance.
00:14:43.000 | And so I can kind of bridge that gap.
00:14:45.000 | If you ever want to ask me questions on why do financial advisors
00:14:48.000 | do the things they do or why do they believe the things they do, etc.,
00:14:51.000 | I can answer that.
00:14:53.000 | And that is a whole speech in and of itself right there.
00:14:57.000 | But I also have an interesting perspective of trying to show how these things relate.
00:15:01.000 | And because I study the industry, I kind of see what works and what doesn't.
00:15:06.000 | So the reason I chose the title of the talk, which was
00:15:13.000 | "Why Wait to Live Like You're Financially Independent
00:15:15.000 | Until You Are Financially Independent,"
00:15:17.000 | is because I feel like this is one of the concepts that's under-discussed,
00:15:20.000 | especially in our area.
00:15:23.000 | And I want to start with a simple question.
00:15:25.000 | I've divided you into the room.
00:15:28.000 | I've divided the room in half, and I've put those of you who are financially independent on one side,
00:15:31.000 | and I've put those of you who aren't financially independent on the other.
00:15:34.000 | So I want you to think. I want you to ask a question. I want you to think.
00:15:37.000 | In the last day and a half, as you have been visiting with your compatriots,
00:15:42.000 | have all of you spent all of your time visiting with people on this side of the room?
00:15:47.000 | And all of you spent all your time visiting with this side of the room?
00:15:49.000 | Because we don't talk to them, we don't have anything in common?
00:15:52.000 | No? No?
00:15:54.000 | There's actually been cross-proliferation?
00:15:57.000 | Okay.
00:15:59.000 | So my point with that is to say that although in our minds we often think there's a big difference
00:16:05.000 | between not being financially independent and being financially independent,
00:16:10.000 | you guys haven't demonstrated that in the last few days.
00:16:15.000 | You've talked to one another, you probably all have interesting lives, interesting experiences,
00:16:21.000 | and you're all on the stages and journeys toward financial independence, in financial independence,
00:16:26.000 | and it's not a hard and fast line.
00:16:29.000 | Now I think this often gets lost in our thinking.
00:16:35.000 | I am not financially independent by the standard measured as I have enough income,
00:16:41.000 | passive income from the dividends and income from my investment portfolio to support my lifestyle.
00:16:47.000 | But I feel financially independent.
00:16:50.000 | I don't think I feel as financially independent as I will feel when I'm there,
00:16:54.000 | but I still feel financially independent.
00:16:57.000 | I'm here, and you all are here, with these people.
00:17:02.000 | Don't miss that.
00:17:04.000 | It's not like there's a super secret club after financial independence,
00:17:09.000 | but before, like you just can't do anything fun.
00:17:14.000 | You think there is, and I just don't know about it, right?
00:17:19.000 | Now it's given away.
00:17:25.000 | So I really want to drive this point home, because I think sometimes the sacrifices
00:17:32.000 | of focusing exclusively on the FI date are a little bit too high,
00:17:39.000 | and we should consider very seriously if they're worth paying.
00:17:43.000 | Now I love the questions that JD asked this morning.
00:17:46.000 | I love his presentation on mission statements, but I want to give you one more question.
00:17:51.000 | I wonder if any of you have ever done this one as a journaling activity.
00:17:55.000 | Here's the question.
00:17:56.000 | I challenge you to write this down and to think about it.
00:18:00.000 | This morning you did JD's questions.
00:18:02.000 | Here's my question.
00:18:04.000 | What would you do if you knew you could never retire?
00:18:15.000 | What would you do if you knew for the rest of your life
00:18:18.000 | it were never possible to become financially independent?
00:18:26.000 | How would you approach your life under those circumstances?
00:18:30.000 | Yeah, what would you do as a career?
00:18:32.000 | How would you build your life?
00:18:36.000 | You have to support yourself.
00:18:38.000 | Yes, you have to be able to live, but you can never quit work.
00:18:46.000 | A lot of people have been a house husband.
00:18:49.000 | If you find the right woman, you can be a house husband.
00:18:52.000 | I asked this question not because I believe that achieving financial independence is not possible.
00:19:00.000 | I believe it is.
00:19:01.000 | I asked the question not because I believe achieving financial independence is not worthwhile.
00:19:05.000 | I believe it is.
00:19:06.000 | I'm working on that plan.
00:19:09.000 | But my emphasis to you is that in many ways I think you would probably pursue
00:19:16.000 | some of the things you're doing now
00:19:18.000 | and live similar to some of the things that you're doing now.
00:19:21.000 | If you think about what is Pete's core message with Mr. Money Mustache,
00:19:24.000 | I'm going to sum it up.
00:19:26.000 | I think Mr. Money Mustache is a secret ploy,
00:19:31.000 | the whole financial independence thing,
00:19:33.000 | is a secret ploy to get people to realize how awesome their lives already are
00:19:37.000 | and can be with less.
00:19:41.000 | Now, Pete, if you had to go back to work,
00:19:43.000 | would you all of a sudden move out of the house that you're living in now
00:19:45.000 | and all of a sudden say, "I have to go somewhere else"?
00:19:49.000 | If you had to go back to work,
00:19:52.000 | would you start by looking for a job in Longmont, Colorado,
00:19:55.000 | or would you immediately say, "I'm going to Miami, Florida"?
00:19:58.000 | Yeah.
00:20:00.000 | We could go through that whole list.
00:20:02.000 | I'm sure Pete would consider it.
00:20:05.000 | He'd say, "Man, I live in this super fancy house.
00:20:07.000 | I don't really need it.
00:20:09.000 | I could live cheaper, but my bet --"
00:20:11.000 | I won't ask him to achieve it.
00:20:13.000 | "My bet is he'd stay in that house.
00:20:15.000 | It's not that expensive.
00:20:16.000 | It's not that crazy of a cost.
00:20:18.000 | It's not that hard to justify.
00:20:19.000 | It's just a comfortable house that he's put a lot of his sweat equity into
00:20:23.000 | making it exactly how he wants it to be."
00:20:26.000 | And I think that if you look --
00:20:28.000 | JD, if you had to go back to work,
00:20:31.000 | would you all of a sudden move out of where you're living
00:20:33.000 | and say, "I'm going to go to Miami, Florida and do something different"?
00:20:35.000 | And what would you say to him?
00:20:37.000 | Bill, similar?
00:20:38.000 | Right.
00:20:39.000 | So, again, no question.
00:20:42.000 | Monday mornings, I think, are much more free over here
00:20:46.000 | than they are for those of us over here.
00:20:48.000 | Amen.
00:20:49.000 | Right?
00:20:50.000 | But the lifestyle doesn't look that different.
00:20:55.000 | So if you think about what you would do if you knew you could never retire,
00:20:59.000 | I have found that to be an incredibly helpful thing.
00:21:04.000 | Where would I live?
00:21:05.000 | How would I live?
00:21:06.000 | What would my daily schedule look like?
00:21:08.000 | Earlier I was having an interview with Joel and --
00:21:12.000 | where are you?
00:21:13.000 | Joel and Alexis.
00:21:14.000 | There you are.
00:21:15.000 | I was looking for two, and I found two.
00:21:17.000 | I was having an interview with Joel and Alexis,
00:21:19.000 | and they were talking about how, Pete, you wrote,
00:21:21.000 | and you said that one of the greatest things you did
00:21:23.000 | was destroy your alarm clock.
00:21:26.000 | So let me give you an example.
00:21:27.000 | For me, my definition of financial independence has often been this.
00:21:31.000 | My definition was,
00:21:32.000 | "I don't want to have to get up with an alarm clock and leave the house."
00:21:37.000 | I don't want to have to get up with an alarm clock.
00:21:39.000 | So immediately after I closed my business,
00:21:43.000 | my financial planning firm,
00:21:44.000 | and moved over to starting Radical Personal Finance,
00:21:47.000 | I lost the need to have an alarm clock.
00:21:51.000 | I lost that need because I run my own schedule.
00:21:53.000 | I do it when and where I want to do it.
00:21:56.000 | Go ahead.
00:21:57.000 | How old are your kids?
00:21:58.000 | Do you have one kid or two?
00:21:59.000 | I have two.
00:22:00.000 | Three-year-old and one-year-old and one on the way.
00:22:03.000 | So, yes, we'll come back to that in a second.
00:22:05.000 | But I lost--this was when they were still little and slept late.
00:22:09.000 | Kids sleep late for a while, and here's the secret.
00:22:12.000 | Don't move your child from a crib to a toddler bed too soon.
00:22:15.000 | My son was so well-trained in a crib, he would sleep until 9 a.m.
00:22:18.000 | It was great.
00:22:19.000 | And then we moved him into a toddler bed.
00:22:21.000 | The next day, 4.30 in the morning, he was up.
00:22:24.000 | It took me five months--five months of training to get him to sleep
00:22:27.000 | until about 6 or 6.30.
00:22:30.000 | That's a bit of an aside.
00:22:31.000 | What I found, though--and so I worked on this,
00:22:34.000 | and I put myself in that position
00:22:36.000 | where I would focus on not using the alarm clock.
00:22:39.000 | But then I found I wasn't getting as much accomplished as I wanted to.
00:22:43.000 | I found that I wanted to make a bigger impact.
00:22:45.000 | I wanted to get more done.
00:22:47.000 | And so then I started setting the alarm clock again.
00:22:49.000 | And so now, for me now, I don't have to set an alarm clock.
00:22:52.000 | Yes, I have children, and they sleep until 6.45 or 7.
00:22:56.000 | But what I find now is I set the alarm clock for 5, 4.30 in the morning
00:23:01.000 | because I want to, because I feel very seriously--
00:23:05.000 | I feel like I'm doing what I'm doing.
00:23:07.000 | I'm not a night owl. I'm an early-to-bed guy.
00:23:09.000 | I'm useless after 9 o'clock. My brain shuts down.
00:23:12.000 | 10 o'clock, I'm dead.
00:23:13.000 | I was trying to be nice last night and talk, but it doesn't work.
00:23:16.000 | For me, 4.35 in the morning is a great time.
00:23:18.000 | So the point is I don't have to set an alarm clock, but I want to
00:23:21.000 | because I feel that what I'm doing is important.
00:23:23.000 | And I'm convinced this is a major thing that all of us want.
00:23:27.000 | We want to feel like what we're doing is important.
00:23:31.000 | Now, I challenge you to think seriously about this question.
00:23:35.000 | And I'll give you another one.
00:23:37.000 | So one was, what would you do if you knew you could never retire?
00:23:39.000 | A few of you didn't believe that.
00:23:41.000 | What would you do if President-elect Trump issued an edict
00:23:46.000 | that said wealthy people are bad and he took away all your money?
00:23:51.000 | So you could do that one if you want to.
00:23:53.000 | It could have been President-elect Hillary Clinton, whichever it was.
00:23:55.000 | The point is this. Things happen.
00:23:57.000 | And throughout history, lots of rich people have found themselves suddenly poor.
00:24:04.000 | Lots of rich people have gone through a change in government.
00:24:07.000 | I live in West Palm Beach, Florida. I have lots of Cuban friends.
00:24:10.000 | Lots of Cuban friends who went to Miami after Fidel Castro came to power
00:24:13.000 | and took all their money, took all their business,
00:24:15.000 | and they fled with the clothes on their back.
00:24:17.000 | I'm deeply interested in history.
00:24:19.000 | There were all kinds of Jews who fled out of Europe
00:24:21.000 | with nothing but the clothes on their back.
00:24:23.000 | And guess what? Many of them came to the United States, to other places,
00:24:28.000 | and they started again, and they did it again.
00:24:30.000 | They got rich again.
00:24:32.000 | One of the most important things about becoming financially independent
00:24:35.000 | is the person that you become to become financially independent.
00:24:39.000 | It's acquiring the skills. It's acquiring the perspective.
00:24:42.000 | It's acquiring the lifestyle. It's acquiring these habits.
00:24:46.000 | The reason that the rich get richer and the poor get poorer
00:24:49.000 | is not always, or even necessarily, the fact that somehow
00:24:56.000 | there's some mass oppression of people.
00:25:00.000 | The reason the rich get richer is because they do different things
00:25:04.000 | than the poor do in general. It's not true on a global basis.
00:25:07.000 | In the United States, however, that's true.
00:25:09.000 | So I challenge you to spend a lot of time focused and thinking
00:25:13.000 | about the impact that you want your life to have
00:25:19.000 | and set your life up in such a way that you're going to achieve that goal,
00:25:23.000 | but you're not going to hate the process.
00:25:25.000 | Now, for those of you who are financially independent,
00:25:28.000 | if I told you that you could pursue a very aggressive plan
00:25:32.000 | for financial independence, very aggressive and do it very quickly,
00:25:35.000 | but it were going to cut a decade off of your life at the end,
00:25:39.000 | how many of you would take that bargain?
00:25:43.000 | I don't think any of you would. None of us would.
00:25:47.000 | Now, what this is pointing out--I hope you recognize what this points out--
00:25:51.000 | (audience member) If I were younger, I might take it.
00:25:53.000 | (laughter)
00:25:54.000 | There we go. Age brings a little bit of perspective.
00:25:56.000 | What I'm pointing out is that life in pre-FI is not so bad
00:26:01.000 | if you're doing the types of things that are going to lead you to FI.
00:26:05.000 | And so that's why JD was joking me that I talk a lot
00:26:08.000 | about the stages of financial independence.
00:26:10.000 | I think you should enjoy the process.
00:26:12.000 | It's on my website, there's a podcast, JD has his version of that.
00:26:15.000 | Financial independence can be experienced in stages.
00:26:17.000 | And I want to just give you a couple of ideas
00:26:20.000 | of some things to add into your thoughts
00:26:22.000 | in addition to simply that one day, that one goal.
00:26:27.000 | These are not my stages, these are just things to consider.
00:26:30.000 | The number one thing is your career choice.
00:26:35.000 | You can become financially independent
00:26:38.000 | in a career that's well-suited to you,
00:26:41.000 | and you can become financially independent
00:26:43.000 | in a career that's not well-suited to you.
00:26:45.000 | These are not mutually exclusive things.
00:26:49.000 | So for those of you over here, if you hate your job, change it.
00:26:54.000 | There are lots of jobs out there that will pay you
00:26:56.000 | double the money that you're making now
00:26:58.000 | that are much more well-suited for you.
00:27:01.000 | And there's no reason why searching for a better job,
00:27:04.000 | a more profitable job, a job that is more appropriate
00:27:07.000 | for your unique skills, experience, talents, and ability
00:27:10.000 | has to in any way conflict with financial independence.
00:27:14.000 | The only reason it would conflict is if you were only focused
00:27:16.000 | on that one date, that FI date, and you said,
00:27:19.000 | "I'm going to put my head down and blow my way through to it."
00:27:22.000 | These are not mutually exclusive.
00:27:24.000 | You don't have to choose one or the other.
00:27:26.000 | You can choose a great job, and if it takes a little while
00:27:28.000 | for you to move to that other job
00:27:30.000 | and then start to make the plans along the way,
00:27:33.000 | that's perfectly valid.
00:27:35.000 | This afternoon, Felisa and I did a podcast.
00:27:37.000 | I encourage you, look for it on my feed.
00:27:39.000 | It was powerful because she shared her process up and then down,
00:27:44.000 | and now she's working her way back up, and she says,
00:27:46.000 | "Oh, I'm five to seven years."
00:27:48.000 | But, Felisa, how would you have felt if the only thing you did
00:27:51.000 | for the last 15 years of your life, or 10 to 15 years,
00:27:54.000 | was stress about the fact that you weren't financially independent?
00:27:57.000 | You would have missed the whole most important years
00:27:59.000 | of your children's life.
00:28:02.000 | So sometimes the price for FI is very high,
00:28:07.000 | and I think sometimes it can be too high.
00:28:10.000 | I'm not the one to say what it is or what it isn't.
00:28:13.000 | I don't think that you're suffering just because you don't have a car.
00:28:16.000 | Pete was wearing a shirt yesterday.
00:28:18.000 | What was the one, the bicycle, and it said Energizer, or what was it?
00:28:21.000 | Antidepressant, right?
00:28:23.000 | So you can look, and that's what everything that he writes about,
00:28:26.000 | everything that is so attractive, the reason why he's created a leaderless cult,
00:28:30.000 | is that he talks about how great things are.
00:28:33.000 | And we're all comparing, "Hey, who spends less? I spend less. You spend less."
00:28:36.000 | It's the weirdest conversations in the world.
00:28:38.000 | It really is. It really is.
00:28:41.000 | And it shows how, when you frame things in a different way.
00:28:44.000 | So I encourage you, think carefully about your job.
00:28:46.000 | Other things. Debtlessness.
00:28:48.000 | Much of the stress that people experience is based upon debt.
00:28:52.000 | We all have stories of consumer debt.
00:28:55.000 | If you just simply eliminate or substantially lower your debt,
00:28:58.000 | you remove a massive amount of the stress.
00:29:01.000 | I'll pick on Felisa because she told her story publicly.
00:29:03.000 | If Felisa and her husband had not had massive amounts of debt,
00:29:06.000 | because they were very focused on growing as quickly as possible,
00:29:10.000 | they wouldn't have experienced the massive stress.
00:29:12.000 | Now, they wouldn't have been financially independent as quickly as leverage,
00:29:15.000 | theoretically, could have gotten them there,
00:29:17.000 | but they would have avoided a whole lot of stress.
00:29:20.000 | I was telling some of you last night, I used to be so hard on Dave Ramsey.
00:29:24.000 | I had so many conflicts with him. I was so frustrated with him.
00:29:28.000 | I have almost no criticisms of Dave Ramsey anymore.
00:29:32.000 | Because now that I've walked a little bit in his shoes,
00:29:35.000 | I realize why he does some of the things.
00:29:37.000 | I often have this conversation around the topic of debtlessness.
00:29:40.000 | I have this conversation with people and they say, "You know what?
00:29:42.000 | It's really hard to go wrong if you don't borrow a bunch of money."
00:29:46.000 | It's really hard to go wrong. You may not get there as quick.
00:29:49.000 | Leverage is powerful. I'm a financial planner. I cannot deny.
00:29:52.000 | Leverage is powerful.
00:29:56.000 | It's powerful both ways.
00:29:58.000 | So, consider that.
00:30:01.000 | Consider Jim Collins' concept of "F-you money."
00:30:04.000 | This means not enough money to be F-I,
00:30:07.000 | but enough money to make your own decisions,
00:30:09.000 | enough money to make your own choices.
00:30:11.000 | For me, I think this number is something like 100 grand.
00:30:15.000 | I know the date.
00:30:17.000 | When I first had $100,000 in a checking account,
00:30:20.000 | I sat there and I said, "I'm financially independent."
00:30:25.000 | I made the decision. Earlier, Bill and I were talking.
00:30:27.000 | Very powerful conversation.
00:30:29.000 | I encourage you to look for that one in the podcast feed as well.
00:30:32.000 | We were talking about the day that he made the decision to say,
00:30:36.000 | "I'm no longer going to make decisions for money."
00:30:42.000 | He learned it late.
00:30:44.000 | I made that decision when I had $100,000 in the bank.
00:30:47.000 | I don't think I'm as hardcore as he probably was.
00:30:49.000 | I still consider it money.
00:30:51.000 | But I made the decision. I said, "From now on,
00:30:54.000 | there's nothing that I have to choose.
00:30:56.000 | I don't have to sell my soul for money.
00:30:59.000 | And I'm not going to."
00:31:01.000 | If you combine those two things, debtlessness and $100,000 in the bank,
00:31:06.000 | there's no transition that you can't make into a great career.
00:31:10.000 | There's no business that you can't start.
00:31:13.000 | You have everything you need to take some steps.
00:31:16.000 | That's a strong approach to financial independence.
00:31:20.000 | One of the things I learned when I started studying the history of retirement,
00:31:23.000 | and I did it because I was always interested in it,
00:31:25.000 | I learned, and I maintain this, it sounds weird,
00:31:27.000 | the people who can afford to retire don't retire.
00:31:31.000 | And the people who are desperate to retire
00:31:33.000 | are the ones who will never be able to afford to retire.
00:31:35.000 | I have searched diligently for this elusive retiree.
00:31:39.000 | And no, I'm not the internet retirement police.
00:31:42.000 | But let's pretend I am for a moment.
00:31:44.000 | I've searched diligently to find this retiree,
00:31:47.000 | this person who goes from not working
00:31:50.000 | and doesn't continue to earn money.
00:31:53.000 | And I have yet to meet them.
00:31:55.000 | - I found one. - Yeah?
00:31:57.000 | I found one, I read, I forget the guy's name,
00:31:59.000 | I think it was the guy who wrote
00:32:01.000 | "How to Live on Charles Something" or one of the old guys.
00:32:04.000 | I tried to get him on my show, I called him,
00:32:06.000 | he's like, "I don't want to do a podcast interview."
00:32:08.000 | I said, "Ah, there he is, and I can't even get him on my show
00:32:10.000 | because he was retired.
00:32:12.000 | He was actually legitimately retired."
00:32:14.000 | - And the Reddit exists, they exist, though.
00:32:16.000 | - I'm sure the Reddit exists, they do.
00:32:18.000 | I think they exist, I think they do.
00:32:20.000 | But I have a hard time finding them.
00:32:22.000 | And back to that reason, back to that thing.
00:32:24.000 | How do you conceive of any of these people here
00:32:26.000 | just not doing anything?
00:32:28.000 | Now, you don't have to do things for money,
00:32:30.000 | but none of us, all of you do things that aren't for money already.
00:32:33.000 | All of you volunteer, all of you help family.
00:32:36.000 | And so it's not like you've got to wait
00:32:38.000 | until you're financially independent to say no to money
00:32:40.000 | or do things that don't earn you money.
00:32:42.000 | And before, you have to do everything that earns you money.
00:32:44.000 | There's a scale here.
00:32:46.000 | So you just don't have to start with money as the primary goal.
00:32:49.000 | You can work on other goals.
00:32:51.000 | So think about that.
00:32:53.000 | A $100,000, $100,000 in the bank
00:32:55.000 | buys you a huge degree of financial independence.
00:32:57.000 | And a career that gives you the characteristics that you want
00:33:00.000 | is really valuable.
00:33:02.000 | Years ago, I worked for a--
00:33:04.000 | well, my managing director when I first started,
00:33:06.000 | his name at Northwestern Mutual, his name was Ed.
00:33:08.000 | And Ed was this great guy.
00:33:10.000 | He's the kind of guy all of you would love.
00:33:12.000 | Ed loves boats, and he loves fishing, and he loves fast cars.
00:33:15.000 | And Ed loves to work hard because he loves his toys.
00:33:19.000 | He is no stranger. He loves his toys.
00:33:21.000 | He had an airplane, and a boat, and a motorcycle,
00:33:23.000 | and he had this crazy Mercedes 12-cylinder souped up by Rentech,
00:33:27.000 | just this ridiculous car.
00:33:29.000 | But one of the things that was fascinating,
00:33:32.000 | years later, he finally retired, '67, he retired, a rich guy,
00:33:35.000 | moved down to the Keys.
00:33:37.000 | And I went down and visited him down in the Keys.
00:33:39.000 | He had a job of a guy who paid him $100,000 a year,
00:33:44.000 | just flat, to drive his boat for him
00:33:48.000 | when he came down and flew down with friends of his,
00:33:51.000 | with friends for a few days fishing.
00:33:53.000 | Now, Ed loved fishing. Ed had his own multi-hundred-thousand-dollar boat.
00:33:56.000 | I'm talking the big ones.
00:33:58.000 | But he had a guy who was paying him $100,000 just to come up
00:34:00.000 | and run his boat for a couple days,
00:34:02.000 | because the man appreciated how Ed ran his boat.
00:34:04.000 | And I've observed that again and again and again and again.
00:34:07.000 | Bill and I were talking earlier.
00:34:09.000 | He said, "I get all kinds of offers.
00:34:11.000 | People who used to work for me just fired half his clients
00:34:13.000 | they didn't want before."
00:34:15.000 | But he still has things. He doesn't make decisions for money,
00:34:17.000 | but he still has things that bring him in money.
00:34:20.000 | So you don't have to wait, is my point.
00:34:23.000 | One of the things that you should seriously consider
00:34:25.000 | is spending a lot of time on career selection
00:34:27.000 | and seriously consider entrepreneurship.
00:34:30.000 | Entrepreneurship is very difficult. We know that.
00:34:33.000 | But it also gives you, in an instant,
00:34:36.000 | many of the aspects of flexibility that you're looking for.
00:34:41.000 | There are many businesses that you can do
00:34:44.000 | that give you that flexibility, that sense of control.
00:34:47.000 | So you don't have to wait until you're financially independent
00:34:49.000 | in order to not be beholden to somebody who has you punch a time card.
00:34:53.000 | I don't punch a time card, and I know one special.
00:34:56.000 | Many people here don't have to punch a time card.
00:34:59.000 | So you can change. You can make adjustments.
00:35:01.000 | And it's possible to do this within your career,
00:35:03.000 | to switch from one position to another,
00:35:05.000 | and it's possible to do this by changing careers.
00:35:07.000 | And when you combine all of the skills that you have
00:35:10.000 | to live well on not a ton of money,
00:35:13.000 | that means that you can make even a lateral or a down career move.
00:35:16.000 | You're not stuck.
00:35:18.000 | One of the challenges is so many people are stuck at their lifestyle.
00:35:21.000 | If you go out and you're earning six figures,
00:35:23.000 | and you've got a big mortgage and big car payments and big debt,
00:35:26.000 | you can't take a job that's cheaper.
00:35:29.000 | One of my financial planning clients,
00:35:31.000 | a man made a lot of money.
00:35:35.000 | But he said, "I could go and work as a bag boy at Publix,"
00:35:40.000 | our grocery store down here, "at Publix, and I could do it."
00:35:43.000 | He never borrowed money, never exposed himself.
00:35:45.000 | And he had tons of money, had tons of freedom,
00:35:47.000 | because he kept his expenses down.
00:35:49.000 | Well, guess what? The mustachioed lifestyle has bought you that.
00:35:56.000 | It's worth considering.
00:35:59.000 | Finally, one of the most powerful things about financial independence
00:36:04.000 | is by considering financial independence,
00:36:06.000 | it opens up the opportunities for you
00:36:08.000 | to consider alternative approaches, alternative lifestyles.
00:36:12.000 | And the skill that you gain in living more cheaply,
00:36:16.000 | the skill that you gain in putting yourself in a situation
00:36:19.000 | where you can tackle things that are hard,
00:36:22.000 | those skills can be translated to many other things.
00:36:25.000 | My wife and I, over Christmas here, we took our camper van,
00:36:28.000 | and we took our kids, and we traveled for two weeks
00:36:30.000 | all around the Southeast here on a road trip.
00:36:33.000 | And one of the things that's so interesting,
00:36:34.000 | those of you who have RV'd would know,
00:36:36.000 | is that in every campground, there's somebody called a camp host.
00:36:40.000 | And the camp host's job is basically,
00:36:43.000 | they get a free site, a free campsite to park their RV in,
00:36:48.000 | including utilities, water, and cable,
00:36:52.000 | if the campsite offers it.
00:36:53.000 | If it's not out in the boonies, a lot of them do.
00:36:55.000 | And all they need to do in exchange for that is,
00:36:57.000 | they clean the bathrooms,
00:36:58.000 | they do a little bit of picking up around the campsite,
00:37:01.000 | and at some facilities, they may do things like
00:37:03.000 | checking in and helping people out.
00:37:06.000 | Most of the time, the people who are camp hosts are retirees,
00:37:09.000 | traditional kind of 60-ish age,
00:37:11.000 | and usually they have these huge rigs,
00:37:14.000 | like these massive fifth wheel trailers,
00:37:16.000 | or these massive motorhomes.
00:37:17.000 | The things are awesome.
00:37:19.000 | I mean, they're huge.
00:37:22.000 | But last week, I saw this person who had this little old F-150,
00:37:27.000 | like a 1979 F-150 pickup truck that they were driving,
00:37:31.000 | and this tiny little ancient, like from the '70s,
00:37:34.000 | single axle travel trailer parked in the camp host spot.
00:37:37.000 | And they were doing camp hosting with this cheap little rig
00:37:40.000 | that you could buy for six grand cash.
00:37:44.000 | Now, most people don't want to live in a trailer.
00:37:47.000 | Most people don't want to do that full time.
00:37:49.000 | But here was a couple who was completely happy in that trailer.
00:37:52.000 | And so you can grasp or pursue alternative ideas if you're flexible.
00:37:59.000 | And you can use and you can combine these things in radical ways
00:38:03.000 | that allow you to get where you want to go faster.
00:38:07.000 | So you can use your flexibility, you take a job as a camp host,
00:38:09.000 | you use that as a time to write your work, do your art, whatever it is,
00:38:15.000 | and you can put these things together.
00:38:16.000 | I was never able to get them on my show,
00:38:18.000 | but there was this awesome story from a guy in Finland
00:38:22.000 | who wanted to build an app,
00:38:24.000 | but he was completely broke and he had no time to do it.
00:38:28.000 | So he quit his job, he bought a tent, and he moved to the forest.
00:38:32.000 | And he lived in a tent in the forest during the summer.
00:38:35.000 | He was in Finland.
00:38:37.000 | And he had a solar panel to power his laptop,
00:38:39.000 | and he had a simple tent there set up,
00:38:41.000 | and he would code, code, code.
00:38:42.000 | He didn't need the internet to do his coding.
00:38:44.000 | And then once a week he would go get groceries, come back.
00:38:46.000 | He got his app built.
00:38:48.000 | Now, I don't know the story beyond there,
00:38:49.000 | but he got his app built because he did that.
00:38:52.000 | Now, did he have to wait to be financially independent
00:38:55.000 | in order to build his app?
00:38:56.000 | Did he have to go work the soul-sucking job that he hated?
00:38:59.000 | No. He put these things together.
00:39:01.000 | So be flexible in your thinking
00:39:03.000 | and consider pursuing different approaches.
00:39:08.000 | My final closing thought for you to consider is this.
00:39:16.000 | How many of you have done or want to do
00:39:18.000 | a physically challenging race or, like, event?
00:39:25.000 | Or how many of you like to challenge yourself physically?
00:39:28.000 | All right. All the hands.
00:39:30.000 | For some people, it comes in, "I'm doing a heavy lift.
00:39:32.000 | I'm doing this hardcore workout."
00:39:34.000 | For other people, it's, "I'm going to run a marathon.
00:39:36.000 | I'm going to do a tough mudder," things like that.
00:39:38.000 | You like to challenge yourself physically.
00:39:40.000 | Now, do you challenge yourself physically
00:39:42.000 | because it feels good in the short term,
00:39:45.000 | because it allows you to sit down and do nothing,
00:39:47.000 | or do you challenge yourself physically
00:39:49.000 | because of the results on the other side of the activity?
00:39:55.000 | No? Yeah.
00:39:57.000 | For you to say both, I don't know what to do.
00:39:59.000 | You just stole my whole thunder.
00:40:01.000 | It was supposed to be latter. That was the point.
00:40:04.000 | The point is that we do difficult things.
00:40:06.000 | And in our modern world,
00:40:08.000 | so much of life has become unchallenging
00:40:11.000 | that we go out and seek weird, crazy, strange challenges.
00:40:16.000 | I'm not against that.
00:40:18.000 | Here's something for you to consider.
00:40:21.000 | Why can your job or your career or your business
00:40:27.000 | not also be viewed in that light?
00:40:31.000 | Why can you not derive similar amounts of satisfaction
00:40:35.000 | from the job or the career or the business that you're doing?
00:40:41.000 | The answer is you won't derive that satisfaction
00:40:45.000 | if the job, career, or business has no meaning to you,
00:40:48.000 | if it's not personally important.
00:40:50.000 | But if it is personally important to you,
00:40:52.000 | you can derive the same amount of satisfaction from that
00:40:56.000 | as you can from finishing a marathon
00:40:58.000 | or finishing Fran at the CrossFit gym
00:41:00.000 | or finishing the Tough Mudder.
00:41:03.000 | You can derive satisfaction from that.
00:41:06.000 | So there doesn't have to be the fact that,
00:41:09.000 | "Well, I can work hard and do a construction project,"
00:41:11.000 | or, "I can work hard and do a cool deal."
00:41:13.000 | You don't have to say, "I don't get that same sense of challenge from business."
00:41:16.000 | Business can be fun. Jobs can be fun.
00:41:19.000 | They can be competitive.
00:41:23.000 | JD's building Money Boss again. He doesn't have to.
00:41:26.000 | JD, I guarantee-- I mean, do you have, in the long run,
00:41:30.000 | are you-- I mean, do you compete with people?
00:41:32.000 | Not saying that you have to be number one,
00:41:34.000 | but do you kind of get a little joy out of competing with people
00:41:38.000 | or collaborating with competing?
00:41:40.000 | I like collaborating with people. I'm not competing with anybody in the financial world.
00:41:44.000 | Okay. So that's fine.
00:41:46.000 | For me, I just-- I notice that people--
00:41:48.000 | Do you want me to?
00:41:49.000 | Hey, if you want to compete, I'll take you on. I'm kidding.
00:41:52.000 | The point is that these things are fun.
00:41:54.000 | I collaborate with a number of other podcasters,
00:41:56.000 | but I also enjoy competing with them.
00:41:58.000 | It's fun. I think we're all in the same world.
00:42:00.000 | We all have different voices, but it is fun for me
00:42:02.000 | to get with some of my other friends who are podcasters in this financial space,
00:42:05.000 | and we hash out ideas, and we're all doing different things.
00:42:08.000 | Our audiences cross-pollinate a little bit,
00:42:10.000 | but the competition is fun.
00:42:12.000 | Now, it's important to me.
00:42:14.000 | So for me, radical personal finance is an outgrowth of my goal setting,
00:42:19.000 | my mission, all those questions that JD asked.
00:42:21.000 | For me, the big one was, "What is your perfect day?"
00:42:24.000 | For me, my perfect day was to wake up,
00:42:27.000 | to be able to wake up when I wanted to--
00:42:30.000 | Got that one wrong. I got it right, and then I realized that was silly.
00:42:33.000 | I wanted to wake up when I wanted to, have breakfast,
00:42:35.000 | have a cup of coffee, and go into my office,
00:42:37.000 | and I wanted to sit down and do something
00:42:39.000 | that was important to me in the finance space.
00:42:41.000 | And I love to teach. I love to teach.
00:42:43.000 | And so I said, "If I were financially independent,
00:42:46.000 | this is what I would do."
00:42:47.000 | And my ideal day didn't have anything to do
00:42:49.000 | with where I lived or the type of house.
00:42:51.000 | It had everything to do with the type of work,
00:42:53.000 | and it had everything to do with being able to do
00:42:55.000 | the things I wanted to do the way I wanted to do them--
00:42:59.000 | to not be filtered by somebody else,
00:43:01.000 | to not be suppressed by somebody else.
00:43:04.000 | And it was after, I think, a year,
00:43:07.000 | I sat down at the kitchen table with my wife one morning
00:43:10.000 | for breakfast, and I just thought,
00:43:12.000 | "I feel free for, I think, the first time in my life
00:43:17.000 | because I have the power to hang myself
00:43:20.000 | or to succeed all by myself."
00:43:24.000 | I thought back--I thought back through it over the years.
00:43:27.000 | And I went to high school.
00:43:29.000 | In high school, all the ministry--
00:43:30.000 | I went to Christian high school,
00:43:31.000 | so we had far more rules than a lot of other people.
00:43:33.000 | And the administrators could have power over me
00:43:35.000 | and the things I did, and the teachers,
00:43:37.000 | and I could risk suspension and all of that stuff.
00:43:40.000 | And then I went to college. I had all the same things.
00:43:43.000 | Went to a Christian college, too.
00:43:44.000 | So there I had even more rules than a lot of other people have.
00:43:47.000 | Then I went immediately into the corporate world,
00:43:49.000 | where, of course, I'm accountable to my bosses
00:43:51.000 | and accountable to the corporate brand.
00:43:53.000 | And then I go into the financial services industry,
00:43:55.000 | where it's like the rules go up through even there.
00:43:58.000 | You can't post on Twitter
00:43:59.000 | without it getting recorded by compliance,
00:44:01.000 | and you can't--like, everything.
00:44:03.000 | And then it was when I finally left that,
00:44:06.000 | and I was doing radical personal finance,
00:44:08.000 | and I realized I can say or do anything I want,
00:44:11.000 | and I'm accountable for the results.
00:44:13.000 | And I felt that freedom.
00:44:15.000 | So I challenge you to spend time
00:44:18.000 | thinking deeply about the process
00:44:23.000 | while you're working towards the goal.
00:44:25.000 | And I challenge you to consider what JD said this morning.
00:44:28.000 | I personally--my personal opinion--
00:44:31.000 | I don't ask you to buy it.
00:44:32.000 | I don't think that financial independence is a great goal.
00:44:37.000 | I think it's a great milestone, and a very worthwhile one.
00:44:41.000 | I remember the day that I paid off all my debt in college.
00:44:44.000 | Two weeks before I graduated, wrote a check to Sally Mae.
00:44:47.000 | I think it was, like, 13 grand, something like that.
00:44:49.000 | Called Dave Ramsey. "I'm debt-free!"
00:44:51.000 | I was just... [laughs]
00:44:55.000 | And...
00:44:58.000 | I felt kind of empty.
00:45:00.000 | I was like, "What do I do now?"
00:45:02.000 | And it took a long time for me to grab the next thing.
00:45:05.000 | Now, on my show, I've interviewed a bunch of people
00:45:07.000 | who've become financially independent.
00:45:09.000 | And here's what I've noticed.
00:45:11.000 | Those who set financial independence as the primary goal
00:45:14.000 | often reach it and don't know what to do.
00:45:19.000 | Those who have goals that reach beyond financial independence
00:45:24.000 | jump into it joyously and benefit from it.
00:45:30.000 | So make sure that when you're thinking about financial independence,
00:45:32.000 | that you think about the "why."
00:45:35.000 | Don't wait for that magical date to pursue the "why."
00:45:40.000 | There are lots of non-profit organizations out there
00:45:42.000 | that need executive directors that are willing to pay $200,000 a year
00:45:45.000 | for work that matters.
00:45:48.000 | I just use that because people often associate my generation,
00:45:51.000 | millennials, like non-profits.
00:45:53.000 | "We don't want to go work for the for-profit.
00:45:54.000 | We want to go work for the non-profits."
00:45:56.000 | Guess what?
00:45:57.000 | You can make hundreds of thousands of dollars a year
00:45:58.000 | working for non-profits, or you can volunteer your time.
00:46:01.000 | The choice is not either/or.
00:46:04.000 | So think carefully about that
00:46:07.000 | as you go through the process of your financial independence journey.
00:46:12.000 | And make sure that you don't miss life now
00:46:17.000 | while you're waiting for tomorrow.
00:46:19.000 | Otherwise, you and I are likely to do
00:46:22.000 | what so many other people have done--
00:46:25.000 | miss life now while thinking about tomorrow.
00:46:27.000 | And I'm telling you, the price can be too high.
00:46:30.000 | So those are my thoughts.
00:46:31.000 | I encourage you just to consider them.
00:46:34.000 | It's a subject that I'd love to see us talk more about
00:46:37.000 | that we don't talk a lot about,
00:46:39.000 | and I don't think these goals are mutually exclusive.
00:46:41.000 | So I'm happy to take questions.
00:46:42.000 | Does anybody have any questions on anything on that?
00:46:45.000 | Or if there are no questions, I can wrap up,
00:46:47.000 | but I'll answer questions on anything.
00:46:48.000 | - I'm going to make this talk so awesome, it's really good.
00:46:51.000 | [laughter]
00:46:52.000 | [applause]
00:46:53.000 | - Thank you.
00:46:55.000 | Thank you.
00:46:56.000 | Thank you very much.
00:46:57.000 | Go ahead.
00:46:58.000 | - You said that you would--
00:46:59.000 | that potentially you might feel bitter
00:47:01.000 | having reached financial independence.
00:47:02.000 | What do you think would actually change about your life right now
00:47:06.000 | if you were this moment financially independent?
00:47:09.000 | - Yeah.
00:47:10.000 | If I were this moment financially independent,
00:47:13.000 | I think I would do--
00:47:14.000 | so right now I do-- in 2017, I do five podcasts a week,
00:47:19.000 | and I do that because I had so many years of pent-up frustration
00:47:24.000 | of all of these topics that I wanted to get out
00:47:27.000 | that I just couldn't conceive of.
00:47:28.000 | I was like, "Oh, I could do one a week."
00:47:29.000 | I was like, "It'll take me years to get everything out."
00:47:31.000 | So I still feel that way, but it's also a lot of work.
00:47:35.000 | It's a lot of work to do that.
00:47:37.000 | To create five new one-hour speeches every day
00:47:39.000 | is a significant challenge.
00:47:41.000 | If I were financially independent,
00:47:42.000 | I think I would drop my show to, like, two days a week.
00:47:45.000 | But here's the thing.
00:47:46.000 | I'm not waiting on that in order to--
00:47:48.000 | I'm not waiting on financial independence to do that.
00:47:51.000 | I think there's an interesting business case
00:47:53.000 | to be made to do that now.
00:47:54.000 | I may do that next year.
00:47:56.000 | It's just a matter of me building things out.
00:47:58.000 | And right now, I'm working very, very diligently
00:48:01.000 | to create the things that I want to create.
00:48:03.000 | Like, I'm so frustrated at--
00:48:06.000 | you know, for me, 2016 was, for me, in many ways,
00:48:08.000 | a disappointing year
00:48:09.000 | because I want to build and chart the path
00:48:12.000 | clearly for people.
00:48:14.000 | There's so many simple concepts,
00:48:15.000 | and one of my skills is to be able to take
00:48:18.000 | all of the disparate ideas
00:48:20.000 | and create a very simple framework.
00:48:22.000 | Like, I've built--I have a book outline.
00:48:25.000 | It's called "The Framework of Wealth,"
00:48:26.000 | where in ten words, I can give you a framework
00:48:29.000 | for every piece of financial advice
00:48:31.000 | you will ever need in your life.
00:48:33.000 | I can't get the book done.
00:48:34.000 | I'm working--I keep working on it.
00:48:36.000 | But I'm really good at that,
00:48:37.000 | and so I want to create the type of useful,
00:48:39.000 | helpful products and courses and books
00:48:43.000 | and whatever that help people to see.
00:48:46.000 | Because here's the reality about finance.
00:48:49.000 | Most things in finance
00:48:51.000 | are like this old story of the elephant.
00:48:53.000 | Y'all remember the story of the elephant.
00:48:55.000 | There's three blind guys or four blind guys
00:48:57.000 | that are gathered around the elephant,
00:48:58.000 | and they ask each other, "What's the elephant like?"
00:49:00.000 | One of them says, "It's kind of like a tree trunk."
00:49:03.000 | And the other one says, "No, it's not.
00:49:04.000 | It's like a spear."
00:49:05.000 | And the other one says, "No, it's not. It's like a snake."
00:49:07.000 | And the other one says, "No, it's not."
00:49:08.000 | It's like, "What does a tail feel like? I don't know."
00:49:10.000 | You get the point.
00:49:11.000 | They're all touching the elephant.
00:49:13.000 | They just are all looking at different parts of it.
00:49:15.000 | And in finance, it's exactly the same way.
00:49:17.000 | I challenge you.
00:49:18.000 | You give me a financial--
00:49:19.000 | piece of financial advice that you hate,
00:49:21.000 | you think is wrong,
00:49:22.000 | I'll give you a situation in which it's right.
00:49:25.000 | Give me a financial product you hate,
00:49:27.000 | tell me it's always wrong.
00:49:28.000 | I'll give you a situation in which it's right.
00:49:30.000 | And that's what I kind of learned
00:49:32.000 | from studying professional finance.
00:49:34.000 | That I didn't get from personal finance.
00:49:37.000 | So what I want to do is I want to give people those tools
00:49:40.000 | where they can look at a situation,
00:49:42.000 | they can look at a product,
00:49:43.000 | and they can evaluate it with a clear approach.
00:49:46.000 | So that's my answer.
00:49:49.000 | Other questions?
00:49:52.000 | Other comments?
00:49:54.000 | I would hit the music,
00:49:55.000 | but I was so flustered at the beginning.
00:49:57.000 | That was supposed to be smoother than what it was.
00:50:00.000 | Thank you all for listening.
00:50:02.000 | Thank you all for doing what you do.
00:50:04.000 | Pete, I just want to honor you publicly.
00:50:07.000 | You have--your work has fundamentally transformed
00:50:11.000 | how people approach money.
00:50:13.000 | And I think I've benefited from it.
00:50:17.000 | I used to sit in my office,
00:50:19.000 | you know, fancy financial advisor office with people,
00:50:21.000 | and I would pull up the shockingly simple math
00:50:23.000 | behind early retirement.
00:50:25.000 | And I would just use it, and I would explain to them,
00:50:27.000 | "Listen, you and I are dickering around
00:50:29.000 | about whether you can save $225 a month or $263 a month.
00:50:33.000 | This is ridiculous.
00:50:35.000 | Let me give you an extreme example.
00:50:37.000 | Now let's work towards that way."
00:50:39.000 | And you have done a phenomenal job
00:50:43.000 | of taking simple concepts
00:50:44.000 | that should have been obvious to many of us
00:50:46.000 | and teaching them to the masses.
00:50:50.000 | So I thank you for that.
00:50:51.000 | I think we're all in your debt for that.
00:50:53.000 | So...
00:50:55.000 | [applause]
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