RPF0427-Jonathan_and_Brad_Interview
00:00:00.000 | Radical Personal Finance is sponsored by Paladin Registry, the intelligent place for you to
00:00:04.560 | start your search for a financial advisor.
00:00:07.520 | Choose from researched, vetted financial advisors rather than wandering out into the wild, woolly
00:00:13.820 | unknown on your own.
00:00:15.680 | Start your search for a financial advisor at radicalpersonalfinance.com/paladin.
00:00:20.960 | Show is also sponsored by YNAB, the budgeting solution that I use each and every day.
00:00:26.240 | I just finished updating my budget right before starting this recording.
00:00:30.400 | Sign up for a free 34-day trial of the world's greatest budgeting software called You Need
00:00:34.840 | a Budget, YNAB.
00:00:37.280 | Free 34-day trial at radicalpersonalfinance.com/ynab.
00:00:39.280 | Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, the show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge,
00:01:01.160 | skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while
00:01:06.040 | building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less.
00:01:08.880 | My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.
00:01:10.760 | Got an interview for you today with the guys behind the website choosefi.com.
00:01:14.120 | Going to tell us their story and share some of their tips with us.
00:01:20.400 | Had a chance to sit down with Jonathan and Brad, the business partners behind the website
00:01:35.000 | choosefi.com.
00:01:36.000 | The tagline of their website is "Experiments in Financial Independence."
00:01:41.320 | I caught up with them a couple weeks ago at Camp Mustache Southeast, as you may have noticed.
00:01:46.920 | I'm bringing you steadily, little by little, many of the interviews from that.
00:01:51.320 | This interview is a bit of a potpourri of topics.
00:01:54.880 | It's fairly casual, fairly discussion-oriented.
00:01:57.200 | It's a little bit of Jonathan and Brad's stories, some of what they have learned in their own
00:02:02.480 | journey towards financial independence, the mistakes that they have made, the things that
00:02:06.480 | they have done well.
00:02:07.480 | Talk a little bit about travel hacking, about various approaches to financial independence,
00:02:10.600 | and I think you're really going to enjoy it.
00:02:12.200 | So Jonathan and Brad, welcome to Radical Personal Finance.
00:02:15.040 | Yeah, thanks so much for having us.
00:02:18.600 | We're here at Camp Mustache Southeast and you guys have a podcast and we're here at
00:02:22.480 | this kind of mustachian roundup and figured it'd be great to get you guys on the show
00:02:26.600 | and have you share, help you with some publicizing your podcast a little bit and just share your
00:02:32.280 | story with my audience.
00:02:34.120 | So I don't know what to do when I got to look at two guys here.
00:02:37.360 | I don't know what your relationship is.
00:02:38.680 | I don't know how you guys got together, what the whole back story is here.
00:02:45.160 | So who wants to start and fill me in on the path of how you wound up in this space and
00:02:50.320 | doing what you're doing?
00:02:51.320 | Let me go first because I'm usually all over the map and then Brad is better at dialing
00:02:55.520 | us in on what our true focus is.
00:02:57.480 | Yeah, he really keeps us on point on a lot of things because my brain just goes in 20
00:03:01.240 | different places.
00:03:04.800 | Brad and I met back in 2016 and we met as a result, really he's already kind of developed
00:03:11.560 | himself as a site authority in the specific art of travel hacking, which maybe he can
00:03:15.760 | talk about, but he is really an expert in that place and he's built a website, TravelMiles101,
00:03:21.520 | that I won't steal a slender and talk about necessarily, but he teaches people basically
00:03:25.080 | how to travel the world for free.
00:03:28.400 | And I heard him on the Mad Scientist podcast.
00:03:30.500 | When you're in the space that we're in, you tend to listen to the same blogs and podcasts
00:03:37.560 | as everybody else because you're voracious, you're constantly wanting to learn, right?
00:03:41.760 | And I heard him on the Mad Scientist and I was exposed to this really cool world of travel
00:03:46.160 | hacking and I found out as part of that podcast that he lived in Richmond and the common thing
00:03:52.740 | you hear is there's nobody that I can talk to about this stuff.
00:03:55.720 | You're interested, you want to explore this world of financial independence, but when
00:03:59.920 | you talk about it with your neighbors, you can only talk to them for so long before they
00:04:03.760 | stop sending you Christmas cards.
00:04:06.520 | So that was the impetus for me to get in touch with, to reach out and get in touch with Brad
00:04:11.200 | and just say, "Could we just get lunch and talk about some ideas?"
00:04:13.720 | And that's really all it was, although I hadn't started anything at that point and was interested
00:04:19.040 | in maybe doing that, I really did just want to meet a like-minded someone in that space.
00:04:23.360 | And so we sat down for lunch and just talked about stuff that we were both interested in.
00:04:28.240 | Now he's in travel hacking, but he also has a website called Richmond Savers and was very
00:04:32.480 | much in this financial independence space as well and I just wanted to hash out some
00:04:37.120 | of those ideas with him.
00:04:38.120 | So that's really just, that was our first meeting.
00:04:41.160 | So Brad, you've been doing online stuff for a long time.
00:04:43.240 | Yeah, I have.
00:04:44.240 | This is, I guess I'm about five years in now.
00:04:46.960 | So yeah, started richmondsavers.com at first and it was just a generic personal finance
00:04:53.080 | blog essentially, but we wound up getting some publicity for a trip to Disney World
00:04:59.080 | that we put together for my family.
00:05:01.040 | So we wound up travel hacking that for, I think we saved $4,000.
00:05:07.040 | Yeah, just using credit card rewards points.
00:05:10.200 | So we're opening up, hold on, take a step back, is my wife and I are both CPAs in our
00:05:16.080 | real lives.
00:05:17.080 | So we started hearing about this travel hacking, right?
00:05:20.840 | And it sounds kind of nefarious and a little odd, but it's opening up very targeted credit
00:05:27.600 | cards to get these massive signup bonuses.
00:05:30.820 | So we were able to turn that into, like I said, saved about $4,000.
00:05:35.420 | We spent I think $150 total on the trip for how many people?
00:05:40.560 | It was for the four of us.
00:05:41.640 | So I had two, yeah, two young daughters and actually we went, since you asked, we went
00:05:46.680 | with our, my parents and my wife's parents as well.
00:05:50.000 | So it was this amazing three generation trip and we just kind of got some publicity in
00:05:55.360 | the New York Times and NBC, CBS and my tiny little Richmond Savers website all of a sudden
00:06:01.240 | is on the map.
00:06:02.240 | And I realized there are a lot of people like us who can benefit essentially from this concept
00:06:08.720 | of travel hacking.
00:06:09.720 | So yeah, so kind of fast forward a couple of years and Jonathan reaches out to me and
00:06:15.640 | I hear financial independence, Richmond and burgers, right?
00:06:19.120 | And I'm just sold.
00:06:20.120 | - He'll take that lunch date.
00:06:21.120 | - Yeah, yeah, yeah.
00:06:22.120 | So that was, that's a lunch I'll take a hundred times out of a hundred.
00:06:24.560 | So as you'll hear on this podcast, Jonathan has a million ideas and he's a really smart
00:06:31.280 | guy, really interesting.
00:06:33.000 | And I'll take a lunch like that anytime.
00:06:35.120 | And we just kind of became friends over the course of months and basically this last year.
00:06:40.160 | And Jonathan had this great idea for Choose FI and I'll throw it over to him to kind of
00:06:45.560 | talk about.
00:06:46.560 | - Yeah, no.
00:06:47.560 | So I did get a chance to sit down with him and just talk about financial independence.
00:06:52.200 | And I think even during that lunch, I was thinking, there's one thing I'm not really
00:06:56.240 | seeing.
00:06:57.240 | I'm getting a lot of great contact, a lot of great content and a lot of information,
00:07:00.840 | but it's so fragmented.
00:07:02.440 | And you're always trying to find how does that information fit my life and my journey
00:07:07.360 | and where I'm at now.
00:07:09.120 | And you're in a place where you almost want to design your own curriculum to take, help
00:07:13.800 | middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.
00:07:16.640 | That's kind of a tagline, I get that.
00:07:18.680 | - That's fantastic tagline.
00:07:19.680 | - Yes, yes, yes, right.
00:07:20.680 | - Well, we've been working on that.
00:07:21.680 | - Copyright, copyright, shift that mic quickly, quickly.
00:07:26.520 | But that's what you want.
00:07:27.520 | Everything is this journey and in this journey, you make choices and hopefully you're satisfied
00:07:31.880 | with the choices that you've made up to this point.
00:07:34.560 | But I really wanted to, I think there's a need out there to build something that helps
00:07:39.120 | take people from where they are to where they want to be and actually model it for them.
00:07:43.200 | It's really hard to relate to a millionaire or a billionaire, someone that's completely
00:07:46.520 | got it made.
00:07:47.560 | You don't necessarily see the things that they did to actually get there.
00:07:50.720 | Even though I'm sure they had to work very hard and they put a lot of time in, all you
00:07:53.680 | see is that they're actually doing it.
00:07:55.820 | And whenever you go to a blog that's very developed, it's really hard to actually go
00:08:00.680 | back to the beginning and find out where they started and find out what that journey actually
00:08:03.920 | looks like.
00:08:04.920 | And I know it's what I do.
00:08:05.920 | Anytime I find a new blog, I don't go to the latest article.
00:08:08.040 | It may get me to check it out further, but if I like that latest article, I immediately
00:08:11.720 | want to go to the beginning.
00:08:12.920 | And nobody does it that way.
00:08:13.920 | The way RSS feeds are aggregated, you always look at the latest content and the oldest
00:08:18.000 | content is buried.
00:08:19.000 | You just can't find it.
00:08:20.440 | So my idea that I said is let's just take people on a journey that's step by step and
00:08:25.400 | walks through what everybody has to do.
00:08:27.360 | I mean, it's a very simple plan for financial independence.
00:08:29.480 | You need to slash your expenses.
00:08:31.200 | You need to create margin in your life.
00:08:33.280 | And then you can either, and then it's what you're going to do with that margin.
00:08:36.080 | You have options, right?
00:08:37.080 | You could just invest it passively if you have enough of it, or you could build a business.
00:08:41.120 | I mean, you have a lot of flexibility.
00:08:42.760 | But what does that actually look like?
00:08:44.280 | It's fine to say that.
00:08:45.480 | It's fine to make a tagline.
00:08:47.520 | But what does that actually look like on a step by step basis?
00:08:49.920 | So Brad got really excited about that.
00:08:51.840 | I mean, I was really excited about that.
00:08:53.200 | I can talk nonstop about it for an hour to anybody that will listen to me.
00:08:59.000 | And he said, "That sounds awesome."
00:09:01.100 | So anyways, we left that conversation and that was it.
00:09:03.320 | It was fun.
00:09:04.320 | It's fun to talk about.
00:09:05.320 | I think I'm going to do something.
00:09:06.400 | He contacts me two months later by text or email and says, "Hey man, did you end up starting
00:09:10.720 | anything?"
00:09:11.720 | I'm rolling to bed to go back to my nine to five.
00:09:13.200 | Like, nothing.
00:09:14.200 | Nothing had been done on it, right?
00:09:16.280 | And isn't that the case?
00:09:17.280 | How many great conversations do you have that are just dust in the wind, right?
00:09:20.960 | So I'm rolling to bed on my nine to five and I sheepishly text him back, "Actually, you
00:09:27.160 | know I haven't done anything yet, but you know what?
00:09:28.680 | I'm going to."
00:09:29.680 | So I came up with the branding that probably within a day or a week of that, choose FI,
00:09:35.840 | which is you choose financial independence.
00:09:38.160 | It's a choice.
00:09:40.080 | And I got the domain name and I got the blog.
00:09:42.320 | And then I said, "Brad, can we sit back down and do lunch?"
00:09:45.160 | And he didn't know this was coming, but I sat back down with him and we laid it out
00:09:47.760 | and I said, "You know, I can do this on my own.
00:09:50.440 | I'm a tech guy.
00:09:51.440 | You know, I have confidence in my abilities.
00:09:53.360 | I can build all this stuff up, but I think it would be really cool if we just did it
00:09:58.440 | together."
00:09:59.440 | Yeah, absolutely.
00:10:00.440 | And then that's kind of a segue into the power of partnerships because that is blossoming.
00:10:03.840 | And our website now, you know, we have a website that's essentially brand new and new websites
00:10:08.840 | really have no business being ranked for the first year or two.
00:10:13.120 | There's an organic process, but Brad already has site authority in a few different areas.
00:10:17.720 | We have contacts that we can bring really, we can bring thought leaders and influencers,
00:10:21.400 | you know, that maybe you shouldn't be able to get as a brand new blog or a podcast, potentially.
00:10:26.800 | So we can bring these thought leaders on.
00:10:28.800 | But the whole idea is instead of just doing interviews, right?
00:10:33.640 | Which there's a fair number of interviews that are done.
00:10:36.320 | We want to get back in there and bring them on as it fits the story.
00:10:40.560 | As you know, we want to bring them because they figured something out.
00:10:42.560 | I don't know everything.
00:10:43.560 | Brad doesn't know everything.
00:10:44.560 | We're two regular guys, but we want to bring those thought leaders on as they fit the journey,
00:10:48.560 | as they fit the story.
00:10:49.560 | And then we want to get them help us with those steps as we're proceeding through it
00:10:52.840 | and then document it for you because you don't need to be the smartest person.
00:10:55.760 | You don't need to be a doctor.
00:10:56.760 | You need to be a little bit smarter than average America and then just actually pay attention
00:11:00.840 | to stuff and make the right choices.
00:11:02.600 | So the concept then is it's primarily about each of your individual stories with your
00:11:08.120 | families, but you're bringing people in to give you advice.
00:11:11.080 | So you're sitting and asking questions.
00:11:12.400 | Do I understand that clearly?
00:11:13.720 | Yeah.
00:11:14.720 | Well, we're trying to crowdsource on some level, certainly.
00:11:17.120 | So you're right there.
00:11:18.120 | But I think what we're trying to describe it as is experiments in financial independence.
00:11:22.660 | So it's, we don't have all the answers.
00:11:25.160 | We're going to screw up.
00:11:26.160 | We're going to fail miserably on some things and we're going to succeed wildly on others.
00:11:29.840 | But we're going to try to document every step of the way and then come up with like an 80/20
00:11:33.840 | analysis essentially where people can say, okay, this, this will work for me.
00:11:39.160 | This won't work for me.
00:11:40.160 | You know, and they can, they can look at it and actually discern what would be valuable
00:11:43.840 | for my life essentially.
00:11:45.440 | So I think that's kind of the starting point.
00:11:48.040 | Yeah.
00:11:49.040 | No.
00:11:50.040 | And there's so many different places that can go.
00:11:51.040 | You know, the one common theme, you know, Dave Ramsey has done an amazing job.
00:11:53.520 | Most of us respect Dave Ramsey.
00:11:55.240 | He's done an amazing job getting people out of debt and off the financial cliff.
00:11:58.600 | Right.
00:11:59.600 | And I think most of us agree that he just kind of gives up at some point and says, now
00:12:02.720 | go invest and give or go build wealth and give.
00:12:05.120 | Right.
00:12:06.120 | Right.
00:12:07.120 | It's a pretty empty, vague picture.
00:12:08.120 | Like what does that actually look like?
00:12:09.120 | Right.
00:12:10.120 | Um, so you know, we're not getting the people off the financial cliff in every case, although
00:12:14.560 | we think we have good content for that, but we're kind of focusing on that space where
00:12:19.720 | you now realize there's a problem and you know how to balance a checkbook and do our
00:12:23.560 | things, but you want to do it a little bit smarter and you want someone to model it for
00:12:27.520 | you and show you, you know, kind of a progressive series of steps, what is actually available.
00:12:33.680 | And I think one of the interesting things is, you know, different perspectives, right?
00:12:37.480 | So you know, I'm farther along the financial independence path, you know, probably maybe
00:12:41.960 | two to three years out at this point.
00:12:44.440 | And Jonathan has a fantastic story.
00:12:46.740 | So he killed, he paid off, excuse me, 168,000.
00:12:50.280 | Jonathan killed the guy.
00:12:52.560 | It was a bad guy.
00:12:53.560 | It was a dark day in my life.
00:12:54.560 | Jonathan killed.
00:12:55.560 | Jonathan is now financially independent.
00:12:58.080 | After eight years of jail time, good behavior.
00:13:00.280 | So he is a pharmacist.
00:13:02.800 | He came out of pharmacy school three and a half years ago with $168,000 in debt.
00:13:08.880 | He's set to pay it off in about two months.
00:13:11.080 | 168k.
00:13:12.080 | Congratulations.
00:13:13.080 | I'm going to do that I'm debt free scream.
00:13:15.520 | You know what I'm talking about?
00:13:18.520 | Exactly.
00:13:19.520 | That's right.
00:13:20.520 | That's right.
00:13:21.520 | So I mean, this is the perfect experiment in financial independence, right?
00:13:22.880 | I mean, he is literally at net worth zero, or he very soon will be.
00:13:26.480 | He has this amazing, amazing amount of margin, right?
00:13:29.600 | Because he's been spending, you know, paying down 50k a year.
00:13:32.600 | And all of a sudden he has 50k or thereabouts, you know, 30 to 50k to play with.
00:13:37.600 | How cool is that?
00:13:38.600 | Right?
00:13:39.600 | I take checks, Jonathan.
00:13:40.600 | Yeah.
00:13:41.600 | Hey, brother.
00:13:42.600 | Now the funny thing about think about that, though, think of how many people are starting
00:13:45.200 | out from totally from scratch at the age of 30 or 40 or 50 or whatever else.
00:13:50.160 | And you know, what does what does that look like?
00:13:51.960 | And there's two pieces of that.
00:13:52.960 | One is that America, most of America stuff stuck on the hamster wheel, whether or not
00:13:57.080 | they realize it or not, right?
00:13:59.360 | They're sacrificing their future for expensive cable and cell phone bills and just, you know,
00:14:04.240 | all this nonsense.
00:14:06.460 | And you don't need to do you know, everything right.
00:14:09.200 | But if you can just get just a few life hacks under your belt, just make you know, make
00:14:12.580 | sure what the value proposition is what you what the trade off is.
00:14:16.680 | Just get a few of these principles really under your belt, you can just retire decades
00:14:20.920 | ahead of your peers, you know, and you'll have to do everything that we're doing.
00:14:24.480 | But if you listen to it, and you like the content and something appeals to you, hey,
00:14:28.280 | here's a step by step process.
00:14:29.420 | This is what we did.
00:14:30.420 | We're not gurus, nothing special about us, nothing that you couldn't replicate.
00:14:33.960 | And we just want to walk you through it.
00:14:35.280 | And you know what, we're also crowdsourcing it.
00:14:38.080 | So we're setting it up so that, you know, our listeners can give us their ideas or thoughts.
00:14:43.960 | And then if they package it well, and they provide something that's, you know, a great
00:14:47.640 | idea or a concept or something that should be discussed, we'll go find the thought leaders,
00:14:51.920 | and we'll bring them on and then we'll do a roundtable and we'll discuss that concept.
00:14:55.640 | So you know, really opening this up and getting America involved in this.
00:14:59.720 | That's great.
00:15:00.720 | That's awesome.
00:15:01.720 | You so Jonathan, you're working as a pharmacist now you got out of pharmacy school three years
00:15:08.400 | ago.
00:15:09.400 | Yeah, 2013.
00:15:10.400 | Okay.
00:15:11.400 | And married?
00:15:12.400 | Yes.
00:15:13.400 | Yeah, kid on the way.
00:15:14.400 | Okay.
00:15:15.400 | And you had two young kids.
00:15:16.400 | Two young daughters.
00:15:17.400 | Yeah.
00:15:18.400 | So tell me, because oftentimes, oftentimes, our wives and children are going to influence
00:15:25.560 | and many times it seems like there's an over domination of kind of young single people
00:15:30.480 | who are saying, hey, we're going to be financially independent.
00:15:33.480 | And there's not a huge representation of people with with young children.
00:15:37.520 | Maybe that's too aggressive a statement.
00:15:39.000 | But what do your wives think about this plan?
00:15:42.000 | Yeah, that's, that's a great question.
00:15:43.960 | I think my wife has always been on board.
00:15:46.500 | So she has probably always been more frugal than I am, actually, which is just a wonderful
00:15:52.080 | blessing.
00:15:53.080 | Yes.
00:15:54.080 | So quick poll.
00:15:55.080 | Yeah.
00:15:56.080 | Jonathan, is your wife more frugal?
00:15:57.080 | Yeah, it's amazing.
00:15:58.080 | If isn't that just the biggest blessing in the world?
00:16:00.080 | It's incredible.
00:16:01.080 | I'm like the total.
00:16:02.080 | I think there's a life hack that there's something there that people should be considering, you
00:16:05.520 | know, when you're going to go find someone to marry, and I'm not saying this needs to
00:16:07.960 | be the only qualification, but if it happens to be, if you find someone that's more frugal
00:16:12.200 | than you, there's a strong chance that you're going to end up in a good place.
00:16:15.720 | And we've heard that at Cam Mustache, right?
00:16:17.440 | When we went around the table, there were three instances, I think, where the wife was
00:16:21.640 | the one who, you know, dragged the husband in kicking and screaming.
00:16:24.880 | And now they're here at Cam Mustache and are on the path to five.
00:16:27.720 | So yeah, it's pretty cool.
00:16:29.340 | My wife doesn't want me to keep up with the Joneses.
00:16:31.580 | She wants me to keep my wallet in my pocket.
00:16:33.680 | It's incredible, right?
00:16:34.680 | My wife doesn't want me to keep up with the Joneses.
00:16:36.640 | She just wants me to be there beside her.
00:16:38.400 | Right, right.
00:16:39.400 | Yeah.
00:16:40.400 | So I interrupted you.
00:16:41.400 | No, no, no.
00:16:42.400 | Your wife is always on board.
00:16:43.400 | Yeah, she's been on board.
00:16:44.400 | We're from Long Island, New York, originally, and that's a very high cost of living place.
00:16:48.680 | Sure, absolutely.
00:16:49.680 | So, you know, both CPAs, we had, you know, decent jobs.
00:16:53.040 | But we just looked at each other pretty much maybe two months after we got married in '05
00:16:57.720 | and just said, "We cannot make the life we want to make here on Long Island.
00:17:02.400 | It's just impossible."
00:17:03.400 | So, I mean, we literally picked up and moved.
00:17:06.440 | And you know, moved down to Richmond, Virginia, where I coincidentally went to college.
00:17:10.780 | So we had some support system, but left all of our family, all of our friends, and made
00:17:16.540 | that move.
00:17:17.620 | And I mean, that was the first major step on the path to FI for sure.
00:17:22.340 | Awesome.
00:17:23.340 | Jonathan, you?
00:17:25.340 | You know, going back to my story of kind of being this hamster wheel, like I'm the American
00:17:28.940 | success story, which is the weird thing, right?
00:17:30.940 | Like I am the guy—
00:17:31.940 | Because you probably don't feel like it.
00:17:32.940 | Yeah, no, that's the thing.
00:17:33.940 | After 158K and that.
00:17:34.940 | Right.
00:17:35.940 | No, let's talk about that.
00:17:36.940 | So, you know, when you are a student or when you're in your teens, your parents' number
00:17:43.300 | one goal is to make sure that you get a good job, right?
00:17:46.260 | That's what we push.
00:17:47.480 | We want to make sure you go to college so that you get a good job.
00:17:50.780 | It's a universal concern for parents for their children.
00:17:55.500 | And you know, I did it.
00:17:56.500 | I did exactly what America tells you is the best possible path, right?
00:18:01.780 | So I got into a medical profession, and then I got out and I got a job.
00:18:06.120 | But along with that comes the six-figure burden of debt.
00:18:09.460 | So I'm out now.
00:18:10.460 | I'm 28 years old.
00:18:11.460 | But now I have the six figures of debt.
00:18:12.740 | I have a six-figure income, so that's fine.
00:18:14.540 | It's a great—it's a good thing, right?
00:18:15.980 | I mean, I have a six-figure income.
00:18:16.980 | I can easily pay it down.
00:18:18.180 | And I do, and I pay it down.
00:18:20.340 | And now I'm 32.
00:18:22.060 | And I'd say that my plan basically worked.
00:18:24.540 | That was the best you could hope for if you're going from not having school paid for.
00:18:29.620 | But now I'm 32 years old, and I'm essentially starting from scratch.
00:18:32.140 | And you've got to ask yourself, was that the most efficient path to get there?
00:18:36.440 | Now, discounting the fact that a lot of people—and if you're going into medicine or pharmacy
00:18:41.180 | or any field because you're passionate about that and you care about people, and I'm not
00:18:44.780 | saying I don't, but specifically if you—
00:18:47.000 | You hate people.
00:18:48.000 | I hate people, yeah.
00:18:49.000 | Just admit it.
00:18:50.000 | I can't do it, man.
00:18:51.000 | I can't do it.
00:18:52.000 | I love people.
00:18:54.560 | But if you're going into that because you just truly want to help people, then do it.
00:18:57.760 | Follow your passion if that's your passion.
00:18:59.420 | But let's just say you're going into a medical profession because you want to make six figures,
00:19:03.440 | and that's how you make six figures.
00:19:05.400 | The way I did it, I'm just going to be honest, it's an incredibly inefficient way to do it.
00:19:09.200 | There are so many easier ways that you can get to financial independence or six-figure
00:19:13.440 | income even without going through essentially what I did, which was a 14-year process in
00:19:18.100 | terms of my brain and what I'm thinking and where I'm aligning my goals.
00:19:21.040 | What if you spent that 14 years learning new skills, and you did it with the confidence
00:19:25.860 | that this is what the stepwise process looks like to get there, not I'm going off into
00:19:29.680 | the great beyond and who knows what's going to happen, but you just had a role model.
00:19:33.360 | I think it's the biggest thing.
00:19:34.360 | People don't always have a role model to show them what a step-by-step process to get to
00:19:38.760 | financial independence looks like.
00:19:40.320 | Yeah, and people don't believe that they can get wealthy on a middle-class income.
00:19:45.040 | They just don't.
00:19:46.040 | Because like Jonathan said, they're not seeing it in their real lives.
00:19:49.440 | But if they can see that—Jonathan can do it.
00:19:51.820 | Even starting out, 168K in debt, if they can see that I can do it and my wife and I can
00:19:56.920 | do it on regular, albeit CPA incomes, but just kind of middle manager positions.
00:20:02.960 | Hold on.
00:20:03.960 | I'm going to pick on you about that.
00:20:06.080 | Not that you wouldn't agree with me, but I get so tired of people discounting their high
00:20:11.000 | income.
00:20:12.200 | The reason is that's one of the components that's important.
00:20:15.320 | Yes, you can get wealthy on $40,000 a year.
00:20:20.320 | If you save $5,000 a year and you do it for 50 years, it's possible.
00:20:25.000 | But the path to wealth does involve good income.
00:20:28.120 | It certainly helps.
00:20:29.120 | The path to wealth does involve CPA.
00:20:30.120 | The path to wealth can involve pharmacists.
00:20:32.800 | And we've got to be careful in this space about not discounting that and not trying
00:20:37.280 | to kind of sell something that, yes, you can do it on $20,000.
00:20:41.480 | Well, maybe you can do it on $20,000 a year.
00:20:44.040 | We'll be optimists.
00:20:45.320 | But it's a lot easier on $200,000 a year than on $20,000.
00:20:48.520 | Well, you're not wrong.
00:20:49.760 | I think what you're getting at is essentially what I said, and that is that there are easier
00:20:55.240 | ways to get a six-figure income than to give up 14 years of your life studying one particular
00:20:59.800 | topic.
00:21:00.800 | Amen.
00:21:01.800 | I agree.
00:21:03.480 | What if you were trained or training yourself, or in some cases, training your child?
00:21:09.120 | There's this first wave.
00:21:10.240 | We're like first-generation FIRE, right?
00:21:12.640 | This concept.
00:21:13.640 | Dave Ramsey introduced this in the '90s, but it was more getting out of debt and then living
00:21:16.960 | debt-free.
00:21:17.960 | So the FIRE, financial independence, early retirement, or retire early, is more of something
00:21:22.800 | that's hitting now.
00:21:23.800 | It's kind of peaking right now.
00:21:25.440 | At some point, you're going to be looking at this not from the perspective of what you
00:21:29.880 | want to do for yourself, Joshua, but you're going to be looking at it on how can I steer
00:21:33.460 | my kids?
00:21:34.460 | How can I model this for them?
00:21:35.940 | How can I give them the tips that they need to succeed?
00:21:39.080 | It's still the same audience, but it's a different focus.
00:21:41.360 | You're thinking, "I need to model this for my kids and show them all these different
00:21:44.280 | opportunities."
00:21:45.280 | I think if you were being intellectually honest, you would say, "Sure, maybe if they want to
00:21:48.600 | be a doctor or if they want to be a pharmacist, of course, I'm going to encourage them in
00:21:52.040 | their passions."
00:21:53.040 | But you might also be able to give them a little bit broader perspective because you
00:21:56.160 | don't have to do that to earn a high income.
00:22:00.240 | If you start them early down this path, there's some really cool opportunities for them that
00:22:04.400 | just I didn't even know were available to me in my early teens.
00:22:08.680 | I have the same, shall we say, regret, resentment, frustration, something like that, that sounds
00:22:18.880 | like you do.
00:22:19.880 | Because when I was younger, when I was graduating high school type of thing, if I had known
00:22:25.280 | then what I know now, I would do things differently.
00:22:27.160 | I have known then what I know now.
00:22:28.760 | That's exactly how I feel.
00:22:31.240 | I look at it and I say, "College is easy to pick on."
00:22:35.280 | I went to college because I'm the kind of person who goes to college.
00:22:39.200 | We have more letters after your name than anybody I know, right?
00:22:41.960 | Right.
00:22:42.960 | But that's because I'm the kind of person who does stuff.
00:22:46.480 | At least the letters after my name were me improving my career and taking advantage of
00:22:51.120 | "tuition wasn't free, it was part of my compensation package."
00:22:56.400 | I figure if someone wants to give you tuition and I'm academically competent and it's not
00:23:02.520 | difficult for me to pass exams.
00:23:08.360 | I went to college because I'm the kind of person who went to college.
00:23:11.000 | Here's what I don't know how to do but I want to do.
00:23:13.160 | How do we take the kind of person who is the kind of person who goes to college and present
00:23:17.200 | them with some of these alternative paths?
00:23:19.180 | College can be part of it, but when I think back and I think about the person who at,
00:23:24.040 | say, 18 years old goes and spends a year or two or six months working in various professions,
00:23:30.480 | six months working as a carpenter, six months working as a plumber, six months working as
00:23:34.360 | an electrician helper, etc. and spends their nights on YouTube or getting some books on
00:23:40.560 | trade school and then takes the money that they've earned and saves and then goes and
00:23:46.920 | invests that time in building their own house.
00:23:49.080 | And they come out the other side by building a house slowly and doing themselves from a
00:23:52.480 | young age they come out and have a debt-free house that they built themselves.
00:23:56.480 | It's totally possible.
00:23:57.960 | That's just not the path that's often recommended.
00:24:00.160 | And we often talk about business.
00:24:01.800 | One thing that we have to be careful of, of discounting professions.
00:24:05.320 | Tom Stanley in one of his books, he talked about why the Millionaire Next Door, which
00:24:09.880 | was primarily composed of entrepreneur, why does that millionaire always go and recommend
00:24:15.160 | that their children become pharmacists or doctors or lawyers or some stable profession?
00:24:20.800 | Because the entrepreneur knows everything that can go wrong.
00:24:23.360 | They know how risky it is and they know that, "Hey, listen, if you do this, it's a more
00:24:26.280 | guaranteed thing."
00:24:27.680 | But I look at it and say, "Okay, yes, it's risky, but what if we change it on its head?"
00:24:31.120 | Going to school for 14 years to go into a career that you may or may not love on the
00:24:34.280 | backside is also risky.
00:24:36.100 | So I'm with you.
00:24:38.320 | That's a long-winded way of saying amen.
00:24:39.800 | Yeah, preach it.
00:24:40.800 | No, no.
00:24:41.800 | We got to keep working on figuring out how to approach these things in a more intelligent
00:24:45.720 | way.
00:24:46.720 | And I'm sure there is a game plan in there that can be written out.
00:24:49.120 | It's going to be different for everybody.
00:24:50.440 | It is an individual choice.
00:24:51.440 | It's what do you love, what do you not love.
00:24:53.520 | It's designing a lifestyle that suits your passions.
00:24:56.000 | But America is very good at telling you what you have to do.
00:24:59.640 | And it's so hard at that age.
00:25:01.840 | There's fear.
00:25:03.520 | Yeah, it's very hard to home in and be willing to go your own way.
00:25:10.920 | Yeah, but do something differently.
00:25:12.960 | Because the whole culture praises conformance, conformity.
00:25:16.000 | And at that age, it's a rare young man or woman in their middle teen to late teen years
00:25:20.640 | who can stand up and say, "No, I'm going to go against it."
00:25:22.940 | Most college students, I'm convinced, most college students choose the college they go
00:25:26.500 | to because that's the one their friends are going to.
00:25:29.380 | Yeah, you're not wrong.
00:25:32.380 | So, Brad, let's talk travel hacking for a minute.
00:25:36.620 | So I haven't, you know what, I should probably, we should do a standalone episode at some
00:25:40.820 | point in the future because I haven't really covered much with travel hacking.
00:25:44.580 | But what is it and how do people, where do people go other than obviously your website?
00:25:50.340 | But like, how do you get started with this world?
00:25:52.380 | Yeah, it's a great question.
00:25:53.780 | So travel hacking, as I kind of alluded to before, it's opening up very targeted credit
00:25:58.820 | cards that offer these massive signup bonuses, which you then parlay into free travel.
00:26:04.780 | Now obvious caveat is this is credit card related.
00:26:08.740 | So please, anyone listening to this, do not get into it if you have any issue with credit
00:26:13.540 | cards whatsoever.
00:26:14.540 | If you do not pay it off on time and in full, or if you spend more than you otherwise would.
00:26:19.100 | Right?
00:26:20.100 | So, you know, the please just stop listening essentially now.
00:26:24.020 | Which means now, of course, that they are going to be listening.
00:26:26.420 | Even, whoa, what do you not want me to hear?
00:26:28.420 | Tell me the secret.
00:26:29.420 | Here's all the juicy stuff.
00:26:31.340 | So you know, it's basically taking your smart financial habits and instead of getting, you
00:26:35.940 | know, what do you get, Joshua, on your, on your, you know, cashback rewards card, one,
00:26:39.580 | 2% if you're lucky, right?
00:26:42.060 | You know, and I have found that in with these new cards that I open, I get somewhere between
00:26:47.700 | 15 to 30%, essentially a rebate on every dollar that we spend in life.
00:26:53.380 | Okay?
00:26:54.380 | Because we're funneling all of our expenses through on our credit cards.
00:26:57.420 | We're getting these signup bonuses and then just moving card to card.
00:27:01.260 | Okay?
00:27:02.260 | So we're continually opening new cards and then just racking up these bonuses.
00:27:05.940 | I mean, at last count, I've earned 2.5 million miles and points, which I estimate is worth
00:27:12.740 | somewhere, you know, at a two cent per point valuation is worth $50,000.
00:27:16.220 | Wow.
00:27:17.220 | So, and, and just to add onto that, that is a post tax.
00:27:19.860 | So that's, you know, they don't pay any taxes, applications whatsoever.
00:27:22.780 | So the great bending beauties of mileage.
00:27:25.060 | Yeah, exactly.
00:27:26.060 | So right.
00:27:27.060 | So it's parlaying these, you know, when you stack these bonuses together, you can actually
00:27:31.420 | put real significant trips together.
00:27:33.180 | I mean, just this past summer, uh, you know, I took my wife and two daughters, we went
00:27:38.360 | to the San Francisco Bay area.
00:27:40.680 | We flew four round trips for free on Southwest.
00:27:43.580 | We stayed in this really nice Hyatt hotel for 10 nights, completely free.
00:27:48.940 | So I mean, I think the entire trip cost us $44 and 80 cents for the, you know, unavoidable
00:27:55.540 | taxes and fees on the award flight.
00:27:57.300 | So you know, that's pretty fantastic.
00:27:59.940 | Absolutely.
00:28:01.100 | So obviously we're not prepared here to do a good kind of like intro or primer, but I
00:28:07.220 | do want to ask one question.
00:28:10.180 | Have you calculated the time involved and what the actual payoff is in terms of the
00:28:15.220 | time that you put into this?
00:28:16.700 | Yeah.
00:28:17.700 | Great question.
00:28:18.700 | So just like anything in life, it's what you want to put into it.
00:28:21.700 | So I, so with my website, which we mentioned before is travel miles one Oh one.
00:28:27.580 | It's similar to Jonathan and my, our project here with trees up high, which is different
00:28:31.860 | perspectives.
00:28:32.860 | Right.
00:28:33.860 | Okay.
00:28:34.860 | So not to dive too deep into the answer here, but my business partner in that Alexi, he's
00:28:38.860 | a cardiologist.
00:28:40.040 | He has a ton of spending and he also does this other wacky stuff called manufactured
00:28:45.700 | spending.
00:28:46.700 | You know, he spends a lot of time.
00:28:47.700 | I spend essentially zero time.
00:28:49.620 | Okay.
00:28:50.620 | I take the laid back, no frills approach.
00:28:53.040 | We open one card, we put all of our normal spending there.
00:28:56.620 | So no time whatsoever.
00:28:57.900 | So maybe we're at 10 minutes to open a credit card.
00:29:00.220 | Right.
00:29:01.220 | So 10 minutes we, you know, just have to loosely track our spending and because you have to
00:29:08.180 | hit these spending requirements.
00:29:09.820 | So you know, you have to be organized somewhat.
00:29:11.860 | Okay.
00:29:12.860 | Card calls for six grand.
00:29:13.860 | You'd have to know when you have to hit six grand.
00:29:15.360 | Once you've hit six grand, you put the card down, you open it and you open a new card
00:29:18.880 | at that point.
00:29:19.880 | So, you know, honestly it takes very minimal time to actually rack up the points.
00:29:24.020 | Then you know, of course redeeming takes a little more time.
00:29:27.500 | You know, you have to plan where you want to travel.
00:29:28.980 | You have to see if there's availability.
00:29:31.300 | It's not terribly difficult and especially if you can be flexible.
00:29:34.820 | That's kind of my buzzword is flexibility.
00:29:37.420 | You know, you can't kind of shoehorn your regular travel schedule into travel rewards.
00:29:42.720 | You just can't because you know, there are limitations.
00:29:44.420 | That's why it helps to be financially independent.
00:29:46.940 | That's exactly right.
00:29:47.940 | That's another word that we use.
00:29:48.940 | That's exactly right.
00:29:49.940 | I just bought a ticket and I can't remember where it was to, but I just was stunned at
00:29:55.980 | how I'm always often stunned at how cheap you can get flights if you don't have to be
00:30:00.700 | somewhere on a certain day.
00:30:02.620 | And that's one of the benefits of having a mobile business, a location independent, financial
00:30:06.460 | independent, et cetera.
00:30:07.460 | It's like everything is built to take as much money away from people who work as possible
00:30:12.700 | and people who don't work for a living can get everything for free.
00:30:15.860 | So true.
00:30:16.860 | And that certainly extends to travel hacking for sure.
00:30:19.260 | Well, awesome guys.
00:30:20.260 | So the website and the podcast is ChooseFI.
00:30:23.060 | ChooseFI.com.
00:30:24.060 | It's primarily a podcast or both?
00:30:25.900 | It's a companion.
00:30:27.300 | We use the articles to create content for the podcast.
00:30:30.580 | We use the podcast to drive people to the articles so that you have, you listen, you
00:30:36.740 | see what's interest you, then you know where to grab on with the articles.
00:30:39.780 | And so it kind of feeds off each other.
00:30:41.060 | They're really intended to be a companion podcast to the blog.
00:30:45.460 | And I think they build off each other in a really synergistic way.
00:30:47.780 | Awesome.
00:30:48.780 | I'm glad to hear people taking this concept of financial media and adding twists to it
00:30:53.620 | that can be more relevant, more interesting as we can continue to expand.
00:30:56.980 | So ChooseFI.com, other website, travel point website?
00:31:00.540 | TravelMiles101.
00:31:01.540 | Anything else you want to plug?
00:31:03.980 | I got nothing, man.
00:31:04.980 | I'm just excited to be here with you.
00:31:06.540 | Thanks for sharing your time with us.
00:31:07.540 | We're big fans.
00:31:08.540 | Thanks for coming on, guys.
00:31:09.540 | Are you ready to make your next pro basketball, football, hockey, concert, or live event unforgettable?
00:31:14.820 | Let Sweet Hop take your game to the next level.
00:31:17.380 | Sweet Hop is an online marketplace curating the best premium tickets at stadiums, arenas,
00:31:22.380 | and amphitheaters nationwide.
00:31:24.460 | Sweet Hop's online marketplace makes it easy to browse and book the best seats with no
00:31:28.780 | hidden fees and a 100% purchase guarantee.
00:31:31.780 | You can feel confident when you book your premium LA tickets with Sweet Hop.
00:31:35.620 | Visit Suitehop.com today.