I'm going to run through types of financial independence. Traditional FIRE is have enough money to quit your job and never work again. Lean FIRE, which would be the retiring early, but bringing your expenses way down. Coast FIRE, it's saving up enough money so that you can stop contributing towards retirement.

Barista FIRE, which is you could choose to just have a side job that only covers the expenses. And then the last one that I'll mention is... Most people, if they had the wherewithal to reach financial independence, they are going to do fantastic things. They're going to add value to the world.

They're going to do interesting and varied things. What I actually would care about more than quitting my job is having the flexibility to work, but also I would like to save up enough money so that I'm not beholden to a job, but I don't want to sacrifice. I want to be able to go on really nice vacations, eat at whatever restaurants and spend money and live in a nice house.

Can you give a little more detail on that, how people are doing this? Yeah, I mean, I think... Brad, thanks for joining me. Yeah, man, this should be fun. I always love chatting with you, whether online or off. So this should be a good time. We did our first conversation.

Well, first one was many years ago on your podcast. Yeah, you first joined me on April for what became episode two of All The Hacks. And then we did it again for episode 100. And we talked a little bit about FIRE at the beginning. But I think both you and I have had an evolution of perspective on financial independence.

So much so that in researching this episode, I found out that I didn't even know what "coast fire" was. And it turns out that that's actually the thing I'm probably most in tuned with myself. So lots of stuff to talk about when it comes to financial independence and how our perspectives have changed.

Yeah, agreed. Going way back to episode 71 on Choose FI. So that was almost six years ago when we recorded this. I think, yeah, unquestionably, both of our perspectives have changed significantly. And I think, frankly, changed for the better in a lot of senses and changed for the healthier, certainly.

I think both of us probably veered a little bit too much towards the frugality and over-optimizing at the expense of maybe enjoyment of life sometimes. And I think there's been an evolution, certainly for both of us, clearly. But I think, frankly, in the greater financial independence world. And this is one of the very few things that I will pat ourselves on the back for at Choose FI is, I mean, we, for a very large degree, and we have really been the center of the FI world for, I mean, the last handful of years.

And we have made this very strongly anti that, like the miserliness, the just, "Hey, let's race to some number at the expense of life." And I think we've tried really, really, really hard to make it about, "Hey, what are you running towards, not what are you running away from?" And I think just that little shift in orientation has made a big difference in a lot of people's lives.

Now, for anyone who didn't listen to the hundreds of episodes you've done, the few we've done, hasn't ever introduced themselves to FIRE, which will maybe only be a few people. So briefly, briefly, since you're the pro, for anyone out there, how would you just define financial independence and the difference between financial independence and FIRE?

Yeah, well, that's a great question. So, okay, FIRE, the definition, so we're financial independence, retire early. And now that was en vogue certainly five to 10 years ago. It was this really, there's an allure to it. And frankly, Chris, it's that cute little acronym, right? Like FIRE just sounds cool.

Like, "Hey, I'm pursuing FIRE." But honestly, there was so much overemphasis on the retire early that it just became this horrible distraction. And there are just people really just crapping on, hold on, I don't want to say this, Andrew, cut that. And there are just people who love to rip on the FIRE movement because all they hear is that R-E.

And it really takes away from people who are pursuing financial independence to live a better life. And that is how I see, I see financial independence as a universal good in that people are resting control of their lives back from this elusive they, right? Like you always hear the doom and gloom of you can never retire.

It's impossible. You need 10 to $20 million to retire. Healthcare is going to be unaffordable. Boom, boom, boom, boom, boom. You can't do this. You can't do this. It's impossible. As opposed to reorienting around what can you control? And you, to a large degree, can control your expenses. And now, again, this is probably where people overemphasize just the cutting.

And Chris, obviously we'll talk about that in depth here today, but you can control what does your life cost? And then essentially you can say, okay, I take, what does my life cost per year? And then multiply by some number. It's usually by 25. So let's say your life costs $80,000 a year.

Multiply by 25, that's $2 million. That's your five number, your financial independence number. Because I think many of us, most of us have heard of the 4% rule where we're not going to get into this really in-depth here today. But in essence, you can pull 4% out of your investable assets.

So again, we'll turn it around and say that $2 million times 0.04 is $80,000, right? So it's just the inverse of where we started at 80,000 for the expenses. So that $2 million can spit off 80K to cover your living expenses. Now it is indexed for inflation, normal inflation, not the inflation we've seen recently.

So there are some potential adjustments, but I think some people have some people adjust for that is say, okay, maybe I want to be a little more conservative and make it 30 times my expenses or 33 times something, something like that. Right. So you can, you can play with this at the margins, because I think really the essence of it is you actually have some degree of certainty and you have something to shoot for maybe for the first time in your life.

And it's not just this doom and gloom of, oh, you can never do this. You can never do that. There's some elusive day that's going to impact you. It's you can control that. So yeah, how does that sound for a rough definition? No, no, it makes sense. And I will come back at some point to the 4% rule because I have some thoughts.

But, you know, when I think about financial independence on one perspective, it doesn't even have to get that detailed. It's, you know, you could have a large emergency fund and that's a form of financial independence because it gives you time to look for the right job. You know, every bit of savings that gives you some flexibility is layering in financial independence.

And sure, when you get to the point that your savings can cover your entire life and you can choose not to work, to work, to work for free, obviously, you know, that's even more independence. And if you truly could replace your entire income, then yeah, you could retire early per se.

The irony is that most people end up using their free time to do things that very much resemble work and very often generate income and they're not truly retiring early. But I think that's why it's actually helpful. As much as I thought it was confusing that there are many different types of fire, it was actually helpful to look at them and talk about what they are because it gave some perspective to the concept that it's not all about one particular style, which I think historically it has been.

It's always been saving up enough money so you have 25 times your income and don't think about anything else. Yeah, I think you're spot on. I think that's exactly right. And that is why that caricature existed, right? It's like this was for a very specific type of person is what it seemed like high income, maybe in a tech job, maybe a white guy in his 30s, right?

Because some of the very famous early fire bloggers, I guess I even have a hard time saying it at this point, Chris, the early fire bloggers were fit that caricature, right? Or fit that profile, let's say. So I agree with you that A, nobody that I know of actually just sits on their butt and retires and doesn't do anything.

Most people, if they had the wherewithal to reach financial independence at some fairly early point or expedited time, they are going to do fantastic things. Like you said, they're going to earn money somehow. They're going to add value to the world. They're going to do interesting and varied things.

And to imagine this again, you can tell I get bothered by this, right? So like that, they're just going to sit there and do nothing and sip umbrella drinks. It's like, it's just so silly and laughable, which is why like to focus on the RE makes no sense. And then, like you said, the power starts accruing essentially from day one, right?

It's like that first time, if you're living paycheck to paycheck and you're now all of a sudden you found out about ChooseFI and you're pursuing financial independence, okay, maybe it's not going to take you 10 years to get to five. Maybe it's going to take you 20 years. Maybe it's going to take you how many every year?

It almost doesn't even matter. But your life is vastly better that first time you have $5,000 saved up. Even $1,000, right? Like, Chris, how many people live paycheck to paycheck and think that an emergency is a $200 expense that came out of the blue, but was perfectly foreseeable in a given year?

But that to them is an emergency. But it's really not, right? Like, it's just life is lumpy. Expenses are lumpy. That's the way it works. But man, that first time they have $1,000 saved up, $5,000 saved up, like their life is dramatically better. So yeah, I mean, you're absolutely right.

Like the FI journey starts from day one. And I think that power starts accruing from day one. And I think it really radically transforms people and their entire mindset. Yeah, I think a handful of people I knew, myself included, probably went off the deep end with one version of it in our minds.

I'm going to run through because there's an unlimited number of types of financial independence, right? They're ones that I will leave off and maybe they're ones you're excited about. But I'm just going to share a few of the ones. I wrote down a couple quick definitions, because I think having a few options of what financial independence could be actually gives you more flexibility.

So the one we talked about, just traditional fire is have enough money to quit your job and never work again. But the other 4 are pretty interesting. So I'm going to talk about first with lean fire, which would be the very tight end of the spectrum, which is retiring early, but bringing your expectation for expenses way down, really tightening your belt so that you can do it even earlier.

And I would say this one probably gets a lot more flack than practically shows up. But this is I am going to change where I live, change what I eat, change the activities I do so I can stop working. And I don't know. I'll run through them all and we can talk about them.

The next one, which is interesting, is kind of coast fire. And it's most interesting to me because I didn't really actually understand what it meant. I thought it was a version of fire for people who live on the coasts where cost of living is higher. But it turns out it's actually instead of focusing on saving up enough money so that you can stop working, it's saving up enough money so that you can stop contributing towards retirement, whatever time in the future that might be.

So let's say you're fine working till you're 65, fill up your retirement accounts enough early on so that all of your income each year can just go to life and not go towards savings, which dovetails into another option, which is called barista fire, which is... And then you could choose to make a lot of money and spend a lot of money, or you could choose to just have a side job that only covers the expenses because you don't need to contribute to your savings.

And so you could take a less stressful job. You could take a job that earns less income. And by the way, this is all a spectrum, right? If in order to meet your retirement needs, you need to save $30,000 a year, it's not zero or 30, you could lower your income.

There's stops along the way. And then the last one that I'll mention is Fatfire, which has a wonderful Reddit community and Facebook group, which is really just not sacrificing, right? It's like, "I would like to save up enough money so that I'm not beholden to a job. I'm not beholden to anything.

But I don't want to sacrifice. I want to be able to go on really nice vacations. I want to be able to travel around the world, eat at whatever restaurants I want to and spend money and live in a nice house and choose to live in the Bay Area, even if I'm not working or wherever it is for you." So I think that's like, "I want to live whatever life I want on my savings and not stress out about it." And I don't know, I'm curious what you think when you hear all of these things, whether you're like, "This is silly.

This is helpful." Yeah, I think it's helpful. I think it's mostly helpful. And like you said, there are a lot of these different ones. I think these are the four probably main ones that I've heard of. I suspect there are some that you and I have never even heard of at this point.

But yeah, I think, like you said, lean fire is probably the one that appeals to me least. But I suspect it's maybe, I don't know. The easiest to achieve. It's easy. It's certainly easiest to achieve. Yeah, it's the old school. It's like essentially how little could you humanly spend more or less to live?

And then have you achieved FI based on probably the 25 times rule based on that? So let's say your life, maybe just your actual structural expenses and some food to get by costs $30,000, right? Well, okay, then your lean FI is $750,000, which is very doable for a lot of people.

I mean, Chris, I can't imagine that sounds like a very appealing life to either me or you, but I can understand why people potentially pursue this. What I think is interesting, and it's something I've actually said a lot, and I guess maybe I've been describing lean fire, is that it's helpful for me to have the security to know that I've saved enough money, that there is a lifestyle I could live, especially once you have a family and children.

If you have that $750,000, and something happens, you lose your ability to work. Knowing that there is a place in the world that you could live, maybe even in the US, maybe even nearby, there is an ability to buy food, feed your family. That's a lot of security. It gives you the flexibility to do a lot of things in your life and be a lot less worried.

Now, it's not enough money to live in a major city and go out and take expensive vacations, but it will give you some peace of mind. I think the challenge is, when you get to the point that you hit it, do you really want to stop, do nothing for the rest of your life, and live that life or keep going?

So to me, there are stops along the journey that start with being out of debt, start with being able to pay off... Well, let's skip that. It starts with being out of debt, building up savings and whatnot. But I think what I've seen in my life, leaving to start this podcast, my wife leaving to join me, those were things we were able to do because we have savings.

Do we have enough savings that we could live off of it in our current lifestyle with zero income? Probably not. But do we have enough savings that we could adapt our lifestyle, move somewhere else and live off it? Yes. And that gives us a lot of comfort. Yeah. Yeah, the security.

I mean, there's a real allure to that, certainly. And I don't think any of these are all or nothing, I mean, especially something like LeanFi. So I mean, I can use the example of my brother and his wife and family. They, I mean, maybe you could call it a mini-retirement, but there's some intersection of a mini-retirement and LeanFi in that they just had a daughter and she's a year old now.

And basically, he was staying home to raise her for the first year. And then his wife, Kristen, realized, "Hey, I don't want to miss this time. This is a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We're not at Fi, but we're certainly at a LeanFi number where we could easily live off the 4% rule based on earning zero income." So they wound up almost doing exactly what you described, Chris, which was, "Hey, maybe you could even do this within the United States." They moved to Wisconsin, where she's from.

They bought a condo, don't have a mortgage on it. And they're living for a year or two or maybe even more in this LeanFi style. But the benefit they're getting is they're seeing those first formative years of their daughter's life as a family. And the three of them are there every single day.

So you talk about security, but you also talk about benefits of something. I mean, that is literally priceless. And I mean, I don't know precisely what's going on in their lives, but are they going out to fancy dinners all the time? Are they doing this and that? No, but man, they're there with their daughter every single day.

And that's an astonishing, astonishing thing. I think you could choose what you want to do with your financial independence. You could choose how it exists. But let's come back to CoastFi because it's the most interesting one to me because it feels like what I'm interested in and what I actually would care about more than quitting my job is having the flexibility to work, but also save.

I'm curious what you think. Yeah. So it's funny, actually, that today is the day you found CoastFi, right? And you realized, oh, wow, this is interesting to me. This is what I'm living at this point. And yeah, I mean, I think this has a real appeal to a lot of people.

This is maybe one of the newer of these flavors of Fi, but it was one of those aha moments for a lot of people in that, yeah, I mean, essentially, and Chris, obviously, there's the intersection of like the rule of 72 and compounding money. So just to take a quick sidebar and explain that is I think most people understand that, okay, you have some investable net worth saved up, right?

And while we can't guarantee what a stock market return is, I think you have a general annual return over a long period of time. Like at ChooseFi, we generally say 8%. We use that as the back of the envelope. So using what's known as the rule of 72, and I don't want to get in the weeds here, but this is actually a really useful and pretty easy thing to figure out is it basically tells you how long it'll take for your assets to double based on a certain rate of return.

So more or less, you just take the number 72 and then divide by your expected rate of return. If we're saying 8%, so 72 divided by 8 very simply is 9. That's the number of years it'll take your money to double. So that's really, really important for CoastFi in that basically how CoastFi works is let's say you've saved up, I don't know, 300,000, let's start there.

Something that's reasonable and is certainly a nice net worth, but is not going to get just about anybody to buy, right? So you've saved up 300,000 and now you want to not save any more money. That's the part of coasting. You're not saving additional money into your, hold on, sorry, let me say that again.

So that's the point where coasting comes in is essentially your money is working for you in the background and you are not adding anything to those assets. You're not saving. You are either earning less and spending it all or potentially spending more money, right? Or potentially spending more money and just increasing your lifestyle to meet where your income is.

So either way, not a bad option, right? And basically using that rule of 72, let's say your actual fine number was, I don't know, 1.2 million just to make the math easy. So that 300,000 will double to 600,000 in nine years. And then that 600 will double again to 1.2 million in 18 years total.

So 18 years from now, if you had a $300,000 net worth, again, in theory, we're not saying this is a guarantee, but assuming an 8% annual return, it would be 1.2 million in about 18 years. And at that point you would be fine. So you're more or less coasting into it based on the work that you've done previously by saving in this concerted manner to get your current net worth.

And yeah, I mean, Chris, I think there really is a great allure to that. I know, again, this is something that you're thinking about in your own life, right? You clearly have a nice net worth, but I think you are not at fi as you would traditionally define it, right?

I mean, it's funny because 10 years ago, I probably would have said yes. Then you have children, you move into the Bay Area, and you spend a lot... You realize how much more money you're spending and you come out of it. So it's like you can come into it, you can come out of it.

For me, I think we've saved enough that it'll cover retirement if it continues to grow. And that we can not focus as much on saving in the short term. But we do need to focus on covering our expenses. And so that's where I think it seems like, "Oh, I could do whatever I want." No, no, no.

Can't do whatever we want. Still need a reasonably high pre-tax income to cover where we live and how much we spend each year and probably will save more. But in a strange way, for me, it's weird to ever withdraw money from your savings. So for me, the money we put away in our brokerage account, our retirement accounts, that's for retirement.

That starts TBD. I feel weird taking money out of it. The strange thing in this new kind of Coast Fi world that I'm hours into is this idea that, "Well, maybe it makes sense to withdraw some of it so that we can put other money we make into more tax-advantaged accounts." So I could actually see a start to draw down on our long-term savings, which for us is in our Wealthfront account, so that we can increase our solo 401(k) contributions because there's just a more tax advantage to doing that.

That's something that we'll probably still do. So we're still going to save, but we're going to also withdraw at the same time, which I'm sure will make some financial model confused. But I think for us, this feels... It feels like the first time I found a part of the FIRE movement, if you will, that I'm like, "Oh, this makes sense now." I don't necessarily want to quit my job.

And I think a lot of people I talk to don't want to quit their job, or at least don't want to stop working. And so the one nuance to calculating this is thinking, "When do I want to stop working?" Work backwards from there to figure out how much you need now.

So like you said, if you want to stop working in 18 years, I'm a bit more conservative. I probably use 6%. So for me, that takes your 18 to 25. So if you're cool with a 65-year retirement age, and you want to work backwards, by 40, you need one-fourth of what you think you need to live on in retirement.

So if that number is $1 million, you need $250 because you're not going to touch it. It's just going to grow until that day. I don't know. We could go down a lot of rabbit holes here. But I've been really intrigued. I will say, I will just take a quick tackle on the 4% rule because I went down the Early Retirement Now website, which had this great whole thing on safe withdrawal rates and sequence of return risk and everything.

It was like a 60-part blog post series, which I will just say is a lot. I'll link to the first one in the show notes. But I think the 4% rule often gets misinterpreted because it was truly built for a 30-year cycle to end at zero. And so if you're using the 4% rule, starting at age 30, the certainty with which it has worked in the Trinity study that it was based off of would have only gotten you to age 60.

However, if you look at a lot of the calculations and the Early Retirement Now blog actually has a lot of them, you'll notice that if you just reduce it to 3.5% or even 3%, it works in perpetuity. So if you want to be really safe, which is what I do in all my projections, I use the 3% rule.

I'm probably underselling things. I'm also not factoring in Social Security or anything else. But that's where I come out with on the 4% rule. I think for a handful of reasons, it's probably both too aggressive to be certain and too conservative for what I imagine we will see with returns.

Yeah. Isn't that interesting? Right? And yeah, Karsten. So listeners of ChooseFI will be very familiar with Karsten from Early Retirement Now. He is just an amazing, amazing intellect. And yeah, like you said, if you're looking to dive deep on safe withdrawal rates, his 60-part series, it's almost laughable to say 60-part series out loud, but yeah, it is amazing.

And yeah. And by the way, each part is not like three paragraphs. Each part is like seven pages of content. Right. Thousands of words and graphs and charts and stuff. Yeah. But right. I think on our show, he basically has said it's almost a guarantee, and he would never use the word guarantee, but in every Monte Carlo simulation he's come up with, that 3.25% will get you there in virtually every single scenario.

So like you said, using a 3% safe withdrawal rate is very, very conservative and not including social security. I mean, we're all, I think those of us that are inclined to think that way, and I am as well, because I mean, I use that 33 times. So that's the 3% rule, 33 times your annual expenses.

I think we all understand we're being ultra, ultra conservative, but again, a lot of this, a lot of personal finance is psychology. It's more than it is numbers. And I think if that helps you sleep well at night, because again, that word security, right? We'll come back to that.

I think that is a really important word. It's a really important concept. And if that helps you sleep well at night, then so be it. It's fine. Like, but you have to understand like, what's the opportunity cost, right? So the opportunity costs potentially are years of your life that you're working.

Now, if like you, you're doing something that you love, and again, I just wrote down as you were talking, like, who says you have to stop working as if you need to stop working to be part of the fire movement or something like that nonsense is gone. It was gone years ago.

Like, that's not a prerequisite to being a member of the financial independence movement, certainly. And like, you can do what you want. That's the whole beauty of this, Chris, right? Like, you have the freedom to do what you want in life. And if that means you want to work because you love it, then do it.

That's great. But do it on your own terms. Right? So I think, again, we're being a little conservative, but that's okay. Again, understanding what's the opportunity cost and for people who are working in jobs that they don't love, and that it's that one more year syndrome, how many people fall prey to that?

Like, oh, I don't feel safe enough yet. I don't feel safe enough. What if I need the 2.5% safe withdrawal rate? What about 2.25%? And I don't think Social Security is going to be here. You know, you can come up with all of this stuff that will keep you working in a job that you potentially hate forever.

And that's not a good alternative either. So clearly, I'm kind of setting up almost like a straw man ridiculous argument here, Chris. But like, but maybe not, because I fear there are people that could fall prey to that. I think the one thing that you got to remember is that it's not binary.

If you have a job you hate, you don't have to just quit that job and never work again and be able to replace your income for the next 30 to 60 years. If you build up enough to get you by for a year, then you can go try to find another job that you might like more.

And it turns out, if you love it more, you might be able to advance better, negotiate a salary better, be more productive. You might end up making more money in the long run. I know a lot of people that find themselves sometimes in their career not happy with their job.

And if I look back now that I've kind of had the professional experience, most of them found other things pretty quickly that they loved. Some took longer than they needed. So a lot of them worried that they couldn't quit their job because they needed enough money, millions of dollars to cover their income forever.

And I know that because I was one of them. But I quickly found other things that I loved. And so, put together, that's more of an emergency fund issue than a financial independence issue. You don't need to have your entire life covered in costs before you can take time to find something you love.

And I have a good friend who did this. He knew he was ready to find something new and knew that it might take a year and had enough savings to do that. Didn't think he needed financial independence, retire early money. And about six months in, he found a thing that he's really, really excited about.

And it took time, but he's going to be much happier. And I think his career will flourish because of it. So I don't know, that's just one perspective I have. No, that's really cool. I mean, that resonates with me in my own life, frankly, and you as well, right?

We both did this with our own entrepreneurial ventures. And it's cool to have options. And I think that's what pursuing FI gives you. It gives you options that if, I mean, for me, if I didn't have any type of side business and I was just, I mean, I was a middle manager at doing corporate state tax returns.

I was a CPA and I was on the path to FI. I was still a number of years away and I had built businesses on the side. I mean, Chris, they weren't bringing in a ton of money, but it was something that like I had proved the concept to myself.

And I said, Oh, if I could actually do this full time, maybe I could turn this into something. And it's, you know, in the points and miles world, you didn't even realize, I don't think all this time that we've known each other, that that was really my first foray into entrepreneurship was through points and miles.

And it was for basically regular people. I was helping people get to Disney world, take Disney world trips, not first class on Singapore suites or anything like that. But literally trips to Disney world, because I figured if they were, if I, if I could save $4,000 for my family, there were millions of other families who want to go to Disney world.

And yeah. Is that super attractive to a 24 year old kid who's looking to fly first class and, and do all the travel hacking type of stuff? No. But is that appealing to tens of millions of families who want to go to Disney world? Yeah, you bet. And then I kind of scaled that with my next business travel miles one-on-one and, and it was just, I wouldn't have had that opportunity.

I wouldn't have had the guts, frankly, to leave my job, my nice safe job when I had two daughters and a wife. If I didn't, if I wasn't pursuing fine, if I wasn't 80% of the way to my fine number, it was that, that security blanket, it made a massive difference, you know?

So you said 80%. So I'm curious, how are you tracking this? I downloaded Karsten's toolkit, which is a spreadsheet that I didn't even... I spent about 20 minutes on it and I made it about 10% or less the way there, which is not to say it's not a helpful tool.

But I think there's a world where you can go down a lot of rabbit holes. So just to be clear, his tool is incredible, especially when it comes to modeling a lot of the things he talks about. If you want to nerd out, I'll also link to that in the show notes.

But high level, what are the tools you're using on a daily basis to kind of manage your money and track your financial independence journey? Yeah. Well, you, the AllTheHacks guy, are going to be very disappointed in me. I am as low-key and low-tech with this as one could possibly be.

I still use the Excel, Microsoft Excel spreadsheet that I've been using for like my entire FI journey. I have it literally quarter by quarter saved, my net worth saved for the last 10 plus years now. And which is actually a really cool exercise. I just love, and I know our good friend Paula Pant does this as well, just loves really getting into the nitty gritty of like, I know it sounds silly, but entering those numbers into the spreadsheet, there's something really visceral about it that is better for me personally than using some fancy tool or some fancy projection software.

And I know you've dove into a whole bunch of these things. So I want to get back to you on this because you have a better answer. But yeah, I mean, I very simply, I have my CPA's brain. So I've come up with like income statements and net worth statements that I just track in Excel.

And I basically maybe spend an hour every month just kind of really tying everything out to, I run everything through my checking account. So I use that as the account that I run everything off of and then any transfers into other accounts. And then obviously increases or decreases in the account balances at Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab or Wealthfront or wherever it may be.

And that then ties out to my net worth. So basically I'm doing this probably, like I said, about an hour a month, give or take to track my checking account. And then at the end of every quarter, I spend probably no more than 30 minutes logging into every account that I own, that I have assets at and just jotting down in this Excel spreadsheet my balance there.

So it ultimately then ties out to my, I get my net worth. So it's been, yeah, I know it sounds like a lot of work. It's really not. And there's something, there is something fun about it. So I know that doesn't appeal to you at all. But yeah, tell us about where the rabbit holes you've dove down.

Obviously I took a more tech forward approach than a spreadsheet, although I used the spreadsheet for a long time. But I just found that if I didn't update it for 6 months, it was just a lot of work. So I think that for everyone, there's 2 to 3 tools.

And I think for a lot of people, it can just be 2. And all of the stuff we've talked about this entire episode really comes down to knowing 2 things. It's knowing how much you're spending and knowing how much you have. And I guess knowing how much you make also, but that's usually a lot easier number for a lot of people to peg.

And so it's how do you track your spending and how do you track your net worth? And how do you project from that would be the third piece of the puzzle. I used to try to track spending in Mint along many years ago. I've done an entire episode where I broke down...

I actually went and used all the tools. Mint, YNAB, Monarch Money, Copilot, the one that Quicken launched, Simplify, and a couple others. And I played with all of them. I synced all my 2022 transactions, looked at everything. And the end goal was like, "I'm going to pick the best one." I had some ideas of what it would be.

But at the end of the day, I went with Copilot. I think it's for anyone who's on Apple products, it's the best. If you're on Android or Windows, it's an iOS, Mac, iPad-only adventure. But for me, it almost makes it so easy and fun and simple and that's just what I've chosen.

Right after I reached out to them and I was like, "Hey guys, I've been pitched by a handful of companies in this space to work with them as sponsors of the podcast. But at the end of the day, I want to work with the products I use." And that's how I've actually done most of the sponsorships we have.

So I did end up working with them. So full disclosure, they are a partner of the show. And if you go to allthehacks.com/copilot, you'll get a discount. But I think that is how I manage how much I spend. I did a whole episode on all that, so I'm not going to go down that rabbit hole.

Then for how much money I have generally, Wealthfront has a free version of linking your accounts, seeing how it's going, doing some light projections. I'd put it in the "I don't want to play around a lot. I want you to give me best practices on everything." What I think goes a step further than that is a product called Kubera, which I first heard about at FinCon, when they presented on stage, I later started using.

And then later, I would say partnered with, they're not a sponsor of the show. But we worked together on the All The Hacks membership. So All The Hacks members get their first year of Kubera free. Both of these tools are not free. So your option of a spreadsheet is free.

My option of 2 apps, I pay for both of them. They're not huge expenses. But I think Kubera is like, imagine if someone wanted to build the website version of the spreadsheet you have, where you can put it in categories, you can look at... Especially on the investment side, you can look at cost bases or IRRs.

But they're calculating it all for you. They're pulling all the info. And then they just launched recently this fast forward feature, where you can put in a set of simple rules in multiple scenarios and be able to just see what happens. So this isn't the full on financial projection tool that you could go down every rabbit hole of tax assumptions and everything.

But you could say... And I'm looking at mine. It's like, let's say my assets grow by 3% factoring in inflation. Let's say my salary continues for this many years. Let's say inflation is this. Let's say I have a future expense for college starting in this year, lasting for 4 years.

Kind of some simple rules. On mine, I have 6. And it'll project forward and say, "Here's your net worth in a year, 5 years, 10 years, 20 years, and what that will generally look like." So I think Kubera... I've abandoned my spreadsheet for Kubera for tracking net worth and everything.

It syncs with... The thing that I think has always been the problem is there are a handful of providers of linking services, meaning where you'd log into your bank account and they'll pull data on a read-only basis. And most apps use one and Kubera works with 2 or 3 of the top ones.

So they know that if you're trying to sync that obscure Vanguard, a census retirement account that I have, they know to make sure you use Yodlee instead of Plaid because it syncs better. So I love that. And so Kubera. And then the third one is one that I recently started playing with after a bunch of listeners emailed in and said, "Hey, you haven't included Projection Lab." And so I said, "Oh, you're right.

I haven't included Projection Lab. I'll make sure at some point to go look into it." And I had a call actually with Kyle, the CEO or the founder of this company. And it's really interesting. I think if you're the kind of person that wants to model out a lot of scenarios, toggle things on and off, look at the tax implications, look at the flow of capital on a year-by-year basis, Projection Lab is amazing.

I will say, I think jumping into it, it's not going to be the "I want to set up 3 simple rules." There's an onboarding and you walk through a lot of stuff. But once you're done, the flexibility you have is really cool. And you can define steps along the way like, "I want to get to...

When will I get to financial independence at 33 times income? When might I get to fat fire at 50 times income?" You can set these milestones and see these projections. So I would say if someone needs an app to track their spending, I'm a fan of Copilot. If someone wants to track their net worth, I'm a big fan of Kubera.

And if you're an All The Hacks member or want to be, it's free for your first year, which is cool. And then finally, I would say if you want to go really deep in the weeds, you can use Projection Lab. And I don't say "deep in the weeds" like it's not interesting for most people.

I just... You're going to spend more time on it and if your money is important. Some people... I love putting my money on autopilot. But if I'm trying to figure out big decisions, I like having all the data. And so right now, we're looking at school. If we ended up paying for college or doing private school, what are those huge costs what kind of impact do they have?

And I think those are really interesting questions to ask. And when you want to factor in the taxes of it, and you want to factor in required minimum distributions from retirement accounts, it's pretty interesting. Yeah, you showed it to me right before we jumped on. And yeah, it looked fantastic.

And there is a spectrum, right? I mean, clearly, I think we are the spectrum here of mine is aside from people who aren't tracking anything, which please, please, please, please track something. You just need to at the very least, what do you spend? What's your net worth? You need to do that.

Up to you who are trying out all these different tools and want to get it. I would say by any measure, you are being more accurate than I am, right? And having these major expenses, like just seeing that, "Oh, hey, from, in my case, 2026 to 2034, I'm going to have college for each of my daughters.

It's going to be eight straight years of college." That clearly needs to be factored in somehow, right? And if I was earning $0, then we would potentially have an issue. Am I really at phi? And I think it's an interesting thought experiment in my case, but for a lot of people, hey, if you've "reach phi" and you're not, maybe you're earning a fraction of what you were, and you have these massive expenses coming up that you haven't modeled, well, there are many of these software options.

I know there's a new retirement. I think there's on trajectory. I've just loosely seen those in the past, but yeah, this Projection Lab looks amazing. Yeah. And just to be clear, normally when I want to do an episode on this, I'll go play with every tool. And so Projection Lab does not get the seal of, "I have gone and played with every tool." But I just got so many emails from listeners to check it out.

And many of those people have gone and played with every tool that I thought it was worth looking at. But honestly, I say that because I enjoyed spending an afternoon going to enter it in, but I equally enjoyed, on Kubera, creating 4 or 5 or I guess 6 rules.

It's like "To college", "Growth", "Inflation", "When does my income end?" and "How do my expenses change?" And just having a very simple form of "How do things project out to the future?" So I care more about people being aware of the circumstance than I do about them going deep, deep down rabbit holes.

But those are the 3 tools that I say all of my financial life lives through. It's not related to business. There's quick books for business and all that stuff. But for me, it's those 3 tools are how I'm doing almost all the tracking. And we'll see where Projection Lab fits in, in the long run, whether it's a thing I check every month, every year, or whether it's a thing I use to make big decisions.

No, that makes perfect sense. And Chris, I actually wanted to double back to something you said before, because I think there might be some people who are looking for some additional clarity on this. So we were talking about LeanFi. You were saying that you were potentially going to be taking money out of some accounts.

It sounded like your taxable brokerage account, but you're going to be putting money in also into let's say, solo 401(k) or some other pre-tax options. You mentioned that very much in passing. And I always love to close the loop on things. Can you give a little more detail on that?

Because I think there are going to be a lot of people who are like, "Chris, I want more info on this." Like the real nuts and bolts of how people are doing this. Yeah. I mean, I think I did some aggressive saving early on and built up a good taxable brokerage account.

Now, we could have a whole conversation about what was the deprivation of skipping dinners, not ordering appetizers, like was all that worth it? Conversation for another day. So now, most of my savings is non-retirement savings. However, and our expenses have gone up. And right now, with Amy leaving her job to work on all the hacks, I would say our income has gone down.

Twelve months ago, we had two jobs and a podcast and now we have zero jobs and a podcast. And so, we just frankly do not have the income right now to both live and contribute to retirement accounts. And that's not to say we're in a... You should feel bad.

No, we're in a fine financial position. It's just if you look practically at the dollars coming in, all the expenses we have related to the podcast, employee, we have a full-time employee, all this stuff, practically, we want to cover our expenses and there's just not a big buffer left over to fund retirement accounts.

However, there are a lot of great options, whether it's Backdoor Roth IRAs, or Solo 401Ks, or... I just got this cool email about this option that I'm not entirely sure how it works, but something that goes one step even further than just Solo 401Ks, it was called a Cash Balance Plan.

So I just read this description. I'm just going to read this description. This is an advanced retirement plan for business owners that are making mid-hundreds of thousands of dollars a year in profit and want to put away more than the $66,000 a year Solo 401K plan allows. It costs considerably more to set up, about $2,000 to set up and maintain each year.

But it's unparalleled in the size of the benefit, and it can be combined with the Solo 401K. So I don't even think... When I read this, I wasn't thinking, "This is for me." I was just thinking, it made me realize that there are a lot of things as a business owner, or even if you were just an employee, that you could use your money to be more tax-efficient in the future.

But if you don't have the spare cash, what do you do? It's always been crazy for me to think, "Let's withdraw from our long-term savings." If you look at our wealth front balance for the last, I don't know, 5 years, it has not been touched. We don't withdraw from it ever.

It's our long-term retirement plan. But now I'm like, "Psychologically, I'm talking about pulling money out of it so that I can take income somewhere else and put it somewhere else." Which in turn might mean investing my savings into the business, and then the business contributing to a retirement plan.

It's a little complicated and we're working with our accountant to make sure we don't mess it all up. But it's just something that we're considering right now in that interim stage. Once you go full, quit your job, financial independence, you tap into your savings all the time. But now that I'm living this "Coast Five" thing, which is so funny to say, having misunderstood what it even meant as early as this morning, it's like, "Well, I don't want to touch my savings anymore." Even though I had that attitude, now I have a name to define why I'm not touching that savings.

And then almost immediately, I'm like, "No, no, no. I'm going to touch it, but I'm going to replenish it through another door." Yeah. I love that. So you're right. You are, in essence, you're netting to zero in the sense that you would be pulling money out of your taxable brokerage account to cover your life expenses, but also contributing to retirement accounts, whatever they may be, whether it's this crazy cash balance thingamajig or 401k, etc.

But in essence, what you're doing then is getting the tax benefit from those contributions. Yeah, it's like I'm basically shifting my after-tax, subject-to-tax-in-the-future investments to tax-advantaged investment accounts, which will reduce my income and give me more growth in the future. So it actually is not a zero sum. It's actually a net positive sum other than the short-term capital gains hits of selling my portfolio, which fortunately, because we've been keeping this money and wealth front for a while, we built up a ton of tax loss harvesting.

So I think I can actually mitigate most of the capital gains with built-up capital losses. So yeah, it'll be a net positive. And for anyone listening, I think, "Look, you might not be a business owner. You might not be in a situation in any way similar to Brad or mine.

But if you work at a company, and you're not maxing out your 401(k) because maybe you just had two children and you decided to quit one of your jobs, and you're in a situation where cash is tight, but you do have savings in a taxable account, just a standard brokerage account, I'm not going to talk about what you should do.

I'm not going to give personalized financial advice, but definitely worth considering using some of your long-term savings to live on so that you can put some of your income into a more tax-efficient vehicle for long-term savings. And it's important just for people to be cognizant of just this concept.

So yeah, it's very cool that you're doing this in real life. And welcome to the Coast 5 world. So one thing we haven't touched on, now that we've evolved our thinking on financial independence over the course of, for you, probably a decade, for me, probably a handful of years, I'm curious to hear some of the changes you've made.

I think we both kind of went from more deprivation, less spending, to training ourselves to spend. So I'm curious if you could talk a little bit about how did you learn this skill of spending and what have you been using it for? Yeah, the skill of spending is such a great way to put it and yeah, Mr.

Money Mustache had come up with this earlier in the year as a phrase that really just appeals to me. I think a skill of spending on the front side of FII is largely, okay, you do have to be more optimized, especially if you're living paycheck to paycheck or getting into debt every month.

Okay, you have to cut, you have to be a little more efficient. And that doesn't mean deprivation necessarily, but it means being smarter with your money. But yeah, Chris, you and I are now at points where I think we've evolved the other side of the skill of spending is learning how to spend for life benefit, for memory dividends, for just enjoyment and for connection, for what we talked about last time, something that you're working on is trying to buy back your time in a lot of senses, right?

Like there's lots of ways to spend and to spend well that can really help your life. So yeah, I mean, I am really thinking about this in a lot of ways. There's certainly spending to get time back just in little ways. Even something like that is very obvious to most people, getting a cleaning service at our house, which we never did forever, spending more on food now than we ever have because we just spend a lot of time cooking and cleaning and it doesn't really make that much sense anymore.

I think we're at a point in our lives where, okay, the ease, especially with having two daughters now in middle and high school, and we're driving them all over the place and to spend an hour cooking and 20 or 30 minutes cleaning up, it just, it doesn't make any sense for a couple of dollars.

So clearly spending more money there. I mean, Chris, the biggest thing is like experiences. I think this is something that I've been honestly like really proud of myself this year. And this also comes back to like the memory dividends and Die With Zero and Bill Perkins. I love music.

And this is like a part of my life that has really not been an important part of my life for the last 10 years because I've let it kind of fall by the wayside. And I think in a lot of senses, like since my daughters were born, like I lost myself.

Might be hyperbolic, but I lost myself in a lot of like the things that I love doing. I used to love watching like the English Premier League on Saturdays and going to concerts and doing just like a lot of fun stuff that I just had let, like I said, slip away.

And this year I challenged myself to really make moves on this and see what I can do. And I actually planned like an impromptu last minute solo trip to New York City to see Bono from U2. So he was doing this like really small concert at the Beacon Theatre that was partially a book tour.

So it was like half one-man show, half book tour/concert. It was very, very interesting. But I bought tickets on StubHub, bought flights, got a hotel, and it was like the week before. And I just, I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. I'm going to take a trip to New York.

And it was, I mean, Chris, it was really awesome. And that is something I never would have done in my entire life before reorienting this, before reorienting this, this skill of spending. And how did you do that reorientation? Because I think I'm not, I'm not quite there yet. What do you think changed that made it possible now when it wouldn't have been possible in the past?

It is understanding that time is finite. And maybe that's that I'm 44 years old and not getting any younger and my kids are growing up. And like I said, I might have, you know, lost some part of myself over the last 10 years where I haven't focused on, on things that bring joy.

And I just really want to do that. There was no moment. It was just understanding that you got to do it. You got to live life. You can't be worried about saving money all the time. And even just little challenges, Chris, like as silly as this sounds, like the Richmond airport is like, it's not very expensive long-term parking or even like the short-term parking.

But I was like on this trip to New York city, I'm like, what would, what would doing this trip like a rich person look like? And it was almost like a Ramit Sethi kind of thing. And it was not parking in economy parking. It was parking in the daily lot that was right there.

And I could just walk over to the airport. It was like, and Chris, this cost me like nine extra dollars because I was, it was 24, 24 hour trip. So this is not that big of a deal, but, and it might've even been less than that, frankly, but it just felt great.

It was just, it was really cool. And it was like, okay, how can you find these little things that actually make a difference? And going back to the food, it was like, we get these amazing, hold on, let me say that again. And going back to the food, like we're now getting these amazing meals brought into the house and it's like, it's just a couple of dollars more, but it's just reorienting to what's the value here.

So it's like this valuist play is like this term valuist is how I've always, I've talked about this on the podcast for so many years, but I never really embodied it in, in actuality. I think I did to some degree, but I didn't get there. And now it's just, all right, look, like I said, and I know it sounds a little morbid, but I, but I think it's important is understanding the finite nature of your life, right?

And like the finite nature of seasons of your life. You know, I, I took a trip to see Taylor Swift to in Pittsburgh with my older daughter and we bought very, very expensive tickets on, on secondary and man, Chris, we had the time of our lives. And like that we'll, we'll be talking about that 30 years from now, it was amazing.

And I don't regret any single one of those dollars I spent on that trip. It was astonishing. And I think it's, I I'm just, I'm really fortunate to be in this position, but I'm really proud of myself that, that I've made these changes in that shorter period of time.

I mean, a lot of the language you're using, memory dividends, seasons of life were, were languages from Bill Perkins' book, Die With Zero. I know, you know, I had him on for, I want to say episode 91, but I can't quite remember the number. Did that have a big impact on you?

Yeah. It was episode 91. Yeah. That book had a massive impact on me. It really did. And it was just the, the conceptual framework. And I mean, Chris, I knew all this stuff, right? Like sometimes it just crystallizes and hits in a moment when it matters. And I think that's, what's also interesting about taking in a lot of different content.

Like I probably listen to way more podcasts and read more books than I, than I probably should frankly. But like, but sometimes you just, you hit on something like this, where it is just a life-changing thing. And I, and I don't know what it was, but, but again, like I'm even doing like little things now.

Like I went to a yoga and meditation retreat last month that like, that's something I never would have done. I never would have had the guts to like, just go off for two days by myself and just be. And it was awesome. It was just really fantastic. I'm like, again, just trying to build these things into life.

Like I'm part of a mastermind group where it's about 24, 25 of those guys. And now we're trying to do more in-person events and like, Chris, I always had an excuse. I always had, it was always like, oh, it's too far. Oh, I need to be home for the weekend with my wife and my daughters.

Like it's selfish to leave. Like that's how, this is the script that I always had running in my head. Like it's selfish to leave, but you know, it's really important to take care of yourself too and to find joy in little ways. And like, we had this day of fun at one of my buddy's house, 12 of us kind of converged on his house and in New Jersey.

And we had like eight hours of playing like this, like Olympics of games. And it was just, cause it was the most fun I've had in years. And like one of the guys cooked this amazing like Michelin star-esque dinner. It was just like one of those days I'll remember forever.

And like, I know I could tell you for certain a year ago, I would have said no to that weekend. I would have just said out of hand, no. And so again, this reorientation. So I think, yeah, I mean, a lot of things have changed in my life and I think they've changed for the better.

I don't think it's selfish to take care of yourself. I think it's selfish if you don't encourage your partner to also do the same. So I'm sure you found that balance as well. And I think that's the important thing. I had a similar moment, which was more serendipitous in that it wasn't something I would have said no to.

But we had this moment where we invited some friends up to a house we were staying at in Napa, not ours. And there was a volleyball court. And for like two hours, we were all just playing outdoor volleyball, probably getting sunburned. But we're blasting some good 80s rock. And I just had this moment where I was like, "Wow, this is...

I want more moments like this." And the downside is that with kids and stuff, you have to really plan them. You can't just expect to text five friends and be like, "Hey, do you want to go do this thing an hour away right now?" No. It's just... It's not practical anymore.

Maybe when I get a little older and my peers and friends or kids are a little older and easier to travel with, maybe it'll get a little better. But you have to plan ahead and you have to commit earlier. And I think I'm still learning, but you've got a couple years on me and your kids do as well.

So I hope I get to that place where you are. But I had the same impact when I talked to Bill Perkins and I made that episode. And we actually planned a trip to London and Paris. I talked about it in the episode and then we just booked it.

And we were like, "We just have to do it." And in a weird way, we stopped tracking our net worth after that episode. We stopped caring about whether it went up. And we started focusing on "Do we just have enough now? And when do we want to spend our money?

Do we want to spend it later? Do we want to stop working?" And for us, now we've both found something we like doing. So I don't know. It changed a lot for me. I encourage anyone to go pick it up and read it. Or if you want a preview, the hour version, I interviewed him in episode 91, which we can link to in the show notes.

But yeah, that changed a lot for me. And we started spending a little bit more on things that some have an ROI, some don't. But I actually am surprised at how much we've been able to accomplish with the podcast, now that we have a little more free time, because we've spent a little bit of money on other things.

Whether that's someone to clean or someone to help with food, or that's hiring an assistant or an employee for your company. These things that felt like they were big expenses we were nervous about. But now that we have them, they've unlocked a little bit more creativity, a little bit more time.

And we've been good in our career at turning that into opportunity. And so you'll never know unless you try. That's some expenses, right? A Taylor Swift concert is probably not one that's going to make you more money in the long run. But it's certainly one that's going to give you memories that far exceed that.

And whatever version of that exists when our daughters are a little older, I'm very excited to do the same thing. Yeah. And it's important to prioritize it. And I think just it being in your mind and like you said, going back and listening to that episode 91 of All The Hacks, that episode was more impactful to me than the book was, honestly, hearing him talk it through.

So yeah, I think that's a perfect starting point for people. And... Well, to go back to the Early Retirement Now blog, he gave a review of that book. Yeah, that was part 60, right? Yeah. And what was interesting was, he justifiably said, "A lot of these things aren't new." And I think the thing that Bill Perkins did was he took a bunch of concepts that we've all known.

We've all known that experiences are valuable. We all know that money diminishes or health diminishes. But if you could package it in a good way, ultimately, a lot of things are just storytelling. And I will say that when it comes to telling a story about money, most people aren't that great at it.

It's something that a lot of people get bored with, aren't interested in, and Bill Perkins weaves a story around it that I think just comes alive when you hear him talk more than when you read the book, though. You'll hear a reminder if you go listen to it. And I'll give it to you here.

It is not an episode to listen to with young children in the room. He has a very colorful vocabulary. He does indeed. And yeah, I mean, even like you said, talking about health and longevity and vitality, spending money on that is important. I think we both have become a little more cognizant of that.

I know this year I hired a personal trainer who I met through Twitter, actually, which was kind of wild. But that again is something I can guarantee you two years ago, there was no chance that I would have done that, 0% chance. And it has been the best money I've ever spent on my health in my entire life.

I was watching this video that a past guest of mine, Nisar Yasin, Nas Daily made. And he hired a personal trainer in India from this company called Fitter. And I haven't done it yet. I haven't pulled the trigger on this service yet. But I was thinking about it and I want your perspective.

So your personal trainer is remote, right? They're not located where you are. You don't see them in person. They don't come to the gym with you. Is there a reason that they need to be in the US? Because if you look at the cost of living around the world, if someone could motivate you just as well, but in India, they can certainly live on less.

And I was blown away. And by the way, I have no connection to this company. So I don't want to endorse it at all. But I was looking at it and the personal training sessions were like $5 a session. And you could do it in 5 days a week, monthly for like $100 a month or something in that ballpark.

I don't want to quote the prices because I'm not an expert here. But I was just surprised. And then it just got me thinking there are some services and practices that are really tied into our system, right? Hiring a tax accountant, you want someone who's really familiar with the rules and the regulations here.

But I was like, "Ah, personal trainer, someone to just throw on a tripod and motivate me to work out and whatnot, live video sessions every time. Why couldn't that person be overseas?" So I want to hear your perspective on whether you think that you could get a similar output from that.

And if so, how does that change your thinking? Yeah, that is really interesting. I definitely think that you could hire someone from anywhere in the world. So it depends what you're looking for, right? So how you described it, if you're looking for somebody to be there with you or just create a video or whatever, 5 days a week, motivation, a little accountability, absolutely.

It makes no difference where they are. Yeah, my guy, Dean Turner is my personal trainer. And he's fantastic. Deanturnertraining.com is where he's located. But, you know, he's in Philadelphia, which is not that far from me, but I'm never going to meet him in person in all likelihood. So yeah, he could be in India, he could be in Australia, it would make no difference whatsoever.

I am paying for his expertise though, not for the motivation. So yeah, clearly, if I was paying for motivation, I would move to that service you just mentioned. That sounds like a slam dunk. I mean, that actually sounds amazing. I suspect a lot of people would benefit from them.

You could even pair the two, right? You could probably find Dean and be like, "Help me come up with the curriculum." And then say, "Great. Now someone else..." This is my big challenge with a lot of services is that you want to pay for experience and execution. And a lot of times, you hire the person...

And you can't get good experience without paying for it. People charge a lot more for their time when they have experience. But then it doesn't make sense to pay for the execution also. And I think about this with financial planning, right? Like a human financial planner will give you a better financial plan that connects your emotions and stuff.

And I'm not against people paying a fixed price for that. I think that's really valuable. It's just if you then on top of that tack on an ongoing 1% of your assets forever fee to manage the investments, that's where I'm like, "Oh, I don't know." So I wonder if there's a hybrid approach here where I think it's totally fine to pay financial planning fixed fee annually, and then a much smaller fee for investments.

Is there a Dean Turner + fitter super combo where you get daily motivation and workout regimens following the curriculum of someone who has a lot more experience and personalization? Yeah, that's fascinating. So this now is turning into a business lesson for Dean, I think. So because, yeah, I wonder if he could scale his business more that way, if he used his expertise to create the programming, but then he found these people wherever they may be, and certainly a lower cost area.

And he could then potentially outsource part of the day-to-day with knowledgeable people who are well-versed in his methodology. That would actually be really interesting. Dean, if you're listening, at a minimum, if you go down this path, I'd love to give it a try. That would be really cool. I bet he'd be super interested in that.

So yeah, to be continued on that, but yeah, I think accountability is important. I think that's why people like group exercise classes also, right? Everybody else is waiting for them, whether it's CrossFit or yoga or whatever it may be, Orange Theory Fitness, all these things. When you have people waiting for you and, oh, they text you when you're not there, why?

It's so easy to fall out of an exercise routine. And I think, to me, accountability and motivation are really, really important. That's why I thought this was so interesting, because I was like, you know what, I would work out to avoid losing $5. I might have gotten comfortable in my life spending money, but I have not gotten comfortable losing money.

It seems so much harder to be comfortable just giving up money, even though you probably, in some cases, should. So in this particular case, I'm like, it would almost be worth it just to say, "I'm going to work out 3 days a week from 8 to 8.30 and I'm going to book it with a person, just any person." It could even be non-existent.

I'm like, I'm going to pay this money and my wife gets to throw it, light it on fire if I don't work out. But even better if you have someone that can sit there and motivate you along the way. Anything else you've been doing in health that's worth covering?

I know the last time you were on, you said 2023 is going to be your year to get healthy. Yeah. It's definitely, yeah, my bold move was healthiest year ever. So yeah, I mean, a lot of it has, I talked last time, last episode about DNS that I have been doing to kind of maybe deal with some nagging shoulder and hip issues that I had.

And that's helped dramatically. I think I've just been much more open again to spending money on massage. I go, I get a massage in that cupping thing. I don't know if you've ever seen that on swimmers at the Olympics. So I do that once a month. I found something in a Tony Robbins book that he was talking about this thing called fascial counter strain, and it's like a massage slash fascial release, which I really, really enjoy.

It winds up, what's so funny is the guy who owns the business here in Richmond is in the financial independence world. He's like, "Are you by any chance Brad from choose a vibe?" It was hilarious. So yeah, I mean, I've been doing that. I bought an aura ring to track my sleep.

So I've been really focusing and trying to dial in in my sleep a lot. I think I mentioned to you that I bought a hot tub and I just bought a cold plunge, but it was actually not one of those super duper expensive ones. One of our listeners, a guy named Mitch, reached out to me and told me about this thing called the ice pod.

Oh, I thought you were going to go down the path of the ice barrel, but the ice pod. No, no, no. Yeah. It is something you can buy. So it's by the pod company. It looks like podcompany.com. This thing's like 150 bucks. I mean, honestly, Chris, it's nothing special.

It's just kind of like an insulated little... If you've ever seen one of those like blow up hot tubs that cost like 500 bucks. This is something similar for cold plunge, but the last handful of nights, we just got it up and running. My two daughters and I have gone out after dinner.

It's getting dark now because it's getting later in the year. So darkness, we go out, go in the hot tub, go in the cold plunge, back in the hot tub. And it's just like this cool little experience together. And I mean, this cold plunge thing, like I said, it was like 150 bucks.

It was fantastic. So even if we don't use it much beyond the next month or two, it would be well worth it. So, yeah, just all these little things that I'm just trying to add to my life. And some of the stuff is really cool, like these experiences that I'm having now with my family.

I love it. Yeah. One of ours will be a sauna, which is days from now, we're getting added on, which will finally, I think, get our cold plunge more usage. For as much as I enjoy hot tubs, I enjoy saunas a lot more. Yeah. Is it an infrared sauna or a barrel sauna?

It is neither. It is a full kind of finish. I've been working with this company that I'm not ready to share. But when I am, they're building like... They might be like the best sauna makers in the U.S., at least making it accessible. So it's kind of a much more finished sauna experience.

I went really deep down the rabbit hole of saunas. (laughs) Surprise, surprise. And there's this Trumpkin guide to saunas, which is like this crazy guide. And barrel saunas have plenty of critique. And so I was on the fence about it. And I actually met someone who's like, "No, no, no.

I'm building this company and we're going to make the best saunas. And we're going to do it in a way that is modular and easy for people to order and set up at their home and build something really nice." And yeah, I'm very excited. But this is like a proper finish sauna style experience that gets hot.

And so, I don't know, Amy and I are very excited to add this to our routine. And ideally, it'll be like, put the girls to bed and have a little time together in the sauna, dip out to the cold plunge, finish off in the sauna and sleep better. Heck, yeah.

I love it. Oh, that's really cool. All right. To be continued on that one, for sure. To be continued. Maybe the fourth edition of Brad and Chris record a podcast together. If you make it out to the West Coast, we can see if the audio equipment handles the heat.

Sounds good. Might not be a video version, but you know... 2024 goals. I like it. This has been great. The emails I got after the last time we did it, I think I got 20 emails that were just like subject more Brad. So for the 20 people who wrote in asking for more Brad, here you are.

Hopefully, there was at least a more Chris email in your inbox too. I'll just pretend there was. Yeah, no. You know we got flooded with them. I copied you on all the responses, so you know they came in. Awesome. Well, this has been great. I am excited for your healthiest year ever.

I hope you finish it out strong and we'll chat soon. Yeah. Thank you, my friend. As always, it's good to chat with you and yeah, until next time.