The holidays start here at Ralph's with a variety of options to celebrate traditions old and new. Whether you're making a traditional roasted turkey or spicy turkey tacos, your go-to shrimp cocktail, or your first Cajun risotto, Ralph's has all the freshest ingredients to embrace your traditions. Ralph's, fresh for everyone.

Choose from a great selection of digital coupons and use them up to five times in one transaction. Check our app for details. Ralph's, fresh for everyone. Ever wanted to save some money, retire in your early 30s, and then spend the rest of your life traveling the world with your spouse?

Maybe that's just me. If it is just me, skip today's show. If you're interested in at least conceptually finding out how that might be possible, enjoy today's interview with a couple who has done exactly that. Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance Podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets. I'm your host and guide through the financial swamps that we all walk through every day.

Today's show is an interview with Jeremy and Winnie, who are travelers, writers, early retirees. They retired in their 30s and are now traveling the world together. Their website is called GoCurryCracker, and they write quite a bit. They put out a lot of content, and it is all helpful, valuable content.

And in today's show, you are going to enjoy hearing at the beginning their story, and then you're going to enjoy hearing some information as far as some of the actual strategies that they have put into place to be able to allow them to retire at a very early age.

I think you're really going to benefit a lot. And at the end, I mean all throughout, obviously, I'm going to encourage you to go over and check out their writing. Some of the content is really great in a written format as well, especially when we get into some of the nitty-gritty with taxes and financial planning stuff as well.

Go and check out some of the information that they have published on their website as far as that information. As you listen to this, I am currently in New Orleans, Louisiana, or at least I hope I am. This show is pre-scheduled long before that, so hopefully that's where I am at the FinCon session.

So all these shows are pre-recorded. I hope you enjoy them. If you have any questions, shoot me a note. Joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com is my email address. One quick note. Jeremy was in Taiwan, and the Skype connection that we were on got a little bit funky towards the middle of the interview.

I let it go for a little bit, and so you should be able to just pick out the words, but then it got so bad, and I waited for a time, and then I interrupted him and paused the recorder, interrupted him, and then asked him to reset. So then after we reset, then it got better.

So don't give up and discuss in the middle when it gets a little bit mixed up. I think you'll appreciate it. Just keep on listening, and then the connection will get better. Enjoy the interview. So Jeremy, welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. I appreciate your being with me.

So thank you for the work that you've done to build out your website at gocurrycracker.com. I have enjoyed your writing over the last couple of years, and I think that it can't possibly be overstated how valuable travelogues and information like yours is for people who are looking to pursue a similar path.

It's such a wonderful thing that today we can access the information so easily of other people's stories. Would you share with us just a little bit about your background and your story, especially as it relates to your journey through and to financial independence? Sure. So my wife and I, we retired in our 30s and we started traveling around the world.

We started that about two years ago. The whole savings path, from when we decided really that early retirement and permanent travel was something we were interested in, took us about 10 years. From when we formally committed to the plan until the day that I submitted my resignation. And since then, we've been slowly moving from place to place.

We worked our way through Mexico and Central America, and we're in Asia now. We kind of started the blog a little bit to keep in touch with friends and family, and also to answer the question that I got from a lot of my co-workers about, "You can really do that?

How did you do it?" Also to share what we thought was a whole when we were looking for information. How much does it cost to do it? We publish all of our expenses on a monthly basis. Every penny we spend. Yeah, that's probably one of the most helpful resources.

I know that I'm interested in long-term travels, taking a year abroad type of thing, and the most valuable thing in the world is when you can find someone who accurately tracks their expenses. And says, "Here's what it actually cost us." And so you can have an idea of what you need to put together your adventure.

So from the beginning, this was a plan? Did you bumble into it? Most people, if you said you retired in your early 30s, and you said it was a 10-year plan, that would mean sometime in your early to mid 20s, you came up with the idea. I've rarely met someone in the early mid 20s that's working towards early retirement.

How did you come up with the idea? Well, there was some time when... Like the phase from basically graduating from college, paying off student loans, until the time when the plans started, I was pretty much a workaholic. You know, I was doing 60 plus hours a week, plus take home work and so on.

And the day, a time came when I had an opportunity to take my first adult vacation. Three weeks long, the first week, I really just checked email, thought about work, exchanged email with people at work. The second week, I started to think, "Hey, this is kind of nice." And by the end of week three, I was asking, "How can I do this every day for the rest of my life?" So I kind of went back home and started asking questions.

"How much would it cost? How would I do it? Is this realistic?" I wrote sort of... It came out to be roughly like a 50-page business plan at that time of how to get there. And I think if I were to go back and look at it right now, I would think, "Wow, I was a very naive person." Right.

But it got me started. And from there, it was very much an active process. How do I save a greater and greater percentage of income? And how do I invest it? What about medical care? You know, just all the kind of the questions that people ask. "Can I ever go back to work?

What would that look like? How much money do I need?" Over that 10-year period, as the money accumulated, the knowledge accumulated as well. Did you find any books or mentors or resources that were particularly helpful for you? Yeah, so there were a lot of different things I read. Pretty much if there was any book on personal finance that I saw in the library or whatever, I would pick it up.

You know, most of it wasn't very practical for somebody aiming at early retirement. It's generic advice of somebody aiming for a 65-year-old retirement. But there was a website, like Early Retirement Forum. You know, the Boggleheads Forum. You know, later, after we were already sort of financially independent, we see some great sites like Mr.

Money Mustache, Early Retirement Extreme, JL Collins, NH.com. Yeah. Did... In kind of pursuing, it's interesting, with regard to the personal finance literature, that's always the... That's always kind of the trick that I found. Because when I was younger, I consumed a lot of personal finance literature, and I thought, "Oh, I'm doing great.

I'm saving 15% of my income, obviously, so therefore I'm on track. I don't have any debt. You know, I'm investing well, so therefore I'm on good shape." I'm in good shape toward reaching my goals. But sometimes I feel like I got a little gypped, because if I had found someone who'd give me the ideas, you know, if I had read Jacob Lund Fisker's book when I was in my teens, I would have saved 75 or 80 percent of my income.

And so I'm so glad that some of those resources are coming out now and are more and more prominent and are being more and more accepted. And then I feel like, "Man, what did I miss?" And somehow you got something that I didn't get 10 or 15 years ago, because we were both reading the same books, and somehow you had the goal and figured out how to make it happen, and I just didn't even think of it as being a possibility.

Well, you know, we all come to it in our own way and in our own time. You know, the question is, you know, are we able to kind of make the connection of how do you break away from the mainstream? Right. So you saved for 10 years. What percentage of your income?

You figured out what percentage of your income you saved over that period of time? Yeah, it was... You know, in the beginning it was less, but we hit 70-ish percent in the later years, and then in hindsight, the last three years we were contributing 100 percent. That's great. I just kind of broke the financial independence barrier before we actually left, and so we were able to save every penny that came in for a few years.

So you followed Jacob's seven-year plan. If you contributed 100 percent for the last three years, you did about the seven-year plan like he talks about. How did you do it? Well, there are basically three pieces, right? Like, if you look at any of either like the US Census data or what is any analysis that looks at kind of average spending for people, the three things that they spend the most money on are housing, transportation, and food, and we we didn't own a car.

We basically very carefully found the place that we lived, which was a small apartment near a university. We had all the great amenities nearby. We were a block from the grocery store, a block from the farmer's market, a couple blocks from a library, a couple blocks from a park, so we could walk everywhere.

We were also on major public transportation routes for busing, so if we needed to get anywhere else, we could take a bus. Then I started biking to work. I had three different routes I could take. There's somewhere between 8 and 23 miles one way, and you know, it's kind of, at first it wasn't that it took a while to become accustomed to it, but by the end, you know, if there's one thing I miss about having my job was that I had that daily bike ride.

And then, you know, now that we had basically our transportation costs way down and our housing costs way down, we started basically working through how do we spend as little money as possible on food. And what we, you know, Winnie basically, she picked a couple cookbooks, like a French cookbook and an Italian cookbook, and she just started working through them.

You know, the quality of the food that she prepared just got better and better, and eventually we're just like, why are we gonna go to a restaurant when the food we can have at home is of this quality? And when you get to that point where those three things basically become kind of a low percentage of your budget, or a low percentage of your income, it becomes quite easy to save a large percentage of income.

I'm glad you bring out the food thing. I've observed if you look at most of the cuisines of at least ethnics, excuse me, ethnicities or countries that are known for their cuisine, if you think about it, it's very likely that their cuisine was not just by the rich. So the, you know, Italian cuisine or French cuisine or Chinese cuisine is not just because this is what the rich people ate.

This is probably what most of the people ate, and there is a cultural treasure in looking to see how did people eat in an affordable way. A loaf of wonderful French bread fresh out of the oven costs about 15 or 20 cents worth of ingredients to make, but you have to make it and you have to do it right to get the same experience.

Or, you know, an Italian pasta dish, the pasta is not that expensive. But learning how to spice it up comes with the skill. So you can either go and buy it and hire somebody to cook for you, or you can learn to do it yourself and recreate with skill what most people would have to spend money on.

And you know Chinese eat the weird part of the meat, so it's really cheap. Right, right. Well, you know, one of the popular posts on GoCurryCracker is about making bread. You know, you can go buy this artisan loaf of bread at like the farmers market or a specialty market for six or seven dollars, or you make it home for a few pennies.

And we have a whole post about how we basically made this fantastic bread for a post of fruit. Yeah, I'll have to check that out and read it. I haven't read that post of yours, but I had the same experience. I read on, I was reading on some frugality blog and they were talking about how easy it was to make French bread.

And they had the, I think it was French bread, and they had their ingredients and it was basically just flour, salt, and water, I guess, maybe a little bit of yeast or whatever it was. And that was it. That was the whole ingredients. And I made I think four or five loaves and it was delicious, right out of the oven.

And the cost was just pennies, absolute pennies. So that's great. And Winnie, I like your point about the Chinese cuisine. We also often forget about that in the US culture. One of the things, I haven't learned how to cook Chinese food, but I love to eat it. And one of the things that I enjoy, you guys are in China now, you're in Taiwan, right?

Okay, so I haven't been to Taiwan, but I went to China one time. We would go to the street markets and you see all of just these amazing, to me, weird foods. And you think, wow, you can eat that, you can eat that, you can eat that. And you see how, especially in Asian cuisine, you know, a lot of times the meat is chopped up very small.

So we're in the in the US, we'll have a steak for dinner and you need a big, nice cut of meat. But if you're only using little bits of meat to flavor the dish, I mean, you can use the, you can use the jowls of the pig to be that meat source and stretch it a lot farther.

So that's a neat observation. So once you left, do you have any plans to ever return to the US or you guys think we're gonna be international forever? No, we'll return to the US. You know, we have a baby on the way. Congratulations. Thank you. And one of the things that we would like to do is kind of RV around to all the national parks.

And so we'll be back in the US. I don't know if that'll be like a permanent destination or just a trip that we do, but we'll be back. So far, Central America and you also said Southeast Asia or Central America and then you flew straight to Taiwan. Yeah, we flew straight to Taiwan.

So, you know, together we've been to about 40 different countries. But we, you know, since I left work, we basically have been doing this very slow form of travel and I think we've been to like six or seven. But Mexico for a long period, Guatemala, Belize and then over to Taiwan.

What have you learned about how much it actually costs you to live this slow travel lifestyle? Well, it could cost a lot less than we pay now. But we basically live a very luxurious lifestyle for about $3,000 a month. You know, that includes everything. And, you know, we sort of set up place.

Set up, you know, we go to a new place. If we like it, we'll find a longer term rental. And then we usually get kind of immersed in the local culture, local you know, if there's something educational that we can study in that place, we'll do so. So we studied Spanish, I'm studying Chinese.

When he's been studying oil painting. And we just kind of we live there for a while. And then when we're ready, we we go on to the next place. And when you do kind of that, that live local, slow travel sort of style, it costs us less than what we were what we would pay for the equivalent in the US by far.

What do you think is the primary difference that drives the lower cost? Is it the cost of housing? Is it the cost of taxes? That what would you from living because you you came from Seattle, right? Yeah. So what would you say is the primary difference between why is it so expensive to live in the United States versus some of the other places that so far you've traveled?

Let's see here, you know, for the for the exact same thing, everything costs more in the US. So even even. Yeah, yeah. When we were in our heavy savings, when we were in our heavy saving mode, we were we were spending only about three thousand dollars in Seattle, too.

We live a much, much, much more luxurious lifestyle now. Like we literally eat two to three meals a day at restaurants every day. But the the cost of real estate is much higher in the US, and so rent is higher. And all the businesses paying rent like restaurants have to charge higher prices and the cost of labor is substantially higher.

And so those two things make make everything effectively more expensive. Like in the in the US, people, people go for for businesses, go for massive scale to reduce costs. Your Wal-Mart, your Costco, you know, in a lot of sort of Central America, Mexico, Taiwan, you have people go the other direction.

You know, it'll be an individual owned store where you'll see four generations of people hanging out and living in the shop. And so a bowl of noodles is very cheap. It's because grandma opened the business 40 years ago and the whole family is still running. Right. I've wondered about this issue because my wife and I enjoy, enjoy traveling.

And to me, it seems like there's a bit of a nuance between it. And it seems to me like the experience that you have of traveling in the US or traveling in another place will depend on the type of traveling that you're doing. And it seems as though different regions of the world have different expenses.

And so the example that I think of is I think you're right about rental costs. It seems if you come to the US and especially in a large city, your rental costs are higher. You know, rental costs in New York City is dramatically different different than Chattanooga, Tennessee, or, you know, so you've got to deal with your regional preferences.

But so that is one thing. But the other thing just seems to be labor costs. So there are things in the US that are substantially cheaper than abroad. In my observation, things like vehicles, most places in the world, even in places that are have a have a lower per capita income.

The cost of acquiring and maintaining a car is is is extremely high as compared to the cost of acquiring and maintaining a car in the United States. Now, it's still a big expense, but it's it's you can get a good car for a few thousand bucks and the cost of of operating it is not not such a big deal.

But when you switch to things like labor intensive things, the prices in restaurants would be a good example. The labor costs are so high that I remember traveling in Hong Kong. It seems like everybody in Hong Kong eats out two to three meals a day. Nobody cooks because the cost of eating out is just extremely low, lower labor costs, and the kitchens are not set up in such a way that, you know, it's small, so it's a little harder to have this massive kitchen.

So if you're willing to adjust with the regional differences, then I think you could probably live a frugal and fulfilled life. It wherever. But the key would be knowing what's important to you and knowing, you know, hey, we're foodies, so the the beautiful restaurants to eat out, that's important to us.

So then we're going to pull back in another place. So I'll be interested to continue watching your expenses as you as you continue traveling and see if they adjust or they change as you're in different regions. I've noticed you've stayed out of Western Europe, for example. Was that intentional or or you haven't gotten around to it yet?

Yeah, we haven't gotten around to it, but it's conscious, right? People have to go through a mental, mental transition when they go from earning a paycheck to living off their investments. And, you know, we we've saved enough where we could go to Western Europe, but we wanted to kind of make that, you know, jumping off the ledge sort of thing.

Right. As shallow as possible. And so we started out in places that we knew were going to cost us. And then we'll work our way over to to to Europe whenever we get there. Right. And I think it's brilliant that you have that flexibility and that that can bring, you know, especially as you get used to living off of a portfolio, there'll be fluctuations in the value of the portfolio as time goes on.

And it's certainly if you can adjust your expenses based upon your actual experience of your portfolio can make a huge difference. And I think the same thing for all of us. You know, tell my wife in our we're still in the accumulation phase of our lives. We're not yet we're not yet financially independent.

But I talk with her and we just talk about there's no reason for us to cut back on the fun and the joy of life. We you know, I don't know if I'll make it to 10 years from now, but I don't have any desire to try to go into Scotland right now or go to the UK and and go to London.

We enjoy traveling in the less expensive parts of the world now. And so we can still satisfy the desire for travel or the desire to experience new things. And then later, as we accumulate more and more assets and it's a lot easier out of the surplus to go to the more expensive parts of the world, then I think that's when we'll start we'll start doing that.

So you've got an amazing amount of flexibility there. And I think that's a really valuable financial strategy that we don't talk enough about. You know, I I've been to I don't know exactly for some countries, not adventure, Western Europe. But my my favorite places that I've been is one of them, you know, stand out is like Guatemala.

And it just so happens that it's also incredibly dirt cheap. Right. It's just the quality of life there and the natural environment. They're incredible. And I love it. Right. Paris is nice. But if I were to choose like a long term place to live, I think I'd be more towards Guatemala than Paris.

Right. It's not not because of the pricing, just because of the quality of life. Do you factor currency fluctuations into your planning at all at this point? I would assume that your portfolio being from the US is probably primarily denominated in US dollars. Have you factored exchange rates and currency fluctuations into your planning at all?

Not really. Don't really worry about it. Like when we spent, I don't know, almost nine months in Mexico last year. And during that time, I think the peso fell against the dollar like 10 percent. You know, so we were paying 10 percent more at the end of the trip than we were in the beginning.

But, you know, it's 10 percent of a pretty low number already. So I don't really worry about it. What strategy did you use as far as accumulating accounts? Did you and especially with retiring early, did you fund retirement accounts? Did you fund taxable accounts? Did you buy real estate?

Did you buy mutual funds? What investment strategy did you pursue while working through to financial independence? All of that. Good. Yeah. And, you know, some of it better than others. But if you're going to save enough, you know, basically 25 times your annual expenses, and less than 10 years, you have to use taxable accounts.

There's just the legal limits for how much you can put in tax deferred accounts preventing you from saving enough there. And so I put money into 401K first. We funded a HSA later when that became an options report. And then it was everything into taxable accounts. And so at this point, are you drawing down on your taxable accounts?

Are you doing like a Roth conversion strategy? What are you doing right now for your tax planning? Yeah, so probably the most popular post on GoCurricular is never pay taxes again. Walk us through that one. Yeah, so there are basically four things that we do, four rules to follow, which I'm probably going to forget that right now.

But rule number one is be lazy. Don't work for a living because there's basically social security taxes and such. There's no way to avoid those when you're working. Then somewhere in there, there's live well for less. We don't own a car. We don't own a 3,000 square foot house with an ocean view.

But we live very well on much less than what it would cost to own those things. And by keeping your annual spending low and therefore your required income low, you are able to pay next to nothing in taxes. And then we try to live primarily off of dividends and long-term capital gains because it's like the US government wants you to retire early and live off of those forms of investments.

So you effectively pay zero tax when you're able to live on less than like $70,000 a year or so as a married couple. So we basically then follow those three things. And then we try to minimize future taxes by following two strategies, and that's Roth IRA conversions. So we're taking my 401(k) and then slowly converting that into a Roth IRA.

Because our sort of earned income is so low, we're allowed to roll over up to $20k total a year in total money from the IRA into a Roth at zero tax. And then that money will be later taken out tax-free. And then we also harvest capital gains. So last year I sold something like a $40,000 gain and then invested it immediately in another fund.

And that 40k was effectively tax-free as well and not tax-free forever. How did you learn about tax planning? I did my own taxes for a decade. And there are great tools like you can pay somebody an accountant $300 to do your taxes. And they'll give you a bill that you owe this much or you get this much of a refund.

And they'll give you some advice. Usually probably buy a house. And you'll never learn anything. You can use a tool like TurboTax. And it'll walk you through. It'll ask you some questions and give you some clues. But again, you probably won't learn very much. When you get down and actually go through all the forms yourself by hand and read the instructions and follow the documents that the instructions refer to, you start to really figure out, wait a second, if I modify what I'm doing here in this way, then this becomes tax-free.

Or if I do this other thing, I can get a tax refund. And when you build up the knowledge over a long period of time, like doing my taxes for 10 years, it always became clear. And then some of the ideas in general, I paid attention to the Bobbohead Tax Forum.

And through there, people ask, kind of beginner investors, they'll ask questions. And I love seeing beginner questions because when you're old and crotchety like me, you kind of assume you know a lot of things. And then when you see it through the beginner's eyes, you realize you didn't know very much at all.

And some of those questions kind of pointed me to it. Wait a second. If I sell a stock with a big gain and not have to pay any tax on it, and then I buy something similar on the same day, I've effectively harvested that gain forever. I never would have thought that without having seen it on the forum.

- Right. And I want to add one point, and I'm sure you could make this point, but it's something I've often heard, is that people often, when you describe tax gain harvesting, oftentimes people say, "Well, doesn't that run afoul of the wash sale rule?" And there's a rule colloquially known as the wash sale rule, which basically means that if you have a loss on an investment, you can't sell it and then purchase in order to take the loss and then purchase the same investment, either the identical or the substantially equivalent investment, in order to take that loss.

But the key that people often forget about is that only applies to losses. So at any point in time, you can go ahead and lock in a gain. And one of the major misconceptions that I see happening right now among tax planning is that everyone's so excited about harvesting tax losses, saying, "Okay, here's how we can figure out how to harvest these losses." But the problem is that every time you harvest a loss, in some ways, you're building up a higher deferred gain.

And so effective tax planning is about moderating that gain, taking your losses when you're able to take them in a way that makes sense, but also ratcheting up those gains to increase your cost basis. So if you can increase your cost basis by selling the investment, taking the gain, recognizing it for tax purposes, and then buying exactly the same investment, if you're able to control that, you can wipe out a massive amount of your tax liability by doing it intelligently.

But it's not something that really someone else can do for you because everything is based upon what do you need, what are your spending, what is your limits, and those will change every year based upon what your income is and what the makeup of your income is. So I'm glad to hear you correcting that and talking about that for people.

- And that's where doing taxes takes me a couple hours. I try to do them before the end of the year. So rather than April 15th, 2015, I'll do our taxes in December of this year. And then I know what to do with the portfolio at the end of the year.

But technically, there is a rule that if you sell a stock or a fund, harvest the gain, and then immediately buy back the exact same fund, technically, the IRS does have a rule that if you're performing an action specifically for the purpose of impacting your taxes, they could decide through a review that they think that that action can be wiped out.

As far as I know, it's never been done for tax gain harvesting, but I try to avoid, say, buying and selling the exact same fund on the same day. But the way to kind of work your way around that is if you buy, say, like an index tracking fund, and it just happens to track a different index, so you could, say, sell an S&P 500 fund and then buy something that tracks, like, small stock index or something, and that is considered a substantially different invest.

If you were to say, sell Berkshire Hathaway, harvest the gain, and buy Berkshire Hathaway the same day, the IRS could get a stick up their butt. You're referring to the substance over form doctrine that any transaction that's specifically for the purpose of tax planning, technically, they're going to look at what's the actual substance of the transaction, not just what was the form of the transaction, right?

That sounds correct. I'm not sure exactly what they're calling it anymore. Sorry, I'm throwing financial planner lingo in. That's what the doctrine is that I'm aware of. I'm not aware of a wash—I could be mistaken, so if I'm mistaken, somebody can let us know in the comments. But you are 100% correct, is that there is a doctrine that basically says that all tax rules are bound by what is the economic substance of a transaction, even if that actual substance varies a little bit from the legal form.

If listeners are interested, check out episode 41, radicalpersonalfinance.com/41, and I mention that doctrine in there and kind of go into it a little bit in detail. But you are right. I think that's an important point to keep in mind, is that you always want to be careful to avoid some of those pitfalls with tax planning.

It's so easy to avoid just by doing something that's slightly different, and you have your evidence illustrating your point. You released on your site your 2013 tax return equivalently, basically, right? Yeah, I put our 2013 1040 out there. It's just something effective, like 90-some thousand dollars in just gross income and zero tax.

So I'm going to repeat that again, because over the connection it was just a little crackled, 90-something thousand dollars of gross income and zero dollars of tax. That is correct. How did you do it? It actually, the principles I mentioned, I don't have a job, so there's no social security tax.

We get most of our income from dividend and long-term capital gains. So those are for our level of income taxed at zero percent. And because our income is considered low, about $60,000 of maybe $60,000 of that $90,000 of imaginary income, it was harvested from a long-term capital gain, and it was doing the Roth IRA conversion.

So I created income on paper that was effectively just moving money around that we found existed. But it eliminated future tax. It reduced our future tax. And it's just a $90,000 number, it's just roughly what you can legally earn from investment income when still considered bad, like future tax.

I think it's awesome. And I'm so glad you put the actual return up so that people could see how it works. And if you can control your expenses, there's a huge, huge opportunity. I love the early retirement financial independence community, because one of the key components of this community is having control over expenses and learning how to live well for less.

And one of the things that's ironic about the way that U.S. income taxes work is that you are penalized for productivity. And it's not really a political statement, although I don't mind getting into politics. It's just simply a fact, is that the more productive you are, because we tax income, the more productive that you are, the more your penalty is.

The more productive that somebody is at creating income, the higher the tax rates, the higher the tax base, the higher the total amount of tax. And we, as a society, we've decided that that is morally just to have that type of income tax system. It's not the system that I would choose, but that's what we as a society have decided.

But what it opens up is that because everything is based upon this class warfare, this idea of, well, we're supposed to penalize the rich, and then the middle class, we're supposed to give everything to the middle class, there's kind of a sweet spot. And you've hit it exactly with your expenses.

If you can control your expenses to a moderate amount, and you can increase your income to a substantial level, you can avoid a massive amount of tax, but not if you need the income for consumption. I was having a conversation with an early retiree the other day, and I was illustrating how this person doesn't need a substantial amount of income from their income.

And I was showing them how they can shelter basically $100,000 in tax-deferred accounts, and then how they could pursue some strategies to shelter their money going forward. But all of that is based upon not needing the money to spend now. If you need the money to spend now, this is where you're in the worst possible situation.

If you need to spend the money now on lifestyle, then that means you need to earn it. And so the high earners and the high spenders are the ones who pay a massive amount of the tax. But what I love about your return and your story is you're illustrating how you can get good tax planning on your side, and it can massively increase your time scale.

So I thank you for working so hard. It's not easy to put numbers out there. It's not easy to work through the detailed definition. I thank you for putting the information out there for people. I want to express my apologies and stuff aside. But the main thing is what it all comes down to, where everything comes from, is just being able to live what you consider a wonderful life, something that you're more than happy with for very little money.

And most of that is just what you've become accustomed to and how you choose to do the things you love. And 99% of people in the United States, that's like saying I hate baseball and apple pie, which I kind of do. Me too. But when I was living in Seattle, I wanted to go do anything.

I wanted to go get some ice cream at the grocery store. Most people, okay, well, I'll walk up to the garage, start the car, I'll drive 10 minutes to the grocery store, find a parking space, walk inside, oh crap, I've got to get some gas, so I'll stop at the gas station and go home.

And they do that whole 40 minute journey, and the oil light comes on, and I'm like, oh, that's right, I need to change the oil, I'll schedule that, and it all goes off. I walk downstairs across the street, start the car, and go back home, and that's five minutes.

And by designing life to not have the car, it will just hit on the car. My life kicks ass, because I never have to get in the car, I never have to park, I never have to get gas, I never have to change the oil, I never have to change all that baggage that comes with owning something.

I just naturally do it. It's a powerful concept, because a lot of times what happens, especially in our society, is that we don't necessarily consciously choose, and certain things are sewn into us and put into us by other people, usually unintentionally, I think. But for example, in the United States, we have a car culture, a car-centric culture.

So if you're a young person, it's often, usually, maybe it's your father. A lot of times your father admires a nice car, and if your father admires a nice car, then you want to emulate your father, and so you naturally take on that desire and that attraction for cars.

And that may be for a beautiful, fast BMW M5, or it may be for a big, giant four-wheel drive pickup truck with mud tires, or it may be a sleek, fast, imported Honda racing car, or whatever it is. What happens is that oftentimes we don't fully grasp, at a young age, we don't fully grasp the impact of certain things that we feed.

So we feed that appetite. When I was a kid, I fed the appetite with magazines, car magazines, and four-wheeler magazines, and as we feed that appetite, it grows and it grows and it grows and it grows, and then we feel like, "Well, this is what I've got to do to be happy," or whether it's things like boats, or whether it's things like any hobby or something that we feed.

And me personally, I would like to leave every person free to live their life as they want, but I've found that if I actually look and do some self-examination and understand why is it that I'm so committed to this love of the car, where does this come from? It wasn't something that I actually went and chose and said, "This would serve me and serve my goals and be beneficial to me." It's largely something that's influenced into me.

And so by rejecting that and seeing that, "You know what? I'd rather have the free time to not have to deal with—I was dealing with fixing my car this weekend, and I'd rather have the free time to not have to deal with the car, and I'd rather just take a taxi when I need one and ride the bus and walk," if you can set your lifestyle up on that, it's powerful because you can take back control.

And that taking back control leads, I believe, to taking back control in every area and leads to long-term goal achievement. Don't forget the bicycle. Right. I forgot. My bicycle was stolen a few months ago and I haven't gotten around to buying a new one, so I forgot about the bicycle.

I need to get another one. On the car thing, I'm kind of—I have a cool new one in my family. My mom has five brothers, four of them in the appendix, my grandfather was in the appendix, and I had a bunch of—you know, the four mustangs that they had souped up and everything, and they rode motorcycles, whatever.

I remember—well, I don't remember, my father told me many years later, but sometime when I was 12 or so, he was changing the rail and he was like, "Hey, I'm going to teach you to change the rail today," and I said something like, "Dad, when I'm older, I'll pay somebody to do that." And so I was the only person, like, the whole time in anywhere that doesn't know how to change the rail.

I used to have the same exact thought, and I regret it now because I didn't learn the skills that I needed to learn, and I've had to, as an adult, go back and say, "Why was I such a dumb-dumb? Now I need to learn those skills." But I don't think there—one comment on the car thing.

I don't think that—these things are not mutually exclusive, meaning that you don't have to walk away from an enjoyment of automobiles just to retire early. An example that would occur to me is I think that very few people necessarily love commuting. So you can implement the lifestyle that you've talked about where you don't need to drive a four-door sedan every day and still indulge in enjoyment of cars, but if you'll free up the money that you spend on the four-door sedan that you destroy every day with an hour on the road commuting, and if you can make an adjustment there, that can open up the kind of thing where you can take a trip to Europe and you can rent a beautiful brand new BMW M5 or M6 or whatever they're on these days, a fast car, and you can rent it and you can enjoy the Autobahn, or you can go and you can lease a beautiful—you go to Spain and you can lease a beautiful Aston Martin or Ferrari for a month.

And the cost of doing those things is really not so significant when they're done for a temporary period of time. So go and lease a Ferrari for a week or for a month or something like that and get that experience. But the majority of middle-class people will never get there because they're destroying their money with the four-door sedan that we put 30,000 miles a year on to cover our commute.

They're not incompatible. When it comes back to—I try to follow the philosophy, "There's no one right way to live." So spend your money however you like. Everybody has those choices. I don't think there's any way that's better than the other. But if early retirement is your goal, then saving upwards of 70% of your income is the goal.

And if you can save a lot and have a car, then fantastic. Maybe you'll spend less money somewhere else. But we do spend more on food. Maybe you'll spend less on food and more on car. We both got there. >> Right. Absolutely. So let's switch gears. And the other thing that you've been writing recently about on your blog, which is of great interest of mine, is about medical costs.

And when I've talked with people who are—whether that's traditional retirement, the 60, 65 age retirement, or whether that's early retirement, one of the major fears that people have is how to handle any potential healthcare costs. What has been your experience since retiring? And what have you practically done, for example, with health insurance coverage, things like that?

And what has been your experience with handling that? Because I know you've recently had some pretty significant medical events going on. >> Yeah, so when we left the US two years ago, we purchased a high deductible health plan. And we paid the premium on that for like 11 months, and then we got rid of it.

And we went to the dentist in Mexico. I went to the doctor in Mexico. Let's see here. We both went to the doctor in Taiwan. And then we went through a whole process of in vitro fertilization here in Taiwan. So that's how we're going to have the baby. All of that, everything, we just paid cash.

And just as a kind of interesting thing, have you or do you know anybody who's been to the emergency room in the US recently? >> I just had some friends go there recently. A three-day hospital stay just last night, was talking with a friend last night. Three-day hospital stay, went to the emergency room, wound up being appendicitis.

The hospital bill was $81,000. >> So we went to the emergency room the other night, saw the doctor, had a couple tests, left after about an hour. The total bill, $30. So when a system is set up in such a way that you can't know the prices in advance, you can't compare prices between places, and you don't get a bill for like two weeks to six months later because of all the processing through the different insurance systems and that, you end up with a bill like $81,000 for whatever the case was.

In Taiwan at least, it's a single payer healthcare system. I can ask in advance, how much am I going to have to pay for this? I pay in advance for the procedure, and I can make decisions, like is that worth it or not? With all that transparency, it just effectively comes out to be a more efficient system, $30.

>> Wow. The strange thing about it is that $81,000 bill, my friend was looking at what the insurance company actually paid. So $81,000 was what was billed, but the negotiated rate for the insurance company that they actually paid was $10,000. So you have this just nuts differential between these things, and that's what makes it so confusing and so complicated.

How much did your dental work in Mexico cost, and how much is the in vitro fertilization process in Taiwan costing you? >> So let's see here. I don't remember what the dental trip in Mexico 500 pieces was, so like 35 bucks, something like that. And then I went to, I had like a high fever and stuff, and I kind of knew I had bronchitis, and I went to the doctor in Mexico, and I think it was three bucks.

But then of course I had to pay for the prescription, right? Which you know, some antibiotics, and I think that was like $8. So they get you on the way out is basically how they get you, right? Three bucks for the doctor, eight bucks for the pills. And yeah, go ahead.

>> I was going to say, how about the IVF? >> So we kind of chose Taiwan for that by doing some cost research, and then Winnie's from here, so we kind of get the double bonus of being able to see family and whatnot while we're here. I think the online calculator that I used for estimating the US price was something like $35,000 it would have cost us.

And in Taiwan that cost us about seven. >> Is your sense that that is because of the general subsidy, meaning that the general taxpayer, the tax base and the general tax that's being collected is being distributed, and so therefore the cost is lower in that way? Or is it generally, do you feel, in your experience, do you feel it's more just the cost of the care is lower, the actual cost is lower?

>> I think it's the cost of the care is lower, right? Because we're effectively operating outside of the subsidized system. If I had Taiwan-based insurance, I would be inside the national health plan. We basically, like, "Hey, you're the white guy. Come talk to us over here. Okay, this is what it's going to cost.

You need to pay in advance. You need to pay cash." Okay. As part of the process, I had to get a chest x-ray and an EKG and stuff because I had to go under anesthesia for part of the process. And just that portion of chest x-ray, EKG, I walk in.

It takes like 10 seconds to do both of those things individually. There's a nurse waiting there to run the x-ray machine and another nurse ready to run the EKG. Go back to the doctor. He's already got the results on his computer. And they're like, "Okay, you're healthy enough to go under anesthesia.

Just leave them off." I walk downstairs, hit the box or something like that. >> Wow. It's definitely something I'm slow to talk much about, health insurance and healthcare systems. And I studied for a financial planning designation called a registered health underwriter designation and as part of that, I read this like about a 500-page textbook on the history of the healthcare industry in the United States and the managed healthcare industry.

And what it opened up to me was how many moving parts there are and what a complicated situation it is. And so at this point, I've kind of--you know, I have my own opinions about how I would like to live but I've kind of set aside any of my opinions for the general public and just said, "Well, here's how--let me just look for the ways that I can work my way through the system." And I think that medical tourism is a tremendous--is a tremendous opportunity.

And as I've worked with a couple of people who are setting up destination medical tourist facilities in Central America and I think that, you know, people will often get--when they have a serious--when they need something, it's not uncommon for people who with the means to get on an airplane and go to another city where there's a well-known health clinic.

And in a world where I can get on an airplane and be in Costa Rica or be in Nicaragua or be in Guatemala in two or three hours, it's really no different for me doing that versus flying to Cleveland. But yet if the cost can be massively lower, it's certainly worth pursuing.

>> I agree. >> So as far as last kind of thought I had, last question that I was curious about and then any of the--and you can share anything else that you would like to share. But have you thought about--now that you're expecting a baby, have you thought about doing any kind of fun like international arbitrage with your future son or daughter as far as where they're born and citizenship and some of those--some of the fun things that you could do?

Do you plan to have a baby abroad in Taiwan for Taiwanese citizenship? Have you researched any of that stuff yet? >> Well, it'll have US and Taiwanese citizenship just through parents. >> Okay. >> Yeah. >> Neat. >> But we had talked about trying to get, you know, if it would make sense to have another passport and that's another citizenship.

And it turns out that there just aren't very many countries anymore that give citizenship on birth. You know, the--let's see here, Australia and New Zealand did up until about 10 years ago. Most of Europe has basically changed their laws and so just by being born there, you don't get citizenship.

And then--so you're kind of looking at like Mexico, the US and Canada, probably the three biggest countries that still have that option. Well, we were thinking originally, like it'd be great to say have like a baby in Spain, Italy, you know, get the EU passport. Our child could work across Europe later if they chose to, you know, or a commonwealth passport from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, UK, and then have the option to work across the commonwealth.

But neither of those options really look viable anymore. But I still have to do it. >> Interesting. >> A destination birth still might be an option. >> Interesting. It's such an interesting just thing to think about. It really is. When you are free of the need to be in one specific place, it opens up a world of possibilities that frankly I never considered when I was younger.

And my wife and I talked about that with our--we have a one-year-old son and we talked about that a little bit. But, you know, I just thought through it and it wasn't appropriate for our lifestyle at that time but with your kind of traveling lifestyle at the moment. But at any rate, Taiwanese citizenship and it sounds like you'll both be--your wife is multilingual and it sounds like you are working on it if you're studying Chinese.

That'll be a tremendous advantage for your child as well. >> That's right. >> Anything else? If you were going to--let's close with this. If you were going to give an exhortation, an encouragement and a little bit of inspiration to other people who are interested in following a similar path to early retirement and who are interested in pursuing a similar lifestyle to the one that you've created, what would you share with others who are working on that path?

>> So, it's a lot easier and a lot faster than most people think. If you're accustomed to save 10% retire at 65 by making a few relatively minor adjustments to life, learning to love your bicycle, learning to cook great food at home and learning to be happy in a smaller space where you can walk everywhere instead of driving a car.

You can get there in just a few short years and then everything in the world effectively opens up to you. So the rewards of spending a little less now give you the world. >> Well said. Thank you for the work that you do on your blog which is gocurrycracker.com.

I appreciate it because I know it's not--it would probably be easier and more fun to not have to write on a blog but it's a valuable source of information and inspiration to other people and I thank you for putting so much work into it because it really will help many, many, many people uncover the strategies and the ideas and have the encouragement as they walk through their path to be able to achieve it.

What is--I forgot to ask you this. Where does Go Curry Cracker come from? >> So for our honeymoon, I think we spent about $0. We went on a--what was it? A 100-mile hike around Mount Rainier outside Seattle. You carry all your own food. You shower by plunging into some glacial runoff.

>> You cry every night. >> You cry every night. It's not easy every day. You're hiking 10 miles a day up massive elevation gains and whatnot. We had these little curry crackers that Winnie had handmade with love and care. One day in a moment of delirium and frustration, we were trying to find some motivation and we looked at each other and said something like, "Go, go, go, curry cracker." That's kind of been--anytime that we need a moment of motivation or something to basically say, "Hey, we can accomplish this and go forward," that's what we'll say to each other.

It'll just kind of bring us back and give us a little laugh and push us forward again. >> It's a memorable name. It's a memorable name. I wanted to make sure we included that. Winnie, I feel like I neglected you. I apologize. Is there something that--would you like to share as we close here?

Would you like to share a bit of encouragement and inspiration for those who are listening from your perspective? >> I think Matt has been talked about already. I just took a few pills so I feel a little dizzy tonight. >> Understood. >> I just passed your bedtime. >> The kind of work that you guys have done and to stay together and to commit to your goals does not happen unless you are united in it.

It has to be a team effort because if one spouse says, "We're going to go live on a sailboat or live in a tent in the woods," and the other spouse says, "No, I want to own a boat, but that's just for the weekends and why can't we have a big house?" The whole plan falls apart.

>> That's why you need an obedient Asian wife. >> Excuse me. I didn't quite hear that. Say that again, please. >> That's why you need an obedient Asian wife. >> Right. I think I got a feeling that there's a little bit of a tongue in cheek there. >> Yeah.

Can I? I want to refund that. I don't think that was in the contract at the beginning. Or it was in the contract maybe at the beginning, but I don't think you can follow it. >> Did you guys learn something as far as going through that? How did you, Jeremy, was it your idea originally, your wife's idea?

How did you talk together? I wish maybe we'd ... Let's explore that real quick. How did you talk together and learn how to be on the same page? What was the process? >> About the early retirement and travel? That's a good question. Travel? If you look back at our individual goals from before we met, seeing the world was one of them that we shared and shared strongly.

We both grew up in relatively low income environments and never really felt the need to strive for consumer items and so on. So not having things that people consider needs, we just never really missed them. When income started rising, we were able to be like, "Hey, would I rather buy a blender or go live in Thailand for a year?" There was no question.

It wasn't ever really a long conversation. It was just like, "Well, obviously this is what we should do." >> Interesting. It certainly is a challenge. I've heard from various readers and I've seen in forums and things like that, "How do I get my spouse on board with this idea?" So it's good to hear that you guys were naturally aligned.

I think that can make a lot of difference. That goes back to if we didn't click on those things early on, we wouldn't be together. We were living in two different countries, speaking two different native languages and different cultures. >> Maybe that's why we get along. I don't understand what you're saying.

>> When I said, "Hey, do you want to live frugally and travel the world?" You were like, "I don't understand that." I thought you said yes. >> You confused the language. I like it. Thank you guys so much for coming on. I appreciate you making the time. I thank you for the insight and I thank you for the work that you're doing.

>> Thank you, Joshua. I appreciate it. >> Normal people, extraordinary results. Anything in their story that you or I couldn't do? Probably nothing. I didn't ask him exactly how much they were making. I know that they're professionals, but you and I could learn to do that. Notice the guild, as Jacob Lundfisker and I figured out is a good word for it, using a permaculture word of guild, is a good word for it to apply to financial planning.

Notice the trio of things, like he said, focusing on the biggest expenses, housing, transportation, and food. So what do you do? Number one, housing. Try to find the least expensive housing option that is satisfactory for your needs. If your needs are simple, then your solution that satisfies those will be simpler.

Think about it. Not enough people think about and locate their housing strategically. Because we live in such an automobile-centric culture, we're accustomed to just driving anywhere. So that's why we have miles and miles of suburbs around every large city. It's almost impossible when you live in the suburbs to not have a car.

But if you're willing to do as they did and live in the city, live in an apartment, you can be strategic about it. You can get yourself close to shopping, restaurants, grocery stores, libraries. You can get yourself close to a main transit terminal, so where you're quickly on that main transit terminal.

And especially if you're in a city where that's not so popular, I think you could do it anywhere. But there are some cities where, in the US and around the world, where people are much more tuned in to those ideas of, "How do I figure out a strategic location for my business, excuse me, for my house?" Maybe more difficult.

But there are many cities in which you could exploit that. And it's cheaper to, if you can get rid of, so A, if you can get a good housing cost, low cost, small amount of stuff, inexpensive apartment. B, if you can reduce or eliminate your transportation costs, that will free up so much money.

And then as I said, if you can reduce or eliminate your food, you can't eliminate your food costs, excuse me. If you can reduce and right size your food costs, that can make a major difference. And sometimes that stuff can free up so much money for you to pursue other things that are important.

Choose consciously. If you want a big house in the suburbs, go for it. If you want a big house on the water and a big four-wheel drive pickup truck, fine. But notice what your options are and make sure that you're going in knowing that my opportunity cost for this money is fill in the blank for what's right for you.

I love to hear stories like that because it just illustrates how doable so many things are. And your results will vary depending on how hardcore you are. If you make more money than they did and spend less, you could do it faster. If you make less money and spend more, it doesn't mean you can't do it.

You're just going to do it slower. Custom design your own plan that will work for you. Consider also the medical tourism ideas. I'm not an expert on that area. I've read a couple of books on it, but some books from the library about people who have written about it.

But I got a feeling that stuff changes so much. I'd love to know if you know somebody who's an expert on medical tourism, I'd love to interview one. I don't know who to interview at this point. But if you know somebody that you've read, maybe they have a blog or a business in that market or they're really an expert, shoot me a note, joshua@radicalpersonalfinance.com and let me know who they are.

Or even better, get in touch with them and ask them to reach out to me for an interview. I would be thrilled to bring them on the show because I think that's a really valuable resource that we could learn together. I've intentionally stayed away from talking about most of the healthcare issues just because it's an overwhelming world and people are so emotionally tied up.

At some point maybe I'll talk about it, but it's just about my least interesting thing to talk about. But medical tourism is something that I think has a lot of potential benefit, especially if you need an expensive root canal or something like that, consider taking a trip abroad. It may be worth it.

It may not be worth it, but a lot of those times those types of expenses are simply not covered with insurance. And if it's not covered with insurance, then why bother? Why not just go ahead and book yourself a trip to Thailand or Taiwan or Costa Rica or something like that, or Mexico, and try to enjoy your experience a little bit.

You've got to be careful. I have no experience in that world, but I have known enough people who have done it successfully to at least consider it as a strategy. That's it for today. I'll be back with you tomorrow. Have a great day, everybody. Thank you for listening to today's show.

This show is intended to provide entertainment, education, and financial enlightenment. Your situation is unique and I cannot deliver any actionable advice without knowing anything about you. This show is not and is not intended to be any form of financial advice. Please, develop a team of professional advisors who you find to be caring, competent, and trustworthy and consult them because they are the ones who can understand your specific needs, your specific goals, and provide specific answers to your questions.

Hold them accountable for your results. I've done my absolute best to be clear and accurate in today's show, but I'm one person and I make mistakes. If you spot a mistake in something I've said, please come by the show page and comment so we can all learn together. Until tomorrow, thanks for being here.

(upbeat music)