My guest today on Radical Personal Finance is a dude who did it. He charted out a path to financial independence at a young age and worked like a maniac, saved like a crazy guy, and he did it. He's now financially independent. He's going to share with us a little bit about his story, what worked, what didn't, and was it worth it.

Welcome to the Radical Personal Finance podcast. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host. Thank you for being with me today. Today I bring you an interview with Scott Alan Turner. Recorded this one at Podcast Movement in Fort Worth, Texas back in August. Scott's a really young, really awesome guy.

I thought he was young, but I don't think he's quite that young. But he's a really cool guy and I'm thrilled to make his acquaintance. You're basically going to hear me learn about his story, but he's where most of us want to get to. He's the guy to learn from.

One of the consistent themes on Radical Personal Finance is financial independence. I believe that should be a goal for most of us. Now what that looks like will vary depending on our background, our circumstances, the type of lifestyle that we envision for ourselves. The numbers will be very different depending on what aspect.

Financial independence for some is $3,000 a month and financial independence for others is $30,000 a month. I don't think personally, my own opinion, take it as simply an opinion, my own opinion is that financial independence isn't really the ultimate goal. It's just a step on the way and it's a worthy goal.

If you're working, you might as well work towards something and if you're saving, you might as well save towards financial independence. It's possible to do it faster than some other people have done and there's many ways to reach financial independence. But today, I'm going to bring you this story with Scott Alan Turner and he's going to share with us his experience because the reality is he's a pretty normal dude who did some things that most people don't do and achieved a place that very few people will ever achieve.

That's the kind of guy we should sit back and learn from. Scott, welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Thank you, Joshua. Great to be here. This has been fun. We're sitting here at Podcast Movement and one of the opportunities of a conference like this is I've been able to talk to a lot of people who are in the financial media space.

One of the coolest things about financial media is that a lot of people in this space are what I think of as just normal people. I love to bring those types of stories and that type of advice to the Radical Personal Finance community because it's often much more accessible.

Kick us off with, share with us a little bit about your story, especially as it pertains to money. Sure. My story, as I like to say, I was a money moron coming out of college. I was for many, many years until I started learning about personal finance. My first exposure to personal finance was a guy on the radio by the name of Clark Howard.

Nice. Love Clark. Consumer advocate who's been doing it for a number of years. Saw his billboard up on a sign, started listening to his radio show. Really it was a pivoting point in my life realizing all the stupid stuff I had done thus far and really got me thinking about, "Oh, here's how you should really handle money." When I was growing up, the only lessons I got from my parents about learning about money was save some of what you earn.

I mean, that was it. Hey, at least they taught you that. That's not the most normal lesson. Right. I got that bit, but nothing about, "Here's what compound interest is. Here's how you go take out a loan." They rented their entire lives, so there was nothing about, "Here's how to buy a house," or anything along that lines.

From learning about Clark Howard, listening to him, I started correcting some of my mistakes that I had made coming out of college, having credit card debt, having student loan debt, paying way too much money for automobiles, and really getting under my head and taking it from there and turning my life around.

Isn't it cool how a radio guy like Clark Howard can be just such a constant source of advice and encouragement as you're making changes? He's been doing this for a long time, and he has impact. I don't know how big his footprint is, but he's impacted so many lives.

I just love it because with radio, oftentimes people get intrigued. They can choose when to tune in, and over time, they're probably at first saying, "What's this guy going on and on about?" As with anything, the average of the five people that you spend the most time with, and oftentimes with media, that can turn into a radio person.

What was it about his message that captured you? He's really a down-to-earth guy. People who listen to him for a period of time, they will always relate that to you. You can connect with him. He's not influenced by products or services. He doesn't take any endorsements. He's just telling it like it is from his standpoint.

He's very frugal. He's called America's cheapskate, I believe, is what people refer to him as. Really there's just a lot that you can take away from him, how to get the best deals on how to buy stuff, where to go to get your insurance, how to get started investing.

He's just so knowledgeable and has such a breadth of experience, and he's been doing it for so long. He's one of the guys on my list I'd like to get on Radical Personal Finance at some point because from my understanding, he has a pretty cool financial independence story. He worked hard, grew a travel agency, sold that and retired, as I understand it.

Then he went on and built the Clark Howard community, I guess I'll say, the show and all the associated things. I heard him mention one time when I was listening to his show that he doesn't spend any of the money that he makes with Clark Howard. He basically saves either all of it or 70% of it or just some massive percentage of it.

He doesn't do it because he has to. He does it because he loves it. Right. It's cool. I can't stand how slow he talks. I have to listen to him as quick of a speed as possible. He knows that. He gets that feedback on his show sometimes, but if I listen to him at normal speed, it's like fingernails on a chalkboard for me.

Sure. One of the other complaints about people had, it's not really a complaint, it's more of a funny story that people have about him over the years. It's like, "Here's how you can make a living answering the same five questions for three hours a day for decades." Which is not true.

He goes into a lot more information. What I enjoy about his show is it's not just straight up personal finance. It's open a retirement account, do that. I enjoy his little travel tips. He's actually tuned into the cell phone marketplace. This consumer scam information is interesting. It's an interesting show.

It's very different than some of the other shows. Very different than Edelman, very different than Ramsey. It's a unique show and a really cool resource for people. What have those changes meant in your life? Where have you come, what's the path from college to where you are today? Coming out of college, I had a lot of student loans.

The key of my original change when I came out of college was when I got the first student loan bill started rolling in nine months after I got out of college. I got the first bill. It's like, "All right, you owe 100 bucks. Okay, pay that." Then the second one comes in and I look at it and it says, "Two dollars that we sent in last month was applied to principal and $100 went to interest." I'm like, "What?

I sent you $100 and my bill has only been deduced by or deducted by two bucks?" I was floored. At that point, when you have these situations in your life, you can either get angry or upset. I got angry. I was like, "Whoa." At that point, I was like, "All right, I'm going to pay off these bills as fast as I possibly can." I ended up knocking them out in about two and a half years even though they gave me 10 to pay them all off.

Your story, I read about what you had on your website where you paid off your loans before you even got out of college. Awesome for you. Thanks. Congratulations on that. For me, it took a longer period of time to do that, but it was that realization, well, this interest thing, got to pay attention to that.

What did you do for work? Because you've done a number of different things and now you're starting to get into the personal finance discussion space. Sure. I have a computer science degree. I was in the technology world for a number of years. I worked for a dot-com startup as well.

Then I moved over to the more entrepreneurial role, having some business partners, still working in technology and the online business world. I've been doing that since then. My story is, I wouldn't say it's identical to Clark Howard's, but I sold a business last year and it enabled me to "retire." At this point in my life, I'm able to do what I want, kind of like what Clark did.

His story is, I retired, I was sitting on the beach, and then I got this travel show. For me, it was, "Well, I have this opportunity. Let's do something I really love." Talking about personal finance, because I've been so interested in it since I came across him many, many years ago.

Let's talk about the business. What was the business journey like? It was very difficult. It was a lot of hours. People should know when you're running your own business, let's not sugarcoat it. It's tough. It's a lot of hours. My success came from holding down a full-time job during the day, and then I would build my online business at night, on the weekends, taking vacations, and spending time on my business.

Throughout over the years, I've had eight companies total, but the pattern would always be the same. I'd build one company, then I would work on that during the daytime, and I'd start a second company in the evening, or on the weekends, and on vacations. Keep on doing that over and over again.

You're being very vague with the online marketing. Are you not allowed to talk about it? No, I can tell you about it. Can you give me some more specifics? Sure. The first company I started was a couple business partners. We taught people about wireless networking, computer networks, taught them to go into hospitals and schools, office buildings, how to hook up a wireless network.

Another company I had, the most successful one, the one I sold last year, was green building education training. We taught architects about green building, energy efficiency design, continuing education. That was all online as well. Had a couple off-shoot weird companies as well. My wife and I produced a DVD on how to toilet train your cat.

Wow. Did you make money? We made a little bit. Not enough to call it a success. We learned a lot. Do your cats actually get on the toilet seat and sit up? They used to, yes. They used to. We moved around a number of times, and now they're outdoor cats for part of the day, so that makes it a little bit easier.

I have a certified financial planner myself, and he says, "You didn't fail at the business. You got an education." There you go. So, very positive spin on it. I do often think about that. If we were to take the amount of money that we put into tuition at colleges and schools, formal schools, if we were to take that and we were to invest that money into a business or starting a series of businesses, recognizing that we might lose it all, and then at the end of, say, five years, we were to compare the amount of knowledge and wisdom that we gained from five years in school or five years in business, I'd put my money behind the business being a pretty good use of the money for the price of the education, even if it was all lost.

Yes. Nowadays, especially with the cost of tuition skyrocketing, I mean, it's crazy from when I went to school. As my wife says, my wife went to TCU, Texas Christian University, which is here in Fort Worth, and she likes to say, "I couldn't afford to go to TCU now because the cost has gone up so much." Yeah, especially the private schools, definitely.

Yeah. So, how old are you now? I am 42. And you consider yourself financially independent? Absolutely, yes. That is awesome. So from not paying attention at 21, 22, you graduated to 42, about 20 years, you've been able to build it. How does it feel, man? It's amazing. I get to work because I want to work, which is...

Hey, pickle man. There's a giant green pickle standing in front of our table from the Podtainment magazine. Financial freedom is amazing. I get to... I don't call what I do now work, and I haven't for a long time because I do what I'm passionate about, but I get to work because I want to work, not because I have to work.

That's my definition of financial freedom or "retirement." It's different for everybody. I get to hang out with my kids during the day. I have twins. How old are they? I have twins, and they're about to turn two in October. So I get to get them up in the bed in the morning.

We get to hang out during the day. They are in daycare a few days a week to get them out of our hair, and so they can learn Spanish and other little things that they teach them at daycare, make a mess so that we don't have to clean it up.

But we get to do stuff during the day. I get to see my wife. I've worked from home for 12 years now, being an entrepreneur, which has been great. You save a ton of money working from home. You can make your own lunch every day. At what stage of your business journey did you start to think about financial independence?

The interesting thing is I never did because when I started my first company with the business partners that approached me, I had a specific set of skills they needed to build their business. I knew how to build websites, and they did not, so they gave me part of the company in order to join it and work on the website.

I was just so ecstatic and happy to be building websites, and there was no money. We had no money to start coming into the company. It wasn't, "Well, I'm doing this to make more money. I was doing this because, oh, I get to build websites." That's exciting. Really, through the years, it was always, "Oh, I get to start a new company," or, "We've got this new idea.

Well, we might make money, but we can go have fun in doing it anyways." It was really the passion that drove it to me, and the money was just a byproduct. It wasn't, "All right, we're going to start this. In 12 months from now, we're going to be making X dollars or trying to be making X dollars." Never even crossed my mind.

Some businesses I had were successful. Some were not, but they were always because I wanted to do it, and it was fun. What's your plan now? Setting up the finances to provide for an income from 42 is very different than doing it at 72. What's your big picture financial plan for how you're going to provide your income off of your nest egg?

Sure. Some of that, right now, we do not have any rental homes, so we're looking at getting some rental homes, be able to have some passive income from that later on in life. We've accumulated enough and invested enough and done enough smart things. We've lived way below our means.

I've been married for 10 years, and I say, "So we." I'm talking about my wife and I. We've always lived way below our means from the income that we've had over those years, been able to save it up. So really, we can live off what we have for a really, really long time and not have to tap into that for decades if we didn't want to.

During the time you've been married for 10 years, so you would have been partway through this journey of building these businesses, did your wife have money when you married? No, she did not. Myself, when we met, I was working full-time at a corporate job, and then I was building my business on the side.

Right before I met her, I decided I was going to go full-time on my own business, and I took a 65% pay cut in order to do that. So when I met her, I was actually not making hardly any money at all. I mean, it was making really not much.

And then she had just graduated from college. Her grandparents paid for her schooling, but she had an auto loan. Other than that, she didn't come into the relationship with any money either. So we're kind of starting it with not much when we got married. Did you have money at that time?

Did you have savings, or you were still in the, "It's all in the business, and maybe I'll sell these things one day"? I had an emergency fund because I had been listening to Clark Howard for probably a couple years at that point. So I had my six-month emergency fund.

When we got married, she had a townhouse. I owned a house, and we decided, "All right, I'm going to sell my house, and I'll move in with you," so she could be closer to her work. From the sale of that house, I had a good chunk of money that came in from that because the housing market was huge at that time.

People were overpaying for houses, kind of like they are now. It was prior to the housing bubble burst. Did she share the financial independence vision with you? What was it like working through that? Because I just know that even in talking with my wife, as we talk about our financial plans and goals, it's unusual that couples share the financial independence vision, at least in the beginning.

Usually, it's often one person, and then we're going to do it. There's a lot of work involved. I mean, you've been working your tail off for two decades, or at least a decade and a half, once you kind of started to get things established. It's not easy to live a life where all your friends are going out every night, and everyone's hanging out, and here you are working 40 hours, and then at this time, you quit.

But here you are working morning, noon, and weekend. What was that like as far as your relationship? Part of what helped us is we had similar backgrounds and upbringing. We both came from small, rural towns, population 2,000, each of us different parts of the country. Our parents were generally middle class.

My wife's dad was a pastor. My dad worked for, we called him the road boss. He worked for the town for a number of years, so very modest backgrounds. Neither of us grew up with a lot of money. We had beater cars during high school. So from that standpoint, we came from a background of we don't have fancy clothes, we don't have fancy cars, and we're used to not going out to eat or going on expensive vacations.

And that's the mindset we had when we came into the marriage, very similar backgrounds. We're kind of comparable. Now after I sold my house and we were combining incomes, we did have a pretty good chunk of savings from that. I think my wife, we won't call it that she nagged me, but for several months she said, "We need to get somebody to help us with this.

We need to get a third party involved to help us, guide us, and manage our finances." And at that point we met with a certified financial planner who agreed to take us on even though we were nowhere near the income level that they typically require, the level of wealth that people want to manage.

He was fairly new to his company as well, I think that helped with the situation. And we sat down with him. He really helped us lay out our goals, say, "Here's what you can do with your money." I learned about nesting, how women need to nest and make the house look nice.

So he said, "You can afford to give Katie $1,000 to decorate." I was like, "All right, well, we can keep this ugly looking couch and why do we need pictures on the wall? We don't need pictures on the wall." I think how you learn that when you move into a place and you're settled there and you learn that it's not all about how many dollars in the bank account.

It's also about how beautiful your house looks and that the level of contentment that comes in a marriage from that is worth far more than a thousand bucks. Happy wife, happy life. Absolutely. If you were going back, what's your message? What's your core message now? You're moving into this space of talking about finance.

What do you have to share that you think is missing out there? I'm trying to educate the people that were in my position early on. They don't know about money. They don't know about debt. They're not familiar with interest rates, how to go out and buy a car. I got into trouble with car loans, so I try to teach people, "Pay for a car with cash if you can, but if you're not, here's how to at least get the best interest rate." I'm trying to reach out to the younger Scott Turners that are out there that might be listening, but they don't want to hear from a guy who's wearing a suit and tie or a collar shirt and jacket, which is just not my style.

If you were going to go back and speak to the 18-year-old you, what would be the specific steps that you would give them to say, "Do these things to achieve financial independence by 40"? The first thing I like to tell people is you've got to have goals, and they've really got to be written down.

Our financial planner asked us to do this when we first got married. He said, "Write down a bunch of goals. What are your five-year goals? What are your 10-year goals?" We did. It wasn't until a couple years ago, I actually went back and pulled them out and realized, "Holy cow, we've actually achieved these goals." Isn't that the craziest thing?

I know. Some of them were just off the wall. I had always wanted to go to Egypt, and I had completely forgotten about it. I'm pulling out this thing. It's like, "Oh, we actually went to Egypt." Writing down goals, and there's been studies about when you write down goals, you review them, you're more likely to achieve them.

I know it's hard for everybody because it seems like such a weird concept. "What do you mean I've got to write stuff down? Why can't I just do it?" There's this strange power in doing that. It does something in your mind. The chemicals do something. Whatever happens. When you're writing it down, you look at it periodically, even if it's once a month, every six months, you're more likely to accomplish those things.

Number one is just write down your goals. Number two is, and it's thrown around all the time, it's really spend less than you earn, live below your means, don't wipe out every paycheck as it comes in. Do it. Automate your savings. If you've got a 401(k), put money in your 401(k).

If not, go out and set up an individual retirement account. Get started with a Roth IRA. You don't have to have the nicest clothes. You don't have to drive a BMW as soon as you get out of college, or a brand new Toyota, or a brand new car at all.

You can drive your Beater for a number of years. If you do just those couple things, that puts you ahead of half the country, half the world, who just blows all their money. Did you shoot for a specific percentage of your income to save? I did. When I first started listening to Clark Howard, his message was, "Save 15% of your income." That's what I tried to set aside, 15 to 20%.

As I got bonuses or raises, I would try to increase that because I had a very modest level of living when I was single. I did have a home and a mortgage, but I brought my lunch to work every day. I didn't go out to eat a whole lot.

Part of that ties into working all the time. I didn't have a ton of friends, but really, from the time I got out of college, throughout my entire corporate life, I can count on two hands the number of times I actually went out and bought lunch. I brought my lunch to work every day and it allowed me to save thousands and thousands of dollars.

Your life sounds absolutely miserable to many people. How do you answer them? It may, but I always did what I loved. I loved to program. Even though I was working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, I never considered work. If you think, maybe you're a musician and you love playing music, and you play music and get to practice that all day long, is it really work?

If you're in a symphony or something, if that's your job, or whatever else you may happen to do, a lot of people are stuck in jobs that they hate. For you to say, "Well, you got to work 60, 70, 80 hours of work." Yeah, if you're in a miserable job, it does sound miserable, but if you're doing what you love, it's not miserable at all.

It's not work. To me, it was never work. When I started these companies on the side, and I would not make any money for years at a time, I didn't care because I was doing what I loved. I was sitting at a computer, writing code, which is not for everybody, but I have the mindset of, to me, it wasn't work.

I was solving puzzles. I was playing games. I was making creative things, using my creative mind, which is what I was wired for. Like what I'm doing now, I spend my days writing blog posts or working on podcasts, tweaking my website or doing the graphics around social media. It's not work.

If I thought it was work, I wouldn't do it. I'd go sit on a beach and drink margaritas. Scott, thanks for coming on. This has been awesome. Give everyone your website, your podcast. Give everyone any info that you want to share with them. Sure. My website is ScottAllenTurner.com, A-L-A-N, and I can be reached on Twitter @ScottAllenTurner as well.

So, it is @ScottAllenTurner on Twitter? Yes, it is. Cool, man. Thanks so much. Thank you, Joshua. Mix a little hard work with a little entrepreneurism, entrepreneurialism, entrepreneurship. I'm not sure of the right word. But mix a little hard work in with some entrepreneurial endeavors. Mix a lot of savings and some careful spending decisions in and you can set yourself up in a pretty cool place.

I'll tell you, I'm 30 years old. I wish I'd done it when I was 20. I wish I was sitting here financially independent. Plan is by 40 or sooner, I think I'll be there. But right now, I'm not there. Kind of wish I were. So if you're 20 years old and you're listening to Radical Personal Finance or if you're 13 and I'll have one 13-year-old listener who emailed me or shot me a message one time and said they listened, pay attention to stories like this.

And hey, guess what? If you're 30 or 60 or 70, pay attention to stories like this. You take it from there. I guess paying attention isn't the only step. You got to actually do something. But hey, do something, would you? I'll let you decide today what you want to do.

Thank you all for listening to these interviews. We'll be back from the Interview Blitz starting in October. It's the Interview Blitz while I am away out of town at XYPN and FinCon. Also while I'm working with my family and kind of getting some things caught up with the show.

My plan is October we should be back to the more normal ebb and flow of the show with fewer interview shows. We'll see if that happens, but that's the plan as this is being pre-recorded. It's going to happen. Of course, no good plan survives contact with the enemy. So I guess tune in in October and you'll see.

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