Don't just dream about paradise, live it with Fiji Airways. Escape the ordinary with Fiji Airways Global Beat the Rush Sale. Immerse yourself in white sandy beaches or dive deep into coral reefs. Fiji Airways has flights to Nadi starting at just $748 for light and just $798 for value. Discover your tropical dreams at FijiAirways.com.

That's FijiAirways.com. From here to happy. Flying direct with Fiji Airways. Radical Personal Finance is sponsored by Paladin Registry. The best place for you to start your search for a new financial advisor. Choose from among a pool of qualified, vetted, researched financial advisors. Don't just start out there in the wild, woolly west of unvetted and unqualified people.

Go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. P-A-L-A-D-I-N. Again, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. That will forward you through to a landing page. You'll put in your name, your address, your information, how much money you have, what you're looking for in a financial advisor. And then Paladin Registry will connect you with a few candidates from their pool of researched, vetted advisors.

I can't promise you're going to find the best or your best financial advisor there. That personality and personal characteristics make a big, big difference. But I can promise at least you're going to be starting on a better foundation than picking up the yellow book. Radical Personal... Who does that anymore?

I'm going to pick up the yellow book rather than starting on Google. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/Paladin. This show is also sponsored by SOFI. SOFI stands for Social Finance. It's the modern, updated approach to lending. If you would like to lower your interest rates on your existing loans or you're potentially looking for new loans, start your quest at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/SOFI, S-O-F-I.

That will forward you through to the SOFI webpage. You can check their rates, put in your information, see if they can save you money. It's modern, updated approach to lending, including the ability of doing things on your smartphone and not having to send faxes. Again, RadicalPersonalFinance.com/SOFI. I recently returned from Camp Mustache Southeast 2017 where I spoke.

You heard that on episode 413 of the show. I did a bunch of interviews while I was there. And today I'm going to share with you the audio of one of the most interesting interviews that I did while I was there, an interview with a man named Bill who achieved financial independence his own way.

I keep forgetting to start my mic. Welcome to Radical Personal Finance. A show dedicated to providing you with the stories and examples of other people who lived rich and meaningful lives now while also concurrently working their own plans for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua Sheets and I'm your host.

Today it's inspiration hour on Radical Personal Finance. Over the coming weeks I'll be bringing you a bunch of interviews. I did interviews with all kinds of people. I did an interview with Mr. Money Mustache, with this Bill, with all kinds of interesting people, several couples of people who've had interesting stories, some younger people who are pursuing financial independence, some older people pursuing financial independence.

I think all these interviews have things to offer. So there are a total of about nine of them in the can that I'll be releasing to you in coming weeks. But today I'm going to leave you or start you off with what may have been my favorite. Let's do this interview with a man named Bill who achieved financial independence.

You're going to hear the whole story. Now let's just start with the story. Bill welcome to Radical Personal Finance. Thanks for having me. So we're here at a very, what's the right adjective to use, a very select group of people here at Camp Mustache Southeast 2017. And when we were going around doing introductions last night you introduced yourself.

You said, "I'm just the old guy. I've done this for years and I feel good and validated when I hear young people doing the same thing." So of course that immediately piqued my interest and I want to make sure that I got you on the microphone and hear a little bit of your story.

So tell us a little bit about your story, especially as it relates to money and financial independence. I think I should start with my mom. So when I was at a young age, my mom introduced me to the idea of financial independence. So I'm currently 48. So this was back in the 70s when I first heard this concept of having financial independence and understanding what it meant.

At what age? I'd say I was probably seven. Was she financially independent? She was on her way to financial independence. Was she like a Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robinson, like your money or your life back in that age? No, definitely not. So I was always understanding the concept of having enough money and it wasn't dissimilar to Jim Collins' idea, JL Collins of the FU money, of having enough money that there was nothing that was going to rock the boat too badly to allow me to keep going on the track.

So even at a very young age, I was making money and saving money and I never had a problem saving. So definitely the key to my financial independence, which happened probably in my late 30s, was an extreme saving rate and all equity investments when I did have money to invest.

So a lot of the things that are being sort of pushed now are things that I naturally came to long before there were blogs, et cetera. And a combination of, as JD Roth says, patience and an all equity investment portfolio back when things were extremely cheap and staying the course has gotten me certainly to the point I am now in combination with a much greater than 50% annual savings rate.

So with your mom at least planting the idea in your head, back in the early days, your late teens, early 20s, what did that look like? Did you follow through at that time or did you have a... Yes. So at that time, I mean the first job I was really making money was when I was 10.

I had a paper route in my town in New Hampshire and I kept collecting more and more customers and I was subcontracting that out and saving 75%. And the money that I did spend, I bought things that helped me do the paper route better or helped me enjoy doing it more, like having a radio on my bicycle.

So her lead, rather than forcing me to do it, she led by example. And I saw the comfort that she had compared to some of my other friends who were less mustachians since here we are at Camp Mustache. Got to pay homage to the brand. So their parents had cool new cars, which we never had, or they had fancy clothes or cool new sneakers or a bicycle that had shock absorbers on it.

And we didn't have any of that stuff, but when things happened like the water heater failing or whatever, there was not even a ripple that went through our lives because she had been taking care of all that. So I saw that and it made it a lot easier to follow in her footsteps because I saw that it made sense.

It just was the way it was. Did you go to college? I did. I went to Boston College. I graduated in 1990. And what type of work did you do getting out? I was immediately recruited by a joint venture Japanese-American management consulting firm. And I worked there for six months before I realized, about two months into it, that I couldn't stand it.

But it got me back to Japan, which is where I had gone for my junior year abroad. And it got me a visa. And luckily, through a connection I had made by talking to strangers, which is something I've been doing my whole life, again, cued by my mom to not be afraid of strangers, but to glean them for information or to ask them for it and glean it from them, was that I found somebody who I ended up bumping into at the Japanese embassy in Boston who gave me a multiple re-entry visa, which allowed me to, say, take this job and shove it to that first management consulting firm.

And I didn't have to then leave because I didn't have a sponsorship. So that was really the first step, because then I could start taking on work, things that I enjoyed doing in Japan, and not worry about having to do things in order to stay. So then I had a variety of really cool jobs in Japan that made really good money, because, again, I was just naturally frugal and banking tons, and being able to do whatever I wanted.

I still had to pursue money, but I was working for myself as opposed to being tied to, like most expats there, tied to an English teaching gig or a multinational corporation that's funded their stay while they work for Goldman Sachs, for example. Were you in Japan as just kind of for the adventure of it?

Yeah. So I was getting a liberal arts education, had no clue what to do. I doubled in English and sociology. And my brother, who is a mentor, had already gone ahead, he's five years older, he spoke fluent Mandarin. And he said, "If you really don't know what you want to do or where you're going to go, learn a language." Everything, he said, "You're smart.

People are, they'll hire you because you're a blank slate, and they can train you to do what they want, but they can't teach you how to learn how to speak Japanese, for example." And so his advice was, "Are you interested in anywhere in Asia? Because I think it's going to go somewhere." And he's my big brother, and I said, "Sure." And I wanted to go to Korea, but my college wouldn't allow me to go there, so I defaulted to Japan.

And it was good advice. I learned Japanese pretty quickly and well, and was recruited by that company entirely based on my decent grades and my fluent Japanese. Do you have any guess or knowledge or remembrance of your savings rate during those early years in your career? I would say my savings rate in my first year in Japan was probably upwards of 60%.

Did it climb from there? Go down? Yes, it climbed from there. And the other big difference is that now that I've achieved financial independence, I was talking to another, one of the conference attendees today, my lifestyle has not changed very much. So many people, as they make more money, they expand into as much money as they make.

I lead a very similar lifestyle, maybe not as frugal as I was as a 20-year-old in Japan, but it's not really that different than it was 15 years ago when it was, I was dating my wife and living in San Francisco and having fun. I didn't have a fancy car then, I don't now.

I didn't have tons of stuff then. I actually had this T-shirt 15 years ago. That's impressive. And these shorts a decade ago and these shoes that I got from my neighbor. So that's just sort of built into the way I am. Again, I think partially from my mother and partially from wanting to achieve financial independence, not necessarily through making tons of money, but through making my money go further.

Let me make sure I describe for the audience. Bill has a very bushy beard. He looks unkempt and bedraggled. His T-shirt has holes in it. I get lots of free food at the homeless shelter. The T-shirt is very nice. The shorts are unstained. The shoes look very fancy and expensive and up to date.

And he has a neatly trimmed goatee and is an upstanding looking gentleman. So you reached a point in time at which you said, "Okay, I'm financially independent." And that age was? It's an interesting question actually because in retrospect, I realized that I was financially independent around 37 to 38.

And I continued to work hard and worry a lot about money, even though I had a lot. And I just didn't grasp the power that I had financially. And because I was alone, I've always worked alone and had a hard time sort of connecting with other people on a more intimate level, like we would be talking about finances.

I never really knew where I stood. So in retrospect, I think I was financially independent easily by the time I was about 38. But I didn't retire by literally moving away from where I was living and working and kind of leaving my business behind until six years ago when I was 42.

So between then and now is when I really identified myself as retired. I live in Portland, Maine. When I meet new people and they say, "What do you do?" I say, "I don't." And they are intrigued usually and they want to know more. So I have a premonition that you might be the elusive retiree that I have often been searching for, excuse me, the elusive early retiree that I've often been searching for, somebody who actually retired.

So I'm going to find out, are you actually retired? I am actually retired. So I take lots of naps. I do what I want every day. And although some of the things I do are things that other people do for work and get paid to do, no one can hire me.

No one can tell me what to do. And I don't make decisions based on how much money it's going to make me. That's my definition of retirement. And in addition to that, you don't have a blog, you don't have a website. You're not trying to tell people they should be financially independent or sell financially independent.

You're here for fun because it's a gathering of like-minded people and it's in Gainesville, Florida, not Portland, Maine, during the middle of the winter. You got it. Absolutely. Okay, so this is intriguing to me because you're a rare species. I have this theory that nobody ever actually retires. Now, of course, I know that's not true.

Some people do. But the number of people that actually retire versus the number of people that think they want to retire or the number of people that talk about retirement or the number of people who leave a job, I find it to be very, very low. Now, I'm enjoying the moment, but I have met other people who've done this and I've met other people who write about it.

But I want to explore what you've gained from this path of early retirement. Did you hate your work? No, I didn't hate my work because I chose it. So unlike a lot of people who I speak to who were on the path or even passed and have passed into financial independence, I, from after that job back in 1991, I've been doing all sorts of really cool things that made money and that I chose to do.

So I've been self-employed since 1991. So no, I never hated my work. I just didn't like the idea that I had to make decisions based on how much money it would make. So the analogy I like to tell people is that I hated, for example, always looking at the menu and being distracted by the prices.

So I didn't know if I really wanted the chicken or if I was just ordering the chicken because it was the cheapest thing on the menu. So it was the idea that I could choose to do what I wanted to do and then secondarily make sure that it was something that was lucrative.

And there were plenty of times when I was younger where there were jobs that were really interesting to me that didn't pay as well and I didn't take. And I think it's important to make that distinction between, as I said, now where I might do things that make money, but I'm not making that decision on a daily basis as to what's going to pay the most.

So again, with kudos to mustachianism, Mr. Money Mustache talks about acting like everything's free and I similarly look at acting like everything doesn't pay. So instead of, "Oh, that's going to pay more per hour," or "That's going to make me more money in the long term," if it was all volunteer work or it was all free, what would I actually choose to do?

And that's not dissimilar to really deciding whether I want the cheap salad or the expensive filet mignon. What am I in the mood for today? How has that changed your experience of life? It's changed it in a positive way because it's given me a great deal of time to reflect on everything and anything.

I think a lot of people, there are multiple reasons why people work. We all like to look at the money side of it, but there are also the benefits, the social benefits of work. I mean, a lot of people love to go to work because they love meeting the people that they either work for or with.

Or the distraction that work gives you from thinking about everything a little too much or having to make decisions about what you're really doing with the rest of your life. And then on the negative side, I think that sometimes I made choices before I was financially independent that didn't get me closer to happiness or didn't get me closer to having a sense of fulfillment or a sense of accomplishment.

And now that I have financial independence, I can think about looking at the other side of the menu, but looking at it from the perspective of, is this going to gain me a great new friendship? Is this going to be an experience that I'm going to look back on?

I'm a big fan of talking about deathbeds, but rather than in a morbid way, I think, what am I going to think about on my deathbed? Am I going to wish I made 20 more grand on that deal? Or am I going to be happy that I followed that dream or that I was a kid on a train in Europe and I didn't get off at my stop and instead kept talking the girl across from me?

I try to now embrace that. And to the degree that I actually do talk to other people about this, I try to motivate them to think about things that way. The longer perspective of what they're going to look back on their lives and think that they accomplished and what brought them joy and happiness, because it's all finite.

What types of work/job/businesses did you do from 1991 up through six years ago? I was the management consultant guy, right? And that was just... So it's like McKinsey type stuff. Yeah, it was helping American small businesses enter the Japanese market. Basically it was technical production, semiconductors and switches and stuff like that.

Then I quit and went on this wild spree of doing all these things that were a blast. For example, I was an FM DJ. So not a DJ like modern idea of spinning discs at the party. I was actually the disc jockey at a radio station. It was called KBNA FM Banana.

And I worked there for a while playing music. Let's hear your radio voice. Come on, come on. This is Willie M on KBNA. There we go. That was my name. I got some great gigs because my girlfriend at the time was the cover girl for Shiseido Cosmetics. So high level.

And I got to go to shoots and got offered modeling jobs. Those of you listening can't see me, I'm an average looking guy. I'm not a model and I'm five, eight and a half on a good day. But in Japan, luckily I'm exactly Japanese height and I fit into Japanese men's clothes perfectly.

I'm 173 centimeters, I think. So I got these great jobs because I was also an avid motorcyclist, being the face of Suzuki for about a year and a half. So I got some really good gigs, modeling bikes, essentially riding bikes and having pictures taken of me looking off into the sunset, looking against the newest Suzuki.

So that was a blast. And then the final big job I had in Japan was working with an advertising executive who owned a large company there and needed somebody who would tell him the truth. Japan is filled with, as you can imagine, people who are following this sort of the status quo and there's a lot of concern about your level compared to your boss and you don't make waves.

He paid me to say, "That's crap." Or I wouldn't do it that way. So I got paid a whole bunch to just- Be an opinionated jerk. Be an opinionated jerk and not wear a suit to work like everybody else. And that was a lot of fun. Then I came back to the United States and essentially started my small tech consulting business in San Francisco by buying and selling Mac books.

At the time they were called Power Books and I was finding them in the newspaper before the internet. And the people at, basically I was looking for one for myself. And then in the next two weeks I saw two more that were even cheaper than the one I got myself and realized that those prices were under market and I started trading in Power Books.

And that basically made its way into a business of doing end user tech support for highly affluent people in San Francisco. And along the way many of those people who needed somebody who was discreet and responsible and could find the answers to sometimes unknown questions. I started to get a lot of other jobs.

So in many cases I became sort of a fixer. So my job sort of segwayed from being a tech support guy to just being a resourceful individual in those people's lives. There's a lot of money in San Francisco and when people who have a lot can find someone they trust, since I always charge the same rate for my time, because that's what I think an hour of my time was worth, regardless of how many literally billions of dollars some of my clients had to some of the people who were making the same money I was, I was fair.

And I loved having sort of a different job every day. But eventually I moved out of San Francisco and retired to Maine. Since you retired, have you continued to earn, have you earned any money doing similar types of things? Yep. So your retirement was a very intentional decision, as you just described.

I'm not going to decide based on money. I'm going to ignore the money, pretend it's all volunteer and I'm just going to go with that. But since then, there have been opportunities that have been fun that have brought in additional sources of... Yes. So there are clients in San Francisco who were despondent that I left.

So occasionally when somebody gets in touch with me with something cool, or it's one of my clients who I had, in some cases, over 15 year relationships with, I wanted to continue to work with them. So I would say yes to particular people and no, I'm retired to others.

And then within Maine, there's a great deal of opportunity. So I've taken on the job of being a property manager. So I have some investment property, which is again, following in my mother's footsteps. She was a property owner and I was sort of a property manager as a young boy pushing the lawnmower and fixing broken panes of glass.

And then there are volunteer opportunities that have made me none, but I actually suspect that they may turn into money-making opportunities without even trying. There's a lot of sort of kind of office space where I've said absolutely not, and then it turns into even more money had I said yes.

And now I'm trying to follow the lead of again, Mr. Money Mustache with ramping up my charitable donations or even considering starting some sort of a scholarship or something fun to help cool people do cool things. Because that's going to serve me selfishly, because ultimately I think a lot of giving is actually kind of greedy because it'll make me feel good and somebody else wins.

So that's win-win. And it'll also keep me mentally stimulated to help other people. I'm thinking... I can see the smoke. It's not something I recommend or that I do frequently. As I think, what's so interesting to me about your story is in some ways you are the elusive early retiree, but yet you prove my theory, which is that people don't retire.

And the reason I say that is I think for you, you had to reach that point where you said, "I have enough money. I'm going to make this intentional decision." But I can imagine that perhaps if you were around other people earlier, you could have made that same decision earlier.

And I'm convinced that... I don't know what the number, but something like $100,000 in the bank is certainly not enough money to live on for the rest of your life, but it's enough of a cushion that it gives you a margin between just about anything that somebody who had that much of a cushion of...

To use Jim Collins' words, "F you, money." Somebody with that much of a cushion could make a similar decision. As long as they're not substituting, say, lying around on the couch and gaming constantly. Of course, then they're... Who knows? They make a lot of money as a game expert, which people do now.

That's what's so remarkable. So we face this tremendous challenge of how to articulate the concept of financial independence while recognizing that financial independence is one, it's a sliding scale, it's a moving stages of growth, stages of achievement. And it's also... It's not going to change all that much, because I am confident that if we'd been talking 20 years ago, you would have been just as chilled out, you would have been just as an interesting person, you would have had all these interesting things that you were working on.

And so the difference between you as a worker and you as an early retiree, I'm not convinced it's all that great. I think for you, it was something where you just said, "I'm gonna consciously choose never to think about the finances." But in terms of how I perceive you, I think you were probably a similar guy.

I was similar, but I had a great deal more anxiety about it. Okay. So I would say that's the big difference. I agree with you. I think I spent a lot of time worrying about things that in retrospect would have happened fine. And I had a lot of people who were in your position, they were usually a lot older than you are, but they would say, "Oh, you're gonna be fine." And I'd say, "How do you know that?

I've gotta pay rent and I'm not making enough money." And they would just look at me and say, "No, no, you're fine." And I didn't listen, 'cause I couldn't see what they were seeing. So I suspect that some of those older people, they were typically men, sort of father figures who told me that, would probably say the same thing you're saying.

"Yeah, that's the same kid I met when he was 22. Hasn't changed a whole lot." You're right. For me, it feels hugely different. And as I spend more time retired, I realize not that I wasted time in between, but that I had to go through that. I had to go through those feelings in order to enjoy where I am now.

And that I couldn't have retired, even if I suddenly had had as much money as I do now, I would have been just as afraid, felt just as nuts about money as I did. So I wasn't as chill then as I am now, but I suspect you are right, that the core way I am and the person who I am has not changed drastically.

And that I could have done it much, much sooner and been wherever I'll be in 10 years now, had I started 10 years ago. Your mother sounds like an amazing woman. Yeah, she is. Do you have children? I have a daughter. How old? 11. Tell me what you've done.

And I'm guessing, correct me if I'm wrong, but I think I'm pretty safe on safe ground here, that you deeply value what your mother sewed into you and that you're seeking to pass on that legacy to your daughter. Tell me what you're doing with your daughter, what you've done at an early age, what you're doing now and what you're planning to do to pass on your mother's legacy through you to your daughter.

At first, I worried much more about the answer to that question than I am now. I realize increasingly that being who I am, so it's that lesson we just talked about, it's going to happen by itself. I am who I am. I don't try to be a mustachian, since we're going to keep going back to that theme.

I just am. So like it or not, my daughter is seeing that, and that is the biggest lesson. Certainly you can try very hard to teach your children things, but they learn most from what you're not actively teaching. And I think the active things that I've done, in order to give some meat to the answer, my daughter doesn't have a lot of the stuff that other kids have currently.

She doesn't have an allowance, even though a lot of her peers have allowances. And over the years, she has seen me not buying the newest, spiffiest, coolest thing. She's actually has made comments about the fact that every single picture of us in the summer, I'm wearing the same shirts.

She's like, "It's kind of neat. You're just wearing the same shirt over, like you're just getting older. Look at the gray hair coming in. Same shirt, same shirt, same shirt." And I think that is a lesson that she's getting, is the fact that I'm not buying all this stuff, and I seem to be pretty happy.

And then there are just some lessons when she actually asks things like renting versus buying. We're walking around, she sees for sale signs and wants to know what that concept is. And I explained to her what I think is right about renting versus buying, and having the power of money work for you, and leasing, because I'm also this car guy, so I give a lot of people advice about cars, and making things, repairing things rather than replacing them.

These are all lessons that I actively teach as well as passively do by example, set by example, I guess. So you are semi-famous under a pseudonym for the topic of cars, and your knowledge of and experience with vehicles, especially how to get a good deal. How did you acquire your skills with being able to drive well for cheap?

So that also was a job that I skipped mentioning in Tokyo. So I've been a motorcyclist my whole life, and in Tokyo I was buying and selling motorcycles as well. Because of my language skill and my long-term being able to stay there without an official job, I learned the official paths to getting a vehicle licensed for a foreigner.

So I could buy motorcycles cheaply and get them licensed, et cetera, and sell them to foreigners who were usually there for a short period of time, all licensed. They didn't have to go wait in line, deal with the DMV, et cetera. So this idea of buying and selling vehicles started actually back in Tokyo.

You were a fixer then. I was making things easier for people who wanted to exchange money for hassle and time. And most of them were actually very wealthy people who were there for short periods of time for their one-year stint with an investment bank, but they wanted a cool motorcycle to just run around town in.

So that was where I got into the idea of buying and selling vehicles and seeing how easy it was and what the spread was between them, and that a lot of it had to do with paperwork. And then my own motorcycle experience, I've had, I think I'm on my 29th personal motorcycle.

That's fantastic. Because I'm always looking for the right bike. What type of bike is it right now? I currently have a Suzuki DL650 V-Strom. Nice. Kind of dual sport. Dual sport 650cc bike. And I started to be interested in fixing the vehicles when I had to. When I was more worried about money, I started to learn to fix actual problems with motorcycles.

And then when I finally got my first car, it was one that I was going to own for a while in San Francisco. There were some things that went wrong with it, and I started to realize that I could treat it like anything else. I mean, if you get multiple quotes for a hole in your roof or for braces or for whatever, you could go to multiple car shops and ask what the price was to get something fixed and start to glean information by asking questions and what the parts were and could I bring parts to you and have you fix it?

I just want to pay for your labor. And then I started to realize that it wasn't rocket science and I could possibly do it myself. So fast forward to moving to Maine where I had a great deal of time and I finally had my own garage. And I'm just talking about my little one car garage in my house, not some fancy garage with a lift or anything.

I started to use the power of the internet and my own two hands and have, I think, the most important thing, which was zero fear. I figured at any point if I really messed something up, I could call AAA and have them tow it to the garage and they'd fix it.

So why should I pay some mechanic to screw it up when I could screw it up for free? And especially the fact that you didn't have to be at a job on Monday morning with a working car so you have time and you didn't really have to be anywhere.

So that's a key thing because I, I, um, I'll just keep going in a moment, but I've faced this myself. I see how simple it is to fix things oftentimes, but I also recognize how many of those projects go long. And if you don't have the flexibility of time, it's been the challenge for me.

I'm not financially independent under the terms of, well, I can just do whatever. I have family members who are, and when I observed them, one of them is just world class at fixing everything. But it's also because they have the time to do the research, order the parts, wait four days for them to arrive, et cetera.

And so time makes a huge difference in having that time where I'm right in that middle where, okay, I could make changes, but I'm still in that. I still have some of those pressures of my business and my job that cut into things. And you, and you're, you know, I understand the value of convenience.

I mean, that's exactly what you're talking about or not being able to do that because you have other responsibilities or other things you'd like to do. I luckily am in this position that I finally got myself into where I do have the time and the inclination. There are certain things that, um, for example, I have an accountant, not unlike Mr.

Money Mustache, uh, I, I could insource that. Like I've been sourced most things in my life because I like to learn stuff, but I, I am not interested. I'm, I'm willing to pay somebody else to do that when it comes to fixing cars. Um, I actually like it. I like the sense of accomplishment.

Um, it's, it's a huge high to, to fix something yourself. And you know, I'm probably, uh, not that much more mechanically inclined than other people are. I, I, you know, I went to prep school, I went to a fancy college, I went to go work in the working world.

You know, I didn't have grease under my fingernails until much later in life, but I figured out that I really like it and, um, and that it's very satisfying to kind of do that work to actually like manual work, especially when it is so, um, binary. I mean you fix it and it works or you don't and it doesn't.

I find it satisfying as well. I like to do work that because so much of my work is mental, um, where you can't physically see the outcome of it. Uh, I find it also satisfying to do things that result in a physical tangible result, fixing the car, improving it and also the process because the process is relatively straightforward in many ways, a linear process.

If you understand where you're going from point a through, you know, point Z of the instructions or the process, um, you know, you can put on something nice to listen to, a great podcast, great radio, great music, whatever. Um, you can have a beer while you work. You can just slow down and enjoy the process and it can be very, uh, for me, I, I, I share that same enjoyment of it, but then if you've got to have it done by a certain time and it doesn't work and the part doesn't fit, you know, my camper van, I bought my camper van and the generator wasn't working and so I fixed it twice and it still wasn't working and I was like, I've got to get this thing working.

So finally I admitted defeat and took it to the shop and they fixed it and got it working. But uh, but I, I, I agree. So that's one of your secrets is, is your fix of cars. Yep. So I fixed them. Uh, and when I don't know how to fix it, I'm certainly happy to involve a professional.

That's fine. And it has, uh, also allowed me in many ways to sort of spread the word actually. Um, cause a lot of times I end up selling these cars to friends or friends of friends, et cetera, um, for cost or very close to it because I'm not really in it to make money.

It's more that I, uh, not dissimilar again to, to Mr. Money Mustache. I see it as, um, as a form of environmentalism. Um, actually someone here on the trip asked, you know, should I get rid of my, uh, Toyota Tundra truck and buy a Prius? And he's an older guy.

He drives less than 5,000 miles a year and he really loves that truck and has 150,000 miles on it. And I said, absolutely not. Uh, sure. The, um, the easy answer would be, oh yeah, you should have a Prius. It's going to get two to three times the gas mileage of your truck.

But what about the environmental impact of him buying a whole nother vehicle? Then what happens to his truck? Someone else is going to be driving it. And I'm sure people who are listening are going to make all sorts of arguments against it. But at the end of the day, what I told him is the lowest hanging fruit is just drive less.

If you drive your car half as much as you do now, you've just doubled the time that you have that vehicle per gallon. Uh, and he said, yeah, I guess I don't have to drive to the gym every day. And I said, yeah, you don't, of course you don't.

And I didn't, you know, and I said, Hey, I'm not Mr. Money Mustache. Cause he was kind of scared. I know you're not going to like this truck. I said, no, I'm not going to beat you over the head. I know you like that truck. I'm not going to tell you to get rid of it, but just drive it less.

Maybe you can just walk around your neighborhood on Tuesdays and Thursdays instead of walking on the treadmill at the gym. And there you've just massively reduced your footprint. And he was happy to hear that. You know, I, I was all for that. How much of a role does environmentalism play into your behavior, your decisions, your financial outlook?

I'd say it's very large. Sometimes too large. I think there are times when for me, I worry too much and focus too hard on the environmental impact instead of the very small difference. It would be if I didn't worry about it. The case in point would be a water fight at my daughter's birthday party.

And I'm thinking the whole time about how much water are we using? And then I try to think, well, it's, you know, it's splashing on the ground and, you know, water's a closed system on our planet and that's okay. But I still kind of get uptight about it. And I also find myself occasionally still getting sort of upset when I see people wasting fuel, for example.

A big thing in Maine is to idle your vehicle. It's very cold. People will get out of their car and leave it. But they often will forget. I'll see a car in my neighbor's driveway idling for an hour while they go inside and they were just going in to get something and then they get distracted.

And I realize I can't save the world that way. And it's a gallon of gas. And yes, we all need to think about the tiny things we can do, but it's not worth getting steamed up about, you know, to sort of make the joke. I'm always thinking about it.

And interestingly enough, a little side story is that my daughter, who I never purposefully teach environmentalism to, got very upset the other day when she drew a bath for herself. She turned on the water. She went into her room to change. She came back and I hear her wailing from upstairs and I run upstairs thinking something terrible has happened.

And she's really crying. And, you know, 11-year-olds don't cry that much anymore. You know, something's bugging her. What is it? She said, "I forgot to put the plug in and all the water I've been, it's been on for like five minutes and that water level hasn't gotten any higher and I wasted all that hot water." And she was really upset and I had to pat her back and calm her down and say, "It's okay.

You know, people make mistakes. In the big picture, this is fine." And part of me was like, "Wow, I'm really screwing my kid up with like being that uptight about something like that." And then I think, "Well, no, it's good." Her reaction was a little strong, but she does understand that every drop counts.

So she is kind of thinking like me. And sometimes I feel that that's a burden and sometimes I feel that that's a blessing. It's a gift. When you think of environmentalism, do you think of that as, like for you, what does environmentalism mean? For me, I think about it as a way for me to lessen my use of stuff.

So it's, I don't really think about the calculations of carbon footprints, how many tons of carbon oxide am I emitting per mile in a particular vehicle, et cetera. I think about it more in terms of what am I consuming? What's being used in sort of my name? So again, back to the car thing, I'm always trying to convince people actually to keep the car they have and fix it.

Even though maybe another car is more fuel efficient, the most efficient thing is for them to keep it. A lot of my neighbors, when they're remodeling their houses and they remodel them "green" and it's LEED compliant, et cetera, I think, "Well, what about all the crap you just ripped out of your kitchen?

You just ripped out all these nice old Formica countertops that were working perfectly. They just didn't look cool." And the appliances that were avocado green or perhaps even as simple as white, you've just sent them all elsewhere. And unless you made a very strong effort to recycle those by selling them to somebody else on Craigslist or reusing them in your basement or something like that, you just made a huge impact on our town dump.

And that's not a way. That's just not your yard. So when people are throwing things away, so I'm constantly trying to reduce the amount of stuff that I'm consuming or that by nature of consuming, I'm excreting. How do you figure out what's enough? How do you figure out where the line is?

So it's very, very difficult. And that actually brings me back to money, which was how do you figure out what is enough? I think a lot of people are going to have that question. I don't have the answer. But that's a big question for your listeners who are interested in financial independence, a big thing to ask.

How much is enough? Because had I had the insight that you came to so quickly, because you're smarter than I am, was I had enough a long time ago and I just didn't realize it. So in terms of how much is enough with sort of the environmental slant, I'd like to think more like anything is better than nothing.

So if I let it mellow and only flush it down when it's brown, I've just saved a whole bunch more water than the guy in the next house who flushes every time he pees. That's a good thing. I don't really have to get caught up in the I didn't save enough or I used too much.

If there's an opportunity for me to use less easily, then I should. Again it's that low-hanging fruit of the guy who I just say, "Just drive your car less. You don't need to go get a Prius." Buying something else isn't going to solve this problem. If you're really worried about the environmental impact of your truck, just drive it less.

You still need it. You use it from time to time. That's fine. Drive it less. So for me, it's not so much that there's a line for what is enough. If it's better than what I would have done without thinking, then I've already accomplished something. And that bar is set in a place where it's really easy to access so I can feel good about it instead of getting caught up in like I used to about how many gallons are being used and just looking at everything around me as being the whole world's going to hell.

It could be and perhaps ignorance is bliss in this case, but I do have to consider my mental health as well. That's my question. And I've often wondered, and I have some ideas in terms of how it can be done better. Have you redesigned your house to use any other than just using less?

Have you changed any of the technology of your house so that things are reused or recycled intentionally internally in the house or on the property? Some of the water that's the wastewater in my house gets reused just to a very small degree because I didn't want to have to go through a bunch of compliance issues with the city.

I did install things, for example, a wood stove insert. So about 80% of my heat now is from wood from a state that's 90% wooded. When my furnace broke, I replaced it with a much more efficient unit rather than the same thing that was there. But I waited until it broke.

I would not if that old furnace was still working, I probably would still be using it. So I haven't made massive changes to the output. Although I would say by far we have the smallest amount of garbage that leaves our house. We recycle extensively. We compost. And I actually purchase things with packaging in mind.

And just the simple stuff. I never, ever forget my reusable bags. It's really that little, but all those plastic bags add up. And I reuse a lot of my garbage. For example, my garage where I'm working on cars and projects and stuff is filled with old yogurt containers for storing screws and the top of a milk jug cut off as a scoop.

I look at these things and try to use them at least once again. Almost partially, that's partially frugal because I don't want to go buy that special thing when I could just make it. And then the second one is because it's just there. I'm in the recycling bins right there in the garage and I know I'm about to drain some gas from an old snow blower.

So gee, that's a good plastic cup to put it in. And then gee, that drained gas is kind of crappy, but my Honda Odyssey gas tank has 20 gallons of fresh gas in it. Half a gallon of crappy gas is not going to hurt it and it's going to get used efficiently.

Because how else am I going to dispose of that in an environmentally conscious way? So I make those steps, but I certainly don't have a composting toilet. My house is just on a regular street with everybody else's and I haven't made massive changes and all the changes have been either for my own comfort, like the wood stove, which I love, or because something broke and then it needed to be replaced.

So I have this theory about environmentalism, is just simply that environmentalists sell their movement the wrong way. And I say they because I don't have a problem with the word environmentalist applied to a person. Like you're a person, if you want to say you're an environmentalist, fine. It's become such a militant term in so many ways that it's got some baggage.

I like to call myself a conservationist. To me there's a slight difference there. And the difference that I see is a difference of hierarchy and superiority. It's a philosophical difference where it seems to me that many environmentalists, I know nothing about your personal philosophy, but many environmentalists look at the world and say the best thing that could happen would be to wipe all humans off the planet.

Because the world is God, the actual physical creation, the world, the natural environment is God and we're a blight upon it. So I don't believe that philosophy, I don't resonate upon it. I say that the world is here for me. But it's also here for me to care for and to be a steward of.

And so to me I think that fits better under the word conservationist. So I personally like that word conservationist. But kind of environmentalism as I see it sells the problem of deprivation instead of the solution of abundance. And I see two parallel tracks where it happens in terms of money and finance and also in terms of environmental impact.

That people often sell money and finance as deprivation. Well you should save more because that's the right thing to do. Well again to pay homage to our friend Mr. Money Mustache, we're here with him at this conference branded for him. And one of the things that I believe he does better than anybody else in the world is he paints financial stewardship, good financial decisions, not as deprivation but as the ultimate luxury.

And that's what this early retiree movement is about. It paints it as the ultimate luxury. And so if you don't go through that, I've talked to people all the time, like listen, if you just save 75% of your income you'll be in a position to where you'll be financially independent seven years.

And they look and they view 75% of income as just this horrible deprivation. Instead of saying, "Oh, I'll be financially independent, look how great it is." So frugality I don't see is any end in and of itself. It's a process. It's something that gains you something that you want better.

In the same way environmentalism, my issue a lot of times with environmentalism, is that it is focused on like, "No you can't. No you can't drive. No you can't fly. No you can't live in a house. You must live in a yurt in the woods and go barefoot and poop in a bucket." Like hold on a second, why don't we apply and say, "How can we make so that we can have everything that we want for our own human needs and comfort and luxury and make the environment around us better?

Why can't we turn it into a surplus and live richly with it?" And so when I look at it, the thing I say about like water, is that if the water gets wasted for example, if the water just kind of gets flushed down the pipe, goes in with the sewage, I can't stand, I personally can't stand that concept.

I hate, my house right now is just a standard apartment. And so the water goes right down in the sewer with all of the feces. And that is so frustrating to me because that is the dumbest thing to do, to take drinking water and pollute it with feces, when it could be repurposed and used in so many ways.

And so that annoys me because it doesn't follow that principle of conservation. But I don't want to not take a bath every day. I don't want to take a bath once a week because, "Oh, I can only take a bath once a week." I want to take a rich, hot, luxurious bath every day.

But for you in Portland, I'd be thinking, "But how can I make sure that I'm using the waste heat from my wood stove to heat the boiler and it's just always hot and it's wasted heat otherwise. So now we're using the heat multiple times in order to provide this luxury.

Then we're going to take the water, we're going to run it through a gray water system, we're going to use it twice, then we're going to flush it out into a reed bed." Well, it doesn't work in the winter, but you can come up with a version that does.

Like how do we flush it out into a reed bed? So then I'm using that to reeds to filter the water. Then at the end of the reed bed, I'm going to pass the water down into my garden so it's used there. And I'm going to put that at the top of my property so it can be used multiple times as it flows down through my property.

Then I'm going to take the reeds, I'm going to take those, use those as mulch, and I'm going to use that as a process of taking those nutrients that were grown from there and take it down and use it on the property. And so the problem with it is that that's just good thinking.

That's saying, "How can I get everything I want? How can I have the luxury? How can I have this? But how can I do it in a way that recognizes my responsibility of stewardship and conservation while also recognizing that I don't serve this goal out here?" And that's actually one of my big issues.

I was glad, I was going to ask you, I was glad that you didn't define environmentalism in terms of carbon. This is one of my biggest issues with people who think environmentalism, they think carbon. Because then it's all about going down. Instead of saying, "Well, how can we create a system that not only fills our needs, but also not just doesn't produce carbon, why don't you create a system that actively pulls carbon out of the atmosphere?" And that is so simple in some ways to do, and there's so many people who are doing much, so much progress there, but instead everyone just wants to guilt everyone and say, "No, you can't drive, you can't fly." That's silly.

We could design and we could completely transform literally the planet. I've seen it done in small test cases. I'm convinced it's going to happen in the coming decades. You can transform the planet and you can green the planet in such a way that you can fly every day in your luxury private jet and still have a carbon negative environment.

But it's the wrong thinking. With no deprivation. Right, with no deprivation. So when you attack somebody's jet and you say, "No, you can't drive," or, "You can't do that," the point about that, it's not to say that there's not a principle there. Yes, you need to be careful of it, but by focusing on the positive, you create something that sells.

Correct. Just like Mr. Money Mustache has done. Yeah, I definitely agree with the idea of we have huge brains. Why not use that to solve the problem? Instead of either guilt, it's the carrot stick kind of analogy. So I agree with you that there is, you used a term just as you were talking about, it's better thinking.

It's not always the easiest path, but it's better thinking and there is a huge incentive, which is a really nice long hot shower. Right. Yeah, which can be done in your climate with wasted heat. Things that would otherwise just be lost and it wasn't recycled. And then it becomes about the goal and the challenge of saying, "How many times can I use this?" I'll give you, recycling programs drive me nuts.

Recycling, however, as in that you're reusing, I think that's fantastic. If recycling programs, as in the blue truck pulled up, was the end of the waste stream, I would be in favor. But it's not for most people. It's the very first thing. Correct. And that's what to me is frustrating, is because it's inefficient.

Make the blue truck. I will grant that the blue truck might be valuable, but try to put the blue truck at the end of the waste stream, not at the beginning. See how many times you can use the milk jug. See how many times you can use that. And let's teach people a little bit of an idea about that instead of creating this artificial sense of being a do-gooder that, "Oh, I put all my stuff in the blue bin." I get it entirely.

Where that's great is there's a school in Portland, Maine called Breakwater School, and they have just opened a tinkering lab. And just like when I was a kid at the Arts and Science Center in Nashua, New Hampshire, it was filled with "garbage." It was all these bins and things that people were throwing away that people were giving to kids to play with and to make things out of, whether it was art or little projects or kind of Rube Goldberg machines.

And they're doing the same thing. There's a lot of scrap that's going to use, and that's direct reuse/recycling, because it's my plastic quart yogurt cup going to mix paints in, rather than buying little paint stirring things that they sell at Home Depot. It's actually better than the one that you're going to get.

So reusing that stuff for a completely different purpose and then giving the children the opportunity to look at it as something other than a yogurt cup. What else could it be? Creative thinking. Last question. I'm ready. Why Portland, Maine? Yeah. J.D. Roth in the background. J.D. Roth from the other Portland.

Yeah, exactly. I'm from Portland, Oregon. It's actually very easy. In no particular order. My wife's family is in Portland, Maine, so we had been visiting and were both familiar with it. My daughter was starting kindergarten, and the public schools in San Francisco at the time were very, very bad.

And we made a very strong effort to get into a school that we felt she'd be comfortable in. And we were denied our first seven choices, went back into the system, were denied the next seven choices. And that was the straw that broke the camel's back. And then, of course, the third one was that I was saving money for a down payment for a house in San Francisco, which is pretty much a million dollars.

Without that payment, I was able to buy a house in Portland, Maine. So given the opportunity of doing the right thing for my daughter to have a better environment to grow up in and go to school in, the second one of having a familial support and finally having Grammy around, and then the third of being able to take naps whenever I want.

It's a pretty easy decision. Something like a snowy day that does something for the napping makes it even better. It also happens to be an incredibly gorgeous location. Yeah, absolutely. Maine is so beautiful. Portland is doing everything in a great way right now. And everyone wants to come visit.

And I can put them up because I have room. So all of you listeners- And you didn't have to spend a million dollars. Sorry, I didn't have to spend. You all come to Portland, Maine. Bill, is there anywhere that you want to direct people to or any final closing thoughts that you'd like to just share with my audience as we go?

Any closing words of advice or wisdom? There's nowhere in particular I want to direct people to. I don't want to push any traffic anywhere. People will find their own path that way. I would like to tell people, as I did here last night, you actually hit the nail on the head.

You have to figure out what enough is and then maybe take a leap. The big one is, are you going to lie on your deathbed and think, "I should have made more. I should have stayed in my job for another year to make another $20,000 when I retire. I should have..." No, they generally say, "I should have gone to my friend's wedding.

I should have done these fun things." I made the mistake of waiting much longer than I should have to retire. I had much more money at retirement that I really needed. That cost me several years of my life. I'm not regretting it, but it would be nice if somebody else could hear these words since that's the great thing that humans can do is tell our stories to others and have them learn.

Consider jumping ship earlier rather than later. I'm certainly going to be a parent who does not push my kid to make more money or get a better education. I really want her to find what's going to make her happy. If you're not happy, you can do something about it.

It is your choice. Financial independence or just plain old being rich doesn't change that at all. You're still you and you've still got your things going on. You can change them right now even if you're broke. Thank you for sharing your story with us. We all stand on the shoulders of giants.

You on the shoulders of your mom and now we on your shoulders. Yeah, just slightly higher. A little bit. Thank you, Bill. There is one thing that I want you to know that happened after the interview. The next day I was sitting and talking with Bill and we were just talking a little bit more about his story after we finished the interview.

He shared something with me that didn't come up in the context of the interview but it's very common. Obviously, it's great that he achieved financial independence. The next day as he was talking, he said, "You know, I really struggled when I first became financially independent." When he first declared that financial independence, he said he struggled with depression for about two years total before he finally was able to work out his new lifestyle.

I mention that because number one, it's an important detail but it's also a common theme that I have seen among many people who have pursued financial independence and who have built it is once they achieve it, that transition can often be difficult. Now this shouldn't be surprising because we know this from the research that's done on traditional retirees.

Many people who retire at traditional retirement age of 65 tend to find themselves feeling depressed, losing some of their sense of meaning and purpose of their lives. It's not a terminal condition. You can replace that and you can find a new sense of meaning and purpose but it's something that you need to be aware of.

It's very likely to happen. Now my summary of how to handle it is very simple. If you're retiring from something alone, you're probably going to face significant emotional and mental problems when you first start retirement. If you're just retiring to get away from a job you hate or out of a business that you can't stand, you're probably going to have problems.

If you're retiring from something, you're going to have problems. But the people that I have seen that have had the most successful retirements are those who are retiring to something. If you're retiring to something, you're likely to have an extremely successful retirement. The person who trades in a job that, hey, it's working fine but they'd love to be able to devote that 40 hours to something that's more important to them that may not be income producing, that person's ready to go.

You should have tested that, the lifestyle, partly before retiring. Slower transitions are usually a better move. But the key is, are you retiring from something or you're retiring to something? It's too important of a point for you to miss. Don't miss it. Think about it carefully. And with that, that's the end of the show today.

I want to thank Bill for coming on and sharing his experience. Take inspiration from him. Fixer. Maybe some of you don't know what that is. Fixer just means somebody who just fixes stuff for people. If you've got a problem, how do you get it done? That to me sounds like such a fun job.

And to think that somebody could build a career doing that should be inspirational to many of you. And it's something that you can do on your own terms. I don't know how you do it. I think you have to have a unique set of skills. But maybe you should put fixer on your career aspiration.

That's it for today's show. As we go, a quick reminder, I'm focusing very hard on finishing this demographic survey that I'm doing. So next question, demographic survey. If you could please take a moment and do that, you could do it right on your phone or at your computer, wherever you're listening to me.

Just go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/survey. Just tell me, are you a man, are you a woman, how old you are, what color you are, et cetera. That'd be super helpful. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/survey. Also, thank you to those of you who support the show as patrons. The patron program is very important. It allows me to not focus first and foremost on advertisers, but to focus first and foremost on serving you, the listening audience, who finds value and engages in a voluntary transaction to tell me that.

If you'd like to support the show, go to RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. Also that gets you access to Q&A calls, just like you'll hear tomorrow. RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. And with that, I'm out of here until tomorrow. When you're in winter's favorite town, the snow-covered mountains surround you. A historic main street charms you. And every day brings a new adventure.

Welcome to Park City, Utah, naturally winter's favorite town. Join the experience at VisitParkCity.com.