Welcome to Radical Personal Finance, a show dedicated to providing you with the knowledge, skills, insight, and encouragement you need to live a rich and meaningful life now while building a plan for financial freedom in 10 years or less. My name is Joshua and today on Radical Personal Finance, I'm excited to bring you an interview with Chris and Christy Moody, who are embarking on a project called Life Opted Out.

This interview features two themes. Number one, it's their personal story of packing up all of their possessions, moving out of a penthouse apartment in Manhattan and moving into a cargo van, traveling around the country. But it's also an interview project where they are looking for interesting stories and trying to examine the threads that are happening in US American culture right now, where many people have chosen and are choosing to opt out of the more traditional path.

I hope you enjoy this interview. It's an excellent project. Stay tuned to the end of the interview for two things. Number one, my hope is that you, a radical, can help Chris and Christy with their reporting project because their project is a perfect fit and it dovetails nicely in with Radical Personal Finance.

And I want you to help them by providing for them some interesting stories and interesting research that they can do in possibly with you or with people that you know and that you know of. The second thing is stay tuned at the end for a little bit of closing commentary by me on what I am observing in what Chris and Christy are doing.

Chris and Christy Moody, welcome to the show. Great to be here, Josh. Hey, Josh. So I'm really excited to bring you guys on today because this project that you are engaged in is a perfect fit for the Radical Personal Finance community. It's a perfect fit in terms of interesting content and also we as a community want to help you with your project.

So describe who you are and what you're doing at this stage of your life. Well, Josh, my name is Chris Moody. I was a journalist in Washington, D.C. and in New York. I covered politics for several different outlets. And we were living in New York City and I was laid off and that led us to a lot of soul searching and Christy and I decided to give away and sell almost all of our possessions, get rid of our Manhattan penthouse apartment on the Upper West Side and move into a cargo van, a used 2017 Ram ProMaster cargo van.

And we built a tiny home inside the cargo van in one month by ourselves. So that you guys, some people move into a van because they're broke and they can't afford it but it sounds like you guys have made the big switch from the posh part of New York and to be living in a van down by the river.

Does this feel a little bit weird or is this just life as normal in today's world? Well, Josh, we kind of saw Chris getting laid off as an opportunity to do something different ourselves and to pursue this passion project, which I've had maybe for about two years. I've been working on this idea of traveling the country and telling stories about people who are choosing to live very intentionally and to opt out of the mainstream, we'd say maybe American dream of having your traditional nine to five job, your house and mortgage, your debts, your house and garage just full of stuff.

And so we are living in a van really for the practical reason that it's probably the least expensive way for us to travel the country full time and to live on the road. So let's talk about expenses because I want to dig into the van build. I want to dig into the comparison of life.

But how much would you guess it was costing you to live when you're living in Manhattan and how much is it costing you to live now? I'd have to take a look at the spreadsheets we had, but I know it was costing more than $5,000 a month just to live and that doesn't even include student loans and other kind of expenses.

Given the cost of rent up in New York City, food, transportation, everything. We were living just in a one bedroom, a pretty standard New York apartment, nothing too big or anything. Nothing is big up there really. But with the van, we were able to do the entire build out for about $5,000.

So we really saved a lot of money on a monthly basis. And then the van plus the cost of the van, so we're financing that at around $1,000 a month and all told, it is far less than living in New York City. Also when you're living in a van, the simplicity of everything that you do really brings your cost down, especially with cooking.

We use a one burner stove and that makes for a lot of vegan bowls and lentils and rice and vegetables and things that really don't cost a lot of money. So add the rising cost of gas to that which made it a little bit more expensive, but we're talking a pretty significant reduction in expenses.

How long have you been on the road now? We left the beginning of June. So we've been on for about six weeks now. And are you paying for camping and campgrounds? Are you parking in random parking lots? How are you handling where you stay? So we rarely pay for a campground unless we're at a national park and we feel like it's worth it to pay to be inside the national park and at their campground.

Usually we stay with this program called Harvest Host, which is an excellent program. If you have a self-contained RV vehicle, an RV or like ours, a class B RV, you can stay on these farms, vineyards, historic sites, all different kinds of places all over the country for a yearly subscription.

I think we paid maybe 45 or $48 for the year. And you just call up the various farms, ask if you can stay the night. We're usually staying in a cow field or in a back parking lot behind a barn or whatever space they have. If it's like a winery, sometimes in the actual parking lot of the winery.

And it's been great. It's basically been completely free. And we always have a place to stay where we have permission and people know we're there. We get to talk to the farmers, we get to meet people. It's been a really great program. And that program, Josh, has taken probably one of the most significant anxiety inducers out of van life.

And that is wondering where we're going to stay. And when we're asleep, is anyone going to knock on the door? There's nothing more terrifying I've heard because it hasn't happened to us yet. But there's nothing more terrifying than an unknown person knocking on your metal van door. You don't know if it's a police officer or something more nefarious.

And so staying on these farms and vineyards has just been so wonderful. We highly recommend this program called Harvest Hosts to anyone who has a self-contained RV. But there's a lot of places people can stay when they're living on the road. Of course, there are campgrounds where you can pay.

National Forests has free camping across the United States. And then there's also just boondocking in a city on the sidewalk. We not on the sidewalk, on the street parking. We slept in downtown Washington, D.C., kind of in the shadow of the Supreme Court and just woke up in the morning and drove off.

No one bothered us. And it was a free place to stay in the heart of a pretty cool city. So I feel like there's this underworld or there's this world of people who are doing what you're doing that most people don't notice. But once you get tuned into the signs, my wife and I, I point them out to her and now she points them out to me.

I always say, "Oh, look, there's a van dweller. Oh, look, there's somebody living in their car." Once you get tuned into the signs, I think you see them in a lot of places. I think you see people doing what you're doing if you know what to look for. Has that been your experience?

Yeah, absolutely. When we were still in Manhattan, we noticed on our block a van where someone was living in the van. And so you look for the signs of if they have solar panels, if they have a ventilation fan, if the windows are open, have screens on them. And so we've seen it even in New York City, people living on the streets.

And I want to say to the listeners, the kind of van we're in is just a worker's cargo van. It kind of looks like a plumber's van or something like that. It's not marked. It's just a regular white van. And stealth for people that are living full time in these things is very important because it gives you a lot more options.

And that's why we chose to go with just a cargo van instead of maybe a larger RV. Christy and I don't have any children, so that makes it a little bit easier for just the two of us, even though it is just 72 square feet. It is a tiny space that we're in together.

But yes, you walk around and you notice all the little things. And there are people, if you go on Instagram, you look for #vanlife, you'll find several different ways of living in vans. We're kind of at this wonderful cultural moment right now where the technology is such that people can go on the road and work from the road.

They don't have to be stuck in one place if they don't want to be. I think it's tremendous what you and your family, Josh, have been doing. You have children and you're on the road and you're working. This is not something that would be entirely possible, at least on such a widespread level, only a few years ago.

And now it is. And that's part of what really took us to the road, was to find this underworld that you're talking about and hear their stories and learn about them and find out why they left maybe a comfortable suburban life and are now living on the road. We are meeting some amazing people.

And that's what fascinates me about your project because you're not just doing it for fun. You're doing this for fun, for the adventure of it, for the change in your life. But you're also doing it as a reporting project. And one of the things I'm intrigued to ask you about now and also to learn as you continue your reporting project is the change that's happening in terms of culture.

The first van dweller that I ever met was a guy named Fred. And Fred was this older guy, overweight, long stringy hair, probably, I assume, an aging hippie. And he had this old broken down Dodge cart conversion van that he slept in. And it was packed with junk. And I had a friend of mine who had an acre and a quarter in his house.

And somehow he had come in contact with Fred. And Fred had permission to park his van overnight on my friend's property. But it was just under a pine tree in a sort of semi-suburban lot. And I would look at Fred and I never really talked to him much. But he almost looked like the stereotypical broken down older guy with just junk everywhere.

It was a very dirty and disheveled appearance. It just didn't seem like anything attractive. Now fast forward to today, you guys are not dirty and disheveled. And I- Most of the time. Most of the time, indeed. But I mean, you guys are professionals. Chris you are an experienced attorney.

Sorry, Chris, you're an experienced reporter. You've done all kinds of appearances on TV. And Christy, you're an attorney. And you guys are highly educated, affluent, upper middle, upper class elite type of culture. And yet this is van life. And I'm wondering if there is a change. If this is- And if so, why?

Why are people like you doing something that used to be you would have to be a dirty aging hippie to do? I think there's a lot of answers to that question. For us personally, apart from the fact that this is the cheapest and most efficient way for us to travel with all of our possessions across the country and interview people for this project, for us it's really stepping into a completely different type of life.

Like Chris said, we got rid of almost all of our possessions. We're living in 72 square feet, which is 12 by six by six. We have to be very careful about our water consumption because we provide our own water because we have a completely self-contained water system where we have to go to a campground or a gas station or something and fill up our water bottles.

We have to monitor our electricity. And so we're thinking about electricity. We have to dispose of all of our trash. We're not at campgrounds. There's no dumpsters to put our trash in. And so this has been, first of all, learning what things we can live with, what things we can live without, and what things we can be self-sustaining in, like our electricity, our water, feeding ourselves, finding places to stay every night.

But sorry, I lost my train of thought. Well, I think Josh, to your question, I think it all comes down to one of the great lies in American culture, and that is if you have things and you have a house and you buy more things than your neighbor, you will be happy.

And these things will make you happy. And the house in the suburbs will make you happy and the fancy job. And we're at this moment right now, I think, Josh, where people are realizing that that is not making them as happy as they were told their whole lives it would.

And they're searching for something a little bit more, something more fulfilling, and realizing they don't need all of these things in order to live the life that they were promised when they took out that big loan to go to school and spent all of that time acquiring things. And we're at the nexus right now where people are realizing that, and the technology and the price have come to a place where a lot of people can do it.

And that was not the case many years ago. It was really people on the far fringes years ago that were doing this, because it was extreme. It was even harder. But now, with technology, the ability to find places to stay, the ability to connect with other people that are living this lifestyle, it broadens it to a lot more people so that somebody who's just not feeling very fulfilled in life and realizing that maybe they got hoodwinked can actually take something like this on.

And I think that nexus in time and technology and affordability is what's causing this right now. Do you ever feel, have you felt, or have you felt a little guilty about... I just sometimes think of how hard many of our forebearers worked to build the good life, to work hard, to build shelter and to provide income and to provide a stable home base.

And I sometimes wonder if we who are younger, who tend to be vocally despising of some of those things, I wonder if we should feel guilty for that. It almost feels a little strange to know that the things that other people worked so hard for, we have such abundance that we just walk away from them.

And I'll give an example. A few years ago, I visited a small museum in a little dusty town in Wyoming where my grandmother lives. And it showed the... The house was preserved as it was, and it was a wealthy person in town's house. And it had the horsehair sofa that was positioned in the parlor.

And I was looking at this horsehair sofa, and there was a little sign and a plaque talking about how much it cost and how expensive it was. And it was a very beautiful chair. And in looking at it, I was imagining how nice it would have been for that family who had that piece of furniture shipped from the East Coast all the way out to Wyoming and had it in their house as something that was beautiful and nice and comfortable and luxurious.

And they were in a very austere environment. And how that was a status symbol that had real meaning, and it was very satisfying for them. Meanwhile, I'm just thinking about the dumpster, the dumpsters and the sides of the road where I live, and recognizing how nowadays we just toss these things out left and right, and it has no meaning.

I guess my question doesn't really have a point. It just seems weird and hard to grapple with in terms of the sheer physical material abundance that we have. And now the next step seems to be that we just walk away from it and get rid of all of our nice stuff and move into a small van or an RV.

I sometimes wonder what our grandparents would say. I think your question has a great point, Josh. Let's face some facts. One is that we live in an incredibly privileged time and an incredibly privileged place. And this kind of living in a van does come from a place of privilege.

There are a lot of people who do it because there's nowhere else to go. And that, I think, is a different thing. I think it's important for us to really recognize the privilege that we have in this opportunity to do this. But you're totally right. You go far back enough, anyone in our families were living very different lives and hoping and dreaming of very different futures.

But I think every generation gets the right to define what makes them happy and what their goals are. And there's a lot of systems that have been set up by the previous generations that worked for them. And I think it's our right to redefine those systems if we want to and explore maybe what went wrong and what we can do better and whether those systems are fulfilling and right for us and our future generations.

I know Christy's family came from Cuba as refugees and worked very hard to get back on their feet as non-English speaking Americans, learning the language, getting an education, and trying to thrive in their own businesses. And now their daughter says she's moving into a van and it probably sounded pretty crazy to her parents when we told them, even though they did help us build it in their front yard.

But I think you make a great point about that. But still, even if some of those systems, those systems are not perfect that were built by the baby boomers and built by the generation before them. And I think it's a sign of progress to be trying to redefine how we live our lives and noticing the things that we're told should make us happy and going, "You know what?

I don't need that." And I think it really gets us back to something a lot more simple and something a lot more satisfying. - Yeah, I think this quest for happiness, I've been thinking a lot about it recently in terms of the, there's almost this social angst where people feel as though if they are unhappy that there's something wrong with them.

And there's this quest for happiness that people are trying to pursue in many different ways. And it's not all bad in my opinion, but it's not necessarily all good. I think there's more to it than just meaning, which is why, there's more to life than just this desire for happiness or hedonistic self-indulgence.

And I think that to me is one of the things that people are looking for, whether they would put those labels on it or not. So with your report, go ahead. - Our culture and our economy is set up to make sure that you're unhappy most of the time because if you're perfectly satisfied and happy, you don't need to buy anything.

And they need you to continue to buy things even though you might not need a new couch, they make you feel like you do. And that feeling of lacking, that you don't have what it takes unless you buy this thing, that's something that permeates within our culture. And I'll say that capitalism has helped create one of the most abundant or the most abundant and privileged societies of all time, but there are strings attached.

And that is a kind of a constant feeling that you're unsatisfied because people who have a great interest in making money off of you need you to feel a little unsatisfied. - Yeah, the premise of our project is sort of that the American dream and the pursuit of happiness in the pursuit of material things and material success has failed a lot of people.

And especially a lot of people in our generation are starting to question whether those things and that material success is actually the key to happiness in life. I know for me personally, I spent a long time in my 20s when I was a practicing attorney and very unhappy, trying to find happiness and trying to figure out why am I unhappy everything is great, life is wonderful, we have all these things and just continually finding that I wasn't as happy as I thought I should be.

And I think as you grow up, when you get older, you start to realize like life is not about me and my feelings and not about my trying to like achieve this level of happiness that I think I should have, but rather life is about other people, what we do with our time that matters, our families, the good things that we are putting into the world.

And that's something that we're really kind of pursuing and seeking out as we do this project as well. Part of our project is, we have nowhere to be, we don't have to be interviewing people if we don't want to, we can go anywhere and do anything. And so when you have absolute freedom, what kind of values and what kind of disciplines do you want to instill in your life?

And so for us, we're really like trying to figure out like, okay, when you're traveling every day, when you're going to all these beautiful places, when you're talking to all these interesting people, how do you figure out how to have some quiet time in the morning where you read and meditate and contemplate things?

And how do you make time to write and do the things you're supposed to do for your projects? And how do you make time for exercise and eating healthy and all that when we could do absolutely anything and stay at vineyards every night and drink and eat cheese every night if we wanted to?

Yeah, my wife and I are experiencing the same challenge. It's interesting when you remove some of the constraints, I don't think often people who are very constrained seem to feel that if you would just remove the constraints, everything would be wonderful and they would be happy. But I've learned that absence of constraints does not equal happiness.

Actually that's a structure, a discipline, a schedule, a system. Those things really help, that structured approach to life really, really helps. I used to despise working a nine to five job, Monday through Friday. I don't want to work this job. Well now in hindsight I recognize that hey, the nine to five, Monday through Friday type of work, it really helps.

And I try to work on a Monday through Friday, nine to five schedule myself because it's good for my productivity and it's good for my mental health. So I'll be interested to hear how your habits develop and what you find. What have you found so far? How much structure has been helpful to you?

Well I think it's really important Josh to make sure you know what your priorities are. And for us it's time spent present with one another that's undistracted. So we try to make sure that there are technologies that are distracting put away at times when we need to be together.

In the morning, knowing each person's role because everything is a chore when you live in a van. Nothing is automatic. So I'm in charge of water and I have to make sure that there's always water in our system. We carry a hundred liters at full capacity and that goes quicker than you think.

Or making breakfast, making coffee, making lunch throughout the day. Making sure that we have set aside time that we can read in the morning and take a quiet time with one another. And then also one practice that we've been trying to stay to keep doing is hiking each day.

The level of I guess positive things that come from that we found is just so abundant and it's important to do that. Because like Christy kind of hinted at, you could just do nothing all day. You could just drive all day and without that structure that you put on yourself you could really find yourself in a rut.

Prior to your van life, I know Chris you were very busy working as a reporter in the Manhattan national, international news media scene. And Christy very busy in that Manhattan life as well. I can't think of a bigger contrast to go from busy, fast-paced downtown New York City to what you've just described.

How has that affected your relationship? Well, you know, that's actually interesting Josh. When we moved to New York City, Chris and I made some big life changes. When we moved from Washington DC. Yeah, when we moved from Washington DC to New York City, Chris and I made some big life changes and we decided to be very disciplined in how we spent our time together.

So when Chris came home from work, we have like a basket next to the front door where he puts his cell phone, I put my cell phone. Everyone leaves their cell phones in that basket. And we spend time together, we spend time reading, we spend time listening to audio books, going on walks, going to museums and the parks.

And so we've kind of started those sort of disciplines before we moved into the van. And so they've kind of continued into our van life, which is good. But let's say that van life is a huge adjustment. So the first week I would say was pretty difficult, Josh. It didn't help that it was cold, it was raining, and Christy had kind of thrown at her back a little bit.

And that required me to do just about everything. And Christy likes to have things done a certain way. And if she can't do them, she has to communicate it to me and I do everything pretty poorly. So things like not understanding the systems of the van quite well enough to do them smoothly.

For example, we have to build our bed every night. We have kind of a couch system and then the bedding is underneath in a storage area and then there's a central thing that we put across the top that makes it into like a queen-size bed. But you have to put that together at night and you have to take it down in the morning.

And if it's raining outside, you're both in the van, it's 72 square feet, you're running into each other. You have to learn to be patient. You have to learn to communicate and you have to learn grace. Because you can just rack up offenses all day long and unless you're able to forgive and to take a deep breath, it's going to be really difficult.

The van life is not for everyone. As I think any listener will attest that they wouldn't want to live in something so small. They wouldn't want the extra chores of having to haul your own water like you live out in the woods or something. But I find great value in both the communication that we're able, the communication skills we're able to develop together as a couple and also what manual and physical labor does for your body and your mind.

It makes you grateful. It makes you realize where things come from. And I think there's something that is lost when physical labor is taken out of our lives, which it was for me for so many years. And now that it's back, Josh, in the build of the van, which it took us one month to do every day, about eight to 10 hours a day, I learned physical labor for the first time because I'm just a suburban kid that never worked a day in his life in any real sense.

And I loved it. And I was very surprised to find that about myself. I'm convinced that... Go ahead, Christy. As far as the relationship goes, I would say, as Chris said, the first week was incredibly difficult. One of the most difficult probably weeks of our five-year marriage so far.

Josh, let me just say, I didn't realize that. But I will say, living in a van and basically having to do everything ourselves and figure out these systems to make things a little bit easier and make things work really does add to this level of teamwork that may be in a more automatic lifestyle where you have regular running water and regular electricity and all these things that just happen kind of automatically.

I found that it's really helped us to become a team and rely on each other much more than we were before. Before I would do certain things and Chris would do certain things, but they were kind of in their own realms and separate. And now we have to work together as a team every single day to do things that we couldn't do just on our own.

Has taking responsibility for your living conditions in such a physical way impacted your confidence in any way? Oh, absolutely. So I'd never used a power tool before I built my own house a couple months ago. And I was never able to do anything. I grew up in a way where I never gave myself the patience to do anything that was that difficult because we live in a very automatic society where if something doesn't work, you throw it away, you buy a new one or you pay somebody to fix it.

That is how I grew up. In our house, if something was too frustrating or took too long, we would just drop it and go get ice cream. I mean, that was just the way it was. And when you build your own house, nothing is going to come together automatically.

You must look at a challenge and figure out how to get over that mountain. You must build the thing or else you're not going to have a house. And I remember, Josh, there were nights after a long day's work and we hadn't figured out some problem, whether it was with the electrical or how to design the bed or the kitchen.

I was thinking, "How are we going to do this?" And then the next morning, we'd get ourselves a fresh pot of coffee and a good night's sleep, and we'd figure it out. And doing that repeated over and over and over, yes, tremendously built confidence. Now after doing this, we feel like with enough help from YouTube and from communities on social media and some practice, we can do just about anything.

We're talking about building a real house someday. It's like, "Oh, well, a house is a rectangle. That's easy because our van is more like a tube. You have to build around the circle and overcome all those challenges. But we can build anything in a rectangle." And I never in my wildest dreams would have ever thought that I could maybe do something as even simple as insulating a house or, gosh, installing something or building something with wood and using carpentry.

I had no idea that you can do it. And I'm coming at it from the most ignorant, the least skilled person. And with a little bit of help, we did it. And so yes, if you do a big project like this, especially with your wife, you will learn a lot about your relationship and also feel pretty confident that you can take challenges in the future.

Christy, what was your experience? Because you also came from more of the academic world, but you were doing this, in my understanding, you were one of the major designers in this project. What was your experience? Yeah, I did design the entire project and the entire van, which was not easy.

So I do come from an academic background and research is something that I'm very good at. Like Chris said, so we decided to do this in February. We took the month of March basically to figure out which van we were going to buy, which type of van we're going to buy, and for me to actually do the design of where the beds would be, how the bed and seating system would work, what kind of kitchen we wanted, refrigerator, electricity, etc.

And then we planned for a month basically, and then built for a month. And I don't recommend by any means building out your entire van in a month. But we just had a time crunch and we had to do it. And so it was really tough. We were doing it in my parents' front yard in Florida.

And my dad is wonderful. He helped us a lot, but I had to conceptualize the entire van and every step that we were going to take, and then kind of direct Chris and my dad and buy all the things on Amazon or at Home Depot, whatever we needed in order to do the things we needed to do that day.

And so I guess I kind of designed and was the project manager for the entire van build. And I mean, it does really give you a lot of confidence to say like, "Okay, we have these problems. We have to figure it out. There's no one else who could do it for us.

And it has to be done today because we need to do something else tomorrow because we need to finish this thing." So it was, as anyone who works with their parents occasionally knows, it was difficult at times working with my dad, who is very handy, but sometimes a little bit stubborn.

But we did it. I think we feel really like we have gained this confidence and these skills that are really going to keep on providing new opportunities throughout our lives. I look at things sometimes now, and I think Chris does too. He looks at a wooden fence and he's like, "I could build that." Or I look at a table and I'm like, "Oh, I'm going to build...

Next time we live in a house, I'm going to build my own table and chairs." Never would have thought that before. Yeah. Having that kind of confidence just to say like, "Yeah, sure. We could figure that out. That's not a big deal." It's really wonderful. Something Chris and I have been thinking about and talking about, and maybe something we're going to think about and develop in our project is we feel like we live in this culture of constant convenience.

So you need something and you just go on Amazon and you look for it and you get it. You get that exact specific thing that you need in order to meet your very specific first world need. And we found in the van build, it takes a lot of improvising, a lot of compromising, a lot of just trying to make things that were not meant to be a fixture in a van, part of a van.

And so that skill of also just learning how to improvise and learning to make things work is super important in a van life, especially when now we don't have access to Amazon's next day delivery any longer. Because we're always traveling, we have to just figure out how to make things work.

If something breaks on the road, we have to go to a Home Depot or Walmart and find whatever piece might relatively work in that situation. If we hadn't have done the van build ourselves, if something happened on the road, we would be really lost. And now we feel like we can do just about anything.

Yeah, I think that's also one of the most important parts of building the van yourself. Chris and I know where all the electrical wires are behind the walls. If something in the electricity gets messed up, we can open up the wall, we can fix it. We know how all the plumbing works in the van.

We know where all the screws and all the nuts and bolts are in the van. And so if something goes wrong, we know how to take it apart and how to put it back together and how we can figure out how to fix it. And that really gives us a lot of confidence on the road as well.

I think back to the major theme of your work as far as what's going on in this generational change. To me, this story that you're describing of confidence is a major key to the component of people being confident themselves and being happy. In our modern world, we are often so specialized that the only thing we know how to do is a very specialized job that creates income.

And we provide for most of our basic needs exclusively through the – I was going to say through writing checks, but more through the swiping of cards or the transferring of digital money. And so if something happens and something goes wrong, we have to transfer digital money. And then if there's a problem in that, it leads to this – I think often leads to this sense of helplessness.

And the mental health of many of us who are younger, some of the objective research data indicates that we're not as confident as we once were. And I was more advanced when I was growing up as far as more experienced with construction projects, things like that, than perhaps you described, Chris.

But still, it was never a real skill of mine. And over the years, I've tried to remedy that and build more skill. It's always hard for me because my brain doesn't really work in that physical way. But I keep going at it because it changes my confidence level. I used to look at a car engine and not have a clue where to start because although my dad tried to teach me about cars, I didn't pay attention.

And then I said, "That's it. I'm going to start fixing some stuff myself." And then I learned, "Wait a second. There's basically the whole skill of fixing a car seems to be diagnosis. And I can go and find a manual and they'll say, 'Do this, then do that, then do that.'" And I probably could get a little closer to figuring out the problem.

And then it's just usually a matter of bolting and unbolting some parts. And as I started to fix more things on my car, it built my confidence where I wasn't so intimidated by a broken car. And same thing for me as I've worked on my RV and on my house, I've developed more confidence.

And that confidence in your ability to provide for your needs, the ability to provide your shelter, the ability to provide your food to some degree, the ability to provide entertainment for yourself, the ability to take care of your waste, that really changes something. There's something very human about that that all of our ancestors knew.

And there's something very new about the last, say, half century, I think, half century to century, where we've lost touch with many of those basic things. And it's very hard to feel like you could just walk away from thousands and thousands of years of human experience into this modern brave new world and not lose something.

And I'm convinced, just kind of providing my little suggestion for your reporting project, I'm convinced that's a core thing in our human experience that we need to make sure that we always cultivate. Well I think it speaks to why so many millennials are getting into craft industries, craft brewing, craft all kinds of stuff, you know, carpentry.

We grew up in, for a lot of us, the last part of the 20th century when everything was just taken care of for us and we want to find out how things work ourselves. And I'm not some kind of doomsday person or anything, but I think it's important to know how your systems work and know what you're going to do if something bad does happen in any kind of varying degree.

And I feel like a different person being on the other side of this. And we're only 5,000 miles into our journey and there's a lot more time to go. And I'm also grateful that after 5,000 miles, nothing has broken, so we built something at least semi-properly. But I think you really hit it on the head there, Josh.

Yeah, and for us this is also a really pretty personal journey to try to figure out how we want to live and what kind of lifestyle we want to have. Obviously we've lived in urban centers for the last decade and we really enjoyed that and that was a great life.

But we don't know going forward what kind of lives we want to live. If we want to live on a farm or if we want to live back in Manhattan, we have no idea. And so part of this journey is also for us to try to figure out what is the good life for us and what kind of life would provide the best kind of opportunities and the best lifestyle for the future family we hope to have.

So let's transition to your reporting project because I know this is a major component in addition to the personal inquiry that you just described. A major component for you is what you're doing. You're writing, you're publishing and you're doing this as a reporting project. So tell us about what you have done so far, who have you spoken with and what have you learned so far in terms of your cultural analysis regarding people who are choosing to live a different life?

Well, we are looking for people that have not only opted out of conventional ways of doing things but are trying something new and really thriving. I think my entrance point for it was the personal finance community, the FIRE community, Financial Independence Retire Early, as your listeners know so much about.

And I realized, "Oh my goodness, here is this thriving community of people. They're having conventions, they're having meetings, they have their podcasts, they have their profits, they have all of these people in the community that are saying, 'You don't have to live the way your parents did and here's how you can do it and here's how you can afford it.'" And that opened my eyes completely and then that led on to people that are doing different things in real estate like with the van life community or with food, people that are opting out of major food systems.

And Christy and I realized that there are all these people with the same kind of common denominator of finding their own way forward. So here's what we've done so far. We met a wonderful family. They just wrote a book. Elizabeth Thames is the name of the author. She wrote a book called Meet the Frugal Woods.

She and her husband saved a major percentage of their income while they lived in urban centers throughout their 20s and they've become financially independent in their early 30s. And with that independence, they chose to move to a homestead in rural Vermont where they live with their family now. And they have the choice of how and when they want to work and how and when they want to spend time with their family.

And so we got to see their farmstead and see what it takes to live a life like that and what it takes to get there. It takes a lot of sacrifice, a lot of work, but it is possible to become financially independent. And then we went up into the mountains of New Hampshire and we embedded with a group that's called the Free State Project.

And they have an annual meetup in the woods of New Hampshire. This is a movement to bring 20,000, I guess you could say broadly, libertarians to all move to the state of New Hampshire to kind of in part create a voting block, in part to build a community of anarchists, minarchists, libertarians, people that believe in a small state and kind of take over the state from within in their own way and set up their own systems, part of which are off grid, part of which are kind of their own little economy that is not attached to kind of mainstream ways of selling and buying goods.

And we met so many different types of people that are living their lives the way they want to live on their terms. And that community in New Hampshire is just thriving with people who have opted out. And I think one of the big, one of the most interesting things I found is we've spoken with people, generally speaking, on the political far left, the political far right, and everywhere in between.

And in this really polarized political time, you find incredible similarities between the most conservative person and the most liberal person and the reasons that they want to build their own systems and opt out of the way everyone else has told them they need to live. Not to be all kumbaya here, but there's a lot more that unites us with these people.

If you just step back, get off political Twitter. And which you have been part of for many years. And just talk to people. You will find that people are speaking the same language, but unfortunately, they're not listening to one another. Just one comment on that. You mentioned political Twitter.

I have a, I don't know what to call it, a soft spot, an indulgence, a weakness, an addiction. I have a, I am prone to political Twitter. And one of the things that I have learned that I've had to do is just disconnect from it because it's so destructive.

And I don't know if I'm an addict, a Twitter addict, hi, my name is Joshua and I'm a Twitter addict or something, but it seems like I have to run so far away from the bottle that I can't even look across the county at the bar. Otherwise, I wind up wending my way back into it.

Just obviously, you're talking about it in terms of an addiction. But as I've gotten on the road, I've been able to more easily and more consistently, and you don't have to go travel for this. I've put all kinds of safeguards in place in other times as well, but it's just a little easier on the road to be totally away from the internet.

And as I've done that, I go back and it just all looks so stupid. And I think, is this what I thought mattered? This is stupid. And yet, this is something that these stupid arguments, these stupid debates, this was something that I thought was really important a few years ago when I was embroiled in the midst of it.

And it's fascinating because you're right, there is so much more that unites us than that divides us, but it sure seems like you've got to take a step back to recognize that. You do, and part of the opting out has to be from technology addiction. Technology is a very powerful thing.

It's a wonderful thing. It's connected lots of people. It's changed lives. It's created new economies and new marketplaces. But it's roped a lot of us in to a point where we're neglecting things that are more important, our families and our communities. And there's something about scrolling that part of Twitter or YouTube that makes you mad.

It's endorphins that makes you feel good in a weird, strange way. But tell me the truth, Josh, after the end of an hour of scrolling political Twitter, do you feel really good? I don't think you do. >>JOSHUA COREY Absolutely not. No question. >>ANDREW BRODIN Of course not. >>JOSHUA COREY It affects me big time.

>>ANDREW BRODIN Right. But it's not necessarily our fault because these systems are so powerful. They do reel us in in a way, and that includes pretty pictures on Instagram, even that too. It is addicting, and it's important to set up those safeguards just like someone who has another kind of addiction will need to do as well.

And you're right, being on the road does help. But without those safeguards, I'm the same way, and I think many people are. You just find yourself roped back in. And I think that is what is really exacerbating this moment, this cultural moment that we're living in right now. Because the hate, all the anger is around you at all times.

You feel completely surrounded by it because you're consuming it from morning until night. And people didn't used to do that. And I think that whatever this is, is really doing a number on people's psyches, on people's souls. And we have to be able to control ourselves, but it is really difficult to do so.

And I think the only way to do is to set up hedges that protect us. Otherwise, we're just going to sit and binge on Netflix all day. At least I would. Indeed. It's one thing about doing all your internet through a data plan where you have a cap. Limits are healthy.

Budgets are healthy. Data caps on your phone are healthy. Hedges are healthy, just like we talked about earlier in terms of the structure of a day. So my hope, Chris and Christy, is that my community, the radicals here who are part of Radical Personal Finance, can help you to discover some cool new stories that you can use in the book that you're writing, in the projects that you're working on about people who have opted out.

Because I know of, there are some amazing people in the audience here. So who would you like to connect with and what kinds of stories would you like to be able to hear and to profile that will help you with the project that you're working on? So we are traveling the country and talking to people who are choosing to live differently and opt out of the mainstream.

But our topics are very broad. So of course, your audience is the personal finance audience. We'd love to talk to people who are part of the FIRE community, who are choosing to retire early, who are choosing to be very frugal, and all of those things. We're also looking to talk to people who are choosing to opt out of real estate, like we said, not just live in a van or live mobily, but people who are living off the grid, who are homesteading, who are choosing to grow their own food, choosing to be self-sufficient from the rest of the grid.

We want to talk to people who are opting out of technology in different ways, people who are choosing to opt in to different types of intentional communities or intentional lifestyles. So it's very broad. Basically, anyone who's choosing to live outside the normal suburban, 9-to-5 job, white collar, have lots of stuff in your garage kind of lifestyle, those are the people we want to talk to.

And if anyone can get me into Camp Mustache so I can see what that's all about, that'd be awesome too. Yeah, we'd really like to do that. That's easy. As I sit here recording this, I'm sitting here in Mr. Money Mustache's co-working space in downtown Longmont. We just had a meetup last night and so I could do that for you, Chris.

I could easily make that happen. Great success. All right. Indeed. Well, tell us all the website, the news profiles that you set up as far as the news channels where people can follow you and follow your journey. All right. Pull out your phone. Follow us at LifeOptedOut on Instagram, L-I-F-E-O-P-T-E-D-O-U-T, LifeOptedOut, and on LifeOptedOut.com.

And then you can email us at OptOutMedia@gmail.com. That's OptOutMedia@gmail.com. Love to hear from people. Love to hear your stories. And hopefully we can come visit and say hello. We're also going to be launching our own podcast, LifeOptedOut podcast, to tell the stories of the people that we're meeting. And we're really excited to meet all different kinds of people because I truly do believe that this is a story about a moment in our country's history that is really going to be important and really pave the way for how we live in the future.

So let's hear your stories. Yeah. We feel that there's many ways for people to live out their values. And really the uniting theme between all the different types of people that we would like to interview are people who are choosing to live intentionally, to live according to a very specific set of values.

And it's not that we necessarily are endorsing everyone's extreme lifestyles or everyone's values out there. But we think that being exposed to new ideas causes us to stop and think and question our own life choices and hopefully helps us to live a better life in the future. And be more empathetic as well.

Yeah. Absolutely. Chris Christie, thank you for coming on. I'll link to all of those pages in the show notes for today and I hope we can meet up out on the road. Thanks for having us, Josh. Happy trails. As we close today's interview, I want to bring your attention to a few themes that you can observe in Chris and Christie's story.

And I hope that you will file them away in the back of your mind in case they ever become useful to you. Number one, if you are ever laid off, I want to encourage you to view that layoff as an opportunity. Now, if you are in financial distress at the time of your layoff, it will most likely not be easy to view it as an opportunity.

At the very least, you should view it as an opportunity to get a newer and better job. After all, they pushed you out the door. Maybe you can go and find something better. But if you're not in financial distress, and I beg of you, make sure that you're not in financial distress.

Make sure that you're spending much less than you're making. Make sure that you have savings on hand. Make sure that your debt burden is low. And if you'll do those things, you will not be in financial distress should you ever become laid off. So if you're not in financial distress, then I encourage you consider viewing a layoff as an opportunity for you to do something that you have wanted to do for a while.

Here's what's cool. Frequently a layoff will come with something like a severance package, especially if you work in a white collar industry. That severance package can give you a place where you can begin something new while having income from something old. Go back and listen to the episode that I did with a financial samurai on how to get laid off from your job.

Consider getting his book. But one of the great things is if you get laid off, you can use that as a point in time where you're freed from some of your day-to-day obligations and you can try something new. One of the themes that I'm convinced has a great deal of value is in your life to pursue a series of sabbaticals, or one of the common terms used today is mini-retirements.

This is not a new concept. The concept is simply that every few years you need a time of rest, a time of change, and you can work this in intentionally into your life. Now sabbaticals are most common in the academic context, but just because they're common there doesn't mean that you can't use them.

Every seven years, every ten years, plan to take six months or a year off. And what you'll do is if you find yourself doing that, you can come back to your work re-energized and rejuvenated and ready to go with a new project, ready to go with new focus for another period of time.

You can negotiate this in the context of your current job, probably. Many people have, but some people can't. But what you can do is take advantage of a layoff to go on some sort of sabbatical, pursue some kind of project. Maybe it's a traveling project like Chris and Christy are doing where they've loaded up their van and they're traveling the country.

Maybe it's a research project. Maybe you just want to work on your French and so you move to the south of France and spend a year there speaking French every day. That's up to you. But use it as an opportunity. If you will use that time of layoff and take a few months to think, work on something personal, take a vacation, then you'll be able to go into your next job more refreshed and rejuvenated.

Here's a warning to you. Make sure that you keep your career going. The best way to keep your career going is keep your connections strong. Make sure that while you're in that time of layoff that you're keeping your connections to your career and you're keeping your network alive. It's also important that you have a good story to tell.

So Chris and Christy, depending on what happens in the next year, they may wind up publishing their book and that is the launch of something new that they're excited about. Or they may return to their old careers. But the neat thing about it is they'll have a story to tell.

So while they're in that interview, whenever they finish their trip, they will be asked about what have you done in the last year and they'll have a story to tell. They'll probably have a book to show. They'll have a media platform to show. And that will separate them and set them apart and distinguish them from many of their competitors who are competing for any jobs or businesses that they're seeking to build.

So I encourage you, view a layoff as an opportunity. Number two, be flexible in your thinking. You'll notice that Chris and Christy are pursuing a very minimal approach to traveling. That can have a lot of advantages. One of the great advantages is the pure fun of traveling. It's a lot easier to travel with a small, inexpensive rig that you've built yourself.

You can go more places and do more things, but it's also much more financially feasible. So if you have a goal of doing something like traveling, look for what's the minimum viable equipment. What's the minimum that you're willing to accept and go with that. Don't think that you need $300,000 for a 40-foot diesel pusher motor coach.

Look to do it simpler and easier. And finally, pursue a project that you're interested in and make sure that you make time to cultivate a lifestyle where you are able to pursue those interests. One of the neat things that Chris and Christy mentioned is even while they were in the busy Manhattan lifestyle or while they were in the busy Washington DC lifestyle, Chris was a veteran political reporter.

Even while they were in that, they were very intentional about the way that they lived. You don't have to live in a van down by the river to have some quiet time, but you do have to turn your phone off and leave it at the front door. It might be easier to have a little more quiet time living in a van down by the river, but it might not because there's a whole lot of work associated with that.

So wherever you are and whatever you're doing, take time to enjoy the beauty around you. Take time to enjoy the beauty of relationship. Take time to be present and think about the life choices that you make. There are many people who are pursuing all kinds of what are called alternative lifestyles, but you know what?

There are a lot of commonalities between those. Perhaps Chris and Christy published their book. Perhaps those commonalities will be clearly identified, but I have some ideas, which is why I started talking to them about the project. I have some ideas. Maybe I'll share them with you in a future podcast.

But almost no matter where you go, no matter what point of the political spectrum you look at, no matter what point of the ideological spectrum, there are some really common variables that if you start analyzing the problems of modern life, you frequently arrive at some simple, common solutions. So consider those things for yourself.

Hope you enjoyed the interview. Thank you for listening. Thank you for listening. You've honored me with your time and attention, and I'm grateful for that. And I hope that I've effectively served you today with some ideas and strategies and tactics and techniques and tools that will help move you towards your goals.

Before you go, three simple requests. One, if there's an idea that's been helpful to you in today's show, make a plan to take action on it. Listening does lead to learning, but learning in and of itself doesn't automatically lead to a life change. It's action that leads to a life change.

So take action. Two, take something that was helpful to you in today's show and share it with somebody that you care about. I'm depending on you to be a co-laborer with me in helping me to propagate the message that I'm seeking to share. That helps the person that you are engaging with.

And it also helps you because teaching others is one of the most effective ways for you to learn and for you to cement your learning. Three, if there's an idea that's been specifically helpful to you, and if you're gaining financial benefit from Radical Personal Finance, I'd be grateful if you'd consider paying me for this work voluntarily.

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But if you're gaining financial benefit from this show, and if it's achieving financial results in your life, I'd be grateful for your financial support at RadicalPersonalFinance.com/patron. Thank you. different.