(audience applauding) This session, however, is going to be one I've been looking forward to. We're gonna be talking about financial independence. Our interviewee is gonna be Brad Barrett. Barrett, he's the host of the Top 50 Business Podcast, Choose FI. He's passionate about financial independence and mostly helping people take action to make their lives richer in every way.

Wealth, health, connections, and ultimately, happiness. He achieved financial independence at 35, which is pretty impressive to those of us who didn't come out of residency until about that age, and lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and two daughters, so welcome. Interviewing him is Sean Mullaney. He's an advice-only financial planner and the president of Mullaney Financial and Tax.

He writes the Plutus award-winning blog, FI Tax Guy, on the intersection of tax and financial independence. He also has a personal finance YouTube channel and published a book that apparently 21 million people in this country need, Solo 401(k), The Solopreneur's Retirement Account, a book about his favorite retirement account in 2022.

So, Sean and Brad, take it away. (audience applauding) - Thank you very much, Jim. Before we get started, I do want to address the elephant in the room. Oh. - And I'll be collecting questions during the session. - Yeah, yeah, so your questions go to Jim. I do want to address the elephant in the room.

A lot of people believe financial independence is all about deprivation. Well, I think we can safely say after two nights at the luxurious, the opulent Bethesda North Marriott, that is most certainly not true. So, well, Brad, thanks so much for being here today with us. - Yeah, thank you for having me.

- Looking forward to this conversation. Let's kick it off with what has the pursuit of financial independence meant to you? - Yeah, that's a good one, Sean. So, the pursuit of financial independence has essentially changed everything in my life. It took me from, I was a corporate tax accountant doing corporate state tax returns, which, as you can imagine, is as mind-numbing and Groundhog Day as that sounds.

And now I'm, I think it's not hyperbole to say, I am a different human being. I get to spend time seeing my daughters grow up. I, at this point, now they're 15 and almost 12, and I left my corporate career eight and a half years ago. So, since they were little girls, I've been home.

And I've been there every single day when they get off the bus. And as Sean said, I think the caricature of FI is that it's about deprivation. And I reject that so wholly you can't even imagine. Because to me, it's about reorienting to what actually matters in life. And having the financial wherewithal to not be stressed constantly, right?

So, obviously, speaking to the choir here at Bogleheads, but nevertheless, most people are financially stressed all the time. And that is an ever-present, and they can't think about anything else. But when you focus on saving money, obviously investing wisely, but saving money specifically, and you have some net worth, you have some space to take a step back and say, what do I actually want to do in life?

What do I want my life to look like? And my wife and I, actually, it's interesting. Sean and my wife went to high school together. And we grew up about four minutes apart on Long Island and reconnected about, what, a handful of years ago? Five, eight years ago, give or take.

And my wife and I lived in this high-cost-of-living area. And we got married at 26 years old and basically decided at the point, okay, look, we're both CPAs. We have done everything conventionally well. We've succeeded college and getting great jobs at the best accounting firms. But it all seemed like a hamster wheel.

It all seemed like this never-ending, the carrot when you're at an accounting firm or an investment bank, et cetera, or a law firm is, oh, I can make partners someday, right? But I looked around, and I looked at the partners, and I saw them working until 2 a.m., just like I was in tax season.

I mean, literally, this is the old days, right? But literally stapling tax returns with me at 1.45 in the morning because April 15th or October 15th, the deadline's coming up, right? And that just, that wasn't a life that I aspired to. It didn't make any sense. And at 22, I looked around and said, okay, there has to be something better.

There has to be some purpose here other than just I'm going to do this for the next 40 years. I just simply didn't want to. And luckily, my wife is of similar mind, and we just saved money. And at that point, we didn't have an investing philosophy. We hadn't come across J.L.

Collins, Simple Path to Wealth, or Bogleheads, or Vanguard. But when we focused on our savings rate, it enabled us to really stockpile money and give us choices. And when we got married, like I was saying a minute ago, we decided, okay, look, we can make a life here on Long Island, but we don't want to.

It's always gonna be giving something up. There was no way that one of us could stay home with these future fictional kids, as I like to call it. At that point, we didn't have kids, but we knew someday we would want to. And it's incredible now to look 15 years, 18 years after the fact, and say, wow, all those plans we set out as, I mean, kids, 25, it's worked out better than I could have possibly imagined.

So, yeah, it's interesting. Sean, it's been a wild journey. - Yeah, and Brad, I really like some of that reframe there, because essentially, you and your wife, Laura, met one of the biggest goals of financial independence well before you ever retired from your day job, right? You were able to have your wife stay home with your children, and you weren't financially independent at that point.

You probably weren't even all that close. Maybe, I don't know your numbers, but. - No, you're right, you're right. - So I think that's just a great reframe of the whole, people think it's tech bros, and we're gonna get to retire at 40. Well, no, you just saw it with the Barretts, that it was, hey, step one, goal one, a huge goal, is mom gets to stay home with the two daughters.

I think that's fantastic, Brad. - Yeah, and you hit on something, which is, there's, many of you have heard of FIRE, right? So Financial Independence Retire Early. And I feel like the RE is such a distraction. It becomes this, it sucks up all the oxygen in the room, essentially.

People only focus on, oh, what are you gonna do? Sit around, do nothing, just be unproductive, and just waste away, in essence. And it becomes, oh, these 30-year-old kids, they're just doing nothing. And I just, again, that's something I reject so significantly. I don't know anybody, well, A, as you notice, this is about financial independence.

There's no retire early. My podcast is choose F-I, not choose FIRE, because, again, it's a distraction. The RE is irrelevant. I don't know, I know there are a lot of my friends here in the audience who also create content in the financial independence world, and I can't think of one single person I've ever met in the FI world that just sits around and does nothing.

Because that's not what we aspire to. We aspire to make a difference in the world. We aspire to add value to our community. Whatever you define community as, could be as micro as your neighborhood to your religious organization, to the local nonprofit, to your university, to whatever it may be.

And when you have that time and space to focus on these things, you actually can for the first time in your life. So it does feel a little bit odd for many of us to step off the career path, because I think so many of us have defined success as the career path, but if you can just reframe it and not think that you're being unproductive or people are gonna look at you differently or negatively, and just say, there is a big wide world out there, and if I'm really, really fortunate, I get nine decades on this planet, right?

Think about that, really fortunate. You get nine healthy decades. To spend any of that additionally working for money in a job that you don't absolutely love, that you're not cartwheeling down the road to go to, I think that's the height of folly. It doesn't make any sense to me.

- Brad, what are your thoughts on the difference between financial independence and conventional personal finance? - Oh, yeah, that's a good one, Sean. So I would certainly not define Bogleheads as traditional personal finance. I think to me, the biggest thing, and we had thought about calling this talk the superpower of financial independence.

I think the traditional personal finance world, it's almost like fear-mongering to a large degree. I know you hear the Susie Ormans of the world say, oh, you can never retire, or you're gonna need $12 million because healthcare. Okay, well, healthcare is expensive. Nobody's gonna deny that. But do you need, is $12 million completely made up?

Yeah, of course it is. Can most people aspire to 10, 12, $15 million? No, they can't. So what do they do? What do humans do when we're met with something that is just so far out of reach that we can't even contemplate it? We throw our hands up and we go on YOLOing our lives, right?

And I think what Phi does is, and the biggest superpower, is it reorients around what you can control. And I think this is really the biggest distinction is Phi looks at, and it's funny because this is gonna be the least technical talk of this entire weekend, obviously, by a mile, but Phi looks at what does my life cost?

Okay, it's not just some magical number for your financial independence or your retirement number. It's not based on what a retirement calculator says because, I mean, frankly, those are fundamentally flawed because they start with your current income, which is wholly irrelevant to what you actually need in retirement or financial independence or whatever you wanna call it.

We look at what does my life cost? And that's actually what I need to cover to live each year, right? Just very simply. Again, this is a rethink, but it's pretty evident once we think about it. And then, again, the technical, we can have large, in-depth conversations, but just very simply, even just saying the 4% rule.

Again, we'll put to the side the analysis and just say, all right, my life costs $80,000 a year multiplied by 25, I need $2 million. That's my Phi number, mine. It's not what Susie Orman tells me. It's my Phi number because my life costs $80,000 a year. And now, of course, that's gonna change and seasons of life, you can model that clearly.

But I think what's so beautiful about the message of Phi is there is some degree of certainty and you control the starting point. And like Sean said, there is a caricature of Phi being about deprivation. And I think that's because, frankly, many of the early adherents of the Phi world were people who, Jacob from early retirement extreme who spends, whatever it is, $8,000 a year on his life.

I don't aspire to that. I can't imagine any of you do either. I mean, that's not a life I want to live, but if Jacob wants to live that, then wonderful. That's great. If your life costs $30,000 a year, all right, well, you need, what, $750,000 to reach Phi.

And that's your life and you control it. And so again, I think just that fundamental starting point is really the biggest difference, Sean. - Brad, what do you think are the superpowers of financial independence? - Yeah, well, I mean, I guess that is honestly, that's one of them is really that starting point.

Yeah, superpowers. So I jotted down some things here. So right, it certainly gives you certainty. I think your savings rate being critical. So I don't know if anybody's ever heard of Mr. Money Mustache, which is kind of a funny name, but he's the biggest name in the financial independence world.

And he has an article that I would suggest every single person read. It's called "The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement." And I think this is one of those aha moments. So yeah, everybody that's, take a second, write this down. "Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement." Because when you see it, it's one of those moments you can't unsee.

It's similar to when you learn about Vanguard and low-cost index fund investing. You can't unsee it. When you see that, hey, if I had my money in a 1% expense ratio fund with a 1% advisory AUM, I'm gonna lose whatever it is, 30 to 50% of my net worth over a 40-year period.

You can't unsee that. It's the same with this in terms of, hey, what is your savings rate? And Sean, this frankly goes back to your question, what's the biggest difference between traditional personal finance and FI is traditional personal finance says, oh, you're succeeding if you save 5 or 10% of your income.

And yeah, I mean, to some degree, you're certainly better than living paycheck to paycheck. We can all agree on that. Or going in the red every month. Obviously, saving 5 or 10% is better. But when you look at that article, and I don't have it committed to memory, unfortunately, but it's something absurd like 45 or 50-year working lifetime you would reach financial independence.

If you save 10%, it would take you about, is that roughly somewhere in the vicinity of 40 years? - Something like that, I'm not entirely sure. - Again, don't quote us, but it's somewhere right around there. It might even be more, frankly. But if you save 50% of your income, which to most people sounds outlandish, but if you happen, like I think about my daughters, before they've made any mistakes, right?

Before they bought fancy cars and a big house and went to college and got $200,000 of debt, if I can reorient them around saving 50% of their income, I would argue you essentially cannot possibly screw up your financial life if you save 50% of your income. You can, I mean, I've done incredibly stupid things.

I invested in some real estate speculation when I was in 2007, 2008, that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars, and because I oriented around a significant savings rate, it's but a blip. I mean, sure, would I love to have compounded? It's probably $700,000. Would I love to have that money?

Obviously, I would. But I don't think about it ever again because it was but a blip. And so you look at that article, and I think he has it as if you save 50% of your income, you reach fly in 17 years in his article. I think a lot of people have it a little less than that, actually, 14 years.

So somewhere, again, we're not gonna quibble over exact details, but somewhere in the 14 to 17 year period, that sounds like a much better working career than 40, 50, 60 years. So again, orienting around savings rate, I think, is just absolutely critical. - All right, let's get away from the technical stuff and back towards the lifestyle stuff.

Are there major life changes that are necessary in order to pursue financial independence? - Necessary, no. But every single person, and I almost cringed as the words were coming out of my mouth talking about my daughters and saying, "Oh, before they bought fancy cars "or big houses." And frankly, if you saw my house, it's a nice big house in the best part of the Richmond metro area.

This is not about deprivation. And if you wanna drive your BMW, great, do it. That's wonderful. Make choices based on value, okay? And what you value and not what your neighbor wants you, or the keeping up with the Joneses nonsense, right? So I think, hold on, Sean, I lost the plot on your actual question.

- So just the major lifestyle change, are there major life changes necessary? - Thank you, I'm sorry. So, right, and I've led this story with, I lived in a high cost of living area, and I moved to a lower cost of living area, which again, is something that I almost cringe about because I don't want anybody to think that that is a prerequisite, that you have to live in Richmond, VA, or Alabama, or wherever, fill in the blank.

Not the case at all. Again, it's orienting around a mindset of savings and savings rate, however that fits into your life. It might, very simply, there are two sides of an equation, right? So earning additional income, upskilling, negotiating. We have multiple episodes on salary negotiation, which has been a remarkable thing for our community.

I mean, I get emails constantly from people, hey, the woman's name is Financial Mechanic, she goes by. So I heard the episode with Financial Mechanic, and I negotiated a $15,000 raise with my next job. I get these all the time. So obviously, there's two sides of an equation, clearly.

But is your path to FI going to be accelerated by cutting out some of the frivolous waste, which we all have, in your budget? Yeah, I mean, it obviously is. I'm not gonna sit here and lie to you and say, if you're living the YOLO mentality, and you're living paycheck to paycheck, or going into the red every single month, that you can just continue doing that, and reach FI in 10 years.

It's not gonna happen, right? What is the critical part, and this is, I think, really the fundamental lesson from my podcast, which, I mean, I'm not one of those pat myself on the back people, but 600 episodes, 65 million downloads, a community of hundreds of thousands of people across the world.

The common bond is very simply taking action, okay? So you can get all the information you want from Bogleheads this weekend. But if you just sit there and just passively take it in, it's worth nothing. You might as well go home. You have to get up off the couch and take action to make your life better, very simply.

Hard stop, end of story. So I think that is the thing that I've been hardened by most of people pursuing FI and people in our community is they understand that every situation is personal. The old cliche, the personal finance is personal, right? It is, because every one situation looks different, and I don't give blanket advice to anybody.

The only advice is you have to take action to make your life better. And you have to determine what is valuable to you in your life. So for me, automobiles mean nothing. They're literally gets me from point A to point B. And driving old cars. I recently upgraded from a 2003 Honda Civic to a 2013 Honda Civic, so you can tell just how much I care about what people think of me driving around, but that decision to essentially have no car payments for the last 20 years, except for obviously two lump sums, I think when compounded, that's a, somewhere in the vicinity of $400,000 plus decision.

And obviously timeline, et cetera, we can go on into all this. I have podcasts about it, but nobody really cares. But it's a massive decision, right? And that's one thing. Do I feel like I'm depriving myself because I drive a 2013 Civic? No, gets me where I'm going. Again, if you value that, if you value BMW or something, okay, do it.

But understand, it's a finite pot of money, right? You can grow your income, but at the end of the day, the easiest first steps, I think, are cutting frivolous things. So yeah, I guess, Sean, that's what I would say. It is certainly not a prerequisite, but you have to take action.

- Absolutely. So Brad, what type of investing strategies do most people pursuing financial independence follow? - Yeah, so this is near and dear to everyone here. Certainly it's, most people in the FI world follow J.L. Collins and his book, "Simple Path to Wealth." VTSAX, obviously Total Stock Market Index Fund from Vanguard, has become, really thanks to J.L.

and his book and his message and the stock series on his website, that's almost become the default investment strategy. And of course, it doesn't start and stop there. But I think for a lot of people, low-cost index fund investing is where the vast majority of people in the FI world put their money.

And I know for me, it was, and I'm sure many of you out there have had this same aha moment with Vogelheads, is when you see it, again, it's one of those moments you can't unsee once you've seen it, right? You understand, all right, what is the likelihood that I'm going to beat the market?

Net of fees and taxes for trading over a 40, 50 year investing lifetime, what's the chance I'm gonna beat the market? Approximately zero, right? So why would I even try? If like literally the brain-dead version, it's the only place I can think of in life where putting less effort in is going to get you better results.

So again, I'm preaching to the choir here, obviously, I don't need to waste a lot of time on this, but yeah, the vast majority of people put the, I would say the vast majority of their net worth in low-cost Vanguard and the like index funds. There are many people who pursue real estate as an investing strategy, certainly.

There's a large overlap between the bigger pockets community, anybody who's a real estate investor certainly recognizes bigger pockets. And of course, there are always the religious arguments of dividend investing and real estate and people thinking that their specific type of investment is gonna outperform. I mean, I find it a little dubious at best, yet to be swayed.

So the vast majority of my net worth is certainly in low-cost index funds. So yeah, I mean, Sean, I think it's probably a pretty large, there's a large sample, but I would say the vast majority of people, it's index funds and real estate. - Yeah, it's certainly an area I think of overlap or alignment between the typical bogal head and the typical financial independence person.

You know, Brad, so you are one of the most prominent voices in the FI community. And one of the things I appreciate about your voice is you're very goal-oriented, right? What are we trying to get to? What are we trying to achieve here? But you're certainly not the only voice in the financial independence community, as it should be, right?

I've got a question for you about that though. Are tactics overemphasized within the financial independence community? - Ooh, so our tactics. So like precise tactics? - Yeah, I mean, things like, it could be backdoor Roth IRA, it could be 529. It could even be just maxing out your 401k, getting your employer match.

Do we spend, you know, HSAs, there are all sorts of tactics out there, even on the investing side, right? Are tactics too, are we focusing too much on tactics in the financial independence movement over sort of the bigger picture and the goals? - Yeah, yeah, that's a good one.

So for me, I focus, I don't wanna speak for the community at large, certainly, but for me, I focus so little on the tactics. So yeah, I mean, I guess I would say by extension, if there is significant focus on the minutiae, I think it's missing the forest for the trees.

I really do. So, because again, I think the biggest driving factor, and obviously, all of the events that I've been to today have been phenomenal, but you know, we're getting into the weeds. And I think if you're saving zero to 5% of your income and you're focusing on little tenths of a percent of return, I think you're missing the forest for the trees.

I think the better way to start is to really prioritize your savings rate, because the bigger shovel you have to throw and just put it in low-cost Vanguard funds, ETFs, wake up in 50 years, you know, what's the, is it, I don't know if it's Bogle or if it's, I think it was Bogle, wake up, you're gonna need a cardiologist on hand, right?

So to me, it's, all right, focus on savings rate, but then honestly, it's focus on your life. I think so many of us, and this is something, frankly, that is very personal for me now, is so many of us lose sight of ourselves, right? Like we lose sight of who we are as humans, what lights us up, what we wanna do with our finite time on this planet.

And again, this is very personal for me, and I'll tell you honestly, like this is something that's going on in my mind now. I have focused, and again, our goal before our kids were born was to spend so much time with our kids, and mission accomplished, I mean, it's incredible.

But I think just like anything in life, you can get out of balance. And I think what Sean's question ultimately is asking is, can we get out of balance with our personal finance? My question is, can we get out of balance with our lives? I think they're inextricably tied.

I think you need to take those couple of steps back and figure out what you want your life to look like. So I have these funny little examples of like, it almost sounds laughable, but I think I've watched fewer than 10 movies in the last 15 years. I think I used to be a huge English Premier League soccer fan, like back in the 1990s, like before it was big here, and like I probably watched fewer than 10 matches in the last 20 years.

And like, you know, again, this is very personal, and this is not necessarily what this event is about, but I think it's important, and I think it's important to be honest with ourselves. And of course, each of you are gonna have something different in your own minds and your own lives of, all right, focus on what's actually important.

Don't necessarily focus on the little tenths of a percent of, oh, if I over contribute to my 529, or if I contribute to my 529, I'm gonna get a state tax benefit, and what's the absolute maximum? Should I be in the Utah plan, or I live in Virginia? You can do all that stuff.

And I think it's fine at the margins, and I think there is a place for it. So I'm not saying it's not important, but I think you have to look at your life. I think you really do. And you have to say, what am I doing here? What am I doing on this planet for the nine decades that I'm afforded if I'm really lucky?

And don't focus on the tactics. Don't focus on the minutia. Focus on your relationships. Focus on the real things that matter. So yeah, Sean, I mean, that's what I got. - Great. So those of you in the audience, you may listen to the Choose a Five podcast. You may think of it as sort of a one-way street, right?

Brad talks into a microphone, maybe he has a guest on, but it truly is a two-way street, right? Especially at the size and scale of Choose a Five, you should see how active their Facebook group is. Brad has a very successful newsletter that he sends out every Tuesday. He gets tons of responses to that.

So you really have sort of a view as to the community and the listener reaction. And I'm gonna ask you something about the Five movement, the Five community, and we're gonna talk about this a little later today, just in the Vogelheads context. You know, I worry about other sources, such as say TikTok, and what they're putting out about personal finance.

As much success as you've had, and as the Fire movement, Five movement, whatever you wanna call it, has had, are we missing 20 and 30 somethings? Are we missing a cohort out there that might be getting their financial information and education from other sources that perhaps are looking to sell more financial products?

You know, in places like TikTok, I think we're probably somewhat familiar with things like IULs and all that. There's a lot of that content on TikTok. Or maybe, Brad, hopefully you're getting a lot of 20 and 30 something interaction. What are your thoughts on that? - Yeah, it's a good question.

It's hard to say. I think there's always the allure of get rich quick, right? I think there's always the allure of there's some secret behind the curtain. And I mean, I guess at this point, I have a fairly decent net worth. I know a lot of other wealthy people.

I've yet to find the secret behind the curtain that's actually real. Or hey, I'm let into this room now all of a sudden. So, you know, for me, I orient my life around simplicity, certainly. So, which again, is preaching to the choir here, and bogal heads investing. But yeah, I mean, I think unfortunately, Sean, and we saw this with GameStop, and we saw the Robinhood.

I think there is a mentality of YOLO, some intersection of YOLO, get rich quick, and stick it to the man, right? And not understanding that investing in stocks is not gambling, right? I think like, if we can proselytize for one thing here as bogal heads community, it would be everyone, you hear it, you hear the phrases, right?

I'm gonna gamble, gamble in the stock market. Like, people think of it as risky. Like, I'm rolling the dice. Like, I've actually heard people use this phrase. Like, no, you're buying a tiny little ownership percentage of, in the case of VTSCX, of three to whatever it is, 4,000 American companies and 100 plus million workers, and their ingenuity and hard work.

That's a totally different thing. It's not get rich quick. It's you are buying a tiny little ownership piece of all of those companies, and getting all of these amazing American workers and workers across the world as essentially your employees, right? So, yeah, I mean, Sean, I think, ultimately, everyone is susceptible to the get rich quick mentality.

So, I think it's incumbent on people like us to, again, not stand up, and even though I just used proselytize, and shout from the rooftops and try to, like, win people over. It's to look for people in our lives who might be open to a message of orienting around long-term thinking, around savings rate, around smart, low-cost investing.

And where do you find those people? How can you help them? Like, I have never found success in spouting. I'm not a very outgoing person in general. So, if you see me sometime later this weekend, come up and say hello, 'cause I'm probably gonna be standing in the corner.

So, I'm not running around telling people about FI, but when I hear people talk about, oh, I invested in my 401k, or even down to, oh, I'm clipping coupons, like, people who are oriented around, again, somehow saving money, somehow thinking about money. Because, I mean, I think all of us know the vast majority of people are just kind of YOLOing it, and we never learned, we never learned personal finance.

It's not like, I'm not blaming anybody. It's all of our faults. But if you can find those people, I think we can make a difference in our own lives and families and communities in a very empowering and positive way, as opposed to demeaning people. Obviously, that never works. Or talking down to entire groups of 20-somethings, whatever, fill in the blank.

And find people to help in your lives. Find that younger niece or nephew or cousin who hasn't made mistakes yet. And, of course, this is not predicate. We have a lot of, we have Bill here from catching up to FI for late starters. FI is not about getting it right at 17.

But it's a hell of a lot easier, right? Like, let's be honest. But there are many people in the FI community, I would even hazard to say the majority of people in the FI community who are finding it in their 40s and 50s. So it's never too late. But again, not to sound like a broken record, but you have to take action.

You just, you have to, very simply. - By the way, so we're getting close to the time for the audience question. So if you have one, please write it down. Dr. Jim's in the back. Brad, I'm gonna challenge you here with a two-parter, right? I know this isn't really fair, but I'm gonna do it anyway.

So are there contradictions in the financial independence movement and do they matter? And I'll give you an example, right? Maybe someone out there is in the FIRE movement, FI movement, and they're like, you know, I'm gonna retire early at say age 50. Well, how are you gonna support yourself?

I'm gonna leave corporate America, right? Done, right? No more nine to five job, no more corporate America. All right, well, how are you gonna support yourself in your early retirement? Invest in corporate America, right? So Brad, are there contradictions in the FIRE movement and do they matter? - Yeah, that's an interesting one, Sean.

I've never thought about that. So yeah, this will be on the fly thinking, but I don't, oh, he's dangerous. I don't think that's a contradiction, certainly, if that is a caricature. Yeah, I mean, contradictions, where my mind goes, and I don't know if this is necessarily a contradiction, but is like the, this is going back to the RE, the retire early.

And if you take that as kind of the bare bones of this, whether you believe that or not, but a lot of people think, okay, once you leave your corporate job, that you have to be done. You're retiring early, hanging up the boots, whatever, and riding off into the sunset, and that's it.

And you're gonna sit on a beach and sip umbrella drinks. And that's the only definition of successful FIRE, which you can tell, dripping with sarcasm, because I think that's preposterous. I think what most of us actually aspire to is making a difference, however we define that. So again, Sean, I'm not sure if this is necessarily a contradiction, but I think what should be apparent to all of us is after you leave your traditional job, or frankly, renegotiate your current situation.

I think what FIRE does is it gives you power, and it reorients, and this doesn't mean lord it over people, or be a jerk at work because you can, because you have power. It doesn't mean that at all, obviously. But what it means is when you are not beholden to your job, like most people are, right?

Most people's lives will fall apart in somewhere between 30 and 90 days without their current income, because they live paycheck to paycheck. It's a house of cards. They might even make a nice income. But if you spend it all, and you have no net worth, you are poor. You know, that sounds a little extreme, but it is the truth.

If you have no net worth, you're living paycheck to paycheck. I don't care if you make 70 grand or 300. Same bottom line, same net worth, right? So I think, yeah, ultimately, it's like I was saying. You can reorient and not lord this over people, but what do I actually like as part of my job?

For people that, I'm sure there are many of you who would say, "I love my job." And I believe you to a degree, but I'm sure there are many aspects of your job that you don't love. I'm sure nobody wants to go to endless meetings and fill in TPS reports and whatever other nonsense, right?

Well, I wonder if there's a way to re, I don't know, reorient? I guess I'm overusing that word, but to change the entire way that your job looks and add more value, potentially the same value, with less time spent at the office, okay? So what does that look like when you reach financial independence and the power is in your court?

Could it look like, "Hey, I only want to come in "three days a week for four hours, "but I really love this aspect of my job, "and I think I do it in a way "that would be really hard to replace." Nobody's irreplaceable, obviously, but this would be really hard to replace, and there's no need to because I want to keep doing this.

Well, I think the powers that be at your office will be a little bit taken aback at first, but I suspect you have more power than you think. And that would be kind of like a parting message that I would leave to everyone here is, I think you have more power than you believe, and when you are at this point of financial independence, and even, frankly, far before it, the power just keeps subtly shifting towards you, and then you can actually devise a life that you want to live, and it's not just the same groundhog day nonsense over and over again.

So, John, I didn't exactly answer your question, but I think the contradiction is, it's ultimately like, it's not either/or, right? Like, you're going to be doing something, but you're gonna be doing it on your terms, and that might mean earning income. For most people, it will be in some way, but it doesn't have to be the same amount of income.

It can be a tiny little fraction. It can be anything. The ball is in your court, and I think that is just so powerful. - All right, we've got some audience questions. We don't have that much time, but we're gonna try to get through some of them. This one's very personal to you, Brad.

How did you feel about your portfolio during March 2020, and did you rebalance or spend less after restrictions were lifted? - Yeah, this is a good one. I think all of us would like to believe, like Dr. Jim over here, that we have an investor policy statement, and we have steeled ourselves for whatever calamity is gonna befall us or the world, and I think what's really important to remember is we're all human, right?

And I think, for me, 90% of personal finance is up here in this little primitive brain, and 10% of it is numbers and getting the minutiae and all the tactics right. So yeah, I mean, I'm not gonna lie. In March of 2020, when the world, when who the heck knew what was gonna happen, I mean, I freaked out like everybody else did, and luckily, because I have some degree of knowledge and I understand that this is, in this case, a 60-year investing horizon, I didn't sell everything and run for the hills and buy gold and MREs and whatever other nonsense, right?

But the thought crossed my mind, you know? I'm sure it did most of us. But obviously, that's what having an investor policy statement, where that helps, or even if you don't have it written down, just understanding that this stuff happens, right? It's not gonna be COVID next time. It's gonna be something.

Something is coming, right? And we've all seen the numbers, and I'm not gonna get the paraphrasing right, but if you miss the 12 best days in the market over a 20-year period, you lose X% of the return, right? You cannot let your emotions rule you. But man, it's hard, right?

It's hard. I think a lot of us freaked out. So did I sell a little bit? I mean, this might be the first time I've publicly said, yeah, I did. It wasn't a lot, thankfully. It was just, it was emotional and it was rash and it was stupid, frankly, and it obviously cost myself, but it was, luckily, I didn't make anything terrible.

This wasn't a significant thing. So my, and I guess to the second part of the question, I am still in an unusual place where my, I own a number of websites. I travel miles 101 where I help people travel the world with credit card points, and I choose a FI.

So I'm earning enough money to cover my life expenses. So in all candor, there has never been a month where I've had to draw down on my assets. So I am not the prototypical, but again, there is no prototypical FI person 'cause I think many of us continue to earn some amount of money after we've reached FI.

But yeah, have I reached a point where I'm earning zero dollars and drawing down? No, so I mean, frankly, my tactics and strategy didn't have to change, which I think is perfect world scenario anyway, that hey, I'm not changing anything amidst calamity or coming out of a calamity. I think we should all, again, the hardest part is up here.

Let's all be honest with ourselves, right? So anything you can do, it's like running the reps on things. How can you get these reps in? And do we want calamities to befall us to get these reps in? No, but okay, I've been through 2008, and again, I screwed up royally on real estate there, but at least I've learned, and now I look at real estate as I own a couple single-family rentals down in Georgia, and I own them mortgage-free, and nothing can go wrong.

So that was a lesson that I took from it, and I will never make that speculation mistake ever again. I learned that I am as susceptible to freaking out as anybody amidst a market downturn, but now I understand the emotion. I understand what's gonna happen the next time in my own head, and hopefully, I'm the wiser for it.

- Here's a little one, Brad, that is near and dear to your own heart. Kids are expensive. What advice do you have for parents of young children seeking to reach financial independence? - Yeah, I mean, I think kids can be expensive. I don't think kids necessarily are by definition expensive, though I guess if we look at opportunity cost, which I think, so I would argue that my kids have not been terribly expensive, like out of pocket, but I think that would be a silly analysis because the opportunity cost is my wife has not been working now, essentially, for 15 years.

So I would have to be a fool to stand up here and say, "Kids are not expensive," right? So opportunity cost has to function, has to matter in any equation. I think pursuing FI with kids is just like pursuing FI, to a large degree, without kids, in the sense that it's about choices, right?

So, and every single person is different. Now, my kids are both excellent, like I guess they were, national-level swimmers as younger girls, and we had them in a very expensive year-round swim program, and that was a choice we made, and that was very, very expensive, but we made that choice from a place of value, and I think that's the important part is, so I'll take this 30,000-foot view, is make any spending decision, whether kids or just in your own life, from a place of value and not from a place of impressing people or, right, impressing your neighbors or whatever it may be, and frankly, so this swim program, I said it was in the past tense, is they fell out of love with it.

It's anybody, I don't know if anybody has swimmers in here, but that is a brutal sport. I mean, they're swimming 20,000 yards a week, and it's just ludicrous, and we could've forced them, right? If we were parents who cared about, "Oh, my kid got a scholarship," or, "My kid is swimming Division I," like, they could've easily done that, but they fell out of love with it, and that was the day they stopped swimming because it wasn't about us, right?

So I think a lot of parents, and this goes, let's all be honest with ourselves, it goes with the car decal that you put up on the back of your car, right? Like, again, my daughter, who's the older one who's an excellent swimmer, that very easily could've said, "MIT," but she stepped off that hamster wheel, she stepped off the swimming, and it was made with eyes wide open.

And, you know, I'm kinda going off the rails here, but I think the more important point is, yes, kids can be expensive, but I think, just like anything, kids don't want fancy stuff. They want your time, and they want your attention, and they want you to put the stupid phone down and just spend time with them, right?

So like, yeah, kids can be expensive as you make them, or they can be as inexpensive as your family wants it to be, right? Like, there's so many free, amazing, I live in Richmond, VA, which is not, like, the center of the universe, by any means, but we could do something free, outdoors, or some festival, every weekend of the year, if we decided, and that costs nothing.

I know we had, and I know we're running out of time here, but Liz from Frugal Woods, on way back in, I think it was, like, episode 12 of "Choose a Buy" in early 2017, and she was saying that the interesting thing of living in a city is everybody thinks it's so expensive.

She's like, "That's laughable." Yeah, it's expensive to actually, the rent, but everything else is free. They lived in Boston, and there are 30 universities there with events every single weekend, so I think the larger point that I would give to everybody here is think a little bit differently, okay?

We're all thinking a little bit differently being here at Bogleheads. We're thinking a little bit differently being in the Phi community. Think a little bit differently. You don't have to be cookie cutter. You can actually do what you want to do based around your values, so that's my challenge.

Think a little bit differently, and get up off the couch, and take action. - Brad, well, first of all, thank you for being here today, and can we get a round of applause for Brad Barrett? (audience applauding) (applause)