ChooseFI

One of ChooseFI's most popular guests is back! Dominick Quartuccio returns to talk about after the shock of 2020, how to bounce back and what it looks like to design your life for next year. Brad's relationship with Dominick goes back to when they were in college together. After reconnecting several years ago, Dominick has become a source of inspiration and a mentor to Brad. In previous episodes, conversations with Dominick have centered around the idea of drift. It's the state of existence where we think we're making intentional decisions with our lives, but in reality, it is habits, patterns, unconscious beliefs, expectations, societal pressures, etc. that are really driving decisions. It's only when an outside force, normally a quite dramatic one, forces itself upon us that we wake up from that state of drift. For the first time in human history, the entire world is going through an experience together. It's caused everyone some sort of pain, whether it was losing a loved one, a financial loss, or anxiety. Most of us have gone through periods of suffering in the past that when we look back on them, those were the moments that made us into the person we are today, and given the choice, we wouldn't change them today. Instead of wishing to speed up 2020 and get it over with, Dominick encourages us to pause and look at the past year to see where you've been and highlight the standout moments. The purpose of this exercise is so that we can envision a 2021 that has the potential to be the most meaningful, fulfilling, and prosperous year of our lives. In his role as a leaser, Dominick has seen behind the curtain of people's personal lives and noticed a distinct difference between those who have an inner foundation of work leading up to the pandemic and those who have never done the work. Fortifying your inner foundation allows you to be strong and thrive if there are tougher times in the year ahead. There are two parts to the exercise of designing the next year of your life: looking back at the year you just had and looking forward to creating the year that you want. Dominick places inner work underneath the umbrella of personal development. Where personal development could be an external skill to better yourself, such as reading a book to learn a new skill that can be applied in the real world, inner work is oriented inward, like examining what lights you up. When the conditions of the outside world change, when you've done the inner work, you don't feel shaken and you are standing on something stable. We've experienced more emotional turmoil in the last year than any other, making it worthy of introspection. In the last year, what were some of the standout moments, both the highs and the lows, beginnings and endings, new and lost relationships or jobs, and the trials and tribulations? Start with going back and looking at your calendar. Looking at it will trigger memories of travel or meetings. Next, go through the photos you've taken. There may be some real standout moments you've forgotten recorded on your phone. Finally, review your journal or scroll through any notes you've taken to see what you were thinking, seeing, and what your attitude was. After looking back, begin looking for themes. Was it bringing your life back into balance, loss, finding love? This year Jonathan and his wife got on the same page of their work-life relationship and she's embraced the idea of building her talent stack which has helped them have a common direction in their marriage. COVID has allowed Jonathan to watch his kids as they grow and evolve into different people every week. He has also lost 20-30 pounds, winning a bet he made with himself on Healthy Wage. He embraced the idea of community and is doing weekly calls with his father and JD Roth. He watched the income for his business take a nosedive and then recover from working to build new lines of revenue. He also built two new businesses using skills acquired in the last four years. He says it was his best year ever. Dominick posed the question to Jonathan about how he would've handled the same downturn to his business if it had occurred three years ago. Jonathan said he's a completely different person now and doesn't know how he would have interacted with who he was three years ago. This year has proven he has grit, determination, and gets stronger during times of trouble. For Brad, he and his family did CrossFit together five days a week for months. His theme is togetherness and it wasn't limited to his immediate family. The mastermind group he belongs to with Dominick was part of it. He's also been able to see his parents more this year and had the time to spend talking with his daughter who was experiencing anxiety and trying to work her way through it. Brad thinks what was important about this year was being able to see the hard work of parenting come to fruition. Dominick mentions that during a normal year, these moments speed by. The pandemic has forced us to slow

ChooseFI Facebook Community Manager recently posted a meme that hit home with Brad. It said, "Plot twist: 2020 has actually been the best year of your life. You faced challenge after challenge, you've adapted, and you've overcome. 2020 has forced you to grow exponentially. Don't take that for granted." 2020 had been Jonathan's best year ever. Instead of giving in to fear, doubt, and insecurity, he decided to lean in. By being more intentional with the things that were important to him, like his health, Jonathan has lost 20 to 30 pounds and is in the best shape of his life. Jonathan also sought to build his personal talent stack and built two new businesses. He is feeling more agency and is more fulfilled than at any other point in his life. Previously, Jonathan's beliefs about himself were all based on external validation. But as he began to get more freedom and autonomy in his life, he began to question those beliefs and reclaim his identity statement. Learning that things such as student loan debt is good debt and you'll have to work until retirement age, just aren't true allowed him the space to challenge the status quo in other areas of his life. Initially, he even questioned whether the success of ChooseFI was the result of a random lightning strike of luck. However, he's taken his interest-led learning and skills he's learned, applied them to two new business models, and achieved success with them. The interest-led learning Brad and Jonathan frequently discuss on the show helped Jonathan lean in March, and it also lead Brad's eight-year-old daughter, Molly, to learn how to cook a perfect pan-seared chicken breast just like Gordon Ramsay. The things you believe about yourself become part of your identity statement. But you can turn the limiting beliefs around and say that you're the type of person who can learn anything. It may be just a Google or YouTube search away. You can reframe your identity by asking yourself what you want it to be. Though she isn't running now at nine months pregnant, part of MK's identity is that she is a runner. However, in high school, she was the slowest person on the team. She thought she couldn't do what the other's on the team were doing, but her coach didn't have the word "can't" in his vocabulary. His mindset is something she has carried through to other areas of her life. MK challenges you to take the word "can't" out of your vocabulary too because once you aren't allowed to use it, your mindset will shift and you can begin to redefine who you are. A case in point for the power of working to get 1% better was in the news last weekend when Chris Nikic became the first person with Down Syndrome to complete a grueling Ironman triathlon. Emblazoned across his shirt was his training mantra, "1% Better". You can make a choice every day to live your life a little bit better and when your finances are in orders, everything else gets a little bit easier. You make the choice not to deprive yourself by saving money, to empower yourself, and put yourself in a position where you have the freedom to think about all the other things that truly matter, like health, relationships, and spending time how you see fit. While it's about making a choice, if you don't get up off the couch and take action, nothing is going to get better. If you have a question you'd like to have answered on the show, submit them by going to ChooseFI.com/voicemail. Or reply to Brad's weekly email, The FI Weekly. Get on the list by going to ChooseFI.com/start. The first mailbag question this week comes from Sara who wants to know how to master financial independence when you don't have a 401K. Sara has been working through the podcasts and read, ChooseFI: Your Blueprint for Financial Independence, but her husband is a bartender and doesn't have a 401K. W-2 employees without access to a 401K could consider being an advocate and talking with their employer about getting a 401K like Waffles on Wednesday talked about when they were on the show. Just giving employees access to a 401K does not have to be cost-prohibitive and can be a win for both owners and employees of small businesses. It's important to remember there are no rules to FI. Just because others are talking about maxing out their 401K and then doing a Roth conversion ladder, doesn't mean that's what you have to do. Brad admits it wasn't until the last two years at his job before he maxed out his 401K contributions. The path to financial independence does not depend on a 401K. It's predicated on savings rate. The goal is to save that in the most-advantaged way possible. Between marginal tax brackets and child tax credits, it may be fie just putting money into a Roth IRA, which has a $6,000 limit this year. If you have your own side hustle, you have options for retirement accounts, like a SEP IRA or solo 401K. A SEP IRA is easy to set up through any major online brokerage firm and put in roughly 20% of your income. There are potentially even higher thresh

Optimize your finances during your 20s, no matter what your income is, and build significant wealth. But what are your options when working an entry-level job when you have a large amount of student loan debt? Amy's first job out of college was an entry-level position earning $30,000. By the age of 25 had a $100,000 net worth and has tripled her salary in the last few years by learning how to market herself. The average cost of a four-year college degree in 2019 is $122,000. Amy was fortunate that her parents paid for college and she graduated with degrees in Communications and International Relations without any student loan debt. She graduated without any job offers and her only source of income came from waitressing which wasn't enough to live in Boston on. After a couple of months, she contacted a temp agency and got a job earning $15 an hour. Nearing the end of college, she saw that recent graduates weren't getting the jobs they had hoped to get. She calls that time her "Year of Fear" because she didn't have much in savings and terrified of what was going to happen. For the rest of the year, she continued to work full time at her temp job and waitressing on the weekends. With the benefit of hindsight, she realizes she has an average amount of skills as anyone else coming out of college, which is inadequate for the realities of today. The ultimate goal of going to college is to graduate and get a well-paying job. But the focus is on grades and prerequisites, not how to find mentors, write a resume that resonates with people, or navigate the application process to get the jobs you actually want. The way the job application process works now is broken While there may not have been any skill Amy believes would have initially made landing a job easier, it would have helped to find people who agreed to meet and interview her in the first place. After submitting resume after resume to company websites and since times out of ten hearing nothing, Amy emphasizes flipping the script and having the companies and recruiters come to you. Amy was able to go from $30,000 to $93,000 a year by learning how to market herself on LinkedIn so that people found her. What makes you stand out and how can you improve your chances? The first step is to decide what it is that you want. If you are marketing to everybody, then you are marketing to nobody. Next, start looking at the job positions and titles that you want, study the job applications for those positions, the job requirements, descriptions, and language used. Using that verbiage in your resume or LinkedIn profile allows hiring managers to see that you are perfect for the role and HR departments who use algorithms to narrow down the prospects, which relies on keywords that your resume or profile will likely also have. It can be difficult to figure out what you want at the age of 20. Amy chose a degree in Communications because it could apply to almost anything she wanted. Though she says to figure out what it is you want, figuring out what you want for just the next couple of years is fine. You can always pivot, but you just need a direction for your resume. Employers don't generally look for someone well-rounded, instead, they are looking to fill a specific need. Show you can fill that need and you're more likely to be hired. The salary increase she received for her second job out of college was pushed by the recruiter Amy was working with who found her on LinkedIn. Amy continued to use the same tactics with her next move but added in extras that may not have been relevant, like her HTML skills. That one change opened the door with recruiters looking for marketers who also understood coding. Landing that job bumped her salary up to $86,000. Answering the question, "What do you do?", always results in a simple answer, like Marketing, not what you actually do or what skills you possess. When helping out a friend earlier this year with his resume, Amy noticed that the skills section of his resume didn't speak directly to his particular skill set for the jobs he wanted. You don't have to be world-class at anything, but with the right variety of skills, you can stand out because there are fewer people who have that intersection of skills. Earlier this year, Amy started her blog, We Want Guac, after looking at different finance blogs while trying to figure out what to do with her new and higher salary. Building the blog has continued to add to her talent stack. Amy says that in 2016 she was the ultimate cheapskate, attending events to take advantage of the free food, and ordering small items when eating out with friends. The salary increases enabled a shift in mindset from deprivation to one of abundance. Part of her mindset shift came out of creating a budget. Her budget didn't mean restricting herself from spending. Instead, the numbers showed her the limits could be more than she expected and it would be okay if she did spend more. It gave her permission to spend more on

Following US Election Day results, it's important to remember the alligators and kittens, a concept to approach overall mental wellbeing. The negative influences in life are alligators and all of the things that make life better are kittens. Focus on getting rid of the alligators. It's a human bias to focus on the negative. How do you focus time and attention on the things that make life better? For Brad, he cut watching the news out of his life which has helped him to achieve a better mental framework for life. The business model of the new is to keep you watching through the next commercial break. They cause anxiety. You can stay informed without being a part of that model. Control what you can control and you will be in a better financial position four years from now regardless of the election outcome. There is so much outside of our control right now and worrying about it isn't productive. Despite the number of people who are confident they know what will happen to the stock market as a result of the election, the fact is that we just don't know. Market uncertainty is one of the reasons to have a plan for your money regardless of what is going on and automate it. Not only is it difficult to try and time the market, but you need to get it right twice, both when you buy and when you sell. The FI community is about long-term thinking. It's not about quarterly earnings or even five-year trends, but performance over multiple decades and the decisions that will help get you to the wealthiest point over that time period. With that long-term thinking in mind and in a time of calm, it's a great time to write down your investor policy statement. Having a plan for your investments, written down in an investor policy statement helps you to avoid being reactionary or make rash decisions. In February, the Dow hit a high of 29,500. By March 20th, it had dropped 20-30% and many predicted it would go even lower. Defying the dire predictions, the Dow recovered 30-40% of its gains within a few months. The problem with making market predictions is that there are far too many variables for you to account for and again, you have to get it right twice. Even the professions are wrong 50% of the time. What chance do you have of making your investment decisions around emotion enough to stay solvent or long-term or outperform the market over the long-term? Essentially no chance. The highest likelihood of long-term financial success is to control the expenses on your investments. Low-cost index funds are going to be your best bet. Following your investor policy statement and injecting new money when you can benefits you with dollar-cost averaging. Time in the market is much more powerful than timing the market. ChooseFI listeners are creating space and making progress in their lives. Patty commuted to paying off debt within five years and just made her last payment, including more than $40,000 in credit card debt. Joe replied to Brad's email, The FI Weekly, Joe shared that he and his wife transferred his 403(b) from a high-fee broker to Vanguard and also started on their journey to earning travel rewards by opening a Chase Sapphire Preferred card. November 8th is the LAST CALL to apply for the Chase Sapphire Preferred card with its highest-ever bonus of 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points after spending $4,000 in the first three months. For more info, go to ChooseFI.com/CSP. Teachers are primarily the ones using 403(b)s, most of which are laden with really high fees and very few options. ChooseFI plans to have an episode in the coming months with Dan Otter discussing doing better with your 403(b). Crystal sent in a message saying that she had no idea about fees and was investing with Edward Jones. Her investments hadn't done much over the last five years and now she's educating herself, but the fees appear to be hidden. Since the market has done so well over that last five years, the reasons why Crystal hasn't made money are because she wasn't invested in a strategy that allowed her to keep up with the market or she was getting crushed by the fees. Brad says finding the expenses for his old company's 401k options was relatively easy. Included in the table of investment options, one of the columns listed expenses. Other titles may be expense ratio or expense percentage. The numbers may range from 1.50 to 0.03. Without a nicely organized table, you may need to look up the expense ratio by looking up the ticker symbol. A low-cost index fund investment strategy is simple and not complex enough to require help from a professional. In contrast, a complex investment plan is probably costing you a lot of money. With an actively-managed fund, a person, or team of people, are making decisions on what to buy and when to sell. Through the fees, you end up paying them for their time. And then the data shows that they aren't even keeping up with the market. The difference between expense ratios of 0.1% and 1.0% is tens of thousands to millions of do

Yanely grew up in a low-income household in Brooklyn and then attended Brown University. But by the time she graduated, she had accumulated a bunch of credit card debt that she was hiding from her family. She tried to figure out dealing with her debt on her own by reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos. After paying it off, she thought it was ridiculous she had never learned it in school and started her own YouTube channel to share her story. That eventually led to her landing the perfect job and a solid career path. Growing up, there wasn't a lot of money in Yanely's household, so there weren't many conversations about money either. When there was talk about money, it was always negative and caused tension. One thing that her father did teach her was to never have a loan or owe debt to a friend or family member and that she needed to always pay them back. Interestingly, that sense of obligation did not transfer over to institutional borrowing which she believes is a common mindset in neighborhoods like the one where she grew up. When Yanely was accepted to Brown University, she had no idea how expensive it was going to be. Although she received a full scholarship, she discovered she still need to purchase things such as textbooks, a laptop, and other supplies. Because her father taught her not to borrow money from anyone, she wanted to figure it out on her own and applied for her first credit card. She attributes her attempt to be resourceful using credit cards to a lack of financial literacy. She thought she was doing the right thing and on the right path at the time. Her payment history was good since always made the minimum payment and never missed a payment on her credit cards, but her credit utilization was high as she was always close to maxing out her card limits. With each credit card application, banks continued to give her credit cards with higher and higher credit card limits. Trying to keep up with the rich kid lifestyles of her classmates ended up getting her $15,000 in debt. Moving from a neighborhood filled with Caribbean immigrants to an elite university was a culture shock. Yanely felt like she didn't fit in because she didn't talk or act like her fellow students. Not understanding expressions and phrases others used made her feel dumb. Going from a top performing student in high school to feeling like being in the wrong pack may be part of the reason why it's physiologically difficult for low-income who attend prestigious universities. Yanely says the biggest thing a low-income student can do is expose themselves to the rigorous language and vocabulary that is going to be expected of you. Students are often not prepared for how much harder they will need to work, it ends up being a shock, and they go home. Approximately 2/3 of her credit card debt came from spending on just trying to keep up with her fellow students. Although there was no overt peer pressure, it was unspoken. Straight A's and scholarships are not enough. Students like Yanely need to have both academic and social grit to survive in an environment that is not in their comfort zone. Reading The Millionaire Nextdoor to help her figure out how to pay off the debt, she noticed the descriptions of poverty and generational poverty were describing the life she was living. She decided she was going to be the one to shift the trajectory of her family in terms of wealth. Yanely had a choice to make between continuing a pursuit to fit in and look good while racking up debt, or the alternate route of smashing her debt aggressively and begin to build wealth, breaking he cycle of poverty. The interviews of people who didn't come from wealth surprised her, opened her eyes, and completely shifted her mindset. She realized she was going to need to completely wipe her mental slate clean and start with new and fresh beliefs about money and how it works. Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko, authors of The Millionaire Nextdoor devised a formula for determining if you are as wealthy as you should be. That formula is: Your Age multiplied by Your Annual Income (from all sources except inheritance) divided by 10 = Your Expected Net Worth Growing up in a neighborhood where spending to reflect success and social status was prevalent, Yanely understands the pressure and had never imagined there was a different route. Her beliefs were shaken to the core listening to interviews of self-made millionaires answer questions and discuss the strategic money decisions they made with a clear goal in mind. It opened her mind and made Yanely want to explore more. Despite FI not even being in her purview a handful of years ago, Yanely just hit Coast FI after beginning to maximize everything she was doing with her investments and prioritizing tax-efficient investments before even paying her rent. Yanely paid herself first. After learning more about 403bs, she determined her priority should be a Roth IRA. She then invested as much as sh

What's in your talent stack? Inspired by content discovered over the last four years while producing ChooseFI, Jonathan has spent the last couple of months hard at work on the side on a new passion project. As said many times here on the show, financial independence isn't about doing less, like sitting on a beach sipping cocktails. It's about aligning your what you value with your life and having the freedom to pursue what you are passionate about. ChooseFI has given Jonathan the opportunity to look at and do better with his personal finances, but it's also helped him realize that he loves to work hard, but not necessarily for a paycheck. He'll work twice as hard when it aligns with his interests, passions, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. While Jonathan has not reached FI, he does have all the benefits of it. FI is not binary because the benefits of FI start accruing from Day one. Time is your precious non-retable resource. You can stick your head in the sand and gut things out until reaching FI, or look around and see what other options we can create for ourselves that bring more joy, autonomy, mastery, and purpose. When you find that your ladder is leaning up against the wrong wall, you don't need to stick it to that commitment and grind it out for another 20 years. You don't need to wait for anyone to give you permission. You can pivot. One of the better messages to come out of the FI movement is that no matter what has happened, huge student loans, disastrous real estate deals drug addiction, or divorce, you can always move forward and make your life better. A life optimization strategy begins with financial security and gives you space for mastery and exploring new things. You don't need to be in the top 1% of anything. Just being better than average at a bunch of different things will open up opportunities. What does a high value, high return on investment, talent stack look like? Students coming out of college are ill-prepared for the way the world really works. The world wants to know what have you done and what can you do for it. What if you were to focus on the skills the world wants and is willing to pay a high salary for? And then very economically earn certificates stating that you can do this work? You can retain and earn these skills in a year or less. There are very few jobs that actually require a college degree. Through certificate programs, you can get jobs earning between $60,000 and $160,000 a year. Jonathan says if he were starting over, knowing what he knows now, this is what he would do. Jonathan has started another podcast, the Talent Stacker podcast. It's not for those set on going to college. It's for people looking to see what other choices are out there or who are unhappy with the choices they previously made and are looking for something different and don't have another four years to earn a degree. The Talent Stacker podcast does not just regurgitate information learned on previous ChooseFI podcast episodes. It helps you recreate what these other people have done step-by-step. The framework of the Talent Stacker podcast is based on a handful of different categories. The first is a time for money or a service role where you trade an hour of work doing something for a set hourly rate. The second category is sales, where you help make it easier for a current audience or customer base to make a purchase. Category three is marketing or expanding the current customer base. The fourth category is team development or leadership or bringing a team together to focus on target goals. The fifth category is systems, process, and workflow, helping teams to work more efficiently. In reality, many of these categories have overlap. If you can do a little bit of several of these, you can become what is called a Rainmaker. Jonathan recognizes how each of these skills has been used and added to his talent stack through the ChooseFI podcast. Building a talent stack is not just limited to business owners. It's a mindset about learning new things and how they can help make you a better person. Brad used his skills as a travel rewards enthusiast, along with his business-building skills and CPA degree to build a travel rewards coaching service. MK found success in her corporate career through choices like learning basic HTML to build her talent stack, which helped her to climb the ranks, and then eventually launch her own business. Her pregnancy has caused her to look at streamlining things and becoming more efficient to keep her passive income stream growing. Your real education doesn't start until you get the job. College merely proves to an employer that you know how to learn. Jonathan worked with Bradley Rice from Episode 117 to create an actual career development program in Customer Relationship Management (CRM) that you can replicate in six months and make $60,000-80,000 a year, with a path to making $200,000 in 3-5 years. With four years of starting ChooseFI, Jonathan has become one of the top i

Your money story informs so much of your life even if you're not aware of it. For 30 years, Leisa Peterson has been researching and studying how trauma in early life contributes to the money challenges faced later in life. Growing up with a scarcity mindset, money became an escape that gave her motivation. Leisa decided in her mid-twenties that she was going to have money in her life and not have any stresses about it as her parents did. Earning money became an all-consuming response to the trauma she had experienced. There's a very broad spectrum of trauma from mild to quite serious and not everyone reacts to it in the same way. Some people like Leisa may end up wanting a lot of money, while others are lead to feeling like they have no control over money. An adverse childhood study from Kaiser was intended to understand how childhood trauma affected health. In Leisa's reading of the study, she found one of the findings included financial problems and realized this was something not a lot of people were talking about. These childhood experiences become very disruptive, brings an uncertainty to how life is viewed and crushed the sense of self. The concept of scarcity and uncertainty go together. This leads to struggling with either an extreme need to control or feeling out of control with money. Because kids are absorbing everything we say, it's important to change the language we use around money. When people become more familiar with their trauma backstory, they are better able to talk with their partner about their money challenges. Disconnects in communication can occur when each other's backstories are quite different. We can only know what we know from our own perspective. The job in relationships is not just to understand ourselves, but to see the other person and how they are approaching money differently because of their backstory. When people think of something as being scare in supply, they are going to buy more of it. Toilet paper is a relevant example of this for 2020. Someone coming from a home without enough money may have strange buying behaviors. Their idea of scarcity or uncertainty may be showing up in their daily behaviors with money. For spouses or partners who have different money stories, Leisa encourages them to just start somewhere. Think about how money was treated at home growing up and have a conversation about it. Questions to consider asking are: Did mom and dad talk about money? Did mom and dad fight about money? What is your first memory of money? When did you make your first money? How did that make you feel? Were you afraid? It can be difficult to have these conversations for the first time with another person. Journaling is a way to privately have them with yourself first. The first person you share these feelings with should be someone you trust and it may be someone other than your partner. Throughout her career, Leisa has found that people react to money very differently. The majority either hold it tightly or avoid control of it altogether, with a minority viewing it as a tool and are at peace with it. Having one strong fire in your life influences the way you think about money in life. The earlier the influence in life, the better. Parents sometimes joke or convey the wrong message about money. Leisa says it's important to go back and close the loop with children. In the FI community, we want our children to have the skills to take care of themselves and be financially independent, but is it possible for them to have too much abundance? Leisa says she wants to be very open about what goes on in their home, discuss their failures, and teach them the value of money and hard work. After reaching her goal of becoming a millionaire, Leisa made a massive change in her life. She and her husband sold it all and took a year off to travel with their son. The trip changed their entire approach to life. Previously, Leisa's family had been consumers of their money. After the trip, they took their nest egg, created investments where their money began working for them. A result of Leisa's drive to become a millionaire was that once achieved, people began to treat her differently. The outward display of wealth began to affect her friendships. It was then that Leisa realized the money was not all that important to her. Leisa's book, The Mindful Millionaire, tells these stories about our money experiences, our relationships with money, and how we can transform them into thinking about money as a tool. The key takeaway from this conversation is that words matter. It's important to think about the unintended consequences of the conversations we are having with our spouses, partners, and kids. Have humility in these conversations and be honest. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Build a better retirement plan today with NewRetirement ChooseFI Episode 246 Overcoming and Battling Financial Abuse Open a commission-free brokerage account with M1 Finance Get started on your own journey

Jonathan draws a parallel between the episode on Monday with professional poker player Annie Duke and hitting his weight loss goals. Finding himself well over his desired weight, Jonathan took a health challenge and has kept the weight off for six months making him a weightloss statistical abnormality. Where most people diet and get to a goal weight, because the effort was a diet, they end up regaining the weight. What Jonathan did was make a lifestyle change. Tying to the discussion with Annie Duke, Jonathan recognized that he couldn't control everything, made better decisions, and set himself up for more opportunities. All of it helped to increase the opportunity for luck to strike. Jonathan isn't alone in his endeavor. Through weekly accountability phone calls with his father and FI community member, JD Roth, they check in to ask if each has followed through with their goals for the week Their goals aren't all that strict but they are trying to be 1% more intentional with their decisions and look at their decision-making framework, watching for triggers, giving into them less often, and coming up with solutions to not be tempted. Brad notes the discipline equals freedom and that the framework Jonathan has created for himself makes everything easier and no longer requires willpower. The accountability and decision-making strategies Jonathan applied to his weightless journey can be used for virtually anything you want to achieve in life. Taking action and trying to be just 1% better what ChooseFI is all about. All of the small wins begin to add up, creating nothing but good, grows your gap, and continuous the virtuous circle. When we upgrade the quality of our decisions, the impact of them begins to compound and increases our probability of success. Brad discusses how 70-80% of the contestations he hears involve one of the three killers of happiness: sarcasm, complaining, and blaming. We can change our mindset and the locus of control to impact our future. He believes putting space between stimulus and control can have positive and compounding effects. As often mentioned on the show, you are the average of the five people you spend the most time with. Those five have the greatest influence on your life and you don't want them to have those happiness killer characteristics. Be intentional with your five picks. Choose people who give you a path forward and will hold you accountable to the things you said were important to you. Brad and Jonathan discussed how the concept of resulting, pro and con lists, and infecting others with our opinions before asking for advice is not helpful when trying to make better decisions. As mentioned during Monday's episode, making better decisions requires depth and an understanding of probability and magnitude. A challenge for listeners is to write down the five people you spend the most time with and who have the most influence on you. Then write down that their characteristics are that make them a good fit for your top five. And finally, what are the ideal characteristics for people who would be influencing your decisions and where can you find them? The second exercise is to approach someone and ask for their opinion on something without prejudicing it first. Don't lead with what it is that you really want to do. Ask your question in a way that gets you additional information you maybe hadn't considered yet. The first win from the community comes from Jodie, a self-professed broke chick who found FI in 2016. Since then, she's doubled her salary, gotten out a debt, flipped a live-in property, paid off her card, got married, formed two business with her husband, quit her job, and hit $100,000 in investments. Congratulations on taking action and changing your life, Jodie! In response to Brad's weekly email, Evan writes about not shooting for FI with reckless urgency, but a thoughtful understanding of the use of money and how it can improve his life after breaking his finger required surgery. FI isn't about deprivation, but buying the things you value. While the world is slowly getting back to normal during the pandemic, John calls in sharing how his wife was able to pivot her events business, Escape Room Races. The pandemic killed her in-person events, but she was able to rebrand, and pivot to a virtual format which is bringing in tons of new virtual events and they just had their biggest month ever. Speaking of live events, previous ChooseFI guest, Christine, from episode 137, sent in a letter saying that at least 50 ChooseFI listeners have come to Nashville and taken her tour. Last Fall, one guest from New Zealand Brough five friends from all over the world after hearing about Christine's tour, A Little Local Flavor, on ChooseFI. She also has converted her friends into ChooseFI listeners. When you respond to Brad's weekly email and we read your win on the air, you will get one of the ChooseFI Publishing books. The first winner is Ahmed who wrote in to say he recently graduat

Annie Duke is a world champion poker player and author of Thinking in Bets, a book which makes the case for embracing uncertainty in our decision-making framework. In Annie's latest book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices, she answers the question, what does a good decision-making process look like and how to incorporate that into your own life. The only way we can become better at making decisions is from our own experience, and our experience is going to be the outcomes of past decisions we've made. We need to understand the way in which knowing how something turned out can mess with our ability to figure out why. In a thought experiment concerning the 2015 Super Bowl between the Seahawks and the Patriots, Annie reviews a play called by Pete Carroll in the last seconds of the game. Though widely panned as the worst play called in Super Bowl history, Annie states that it's hard to evaluate the quality of the play called when we already know the outcome. Had the outcome of Pete Carroll's play been a touchdown, the reaction would have been the opposite. This phenomenon is called Resulting, where the quality of the result is attributed the quality of the decision. Reviewing the actual odds of the result of that specific play, Annie determines that Pete Carroll's decision was far from the worst play called of all time as there was only a 25 likelihood of that specific result. Annie applies what she's learned playing poker, specifically realizing that what you see happen doesn't change the decision that you make, to other aspects of life. The paradox of experience is that while we know we need all of these experiences to learn, we see how things unfold and we take our lessons for individual experiences, not in the aggregate. Poker has some surprising similarities to real life in that your outcome is a combination of luck and the quality of your decisions. The definition of luck is what you don't have control over. You cannot control your own luck. You can control the quality of the decisions you make and reduce the chance that luck has an influence that will turn out poorly for you. While we are all under the influence of luck, we are also very much under the influence of our own decisions. In our decision making, we should see the luck clearly and make the decisions that are more likely to advance our goals. Brad ties that to ChooseFI's philosophy of the aggravation of marginal gains and striving to do 1% better. We have a lot of cognitive bias that delude us into believing things are much more stable than they really are. COVID has torn that away from us. We are also feeling the effect of imperfect information. COVID is not a special case, it's just something we can't hide from the uncertainty. COVID does give us an opportunity to think about how to navigate uncertainty which will improve all decisions we make. A pro and con list has no dimensions to it, specifically missing are the magnitude of the payoff or how much will it advance or take away from your goal, and what is the probability of each con. These lists also amply biases you already have and can be gamed to reach a predetermined decision. With inside view thinking, our personal models create cognitive trenches. When new information comes in, we mold it into a model we already have rather than be objective. An outside view is what is true of the world. To try and avoid inside view thinking, we need to expose ourselves to different perspectives of corrective information. The foundation we base our decisions on is flimsy and full of inaccuracies. We should increase the probability that we collide with perspectives and information we don't know. It's okay to say you don't know very much and decide to get more information to become a better decision-maker. Making a good decision with one stock doesn't necessarily make you a good investor, you would have to look at all the decisions made with your portfolio. When getting to your outside view, it helps to get yourself into the future because it helps us look back on ourselves. We also need to realize that we tend to believe we are more likely to be successful than we actually are. It's helpful to think about all the ways in which you might fail. A pre-mortem is the idea that time travel and negative thinking will result in an outside view and lead to better decision making. A backcast is the opposite of a pre-mortem where you look at the luck and skills that lead to a positive outcome. To find groups of people to get the best opinions from, find people who are interested in finding what is true in the world, but by putting the framework in place, you can turn anybody into an amazing true-seeking pod. When seeking other's opinions, it's best not to divulge your own opinion beforehand. It results in one of three ways: it might show the other person's opinion is right, the truth may lie in the middle somewhere, or it may show your opinion is right and help you to understand it better. Ann

After 18 years of ownership, Brad says goodbye to his beloved Honda Civic, Golden Boy. When it comes to car ownership, ChooseFI often talks about only buying a new car every 15 years. Over a 45 year adult lifetime, the savings, when invested, can amount to almost $750,000 when compared to someone who leases or just manages a constant car payment. Although Brad wanted to keep the car, it had been having some mechanical issues and his family was no longer comfortable riding in it anymore. The impact it was having on Brad's family was not worth it. For his next vehicle, Brad opted for a 2013 Honda Civic rather than a brand new car. He purchased his new Civic through Caravana, the car vending machine business, who was selling Civics for roughly $3,000 less than CarMax. The buying process through Caravan was quick and streamlined. The car was delivered to his home and he spent approximately one-hour signing paperwork and finalizing documents. There are sweet spots when purchasing used vehicles. Although Brad's car is seven years old, after five years, cars have generally already depreciated at the fastest rate. If you are going to buy new, keep it forever. If you buy used, target 5-7 years old. Listener Oscar wrote into the show asking about Home Equity Line of Credit (HELOC) which hasn't been something that ChooseFI has discussed much in previous episodes. A HELOC is a revolving line of credit on your home where the equity you have in your home is used to secure it. For instance, a home worth $300,000 with a mortgage balance of $100,000 has $200,000 worth of equity. A HELOC allows homeowners to tap into the equity locked up in their homes. An advantage of using a home equity loan over other options for access to cash, like credit cards, is that the interest rate is often much lower, although it is a variable rate and can change. The interest rate on a HELOC may be in the 3-5% range versus 15-30% with credit cards. For homeowners who placed a sizable down payment on their home, whose home has appreciated, made extra payments, etc., a HELOC becomes a potential source of low-interest revolving credit. A HELOC is different from a home equity loan in that with a loan, the loan amount is deposited into your bank account and interest begins accruing immediately. A HELOC provides you with the ability to tap into the equity at any time, such as in the case of an emergency. No interest accrues until you decide to access the money. It gives you options if ever needed. Occasionally, HELOCs can be had for no closing costs. Considering that the process to apply and be approved for a HELOC can take weeks, it can be useful to have one in place so that it is already available if and when it is needed. Frequent guest and friend of ChooseFI, Big ERN, does not have an emergency fund. He believes that there is an opportunity cost to keeping 6 months of expenses in a liquid account that is likely earning every little in interest. In a thought experiment, he tried to envision a true emergency that he could not cover with credit cards or a HELOC. Those working to build an emergency fund before beginning to invest are potentially missing out on higher interest rates earned from investments. They might be better off investing their savings and using money from a HELOC to cover monthly expenses in an emergency rather than selling off investments or using high-interest credit cards. Jonathan mentioned that there are schemes to paying off a mortgage early using HELOCs and credit cards that people can learn about for a fee. Brad doesn't doubt that these might work, but it's too complex. There's no insider knowledge worth paying for. He doesn't believe these methods are any more beneficial than making additional principal payments to a traditional mortgage. Rather than a HELOC, Jonathan uses a margin loan through M1 Finance for a line of credit. He can borrow up to 40% of his invested assets with an interest rate of 2.75-3.5% and have the money in his account in minutes. Margin loans on investment accounts are lines of credit options for renters. Listener Alex wrote in with his win with a High Deductible Health Plan (HDHP) and Health Savings Account (HSA). Listener Rachel wrote in saying that she has reached FI and didn't even know it. As a result, she was able to leave a toxic work environment in the middle of a pandemic and spend more time with her nice and nephew. FI wins read on the show win their choice of one of ChooseFI's books so keep them coming! Listeners Brian and Deb maxed out their 401Ks this week before their contracts ended to take full advantage of the company's match and on Oct 23 will officially be financially independent. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Learn about ChooseFi's 3-card $1,000 cashback credit card strategy ChooseFI Episode 022 The Ultimate Guide to the True Cost of Car Ownership Get a fantastic term life insurance policy at a fantastic price with PolicyGenius Earn a high-interest rate on your savin

Immigrating to the United States as a child, by early adulthood, Jully found herself caught up in our consumer culture and had acquired five figures worth of debt. After working to dig her way out and starting on her path to finical independence, she's become an advocate. Drawing from her experience, she now help Latinas become financial powerful through investing. At the age of four, Jully moved from the Dominican Republic to New York. Her extended family all began making the move as well, but as many immigrants to, they continued to send money and invest in their socioeconomic systems back home. For immigrants, investing in their home countries has multiple purposes. There is often an expectation that money will be sent home to support the family. Jully's father supported her grandmother by building her a new home and making sure she was taken care of. However, when the grandmother also immigrated to the US, the house back in the Dominican Republic was rented out and became the first property in a real estate portfolio. Immigrants have struggles that a typical American doesn't go through. Investing in real estate in their home countries helps connect them to their communities. However, Jully says immigrants tend to invest more in real estate than in the stock market. She shares the message that it is important to diversify their investments. When she started working for a non-profit at the age of 19, Jully began investing a 403b for the free money. That decision was criticized by her mother who felt retirement was a long way off and that it wasn't necessary because Americans receive Social Security. When her family first arrived in the US, they didn't speak the language. It was a lesson in how to figure things out in the moment and just survive. It took a couple of years before her father began thinking in an entrepreneurial way and on a bigger scale. He went from driving a taxi to starting a bodega business. The bodega enabled Jully to see both her parents work in that environment, build their business, send money home, and contribute to the community. The money lessons she learned from her parents were to be generous and give. But the reality was her father worked a lot to build their life and they didn't see him much. Had he invested more, perhaps they would have been able to see him more. Jully went to school for fashion merchandising and economics. When she got her first job, lifestyle inflation kicked in. Working in the fashion industry required looking good with the latest trends. After accumulating the debt, Jully realized that she was channeling her emotions with her shopping. She was both celebrating and consoling herself with shopping to the point where it became unhealthy. Thankfully she had continued to invest even when the debt was bringing her down. It wasn't until her father became ill that she realized the safety net she had in her parents won't always be there. At that point, she began working to pay off all her debt. Once debt-free, Jully increased her 401K investments to around 20%. Jully notes that when first entering the workforce, you feel that nothing can go wrong, or if it does, you'll just figure it out. But you have to start with the basics. You have to start with the foundation of an emergency fund. Credit card debt is subject to incredibly high-interest rates of 12-30%. With five figures of debt, the compound interest is working against you and it's hard to fig yourself out from under it. To get out from under her credit card debt, Jully had to make significant payments toward it. The key was knowing her survival number. She created a simple chart with eight categories of things you need to come up with a survival number. The categories include housing, food, transportation, and even entertainment. Jully's survival number is $581. The items in her $581 figure are the absolute minimum things she needs to survive and keep her life sane. The reason she can keep her number so low is by house hacking her four-bedroom apartment. With master leasing, she is responsible for the rent each month, but she then uses sub-leases to rent out rooms. She uses Craigslist to market the rooms for lease in her apartment and thinks it is important to find people with similar lifestyles and working schedules which creates a good co-habiting space for everyone. After paying off her debt in 2016, Jully felt an incredible sense of freedom, quit her corporate job, and went to work for herself. She has been inspired and motivated by the financial independence community to use her platform, Investing Latina, to provide resources and stories, to inspire others to do more, increase financial stability, and reach financial independence. Given the struggles that her family faced when they first arrived in this country, Jully speak about building credit and establishing yourself. Jully's conversations with new immigrants start her three pillars, building credit, investing in the stock market, and real estate.

In our eighth Households of FI touchpoint episodes, Kristi was successfully following the standard path with a six-figure job and keeping up with the Joneses but waiting to take a breath and enjoy life. After finding FI, she realized the money was no longer the goal but simply a tool. Kristi has been connected with Big ERN, from Early Retirement Now, and over several conversations, they discuss Employee Stock Purchase Plans, 401K contribution strategies, the phase of retirement, and more. While wealth accumulation is simple math, decumulation is more complicated so Big ERN created the ultimate safe withdrawal rate series. Some recent changes Kristi has made to her investments since starting her path to FI are moving from a Roth 401K to a traditional 401K and maxing her contributions out. She also moved her current balance and future contributions out of target retirement date fund and into an S&P 500 fund. While Kristi has the option to self-manage her 401K in a Schwab account which would give her access to a total stock market fund, Big ERN doesn't believe that the difference between it and an S&P 500 fund is minor. Expense ratios are a more important consideration. Moving from a 0.2% expense ratio to a 0.02% might be worthwhile, but leaving the money where it is fine when the difference is 0.01% unless it is an in-kind transfer or a quick process. Human Resources may know how long the process is likely to take. Kristi approached her HR department about making after-tax contributions so that she could do a mega-backdoor Roth conversion, but the HR department was not clear on how much she would be allowed to contribute. She found the ChooseFI community to be quite helpful for bouncing ideas off of. She's also interested in her company's Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP). The advantage of it is that she can purchase stock at a 15% discount, but she will pay taxes on the discount and be required to hold the stock for two years. Such a purchase gives her investment a 5% per year boost, however, there's no diversification in purchasing company stock. Kristi's income, bonuses, and employment are all already tied to her company. That being said, Being ERN says he would probably still do the ESPP, although he would only keep two year's worth of money in the plan and then pull it out. After taking it out, it will be subject to long-term capital gains. The ESPP may have contribution limits, in which case she should make the additional contributions to her 401K and then do the backdoor Roth conversions. Big ERN likes to say don't let the tail wag the dog, meaning that asset allocation and expected returns should be the primary concern before tax considerations. Kristi has a difficult time determining exactly how much to contribute as her company does it by percentage and how bonuses are paid out. If she overshoots it, she could miss out on the company match in the last month of two of the year. Big ERN says some companies will do a true-up, or another HR term, where they will still contribute the match. Some who have access to a true-up prefer to contribute the maximum to their 401K at the beginning of the year so that their money is in the market longer. Those without a true-up need to be careful. Big ERN suggested Kristi could look at the minimum and maximum of her salary and bonuses to come up with a range. $19,500 divided by her maximum would give her a rough percentage to start the year with. Toward the end of the year, she will need to look at it again and make adjustments. Kristi also asked about Big ERN's thoughts on the stages of retirement, but she is most interested in the early retirement phase. Retirement is an uneven path. Health expenses may be higher before Medicare kicks in and there will be a boost of income once Social Security is received. How do you structure your withdrawals? What are the tax aspects? Which accounts do you tap into first? And what should the assist allocation be? Big ERN doesn't recommend 100% equities for people in retirement. 75% stocks and 25% bonds is a better allocation. Kristi will likely have to rely on more than just her taxable accounts during the early retirement phase. She could tap into her Roth IRA accounts as well which may get her to 59 1/2 when she could then begin withdrawals from her 401K tax and penalty-free. It's best to spread the tax liability as equally as you can due to our progressive tax system. Although trying to optimize taxes is important, safe withdrawal rate and asset allocation are significantly more so. Not all of the withdrawals in retirement are taxable. Some of the withdraw money is principal, which taxes were already paid on. Good tax planning versus alright tax planning in retirement probably doesn't make a significant difference. Kristi was also curious about when contributing to taxable accounts might be advantageous over continuing to fund retirement accounts for those who want to retire early. Big ERN thinks what there are cases when i

Brad has been taking part in a mastermind group and teaching its members about financial independence. While they understood the "Why of FI", how to get started wasn't as clear. The Back to Basics series of episodes covers just that, how to get started on the path to FI. The journey to financial independence is not about deprivation. It is about a life of personal choice and abundance. Its starts with understanding your "why" and then setting goals for the next 5, 10, or 15 years. There's a difference between the money you need to pay bills and meet basic needs and discretionary spending. Understanding how much your lifestyle costs is the first step. It can be psychologically difficult to do this first step. It may reveal mistakes, but it's important to be honest with yourself and not beat yourself up over them. We all make mistakes. After knowing what your life costs, what comes next? To calculate your FI number based on your current lifestyle, multiply your monthly expenses by 12 to get your annual expenses. This is how much money you will need each and every year in retirement to cover your expenses. The 4% Rule of Thumb suggests that you can withdraw 4% from your total assets each year to live on and reasonably expect the money to last for the remainder of your life. For example, if you have $1 million in assets, 4% of it is $40,000 that you could withdraw each year. The 4% withdraw rate is adjusted for inflation. To get to your FI number, multiply your annual expenses by 25. $40,000 multiplied by 25 is $1 million. $80,000 in annual expenses, multiplied by 25, results in a FI number of $2 million. Whether starting with a net worth of zero or with some assets, the next step would be determining your current path to your FI number. The point of saving money is not for it to be finally used for a retirement far off in the future. Save to reclaim decades of your life when you can spend time as you see fit. Reframing the goal of saving allows you to reorient and see that saving money is investing in your time. One of the reasons Brad and Jonathan enjoy board games so much may have parallels with financial independence. Both involve iteration and getting better and better at making smarter decisions through gamification. People who win games the most have an intermediate mindset. They understand the limitations balanced with longterm thinking. When looking at income, what is the bare minimum needed to cover your expenses? For a married couple living in Virginia spending $80,000 a year on expenses, they will need to earn an income of $102,000 before taxes and without contributing to savings or retirement. They would pay $9,000 in federal taxes, $5,000 in state taxes, and roughly $8,000 in FICA (social security and medicare taxes), for a total of $22,000 in taxes. When income and expenses are exactly the same, you can never afford to retire. How do you create some space between the two? Expenses are not always fixed. Cars loans come to the end of their terms and student loans are paid off. Add in some cuts to a few other line items in your budget and you might find an extra $1,000. How might that change things? Cutting $1,000 from your monthly expenses reduces your annual expenses and subsequently your FI number by a whopping $300,000. What should you do with that extra $1,000 a month? Putting that savings into a 401K allows that money to begin working for you. In addition, the $1,000 a month going into a 401K becomes a tax deduction and reduces your federal income tax. For the couple in the previous example earning $102,000 per year and bringing home $80,000 after taxes, contributing $12,000 to a 401K doesn't mean they have $12,000 less to spend. With the tax advantages of contributing to a 401K, they will bring home $70,000, only reducing their take-home pay by $10,000. They saved $2,000 in taxes. Since they already have enough money to meet their expenses, that extra $2,000 saved in taxes could go toward a Roth IRA. Part 3 in the Back to Basics series will talk about optimization on both the income and expenses side of things. Our hypothetical couple, starting with a zero net worth, after investing $1,167 a month (totaling $14,000 per year) at an average 8% rate of return, will hit their FI number of $1.7 million in 30 years. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION ChooseFI Episode 257 Back to Basics: Getting Started With FI Part 1 ChooseFI Episode 132R Insurance | A Framework Easily compare and buy life insurance with PolicyGenius Get started on Fundrise with no advisory fees for 90 days Smartasset.com ChooseFI's financial calculators Learn how to get started on your path to financial independence at ChooseFI.com/start IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

In this ChooseFI Back to Basics episode, we review Health Savings Accounts (HSA). What happens when you need to finally pull money out after funding it year after year? ChooseFI Chief Content Officer, MK, is just weeks away from having her baby. For years, she and her husband, Jason, have been funding separate HSA accounts without making any withdrawals. They now contribute to a family plan HSA and decided it was a good time to test out how complicated the process was to withdraw HSA funds. They discovered some plans are easier than others. The process of withdrawing funds from the fund MK had rolled over to Fidelity was super easy. Jason's was a bit more tricky due to the Health Insurance Portability Accountability Act (HIPPA) compliance laws and auto-reinvest settings. Now that they tested it out, they feel confident they will know what to do in the future. An HSA is a type of investment vehicle that gives you a tax deduction in the current year and helps pay for healthcare-related expenses. Only those participating in qualified in high-deductible healthcare plans are eligible for HSAs. For 2020, the IRS defines a high-deductible plan as one with a deductible of $1,400 for an individual, or $2,800 for a family. the maximum a family may contribute in 2020 is $7,100, and half of that for an individual. The money going into the account isn't subject to income tax and sits in the HSA account until you submit for reimbursement of healthcare expenses. HSA withdrawals for healthcare expenses are also tax-free.The benefit of an HSA is that the money can build and grow over time. Healthcare expenses do not need to be submitted for reimbursement as they are incurred. HSA participants can pay out-of-pocket and wait for years before requesting reimbursement if they choose to. The IRS criteria dos state that the high-deductible plan must be a qualified plan. Check with your company's human resources department to determine if your plan is a qualified one. HSA participants should also understand who their plan is with, what investment options they have, and what the fees are. Based on fees, Fidelity and Lively are two good providers who offer low-cost, board-based investment fund options. The goal is to cash flow medical expenses in your younger years when they are generally lower, funding the HSA with pre-tax dollars and allow them to grow until later in life when healthcare costs begin to increase. There may be additional tax benefits from using your employer's HSA provider rather than Fidelity or Lively. Because you can submit for reimbursement years after the expense was incurred, save your receipts. Brad has a Google doc that lists all of the healthcare expenses he pays out-of-pocket and saves a pdf of the receipt in his Google Drive account. Even if your provider offers a way to upload receipts, you should always maintain your own records and only use the provider's system as a secondary backup. If you change HSA, you could lose your receipts. It is your responsibility to verify to the IRS that you've been using the funds in the HSA appropriately. It makes it easier if you have all of that information maintained in your own cloud-based account. After several years or decades of cash-flowing healthcare, it may be possible to have tens of thousands of dollars of reimbursable expenses that are accessible anytime, tax, and penalty-free whenever it is needed. The final episode in round one of the Households of FI series airs next week. Throughout this series, ChooseFI follows eight diverse households at different points on their path to FI. More exciting news for ChooseFi is the website redesign, expected to launch in the coming weeks. The new website format was designed with your experience and journey to financial independence in mind. The content on the site has been curated so that people looking for specific content can easily find what they are looking for. If you would like to receive a notification when the new website has been launched, go to ChooseFI.com/subscribe and an email will be sent to you when it's ready. Brad recently gave a presentation to Dominick Quartuccio's Do Inner Work mastermind group on the Why of FI. Though people seemed to understand the why of FI, there were questions regarding how to get to FI. How does someone go about getting started? It starts with visualizing where you want to be in 10-15 years, what your goals, and what kind of options you'd like to have. If Brad were to go back to when he began his journey, he would have said that there's got to be more to life than what he's experiencing. Life was comfortable, but it felt like Groundhog Day. He could see himself doing it for the rest of his life. The second task when starting on the path to FI is to take an assessment of what your life actually costs. What you earn minus what you spend, equals the gap, or the amount of money you have left to work with. Adding up your structural expenses, recurring monthly bills, unplanned expense

How can you recognize the value in the secondhand market, begin optimizing a strategy, and turn it into income? Today's guests, Rob and Melissa Stephenson, the Flea Market Flippers, have built a six-figure business flipping the bargains they find. Rob spent weekends as a child with his parents visiting yard sales. They bought items and then listed them for sale to a bigger market using the newspaper classified section. Rob followed in their footsteps, flipping items as another side job without realizing the full potential of it. Selling used items is no longer a local market. With the launch sites like eBay with 181 million users, the whole world becomes the market. Rob and Melissa's business model capitalizes on larger items, such as commercial exercise equipment or restaurant equipment. They find the items locally from establishments going out of business. They look for the higher retail items which will make them a lot of money. It helps them to work less and make more profit. From their 89 sales last year, they made $80,000. For example, over the summer, they found a 40-inch range that retailed for $4,500. They bought it for $200, brought it home, then sold on eBay for $2,800. Over the last five years, Rob and Melissa have honed their freight skills and can ship very large and heavy items for reasonable prices. While they have become comfortable shipping large items, Rob and Melissa want people to start where they are at. Start with the items in your house, learn the system, how to take photos, how to sell on eBay to slowly build your confidence. The majority of the time, they research an item before buying it. Some things do sell quickly, but other items need time for the right buyer to find them before they sell. There are skill sets involved that make flipping items work: finding the deals, researching prices, making offers, marketing, taking good photos, and shipping. However, Melissa says it's actually a really simple business. There are lots of options for finding items, but Rob's favorite apps are Facebook Marketplace and OfferUp. He will scroll through them for ten minutes while sitting in his LazyBoy at night. There are fewer risks than there were several years ago. Smartphones have made it possible to jump onto eBay to check everything for the last 30-60 days that has sold. It's similar to the MLS with the housing market and looking for comparable properties that recently sold. If you can't find it on eBay, a good rule of thumb for items in good condition is 50% off retail. They no longer do many actions on eBay, opting for Buy It Now and listing for the price they want. Since you can see what an item has sold for the in past, if you want to sell it quickly you can just price it a little bit lower than that. Rob and Melissa sell 85% of their items on eBay and the rest on Facebook Marketplace. They usually cross-post items but eBay is consistently a winner. Fees on eBay are 13%. PayPal processing is 3% and 10% goes to eBay. They believe the opportunity to sell to a larger audience is worth the fee. Taking good pictures is important, with clean photos and nothing in the background. Fancy photography equipment isn't required. They still use their iPhones for everything. Since eBay allows up to 12 photos, you should use all 12 photos. The title for the item is the most important since eBay is essentially a search engine and the searches will come up on Google too. Descriptions are less important and Rob likes to underpromise and overdeliver so people have realistic expectations. Since they already have a good idea of how much it going to cost, they build it into the item cost and offer free shipping. It helps items to sell more quickly and reduce emailing back and forth with the buyer. Rob and Melissa love what they do and already feel like they are retired even if they haven't hit their FI number. Rob spend about 20-25 hours a week on their flipping business. They both like to travel and have a goal of being able to pay for the trip by flipping while on the road. Flipping is something Rob and Melissa are so passionate about that they teach a course. They have two groups they've been teaching, one with no experience flipping, and another group of experienced flippers looking to go freight. Rob and Melissa offer a webinar, which can be found at ChooseFI.com/flip, and a paid course. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Get an increased bonus of 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points with the Chase Sapphire Preferred Improve your writing skills and get a 20% discount on Grammarly Premium Check out Rob and Melissa's webinar IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

Picking back up with the Household of FI series, Vivian is a single mom who found FI in the last year, but initially, it seemed impossible. It wasn't until she was introduced to the ChooseFI podcast and saw real people reaching financial independence that she believed she could do it too. Vivian has been dealing with a number of challenges: a cancer diagnosis, a child custody battle, and caring for parents who have no savings of their own. As a pharmacist, she earns a significant income. She's already managed to pay off $300,000 in student loans in six years and believes she can save $60,000 a year. Vivian has been paired with mentor, Leslie Tayne, also a single mom and attorney who helps people with debt relief. Leslie acknowledges that what Vivian is going through with her separation is one the most challenging times in her life and it is a very emotional experience along with being financially damaging. However, there is a light on the other side and she will come out with more freedom and more control. Because her significant other's mom used to watch her child while she was a work, childcare is a challenge right now. Childcare is expensive and not something you can find discounts on. As an attorney, Leslie helps her clients to fix their financial messes without judgment. She doesn't believe in a debt-free life since life has its ups and downs. Instead, it's okay if being debt-free is not realistic. We should learn to embrace our debt but what is important is how you manage the debt. Due to the separation, Vivian will be selling the house that is entirely in her name. If she makes a profit, she should talk to her tax preparer about qualifying for a capital gains exemption. Vivian is also interested in ways to save for her child's college education to which Leslie offers several options: contributing to a 529 plan, a state pre-pay program, or a regular savings account. There are tax advantages to contributing to a 529 plan over a savings account and should Vivian's child decide to not go to school, the money in the 529 plan may be used for grandchildren or withdrawn with earnings taxed at regular income tax rates. The Texas pre-pay option would allow Vivian to lock in current undergraduate tuition rates and required fees. When it comes to budgeting for groceries, Leslie says that her family mostly eats at home and orders out just once a week. One trick to not overspending at the grocery store is not to take the children with you, shop with a list, don't allow yourself to get distracted, and buy non-perishables in bulk. When you have no choice but to bring your child with you, you can allow them to pick one item so that they can pick something they want without filling your cart with everything they want. It limits your financial exposure when shopping. While eating out, rather than order a kid's meal, share bites of your own meal, and develop a taste for adult foods. Vivian's daughter is not yet attending pre-K schooling, due to the virus but may be able to find reasonably-priced options that give her the option to socialize. Because her significant other has not been cooperative during their separation, all of the attorney costs and other fees have gotten be very expensive. Vivian needs to be as cooperative as possible to limit her financial exposure. Leslie says a good piece of advice is don't marry or get involved with anyone you don't want to be divorced from. It's often advisable to keep finances separate in a relationship and protect any assets with a prenup or postnup because it is very tricky to untangle them should the relationship end. Everyone should look at what deciding to combine finances in a relationship really means and how it impacts things. Brad reviewed the capital gains tax question and said because Vivian has lived there for at least two of the last five years, she would be eligible for up to $250,000 in capital gains tax exclusion. The decisions being made should be ones that will make life better over the long-term. Brad's goal is to set the groundwork for a successful life. Jonathan notes that Vivian doesn't appear to have an issue with her savings rate, instead, she may be at risk of slipping into a deprivation state. To fight this urge, Brad believes we need to have a better idea of what the path looks like for her. As ChooseFI follows Vivian during this study, she will need to better understand her expenses and her FI number. She needs to have a sense of where she is to know where she is going. ChooseFI recognizes that some audience members are just finding and joining us now. ChooseFI is building out a curated path to help you figure out where you are and what information will serve you best. Sign up to receive this information and more at ChooseFI.com/start. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION ChooseFI Episode 155 FI for Single Parents The Tayne Law Group Compare life insurance policies with Policygenius Get 80,000 Ultimate Rewards points with the Chase Sapphire Pref

Building a business online has never been easier than right now, but Corbett Barr was forging his path in the early 2000s when it was hard. We're diving into his origin story to learn what gave him motivation and why he believed entrepreneurship was for him. Working as a consultant in Fortune 500 companies, Corbett had the kind of job a lot of people really wanted and could build a career around. Though he wasn't aware of financial independence at the time, he didn't want to climb the ladder only to find it had been leaning up against the wrong wall. Unhappy with his career, he was nudged toward entrepreneurship but was scared to take the leap until a friend asked if he wanted to become involved in a new project, which he was able to do without risking any of his own money. In his early 20s, Corbett was furloughed from his job during the 2000-01 financial crisis. During his efforts to stay afloat, he was ashamed and learned how important it is to save as much as possible. His savings gave him enough of a cushion to last a year or so in order to find out if he had what it takes to be an entrepreneur. His picture of entrepreneurship at the time was working yourself to the bone, sleeping under your desk, and hitting a home run before earning a bunch of money and doing whatever he wanted. But he found that he still had a host people he still needed to answer to and felt even more trapped than if he were an employee. After putting in so much time, effort, and money, it was painful to realize he didn't have much to show for it. But after having a taste of entrepreneurship, it was hard to imagine going back. Rather than jump into another project, Corbett and his wife took an eight-month sabbatical in Mexico to clear his head, reset and pivot. The Mexican sabbatical allowed him to put some space between himself and the friends, family, and San Francisco venture capitalists influencing his life to see that something else was possible. It was around that time he discovered concepts of location, independence, lifestyle design, and digital nomads. He realized that perhaps what he wanted wasn't to be wealthy, but instead to have enough time and control to do the things he wanted, like working on the things he wanted or spending time with friends and family. When discussing the dark side of entrepreneurship, Corbett says we don't often see the path of destructions can leave in people's lives. However, it has become much more democratized in recent years where you don't have to take investment money or big-name advertisers. It allows you to really be in control and think about how you go about doing it. Though he originally envisioned building a product and then finding customers who wanted it, he decided to go with an audience first business where he would find customers who wanted a product he would then build for them. An audience first strategy ends up taking a lot of the risk out of things. In the beginning stages of entrepreneurship, it's all about finding your topic and what you are going o building toward. It's good to jump into something you are interested in and can become good at. It can take experimentation and doesn't necessarily come overnight. Something that Corbett teaches is "minimum viable income" where you cut back all of the fat. Though he jumped in with both feet and lived off savings, people like Brad did things on the side. And adding an extra thousand or two in income through a side project, it can change the entire trajectory in terms of FI. Some of Corbett's observations about working for yourself are: you have no one to blame but you, when you work for yourself, you don't have to worry about a new boss, you decide when you work and when you don't, no pointless, actionless meetings, no cubicles, and the coffee is amazing. When living a nomadic lifestyle, Corbett and his wife consider the total annual cost of their home base, including any rent they might receive back. Some locations are better than others, so you may need to get creative about it. In 2009, when Corbett began building his audience first business, he began with free ebooks on affiliate marketing, followed by an online course, and then another, and another. He began to realize that he wanted to layer coaching and community on it. He's been doing that through Fizzle since 2012, along with a podcast. Free consultations are a great way to understand what questions your audience has and then build it into your product. There are ways to ease into charging for the product you are creating to find out if it's viable. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Quickly and securely send money to people with PayPal Get a $75 credit to boost your job posting on Indeed.com Wondering what it would look like to make work optional? Go back through the ChooseFI archives or visit ChooseFI.com/start IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

Going back to the basics of ChooseFI being a crowdsourced show, Brad and Jonathan address what's going on in the FI community with a wild card Friday episode. Why revisit content that's already been discussed? After several years of introducing new ideas, the ChooseFI audience may be in a different place financially and ready for a refresher on some of the more advanced concepts presented earlier in the show's history. And newer listeners may not have combed through the archives and missed out on topics relevant to their situation. This episode back to basics provides an orientation of what ChooseFI hopes to deliver. Goals for the podcast are to introduce a new idea or story during the Monday episode. But not every strategy or tactic works for everyone. Friday's Roundup episode looks at that idea from different perspectives, incorporates audience feedback, and seeks to answer additional questions. The FI Weekly is the email Brad sends out every Tuesday where he provides subscribers with ideas to ponder, inspire, and motivate people on their own journey and shares what actions he is taking to make his life a little bit better. Opt in to receive Brad's email, The FI Weekly, at ChooseFI.com/start. Financial independence means different things to different people. For Jonathan, it means he has options allowing him to choose what he does during the best years of his life. For Brad, it means freedom, giving him the ability to live life on his terms, spending time with his family. Pursuing financial independence doesn't mean living a life of deprivation. It's about choice. No one should tell you how to spend your time, your freedom, or what to spend your money on. You have the freedom to spend money on an expensive car if you choose, as long as you understand the impact of that decision. It's not even about being at financial independence or not. Simply being on the path to FI gives you options. Whether you're in a toxic situation at work or want to pursue a passion project, just working toward FI gives you options those on the standard path cannot afford to take. Sharing stories from the community and discussing the decisions they have made broadens and brings to light the scope of options available to the variety of personal challenges you may have. The pursuit of financial independence is not necessarily about hitting that FI number. It's a life optimization strategy. If you are working in a low-wage job and don't see the path, you can be trained in a new industry and be making $60-80K within six months. Check out the Talent Stacker podcast. Shane recently posted in the ChooseFI Facebook Group, "I'm a recent college graduate, 23 years old. What advice would you give yourself when you were my age regarding investments, retirement/401K, and student loans? I want to invest, but I also have about $30,000 worth of student debt, but I'm only making around $41,000 a year." Brad notes that a lot of people like Shane are looking for tips or special advice that will get them to financial success, but that there's nothing complex about it. It comes down to savings rate and time. Increasing savings rate is easier when you reduce your structural expenses. If your life doesn't cost much, you can increase your savings. When first starting out, Brad and Laura weren't making high salaries, but they set themselves up for success by moving to a city with a lower cost of living, purchased a home with a reasonable mortgage, and have driven the same car since 2003. These choices allowed them to have a 50% savings rate and meant if Laura decided to stop working once they had kids, they would be fine. Brad and Laura became wealthy because they didn't care about looking wealthy. With some quick math, Jonathan calculates for Shane to have a 50% savings rate, his monthly expenses will need to be $1,700 a month. With a mortgage and expensive car payment, that may be difficult. He might do well trying something like house hacking. Shane could purchase 4 bedroom house, rent out rooms to friends and cut his housing expenses down to $300 a month. 40% of most people's expenses go to housing and transportation. Optimizing in just those two high-cost areas can make a huge difference in your savings rate. Anchoring yourself to a food budget of $2 per person per meal per day in another way to reduce a major expense category. Laura sits down once a week to plan out several meals for the week, making enough to have as leftovers on a second night. The meals she cooks average that $2 per person per meal goal which helps them save over $1,000 on eating out and picking up convenience foods at the grocery store. A rough target for housing expenses is 25% of your take home pay. For investing, Brad recommends Shane begin with low-cost index fund investing and JL Collins' book The Simple Path to Wealth. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Build your plan NewRetirement Sign up to get The FI Weekly delivered to your inbox every Tuesday! Switch to Mint

Everyone's path to FI is going to look a little bit different and there is so much we can learn from each other. Hoping to inspire and share lessons learned through conversations with community members, Brad and Jonathan speak with Julia Harder, an active duty member of the Coast Guard, is already well on her path to FI. Always a natural saver, Julia was influenced by her dad, who stressed the importance of investing, and Dave Ramsey's teachings that debt is bad. She was on a good financial path, yet she still felt something was missing. Though it sounds counterintuitive, Julia's path to financial independence began with divorce. Prioritization to her marriage, she rarely spent money on anything she didn't absolutely need. During her marriage, her husband helped her learn that some spending can be a good thing. Unfortunately, he was an irresponsible spender and there were months Julia found she couldn't pay all of the bills. Although she knew something was wrong, she failed to listen to her instincts and all of the red flags that kept popping up. she just assumed everything would be okay rather than taking a step back and thinking about it critically. Following her divorce, she was left with a $300,000 mortgage, a $20,000 car loan, no savings, and was feeling like she had hit rock bottom financially. Following Dave Ramsey's advice, Julia began to follow his steps to get back on her feet and find herself and her financial objectives again. Julia was all in on Dave Ramsey's strategies. She cut up her credit cards, began using cash for everything, and made a budget every month. It gave her discipline and solidified her habits. She found ChooseFI in May 2019 after she began teaching personal finance to other members of her Coast Guard unit. The thought of optimizing investments and taxes really caught her attention. It was exciting to begin taking action to optimize her money in these areas as well. It was more difficult to come around with respect to travel rewards credit cards, but because she had learned to be disciplined with her budget, she could spend money on a rewards credit card and begin optimizing her travel spending too. Before ChooseFI, Julia thought she was killing it with her 15% savings rate. She assumed 59 and a half was the earliest she could retire because that's the age her finical advisors had given her. She was blown away when a ChooseFI guest discussed their 70% savings rate. It was then that she realized she could control so much more than current her zone of awareness concerning savings and retirement. Julia plans on remaining in the Coast Guard until eligible for a pension at 20 years of service. While others often ask if she'll be bored, she has a list of passion projects she can't wait to pursue without having to worry about how to pay the bills. As someone who always enjoyed public speaking, last Fall, she took up book narration after reaching out to a friend with audio experience for help getting started. She's also joined Jonathon's Talent Stacker class and looking to start a podcast. Julia keeps a list of all the things she wants to accomplish and FI will give her the freedom to pursue them without being obligated to a job or other people's expectations. Between Julia's pension, TSP, Roth IRA, and a taxable brokerage account, she plans to hit Fat FI in 2027 when she becomes eligible for her pension. Calculating a FI number with a pension is a bit different than multiplying annual expenses by 25. Julia estimated her pension using the military's pension calculator. She multiplied the difference between her pension and her expenses to calculate her FI number. While she still follows the tenants of Dave Ramsey's Baby Steps and has met the minimum standards, she believes she has moved on from the standard path of working for 40 years and is more in line with ChooseFI. Jonathon stressed that like Julia, members of the military with a pension, the Roth Conversion Ladder is not going to be a good option since it requires a few years with little to no income. When exploring the idea of a talent stack, some people may have a difficult time identifying what they are really good at. It might start with identifying a pattern in what others tell you you are good at. To watch the video highlights, click on ChooseFI.com/252 RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Get "unstuck" with Jillian Johnsrud and the Everyday Courage podcast Build a better portfolio today with Fund Rise and get your first 90 days of advisory fees waived Never Split the Difference: Negotiating As If Your Life Depended On It by Chris Voss and Tahl Raz The Untethered Soul: The Journey Beyond by Michael A. Singer IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

Martin and Ayesha are both natural savers who have been great about living below their means but lacked a real plan. Their goals are to maximize investments for retirement and finding ways to utilize dividend funds. After stumbling across the ChooseFI podcast, they felt like their financial independence number and retirement seemed obtainable which has helped push them to commit and make even bigger changes. While Martin and Ayesha had a 20-25% savings rate before finding FI, Brad commended them on what a great job they were doing. He also stressed that FI is about living a better life and having the financial security to get you there, not what your savings rate is. Despite the inclination to save, Ayesha always resisted the thought of meticulousness and restrictive budgets. However, she found that she could get behind the idea of focusing on spending on what they truly valued, so they began using Personal Capital as a less obtrusive method of tracking their spending and gaining insight into their habits. Something that Martin and Ayesha place considerable value on are experiences, particularly travel, spending time with friends and family, and being healthy. Instead of getting together at restaurants and spending money on pricey meals out, they began hosting monthly potlucks. Ayesha has found the website Budget Bytes to be incredibly economical when it comes to low-cost recipes and efficient for discovering uses for the ingredients she already has in her refrigerator. It's helped to cut their grocery bill to around $600 per month for their family of 4. Due to quarantine restrictions, Ayesha was out of work for months, which she calls a blessing in disguise. During that free time, they were able to take a deep dive into their spending and immediately saved $500. It also allowed them to slow down and spend more time with family enjoying the outdoors, playing games, and eating all three meals together. Following the time off from work, Ayesha has realized that it does cause her some stress which made her want to buy things. It also strengthened her conviction to reduce her workload within 5 years to perhaps just one day a week so that she can find more joy in the moment. Although Martin enjoyed his two-hour daily commute, working from home during the pandemic has made him more aware of the importance of time. He now strives to make the most of his time and focus on using it in ways that bring him the most value. While their monthly expenses are not constant because life is lumpy, it runs around $3,500 but can go as high as $5,000 a month when home repairs are needed. Martin and Ayesha have a goal of reaching FI in seven years and are looking at exploring several different options to help get them there. With option one, they would withdraw money from an investment account to pay off the mortgage on their home. The money saved on the mortgage payment would then be invested for the next seven years. In option two, they would use their investment account to pay off half of the remaining mortgage and continue to make the monthly mortgage payments which result in a mortgage pay off in seven years. Their third option is to refinance their current mortgage which has 17 years left at 3.3% interest rate to a 15-year loan at 2.6%, but that refinance incurs $7,000 in fees. The payments would remain the same, but the home would be paid off two years earlier. Ayesha likes the idea of not having a mortgage but doesn't want to do it if the numbers don't make sense. However, Martin is okay with a lower net worth if it means they can get rid of their mortgage because he feels they would have more options. Brad admits this is an issue he and many others in the FI community struggle with. With such low-interest rates on mortgages, it's almost always a better option mathematically to keep the money invested, but it doesn't mean it's the right decision for everyone. The psychological aspect needs to be considered. If they would like to pay the mortgage off in seven years, the best thing they can do it to use an amortization calculator and see how much extra they will need to pay each month to have the mortgage paid off in seven years. Martin and Ayesha can then see how that payment fits into their current lifestyle. As a fourth option, Brad pointed out that they can drastically reduce their FI number if they were to pay off their mortgage. With a FI estimate of 1.25 million, using the 4% rule, they would have $4,000 per month. If the mortgage was paid off, they could reduce their monthly expenses by $1,600, and then their FI number is only $750,000. After living through the 2008 housing market crash and not having a plan, and then this most recent market downturn, Martin and Ayesha have realized they may not be as risk-tolerant as they used to believe. Brad suggested having an investor policy statement that they've written down to help them stay the course in times of uncertainty. The biggest takeaway is the being on the path to

Once you realize financial independence is possible for you, how do you ensure the money lessons you've learned are consistently passed down to future generations? Anne Zonca's family is well ahead of their time when it comes to financial independence. When many are focused on second-generation FI, Anne herself is third generation FI working to pass along her family's lessons to her own children. Children of the Great Depression, Anne's grandparents were deeply effected by having lived through it. Starting out in marriage with literally nothing, they worked hard and saved so that they never had to live through a financial situation like that again. Understanding that saving was not enough, they began investing in the stock market in the 1950s. With a formal education, her grandfather stayed informed with the Wall Street Journal and sharing stock tips with his brother. They invested in individual stocks, picking ones they felt were stable, like oil and gas, or utility companies. For stocks that paid dividends, they reinvested the dividends. with this strategy, they were able to build a substantial amount of wealth. Anne's mom recounted stories about how her grandfather got into stock investing, but Anne became more aware of her grandparents investing prowess around 14 when they began gifting stock to their children and grandchildren. While the value of the gifted stock wasn't necessarily a large sum, it was substantial considering they were regularly gifting to 4 children and 11 grandchildren. The gifted stocks were paying decent dividends, but rather than receive a lot of checks for small amounts, the dividends were all reinvested. Though the growth on the stocks gifted to Anne was not enough for her to reach FI, she definitely had a heart start and was learning about stocks and investing at a young age. Her grandparents gifting stock to the family was a win-win scenario as her grandparents did not have to sell the stock and pay capital gains on the appreciated value. Though the recipient bears a tax burden, children are entitled to a certain amount of capital gains each year tax-free. Currently, children can have up to $2,000 of capital gains before being subject to capital gains taxes. Following the example set by her grandparents, Anne's parents were able to achieve financial independence as well through entrepreneurship and real estate. Although preceding generations had reached financial independence, it wasn't wealth being passed on from generation to generation that got them there. It was the lessons of spending less than you make and smartly investing the extra that perpetuated generational success and wealth. Despite her grandparents' success in the stock market, there was remarkably little conversation about investing until the grandkids were older and showed an interest in having such conversations. As a result of the gifted stocks and her parents being good stewards of it for her, Anne was able to use it and graduate from college debt-free. As life is often bumpy, Anne experienced her own financial setback when she divorced her husband and the courts gave her ex-husband half of everything her grandparents had gifted to her. Luckily, the money lessons she had learned allowed her to be in a financial position to leave behind the marriage and move on with her life. Although not everything has gone fairly or smoothly since the divorce, Anne has adopted a great attitude by understanding that it's only money, she will be able to move on, and that she will still reach FI. The advice she would give to anyone else going through a divorce is to work with the things that are burdening you, follow your heart, and don't sacrifice your life, happiness, or the person you want to be over a bad decision. You can work hard and invest. There are still a lot of opportunities to save money, meet goals, and find love. Having been a stay-at-home mom and yoga teacher, Anne needed to get back into the workforce to support herself. A friend advised her to do it scared. The first year was hard, but she built up her skills and got her CPA certification renewed. Anne's grandparents lived long enough to begin gifting stock to their great-grandchildren, so her kids have been the fortunate recipients of these gifts and their associated money lessons. In addition to the stock gifts, Anne started a program of investing pocket change with her kids. Now that they are are in high school, they listen to ChooseFI with her and she's established stock accounts for them so that they can become comfortable investing in stocks and mutual funds. To impart a FI mindset in her children by being an example. Anne drives used cars. She also has them responsible for paying their own car insurance, which incentivizes them to get good grades to earn a discount. And she gives them some say in how Anne she invests money for them. Anne says financial independence means freedom. She can make decisions independent of the financial impact. Second, third

Brad is back after taking August off of work as his Red X month. Though his original vacation plans were changed because of COVID, he made the best of it. They spent three weeks in Long Island visiting family, enjoying the pool, board games, and a digital detox. While Brad was away relaxing, Jonathan used that time to work on a couple of big passion projects. During the month of August, Jonathan created a podcast course and membership group. He also started a new podcast as a way to demonstrate to the group how you start one. The Talent Stacker podcast uses the content discussed on ChooseFI but then goes even further and fills in the holes to focus on skills, certificate programs, and career paths that don't require the high cost of college. The first episode of Talent Stacker has already been released and this coming Monday's episode will feature Bradley Rice where he and Jonathan discuss a carer path you can start for free with no talent stack, no career, and no experience and after 6 months of training, you can make a minimum of 60-80K with the ability to scale for an even higher income. The Talent Stacker membership program has lifetime guaranteed access where they will work with you to as long as it takes to get you working in that new job earning $60,000. Programs such as the one discussed on next Monday's Talent Stacker episode are becoming more popular with examples like Google's new career certificate program which also takes about 6 months to complete at a fraction of the cost of traditional college. The Vice President of Global Affairs at Google, Kent Walker, stated they consider the certificate to be the equivalent of a four-year degree for related roles. The next Households of FI family featured this week is Carol, sho found FI in 2020. In her mid-50s, Carol claims she is financially illiterate and does not want to end up being a burden to her child. Her goals are to change her deprivation mindset when it comes to money, retire with financial security, and kick her lifelong issues with credit cards. Carol was introduced to financial planner, Roger Whitney, to come up with a financial plan of attack. Since finding FI, Carol has jumped right in reading and listening to as much as she can. In that time, she has cut her debt in half. She believes her first steps should be to pay off debt, start an emergency fund, and begin saving aggressively for retirement. She also knows she needs a mindset shift. Carol struggles with budgets, but she's contributing to her 401(k) for the first time and is only giving herself a small amount of spending money with everything extra going to savings after her bills have been paid. Roger suggests there are two ways to tackle the mindset issue, either toughen up and do it, or set up a system to capture her excess money. Rather than focus on the big hill Carol needs to climb, Roger wants her to focus on what little thing she needs to do next to begin to create momentum. He also suggests that having a community like ChooseFI is great for providing encouragement, assistance, and being a virtual mentor. Carol wants to know which is more important paying off her credit cards or building her emergency fund. Because she's been good about not using her credit cards and they have a high-interest rate, Roger wants her to focus on paying off her cards with every extra dollar she has. Second, Carol should set up a system for how she manages her money. It can be helpful to have income deposited into a savings account we don't see and then transfer spending money to checking accounts at another bank. After paying bills and buying groceries and gas, Carol has about $200 leftover at the end of the month before she receives her commissions from sales. With her commission checks, she would like to save 50-60% of her income. Carol's company offers both a traditional 401(k) and a Roth 401(k), but she is unsure what the differences are. Roger explains with a traditional 401(k) contributions and growth are tax-deferred until withdrawn, while Roth 401(k) contributions are made from post-tax income and grow tax-free. The next two levers Carol needs to focus on are earning as much as she can in commissions which is the most effective way to make the plan work. The next lever is to hang on to the money she is earning. Side hustles are another area Carol is looking at to increase her earnings. She's already published two books and is working on a third, as well as looking for another side hustle. Since she enjoys writing, Roger suggested that Carol could share her journey on her blog and collect readers and be an inspiration. Mentioning that seeing her M1 Finance account grow, Roger thinks it would be useful to set up a system around that kind of excitement for continued encouragement. To watch the video highlights, click on ChooseFI.com/249. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Freelance to Freedom by Vincent Pugliese Total Life Freedom Talent Stacker Podcast Google Career Certificates R

What does it look like when you are invested in building wealth, environmentalism, and sustainability? How do you combine raising your net worth while optimizing these other areas of your life? You build a holistic approach to the different types of capital. Laura learned about the different forms of capital through her experiences with permaculture, which is a design science that looks to nature as an example of a closed-loop, no waste system. Her introduction to permaculture through her gardening interest in sustainability. The permaculture flower has seven petals, with each petal representing concepts like Land in Nature, Stewardship, and The Built Environment. In addition, 12 guiding principles can be applied to each petal, such as Catch and Store Energy. She became intrigued after learning permaculture could be applied to more than just the landscape. Not pleased with the investing options available through her employer's retirement account investment options, Laura turned to the permaculture space around money, investing, and finances. Financial permaculture got off the ground around 2010-2013 where permaculture principles were applied to finances. While much of the thinking done early on has been at the macro level, Laura has been working to bring it down the personal finance level. Socially responsible investing is something that Laura does at the local level. She looks for investment opportunities in her local community, like purchasing a share in a local permaculture farm. But she recognizes local investments are few and far between, so she casts a wider net for meaningful investments outside of the stock market, like with the American Homeowner Preservation Fund which buys distressed mortgages and works to keep people in their homes. While it may sound like a charitable contribution, Laura is investing in these opportunities through her retirement account. Though she recognizes these investments may be riskier, she believes there are far greater risks to the environment with many other investments. Anyone considering investing in this way should do their due diligence and understand the risk before investing in a non-diversified portfolio. Laura tries to mitigate this risk using multiple forms of capital as a safety net. In addition to financial capital, there are material capital, intellectual capital, experiential capital, social capital, living capital, cultural capital, and spiritual capital. Other forms of capital sometimes discussed are time, health, and attention. Within social capital, Laura discussed communities helping each other through mutual aid societies and time banks and how they have been springing up since the pandemic began. Understanding these various forms of capital has shaped how Laura thinks about retirement planning. Financial capital is how we access the other forms of capital and they are where our quality of life comes from. Laura has been thinking about how to build and develop her other forms of capital so that she will require less financial capital. Long-term care is extremely expensive as is the insurance to cover it. Building social capital is one way to defer those long-term care costs but may not be a substitute for everyone. Thinking about some of these issues as a system versus a singular item brings more joy and focuses on quality of life instead of a number on a spreadsheet. Jonathan acknowledged that when describing his investor policy statement, he was looking at his options through the various forms of capital he has not solely his net worth and that changes his investing approach. Laura believes it's not necessary to have balance across all forms of capital. It may be more effective to specialize in several and looks to our networks, friends, family, and community to find who is rich in the areas where we are deficient. Though asset mapping, some communities may be poor in financial capital, yet wealthy in other forms which, when tapped, can be converted into financial capital. These forms of capital are not limited to homeowners. They are still accessible to those living a nomadic life, who are renting or not thinking about retirement yet. Community gardens, volunteering, and online communities are several ways to build capital. To watch the video highlights, click on ChooseFI.com/248 RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Get a 4-week trial, free postage, and a digital sale from Stamps.com using promo code "ChooseFI" Check out all the titles available from ChooseFI Publishing Get started on your own path to financial independence at ChooseFI.com/start IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

Continuing the financial independence case study series, Households of FI family, Zach and Marilyn are a married couple with young kids. Using Dave Ramsey's baby steps, they no longer have any debt but have wondered what to do next. Looking to explore investing in real estate, ChooseFI connected them with real estate expert, Paula Pant. Though Zach and Marilyn once lived below the poverty line, they managed to pay off their debt, including student loans, a car loan, credit cards, and medical debt. During that time, they gained a little experience with buying and selling property. Since that time, Marilyn has gone back to work and their income almost doubled. Having earned a profit on some previous homes they flipped after living in and renovating them, it's encouraged them to use the skills they've acquired on future investment properties. Where they currently live in Cedar City UT, the market is a bit inflated and are concerned about the 1% rule where monthly rent should equal 1% of the total purchase price. Paula explains that if a property rents for 1% of the purchase price, that is 12% per year at full occupancy. Since it is estimated that operating costs will be roughly 50% of the monthly rent, 6% of the purchase price is what if leftover as an unleveraged dividend on the property. Assuming no increase in the value of the property, but keeps pace with inflation, that's roughly another 3% based on historical averages, the property gives a 6% dividend and 3% inflationary increase, for a total return of 9%. It is a rough way to determine if a property is worth looking into further Exceptions for the 1% rule of thumb may be made when operating costs are expected to be less than the 50% average, such as if property taxes are extremely low or if it is a newer home. Other exceptions to the 1% rule can also be made when buying a multi-unit home where you live in one unit and rent out the others. In those cases, personal criteria for where you want to live also come into play and the 1% rule can be thrown out the window. Because property values are a little inflated where they live, Zach and Marilyn are interested in buying properties in markets where they don't live. Paula believes that it's easier being an out-of-state landlord because it forced her to treat it like a business when she couldn't just pop over and take care of issues herself. Zach and Marilyn were also interested in what criteria they should consider regarding properties that are fixer-uppers versus being move-in ready. Paula says what she teaches the students in her real estate investing course includes a graph where on the x-axis represents a spectrum with "You Find Deals" at one end and "Your Create Deals" at the other. On the ends of the Y-axis are "Move-in Ready" and "Not Even Habitable". There are tradeoffs between effort and reward, but as effort increases, generally, reward increases as well. If you don't have time to devote to the hardest quadrant of the graph, then it might be easier to find deals in the move-in ready quadrant instead. Since they are debt-free, Marilyn I feeling anxious about taking on additional mortgage debt, but Paula views the mortgage from an investment property differently from personal property. An investment property mortgage is a tool that allows you to cashflow positive. Paula doesn't have a specific price range she won't exceed but says there is a balance of equity to debt that she tries not to exceed across her entire rental property portfolio. She tries to keep a 50/50 ratio where for every $1 of debt she has, she also has $1 of equity which is conservative by most real estate investor standards. To ensure that enough funds are on hand to take care of emergency maintenance and other unexpected household repairs, Pauls advises having 3-6 months' worth of rent on hand to cover these expenses. Zach and Marilyn are wondering if they should cut back on retirement investments and divert to real estate to help them acquire property faster. Paula suggests instead look at how much from their overall budget they want to save and then decide how to divide up the savings. Considering what happened in 2008 with the real estate market, and unsure how the pandemic will impact real estate today, they are unsure when to jump in and purchase an investment property. Similar to trying to time the stock market, Paula encouraged them to look at the numbers to decide if it's a good deal right now. If in the future, the market shifts and no longer makes sense, then sell. When this is done repeatedly over a lifetime, you win. Since they have done well in the past with live-in flips, Paula cautioned them to be aware of their emotions and to be careful about separating what they want from a home they live in with what makes sense as a good investment. A 1031 Exchange allows you to avoid paying capital gains when selling an investment property and reinvest the proceeds from the sale within certain time limits in properties of like-k

What happens when someone is using your finances to prevent you from making decisions that are in your own best interest? What does financial abuse look like and can you reclaim your financial life? Rachael shares her story and how she's become passionate about economic empowerment. Although she had a successful career and what appeared to be a healthy relationship from the outside, Rachael found herself in a relationship with someone who walked all over her. Slowly over time, Rachael's boyfriend began chipping away at her confidence and inserting himself into her finances, putting his name on all of the bills, linking bank accounts, opening joint accounts, and pushing to have his name on the mortgage to the property she had purchased on her own. Your instincts and feelings are worth paying attention to. Had Rachael explored her feelings more, she believes she would have listened to them better. Not knowing what's happening with your bills or financial accounts is a red flag. Sharing accounts is only good when both people are acting in good faith. The drive to take over control finances may start as a result of insecurity in the relationship, but it can take a turn and be used against the other person as a form of punishment. Rachael describes financial abuse as a psychological assault where your trust is so broken that it can damage the relationship you have with yourself. If you aren't making decisions willingly and freely, you are giving up bits of your power and it's then a slippery slope to giving away too much. There's nothing inherently wrong about merging finances but there's needs to be a conversation it. After 10 years, the relationship ended, Rachael found herself in a legal battle over the property, was experiencing PTSD and unable to do her job. The systemic assault she experienced during the relationship and in its aftermath destroyed her trust in society. All the business, government, legal, and social systems she sought help from had failed her. The bright light in her experience is that Rachael has now become an agent of change to have new laws passed in the UK to help other victims of financial abuse. Learning to tell her story and fight for herself was incredibly difficult, but also a skill-building endeavor. She channeled her anger, found her voice, and learned how to speak clearly and with confidence. Always a fan of journaling and understanding the power of words, Rachael started a blog as an unfiltered outlet for her feelings. The positive feedback she received from family and friends also helped build her confidence. Not wanting to return to teaching, Rachael attended one of Alan Donegan's PopUp Business Schools to possibly become a personal fitness trainer. When hearing about using your experiences to build an authentic business, Rachael realized she wanted to help other victims of financial abuse. Rachael wants to become a consultant to banks, housing associations, and lawyers and tell them what they need to do to stop financial abuse from happening, protecting both themselves and their customers. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Register for The Simple StartUp Fall Challenge Order your copy of Raising Your Money Savvy Family For Next Generation Financial Independence by Carol Pittner and Doug Nordman IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

To watch the video highlights, click on ChooseFI.com/245 Matt and Megan are a dual military family on the path to FI. Matt is serving in the UK Royal Navy and Megan is serving in the US Navy, making their tax situation unique. Currently, they plan on having Matt get a green card, allowing him to work in the US, while Megan finishes out her Navy career to earn a pension and then move abroad in about seven years. Once Matt gets his green card, he will be taxed like any other US citizen. He owns an apartment in the UK that he would like to sell. Dave McKeegan notes that since there is no wealth tax in the US, Matt will not be taxed on his assets, but once he gets a green card or meets the substantial presence test, he would potentially have to pay capital gains tax on the sale of the apartment so it would be best to sell it first. Due to the Foreign Account Tax Compliance Act (FATCA), every bank around the world is required to report US citizen account information to the US Treasury Department. US citizens are also required to report accounts on a FinCEN 114 form and assets held overseas are subject to capital gains taxes. Dave wanted Matt and Megan to be aware that mutual funds held outside of the US can often be viewed as passive foreign investment companies. Any investments overseas should be US compliant as well. Vanguard has a number of retirement funds that report correctly to both the US and UK and are exempt from taxes. Matt and Megan are interested in how the can best take advantage of the US tax system and simplify it for themselves. To reduce their taxes, Dave advises Matt to physically give up his green card once they move abroad so that they can place money in international investments under Matt's name and he won't be taxed like he is a US citizen anymore. As long as their assets are less than $2 million, leaving the US will not trigger an exit tax. Depending on income, where their assets are held, and if they have children, their US tax filing status may change to take advantage of higher exemptions, but they should sell the UK property before filing "married filing jointly" as long as he doesn't already meet the substantial presence test. Matt may qualify for a tax-free UK pension when he retires from the Royal Navy but if he has a green card, he will need to pay US taxes on his pension until they move overseas and he gives up the green card. Dave McKeegan has moved around the world and is currently living in Costa Rica. Costa Rica is one of a number of countries that only tax sources of income earned within that country. As his business is located in the US, Dave pays US taxes. If Matt and Megan were to move to a country with tax laws like Costa Rica, they would not pay income tax to that country on their UK and US pensions. Other countries have income tax rules that depend on how much time is spent in that country. So it's possible to slow travel or split the time spend in a few countries and not pay income tax to the countries visited. Countries that tax their citizens living abroad are the United States, Eritrea, and North Korea. While there may be tax advantages to living abroad and giving up US citizenship, Dave has decided that he benefits of retaining citizenship far outweigh the benefits of not paying taxes and the risk of not being let back into the country. Wyoming is an easy state to incorporate a business and there's no state income tax. If also living outside of the US for 330 days a year, you can be eligible for the foreign income exclusion and exclude $100,000 of income from taxation. Alternatively, Matt could set up an online business overseas and pay Megan a salary up the foreign income exclusion amount and also avoid self-employment taxes. Living in Costa Rica, Dave's children have been learning through a combination of the local international school, homeschooling, and the Simple StartUp entrepreneurial program he's been running for a home school group. He is able to have conversations about business and money with his kids about money and they have become interested in investing as well. Though Dave and his family primarily rented homes while moving around the world, the rental market in Costa Rica made conditions more advantageous to buy. When they travel back to the US for extended periods, they can rent their home in Costa Rica out. Diversification doesn't just apply to a stock portfolio. You can be diversified in passports, income streams, and properties from other countries. Spreading your bets around different countries can make sense. Dave discussed some of the issues expats have opening local bank accounts as US citizens. Matt and Megan have been using Revolut to more easily move money around between countries. Opening up a Roth IRA is something Dave suggested Matt and Megan could do to stash away some tax-free money and have ready access to the principal later. Health care coverage overseas was another area Dave suggested they look into, although health care is fre

Who do young people look up to today? The lifestyles marketed on MTV and social media not exactly something to aspire to, but where can the next generation go to find something different? Inspired by the work of her father, Don Wettrick, and feeling like she needed to take charge of the issue, Ava Wettrick created MentorZ, a platform designed to introduce great people to Generation Z. As a young child, Ava thought her dad was the smartest guy in the world. It wasn't until she got older that she realized he wasn't necessarily smart, he just read a lot. She's witnessed his transition from teacher to owning a non-profit and embrace the experience. Being a voracious reader, it didn't take much pushing from her dad to begin consuming content from the likes of Tom Bilyeu, Simon Sinek, and Victor Franco and having an influence over her peers. Since getting to know several entrepreneurs, Ava questioned whether or not college is worth the time and expense. She was surrounded by highly successful people telling not to go to college, but she is attending college and has found it helpful to have the financial support of her parents and scholarships while growing, learning and choosing the information she wants to consume. Don acknowledges that for some majors, college is still relevant, and for those who have the money should go, but have a plan. He thinks the best thing students can do is to start doing the thing they might love and begin to shadow people to determine if it is a good fit. Majoring in entrepreneurship at Ball State, Ava is learning about accounting, marketing, running a business, and being a CEO which has only accelerated her drive to make the podcast a success and provides quality content and great messages. Interviewing guests for her podcast has been a significant personal learning experience and changed her perspective on the power of an interview. She waited a year to release the episode recorded with Tom Bilyeu because she feared it wasn't good enough and yet people think it was one of her best. And following her interview with Dov Baron, she received feedback that he believed in her and wanted to mentor her. While there are ways of doing things to make them appear more important than they are, "fake it til you make it" can have its drawbacks. Don believes humility can be key when it comes to Imposter Syndrome. When it comes to second generation FI, Don says it happens by osmosis. His kids have been raised under a frugal lifestyle. Since his last appearance on the podcast, Don left his teaching job to take the non-profit to the next level, growing both the team starting chapters in co-working spaces and tech hubs. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION The StartEDUP Foundation The 4-Hour Workweek by Timothy Ferriss Outwitting the Devil: The Secret to Freedom and Success by Napoleon Hill Learn to be a better writer with Grammarly Premium Register for The Simple StartUp Fall Challenge ChooseFI Episode 013 The Unfair (FI) Advantage of Teachers 457b Man's Search for Meaning by Viktor E. Frankl Impact Theory Podcast ChooseFI Episode 087 Education Through Innovation Sign up for ChooseFI's FREE FI101 Course! IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

Progress Coach, Jillian Johnsrud, meets with Households of FI member, Corinne, to review the two exercises designed to help her understand how she can prioritize her life to focus on the things that matter the most. After taking a quiz to reveal which of the Four Tendencies she is, Corinne discovered that she is an Upholder. She has many things that she would like to do but struggles with feeling guilty about doing non-work related things that are important too. Corinne would like to find more time for meditation and develop better awareness and confidence with her finances. Though Corinne always felt like she was decent with money, beyond investing in a 401k, she would like a better understanding of what her baseline expenses should be and where she can make improvements with a budget and investments. When it comes to learning, Corinne feels that she learns best by practice, repetition, and talking through things, but would love to make her processes as automated as possible. Jillian suggested that Corinne may learn about investing best through a book club, class, or mastermind group. Her goals for mediation are to be more in tune with her body, realize when she needs to step away from work and take a break plus try and have mediation become a part of a daily routine. Jillian divides priorities into two categories, the things we want to make progress on and the action steps to take. There is a huge return on the investment when taking those actions, but things that help with progress are foundational and make life easier. As habits develop in stages, Jillian suggests Corinne first try to find a place in her life for a two-minute meditation habit, before getting started and trying to optimize it. This will help test out when mediation might be appropriate and get through the learning curve. Then focus on any hesitation resistance to doing those two minutes. Creating habits can be more successful when added to an existing routine or by creating a prompt. Corinne would also like to make progress in her career. She needs to stay focused better during working hours to make the most out of them and make progress with communication and executive presence. Exercise, eating healthy, and socializing with friends are other areas where Corinne would like to reduce friction and make doing them easier. Since starting a new habit is so difficult, Jillian likes to divide the year up into six-week chunks and focus on one of the new habits in each of the six weeks. The synergy between the habits begins to build momentum. For the exercise "Challenges and Motivations", Corinne felt making partner at work was her biggest motivation because she values being part of a team or community and having a sense of belongingness. Other motivations she has are security and autonomy. To increase Corinne's sense of her top three motivations, she feels that she hasn't done well lately with maintaining relationships and connections with people. Jillian likes to use her understanding of the five love languages as a framework to strengthen relationships with others. The biggest challenge to meeting the goal of becoming partner is balancing the expectations of her time at work with her personal life which is why she would like to be more focused at work. Additionally, she would like to stop comparing herself to others at work and concentrate on what works for her. Options for tackling challenges include self-correction, finding a more helpful perspective, and problem solve it. In Corinne's case, Jillian thought she would benefit by actively looking for leaders who were more like her rather than the hard-charging partners in her workplace. Regarding Corinne's challenge with setting boundaries at work with her time, people who work for her sometimes find it difficult to connect with her. Jillian suggested creating a specific time or better communicating what times she is available. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION JillianJohnsrud.com ChooseFI Episode 162 The Four Tendencies and FI With Gretchen Rubin Everyday Courage Episode 32 Four Tendencies, The Obliger Save on shipping costs with a free four-week trial with Stamps.com when using code "ChooseFI" Earn $1,000 or more with ChooseFI's 3 card cash back strategy The Five Love Languages by Gary Chapman IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

For those on the path to financial independence, finance, fitness, and life optimization all intersect. During her career in the banking industry, Shannon McLay found it didn't work for the people she wanted to help. She set out to use her skill set and training to change the coaching industry and founded Financial Gym. Even for those who not physically fit, they know what it looks like and there are many resources available for achieving it. The path the financial independence is similar in that it is a long journey. You have to work up to it, will experience setbacks, and take breaks. Much like diets, budgets don't work long-term. Making lifestyle changes is the key to success. At the Financial Gym, clients hit 90% of the goals set for themselves by examining their money behaviors and constantly working to figure out what's will work for them. The two largest emotions people have regarding money are fear and shame. Once people drop these highly charged emotions and understand the financial numbers don't define them, they can break through and embrace moving forward. After turning 30, Shannon realized she didn't want the life she was leading. Her life's trajectory changed when she came to understand that to have long-term sustainable happiness is to help other people and not expect anything in return. During her work as a financial advisor for Merrill Lynch, she discovered she enjoyed helping out her pro bono clients far more than the wealthy ones. It allowed her to see there was a need for a service where it didn't matter what you looked like financially, you just needed to get financially healthy. Much like going to the gym to get healthy, her concept of a financial gym was a place to meet with financial trainers for a monthly membership fee. Following the model of H&R Block, Shannon believed people wanted to meet with a financial advisor face-to-face. She was advised to prove the model would work before looking to raise money. Experimenting with different plans and prices, she had great success with her first clients increasing their net worth. Clients wanted to keep working with her, but she was running out of money to continue investing in her business. When a former boss invested $100,000 in her concept, she rebranded using the gym concept. The physical environment of the Financial Gym created a community where clients had a shared goal and a safe space to talk about money. Shannon was able to scale her business by developing a training program and teaching compassionate and empathetic people what she knew. Those contemplating becoming an entrepreneur should ask themselves, "Am I a good problem solver?" because running a business is like solving a lot of word problems. No one's financial situation is so bad that it can't be fixed. The trainers at the Financial Gym have seen and fixed it all. On average, clients pay $70-80 a month for membership, but they offer a six-month money-back guarantee which they've never needed to pay out on. The average client increases their net worth by $2,500, increases their credit score by 60 points, and negotiates a $5,000 a year salary increase within the first 3 months of membership. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Compare quotes from top insurers with Policy Genius Earn $1000 or more with ChooseFI's 3 card cash back strategy! Happiness: A Guide to Developing Life's Most Important Skill by Matthieu Ricard Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions When You Don't Have All the Facts by Annie Duke IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

The Troy and Lindsay are new on their journey, finding FI several months ago after making a budget and realizing they had no money left over at the end of the month. Compared to other systematic approaches to becoming debt-free, they felt FI was creative and adaptable to a variety of lifestyles. The first step Troy and Lindsay took was to determine where all their money was going using a budget tracker, which enabled them to cut monthly expenses and continue to do the things they enjoyed doing, like going to happy hours. Except for their mortgage, the Troy and Lindsay have paid off all of their debt, contribute to a 401k, and have an $80,000 net worth, including a $15,000 emergency fund. Though they both enjoy their jobs now, Lindsay is a teacher, so Brad suggests considering her pension's "worth vs worth it" as Grumpus Maximus has discussed on the podcast and in his book, The Golden Albatross. Use the 4% rule of thumb to determine what your net worth should be to reach FI. Using the 4% rule, you can withdraw 4% of the balance each year to live off of and reasonably expect it to last for the rest of your life. To calculate your FI number, multiply your annual expenses by 25. For every $100 cut from your monthly expenses, is $30,000 less you need to save to reach FI. Troy and Lindsay recently refinanced their mortgage from 4.75% to 3.25% and are investing the $500 a monthly savings into 401ks and Roth IRAs. When wondering about paying off their mortgage, Brad acknowledges that there is a real psychological satisfaction the goes along with it, but he looks at it in this way. The interest portion the payment is the true expense, while the principal payment is a reallocation of net worth going from your checking account into home equity. Brad suggests taking the time to document a year's worth of expenses and look at different scenarios for what life may be like in retirement to come up with a range of possible annual expenses. When calculating their FI number, Troy realized the number was double if he included a mortgage payment. Brad suggests looking at the mortgage amortization schedule for prepayment options. Food expenses have been cut with a goal of $500 a month. Lindsay checks to see what's in the pantry before shopping and meal preps one day a week to avoid eating out, but she isn't penny-pinching when it comes to quality. Removing mortgage and childcare from their expenses, Troy and Lindsay's monthly expenses are about $3,500 per month, which puts their FI number at just around 1 million dollars. They are currently saving roughly $50,000 per year to add to the $80,000 net worth but are wondering where they go from here. Brad acknowledges there can be a lot of initial excitement upon finding FI and making changes, but then there can be a lull. He challenges Troy and Lindsay to figure out what they want their lives to look like rather than compare their FI journey to anyone else's. It's important to understand that life is fluid and wants may change over time. Test small before making big decisions or changes. Flexibility and communication with your partner are critically important pieces of the process. The next steps Troy and Lindsay will be taking are to build a spreadsheet with different retirement expenses scenarios and talk about what they really want their lives to look like. Anyone interested in FI should understand that you don't need to be perfect, but you do need to get started. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION ChooseFI Episode 227 The Golden Albatross with Grumpus Maximus The Golden Albatross by Grumpus Maximus Protect your online activities with an Express VPN Earn $1000 or more with ChooseFI's 3 card cash back strategy! NewRetirement Retirement Calculator ChooseFI Episode 013 The Unfair(FI) Advantage of Teachers with The Millionaire Educator ChooseFI Episode 238 How to Test Out of College While You're Still in High School with The Millionaire Educator Get started on your journey at ChooseFI.com/start Get a group of friends to join you on the journey with ChooseFI's free FI101 course! IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence.

For video highlights from the episode, check out choosefi.com/240. Tiffany Alice was raised by a financially savvy father who taught her how to save and handle her money, but a few poor choices in her 20s destroyed her finances. Since overcoming her mistakes, she's made it her mission to help others fix their finances. After falling victim to a con man, Tiffany found herself more than $35,000 in credit card debt. Though her pre-school teacher salary wasn't a high income, she was saving aggressively by living simply and transferring her credit card debt to 0% interest cards. During the 2008/2009 recession, she was $300,000 in the hole between credit card, student loan, and mortgage debt when she was laid off from her job. Seeing that she was struggling less with financial hardship because of the lesson's Tiffany had learned from her father, friends began to ask for help with their finances. She liked teaching and turned teaching financial education into a business. Through her business, she can make good money, help people, and still have happiness and time. She feels that she is living her life in complete alignment. Even with a high net worth, she and her husband continue to live frugally and without debt. One of the lessons her mistakes taught her was to get straight to a solution sooner rather than allow shame or ego to delay it. It's important to acknowledge your role in mistakes, take full responsibility, and then get over it. Teaching financial education was the easy part. Tiffany found that her own financial struggles allowed her to relate to people. She doesn't consider herself to be a guru but an educator helping her girlfriends along. Tiffany built her business from one-on-one financial coaching to a following of over half of a million people in her Dreamcatcher community. Volunteering in her community and utilizing her network, in addition to social media helped get her business off the ground. When followers from outside her local area began to request her course, Tiffany scaled the business to reach anyone, no matter where they lived, with her Live Richer Challenge. When it launched, 10,000 people had signed up. To date more, than 900,000 have taken one or more of her Live Richer challenges. Along the way, Tiffany learned about blogging, video editing, affiliates, monetization, and self-publishing. A good teacher has to be constantly learning, listening, and reading, but what made Tiffany a really good teacher comes from being a pre-school teacher, she honestly cares about her students. She's taken her skills in leading and caring about students as a teacher and applied them to her business, making it an amazing place to work where her employees feel looked after and cared for. Tiffany has authored a pre-financial education book, Happy Birthday Mali More, aimed at teaching pre-school age children a lesson about the things that matter most. RESOURCES MENTIONED IN TODAY'S CONVERSATION Free 4 week trial with Stamps.com! Click on the microphone and enter code "ChooseFI". Earn $1000 or more with ChooseFI's 3-card cashback strategy Live Richer Challenge Live Richer Academy Happy Birthday Mali More by Tiffany Aliche IF YOU WANT TO SUPPORT CHOOSEFI: Share FI by sending a friend "ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence".

Don't believe that you need anyone's permission for access anymore. The gatekeepers are gone and the ability to access knowledge on-demand and create a business model around it has never been easier. The realization that you have autonomy gives you control over your life is transformational. You can control your expenses and reach FI. You can choose to pursue interest-led learning and follow a passion. There is no more "they" you need to seek permission from. MK didn't need the permission of traditional publishing's gatekeepers, instead, she learned how to self-publish. Employers are beginning to value skills over degrees. Google recently announced they are offering 3 new online certificate programs in skill areas critically important to the tech industry. Google is even offering 100,000 need-based scholarships for individuals enrolled in the certificate programs. Start building a talent stack around what interests you. Bradley Rice from episode 117 is building BradForce Academy, a course designed for people in a Salesforce career looking for more freedom and flexibility. Working just 20 hours a week as a Salesforce Freelance Administrator in 2019, Bradley Rice made $225,000 using skills he had picked up during his lunch hour. From the community, Chris shared a big win on the ChooseFI Facebook page. He and his wife maxed out her Employee Stock Purchasing Plan and used to it help pay off her student loans once it reached its maturity to qualify as long-term capital gains. For the first time in 20 years, they feel like they are winning the game. Josh challenged Brad to share what his Todoist organized life looks like. In it, Brad has everything scheduled, from chasing his home air filters every 2 months to passport renewal reminders to subscription cancelation dates. Brad's taking his Red X month off from work, but ChooseFI episodes will continue with amazing pre-recorded shows, including an episode with The Budgetnista, Tiffany Aliche, and deep dives with the Households of FI. Jonathan issues a challenge to start on the path to FI. Gather a small group of friends and go through a 6-8 week transformation together starting September 1. Resources Mentioned In Today's Conversation Google Announces 100,000 Scholarships for Online Certificates Earn $1000 or more with ChooseFI's 3 Card Cashback Strategy M1 Finance ChooseFI Episode 117 Making the Case for Part Time with Bradley Rice Salesforce Freelance Consulting Course Preview BradForce Academy BradForce YouTube Channel ChooseFI Episode 024R The Friday Roundup | How to Hack Your ESPP Todoist ChooseFI Episode 221 Introducing Our Households of FI!! Part 1 ChooseFI Episode 224 Introducing Our Households of FI!! Part 2 ChooseFI's FREE FI101 Course

Gerry Born, the Millionaire Educator, joins the show to talk about strategizing college via online classes, dual enrollment, and CLEP Testing. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/238

Today we talk about asset allocation versus information allocation. What are you doing with all the information you are taking in? Are you making intentional steps to build your talent stack? Tune in to today's Friday Roundup! For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/237

The guys talk about their journey toward financial independence and fitness and how closely the two correlated to one another. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/236

Jacques Hopkins shares how he built an online course and some of the skills he had to learn along the way. If you have been sitting on an business idea you definitely want to listen to this episode! For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/235

Brad's children learn a valuable lesson on running a business and some of the associated difficulties. As Tesla becomes a potential candidate for the S&P500, the guys take the opportunity to touch a bit on questions you might have about this aforementioned index. And the pronunciation of our Brand: ChooseF.I. or ChooseFI? Or is there even a potential dark horse in this race as a third alternative? Find out on today's Friday Roundup! For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/234

Jordan Harbinger shares his tips and techiques for managing and expanding your network For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/233

Doug Nordman and Carol Pittner Join the show to talk about how to raise your children to think about the potential of money in a positive way For more information on the show and for shownotes visit https://www.choosefi.com/232

Jonathan makes a bet, the secret to wealth lies in the Casserole, and the guys share their thoughts on college planning For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/231

Jonathan, Brad, and MK have collected tips, comments, hacks, and feedback from the community for crushing college debt free. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/230

Corey and Jess from The Fioneers join the show to tell share their story of getting on the same page financially. They talk about incremental freedom, habitual spending triggers, and stress management. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/229

The guys talk about their strategies for public speaking, and Brad shares how podcasting has played a key role in learning to play into his strengths in order to overcome his fear of public speaking. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/228

Grumpus Maximus has partnered with ChooseFI Publishing to release his book The Golden Albatross. While pensions can seem like a dry topic, Grumpus has created an in-depth guide to the subject while simultaneously making it enjoyable to read. Today Grumpus is on the show to talk with us a bit about his story. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/227

Lauren and Steven Keys from Trip of a Lifestyle join the show to share their story of frugalality to live a life doing the things they love. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/226

Today we're talking about staycations, traveling the world ~$1,200/month, and community wins! For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/225

Today we are introducing the second 4 households in our on-going case study project where we follow 8 households on their journey towards FI. Each household is just starting their journey to FI, and each of which ultimately have the same goal: achieving FI. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/224

The Nomads join the show to talk about their system for perpetual travel, and all the nuances that go into a nomadic lifestlye. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/223

A lot of people think FI is about having as much money as possible, but that is a fundamentally flawed supposition. Jonathan and Brad saw plenty of "successful" people in the workforce who were miserable. Today we talk about the Oh-so-dreaded mid life crisis, and what FI is really about. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/222

Today we are introducing the first 4 households in our on-going case study project where we follow 8 households on their journey towards FI. Each household is just starting their journey to FI, and each of which ultimately have the same goal: achieving FI. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/221