Mindy:
What if losing everything was actually the best thing that ever happened to you? Today’s guest went through a divorce that could have destroyed his retirement dreams. Instead, he cracked the code to Coast Fi and is now living proof that it’s never too late to take control of your money. Today, Aubrey is going to share the exact steps he took to go from rock bottom to financial independence, and why starting over in your 40s is absolutely possible.
Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my free only financial advice co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott:
Dang it, I came up with that free only financial advice co-host Scott Trench intro line and I did I forgot to give myself a pun to respond to it with.
We are so excited to be joined by Aubrey Williams today. I won’t go too much into his background because we’ll be talking about both his personal financial independence story and then on Friday’s episode, we’re going to have him back on the podcast to discuss how to build draw down guardrails for early retirement. Aubrey, welcome to the show.
Guest:
Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Mindy. It’s a real honor and a pleasure to be here. I’m first and always a member of the FI community. I started out desperate in 2011, I think it was, reading Early Retirement Extreme, and then pretty soon after Mr. Money Mustache came on the scene and he was a little bit funnier. It might be a slight exaggeration but I told this to Pete Adney, Mr. Money Mustache when I first met him in person, that he’s saving lives out there and my life is forever changed by the contributions of people like him and him in particular. And so what I’m here for, what I’m doing is trying to do that in my way for anyone, absolutely anyone I can to help with what we’re doing here which is financial independence.
Mindy:
Well, Aubrey, I had several friends who attended CampFi Rocky Mountain week one and a half and when they came back, they told me about this awesome presentation from Aubrey Williams about setting guardrails on your spending. and I said, you know, I need that. I need to hear that episode. And if I need to hear it, I know there’s a lot of people in my audience who needs to hear it. But before we get into the presentation, I want to introduce you to the audience and give a little bit of your back story. So you said 2011 you started in the FI community first with uh early retirement extreme and then moving on to Mr. Money Mustache. What brought you to the FI community?
Guest:
Yeah, what brought me to the FI community was a combination of heading towards and eventually going through a divorce. and I always joke say, oh, very difficult divorce. I haven’t met the person yet who didn’t put that qualifier in front of it. But mine, I have to say, it was in the end a very good thing. It was fair, but it had very significant consequences for my finances. I ended up with all the debt because I was the one who had the steady paycheck and my savings were cut in half. I had to buy out my ex-wife of my pension, I had an old school pension time. So I went from earning well, saving well, living in a three bedroom house in Santa Barbara with two little kids to living in a one bedroom apartment with the kids’ bunk bed in the bedroom and me in the same room and things were difficult and this was unfamiliar and different. I was looking for help because I hadn’t had to navigate anything like this before. And I went to financial advisors. I actually went to three of them, and I picked one to work with. and she was an amazing person. She was a marine, in case you know any marines, you never say retired marine because they’re never retired. She was very interested in choosing investments. and looking back, I might not pick the exact same investment she did, but that was what she was interested in. But I didn’t need help with that. I needed help with budgeting and cash flow and paying down debt, obviously. And she wasn’t that interested in that and even though I asked directly, the the best advice I got, sort of jokingly best, was, well if you need more money, then you can reduce your 401k contributions. So following that advice, I gave up three years of the company match. It didn’t really help things because the underlying spending patterns and behaviors didn’t change.
Mindy:
In what year did those underlying patterns change? Was that when you found the financial independence community?
Guest:
I think I found the first part of it like I said in 2011, but when I put it all to work was in 2014. That’s when I was in that situation and I had gone to professionals, paid them money. I didn’t understand at the time how I was paying my financial advisor. I think it’s shocking how many people are in that same boat. I was paying 1% assets under management, and as soon as I understood that, I built the spreadsheet that many of us have that shows the impact of 1% assets under management over 10 years, over 20 years, over 30 years. I legitimately asked the question, is this person providing value that justifies me having 20, 30, 40% less depending on the assumptions you make? and I came to the conclusion, heck no. And so I was very nervous, called her up and said, I’m firing you, you know, in nicer words. And then it was managing my own investments, controlling my spending, food, cars, housing, all of the big rocks. And then I really am someone who believes in small changes, many of them add up to big effects also. So for example, today I I wrote a blog post about how using an old school double-edged razor, for which the blades are 7.91 cents each, compared to a Gillette sensor or a Gillette Venus for women, can save you about $1284 over 10 years per person. So in my household, I have four shavers, two teenagers, myself and my partner. And that’s real money, and it’s not just that thing by itself, but it’s a couple dozen or even a hundred changes like that that also affect the trajectory.
Mindy:
Okay, I love that point. You just said it’s a couple of changes, it’s multiple changes like this that affect your trajectory. There are so many people who will hear you, $1,200 over 10 years, that’s nothing. I’m not even going to bother. Well, that’s just one thing. If you can change everything, then you can have like significant real savings and it isn’t about the razor, it’s about the thought process that goes into it. Is it easier to buy those Gillette razors? You bet your bottom dollar it’s easier to buy those razors. I’ve actually never installed a new razor into those razor, the reusable ones that you’re talking about, but my grandfather had one. I remember seeing them. They seem a little scary to me. So it can be done. I mean, you haven’t cut off all your fingers yet, have you? Changing out those razors?
Guest:
Not at all.
Scott:
I think what you’re trying to say is that all those little shavings add up.
Mindy:
Oh my goodness.
Guest:
I couldn’t resist. Sorry guys.
Mindy:
What’s your shavings rate? Uh, Scott has uh gone back on his savings rate if you can see.
Scott:
Oh yeah, I I use up like, what, a fraction of a fewer razors than that now that I’m not shaving this part of my face anymore.
Guest:
The other angle is, not everyone’s purely financially oriented, but that razor blade, the one from Gillette is not recyclable. There’s metal in it, there’s plastic in it, they can’t be easily separated, so it’s landfill. Whereas the steel, 100% steel razor blade, steel is recycled at the highest rate of any material. So from an environmental perspective, it also works. So I I like to look for things like that and this really is an homage to Mr. Money Mustache because this is his combination, which is make your life better, spend less money and do something good for the planet. If you can put those together consistently, then things tend to go well.
Scott:
You mentioned earlier, Mr. Money Mustache was a little bit funnier than some of the other financial bloggers there. One um post that sticks in my head that this conversation reminds me of is is his uh diatribe, I guess I’ll refer to it as a diatribe, about the uh universal men’s grooming device, which is an electric razor that he discusses uh for $12 and its effectiveness in cutting costs in a variety of areas uh in one’s life. So.
Mindy:
What are your top 10 uh of this like this example with a razor that you’d use?
Guest:
I’ll tell you one that didn’t work out because that’s probably funnier. I love a certain Trader Joe’s trail mix. And at one time, I was buying a lot of it and it’s organic and it’s $7.99 a bag, and it’s not a pound, you know, it’s like 12 ounces instead of 16 ounces. And I thought, okay, for sure, the financial independence aficionado in me can do better. And so out of that whole bag of trail mix, I weighed and counted every single piece, every single pumpkin seed, every dried cranberry, every pistachio, and then I went to Costco and I price shopped all the ingredients, and I thought, okay, for sure, for sure, for sure, I’m going to win. And you know what? Trader Joe’s was cheaper. But that’s the length that I’ll go to. And I actually like that result even more because who would think that Trader Joe’s would be cheaper, even with me going to the trouble of buying every single ingredient, but maybe with volume. So now I buy that trail mix 100% confident I’m getting a good deal.
Mindy:
Aubrey was able to build back a strong financial runway after his divorce. How’d he do it? We’ll be talking about that right after the break.
All right, let’s jump back in.
Scott:
I love that you went to that level of research because I’m never going to do that. I’m just going to be honest right there. But I love that you did because you you know where you’re spending and you’re spending it on what you want.
Mindy:
I can hear people listening be like, oh, I would never do that. Well, you know what? I wouldn’t either. But that doesn’t mean that he’s wrong for doing it. That just means that’s not our personality. and that doesn’t mean that that’s the only item or you have to have that level of research to see where you’re spending your money. Personal finance is personal. I say that all the time. and if you want to spend your time making sure that you are getting the absolute best Trader Joe’s level trail mix price, then you can do that. But if you choose not to, there are lots of other ways that you can look at your spending without going down the rabbit hole. And I hope you don’t feel like I’m being mean, Aubrey. I’m not. I’m trying to introduce an article from J Money over a budgets are sexy called challenge everything. And this is an article he wrote a really long time ago, but it goes into kind of detail about how he decided he wanted to make sure that he wasn’t overspending on things. So he came up with this idea. I’m going to challenge everything. I’m going to look and see. The example that comes to mind is his insurance. I have heard and I have said multiple times, your insurance company is not going to be loyal to you. So you don’t need to be loyal to them. Your car insurance, your home insurance, that kind of insurance. I’m not talking about health insurance. That’s usually you get through work or the ACA and that’s a different conversation altogether. But your car insurance, you notice that your car insurance just went up even though you didn’t have an accident last year or even had an accident for a while. Sit down and call up all of the big names. Call up the little names and see who’s got the best price on your insurance. What do you do for auto insurance? What do you do for home insurance? What do you do for umbrella policy?
Guest:
Pet insurance.
Mindy:
That’s one I’ve noticed a lot of people don’t talk about. Pet insurance, right? Pet insurance. I actually don’t have pets, so that’s never going to come up in my spending.
Scott:
I want to chime in here and say, your example here of analyzing the cost of razors and trail mix is perfect fuel for the anti financial independence retire early influencer who says they’re all a bunch of frugal weirdos uh over here in the fire community. And I want to chime in here and say, this is absolutely necessary analysis for most people who are not these big shot business owner influencers on the internet who have big incomes, right? If you’re making $250,000 a year, some big income like that, then you’d be absolutely silly to spend any time really doing some of the analysis Aubrey that you did on these types of cost savings because it’s almost certain that you’re going to be able to get a out a 1% annual improvement in your income, which will totally amplify your financial position. Or if you have millions of dollars, getting your investment portfolio in shape and really crystallized is going to be more important than this analysis. But what these people forget is that almost everybody starts out at a median income or with very little in the way of assets, and there is nothing to optimize on those fronts. We are already working a job that is the maximum, that takes us to the maximum of our abilities at that particular moment in time, and investments in our career are long-term. We may not have investments to optimize from a portfolio perspective. So it’s go down a very short checklist of investment portfolios. And from there, the thing we can control is our expenses. And these analyses make an enormous difference at that stage in the journey and get the snowball going and that’s why most people can never get the snowball going is because they’re not intentionally treating their costs with this level of analysis. And that’s the part that people miss. In the context of a fire journey, people see the extreme frugality that people do and the links they’ll go to get the snowball going. but they forget about uh the how that in just a few years translates to exploding wealth and optionality and the option to spend big on the basis of a a much larger portfolio. So I wanted to call that out because I can see people being like, I don’t want to analyze the the cost of the ingredients in my trail mix all to just keep buying it from Trader Joe’s and do this analysis 30 to 100 times on on big cost of my life. but no, that’s the answer. That’s what you should do. In that context, one push I’d give you is, it would never have occurred to me to analyze the inputs to trail mix or the cost of razor blades when I was started my financial journey. Instead, I looked at like housing. I’m going to house hack. That’s my biggest expense and if I can make a delay there. How would you encourage somebody to take the first couple of steps here, keeping in mind the prioritized order or the size of the benefit if they feel that they’re in this place where, yes, I do have to analyze my cost because that is my lever right now in my financial journey. How would you start this analysis so it’s not so deep down perhaps the stack of expenses as a as a razor blade analysis?
Guest:
Yeah, absolutely. The way I looked at it was what’s the proportion of expenses? And for me, the big four were taxes, housing, food, and transportation. And so taxes, I made contributions as much as I was able to to every tax advantage account, which at the time was 401k pre tax, HSA, flexible spending account, which was a special purpose flexible spending account just for dental and vision and dependent care spending account. So right there, drastically reduced taxes. I went from a $3,500 a month rent to 15.95, that was that one bedroom. With food, I was spending $800 a month on restaurants and $1,500 a month on groceries, and I took that down to $400 or less of groceries and $125 a month in restaurants. And then finally, with my car, as my first car after I got my first job, I really wanted a BMW. Now I did it in a smart way. I bought one that was three years old, it was still under warranty, new it would have cost 55k. I got it for 25k and it was an amazing car, 2001 330i with a performance package and I did track days and autocross. I enjoyed the heck out of it. but I was stuck with a $400 a month payment for five years. That definitely slowed everything way down. and so I sold that car and I bought a Prius. And this was a big identity shift. You know, I was the corporate guy in the BMW, and it almost helped that I had had that identity. It made it easier to let it go. And so I’ve seen that repeat itself over and over. we’re going to catch up on my story. I’m now a financial advisor, I’ve left the corporate world behind, and I’m helping people from the FI community and from the neurodiverse community with financial planning. I’m advice only, I don’t manage anyone’s assets, I’m hourly. So my intention there is for it to be very accessible and scalable. But often it takes having the thing at least a little bit before someone is ready to let it go. So, go out for the big fancy dinner with oysters and crab. Have the experience and then you can make it a once a year or twice a year thing instead of always feeling like, I can’t. That’s a a mental model or a framework that I have found helpful to people when they’re feeling deprivation a little bit, but yet they need to control their spending at least temporarily.
Mindy:
I like that. You can afford anything, you can’t afford everything from Paula Pant and that’s I think a lot of people in this community, me included, I’m not excluding myself at all here, really feel like I can’t spend anything on anything ever. I have to be so frugal and it’s really not so much fun when you are constantly saying no to yourself. I like that advice. So I have a question. You mentioned you were living in Santa Barbara, but then you also mentioned that there were two kidos involved. Did you ever consider moving to a lower cost of living area or was that just not an option with the kids?
Guest:
It was an option. If anyone has been in a a divorce situation. Mine was I’d say high conflict. and so it is theoretically possible to convince an ex-spouse to relocate, and it was difficult. It is a high cost of living area. I think the median single home price now is around 1.4 million. And that’s median. The average is higher. I really, really, really love this area. The fact that it’s not overdeveloped, it’s bikable, there’s the mountains on one side and ocean on the other. And I grew up in Washington D. C, in New York City, and different parts of Central and South America. and I felt so good the moment I landed here and I made friends right away. So there was a lot of things keeping me here. and I think that it speaks to what’s possible if one is willing to hold something like location fixed even in one of the most expensive places in the world. if you’re willing to be flexible with other elements, it can work and I did it. And within four years, that debt that I was talking about was paid off. I had more than doubled my net worth and my savings rate net of taxes was 62%. and that was from a negative savings rate four years before and that’s using the tools of this community.
Scott:
Was that including how you allocated if if you had to allocate for child support or alimony?
Guest:
Yeah, and at one point, I did have both child support and spousal support, which is what they call alimony in California and it was half of my take-home pay that was going to that. So as JL Collins says, learn to live on half. Some of us don’t have a choice. And then once some of those elements stopped and were adjusted, spousal support continued for five years. I could keep living the way I was and just pile that money into investments, which is exactly what I did and putting more power and control on my side of the table. Scott, earlier you were talking about jobs and careers and at least at the moment for most people, wherever they are is fixed. Something in your book really stuck with me and it was that you very intentionally went from a career and a job where outperformance might only be rewarded by the difference between a three and a 5% raise to a role where you were selling and outperformance could mean 1.5X, 2X or even 10X. I think that’s a really important message and the way I deliver that is there is no such thing as fixed expenses and there’s no such thing as fixed income and it fits in with Mindy what you were referencing with J money, challenge everything, including your income.
Scott:
I would say that like I’m putting myself in the shoes of that person because I I get in LinkedIn fights with these people from time to time um about the fire movement, but there’s like a little bit of this, hey, the fire community, all they do is just worry about expenses. And there’s almost a little bit of a truth to it on that front, which is what I was getting at earlier, right? Is that analysis on the frugality side makes sense to a point. But if you’re in a job that’s paying a median income and the career is going to do that and your journey is 20 years, frugaling your way to fire does not make sense. Like that effort is wasted or or could be much better applied to becoming a more sophisticated investor, to house hacking, to taking some job in sales or starting a business eventually, right? It of course, doesn’t make sense to do that if you already are a very high-earning corporate executive or whatever, right, or your field is already producing an income that is so high that that that becomes there. But I think there’s a valid criticism there at some point of, hey, your plan is to work this median income job for 20 years and fire is a top priority, why aren’t we beginning to set aside some liquidity to take a risk or to begin developing our skill set there?
Mindy:
And this comes up on a lot of challenges I see. is, hey, I feel like I’m doing everything right. I’m I’m kind of stuck. Like this is going to take me 15 more years. Well, nothing in your plan can work. There’s nothing that could get you lucky. There’s no business or career shift in there.
Scott:
It’s just this formula on a spreadsheet and the formula’s great, but you also got to I think layer in a few bets. and that that’s what it sounds like where you arrived at and where you went into your business for yourself. Is that is that what I’m hearing?
Guest:
Well, it took quite a while. I’ll catch up to that. But I was that person who wasn’t willing to change anything. When I when I first came to the community, Mindy, as I said, I discovered it in 2011. I took in the information, but I said, well, three bedroom house, I have two kids, can’t change that. I have the car payment, and I like my BMW and it’s part of my identity, can’t change that. And so I posted my whole situation on the Mr. Money Mustache forums and they said right away, it was lightning quick, change out the house, get a different car, work on your food budget, you know, they just ran down. And I I wrote back in great detail, well I can’t change that because I can’t change that because and the response was, okay, come back when you’re ready.
Scott:
I think that that’s it, right? There’s a lot of people like, hey, well I’m not gonna do that. I’m just not gonna do that. and it’s totally fine. There’s more important things than FIRE, you’re just not gonna FIRE.
Guest:
Yeah, and when I was ready, you know, it was like it was my idea maybe I suffer from that one where, oh yeah, I did it, I did it. Yeah, I was doing exactly what the members of that forum told me to do four years ago that I wasn’t willing to do, but it absolutely worked once I was ready. So that’s another concept that we can use is just because you hear something right away, you don’t have to decide yes or no forever. You can plant a seed and see how it might apply to your life. You don’t necessarily have to make huge changes all at once.
Mindy:
Absolutely correct. When you are ready. I love what you just said. It absolutely worked once I was ready. And not everybody’s going to be ready the first time they hear it, or the second time they hear it, and that’s okay. That’s why we keep talking about it. We want people to identify with a story. and I think there’s going to be a lot of people listening who are like, yeah, I also didn’t listen the first time I heard it. and that’s okay. There’s been lots of things I didn’t listen to the first time I heard it either.
Guest:
Yeah, so, Scott, you’re asking about my business. So I grew up a little bit of an unusual childhood. Home base was Washington D. C. but my dad was an anthropologist and my mom was a modern dancer. So I was living in rural Mexico, in eight different countries in South America where he was doing fieldwork, and then my mom was traveling back and forth to New York City to perform. I would go from place to place and for example in Mexico where I lived my job was to take cows out to pasture at four years old. Two years later I was in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which is a very posh suburb of Washington D. C. Kids were throwing fits because they didn’t get the Nintendo entertainment system that they wanted in 1986. I didn’t really question it. you know, it just all seemed normal to me. It was only later that I looked back. I said, okay, the the money that was flowing through people’s lives was vastly different. Did the money fix everything? No. Did it help with some things like healthcare, being able to go to the hospital, shelter, housing, you bet it did, but it didn’t fix everything. And so I brought that into my life, my career, and the way it showed up the most was I went to work for engineering companies and instead of only caring about the bottom line, I really cared more about the people that I was leading, and so I became a director of research and development, associate director of research and development at Raytheon in radar technology and I was program manager at Lockheed Martin in infrared technology. My goal, and I would say this out loud was for the engineers who were working for me to routinely, not just once, but routinely do the best work of their lives. And often they maybe had that experience once or twice. And so I saw that as my role. That career, which was once my dream job, I stayed way too long. As I was making my own changes in my life with financial independence, friends and family said, ‘What are you doing? How are you doing this? Can you help me?’ And so I started helping them. And then the friends of the friends were asking and I wanted to help them. and eventually it was taking up a lot of time, although I enjoyed the heck out of it. so I started doing paid financial coaching in 2019. and I continued that until I got tired of saying this is not financial advice. I wanted people to be able to take what I said as seriously as any other financial advisor. And so I became a financial advisor, even though that was the thing I was most critical of a lot of the time. I said, well, instead of criticizing it, how about be one that does things differently. And I was doing that for several years alongside my 50 to 70 hour a week corporate job. I was working 30 to 40 hours on the financial planning business. and at Camp FI, my very first one, I made the commitment to the people there that I was going to leave the corporate job in March of 2024 and I was ready to, I had the date picked. and a layoff was offered right at the beginning of March and I accepted it. So it took a real commitment because I was giving up a very healthy salary, 240k a year in this corporate job for a business that was growing exponentially. but if anyone’s looked at an exponential curve, the first parts of it are very little.
Mindy:
One to two, two to four.
Guest:
Exactly, exactly. And in the first quarter, I think I made 7k, which was a huge achievement, you know, but compared to 240k, you know, showing up in a paycheck every two weeks, that’s a huge change. and I had the savings, but even the savings and using tools like projection lab, which is amazing, it showed that even if the income from my business stayed relatively low or grew very slowly, I was going to be fine. But the emotional charge and fear and anxiety was still huge. I think that’s a big part of the transition from working to fy is confronting that anxiety and a huge change in your life. And part of it’s financial, but definitely not all of it.
Scott:
On the financial component, two questions. One is, it sounds like several years have gone by where you’ve been a really racking up savings and there was no more large outlay of expenses on the child support and spousal support, uh as it’s called in California. Would this have been possible for you? Would this have been even something you could have considered while that was being paid out?
Guest:
In hindsight, absolutely yes. I had layered conservatism over conservatism. However, financially, it would have been possible, but psychologically, emotionally and the confidence needed to make it work, I don’t think it would be. Because a big part of launching any business is putting in consistent effort even and especially when there isn’t a lot of feedback and that takes confidence and if a person is sort of in desperation mode, it comes across. It’s just like if you’re trying to meet someone whether it’s at a speed dating event or at a bar, desperate doesn’t work, but if you’re confident, relaxed and glad to be there whether you meet someone or not, that’s when a lot of people want to talk to you because you’re not trying to get something from them. So that’s where I say yes financially, it would have been possible much sooner, but psychologically I hadn’t built the confidence yet that I needed to make the leap.
Scott:
Tell us a little bit about how your business grew in the last what is it 18 months, since you started.
Guest:
Yeah, so April of 2024 was when I received, the business received the designation of registered investment advisor. So as you said, it’s been about 18 months. I’ve worked with now just over 80 clients. With traditional financial advisors who are assets under management or sometimes flat fee or retainer, 80 clients means you have 80 ongoing clients. And as an hourly advisor, that’s not necessarily the case. If someone comes in and they have a question, should I contribute to my Roth or my pretax 401K? If the question can legitimately and confidently be answered in 0.4 hours, then the next Monday, that’s the bill I send them. And I’ve gotten questions from folks about advice from your show, for example about Frank Vasquez portfolio recommendations and people want to ask how does that apply to my situation? So I can do that. It doesn’t necessarily mean that I have to work with that person forever. I do it that way because that’s what I would want.
Scott:
As an advisor, let me take an aside here. Was that show helpful for these folks or did it create problems for them or nuance for you as a planner?
Guest:
I don’t think anything creates problems. It was helpful because it challenged their current investments, it challenged their current asset allocation and helped them look at am I invested appropriately for the stage of life I am in for the risks I’m taking and what I’m comfortable with. They did not end up adopting any changes to their portfolio, but they could do that confidently. That happened a lot this spring for example, I introduced a new way of working with people called a one-day financial plan. and I got the idea from Rick Ferry who is the head of the Boglehead International Foundation. He does a portfolio second look. He spends an hour looking over people’s financial portfolio, two hours talking to them and one hour writing up a report. And I wasn’t getting calls from my clients but friends of clients who are freaking out in February, March and April, they wanted to know should I sell, should I stay put? And I didn’t have the bandwidth to do a full financial plan which takes anywhere from 10 to 40 hours between meeting time and work time for all these people, but I said, ‘Can I, one in the morning, one in the afternoon, do a super focused session where we dive deep into what they’re doing, build models in projection lab or other tools and then get them an answer about what needs to happen or most often not happen?’ That’s been really transformative because people can come in, get the answers they need at least for the time being, then if they choose to, you know we check in every quarter or twice a year, once a year, but there’s no lock-in. That’s one of the things that bugged me was like I had to pick a dance partner with a financial advisor, never be able to do anything else except pay them. So every aspect of the financial planning industry when I was choosing to go into it, I questioned. So I’m not assets under management, I don’t manage assets, I’m hourly, it’s flat fee. If I give you an estimate, I won’t exceed it and you can leave at any time and I will hand over all data, all analysis to you or whoever you want to work with. It’s what I would want and I didn’t see it out there. Now I’m glad to see folks like Cody Garrett who he built the measure twice planners community. Now I see that there are other people doing exactly what I’m doing and I’ve formed mastermind groups with them. A couple of years ago, 2019, I felt like I was the only one and I felt like I needed to do something because otherwise folks who are looking for those answers were going to end up talking to the same advisors that didn’t help me.
Scott:
I feel like a few years ago this concept of the fee-only financial advisor started coming out. That became all the rage and rightly so. There was, there were some really bad practices especially in the commission space for life insurance. But it didn’t go far enough, frankly. Fee only includes assets under management fees, which are a problem from an incentive perspective. The incentive for someone with AUM is to keep the assets under management and keep that annuity going for them and rack up as much as possible. And that encourages an asset allocation that is stable and continuous, rather than one that maximizes long-term gains or that maximizes withdrawals or maybe achieves another client objective in there and it’s very hard to break. It’s very hard to get somebody to understand something if their salary depends on them not understanding that, right? I’m butchering that quote, but that’s the concept.
Guest:
I know that quote, it’s very true.
Scott:
And this fee only concept has now been, I think, replaced or is being replaced with advice only, which is what you’re talking about here. That’s the bandwagon I’m jumping on here. I would love to see a continuation of the shift away from asset under management style incentive structures to DIY or advice only management philosophies. So love it. It’s way cheaper, right? Yeah, million bucks on our management and 50/50 basis points.
Mindy:
That’s 5k a year.
Guest:
Yeah, and good luck finding someone who’ll do it for 50 basis points. Around here, I’ve had clients come to me who’ve talked to three advisors who told them, since you don’t have a million dollars, I won’t work with you, or if you have less than a million dollars, then you need to be on this $400 a month subscription plan. As a pushback, some people have asked, ‘Well, why wouldn’t you want to make more money?’ And there are very highly profitable hourly firms. The largest is a shop called Timothy Financial and their revenue is 5 million a year. They serve more than 700 clients with 17 employees. And when I started to understand that, it’s about 125 clients per employee. I thought, well what’s going on there? It’s because they’re not spending time guessing what their ongoing clients want and sending emails with generic advice or in the worst cases, organizing steak dinners to show their appreciation for their clients. At Timothy Financial, because they’re hourly, every hour that they spend is actively helping someone. And so once they’re done helping person A, they go on to helping person B. And so suddenly 17 employees, they could maybe serve 50 clients each, but instead they’re serving 125. And so the math of that told me, by being hourly, I can magnify my impact, and that’s more important to me than making money. Yes, I want to provide for my family. Yes, I’m determined to live in Santa Barbara because I love it so much. And I will do that and I am doing that. But before that comes impact, and that’s helping more people helping people better and not wasting my time trying to guess what people need.
Scott:
So what is the hourly rate one should expect for a good advice only financial planner?
Guest:
It varies quite a bit. The lowest I’ve seen is around like the 250, 300 range. There are some services which are larger scale and nectarine and abundo are two examples of that where I believe the rates are lower around 150. But for an independent shop, the rates that I’ve seen are between 300 and 500 an hour. And that can be shocking to people at first. There aren’t a lot of businesses that I engage in personally where I’m prying $300 to $500 out of my wallet. I can think of family law attorneys. That’s one. It’s well worth it, but it still hurt. And I actually embrace that. Instead of the assets under management model where the money just disappears from your investment accounts, I want people to have to pry that money out of their wallet because it makes them question, am I getting value from what Aubrey or what any advisor is doing for me? And if not, then go somewhere else or do it yourself. That feedback of I know I’m delivering value because people continue to work with me, that’s really important to me. And so I consider that a strength of the hourly model, not a not a weakness. I want the transaction to be visceral and visible.
Scott:
So what does revenue look like right now?
Guest:
Well, it’s been increasing. Like I said in the first quarter, business, it was 7k a month. Most recent month it was 22k in a month. And so my goal for the month was 10K, so I more than 2x exceeded the goal. And I’m now at a point where operations, efficiency, systems are becoming very important just because of getting people’s data organized, being prepared for meetings and so forth. And so I’m actually turning down the client intake lever so that I can focus on building those systems and efficiencies in the background, working on the business instead of in the business. But in terms of revenue, it’s been very positive over the last couple of months.
Scott:
So what’s next for you on your financial journey? We we have a divorce. We’ve got intense focus on savings. Sounds like career progression to this executive role. Did you achieve fire or were you close when you went out into the into business for yourself? and and what’s the goal now?
Guest:
If I lived anywhere else, I would be fire. But since I live in Santa Barbara, I’m I’m coast fi. I’m having more fun than I’ve ever had in my life. That’s one element that I try to bring into everything which is play. A lot of times this business of saving, of investing, it can feel very serious and it is, but it can also be fun and enjoyable. The reason I told the ridiculous story of the trail mix is because it’s ridiculous. I’m not prescribing that for anyone. I want them to laugh at me and the razors too. But it’s not as if I’m saying do exactly what I do, it’s consider things the way I consider them. How can you play in your life to make your life better and save money and increase your progress towards five all at the same time while having fun. Getting to go to in-person events, getting to meet people. That’s what I want to be doing.
Mindy:
I love that. I love that you have found your place. It sounds like you are the embodiment of if you love what you do, you’ll never work a day in your life. Like it’s it’s something that brings you joy because you know you’re helping people. Uh you mentioned that you are Coast Fi, what does your portfolio look like?
Guest:
I am just about 100% equities with cash position. So if you call that a barbell, but the end of the barbell that’s equities is much, much bigger than the end that’s cash. The thinking behind that was that my salaried job was very much like fixed income, although not as secure as something like a tips ladder, so I could afford to take the risk, and the savings that I built up in cash allowed me the runway to build this business into a reliable revenue source. Again, it’s not fixed income. I don’t believe there’s any fixed expenses or fixed income, but it’s stable enough that I’m prepared to take the risk of full exposure to the equity markets.
Mindy:
In terms of monthly or annual spending, what amount are you keeping in cash?
Guest:
I am keeping nine months of cash at this point.
Mindy:
Okay. And how does that feel? You’re a business owner and you’ve got the equities so you’re Coast Fi. It seems to me that the cash doesn’t need to be so overwhelmingly heavy because you’re Coast Fi. Is that how you feel about it too? Because we’ve spoken with business owners who are 18 months, 24 months of cash because they’re business owners, but I can’t now remember if they were fi or coast fi or just somewhere on the path.
Guest:
To some extent it’s a hangover from my anxiety and fear before leaving the corporate job. I recognize that it’s a cash drag that is potentially unnecessary and I’ve been bleeding it down over time. It’s basically the advice that I would give someone, if if they’ve got it locked in their head, I need 12 months, I might give them my assessment, you know, I think you really need to be at six months, but if it takes you two years to go from 12 months of cash and build your confidence to be at six months, that’s fine. It’s not going to derail your path to fire or anything like that. So I’m sort of the recipient of my own advice there. It may not be 100% optimal, but for me psychologically, it’s serving me.
Scott:
Tell us about your entrepreneurial journey. Did it start with this financial planning business or did it start somewhere else?
Guest:
Yeah, my entrepreneurial journey started very young. I was in Mexico. I would go around town and gather bricks and sell them to construction workers. I would gather oranges and lemons from trees. So in Chevy Chase, Maryland, which I mentioned, I made pot holders and sold them door-to-door, and I sold greeting cards. I think it’s part of me that’s just got to be contrary. My dad an anthropologist and my mom a modern dancer, they were not into money. They wanted it to be there so that they could go where they wanted to go, but it was not of interest to them. But I took great interest in it so that when I was 10 years old, they were sometimes borrowing money from me. When I was in my corporate job, I still had that entrepreneurial spirit, and I really credit Tim Ferris and the four-hour work week for igniting it. And I didn’t do a drop ship business or make a supplement company like him, but I saw a need in my own life. My daughter who was a toddler at the time, loved going in the ocean, but if you’ve been in the ocean in Santa Barbara, it’s cold. It’s between 55 and 65 degrees. And that didn’t stop her one bit but the scientist in me, I measured her temperature and it went within 10 minutes to mild hypothermia when she was in the water. again, she didn’t seem phased at all. and I saw the wetsuits that were out there for infants and toddlers and they were really just clothing or bathing suits made out of neoprene, they weren’t effective. So, I found a pattern maker in Hollywood who was actually a pattern maker for rock and roll stars leather outfits because they have to be form-fitting and also durable. He did the pattern design for me and I made really high-quality wetsuits for kids that were comparable to those that the surfers in Washington State, Oregon, Northern California wear to surf in those even colder waters. The thing that held me back was I starved the business for my attention because I was still working in the corporate job. It had possibility, but working as hard as I was during the day, I couldn’t take a trip to China, which is what I really needed to do to get production started, and so it just sort of stalled. And then I started a business teaching fitness in a system called Movnat, Natural Movement Fitness, where I took people out into the forest and taught them how to climb trees and crawl and lift rocks and logs and lift each other. Again, it was right on that tipping point where I had 15 people coming to classes, but I didn’t really have the time to market the business or to launch it and I didn’t have the confidence to do so. So I I see that sometimes, certainly in myself where the foundations of a successful business are there, but if you’re not willing to commit and you don’t have the confidence to commit, it won’t happen. I had this idea like, oh, every business I’m going to start is going to be a failure. I knew it wasn’t true, but I still had that thought a lot when it came to the financial planning business. But what got me through was change something, which is if you’re going to do it, commit. So, you’re leaving behind the corporate job, you’re going to the conferences, you’re going to the events, building your tool set, treating it like a real business, This is your career now. That’s what made the difference was commitment and belief and putting the effort more into the business and less into the corporate job.
Scott:
And low expenses and a big cash position.
Guest:
Yeah, low expenses is something I’m all about. Even in the financial planning space. Here’s an example. Most advisors as their payment processor use advice pay. They charge 3 and a half percent. So when you’re sending out bills that are 3,000, 6,000, $8,000, three and a half percent is significant. I was able to put together a payment processor by using Costco and their provider Elevan combined with authorize.net as the gateway and I’m paying 2 to 2.1%. And I made a spreadsheet about it, I sent it out to all my financial advisor friends and mostly the reaction I got was, ‘That looks hard.’
Mindy:
I give that advice to myself and I give that advice to my clients. Yes, something might look hard at first, but if you step through it step by step, nothing needs to be hard, especially if you have someone who’s done it to guide you.
Scott:
Aubrey, this has been fantastic. Thank you so much for joining us here today on Bigger Pockets Money. Where can people find out more about you?
Guest:
My website is openpath.financial and I’m also on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn. Look for my name Aubrey Williams, open path financial and I’ve got talks on YouTube from various camp fi events. I also speak about neurodiversity, ADHD and autism spectrum as it concerns clients, as it concerns advisors, because I’m a proud member of those, as well as other neurodiversities. And so, thank you so much, Mindy. Thank you so much, Scott, for the opportunity to share today and hopefully to help. And thank you for what you do.
Scott:
Well, thank you for coming on and thank you for the changes you’re making to the wave that you’re a part of and the changes to the financial planning space.
Guest:
You’re very welcome.
Mindy:
Yes, Aubrey, thank you so much. And next episode, we are going to talk to Aubrey about his presentation that he gave at Camp Fi about setting guardrails around your spending when you are drawing down. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. He is Scott Trench, I am Mindy Jensen saying Peace, Go.
