**Intro**
Hindsight really is 20/20. Today, Scott and I are going to be looking back on our respective FIRE journeys, including timeline, FI numbers, and moving goalposts.
**Mindy**
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my not-quite-ready-to-retire co-host, Scott Trench.
**Scott**
That was a F.I.N.E. intro, Mindy. F-I-N-E. Financial Independence, Next Endeavor, because that’s what you are, on this, not quite retired early. Um, thank you Mindy. BiggerPockets has a goal of creating one million millionaires. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you’re starting, or even if you start with a very clear goal in mind and it changes and evolves and doesn’t look anything like that by the time you get there. Mindy, excited to get into this with you today. Mindy, did you go into your FI journey with a timeline and a number? Or was there one that you focused on more?
**Mindy**
Anybody listening to this podcast should be aware that I am Mrs. 1500 from 1500days.com. And if you’re not, that’s okay. I don’t really talk about it. But the 1500 was the timeline that my husband and I predicted it would take, the number of days, 1500 days, to reach financial independence from where we were starting, which was a position of about halfway there, when we discovered the concept of financial independence. So we were focused more on the timeline to get to the number than the actual number, but we were also really focused on the number.
Um, we ended up doing it sooner than 1500 days. Uh, conscious readers will understand, will be like, yeah, maybe you did it in X number of days. I don’t actually remember how long it was. I know it was shorter than the 1500 days. Um, but I think that everything that we did to go about our financial independence journey outside of like, you know, saving for retirement, we did wrong. We didn’t focus on the right things and we didn’t enjoy the journey.
**Scott**
Mindy, I think you’re going to be a rare example of someone who was so clearly focused on the timeline and less on the, the like, the number. I mean, the whole premise is 1500 days, or what is that, like, like five, six years, four, four or five years? Somewhere in that range. So I mean, that’s, that’s a, that’s, that’s like, I think the healthiest way to do it, because you’re thinking about it from the right, like the right framework. It’s about getting life back and getting control back and time as the real resource here, rather than putting the money first, which I think is backwards for a lot of people, including myself, um, and how I approached it.
**Mindy**
Well, let me correct you here, Scott. I wasn’t focused on the timeline. I was obsessed with the number. And we thought we would do it in a certain amount of time, but we were like just hell-bent on getting there. And that I think is what makes it such an unhealthy approach. And if I could go back in time, I think I would probably contribute almost as much to my investments as I did in real life, but I would be more focused on the journey. So Scott, you mentioned that you were focused on the number. Let’s talk about your journey.
**Scott**
Yeah, I mean, I set out in 2013. I, you know, I started my job and I became pretty interested in financial independence within probably three months of starting my corporate finance gig. And I think I read the surprisingly simple math of early retirement by Mr. Money Mustache, or a precursor article to that. But it was, you know, I’m reaching back 10 years now. But that, there’s, when that concept hit home, I was like, oh, boom, that’s it. And I think I set a seven-year time horizon to get to between $750,000 and a million. $750,000 was my minimum cut-off there.
And that was, that was the original goal that I set and it’s moved all over the place for the last 10 years as I’ve evolved as a person. Like, okay, I started at 750. And then by 2014, when I had gotten into BiggerPockets world, I was like, oh, if I house hack, then I don’t have any housing expenses. So my number is 340 or whatever it was at that point in time, because I don’t have any housing expenses and that’s the biggest thing and I bike to work.
And then, you know, you know, you turn 25 or 26 and you’re like, you know what? The $300,000 in wealth and the house hack is not really a good FI concept. It’s back to the 750 to a million. And so it went, it’s evolved all over the place as I’ve moved that journey.
The foundational principles that I’ve never moved though, and I’m really glad I’ve stuck with the whole time, are this concept of after-tax wealth and spendable cash flow being generated by my portfolio. I think I instinctively knew pretty early on in the journey that the 4% rule was the starting point, but that I’d never actually live off a portfolio where I was selling stocks. I would need to live off of a minority of the cash flows that my portfolio was generating.
**Mindy**
So I think it’s really interesting. You said a couple of things that I want to highlight. First you said, my number has moved all over the place as I have grown. And I think that’s really important to underline. I am looking to talk to people who have reached financial independence, if you have, email me, mindy@biggerpockets.com. And I want to know how their money number has evolved, because when Carl and I were on our path to get to $1 million, it was always $1 million. And then it, we bumped it up a little bit to $1,120,000 so that we could have money to pay off our mortgage if we chose, but we didn’t want to pay it off at the time. So we were just like, okay, we’ll move our number. But our number only changed that one time. And then that was, and we just kind of like put that in the back of our mind, but focused on getting to 1 million.
But then we got to 1 million and it didn’t feel like enough. And I am truly on the path that, or truly in alignment with Bill Bengen’s 4% rule. I believe in the 4% rule. I believe it’s going to work. I would love to talk to Big ERN because he has done like way more math and says it’s more like three or 3.5 or whatever. We’re going to talk to him down the road. But the number seems to change with most people that I talk to. Oh, originally my number was this, but then once I got there, I didn’t feel comfortable with it, one-more-year syndrome, so I moved it again.
Has your number changed as your life has changed? So I’ve known Scott for nine years. When we first started, how old are you, Scott, now? 30?
**Scott**
I’m 34.
**Mindy**
You’re 34. Okay, you just had a birthday. So I’ve known Scott since he was 25, 26. He was, he had some different thoughts back then, which is fine. Like you are allowed to grow and evolve. But 750 when you’re a single guy living in that, you know, that first duplex that you were living in, versus now you have a wife, you have a family, you have like a different life than you did nine years ago. How has your mental financial independence number pushed back? Because I think that there’s a lot of this moving goalposts thing in the financial independence community.
**Scott**
Once I crossed the threshold, which for me, I think was probably around 28 to 29 years old, and as I assumed leadership here at BiggerPockets as CEO, there there was a, I crossed the inflection point of what I defined as FIRE, right? I had well over a million dollar net worth, and I was able to to to generate enough to live my lifestyle without depending on on my job. I do not ever want to go back on the other side of that. My portfolio needs to be able to sustain my lifestyle. Yet, as I work, I’m piling on more and more assets. I love my job here at BiggerPockets and I’m privileged to have good compensation and opportunities as a result of that. My investments continue to perform.
And so, one of the things that like, that I think changes is you’re like, well, why would I continue to live in a house-hack duplex here? Why wouldn’t I begin to expand that from this position here? So I think that there was a, I think I did a good job of keeping those goalposts from moving before hitting FI and not moving them so that the FI number, so that I need to continue to generate more assets from active work, but also, I’m I’m going to start living my life a little bit differently here, right? I’m about to celebrate my 11th year anniversary with my Corolla and I don’t know if there will be a 12th year for the Corolla. So, you know, I think it’s time to get an electric vehicle. So like those types of things are are happening. So it’s like, what is the FI number? Well, it’s that I’m definitely well past that at this point. And I expect my portfolio to continue to grow and I expect to cautiously and step by step continue to to hopefully get the benefits of that. And I think that’s the, that’s the magic of achieving financial independence, you know, early on is that that that happens. And I’m I’m I think that’s happening to you to an extent as well, you and Carl.
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**Mindy**
One of the things that changed with my financial independence journey was my salary. My, the household income. Uh, household expenses went up dramatically. Uh, there’s there’s some things you can control and there’s some things that you can’t control. What do you think people on the path to financial independence should be considering when they’re taking into account what they think their FI number should be?
**Scott**
It’s been talked about a million times. People roll their eyes, but you have to always start it from the spending framework. Spending is, generally speaking, and again, there’s there’s multiple levers, but spending is generally speaking going to be the number one number to figure out in order to plan and back into a FI timeline. And the lower spending gets, the easier the FI timeline gets. It’s a geometric relationship, right? $100,000 income earner who spends $80,000, $90,000 a year, after-tax $100,000, after-tax $90,000 spend, is going to accumulate one year of wealth in nine years, right? Or one year of spending in nine years, right? $100,000 income earner who spends $50,000 a year is going to accumulate one year of spending in one year. That’s not a 40% or 50% increase. That’s a 9, that’s a 9x faster path to financial independence. So it’s a geometric acceleration as your spending declines relative to your income.
And it doesn’t even stop there because generating $40,000 or $50,000 a year in income from investments is not likely to leave the person searching for FIRE subject to tax. You’re not going to be in a high tax bracket. If you only have to realize $50,000 a year from your portfolio, if you need to realize $200,000 a year from your portfolio, you’re going to be in a high income tax bracket. And so you’re going to have to generate more like 3 or 350 in order to actually realize, I mean, you know, depending on what source it’s coming from, if it’s truly dividends, if it’s truly passive, if it’s truly long-term capital gains, it might be a little less. But you’re looking at at minimum a $240 or $250,000 distribution just to finance that that $200,000 in spend. So when you go from a more lean FIRE to a fat or chubby FIRE world, the game gets geometrically more difficult because you’re both accumulating less and you need a bigger asset base to finance it, and you got to multiply, add the tax component on top of that to to realizing FIRE. So it really does start with the expenses when you’re planning this and trying to forecast and back into a timeline.
**Mindy**
I think that there is really no way to argue with that. You need to have your spending under control. And I don’t say that as you need to be the most frugal you can possibly be. I say that as you need to be conscious of where your money’s going. And I think that when we speak with people on Finance Fridays or when I’m just even chatting with like regular people, one of my first questions is, you know, is this your actual spending? Do you know what your spending is?
And a lot of times, people think that they are spending X, but they’re actually spending X plus. And of course, every every month is going to be different. But if you think you’re spending $3,000 a month and you’re really spending $3,050, you don’t have an issue. But if you think you’re spending $3,000 a month and you’re really spending five, all of your numbers are out of whack. Everything is going to be off and you’re going to be like, why am I not reaching financial independence? So you’re absolutely right, Scott. Spending is the huge, the biggest consideration that you need to be thinking of, especially at the beginning of your journey. But also throughout your journey. Like it’s so easy to have your your spending go out of whack when you’re not paying attention to it. This is one of the reasons why I uh tracked my spending in 2022. You can still see it. It’s at biggerpockets.com/mindysbudget. You can see how much I didn’t guess right on my spending. But I do think that when you are taking into account your FI number, oh, I’m spending uh $3,000. This is how I did mine. I’m spending $3,000 a month right now, therefore that’s $36,000 a year. I’m going to round it up to 40. I only need a million dollars.
Well, okay, but my housing costs went up because I moved. My salary changed, which was beneficial. Um, but there’s a lot of other expenses that I wasn’t having back when I made my FI number 11 years ago when I had a uh, you know, six-year-old and a three-year-old. Now I have a 14-year-old and a 17-year-old. Guess what? My 17-year-old drives. She didn’t need a car, but it’s so much easier on me if she has one. There’s clothes and school stuff and and and and and. So your expenses are going to change. Even in traditional retirement, your expenses are going to change because as you get older, you typically have um health, more health issues and that requires you to spend more.
**Scott**
I think that like the the reason why so much of the math and so much of the discussion in the financial independence world derives around this this question. And I think that if you want to achieve FI, you’re going to, like, you have to focus on this number. You have to be in control and you have to get really confident about it if you’re actually going to pull the trigger at the end of the journey and quit your job and begin living off of assets. And a whole host of additional frameworks in the way I plan my finances and the way I think about pursuing financial independence that are at odds with traditional retirement planning advice derive from that very simple observation.
The other day, Mindy, we talked about um, a couple of weeks ago, we talked about paying off the mortgage, right? Even a low interest rate mortgage, if it’s a big mortgage and you’re trying to live in a nice house, for example, requires a tremendous amount of income to be realized, which puts you in the higher tax bracket, which compounds the problems from an, so once once you start thinking about actually pulling the trigger, pull it putting down or paying off that mortgage becomes a major factor in requiring less distributions from the portfolio to satisfy the 4% rule, right? I think we used the example that your mortgage at like 2.85% was like $1,300 in P&I every month. And it was like $15,000 a year, and the asset base that you need to generate $15,000 a year is what, 15 * 25, is like 375 grand, which is more than the balance of your mortgage from there. So those are all considerations that derive from this how much do I spend problem and how do I get that expense pile as low as possible so that I don’t, I can get my, I can rely less on my asset base. I can get to a lower asset base to get there.
So that everything derives from that. And then when we think about the journey to FI, we have two numbers that I always look for. We always do these Finance Fridays and these other conversations with listeners’ finances. There’s two numbers that I’m looking for. One is your current net worth. What are your assets in right now? And the second is, what is the annual amount that you’re going to keep after taxes that you could invest, right? So if you have 500k and you’re saving 50 grand a year, I can do very simple math right there. I say, okay, we have 500k today and we’re going to have another 500k over the next 10 years. That’s a million bucks. The 500k is going to compound at some rate over the next couple of years. If it’s in a paid-off house, 3%. If it’s in a stock market index fund, 8 to 10% most likely if we use historical averages. And those cash flows are going to compound at a certain rate, 8 to 10% if they’re put in place, put into a stock market, 3% if they’re paying off a low interest rate mortgage, whatever, right? And so I use those two things to begin backing into the timeline and looking for ways to shorten flatten the journey.
Now, some people listening to this will be like, I have $0 and I make $50,000 a year, and I spend 45. Okay, now we’ve got $5,000 in generation a year. That has to change in order to move there, and it will change as the years go by. And we think, okay, we build a spreadsheet here. You’re going to get to a very long time horizon to achieve FI with that starting point. So we have to think about how we can geometrically expand that. How do we reduce expenses? How do we increase income? And then how do we put in place some big boosts along the way, like a live-in flip that could contribute $100 to $200,000 in after-tax wealth to really boost and accelerate that journey by, you know, what what is that like 40 years from the year one position, have 5,000, but you know, really in practice boost that journey by three, four, five year chunks in one go. So that that’s that’s the framework I always use to size how long this thing is going to take for people to get to their end goal.
**Mindy**
I think there’s a lot of people who don’t really dive into the aspects of it. They think, oh, I’m making 50 and I’m only spending 45, so I’m saving 5,000. And that’s awesome. Let’s celebrate that because that is not the norm in American society. But it’s also not going to get you to financial independence, to early financial independence. It might not ever get you to financial independence unless something changes like you said.
Uh, Scott, we did an episode where we talked, it was kind of a, we called it a tough love episode, where we talked about, you know what, you might not reach financial independence. And I’m pretty sure I gave off the Dave Ramsey quote in that episode. Uh, that was episode 563. I don’t know if I said that. Um, live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. If you want to be financially independent, you have to change what you’re doing now.
And you said the way I think is sometimes at odds with traditional FI advice. I want you to seek out, listeners, I want you to seek out people who are at odds with traditional FI advice. You might not agree with it. Scott is a proponent of real estate investing. I am a proponent of real estate investing. That doesn’t mean you have to invest in real estate. Uh, look at the traditional FI advice is VTSAX. Well, maybe that doesn’t float your boat. Maybe you want something else instead. Go and look at what other people are doing and kind of choose your own adventure with regards to your FI journey. But always come back to the fact that the lower your expenses, the faster you’re going to get there. The higher your income, the faster you’re going to get there. Combine them both, lower expenses and higher income, blam. You’re going to get there quickly.
**Scott**
So I think that’s it, right? It’s the gap between your income and your expenses, multiplied by years and returns. And there’s a lot of calculators out there that will help you figure that out. What I’d encourage everyone to do in the way I approach this is there’s a formula, right? I’m going to save this much, I’m going to invest in the index fund, I’m going to let time compound, and I got my, you know, uh, the shockingly simple math of early retirement, like Mr. Money Mustache wrote almost a decade ago or a little bit over a decade ago today, right? That’s one. But don’t stop there, right? This is this is about financial independence and if you’re listening to this and if you’re serious about it, layer on the pot shots on top of that, right? You know, can you do a live-in flip? Can you do a house hack? Can you start a small business? Can you do a side hustle? Right? Layer these things on and my framework for that, which we’ve talked about a lot, Mindy is, nine out of 10 businesses fail, so start 10 businesses, right? And you take you take two and a half years, right? And you say every 90 days, I’m going to try a new concept. I’m going to this this 90 days, I’m going to buy a live-in flip. Then maybe it take another and if that works out and you find a great deal, you spend the next 90 days actually completing it, getting as far as you can.
Great. That’s complete. You live in it for a year or two. Then you start um you you explore a really harebrained scheme that I had around winter gloves for driving because your hands get cold, which went absolutely nowhere and was a terrible plan. And then there was winter tire rental businesses, which geometrically compounds the amount of inventory that you have to have because what do you have a set of tires and then somebody else gets, so yeah, that was a terrible plan. And then, you know, I did a t-shirt, and you just just like try, layer those things on and you know nine of that, 10 are going to try, are going to fail. You don’t go into them because you know they’re going to fail, but you just know that’s the odds of your best ideas. Nine out of 10 of your best ideas will fail. And by the end of two and a half years, you got a winner. And then after five years, you got two. And after 10 years, you got four. You got four business winners. One of those could really make a big difference on your, on your, you know, one of those four might drive in, you know, 80% of your income or outputs on there. And that’s it. And you do those two things, the formula and those ideas and and and pursuing these kind of ideas on some sort of cadence, you will accelerate that timeline beyond what the formula tells you is going to happen, almost certainly. There will be periods where that won’t be true, but that will be the the the reality for for many or most who pursue it like that.
**Mindy**
So Scott, I actually quote you frequently, um on a multitude of things, but the the, oh, 90% of all small businesses fail, so start 10 businesses. I say that to a lot of people who are talking about I want to start a small business. Um I wish you would have said something back when you wanted to start winter driving gloves and tire rental because I would have had some advice for you then.
**Scott**
Well, I never actually got them off the ground because they were terrible ideas. But I explored them for several weeks, wrote the thesis down, did all, you know, like went nowhere. That’s it, right? That’s all it is. And you give up when when it becomes clear that it’s not worth the the effort on those. And then you find something. But I think that that’s the, I think that’s the framework. And that’s why you hear all these stories about people who achieve financial independence and they’ve always got, or not always, but a huge percentage of them have some sort of wacky, very specific situation to them, which is the norm because that framework is being applied to, you know, all of these different people who are pursuing FI.
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**Mindy**
Okay, so let’s go in a bit of a different direction. I have talked to people who say, oh, I hope I can get to financial independence in 15 years. I’m like, okay, what’s your FI number? Well, my FI number is a million and I’m at 900,000 right now. I’m like, ah, you’re probably going to make it a little bit sooner than 15 years. But on the flip side, there are people who are like, I want to quit my job next year.
Okay, great. What’s your net worth? Well, I’ve got, you know, $100,000 in student loans and I make $50,000 a year now and, you know, I’m spending 49 and a half thousand every year. I’m like, well, I don’t, the uh the eight ball, the Magic 8 ball says outlook not good that you’re going to reach financial independence in a year. What are some of the detriments do you think to focusing on too short of a timeline?
**Scott**
Two reactions. One is it will be discouraging, but the second is that in that user’s specific case, I don’t think the goal should be FIRE. Um, in there, it should be getting out of that job, right? The the long-term goal is I think should for for folks listening to this podcast should should often be FIRE, right, in terms of getting to financial independence and early retirement here and having an asset base that can remove the need for work. But if you really hate your job and you’re starting with, you know, anywhere close to a median income and zero net worth, then I would just encourage you to go the different route of flexibility. And one of the problems that people find themselves is they’re trapped in their job, right? And why why do you get, how do you get trapped in your job? Well, you get trapped because you optimized for income. So this is the highest paying job that I could get, right? That was reasonable or whatever around this, and there’s no other job or few other jobs that would allow me to you know to do this kind of work and get the same paycheck. If you make 80 grand and you spend $78,000, you’re going to be stuck. That’s not a pleasant situation because you can’t take a $75,000 a year job that is way better and removes all the things that you hate about your life and your job because of that $5,000 difference. And so I think that the game becomes about flexibility. If you spend $40,000 a year and you make $80,000 a year, chances are you can find a job for 60 grand that removes those problems, maybe gives you more time to pursue other interests, side hustles, other wealth building activities, actually make you richer over a longer period of time. But that’s the trap I think that a lot of workers find themselves in and and I think that your goal in that situation should be flexibility. If if if someone has an $80,000 a year job and they’ve got $50,000 in the bank in liquidity in their savings account and they’re saving three, four thousand dollars a month, they’re not going to be stuck in that job for you know, years and years and years hating life. They’re going to get another opportunity. They’re going to see something come up that’s going to give them better longer term upside. But again, there so many people I think that are in the prior situation of just like they spend essentially all that they earn and they are optimized for income and so they’re just totally trapped in that job and that’s where you start to hate it.
**Mindy**
I love this point, Scott, because most people who hear about financial independence, pursue it, let’s be honest, because they hate their job. Either they hate their job or they hate that they have to go to a job instead of doing whatever they want. And changing jobs doesn’t really come up in a lot of FI advice. It’s just put your nose to the grindstone and bust it out and get to FI and then leave. But changing jobs can change the whole, it can change your whole life. It will change your whole life. I have had jobs where I get up in the morning and I’m like, ugh, I can’t believe I have to go to this job. I hate this job. When I started working at BiggerPockets, I felt guilty that I was leaving because Carl was working with the girls and they’re like fighting and bickering and whatever it’s kids do. And I’m like, I’m going to go to work, bye. I’m going to have a great time. I love my job so much. This is so awesome. So just having a different job that you enjoy, maybe it pays less, but you have so much less stress, changes your death march to financial independence and makes it more of a journey that you can focus on enjoying. I love that you said that.
**Scott**
I think that that’s also part of the dynamic in a lot of FIRE people, right? You hear a lot of FIRE people who are like, I’m FI and I work. And I don’t think that, I think that that’s a component of this, right? Because, you know, let’s, you hate, FI is a, is a motivator and it should be for people who hate their jobs, right? I want to hate my job, I want to retire really. It starts that way. Did I hate my first job? No, but I didn’t want to be doing it for 20 years. And so FIRE was a huge motivator for me. The idea of not having to work is a huge motivator. Um, and I think it will be for 30, 40, maybe up to 50% of the US population on that. But as you pursue FIRE, as you rack up a 30, 40, 50, 60, 70% savings rate over the years and decades, as you accumulate assets into the hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars that generate cash flow, and the the wage is less relevant to to what you’re doing, I think what we found with a lot of FIRE people is they’re like, I either love my job, or if I don’t like it, it pays so much that it’s really hard to walk away from, um, from that. And like, that’s the problem you want to give yourself as a worker, right? Is is you like is you like your job, so you’re not going to leave it or it’s just so compelling that the pile, the ability to add on to the pile is is there. And I think that that is almost, you know, a common theme among a good number of people who are pursuing FIRE in this space or at least that I’ve encountered. Would you say that’s that’s true for many of the people you encounter?
**Mindy**
That they either make so much money it’s hard to quit or they actually like their job?
**Scott**
Yes.
**Mindy**
I would say I’m meeting different people. I am meeting the people who make so much that it’s hard to quit and I’m meeting the people who like their job. But I’m also meeting a lot of people who are like, I’m on the path, I don’t really like my job. I don’t hate it so much that it’s ruining my life, but I don’t want to continue once I have my financial independence number reached. Scott, what are the major milestones that you set to help you keep track of your progress? Or did you keep track of your progress?
**Scott**
In terms of milestones, I personally, you know, I think that the events that really helped accelerate FI were my, each of my rental property investments. I think it was the various promotions I got here at BiggerPockets in my career. And I don’t think I really worked out a lot of different milestones. That wasn’t the way I was thinking about it. I looked at the number every week, if not multiple times a week, and ran the analysis, you know, monthly or quarterly on my personal financial position, you know, to to kind of run projections and estimates and those types of things. But I don’t know if I really thought about it in terms of like, oh, this milestone of 250 will be reached at this point and this one will be reached here. It was just a constant progression. How did you think about it, Mindy?
**Mindy**
You know, Carl and I didn’t really have milestones either. We had this one goal and we started a blog very shortly after we discovered financial independence and we published monthly net worth updates. So it was easier to see where we were going because we were, like every month we had to to publish this. I mean, I remember being on vacation with Carl and he’s like, I got to find a an internet connection because I got to log in and get a screenshot of our net worth today before the market’s open tomorrow. I’m like, really, is it that serious? You know, but it did, it helped to see where we were. I think it is important to keep track of, even though long-time listeners of this show will know that I don’t check in on my net worth now, I was reading those net worth trackers or those net worth statements when they were published just to see where we were. I think it’s really important to check in, and Carl is obsessed. I tell him this too. I’m not talking smack about him when he can’t hear. Um Carl is obsessed with checking our numbers. He checks them every morning. I think that’s too much. There are people who check them once a year. I think that’s a little too infrequently. I like the quarterly or monthly check-ins and if you are on the path to financial independence, you’re feeling terrible because the market just crashed, or you’re feeling terrible for whatever XYZ reason, then look at how frequently you’re checking in with yourself and change that frequency. But I don’t know that I would do the days again. I think I would focus more on the number and the experience on the way to the number.
**Scott**
I think that that’s good learning here. And I’m trying to think about how I would have re-approached it here. I I think I think I would have done the same thing. I think I think the the framework is the right one of just setting, understanding the goal, keeping expenses as low as possible, tracking frequently, making sure the formula will lead me to my end destination, and layering on top the additional bets that could potentially that have the ability, the unpredictable, the things you can’t put in a model but have the potential to accelerate the journey. And then, you know, I think that there’s a little bit of a lighten up phrase that comes and it probably applies to both of our journeys, Mindy, um on on with with moving to financial independence. You know, you’re going to get there and you’re not really going to care 10 years from now if you got there six months sooner because you didn’t buy, you know, the steak and potatoes at the steak restaurant instead of the hamburger. You know, and so I think that that’s kind of the the only piece that I might have reframed or changed early in my journey.
**Mindy**
I definitely wish I would have focused on the journey, because even if focusing on the journey as opposed to the end number gets you an extra year of working, but now you have 11 years of a nice life instead of eight years, nine years, 10 years of this like just all out desperate travel to to get to the end. Like Carl wrote an article called The Death March to FI and it was like, this is everything we did wrong, and it was pretty much everything, except for the whole investing part. We did that part right and everything else was wrong. So uh I guess I guess what I want to share with people, what’s your FI timeline? Your FI timeline should be uh fluid and it should be realistic, it should be attainable, it should be like so flexible because if you have an opportunity to do something that’s going to cost a lot of money, but it’s kind of like one of those once in a lifetime opportunities, take it and extend your FI journey so the whole thing is enjoyable. Don’t eat rice and beans every single day unless that’s what you want to do. Don’t eat rice and beans every single day so you can reach financial independence earlier. Like enjoy the parts that you really want to enjoy.
**Scott**
I think that’s it, right? You know, and and again, you know, I don’t I don’t feel personally that I didn’t do that. I you know, I I think that uh, too much of it. I can remember several instances, but it was it’s like, I don’t know, I I I prioritized partying on the weekends and, you know, uh video games, my nice my nice uh my nice computer there and those types of things. And I didn’t prioritize a nice car, a nice place to live, you know, the steak at the restaurant, which is probably one of those things that, you know, I could have done and gone out to more more dinners with friends and those types of things. But I think that that’s, you can you can do that. Um and I think that again, that that phrase lighten up, I think, you know, applies to a degree, but I will take the the stance today that I’m very glad that I did what I did in my 20s and approached it with the level of intensity that I did, because I think it is a big reward and it’s great to have those options now at 34 and to be able to not have to worry whenever I want to do something fun with my wife or baby at this point. That’s that’s stuff I worked hard for and I’m I’m enjoying that now and I I believe I will have the ability to potentially do that for the rest of my life and I think that that’s worth it by a long shot. Well, this has been a really fun discussion, I think, Mindy, and I I yeah, I think it was really introspective. I think we were I was actually expecting to go a little bit of a different direction with some of the ways we talked about it, but I thought, you know, I think that just talking about our journeys was was hopefully helpful and illuminating for some folks.
**Mindy**
I want to hear from our listeners. How was your journey? How would you have made changes to it, knowing what you know now if you knew it then? Um and how long did it take you? Did you focus on the number or the timeline? And did you enjoy the journey or did you death march it like Carl and I did? Uh email mindy@biggerpockets.com, email scott@biggerpockets.com or email us both.
**Scott**
Yeah, and I want to say thank you. I mean, we we actually put a similar message out to reach out to us for how to reach FIRE based on your income, um, uh, the episode that released on uh October 1st here on BiggerPockets Money. And 50 of you must have reached out to me. Thank you. It was very thoughtful and and detailed, um, messages. So just know when when I love that. Please do. I will respond to every single one. Just know that in some of these, it might take me a couple days. Um, but I look forward to hearing from you guys and and thank you. Me and Mindy both both appreciated that.
**Mindy**
Yeah, it’s awesome to get emails from our listeners. So, mindy@biggerpockets.com, scott@biggerpockets.com. We made it real easy. You don’t even have to remember our last names. However, I will tell you that that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and he is Scott Trench and we are saying goodbye, peach pie.
