Scott: Hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Scott Trench and with me today is my co-host, the She Wolf of Wall Street, Amanda Wolf.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets has a goal of creating 1 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 what your investing philosophy may be to get to financial independence.
Mindy: Today’s guest, Darius Foroux, is an international landlord, business owner, author of eight books and a financial educator who vowed to change his financial destiny by using the virtues of stoicism.
Scott: Yeah, I I um uh stoicism kind of pops up every once in a while if you’ve been paying attention in the world of personal finance, tech, business and a lot of these kind of thought leaders are really into stoicism it seems, or practicing stoics. I can label Tim Ferris, the author of the four-hour work week as someone who has talked about uh stoicism. I believe Mr. Money Mustache is a follower of stoicism. And so it kind of has this alignment with a lot of people who are in the financial independence retire early space. And for others, it may be a little off-putting because they don’t really understand it or don’t know what it is or maybe in some cases don’t like some of the people that it’s associated with um at the highest level. And today we’re really looking forward to defining what it is. Um I have dabbled in stoicism, the way I’ve probably dabbled in Bitcoin uh in the past. Uh and you know, I think it’s a really fascinating school of thought. It’s a philosophy from ancient Greece that really talks about how to um, you know, how to pursue joy, right? And there’s a variety of techniques that go along with that, uh including understanding how to endure hardship, how to um think about the worst, the worst case scenario, plan for it, accept it, and then rejoice, um, in the fact that it has not uh, come true at this point yet. Um, and there’s a lot of tie-ins to the discipline, the philosophy, and I’m doing a bad job explaining it. our guest today, Darius is going to do a much better job, um, as we go as we as we move through today’s episode. But there’s a lot of really interesting tie-ins that uh stoic philosophy has that are congruent with building wealth, like controlling the controllables, um, especially in the context of downturns in the market. Um and it’s also congruent with reaping the rewards of financial and uh professional success at the same time. So a lot of appeal to a lot of folks and you may find yourself in alignment with a lot of the principles, even if you’re not a practicing stoic.
Scott: Darius, welcome to Bigger Pockets Money.
Guest: Hey, thanks for having me.
Scott: Darius, where does your journey with money begin?
Guest: So I have a classic immigrant story. I was born in Tehran and um, in in 1987, and there was a war at the time, so my parents fled the war and went to the Netherlands, which in terms of economy and mindset and culture is very similar to the US. The only thing that we don’t have is guns, but other than that, in terms of our mindset and culture and the, you know, fast-paced society, it’s practically the same.
Guest: So, I grew up in the Netherlands and my parents not having much money, always living from paycheck to paycheck. So, in my household, it was always about money, or actually the lack of money. So when I grew up, I always felt this tension and I don’t know why, but even from a very young age, I always knew what was going on, that we weren’t financially well off. So that somehow created some responsibility with me and I always had this very strong desire to become very wealthy. And not just because I wanted to have a nice car or any other, you know, young boy’s dream when he grows up, but I just wanted to have freedom and not to worry about money. So that desire really started in my childhood and as I got older, I started to get more interested in the stock market and investing and that’s how my journey really began.
Mindy: Wow. So, just to take it back a a one step real quick. So, do you still live in the Netherlands today then, Darius?
Guest: Yeah, but uh, pretty much all my readers are in the US, so I started writing like 10 years ago, but I don’t know, somehow the US readers connected more with my message than uh.
Mindy: Okay. Okay. So, and then at what age did you move to the Netherlands? And and do you remember because you said, you know, money was part of that that story the whole time or the lack thereof. So, when did you move to the Netherlands and do you remember some of those first memories around money or the lack thereof?
Guest: Yeah, well, I was a year and a half, so I don’t remember anything from those times, but growing up in the Netherlands, I always noticed that you know, we weren’t in a great neighborhood or, you know, when I wanted to get something, there was always argument about it at home. You know, when I wanted to have a new Nintendo console at the time, um, you know, I I realized I looked at my mother was going through these mail order catalogs and uh talking about, yeah, we should get this and then, you know, my father not being cool with it, but eventually, I would get my Nintendo. So I would get my the things that I wanted it. So in terms of, I don’t feel like I really missed out on certain things, but it’s just the emotions and the the feelings that were around um having, you know, the things that that we wanted or any like a normal child would want to have. So those were really my first memories growing up.
Scott: So how did you how did you begin making movements to building wealth? Where does that journey begin for you?
Guest: Yeah. So, I always wanted to have a job when I was in high school because all of my friends at the time had jobs and my parents told me to focus on school because also classic immigrant story, a lot of immigrants their parents realized that, you know, one of the best ways to become financially better off than yourself is to encourage your children to get educated. So that’s what my parents also did and they told me to get a job after high school. So I waited and during, you know, the summer after high school, I immediately went to apply for the best paying job at that time, which was to work in a call center. And I thought, well, that’s great. I just have to sit and make a bunch of calls and I’m getting paid pretty good money. So, that’s what I did pretty much like six days a week, my entire summer and saving everything that I made because that was my first taste of making money and I realized how hard it is because, you know, you just show up every single day and you have to do what you’re told. And I made the money and I was like, yeah, I’m not going to spend this. So I just saved everything.
Mindy: Yeah. So then so you you get your first job. Now you have money and it’s it sounds like probably the most money you really had ever been exposed to, right? So now you’re like hoarding money. So, when when was it that you really um, started building the wealth, right? Because just hoarding money isn’t going to allow us to actually be able to build wealth. So, like, what was your mindset like back then, you know, in those beginning years when you when you started your started working?
Guest: Yeah, in those beginning years, I really didn’t know what it took to build wealth. I uh watched movies like Wall Street and I thought, wow, these folks are making a lot of money buying, selling stocks, maybe I should do that too. So that’s how I got obsessed with the stock market. And basically, it wasn’t until like 2015 that I finally figured out how to build wealth over the long term. And in all those early days, you know, basically from the time I was 17 till the time I was like 29 or 30, I just made one mistake after the other. I bought stocks and I sold them when I was down 60%. Um I thought that getting educated is the answer to becoming rich. So I got a master’s degree and I specialized in finance and I read pretty much every investing book that there was. And I could just, I I couldn’t figure it out. I had no clue what I was doing and I was making a living, but I wasn’t getting wealthier, you know, I was saving and that’s great, but as we all know, there’s limitations to saving. So I was always looking for the answer to getting back to particularly in my case, the stock market because that was the thing that I always wanted to get into and also, I I I’ve been interested in real estate and I got into that as well. But the stock market always had this very big pull on me because I felt like it’s the greatest wealth builder on the planet. You can just do it from any place in the world. Um it’s so easy and that’s exactly what it what makes it so hard. And it wasn’t until I discovered stoicism that I found out that managing my emotions was the most important thing because all those years that I failed was because I didn’t have my emotions in check and I always made the the wrong decision because I got too uh too consumed by my emotions. So, when I finally discovered stoicism, I started to apply the philosophy to my investment strategy.
Mindy: After this quick break, we will get into how stoicism played a role in your journey to fi and what happens next on your wealth creation endeavor.
Scott: And welcome back.
Scott: So Darius, what what um it sounds like he started with nothing, you know, as a teenager working this job in a call center, and and again, like the pivot point that I really want to get into next, happens in 2015. But, you know, it’s and it sounds like you developed a lot of skills during that period, but can you give us some indication of the amount of wealth you were able to accumulate. I presume you didn’t go those 10 years and not accumulate anything. You accumulated something but didn’t maximize your potential from a financial standpoint during that. Is it was it hundreds of thousands, millions of dollars?
Guest: Yeah, in terms of num number, I had about 10,000 to my name when I in like 2014. So I started a business with my dad in 2010 after as I was writing my master’s thesis and this was in, you know, after the financial crisis. So there were not many opportunities because I wanted to climb the corporate ladder. and I thought to myself, this is a great opportunity. So we started a business in the industrial laundry equipment as a wholesaler. And being an entrepreneur, I just paid myself enough to rent an apartment and I still remember like my salary was about $1,300 or something. and that’s how where I would live on. and because we live in, you know, cost of living where I live in like an hour outside of Amsterdam is was at the time really low, it’s much higher now. Um, so I didn’t build wealth. I just learned skills and I learned business and then I thought to myself, well, I don’t have any money. I have a lot of experience. Our business is doing well. My father is starting to earn more. You know, let him enjoy that. I’m going to find a job and that’s how I came ended up in London at the IT research firm Gartner and that’s where I learned, you know, how to how corporations work and working in sales and account management, etc. Cost of living in London so high that I almost spent my entire salary every single month. And I did I performed well, so I earned some bonuses, but after a year, I realized I’m I’m still not building any wealth. My net worth was just a few thousand dollars at the time. And after a year of being in that rat race and spending all my money on rent and just going out and you know, the things that you do when you live in an expensive city, I realized I have to stop. I I need to find out the answer. I need to start a business or I need to start something because I need to start building wealth and at the time I was 28, 29. So at that time, I came back to the Netherlands and I moved back in with my parents and I from what I recall, like my savings were about 10,000, the equivalent of $10,000 and I still had I think like I was paying off my student debt a little bit, but I still I think I had more student debt than 10,000 as well. So I would have I had a negative net worth at that time.
Scott: Okay, and so so at this point you have this negative net worth, you’re frustrated. It’s been 10 years and you got nowhere, right? Um on your on your wealth building journey and that’s been a primary motivator. What changes? What’s the what’s the aha moment, the revelation that you have and how do things change and you begin to get this thing on track? And because we’ve already set it up, how does stoicism play in? Is this where is this where stoicism enters your journey?
Guest: Yeah, 100%. So I felt really stuck. I wanted to earn more, I wanted to build wealth. I wanted I thought in my mind I thought by the time I’m 30, I should be financially free. You know, when I was in you know, business school or in in or when I was uh doing my master’s degree, I thought, you know, yeah, just give me a few years, I’ll figure it out and then a few years went by, nothing happened. So I was really stuck. And I started to look for the answers in books. I started reading nonfiction books, personal development books, business books, um, and I like so many folks who start an online business, I read the four-hour work week by Tim Ferris. and in that book, he has a small section on stoicism and he talks about how it’s great for dealing with the entrepreneurial roller coaster. So I was really curious and I started to read the original works of the stoics like Marcus Aurelius and Seneca, Epictetus, and I was immediately hooked and it gave me clarity. And at that time, so I came back to the Netherlands and I thought to myself, I’m going to start some type of business and I didn’t know exactly what that was. So I thought to myself, I have this opportunity to write a book because I always wanted to write. I had this desire to write but I never had something to say. And after these years of struggling with my goals and not being able to accomplish them, I thought, you know, I should write a book about the inner turmoil that comes along with that phase of life. So I sat down and I started to write a book and it’s called Win Your Inner Battles. And I published it and I thought, maybe I should start a blog to, you know, tell people about it. And I started to publish on social media or you know, created social media account and started publishing on Medium. And all of a sudden, I had a bunch of articles that did really well. So that’s how I really got started in this. And it it was really the philosophy of Stoicism that gave me the confidence to just ignore all the noise and focus on myself and focus on my skills and put them into practice. And that’s how I really got started on this entire journey that I’ve been on now because one of the things that I also learned was that if you become among the top performers in your industry, you get significantly higher rewards than if you are average or somewhere at the bottom. And and that’s directly also from Stoicism. The philosophy of Stoicism is not really about, you know, being an emotionless person who never reacts to anything and isn’t harmed by anything or whatever. It’s about challenging yourself to become the best. And that’s what I love the most and when I read about that, I thought, you know, I need to be the best at what I do.
Mindy: Darius, I I love that you just kind of clarified that for us of, you know, what what stoicism means to you because I think that um, the the word carries a lot of weight in society today and I think it can be associated with um, you know, things that some it can have a little bit of a negative connotation as what I’ll say. So the the whole like suppression of emotions, which is obviously just really, really unhealthy. But it sounds like from your side you’re saying it’s more around like intentionality, um, that’s what it sounds like to me. Would you say that’s like kind of on track with what you think stoicism is or, you know, what does it mean to you and what does it not mean to you?
Guest: Yeah, definitely. And the it’s good that you brought this up because people generally think that the word stoic, which we often have this negative relationship with or the lower case word stoic where, you know, a person who’s stoic, we think of, I don’t know, this old person, maybe went through the war or something or is is not reacting to anything and is emotionless. Um, but it doesn’t have anything to do with the philosophy of stoicism. And at the same time, there are also a lot of folks online who have read a few stoic texts or quotes and interpret it completely wrong as in, oh, I need to use this to show that I’m so macho or so cool that I don’t feel anything and I can deal with anything in life. I also don’t think that’s true because if you read the the works of the stoics themselves, you’ll really learn that it’s a a philosophy of empathy and having understanding for yourself, but also for others because what I one of the things that I also love about um some of the stoics, particularlyetus is that he’s known as a very stringent philosopher that says, yeah, just focus on what you control. Um if someone in your family or a loved one dies, um keep your man keep your emotions in check, etc. and of course, that’s very hard to do, but at the same time, he also says if a loved one is upset, find a way to console them, you know, don’t say, yeah, it’s wrong to have emotions, right? And and that’s I feel like a lot of folks um don’t understand how to to use the philosophy to become a better human being. And I think that’s ultimately the the power of stoicism. It helps you not only to challenge yourself to become the best version of yourself, but it also helps you to deal with your own emotions and other people’s emotions as well.
Scott: We’re about to get into how the stoic philosophy gives us a strategy that we can apply to stocks and real estate and how it helps us handle losses in a portfolio as we move toward financial freedom. We’ll be right back.
Mindy: And we’re back.
Mindy: Yeah, and I want to get into how stoicism can shape your strategy, especially as it relates to real estate and um achieving retirement. But first, how does this translate to finance overall?
Guest: Yeah, so when it comes to finance overall, I think that any type of financial decision that you make comes with emotions. So, if you have kind of a operating system for managing your emotions and making sure that you are always balanced because I think that’s the ultimate goal to to feel that you are in control of life and we can’t control what happens to us, but we can control how we respond to the things that happen to us. And especially in finance or in investing whether it’s in real estate or in the stock market, things are thrown at you all the time and you don’t control those things. I I’m a small real estate investor. I own two rental properties and over the over these years, I’ve had just a few small um problems with tenants, but it always happened at the wrong time when I was on vacation. You know, or when I was going through a, you know, remodeling project of my own house. So it it always happens at the wrong time and it can, you know, kind of piss you off or at least can piss me off when those thing things happen. But that’s my first response. Then I need to remind myself that I don’t control what happens or when things happen. I just need to look at my actions because that’s the only thing that I control. And I think that you can basically apply this strategy not only to your investment investments, but also to your spending because especially with social media, I just have to spend like 5 or 10 minutes on Instagram and I I’m thinking to myself, yeah, I need to buy a new car or me and my partner, yeah, we need to remodel our house, you know, like social media does that to us, right? Or we need to go on a vacation. And Stoicism constantly reminds me to just stay grounded and just to stay on the path, stay focused on my own life and my own philosophy and the way that I want to live, which is to be free because I think having freedom is more worth it than to go on vacations or drive the latest car, you know?
Scott: I think that the appeal of Stoicism, I think has a lot to do with the fact that Stoicism does not disallow someone from wanting a lot more. It just provides a toolkit for dealing with the inevitable challenges on the way there, including loss, which is very congruent with investing, right? We invest because we want more. And we know that the investments are not always going to play out and there’s going to be hard times in there. And I think that’s the that’s why, you know, invest investors there seems to be a lot of overlap with notable investors or influencers in the personal finance space or tech space and practitioners of Stoicism perhaps because of that that dynamic. Is that would you agree with that, Darius?
Guest: Yeah, I totally agree with that. And especially the thing that you said about wanting or having a desire to earn more or to become wealthy. I’ve also read on Reddit. Uh there there are a lot of these philosophy subreddits and there’s one for stoicism where I saw this discussion of some guys who were saying, yeah, if you’re a real stoic, you shouldn’t care about money. You shouldn’t have the desire to become wealthy because it goes against the philosophy or something and and I don’t agree with that at all. In fact, you can find quotes from Seneca or Epictitus saying that money in itself is not bad. It’s fine to have the desire to acquire more money because it’s practical. Um the the problem is when you have this crazy desire when you are too focused and too attached to your money as well, that when you totally become consumed by it and you end up being greedy and then you want to just acquire money for the sake of having more. And that type of dynamic is yeah, really detrimental for I think for your mindset and the way that you live but also for your long-term wealth because you know, we all know what happens when we get too greedy, particular in public markets, when we want to jump on the latest train of whatever it is, meme stock or Bitcoin or any other cryptocurrency that seems great but you don’t know anything about, you think, oh, I can make a few bucks here and then plays out differently and then you have this negative emotion, a negative feeling of losing money and then you might think to yourself, I’m not going to do that again. So you kind of take a lot of future wealth from yourself away by getting swayed by all of these emotions.
Mindy: Yeah, and and earlier you mentioned a 60% loss, specifically. It’s a very like big number, right? A 60% loss pretty early in your journey. So, as it relates to investing, how would or should a stoic experience losses? Because we can, you know, at face value say, yeah, just, you know, leave your emotions at the door, what happens, happens, but like, how do you actually put that in into place when you experience something like a 60% loss?
Guest: Yeah, that’s a great question because as a Stoic, I don’t think you would ever put yourself in that position in the first place because what I did at the time was I I had this job or when I was in college, this is in 2007, I got this job at a bank and then they offered me to get like a three or four week training program to become a mutual fund advisor. And you could do this before 08, you know, where there were not that many financial regulations. But I thought to myself, hmm, I work at a bank, seems like everyone is making a lot a lot of money here. I should buy bank stocks. So, I took pretty much all of my savings and I bought stocks of two financials. And then of course, 2008 happens and the market keeps going down, down, down and at some point I was down more than 60% and when that happened, I really felt it in my gut just throughout that whole experience. So, I also stopped investing for many years. So, as a Stoic, you would never put yourself in that position because a first of all, I was taking too much risk. I also didn’t know what I was doing. I didn’t know what was going on under the hood. And I should have never started to invest with all of my savings because when you, you know, when you start with a big amount of money, then you start looking at your portfolio with laser focus and then you feel every single uptick or downtick and that’s not a healthy way to invest. So as a Stoic, you need to create some distance between yourself and your investments, whether that’s a rental property or the stock market. So, for example, when I started investing again, I started with small sums just to experience the ups and downs of the market because I feel that as an investor, you should look at your portfolio. A lot of folks say, yeah, just invest in the stock market, invest in the S&P 500, which is what I do as well, but just don’t look at it. And I think that’s not the right way to do it because you should be involved. It’s your money, you should know what’s going on. You just shouldn’t react to what’s going on. You should be able to look at it and say, okay, when we’re down, you probably won’t feel good, but that’s normal. And a similar way, when you have a rental property and particularly if you live in it before and then you decide to rent it out, you should just say goodbye to it, right? It’s no longer a house. It’s just a property, it’s just an investment. And in a similar way, your money is also not something that you earned with your time, it’s just a tool and it should work for you.
Scott: So so how do we use what you’ve told us so far, like like it seems like how how do you boil down the practice of Stoicism and translate that into building wealth? Like what is a plan that Stoicism would lead an investor to? Um and and what are the tools that Stoicism offers for an investor to follow that? Bonus question, if you can tie in how taking a cold plunge fits into that uh, long-term wealth creation plan.
Guest: Yeah, well, let’s start with the cold plunge. I don’t think I don’t think that jumping in cold water does anything for your mind personally. I think that small um uh exposure does a lot more to you like small small increments of improvement over time instead of jumping straight in to cold water would improve but when it comes to like how we could apply this to our lives, um so I created this concept that I call the stoic edge because when you look at uh successful investors, they always talk about having an edge if you want to beat the market. So, for example, Warren Buffett and Berkshire Hathaway have a size edge because they are so big and manage so much money, they can make investments that we can’t. They can buy entire companies. So that’s something that’s not easily attainable for an individual. In a similar way, there’s also an edge called the quant edge. Um many folks might have heard of Jim Simons who was a lot in the news last several months. He passed away. Um he was one of the most successful investors of all time, beating Warren Buffett’s annualized return. And he did that with a quant edge by econometrics and hiring PhDs and having a fund like that, also, I can’t do that. The individual investor won’t be able to do that. So what’s an attainable edge for us if we want to invest? And not necessarily to beat the market because beating the market is an extremely high aim that only a few are able to do. What if we just say that we want to build wealth and profit from the stock market as a whole, how can we do that? Well, by staying invested. And if you have a stoic edge, you can stay invested, no matter what happens, whether the market goes up or down, you should be able to stay invested and keep investing. And how you can acquire that stoic edge is in my experience through three steps. First, to invest in yourself and to not only acquire skills, but also become a stable human being and form the habit of investing because a lot of folks don’t see themselves as investors. Even if you invest, you might think of yourself as someone with a job who has made a few investments. But if you made one investment, I think you should look at yourself as an investor because that’s who you are and you should behave like that as well and be responsible with your money. So, I think that’s the first step to invest in yourself and then to get comfortable with short-term losses because as a long-term investor or as a stoic investor, you should only invest in the opportunities that are proven and have a solid foundation like investing in real estate or like investing in the S&P 500, not trying to pick stocks. Um so when you have that strategy, the losses that you take are generally short-term. So when you see the your portfolio going down, you can just accept it as something that’s normal. And once you’re able to do those two things, I think you can just sit back and let your money do the work because you can just repeat that cycle. And if you found a good strategy of investing in the stock market, you know, through the S&P 500 or total stock market, whatever that works for you, or you found a way to invest in real estate, you can just simply repeat that process and let your money just do the work.
Scott: I think that there’s so much to like in the the the practice of Stoicism for investors at like every stage of the journey, hearing you say you’re saying here because at the early stage, right, we have to reduce our wants and Stoicism helps with that, right? And you have to do that for a long period of time. That’s self-sacrifice, that is living below your means, right? You’re enabled to want more and be able to and delay gratification and think through it with the toolkit that Stoicism offers. You’re able to invest for the long term in riskier or more volatile asset classes like real estate and stocks that can come with lumpy problems, um but higher long-term overall returns for this. And then Stoicism does allow you to then reap the rewards of this of this success in a longer-term sense, responsibly and you know, and still, you know, constantly remind you to save, hey, occasionally you will need to dip into um the rolling up your sleeves efforts that got you there and you keep yourself reminded of that. And so I think that that’s like the appeal of Stoicism to a lot of people and and to me, I’ve I’ve dabbled in this and I’m probably one of those people that has uh misrepresented it badly that you referred to at the beginning of our our interview here. But those are the kind of some of the things that I’ve taken away from it and the toolkits offered to people who practice Stoicism um to be able to, you know, constantly, you know, yes, keep on the journey and stay disciplined and stay focused, but to always be willing and able to reap the rewards and go back if you need to when there’s problems that come up. How am I doing here, Darius? Am I fairly close? I see you nodding in agreement. Is that polite or is that because I’m I’m reasonably close?
Guest: Oh, I I love it because you brought up the reaping the rewards, which is also one of my personal goals as well, um, because I think life is too short to have this very stringent life and to always well, I think I do think it’s always good to live below your means just in general, but to always just save as much as you can and I I love the um, the fire movement, right? Like early retirement, financial independence, etc. But I think that a lot of folks put a little bit too much emphasis on wealth acquisition because at the end of the day, like life is about our memories, right? Because what what else is there to life? Right? Like later on in our lives, we probably look back and the only thing that we remember are our memories. And it requires some money to make some memories in in in some cases. Now, of course, as they say, the best things in life are free, but we have to stay practical, right? Like we also want to enjoy the wealth that we build and I think that’s kind of a thing that a lot of folks forget, particularly those very financially responsible people. I could assume people who would listen to this podcast because if you’re interested in real estate investing, if you’re interested in building wealth, you are generally more financially responsible than the folks who just live day-to-day and just spend everything they they earn. So, I think I’m glad that you brought that up uh because you also have to enjoy the the wealth that you have built and actually also are building because it doesn’t mean that if you’re on a journey, you should just always be super stringent uh until that moment that oh, you know, look, I’ll enjoy my life when I when my net worth is 2 million dollars or whatever, right? Um, and then that moment comes and then you think to yourself, maybe I should just keep going. So, when when does that moment come?
Mindy: Yeah, so I I have a question then because it seems like you obviously have like already embodied the idea and spirit of stoicism and um, you know, kind of setting your emotions aside, acknowledging your emotions, but kind of setting them aside in places where you don’t want them to be the decision maker, if you will. But I would say like there are probably some people out there who are listening to this podcast and are interested in money, interested in getting started, interested in hitting their goals, interested in doing that next thing, but maybe they haven’t like taken that step yet. So, for somebody who is new, um, and and looking to start, I guess, how would you say, where would you say is a good place for them to begin their journey?
Guest: Yeah, so personally because I am always more attracted to the stock market, I feel like that’s the perfect place to start, even if it’s not with big amounts of money, just to form the habit and to start seeing yourself as an investor. I think it’s very simple to start an automated investment into the S&P 500. Um an ETF, I personally own the Vanguard ETF uh and um it’s a low cost way of investing and it makes sense to me because investing in the 500 greatest companies in the US makes sense because these are companies that we all use, like Apple and Microsoft, and Amazon and Tesla and you name it. And these companies have international exposure. So I understand the mechanism. If I, if someone would tell me, yeah, pick a stock, then I would be like, oh oh, what should I do? What, you know, I even if you have a business background or if you have a finance background, it’s very difficult to look at a company’s financials and its future prospects, etc. So that makes it a lot more complicated. just and to to keep things simple and I think also that’s one of the things that I learned fromsm is that when you want to start something, just boil it down to the simplest action and how you can start today. And that’s really I think one of the the easiest ways to to get started.
Scott: So Darius, what what do you do personally with your portfolio? And do you consider yourself financially independent?
Guest: Yes, I am financially independent. Um now, also financially, but there’s also another part of financial independence I think in my book, which is emotional independence and I feel like I accomplished that before I accomplished my financial independence. Um so how I have my portfolio set up is that I have these two rental properties, and the first one I bought in 2017 with the first money that I earned with my writing and in 2020 right before COVID. And throughout this time, I was also investing with smaller amounts, uh basically based on my income. So I have this goal of investing at least 30% of my income. So as my income started to rise over these years, I kept investing more in the stock market. And now in total what my portfolio looks like is that I have the real estate and then I have 90% of the the money that I have allocated to the stock market in the S&P 500 and then 10% for speculating in individual stocks because that is my passion. I don’t think that everybody should do that if you’re not completely passionate about it. So, I do own a few individual stocks but that’s only 10% of my total stock market.
Scott: Awesome. What’s the next big stock that’s going to boom?
Guest: Well, I I own uh actually a Dutch stock called Ajyen. It’s kind of the stripe of uh Netherlands and uh they do payment processing for Uber and McDonald’s and a lot of uh large firms. And I’m um, you know, I’ve always been a Warren Buffet fan. So one of the things that I learn from Warren Buffett is to invest in businesses that you understand. And um, taking a a small portion as a fee of a payment is a business that I understand. So it’s can’t be simpler than that. Uh and I also understand corporate sales a little bit because of my experience. So I I realized that if you have these multinational clients, something really weird has to happen to to give them up. So these types of companies have this large client base and even if they don’t acquire new company or new clients, they they will continue to grow their revenue. So that’s one of the stocks that I uh that I’ve owning for the last year now.
Mindy: So, Darius, you are obviously in a way different place in life than you were when you were a kid, right? I’m sure kid Darius looks at adult Darius like, wow, look at how far we’ve come. So, before we hear how to retire like a stoic, when did the feeling of financial independence really sink in for you? When was it like, wow, I’ve made it. This is kind of awesome.
Guest: Yeah, that’s really a great question and it actually was a very specific moment. So, my writing career started to take off around 2017. So the first two years was still like kind of kind of a slow and steady growth and then I uh, some of my articles went viral and then my books went viral and then in 2019, I remember it was this time when I was starting to look at my my financials of the last year to do my taxes. And then I somehow discovered this account of audible sales of audiobook sales. And I I had never thought of it because I set it up when I published, because I actually self-published my first books. It’s only now that my latest book is being traditionally published, but I self-published my first books and I also did an audio book of one of them. And then in 2019, I think, oh, what happened to that account? So I log in and I realize there’s like 7, 8,000 in that account. And I’m like, oh wow, that’s pretty cool. I didn’t know that I had this money. And that was the first moment in my life where I was like, oh wow, okay, you know, like, I feel pretty cool about the things that I’ve done until now while it at that time my net worth was probably about half a million uh the equivalent of dollars and to be frankly, technically I was not financially independent, you know, if I would stop working, I like, of course, I I my cost of living are not that high and I’ve never upgraded my lifestyle. So I would be okay, but not like fully okay, you know? So I still have had to do some work, but in my mind, I was already there because I felt like, okay, I’ve got this under control. I’ve invested in my skills and network and I have these products and I have at that time one one rental property. So, that was really the first moment that I thought to myself, well, you don’t have to be, you actually don’t have to be a multi-millionaire to feel financially independent. So that was a huge win for me.
Mindy: Yeah, the fact that you like had reached a point in your life where you weren’t like tracking down every penny that was like O2U or available to you is like surprise money if you will. What is that Bob Ross quote that’s like the painter? You know remember the painter when you were like a kid that was like we don’t make mistakes, we just have happy accidents. It sounds like that was a very happy accident for you to run into.
Guest: Yeah, exactly. And especially for uh like my younger self, I I don’t think that would ever happen because I was just like I I I was holding on to every penny that I made, you know, like like a madman and uh, when I had kind of that moment, I realized, okay, I finally learned to let go. So that was that was that was a cool moment.
Mindy: Yeah, I I love that. So then, how can someone retire like a stoic? Somebody who is interested in retiring like a stoic?
Guest: Yeah, I think retiring retiring like a Stoic um to me means that you are finally kind of ready to kind of step back from active life and from busy life, um but not necessarily to change your life when you retire, why not just maintain your habits that you kind of built during your entire life and if you’ve built like sustainable habits like exercising and journaling and saving and investing, why not keep doing that when you retire? Why not keep investing in the stock market? Well, a lot of folks say, yeah, well, you should own bonds or you should own less volatile stocks or maybe you should be more in cash. And I think to myself, why? Because if you spend your entire lifetime to you know, practice managing your emotions, you’ve built all of these great habits and you’re able to live a, you know, consistent and stable life, when you retire, you can just maintain that strategy and okay, if you want to downsize or if you want to downgrade your lifestyle or move to a place where it’s cheaper, that’s also fine. It’s a bonus. But I feel like a lot of folks uh worry too much about retirement and again, those are those financially responsible folks and and those are the folks who generally are fine. So I think retirement is just an extension of what we are doing now, just in a you know, maybe at at a slower pace.
Scott: Well Darius, where can people find out more about you and the new book you have coming out?
Guest: Yeah, so best place to learn more is on my website, Dariusforoux.com or Stoicpathtowealth.com and um, I have more about my work and articles etcetera and the book as well.
Scott: Awesome. Thank you so much for coming on the Bigger Pockets Money today and sharing a lot of wisdom around Stoicism and how it applies to personal finance and early retirement. Really appreciate it and I hope you have a wonderful rest of your week.
Guest: Yeah, thanks for having me and it was a pleasure.
Scott: All right, that was Darius Foroux. Amanda, what’d you think?
Mindy: I loved it. You know, I think the idea of stoicism really has um a little bit of a negative connotation in society today. It can be looked at as, you know, as maybe even a little pretentious sometimes, but I think that his focus is really on just intentionality and knowing your own risk tolerance. That’s kind of what I took away from it. It’s it’s, you know, knowing what you can handle, what you can risk. And I think it’s really just about knowing your own risk tolerance and um spending your money and investing your money intentionally. So, taking a step back from the chaos of life, social media, anybody surrounding you and being like, what do I want out of life? How do I find the most joy out of life? So that’s really what I took from it and I really like that he kind of gave us a a different view into what stoicism could mean.
Scott: And and what about you, Scott? What’d you think? Like what what did you take away from from the conversation with Darius around what stoicism is?
Scott: Yeah, so I I mean, soism it seems to me is is it’s a it’s a philosophy, it’s a toolkit though, more than that to me that and it empowers people to make better financial decisions long term because it comes with it’s congruent with all the things we want on the journey to financial independence including allowing this desire for more, but a constant reminder of where we’ve come from, what um you know the challenges to overcome and the acceptance of discomfort and even even taking joy in the journey and getting one step better at all times while constantly reminding ourselves um where we came from. Reap the rewards, but never forget the journey and never um never allow yourself to grow too uh soft, too comfortable to to uh go back and and do the hard things that got you to where you are in the first place.
Mindy: I love that. Get comfortable with being uncomfortable.
Scott: Perfect, way better summary.
Scott: Well Amanda, should we get out of here?
Mindy: Let’s do it.
Scott: All right, this is Scott Trench and Amanda Wolf from the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, signing off.
Mindy: Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jenson and Scott Trench. This episode was produced by Eric Kaun. Copywriting by Calico Content. Post production by Exodus Media and Chris Makin. Thanks for listening.
