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Mindy: Today’s guest Emily proves that where you start does not define where you finish, from growing up in poverty and working three jobs to a $2 million net worth and financial independence by age 40. Let’s hear how she did it.
Mindy: Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my non magical co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott: Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here. I’m super excited to talk about how Emily and her husband stacked the deck in their favor and then played their hand to its logical conclusion. You’ll get it later. I promise, guys, it’s a magic story. We are going to be going back to the beginning of her five story and talking about how she built this impressive portfolio today.
Scott: Emily, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.
Guest: Thank you so much, Scott and Mindy. I cannot wait to talk to you about this. This is one of my favorite subjects.
Mindy: Oh, us too. Yay.
Guest: I’m in the right place.
Mindy: Emily, where does your journey with money begin?
Guest: Well, honestly, it goes way back. And I I’ll try not to give you my here’s my whole life story, but I’ll I’ll sum it up here. I grew up in poverty. So food stamps, food banks, we just did not really have a lot. And to go to my friend’s house that had like a refrigerator with running water was like mindblowing and like those were the rich kids in my class, right? But I just remember, you know, a lot of handme downs and we didn’t live in very great homes and great areas. and unfortunately, like when I moved out as well, when I was 17, it was the same thing. I had very little money. I was working three jobs, struggling to make ends meat and it was kind of just survival. You know, I was never taught about money. Like I was only influenced by what my parents did and they never taught me about money. So, I just knew that money was scares from what I had perceived and that you had to work really hard for it. And so when I finally came into my first corporate job making you know, decent amount of money when I first started, I was 22 years old and I was making about $32,000, which was a lot coming from poverty. So I was like, oh, wow, okay, this is like real money. And, you know, I eventually after a few years of working corporate, I was about 25, 26. I was making closer to $65 to $70,000, but I was just sending it. I I mean, I was keeping up with the Joneses. I was leasing a car that was worth my salary that that’s a whole other story. And I just realized I was like, what am I doing? I make pretty good money, but like there’s like nothing really to show for it. And my co-worker at the time brought up, I don’t know how it got started, but he was like, you know, have you heard of this Dave Ramsey guy? And I was like, who’s Dave Ramsey? You know, I’ve never heard of him and we were maybe talking about buying cars or something. And he was telling me about the baby steps. For someone who had always seen her family struggle with money, who was also struggled with money herself, who had no idea how to manage it, when he was like, oh, there’s these seven baby steps, you just go one, two, three, four up the ladder. I just clung to that and I was like, that’s what I need. That’s the solution. I’ve always needed someone to lay it out so simply for me. And from there, I don’t know what, but it lit a fire in me. I guess no pun intended, but it lit a fire in me for personal finance because the idea of financial peace, the idea of eventually, what I learned about financial freedom and fire, I was like, oh my gosh, this is unbelievable. I could never imagine a life like this, I want to build it.
Mindy: What was your financial position when you discovered Dave Ramsey? You said you were spending all the money that came in. Did you have any sort of savings or any sort of debt?
Guest: As I mentioned, I was making probably about 70,000 and if I had savings, it was probably no more than a few thousand dollars if that. I did not have like an emergency fund. I was not intentionally like trying to build something. and although I didn’t have consumer debt on my like a credit card, I had a very irresponsible car lease. And so I ended up leasing this top of the line Audi, which not sponsored by the way, not sponsored by Audi, but I leased it. It was like show floor model. It was probably with $65,000 and mind you, I’m like 23 years old or something at this point, 24 years old and my car payment, I had put like $12,000 or $15,000 down my car payment was still almost like $600 a month. I mean, this had to been over 10, 12, 15 years ago. So, it’s a lot of money.
Mindy: But you deserved it.
Guest: right? I deserved it. I deserved a $600 monthly payment, right? So it’s so interesting how perspectives shift as you start to really dive deeper into like financial freedom and and personal finance. So, I would say I had a a really big car payment draining my budget. I had very little savings and I was not investing. I was terrified of investing, which is so funny now, because all I do really, I promote so much investing now. It’s just it’s funny how it’s come completely 180 from where I was.
Mindy: But you had no history of seeing your parents invest. Growing up, I didn’t have a lot of money, but my parents did invest, and I knew they invested, and I knew that once I got an adult job, I would also have to start investing, because that’s what you do when you’re an adult. I didn’t, but that’s what you’re supposed to do. So, not have, like, don’t beat yourself up because you weren’t investing before. You turned this around in your mid-20s, mid to late 20s. That’s awesome, because there’s a lot of people who don’t turn it around for a super long time.
Guest: Yeah.
Mindy: What did you start doing when you started following date?
Guest: When I started doing the baby steps, I think I had just gotten engaged to my now husband or soon to be engaged. And so now it was kind of a a dual thing. Like I remember finding Dave Ramsey and I told I think my fiancem I was like, hey, this just makes so much sense. Like we’ve got to start doing it. And he was like on board with it. I think I did like financial Peace University. There was a part in it that’s like make your partner sign this contract to do monthly budget meetings and I actually made him sign it and I like put it on the fridge. I was so invested in this. So immediately it was like get an emergency fund going, pay off the debt, and I remember I think I had like three or four months left of my lease. And I was like, hey, you know, I’m going to save up money, like I’m going to save up the cash to buy a used car in cash. We both made a promise to each other, we will never go in debt again. Like we are not going to be in debt. I ended up paying off my lease early and I bought a car in cash, like a used car in cash and his name was Boris. I love that car. Miss him. He was very sentimental. Then it was like building up the emergency fund and, you know, building up that savings and then I had to learn how to invest and I started to, I was scared, but I was like, I know I got to start doing it. That’s when I came across like the simple path to wealth from J O Collins. And index funds and financial freedom and fire and I just like, I set my target on, I was like, that’s it. That’s what I’ve been looking for is financial freedom. From there, I mean, it’s been a almost decade long journey now, but we’re getting close.
Mindy: What was your partner’s financial position before you got married and before you started this Dave Ramsey thing? And then he, I’m assuming he was on board with it?
Guest: So, my husband’s name is Kenji. Fortunately, Kenji, he’s always been a very simple person, so like he hasn’t been very materialistic and bought a lot of stuff. So, he fortunately did not have any debt. He definitely comes from, I would say, he had a comfortable life but not a spoiled life. So, he was comfortable financially, but he didn’t really take a lot of initiative with money. And so, I remember when we started talking about combining finances and like he doesn’t mind if I tell this story, it’s a pretty funny one. But I remember when we talked about, I’m like, okay, like let’s start thinking about, you know, how much we could set aside for the emergency fund and and he’s like, yeah, and I was like, do you have, you know, do you know how much money you make? He’s like, no. I was like, do you know how much you spend? He’s like, no. I was like, oh boy, we’re starting from zero. We’re like starting from scratch. And I remember like we had to like check his account together and he’s just like, I just keep it in my checking account. Like I just keep money there and I was like, now looking back, I’m like, oh my gosh, all of the returns we missed out on all the gains. He had been working for a really long time. He had like a decent amount of money just sitting in his checking account. and I was like, oh my goodness, we have to have a plan. like we can’t do this. So, he unfortunately he got on board and like we’ve on ever since we signed that paper, we have monthly budget meetings since and it’s been 10 years now.
Scott: I want to ask you about the psychological importance of having a plan. Did something shift when you kind of figured out, hey, I can do this that immediately translated to behavior change that should that maybe you in hindsight should have been there all along. Is it is it that simple for a lot of people that once you just get that a plan will get you there, your behavior snap falls into place behind it?
Guest: I think it also depends on how badly you want it and I wanted financial freedom, I wanted financial peace so badly, I was willing to do anything. I do think like the behavior shift and like that mindset shift is necessary because if you don’t have a plan, it’s like you’re driving a car without your hands on the wheel and you’re just hoping for the best, which we all know how that goes. Like maybe you don’t have an accident for a while, but eventually something’s going to pop up, some emergency, some unexpected thing. It was really important for me to get that plan and that get us both on the same page and now we can be focused on one set like shared goal.
Scott: I’m still interested in the psychology here in addition to the numbers that that we’ve we we can have very lightly touched on so far. We have this Dave Ramsay is giving us hope and changing behavior immediately and lighting a fire. And then at some point we also have the fire movement come into play and that seems like an evolution in your psychology or approach to money there based on what I what I’m hearing you say. Could you describe that? Is that accurate? how does that intertwine with or branch off from Dave Ramsey’s baby steps for you?
Guest: I think the baby steps were essentially the this is how you get started manual and it was kind of a one-size fits all. Those first few steps made a lot of sense and I was like, yeah, that’s great. And then I think his fourth step is like save or invest 15% of your income. As I was learning about the baby steps, I was just trying to learn about personal finance in general. So I was off on Reddit and all the deep subreddit forums. There’s lots of you know, fire folks there and I was learning so much in other places too and reading other books. The simple path to wealth was one that popped up and you know, index funds and people mentioning fire and I learned about financial freedom and I was like, oh, that sounds a lot better than just working my whole life investing 15% and hoping it turns out, okay. Like, I don’t want to work corporate, like, I want to be done really soon. So like the idea that I had an out even sooner was like the 2.0 plan for me. and I got even more excited and this was also at a time where we started to earn a bit more money. and I was like, hey, we could actually do this. If we really focus on it, we could probably do it pretty darn early in life. And my husband had always joked like when we first started dating, he’s like, I want to retire at 35. And I was like, okay, unless you’re a secret millionaire like, good luck. Like there’s no way. But it’s just kind of funny how like years later when we actually started talking about it like we could probably retire at 40. like maybe this could actually happen. And so I was like, it got to the place where I mean, I was just running the Monte Carlos Sims and I was like doing all this stuff and he’s just like, uh, I trust you honey. like he’s like, I, he doesn’t really understand like or, you know, the personal finance stuff as much. So I guess like in terms of the mindset shift, it was the idea that I kind of had this starting path and it felt very one size fits all, but then I realized that that wasn’t the only option and I was extremely burnt out. I was very stressed and I wanted that out. I wanted the freedom to work when I wanted to work or to not have the golden handcuffs. And so the fire movement felt that’s kind of when I started to branch away from the baby steps and I was like all in on fire and financial independence and learning about, you know, the Trinity study and the 4% role and like all of those different things that we know about.
Scott: What do you count as your savings rate right now?
Guest: Right now, it’s definitely dropped because we added a kid to the mix and daycare is very expensive. We’re also on self-employed insurance now, not through an employer. So that is astronomically higher. But we still tend to be ballpark around 45 to 50% savings right.
Scott: Do you count your insurance as part of your spending given that you’re self-employed or is that run through your business?
Guest: I’m kind of trying to figure that out honestly. I I think we do write it off as a business expense, but we don’t have like a special like small business plan per se if that makes sense. My husband just got his S corp. I am hopefully going to convert to an S corp this year. So we’re just still trying to figure out that whole thing. But unfortunately, like, you know, we’re just going through the marketplace right now and we dropped down to a bronze plan and we’re still paying over, I think it’s like 16 to 1,700 a month now for everything. It’s insane.
Mindy: Insurance is so expensive.
Guest: That’s one of the biggest questions I get around fire a lot of times. It’s like, how do you plan for healthcare and healthcare expenses? Like it’s such a big question mark with so many changes that happens to policy and things that impact it. You know, fortunately like we do have an HSA. I’m hoping to use it as a stealth retirement account. So just loading it up, investing it and hopefully not touching it until much later on. but you know, if things really come down to it too, we do have like a backup backup emergency fund for healthcare expenses as well.
Mindy: I would do everything in my power not to touch that HSA money right now if possible. What things have you changed from the mid-20s, making $60,000 a year and spending it all to current day Emily?
Guest: besides the expensive car
Mindy: What haven’t I changed, honestly?
Guest: Like all aspects of my life I’ve found ways to save money pretty much, and having lived in poverty, I was very well aware of like how to save a lot of money and like different resources and tricks and tips and all of those different things. And so a lot of it was experiencing about like finding what’s the minimum viable solution, like what’s the minimum and cheapest I can go but still feel like life’s pretty darn good, you know? Like I didn’t want to be miserable. Like and that’s not sustainable, right? Like you can’t deprive yourself so much and save every single penny. You still have to live a little too. So, you know, we would save money by cooking at home and eating leftovers and we like I would almost never get lunch at work when all my other coworkers were eating out all the time. Or I wasn’t upgrading our cars, like we had very reasonable older cars that we paid for in cash. When we did travel, we would never go into debt for traveling. We would do smaller trips or local trips or we would, you know, save in advance and and make sure that we paid it off. Like we were much more mindful about how we spent our money. And it was really exciting to see us getting closer to those financial goals and it made me want to like just keep doing it. Like just I know for a lot of people, it’s like the drawn out middle of just saving and investing, it could feel like it takes forever. But when you start to see the money compounding, when you start to see those efforts pay off, I mean, there was a day, I mean, it wasn’t that long ago, I think the market was up like 10 plus percent or something crazy in like one day and I saw our investment accounts make as much money as my salary used to be and I was like, this is insane. Like I don’t come for money. I started I started my investing accounts at zero, like everyone else starts them and like it was just the fact that we paired really good money habits with our good incomes at the time and we’re like, we’re going to utilize this by buying our freedom. That’s how we want to use this money and we just invested, and invested, and invested, and we invested every month, no matter what the market was doing, we drowned out the noise. We never panic sold and now I get to sit back and I’m like, it feels like my contributions are nothing now because they’re so small compared to how much it grows and compounds now. But that’s the power of compound interest that a lot of people don’t realize. It’s slow to build up to, but once you get there, it just takes off.
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Mindy: I remember the day that we saw our investment accounts grow by the amount that was our W2 income in one day. I’m like, wow, it took me a whole lot longer to make that amount than it did to just watch this happen in one day. I’ve also seen it go the opposite. I’ve seen it drop by the amount that we were making in one year, in one day, and you’re like, oh, I don’t like it going that way. I like it when it goes up. I’m not such a fan when it goes down. But like you said, you never panic sold. I have a friend who’s company was acquired by another company and for some reason, everything in their investment accounts or maybe it was all the company stock was liquidated to cash and this was in 2008 and he looked like a genius, but then he never put it back in. So he missed all of that growth after the what is it? the great financial crash or whatever. He missed all that growth. So he also missed the drop, but the drop wasn’t nearly as big as the growth. So time in the market beats timing the market and these are cliches but they’re cliches for a reason. It makes so much sense.
Guest: Yep.
Scott: I just wanted to to ask about, you know, this time in the market and but moving towards fire, I think you’re a few years away from from your fire number based on your latest projections. Is that right?
Guest: We were targeting age 40 and we were actually invited to be guests on the money guide show and they ran through our plans with us and they were definitely leaning a bit more conservative and I think we were more optimistic and so it was helpful to kind of reality check us. and I think we are probably a little closer to like age 42, which would be like six, seven years off, but we’re hoping that I’m increasing my income a bit right now too to get us there sooner. but ideally, I’m trying to get there in five years. So, but we have a bit of a dual fire situation going on, which is a little less common. So when I say dual fire, we’re having early retirement from about 40 to 60. And so we are solely funding like a bridge fund in a brokerage account for that because I want to coast and potentially continue growing our traditional retirement accounts. So, the idea is that we would use this brokerage account to get us from 40 to 60 and then once we get to 60, we have all this other money sitting in our IRAs and such waiting for us at 60. And it’s like, wooohoo, we get to double tap into the new retirement fund now. So it’s a little bit of a more complex fire I guess, but the drawdown strategy is a little bit different coming from the brokerage account and it’s a 20 year span. So the drawdowns like probably a little bit higher than like traditional retirement will be. The fire number, we’re we’re technically like coastfi for traditional retirement, but early retirement, we’re trying to get to about 1.5, and we are right around 600,000 right now.
Scott: You want to increase this after tax brokerage position by $900,000 in five years is what I’m hearing you say.
Guest: It sounds crazy.
Mindy: No, it doesn’t.
Guest: You know, with market growth and the compounding and, you know, ideally with me increasing my income too. like we still live below our means. We save at least half of what we make. So I’m I’m hoping that math works out for us.
Scott: In the BiggerPockets Money community, we pulled the audience and a third of members, a third, a third, a third. There’s a big, a small and a medium-sized third, but they’re roughly a third, a third, a third. One third is certain that they want to build a business or work in early retirement. Another third is open to that, and another third wants to not assume anything at all and certainly does not want to work. How would you bucket yourself given that you’re both self-employed today?
Guest: Definitely in the middle. I would say that I it’s hard for me to see myself just completely stop all work and producing something or adding value into something. My husband is the same way. We say, we’re going to go till we go. That’s kind of our motto. It’s like we want to keep doing what we’re doing out of passion and out of want. and once it starts to feel like we just don’t have the same passion for it or we don’t have the same like if this is not bringing us the value and joy anymore, that’s when we’re like, okay, let’s maybe ease out of it. Like let’s work part time or let’s not work at all, like or take a mini retirement. I mean, there’s different, there’s so much that’s the thing is like we have the option to really do whatever at that point, whether we want to work for like a few months at a time and then take time off or if we want to work five hours or full time and it really just kind of goes based off how we’re feeling and our mood and what’s going on in our life. So, you know, I became a certified money coach as well throughout this process to like help people and it’s hard for me to just to see myself just stop. I’ve seen the impact that a lot of my videos are making and inspiring people. So I want to keep doing that and can it bring in some money, awesome, yeah, but at that point, I think it’s going to be more of like, this is really passion driven, less, it’ll be less income driven at that point.
Scott: Okay, and so with your portfolio, does this essentially mean that you’re just invest everything very aggressively in like 100% stock portfolios through to your number or is there more complexity to it in terms of how you’ll bridge to a drawdown portfolio.
Guest: That is something I’ve gone back and forth on so many times and I always lean towards simplicity. and so for right now, like we have a pretty aggressive investing risk tolerance. So 100% stocks, index funds, a little bit of international, mostly domestic exposure. and I have gone through so many conversations with myself, with friends, advisors, chat GPT, you name it. I’m like, do I add in bonds and when, what’s that flight path look like and all of that. I don’t know why, maybe it’s just because I really like to see the numbers go up. I just bonds are so boring to me that I’m like, I’m going to wait till the last minute. There’s always like what the book says, but then there’s also just like what feels good to you and what works for you. And so for me, I think what I probably plan to do is stay very aggressive up until the point where I essentially switch from wealth accumulation to wealth preservation. That’s when I start to see myself bringing in maybe some bonds, a little bit more cash reserves or something like that. But for right now, I’m like, I have a big target to hit. I’m kind of trying to maximize the games right now.
Mindy: How did you feel in March of 2020 when Covid hit and the stock market went down and then it had the V-shaped recovery, but it went way down really, really quickly. How did you feel when that happened?
Guest: You know, the first few times you see that happen or the first few times you see the dips, it’s kind of like a it’s a roller coaster. The first few times you take those dips, your stomach is kind of like, oh, a little queasy, and you’re like, that’s a lot of money. But I have found that when I remind myself of the data that we know, and I remind, you know, when in doubt zoom out, right, like, I know eventually it trends back up. I know what the data tells us. I know what the trends have shown us. And I also tell myself that if I sell, I lock in that loss. If I don’t sell, I’m not locking in the loss. And I still own the exact same number of shares that I own owned before, they’re just valued differently. So for me, it was a really big mindset shift that took place. So now when I see those dips, even if it’s really big dips, I’m just like, oh, yeah, that’s going to take a while to recover, but I’m getting everything on sale right now. So, my money’s buying more and I haven’t lost the money unless I sold my my assets and so there’s a quote from Dave Ramsey that I do like, which is, the only people who get hurt on a roller coaster are those who jump off. And so I just see it as that. I’m like, I’m on a roller coaster. It’s just one of those dips and dives and I’m not jumping off. No way. That’s how I see it now and honestly, it really doesn’t phase me at this point anymore after I’ve seen it.
Scott: We find that the overwhelming majority of folks, even as they are approaching fire and their number, remain invested extremely aggressively in all or mostly all stocks, even as they get there. So, this is worried me for a long time. It does not worry, it seems like most people that listen to this podcast, but it is something I have in the back of my mind and it seems like that’s not not a concern that you have on on the journey. I also think for the record that six years out is potentially too soon to begin thinking about shifting towards the more conservative portfolio. But five years or 80% of the way, this is a Frank has has given me this framework, I think is the time to really begin thinking about that for folks that are are are transitioning there. but most people will hear that rule and not do it is what our data tells us from the polling that we do on bigger pockets money.
Guest: We’ll see how I’m feeling. Like, you know, money is very emotional, right? And so I might get to a point where I’m like, okay, yeah, you know, I want to smooth out the ride. I’m going to add some bonds in and maybe I do that like three years out and I add a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more and a little bit more until I get to the allocation that I’m looking at. You know, I’ve thought of allocations like 8020s, maybe as conservative as 7030s, but for the time being, that is a privilege though too that we have the flexibility. Like we’re not going to get to age 40, 41, 42 and be like, we have to quit and we have to quit right now. Like everything relies on this. Like if the market takes a dip before we want to retire, kind of stinks. Okay, we’ll just keep doing what we’re doing for a while. Like we’re not so set on that time. It’s just that time frame in general is we want to start having the option to be a lot more financially independent at that point.
Scott: Going back to the beginning of your journey when before you discovered Dave Ramsey, what how would you describe how you felt about money in a general sense?
Guest: that there was never enough. I mean, I had a very scarcity mindset from seeing my parents struggle, from me myself struggling. And it felt like no matter I was working three jobs and no matter how hard I worked, I felt like I I mean, I had almost no money at the end of the month. And I mean, I was living off bare, bare bones. Like I was poverty line living. So I guess like my mindset around it was just, I must have to work just super hard, I guess if I want to be happy and it’s such a polarizing feeling cuz the more you work, it doesn’t correlate to how happy you are, right? And so and more money doesn’t always equate to more happiness or more wealth. It’s about how you manage the money you have. For me, there was that mindset, but also, I think one thing that set me up, it was almost like an ignorance is bliss moment for me because one thing that actually helped me a bit was I never even knew that getting credit was an option. My parents had never talked to me about it. I knew credit cards existed, but I thought they were for like older people with big corporate jobs. Like I never knew I had access to even get a credit card. So to me, my mindset was like, I can only spend what I have. I can’t spend more money than I have. So that actually in a way helped me a lot by not accruing debt.
Scott: How do you feel about money now at this point in your journey? Like how has that emotional relationship evolved over time.
Guest: It’s almost like making me emotional if I’m being honest.
Mindy: That’s okay.
Scott: This is like why we obsess is the right word, I think over money is is for this new emotional situation, right?
Guest: I cannot tell you how much more peace I feel in life to not worry about the bills, to not have to calculate my groceries when I’m shopping and put things back. And when people think of financial freedom, I think for a lot of people it’s very all or nothing. It’s like you don’t have to work or you do have to work, but there’s so much in between. The freedom, like I was saying, to not have to put the groceries back or calculate them, the freedom to not rely on food banks, the freedom to take time off of work when you need it, like truly need it. And I’m at a point now in life where it’s get me so emotional because like I, I have a fully funded emergency fund. I have all my bills paid. I can give generously to people and it just brings me so much joy to be able to do what I do now and to help other people and to know that like my son, he is not going to have to go through what I did. And I cannot tell you how much it has changed my life completely. I mean as you can see, this is why I’m so passionate about just personal finance and financial freedom and all of these topics because like it truly does change lives and it is accessible. I know that a lot of people might look at our situation and be like, well, you had good jobs or well, I have credit card debt. But these principles of building wealth and managing your money well apply to everyone. Now, we were able to get here quicker than a lot of people because of our incomes and because of, you know, how aggressively we did it and lived below our means, but it doesn’t mean it’s inaccessible for other people. Like people can still retire with dignity. They can still set up college funds for their children. It’s just we’re not taught this stuff. I still would be working at my corporate job probably just keeping up with the Joneses and spending what I make until someone had told me and introduced me to personal finance. I’ve just been in the same rat race.
Scott: I think that’s extremely powerful here. I want to dig into a couple of more dynamics that I think we have not yet covered. One is you guys are both self-employed and have transitioned out of corporate work. Can you tell us a little bit more about how that came to pass because in the way you’re telling your story and the way your journey is unfolding, it seemed a little less like we were hardcore entrepreneurs from the outset and more like that confidence evolved over time as your as your story progressed. But I’d love to hear in your words, how that transition came to be.
Guest: My husband definitely got lucky because he has been a content creator for 13 years now. That has been his full-time job and he started off at like a grocery store. He was like stocking shelves overnight and then in the meantime, building up his, he’s a video game streamer. So he would stream video games after he worked the night shift and he built up his business from just doing that. And so like he had pretty humble beginnings with his work and not really corporate, but you know, just working at the grocery store.
Scott: What game is he play?
Guest: He plays a game called Magic the Gathering.
Scott: Oh. And he streams this on this is a I I didn’t realize that was a video game. I thought that was a card game.
Guest: It is, but they made like a video game client for it. And so he has streamed it. I mean, they’ve had an old one that looks pretty old and dated and then they made a new one a few years ago. and he’s been doing that for 13 years and like, it has been so steady for him. I know everyone’s like content creation is so unpredictable and all of that and like it is, I get it, but like he has built such a steady community and like his income has been very predictable and it’s almost just like just a normal job. It’s, I don’t know, it’s kind of interesting. but he got lucky for sure. He has like the dream life with his career. I worked a bunch of just random jobs and I actually by trade, I’m an aesthetician but I only did that for a few years. So while I was working three jobs, I put myself through school and became licensed and I just realized it wasn’t for me. Like I didn’t enjoy the work I was doing so I got introduced to social media marketing and I did that for about 12 years. I was hopping around. I started at like really small studios and then I started getting into like, you know, the big hitters, like I was working at really like globally recognized, huge companies with very big budgets and I got the title I wanted and I was making tons of money. I think like at my peak, I was like, I had about a $200,000 compensation package and I mean, I felt like I had made it. Like I spent all this time and I finally made it. and I’ll summarize this story a bit because it’s a little there’s a lot of nuance in it. but essentially there was like a perfect storm that happened where I was so burnt out and stressed at work and we were going through years of of infertility struggles at the same time. so just balancing the work with the appointments and the medications and all these things and it was just a lot of grief and trauma and loss and it just it was a lot for my mental health, my physical health. So my husband and I were talking, we’re like, you know, he has built up his business to be really stable at this point. We’ve been saving a ton of money, we invest a ton of money. We probably knew it wasn’t going to last much longer doing what I was doing and he’s like, you should just quit. I was like kind of taken a back at first, I was like, I can’t quit. Like I have to work. And I realized like my identity was my work. My identity was my title and the company I worked for and like it was so scary for me to even think about quitting my job. And he’s like, I think you should just do it. Like let’s see if it changes anything and like you just got to take some time. I was like, yeah, I think I got to. and like I ended up quitting my corporate work. sure enough, we had a family a few months later. Like, no, I don’t think that’s coincidental. I really don’t. You know, we were able to start a family and I was like, you know, I don’t really want to go back to corporate work now that I’ve had like a taste of this life. Like I finally feel like I can breathe. Like I don’t have this horrible dread and anxiety and this like having to wake up all these emails and meetings that should have been emails and like you, I mean, you know, the corporate life and so I guess that’s a long winded way of saying that I definitely have the more traditional career path of like working corporate and then we had built up so much security and my husband had also built up his income that it give me a safety net to quit. and then as of about a year and a half ago, I was like, you know, I really want to help people. and I don’t want to go make a business more money. So maybe I could go into this social media thing. I’ve done it for brands, so maybe I can do it for myself. And I started talking about personal finance and our situation and our story and retiring early and here I am. It’s actually starting to turn into something.
Scott: What was the interplay between the liquidity that you had in your life at that point in time, that was not in your retirement accounts and your comfort level with this decision? Because that that I think is an interesting dynamic that I observe in the fire community. Some people are comfortable with, hey, I’m going to just jump in. And some people need a lot of cash or a big buffer to feel good about that decision. I’d love to know what that was like for you.
Guest: I don’t remember the exact number off the top of my head of our emergency fund at the time, but we did have an emergency fund that was at least, I want to say probably like $30,000 or more and then we had a significant amount in our brokerage account as well as like all of our other investment accounts and my husband had been steadily bringing in about $200,000 or more a year. So, I mean, that with the fact that we had also just paid off our mortgage. So we were completely debt free. Our expenses were a lot lower. I just ran the numbers a lot and I ran all the different scenarios and situations and oh, well, if you lose your job and what do we do plan A B C and D. And so I think it was a little bit of like, there were two parts of it. There was a big mindset portion of it too. There’s so much fear when you pull away from corporate work or just like a traditional nine to five because that’s so much security for people and that’s what we do our whole lives, right? We’re working nine to five and that’s our income, that’s our stability. And so it was really scary to jump out of that. but then I tried to just reinforce the facts of like, okay, we’ve spent all these years building up all of these financial resources and all of these accounts and we have his income and we have plan A BC and D. Like, there was a lot of reassurance in doing it and I also just knew that like for my sake and my mental health and my physical health, like I had to take a step back in some capacity.
Scott: Was your job very high paying before this? Like start of the two kind of high paying before you stepped down?
Guest: you mean at the time I stepped down?
Scott: yeah.
Guest: Yeah, I stepped down when I was making around 200,000 a year.
Scott: There are no easy jobs in corporate that start with that number.
Guest: No.
Scott: That are secure. It’s just it is it is so brutal.
Guest: extremely demanding. and this was, I think this was the year before we had gotten pregnant. and so he had also peaked in his career. He was ended up like pulling 300,000 and I was pulling about 200, like I mean, that was the year that we blew it out of the water. And instead of being like, how do we upgrade our life, we were like, how can we save every penny of this? Because we know that I’m probably not going to last much longer in this job. and we want financial freedom. I know some people will hear that and I mean that was just one year of our life, right? That was not average or ordinary for us, but people will see that or hear it and be like, well, it’s a no-brainer that you can do what you’re doing. But the statistics even show us that there are a lot of broke rich people. There are a lot of people who make well over six figures over a year and like a third of them are still paycheck to paycheck. So it’s not just about what you bring in, it’s how much you keep of what you bring in and how you’re utilizing it too. And so we had just chosen to use our money in a way that was going to support our financial goals. I still have my eight-year old Honda outside, you know. Like even though we were pulling like half a million dollars that year, we could have bought a Lamborghini but I’m like this does’t serve us. My cute little Honda gets me to the grocery store just fine.
Scott: So, in 2024, you needed to make $631,500 or more to be in the top 1% of all US households. So, you were not in the top 1% and I’ll also put in another detail here, which is that 12% of US households will earn in the top 1% one year at least out of their life. And that number goes up much higher for a household that get into the top five or or 10%, right? I think a majority of Americans will actually be in the top 30, 25 or 30%, I’m I’m now I’m reaching a little bit for the data here, but a majority of Americans will have a good earn income year. And the bigger Pockets money listener, the person who is listening to a personal finance podcast instead of the Chainsmokers, they have a great remix of Ophelia, by the way, which we listen to every day along with the original version from Taylor Swift on the way to daycare with my little girl. But but it’s that you’re listening to this instead of that, you’re probably disproportionately likely to have one of those high income years at some point and if you’re pursuing fire, it’s going it’s going to happen towards the end of your journey right before you fire. And this is a frustration that keeps coming out in the fire, financial Independence community, that you are instinctively aware of in the way that you’re presenting this because there’s like almost like an immune reaction to people who don’t get this that oh, they were a super high income earner. There is doesn’t apply. Where’s the median person that has done that journey. We understand that there are people who have been in the medium income their whole journey. Those are generally exceptions to the rule. Most people who pursue and achieve fire will start at a median income and end at a very high relative income at the very peak of their journey before they they fire. And that’s a very common thing and that’s not not unusual. It also cascades with saying yes to those opportunities and being very conscious with money over time. And then we, yet we find ourselves in the community very surprised when we hear big numbers like yours in your household. And there’s a defensiveness or unwillingness to talk about it because there’s some sort of negative connotation attached to it. I I think that’s that’s nuts. It’s fine to do it on a medium income and it’s also fine to watch those incomes grow. But I I just wanted to call that out because I observed the way you are phrasing that in that defensive, not defensive, but cautious way because you know that challenge is coming from somebody and I think it’s unhealthy. I think it’s just it’s also just not act acknowledging the reality of statistics and especially as they will probably apply to the fire community.
Guest: Yeah. And I mean, people will look to that and gravitate towards that number, but then, you know, when I worked three jobs, I was making like maybe $18,000 a year if that maybe. So my career, like I’ve made as little as 18,000 and then it took me 12 years to make this 200,000 that, you know, it coupled into that bigger number that we shared. And it took, you know, my husband 13 years to get to where he is too. And so like I do understand though the idea that the median families or folks who are interested in fire and saying, well, where do I fit into the picture? I think there’s this idea that when you hear fire stories, the ones we tend to hear are the really extraordinary ones. It’s the the tech bro in San Fran who fired at 23 because he sold his business for $7 million and like, I mean, it’s these really extraordinary high income crazy situation stories. But the reality too is that fire could be retiring at 50, right? Like fire doesn’t mean you have to retire at 30 or 35 or 40. Like fire just means early retirement before, you know, what, 6065, whatever traditional retirement is, they keep pushing it off because people are retiring later, but it’s not that they can’t achieve fire. It’s not that they can’t achieve financial independence. Stories like mine and other, you know, people, yes, like they’re likely to have high incomes at some point in their life too. But the people who have these incomes early in life, I think of it as almost like going to Game Boy, it’s like Mario Kart. You like, you get power-ups. Like some people get power ups earlier on in life, but it doesn’t mean that you still can’t get those later on and still reach financial independence. Journeys are going to look different, but the same principles of reaching financial independence applies. Live below your means, invest the rest, right? Like those principles apply to everyone’s situation.
Mindy: I think the pushback comes from people who are like, oh, well, she did it with $200,000 of income. I don’t have $200,000. Therefore, I can’t do it. Well, if you’re looking for a reason why you can’t reach financial independence, why you can’t pursue financial independence, you will find it everywhere you look. And it’s just it’s a difference in mindset. You were making $200,000 a year and burnt out. You were horribly stressed out to the point that you couldn’t conceive. That’s an enormous level of stress. Somebody making a lot less money, probably doesn’t have that same level of stress. And if they do, they are absolutely in the wrong job and they should get their resume together and start looking for a different job that isn’t nearly so stressful because people run their companies in a lot of different ways and there’s a really, really bad way to run your company and there’s a really, really good way to run your company. Your job, I think just came with a lot of stress. But for people to automatically dismiss what it is that you’ve accomplished because you had a high income, I think is missing the point of the whole story in general. You were saving at one point 85% of your income. That means that you’re really not spending a lot of money. You’re putting most of your income away and like you said, buying back your future. So they could do that even if it’s not at the same scale. They could do that. They choose not to because they’re looking for the excuse. So if you have an excuse for why you can’t reach fi, email tell somebody else I don’t care.com.
Scott: I’m not going to go quite as far as you there, Mindy, on this. I’m going to say that there are plenty of people that that are not going to be able to reach those upper incomes. But I think that a better framework is my career is going to compound just like my investments will compound in many base reasonable scenarios. You know if that doesn’t apply to you. You know that if you’re teaching middle school, that you’re going to get a pension and there’s going to be some good things, but your career is not going to compound to $200,000 in real real terms on an annual basis. But if you are in a corporate setting and there’s a chance to climb the corporate ladder at a big company, that is a very realistic trajectory over 15 to 20 years depending on how you set yourself up and how hard you apply yourself and what opportunities you take. It doesn’t mean it will happen, but it’s it’s it’s a potential outcome and it’s going to be relatively common among the fire community to the dismay, I think of some folks who hear that number and then, you know, put a nasty comment on the YouTube channel or whatever, which is again what you were reacting to. I I just wanted to observe it for a second here that this is going to be very common relative to the fire community. It’s not common to earn $500,000. It’s common to ramp up to a income that is approaching the top two, three, four, 5% in the fire community towards the very end of the journey to financial Independence and the transition in the last few years of transitioning to that. That is going to be relatively common and also relatively taboo to talk about.
Mindy: yeah, no, I I completely agree.
Scott: Sorry, my rant is now, now over on that particular front.
Mindy: My rant was aimed at people who were looking for a reason to not reach FI.
Scott: Yes. It always bugs me when when we talk about a fire journey and you’re like, we we do this one for for Nancy, right? who’s starting a career over at 50, you know, and and has no skills. And and it’s like Nancy, you get an entry level job, you’re not going to be earning an entry level salary for the next 15 years. If you do that and say you it’s impossible, of course it’s going to be impossible if you assume that’s going to be the case. You’re going to get a raise after three, four, five years, you’re going to get a promotion after four or five years if you try that out. And that is what people don’t factor into these plans. and once they see it, it begins to compound really nicely. It’s in the same way that when you saw Dave Ramsey’s baby steps and had that first plan put together, that lit a fire underneath you. And then when you got the fire movement concept, I guess fire is using is being used twice in this in this example, that gang kicked it into another gear and the last piece of that puzzle, I think for a lot of people is understand, don’t model your career as this like static 3% raise trajectory the whole time, bet on, you know, acknowledge the possibility that you’re going to win in your career and get those promotions and things are going to are going to progress, especially if you’re starting out and you’re you’re at the relative early stages of your career, you’ve got a great shot at advancing over a reasonable period of time.
Guest: Yeah. And I would say too, like when you’re making the median income or, you know, you you haven’t hit that point yet. This is the perfect time to start to learn good money habits and how to manage your money because if you can’t manage a smaller income or a more modest income, you’re not going to just magically become good at managing your money when you all of a sudden going to get a $200,000 job. There’s a lot more responsibility and like the same habits you have are only going to be amplified, the more money that comes in. and so, yes, like there’s a good chance that people like you said, over the long run, over when you look at like their lifespan or their working career or working timeline, they’re going to come into money at some point. That’s just like statistically that that’s what supports it, but it’s also a matter too of like when you are not making all that much money, you are still building the foundation for fire. You are still setting aside money and you’re still building an emergency fund, you’re still doing these things to set you up for financial freedom later.
Scott: Emily, let’s end on this question. What does your typical Tuesday look like as you approach fire and are self-employed?
Guest: Oh my gosh. I mean there’s like almost no answer to that because it’s really kind of, I mean this sounds so maybe this sounds really conceited. I don’t know what it sounds like. It’s kind of whatever I want which is like that’s the blessing of, oh wait, you said Tuesday, Tuesday are my coaching days. I do one-on-one coachings on Tuesday. Dang it. I was going to say if it’s my free day my free days or like the days that I’m not coaching, I will usually like my favorite treat myself day is like I will go thrifting, Goodwill has $2 tags on Monday, my local store. So I will go thrifting to Goodwill on Monday and I’ll go treasure hunting and then run some errands. I don’t know, if I’m really, I might get like a drink at grocery outlet for like clearance out drink. I mean like legit, like I’m still very frugal. Oh, yeah, I’ll go see friends. I’ll go to the gym, whenever I want, I’ll make a nice lunch. I kind of just I’ve slowed down my life and like I’ve really tried to focus on like savoring the time that I have and be really grateful for everything that I have and my loved ones and you know, just how far I’ve come over the years and so yeah, a Tuesday, I’m working any other day, hopefully, I’m probably kind of a wild card.
Mindy: good, I’m glad it’s not structured.
Scott: It doesn’t count if it’s not Tuesday, unfortunately.
Guest: Ah, dang it. Yeah, I’m working on Tuesdays then.
Scott: Stickler Scott, scratch all the other answers. I’m working.
Guest: I’m I’m working.
Scott: That was our tag line for a while. We optimized for Tuesday, not terminal net worth. So you unfortunately don’t check the box.
Mindy: Scott, you’re fired.
Scott: Where can people find out more about you, Emily?
Guest: Yeah, so if you guys are interested in frugality or financial freedom or fire, you can check me out at hey friend it’s M. I am on Instagram, Tik Tok and Facebook. So, you can find me there and follow along.
Scott: Well, Emily, thank you so much for sharing your story with us today and um we wish you the best of luck on finishing the play to true and total financial independence as you’ve defined it over the next five years, five or six years, we’ll see.
Guest: Thank you so much for having me. It was so nice chatting with you.
Mindy: Thank you so much for joining us and we will talk to you soon.
Guest: Sounds good.
Mindy: All right, Scott. That was Emily and her magic journey to financial independence. She’s not there yet, but she’s getting there. What did you think of her story?
Scott: I thought her story was great. I thought her energy or mana was great. I thought it was a fantastic overall presentation of the story. So I’m excited for her and I think that I’m cautious, I’m worried that people hear this like, oh, my peak earning year was $500,000 and p That doesn’t apply. But I really think that that’s a limiting belief and I think that a significant percentage of this community will see a peak income year in that ballpark. I think as much as 25 to 30% of the people listening to this podcast have a shot at achieving a peak income year in the top 1% of all Americans because you listen to personal finance podcast here and it will depend on your career and your your trajectory, whether you become self-employed or our a business owner one day. But I think that that is is is underestimated by a lot of people and in their model, their mental model about how they’re going to achieve financial independence and um I think that that’s an unfortunate and limiting belief. I think it guides a lot of my optimism around journeys that I think are grounded in incredible conservatism because I can see those those growth opportunities right in front of people that they can’t.
Mindy: Well, 50% of this show’s hosts will never make a 1% income because they don’t want to do that much work.
Scott: The 50% of these shows hosts have never generate a top 1% taxable income, but you’ve generated a top 1% income when you’ve lived and flipped in some of those years. You just haven’t paid taxes on those gains because they’re excluded from income tax.
Mindy: I don’t even think that was top 1% then. We’ll see what happens when I sell this house.
Scott: What’s been your biggest ever live and flip game?
Mindy: A $298,000.
Scott: and on top of a full-time salary at the same time from at least one of you guys, right? And then on top of dividends and other things like that, you’re going to be approaching that that level.
Mindy: Oh, I don’t count dividends even though the IRS does. I don’t even look at those. They just get reinvested.
Scott: it’s not every year, but like if you live in flip and do it 10 times, probably going to hit on one of those in a way that puts you pretty close to that, especially if you’re doing another full-time job at the same time.
Mindy: Okay, going forward, 50% of this hosting staff will not be making a 1% income because she doesn’t want to do that work. I mean, you have to put in a lot of work to make $500,000.
Scott: good.
Mindy: or realize a lifetime work, right? you build a business over over many, many years and you sell it and that’s the year you hit the 1%, right? or you sell your house after living in it for for 20 years, right? Those are those are all ways to get into these years where where household income between ordinary income and gains can put you into those categories.
Mindy: Yes, but if you look at this and their top line income on one year, you look at that and you’re like, oh, I could never do that. So therefore I’m not going to listen. You’ve missed the point just because you can’t save at their exact dollar amount, doesn’t mean you can’t save some. She was purposely putting herself into frugality mode so that she could make it to early retirement. That is exactly what she wanted to do and she did it. So great for her. But if you want to retire early, you’re going to have to do things differently. And number one is don’t spend every time that comes in.
Scott: Let’s just end on this. The the magic is not in the income generation. The magic is in the gathering.
Mindy: Oh, God.
Scott: Should we get out of here?
Mindy: Yes. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, his name is Scott Trench and we’re saying, do you want to do some sort of magic ky thing at the end? We’ll just leave with you. The end, goodbye, toodles poodles.
Scott: Yes. you can email Scott at biggerpocketsmoney.com to tell him how much of a groan that was. All right.
Scott: When I evaluate debt funds, I look for things like first position loans, personal guarantees, deep experience by the fund operator, low fund leverage, fast liquidity and consistent returns. These are some of the reasons why I’m excited to partner with Pine Financial Group. Their Fund 6 offers investors exposure to real estate credit largely for construction and rehab with loans originated by an experienced originator with over $1 billion dollar in origination volume. They offer investors and 8% preferred return paid monthly and a 7030 LP GP split of everything over 10% paid annually. The lockup period is nine months with liquidity available within 90 days after that 9-month commitment. The fund is open to accredited investors only. The fund’s minimum investment is typically $100,000, but Pine Financial is able to reduce that minimum for bigger pockets money listeners to a minimum of $25,000. Full disclosure, I am personally invested in this fund through my self-directed IRA. Pine Financial is sponsoring this message and our podcast. Go to biggerpocketsmoney.com/pine, P I N E. Please note that returns are not guaranteed and may vary based on fun performance.
Scott: There’s a reason most big wealth management firms don’t like talking about flat fee planning. It’s because it puts the power and the profit back in your pocket. I’ve been working with David Jackson at domain money because I wanted a fiduciary who didn’t care about selling me products or making asset under management fees that grew as my portfolio grew. I wanted a partner who would look at my whole financial picture with all of its complexity and give me a personalized step-by-step road map to reach my goals faster. If you want a plan that’s built for your benefit, not your advisors, you need to check out biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp. This is a promotion for domain money, a registered investment advisor with the SEC. Bigger Pockets money may receive compensation if you choose to work with domain money as a client. I, Scott Trench, am a current client of domain money and received non-cash compensation related to this promotional activity. This is not personalized investment advice. For the full disclosures, visit biggerpocketsmoney.com/cfp.
