Mindy Jensen: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, show number 311, where we interview Joseph Bussey and hear how he simultaneously increased his income by $75,000 while paying down more than $85,000 in student loan debt, all thanks to a little book called Set for Life.
Joe Bussey: I read this thing and I mean, I read it in a day. I sat down and I read it cover to cover without putting it down, and I was like, this makes sense. I have a direction. There’s a plan here. Let’s see what happens if I just start at part 1 here and just try to save $25,000. Let me just go get a job and see what happens. We’re in the middle of COVID. Everybody’s hiring because nobody wants to work. Everybody wants to collect their unemployment or whatever. I’m like, let me just—I know how to work. I have no problem working. Let me get a job and see what I can do and just try to save $25,000. Let’s just set that as a goal and do it. Not worry about paying debt or whatever. Just make that—see if you can just, in a bank account, put $25,000 away. And that’s what I did. Hello, hello, hello!
Mindy Jensen: My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my unflappable co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott Trench: What are you talking about? We’re flying high today, Mindy.
Mindy Jensen: We’re flying so high today, Scott. This is an awesome episode. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when you’re starting, no matter where you’re starting, no matter how little money you make in the beginning, including $250 a week.
Scott Trench: That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big-time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or pay off $220,000 in student loan debt in 3 years, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams.
Mindy Jensen: Scott, I’m so excited. I’m so excited to talk to Joe today because he has an amazing story of taking some pretty crappy circumstances, wanting something more, learning about how to change his situation, and most importantly, taking action once he figured out what he needed to do in order to change some pretty awful scenarios that happened to him earlier in his life.
Scott Trench: Yeah, and I think Joe started out, or slowly accumulated, over a 15-year period, a very tough financial situation. And to break out of that requires an extraordinary amount of effort, a grind, hard work, all-out approach on the savings, income generation, self-education front. And you’ll see that play out in today’s episode. And I think it’s fantastic.
Joe Bussey: Yep.
Mindy Jensen: I don’t want to give away too much of his story because we do go long today. He has a fabulous story. And he, I just want to highlight again, he takes action. And that is what is most important in this whole scenario. You can have all the knowledge in the world, but if you don’t do anything with it, that knowledge is worthless.
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Mindy Jensen: Today’s guest is Joseph Bussey, a member of our Facebook group who posted, I started listening to the podcast around June of 2019 thanks to Scott Trench’s book Set for Life. At that time, I had $170,000 in student loan debt and made only $25,000 per year. Life felt overwhelming, to say the least. Today I have $85,000 in student loan debt and have increased my income to nearly $100,000 a year thanks to the tips and stories of real people on this podcast. What I am hoping to find in this group are some like-minded people to establish some sort of support, as all the people in my life are spenders and are not able to understand why I am so strict with my budget. So of course I had to dive into this story a little bit more. How did he pay off $85,000 in student loans? How did he increase his income almost $75,000? I know one contributed to the other, but it’s very difficult to go from $25,000 a year to $100,000 a year in only 3 years. That takes some real effort. So Joe, welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast.
Joe Bussey: Oh, thanks for having me.
Mindy Jensen: I’m really excited to talk to you because I love this. I mean, I don’t love the, I had $175,000 in student loan debt, but I love the fact that you’ve paid off such a big chunk of it in such a small amount of time. I want to know all the things.
Joe Bussey: Yeah, I mean, it’s just one of these, you get started and you get on a roll and you get, you have some kind of a plan, and it just starts to fall into place. But you spend so much time before you start paying it off just not knowing what you’re doing, and you get lost in everything.
Scott Trench: So can you walk us through how you got into all of this debt and had the $25,000 a year in income? What were the circumstances that led to that?
Joe Bussey: Oh yeah, so if you start all the way back at like, gosh, what, my first job, I was 13 years old and I was like shoveling horse crap at a racetrack, and that was my first job, and I made like $500 a week or whatever, and I’m saving this money, going to get ready to go to, you know, get through high school and go to college. And what ends up happening is at 17 years old, I have a falling out with my dad and my stepmom, and there’s this huge fight, and I end up getting kicked out of my house at 17 years old. And so I use all this money that I’ve been saving to buy my own car, to buy my own cell phone, to go to school. And then of course, student loans became the way that I paid for living because I didn’t have a choice at that point. It was like either go to school or go figure out your life without school. And everybody in my life to that point had told me, oh, school is the only way that you’re going to be successful in life. And so that’s what I did, was what I thought I was supposed to do. And here we are later, you know, after basically you’ve got an associate’s degree, I’ve got a bachelor’s degree, I’ve got 2 master’s degrees, and of course the $180,000 that goes along with all of those things.
Scott Trench: So how did that go? Was it 4 years, 6 years in college? How long did it take you to accumulate those degrees?
Joe Bussey: So it was a period of time. So I graduated high school ’03, and I earned my last master’s degree in 2017, and so I had a few years off in between because of crazy life things. So two years I got an associate’s degree. So ’05, I’m getting ready to go to a really prestigious art school over in Seattle, Washington, called Cornish College of the Arts. And at that point, my dad and my stepmom, like I said, they had got divorced, and she wanted to be a part of my life again. And she’s like, “Oh yeah, I’m gonna help you move,” and so we’re on the road here and we’re driving over to Seattle, and they came up and they actually, her and her new boyfriend, like robbed me at gunpoint and stole the $3,000 that I had saved up to go to school. And so I’m here in the middle of I-5, just had all my money stolen. He’s taking a walk down the street because he’s basically left her and took my money and said, basically, just take it out of what your mama owes me. And it’s like, this isn’t even my mom. Oh my God. Here we are, we’re sitting in the middle of I-5 just like, all right. And so then she starts blaming me for the whole thing, and I’m like, I can’t do—I’m done. Get out of my car. I’m done with you. Just—and I left her there in the middle of I-5, and I drive off to the nearest exit, right? And I start unloading my U-Haul just into a dumpster. And this is just a crazy thing. Everything that you own just going into a dumpster because you have nothing else to do with it, because you don’t want to pay extra days on this U-Haul. And so I’m just like completely lost. And so I’m like, I can’t go to school. I have no money to start to pay my rent, anything.
Scott Trench: And so—what year is this?
Joe Bussey: This is ’05, summer ’05.
Scott Trench: Oh, wow.
Joe Bussey: Yeah. And so that was sort of the first period where I took a year off because I was like, I can’t go to school. So let me go figure life out and get a job for a year and try to save up money to go back to school, ’cause that’s where I’m supposed to be, still trying to get to this thing that I’m supposed to do. And this is the first incremental thing that happened along the way here.
Scott Trench: All right, so we know that there’s a turning point in 2019, thanks to the intro we heard earlier. What are some of the milestones or crazy situations or tough circumstances that you experienced in this 14-year period between 2003 and 2017, when you got your last master’s? Were there any things that set you up for the later parts of the story, for example?
Joe Bussey: Yeah. So, I mean, this is the huge thing, and then I have to figure out where I’m going to be going to, what I’m going to do. So, for a year, I worked with my uncle in Arizona doing landscaping, just 115 degrees craziness, trying to save money to go back to school. And I’m trying to figure out how to get back, and I end up taking this full year working with him, and then I save up some more money, and I call back to my old—where I got my associate’s degree. I was like, hey, where have you sent people that’s affordable that I can go to school? Because this is just not doable to go to this private art school anymore. And they sent me to North Dakota. So I move up to—I drive my car up to Grand Forks, North Dakota, where it is—I don’t know if you’ve ever experienced -70. I know you guys are in Colorado, but like -70 is a whole other life. And so I’m up there just freezing my life away. And I do 2 more years there. And so I graduate with my bachelor’s degree in 2008. And I go do this New York showcase, right? I’m an actor. That’s what I got my degree in. And I go to do this showcase where you get to go perform in New York and you show off your talents. And I start to get these people contacting me like, hey, we want you to come audition for this, or, hey, we want you to come in and meet with our talent agent, or, hey, we want you to, you know, whatever these things, opportunities that start coming my way. But then you start to look at your life and you’re like, oh no, I can’t do any of that because New York is expensive and I have $40,000, $50,000 in student loan debt and I don’t know how I’m going to pay for that and live in New York. And so I got stuck. I just stayed in North Dakota and I got a job and I became a manager at a Kohl’s department store. And did that whole life for about four years. So from 2008, when I graduated, to 2012, I’m literally just working. And I realized, hey, even at that time manager wage was $12.25 an hour or some craziness. But that was realizing, hey, this isn’t even enough to pay back my loans and pay my rent and eat and all of these other things. And granted, I was not as frugal then as I am now, but I was just like, I don’t know how to do this. So what do I do? I’m like, well, get another job. And all of a sudden I’m working 4 jobs. I’m getting up at 2 AM every morning to go deliver newspapers or whatever it is, to get the first part of the day done. And then I go open a Kohl’s department store and count all their cash office and work with them. And then I go work at a Hollywood Video. If you remember Hollywood Video, that’s a whole other time. And I start having—picking up night jobs. Now I’m—at some point I was working 5 jobs and I would work 18, 19 hours a day, and I would sleep for a couple of hours and then get up and do it all over again. And I did that for about a year and a half. And it was, gosh, right about 2012, I guess, is when I had my—from my undergraduate program, she was the director of the program, and she came through my Starbucks drive-through. I was working at Starbucks at that time. And she’s like, what are you doing? I was like, I’m doing this. I’m putting coffee out the window every day. That’s my life. And she’s like, you should come talk to me. And so I was like, okay. So I went to her office that day and we started talking, and all of a sudden she’s like, yeah, you should look into grad school. We can maybe get you down a track to start teaching theater, and that would be a way to use your degree, and you know, we can figure it out. It’s like, yeah, that sounds great. Of course, I can also write off all these student loans and put them back on the back burner and not have to pay them because I’ll be back in school. And of course, these are the mistakes that you make because everybody keeps saying, go back to school, go get this degree, you can do this instead. And then you start to realize after 2 years you get an MA in theater. So it’s 2014.
Scott Trench: But were you able to pay off any of the debt or begin kind of getting positive while working the multiple jobs for that long time period?
Joe Bussey: Oh no, because what ends up happening is you’re so crazy from working so much that I—and then there’s several situations that go into this, but for me, I got just completely absorbed and I actually had a complete mental breakdown. And I went into a mental hospital for about 6 to 8 weeks. It’s kind of a blurry time because I was on a lot of medication and I don’t really remember a lot of it. But it was about 6 to 8 weeks there where I was completely inpatient at the mental hospital, because I could not cope with between what was going on in my life with—I had a—my grandfather had passed away, and he was sort of like the main father figure in my life. And there was just all of these things that compounded all at once. So I wasn’t paying any debt off. I was only accumulating hospital debt.
Scott Trench: Geez.
Joe Bussey: And so it was just like adding to, you know, fuel to the fire, if you will. And so this is where I’m just like, okay, yeah, school sounds great. Let’s just put all this debt in the back burner. And see, I didn’t actually pay. I was only accumulating. And of course, also when you do that and you’re working 5 jobs, and the last one of the days you work in a restaurant is—or actually it was a little bar and grill—you start to get off work and have a drink with everybody. And then you start drinking, and then that’s keeping you from sleeping because you’re drinking at night just to get through the next part, because it’s your really only social life. And it’s just this crazy series of events that just continued to compound until you’re, like I said earlier, you just don’t have a plan in life anymore. You’re just living to get through the next day. And so yeah, no, no actual payoff of anything, just hoping that I can maybe find a job that I enjoy where I don’t have to work 19 hours a day to get through.
Scott Trench: Wow. Okay. And so, at this point, you’re now back into grad school. And you’re doing that for 2 years, accumulating more student loan debts. And at that point, you’re able to get a job that’s easy peasy and the situation improves.
Joe Bussey: Yeah, that’s the end of it. No, not at all. So, you find out that, hey, with an MA, that’s not a terminal degree. So, I have an MA in theater, which you can’t teach with, or at least you’re looked down upon in terms of the hiring process. So, it’s difficult then to get the job that you’re going to try to get. And so they’re like, what you really need is a terminal degree, so you can go do these auditions in Chicago. And buy a plane ticket and go to Chicago and audition for grad schools to get a terminal degree, which is the MFA, in my case in acting, so Master of Fine Arts. And so I do, I go do these auditions in Chicago and I get a bunch of interest and I end up going to school in West Virginia. And I do three years to get my terminal degree after I’ve already done two years because none of it transfers across. You have to take an additional three years. And what they don’t tell you is that when you do things like theater in terms of being an actor in theater for your degree, you go to school, right? And then when you get done with school, you have your homework and all these things that everybody else has. But then let’s say you have to do the show because that’s part of your degree—you have to go perform on the main stage. So when you get done with school, you then have to go to rehearsal. So you don’t really have time to work these outside jobs or anything else because you’re in school from 9 to 5, and then you go to your actual rehearsal from 5 till 10, 11, midnight, 2 AM, depending on where you’re at in your rehearsal schedule. And you’re getting up to go to school again. So you really don’t have time to work. So you can’t pay for anything. So you have to take out these loans. So this is how we get into the situation we’re in.
Scott Trench: Wow. Okay, so what time do you finish the MFA, the Master’s in Fine Arts?
Joe Bussey: Yes.
Scott Trench: And what does your situation look like at that point?
Joe Bussey: Yeah, so that’s about—gosh, 2017. Yeah, ’15, ’16, ’17. Yeah, so 2017, I’m finished with my graduate degree. I’ve got the shiny piece of paper. And I did all of that to eventually just get an internship with—and I won’t mention the name of the place, but I got an internship with a Shakespeare company. And so I’m like, cool, I’m going to go do this Shakespeare thing. And then they—I don’t know if you know about internships, but they don’t tend to pay very well. So you go work 10, 12, 14, 16-hour days for $250 a week. And yeah, my housing is paid, but $250 a week. And I don’t know, but the student loans got to be paid now. So I’m doing this internship.
Scott Trench: How much were the student loans?
Joe Bussey: At this point, we are up to—this is where we’re sort of at that $180-ish thousand. And like I said, some of this student loan debt I took on not as a matter of taking it on to go to school, but actually to pay off the hospital bills. So I kind of refinanced my—because I didn’t pay the hospital bills because I couldn’t, didn’t have any money. So that goes into collections. And then I, instead of negotiating, as I’ve learned through the podcast here, you can negotiate some of those hospital bills, I just refinanced it all into student loan debt because you don’t have to tell people what you’re doing with your student loans. You can literally pay anything with it. And so I just refinanced a lot of debt that was at 20-30% into student loans. And so by the time we’re all said and done, we are there at about $180-ish thousand. And that’s just in the regular federal student loans. I also had, which I don’t always count because when I put everything into Mint, it doesn’t show up, but I had about $40,000 then also in private student loans, which I paid off first.
Mindy Jensen: Wow.
Joe Bussey: So those were paid off before the $180,000. So, you know, I would say all in, we were about $220,000 or so.
Scott Trench: And you’re making $250 a week.
Joe Bussey: Yeah.
Scott Trench: So how long does this situation continue for?
Joe Bussey: So $250 a week lasted about six months. And then through no fault of anybody, my stepdad got cancer. And my mom—she lives in the Bay Area—and just out of need to go help family and be a part of—this is not on the side that left me stranded in the middle of nowhere and stole all my money, but this is my actual mom. Her husband, my stepdad at the time, passed away, or he was on his way to passing away. We didn’t know that. We knew he was really, really sick at the time. And so I came out there and I kind of canceled the whole internship and went to go help out family. And that’s how it sort of ended. So this is about Christmas, 2017, end of 2017, beginning of 2018, that I went back home and was basically living home for the first time since I was 17 years old.
Scott Trench: And so what happens from here? Do you—
Joe Bussey: What do you—
Scott Trench: How does the situation proceed?
Joe Bussey: Yeah, so what happens now is I’m there, I’m in the Bay Area. I’m like, there’s all kinds of theater in this area. Let’s do this acting thing. Let’s actually give it a try. And through my time with the Shakespeare company and through just my tenure overall, I’m actually part of—I was part of the acting union, or I was on my way to get my Equity card. I could have applied for it at any time, but of course there’s money that you got to pay to do that. And so I’m like, well, let me just go audition. Let me just go meet these people, get myself out there, and just see what happens. And so I start driving from Santa Rosa in California, which is about two hours from the city, hour and a half, two hours depending on traffic. And I’m driving every day from over the bridge into the city to do these auditions. And I’m working at an Old Navy stockroom, going in at 4 AM and doing that, and then doing Peet’s Coffee in the morning and doing all these jobs in the morning so that I can get over to the city to actually go audition and get that done. So I’m spending everything that I’m bringing in. This is still, you know, making maybe, gosh, like $1,000 a month, maybe $1,500 a month, just enough to pay my gas and get myself over the bridge. And just craziness. But I was doing it. I was doing the starving actor thing that everybody kind of idolizes in some ways. And I’m realizing, hey, this is just not going very well. I’m getting some—I’m getting callbacks. I’m getting into shows. I have seven or eight shows lined up, but what they want to pay you is $900 for three months of work. And I’m like, this is not feasible. I’m not even paying rent right now. I’m at my mom’s house, which is a blessing all on its own. For the first time, I have a little bit of reprieve so I can literally just focus on this thing that I want to do. And I’m like, this is not feasible. You can’t do this. There’s no way that you can make $900 for three months of work driving across—you guys, it barely pays the bridge and the gas to get there and back. So I basically was forced at this point because we’re coming up on 2019 now, and then that’s when COVID happened. And then that sort of spiraled me into this next deep depression. I was like, I can’t do this thing. Everything just seems to be stacked against me. Everything’s bad. And you get into this whole negative self-talk. And then I start to go, all right, well, what are you going to do about it? And I finally just had this realization. What is this thing? You can do it, but what do you do now? And this is sort of where the big turning point is—I actually take this sheet of paper, and I’m, being in theater, I’m a writer. I want to actually write things out. I’m not a typer. And so I take this sheet of paper and I just start writing out the problem. What is the problem? What is it that is stacked against you? And you start putting it on there, and everything came back to money. Money, money, money. Money’s bad. You have no money. And you can’t do anything because you have no money, and debt, debt, debt, debt, debt. And so what I did was I started researching how to make more money, and I came across BiggerPockets. And the first thing that I came across was the original BiggerPockets Podcast and the housing market, right? And starting to look at—so I’m like, okay, well, how do you get into buying? How do I buy a house? I have no money and I have all this debt, but let’s see how I can buy a house. That’s where I’m at in my life. And so I realize as I’m reading these books that I can’t buy a house. Well, why can’t I buy a house? Oh, we’re back to I don’t have any money. And that’s when I stumbled across Scott Trench’s book, and I found Set for Life. And I read this thing, and I mean, I read it in a day. I sat down because I’m not working, I’m not doing anything else. I sat down and I read it cover to cover without putting it down. And I was like, this makes sense. I have a direction. There’s a plan here. Let’s see what happens if I just start at part one here and just try to save $25,000. Let me just go get a job and see what happens. We’re in the middle of COVID. Everybody’s hiring because nobody wants to work. And everybody wants to collect their unemployment or whatever. I’m like, let me just—I know how to work. I have no problem working. Let me get a job and see what I can do and just try to save $25,000. Let’s just set that as a goal and do it. Not worry about paying debt or whatever. Just see if you can just put $25,000 away in a bank account. And that’s what I did. And I realized when I actually started working full-time at a real job—you know, and what was the job? The job—I got a job at a little winery in Kenwood, and, you know, it was like $18 an hour. It’s not a ton of money, but it was more than I’d ever made in my entire life. And then you get tips because you’re now a hospitality employee, so you’re actually making a little cash here and there. And all these things start to come together, and you’re like, okay, well, now instead of $1,000, you know, a month, I’m making $3,000 a month. Oh, well, I’ve been living on $1,000 a month, so now I’m saving $2,000 a month because I know how to live on $1,000 a month. And $2,000 starts getting put aside, and I’m like, well, what if I get another job? Because this is who I am. And so I get a job at a little bar and grill, and I basically am working then again from 9 to 5 and then 5 to midnight. And the other job then becomes just complete income that’s going into the savings account, including the cash. And I had to go open a bank account in town because I’d been with an online banking thing for so long. But I actually go and I open this bank account, and every time I get cash, the next morning, I don’t care if it was $7 or $170, I would go to the bank and I would put that $7 or whatever it was directly into the bank. I know if it’s in my pocket, I’m going to spend it. I’ll buy dinner or whatever. And so I start just accumulating this cash, and all of a sudden I realize—it’s like two or three months, I have $25,000.
Scott Trench: How did you—so you’re working two jobs. You’re going from doing—like, it sounds like not working and struggling with this acting. You’re working two jobs, and sounds like a lot of hours. How many hours a week are you working with those two jobs?
Joe Bussey: I’m closing in on probably 60, 70-ish hours a week, which is still less than I’ve ever worked when I was trying to do theater.
Scott Trench: How did you feel about the situation while you were working those 70 hours?
Joe Bussey: Well, when you start seeing the money show up, you’re like, this is awesome. I mean, you just have to go to work and you get paid? That’s how that works?
Mindy Jensen: No, no, no, no, no, no. What I’m hearing you say is, I used to go to work and I worked and worked and worked and worked and worked and didn’t have any sort of plan in place. So I spent everything and I didn’t really think about what I was doing or where I was going. So nothing was working for me. But then I read this book and I figured out I need to—step one, I need to save $25,000. There’s more steps beyond that, but you weren’t thinking about all the other things you have to do. You can’t do these other things until you do this one thing. So that was your main focus. And you could have worked at your job making $3,000 a month and let lifestyle inflate and save a couple of hundred dollars a month and taken 15 years to save $25,000. Or you could go from, I was making $1,000 a month and living off of that, to I’m still making $1,000 a month and I’m going to live off of that and everything else is going into this bank account because I have this goal.
Scott Trench: You’re still able to spend very little, right? What are your expenses during this period?
Joe Bussey: Nominal, because the student loans at this point are—the federal student loans anyway are at 0%, no payment required. I have at this point about $35,000 in these private student loans that are killing me. They are at like 15.5% interest, just ruining my whole life, and I didn’t realize it. And so my expenses—I’m living at home, so I have no rent, and my food is pretty much taken care of unless I’m out. I have no social life because I just moved here and it’s COVID and I know nobody, so I’m not going out or doing anything except working. So, you know, just the basic bills, your gas, you know, I mean, we’re talking I’m probably living on $400 or $500 a month and making $3,000-ish at this point. And just every dime went into that savings account. And then I realized, hey, I made it, I got $25,000. And then this, like, you take this ownership, this pride—all of a sudden you’ve accomplished something.
Scott Trench: So how long did that take you? How long did it take you to get to $25,000?
Joe Bussey: Three or four months, just socking money away, because it was literally everything I was making. And what ends up happening is I get—I see I have $25,000. I’m like, okay, this is where Scott bought a house. I still can’t buy a house because I’m living in the Bay Area and I still have all this debt, but I have 15% interest. What if I just take half of it? Let’s say $15,000—a little more than half, $15,000—and I just pay off this student loan? Now I don’t have that bill anymore, and then that extra $100 can go right back into that savings account. We can get back to $25,000 again, and then it gets—so that happened. I just paid it off. Done. All of a sudden, money frees up. And then I was like, okay, now I have this other one that’s $20,000. When I get to $25,000, I just paid that one off, just lump sum. But I kept making the goal to go back to $25,000. Because I knew if I had the $25,000, not only can I live for a year on $25,000 very comfortably at this point, but I know that there’s some—there’s some goal. There’s something that I’m working toward. There’s a plan. And so I get the $25,000 and I pay that one off. And now I have no more private student loans. So right now, all of my debt then is—I have no credit card debt. I have no car loan. I have none of these other things. It was just student loans. So now it’s down to just these federal loans, which is where we come in at that like $170,000 or whatever, $80,000, I think it was. And like, okay, so now I just have this one giant loan that’s 0% interest, and what do we do now?
Scott Trench: And what’s the balance on this loan after you’ve paid off those debts?
Joe Bussey: So this is where we’re at the $180,000. This is all—this is when I started with your book. I joined Mint and I put everything in there, and that’s where—
Scott Trench: You had $220,000 in total debt when you started, paid off $40,000, and now you have $180,000 left in federal student loans.
Mindy Jensen: Correct.
Scott Trench: Plus $25,000.
Joe Bussey: Plus $25,000 in the bank.
Scott Trench: Awesome. And what month and year are we at right now?
Joe Bussey: And so now we’re at like 2020, like March, like a year into the pandemic. So like March 2020.
Scott Trench: 2021. So March 2021.
Joe Bussey: Yeah, is roughly where we’re at. And then I start going, well, instead of having both these jobs, what if I could find one job that is just a regular schedule and not have to do both jobs, and I could free up some of my time so that I’m not crazy. And so I start looking around and I find this job at another winery, and I go in and I talk with them, and it’s in a little ritzy area, and so it’s a little better spot in terms of like clientele. And I go and I talk with them, and I—mind you, I have no real wine knowledge. I’m making things up and learning as I go and studying all this stuff on the outside.
Mindy Jensen: I knew it.
Joe Bussey: Yeah. And so I go up and I talk with the owners, and they basically hire me. And they said, you just have this energy about you. You have this thing that’s just—we can’t—we’ve been looking for people like this. And she’s like, what are you making right now? And I said, I’m making $18 an hour. And you know, I have this going on in my life, and I’m just very honest and upfront. I find that’s usually the best way to be with people—just like, this is the real me. I’m not gonna come into this interview and blow smoke and try to make you feel like I’m something I’m not. Just go be yourself and see what happens. And it works, especially in this case—it’s a small family business. And she’s like, what do you want to be paid? And I said, well, let’s just say we start at $19,000. I’m at $18,000. You want to pull me away from my job? Let’s start at $19,000. And if you feel I’m worth it, let’s talk about a raise in the next three months. And so that’s basically what we did. We started at $19 an hour. There’s no commission, there’s no sales thing, but it’s more of a restaurant because they’re doing food and wine pairings, which drives more tips. And all of a sudden I’m making basically what I was making—you know, $19 plus tips there, or $18 an hour plus tips in the first place, $19 an hour plus tips here. But I’m finding out that the tips are almost double what I was making at the previous place. So I don’t need the bar job anymore. And I literally was able to find a job that paid the same as both of those jobs combined. And my hours went from 9 to midnight to 11 to 7.
Scott Trench: That’s awesome. How did your—did the $25,000 in the bank account help you feel comfortable with making that switch? Was that a factor at all in the decision or ability to change the jobs?
Joe Bussey: Oh, absolutely. Because what are they going to do? I can always find a job. I’ve never had a problem doing that. So if I’ve got that there, I have a year basically to go find a job if I don’t like this one. It’s not resting on your laurels, but it’s like a sense of ownership. You’re like, this is—I have provided for myself for a year in the bank account.
Scott Trench: Awesome.
Joe Bussey: Without any question. And so, yeah, here we are, we’re working at this job, and I’ve got this steady stream of income coming in, and I realize I’m no longer making $3,000 a month, I’m making like $5,500 a month after taxes. So it’s like this is like $85,000, $95,000 a year. And only half of it’s being paid by my employer and the other half is coming in through tips. And at this point, too, because of your book, I started listening to the podcast as well. And I came across that episode with David Greene, who was talking about all these things that he did in the restaurant. And I was like, oh, I could do that too. Oh yeah, I can go just work really hard at the one job and get people to trust me to do all these things. And so now all of a sudden I’ve got my boss telling me, I don’t want you to be my manager. You’re too valuable in all these other places. I would rather just pay you now $25 an hour and not have you be my manager. I don’t want you bogged down with managerial stuff. I want you talking to my guests. I want you dealing with my clients. I want you pouring the wine and serving the food and making people happy because that’s what you’re good at, and that’s where you should be. And of course that benefits me more too, because if you get bogged down with the manager stuff, you stop making the tips. So—
Scott Trench: I love that mentality, right? Here you are making $19 an hour, and you’re saying, no, I’m going to take ownership over every aspect of this restaurant, and see what happens there—just because that’s the mentality I’m going to adopt, because I’m listening to something that will hopefully help me improve my finances, or just in general improve whatever. That’s awesome. And David Greene obviously has applied that across a 10, 20-year career since his days working at a restaurant to incredible heights, to a large degree in real estate. If you’re interested and you’re listening for that episode, that is episode 12 of the BiggerPockets Money Show podcast. You can go find that one at biggerpockets.com/moneyshow012. Sorry, continue, Joe.
Joe Bussey: Oh yeah, no. So yeah, now we’re here, it’s $25 an hour. And it’s just crazy. I went from making $250 a week to $25 an hour. I’m like, in a day I’m making what I made in a week. And you start to realize that, oh yes, we have these things that you guys talk about all the time—these levers that you can pull. And you’re like, okay, so I now earn more, I spend less, I’m doing all these different things, and I’m now at a point where, yeah, I have about $84,000—I think I’m $84,000 in student loan debt, and I’ve got that $25,000 in the bank, and then I’ve got money invested now that I didn’t have before, because I was like, well, I’ve got this money, and well, there’s this Roth IRA thing I keep hearing about. Let me just max this thing out. I have no 401(k), I have nothing else that I’m investing into, but let me just make sure I’ve got for sure $6,000 for the next two years. So now I’ve got $12,000 in a Roth IRA that’s just there, plus the $25,000. And so you’re sitting at like, you know, my negative net worth of negative $52,000, and it’s like the most money I’ve ever had in my life.
Scott Trench: Well, you’re building runway.
Joe Bussey: Right.
Scott Trench: You’re making an intelligent decision to build runway that will give you flexibility prior to paying down your debt, right? And there’s all sorts of math—oh, I can argue the math is better if I were to pay it off than keep—no, there’s a freedom and a sense of opportunity and opportunism that comes with that runway, and consciously making that choice to build that as a primary component, which you’ve parlayed a little bit here, and I suspect will parlay even more on a go-forward basis, as certain opportunities may materialize in front of you in your career as things progress here with this. So I love it. In 2021, in March, we’re sitting here—you’ve been doing the job, you’ve paid off your $40,000 in private student loans, you’ve got your $25,000 runway, you’re taking on more responsibility at the winery. What exactly are you—you said you’re putting it into a Roth. How are you making the decision about student loans versus Roth, one more time?
Joe Bussey: So my theory was, I have nothing saved. I’m not saving anything for retirement. I have no plan for any of that. I can’t contribute—well, I can now at this point in my life contribute to the 401(k). But at that point, for 2020 and 2021, I had no way to do anything for that. But I knew for sure I could open one, either a traditional or a Roth IRA. And I figured since at that point I was making—I’m still making right around that $100,000 mark—I might as well stick this money into this Roth IRA, and know that if it absolutely comes down to it, I can always get back to it. But if I’ve got $25,000 in the bank, I can for sure put $6,000 of it into this Roth IRA so that I at least have something going for my retirement, which starts to even give you more of a sense of security, because you’re thinking, okay, not only do I have this money in the bank, but I’m starting this runway for even the retirement aspect of it, right? And so, yeah, does that $6,000 maybe go better toward my student loans? I’m not sure. I’m not going to try to guess whether, you know, the 4% interest on my student loans or the possible gains on the stock market—who knows? We’re dabbling with percentage points instead of just the actual feeling of what it gives you—hey, I actually am doing something with my life. I have retirement savings for the first time ever. And that’s worth everything, just to have that financial peace, or peace of mind, which is based in financial security.
Scott Trench: My mom calls it six of one, half a dozen of the other. So there’s no right choice here. And the fact of the matter is, you have a plan, you’ve made a choice, and you have a large surplus, and you’re applying that in the way that feels best from there. So—one way you get rich, one way you get rich. I love it. All right, so you’re piling the money into the 401(k), into the Roth, which is just $6,000. Where is all the other money going from here? $6,500, sorry.
Joe Bussey: Yeah. All the other money, when the bank account, the savings account, hits that $25,000, everything else gets dumped to the student loan. And so, you know, if something happens—like I had this thing happen a couple months ago, like I had this problem with my car and all of a sudden I had to go get a tire replaced—and that’s, you know, $300 or $400—well, I’m able to pull that out of the $25,000, and then you cap that back off. So I’m finishing up back to $25,000, and then everything else goes back into student loans. So that’s sort of where we’re at right now—keep the $25,000 in the bank, and everything else becomes student loan payment until that $84,000 is paid off.
Scott Trench: So you went from $180,000 to $84,000 in the last year?
Joe Bussey: Correct.
Scott Trench: We’re recording this in early May, so it’s about 14 months since that March time period. You’ve paid off $100,000.
Joe Bussey: Yeah. Crazy.
Scott Trench: That’s incredible. That’s awesome. So by this time next year, you’ll be completely student loan debt-free, with your $25,000 runway.
Joe Bussey: Ideally, yeah. I mean, it’s all dependent on the kindness of strangers, but yeah.
Scott Trench: Yeah. So this is a great thing here. So you’ve paid off all of these student loans. What is your opinion on the subject of the forbearance? Because we’ve actually discussed on this podcast—some folks are consciously making the choice not to pay off the student loans and invest elsewhere, because some of the loans are in forbearance and they’re not accruing interest. What made you decide to muscle it through and pay it off?
Joe Bussey: Absolutely. So what happened was, I actually listened to that first episode, and I forget the gentleman’s name that was on the episode, but we were talking about the forbearance ending, and how we needed to make a plan for this forbearance ending and having to go back into payment. And I’m thinking, oh well, if these come out of forbearance, I’m going to owe 7.5% or something, because I was in trouble before and I hadn’t made payments, so the amount I owed was higher on my percentages. So I was like, oh well, I’m gonna refinance all of this before this all happens so that I’m prepared and I can drop that amount down, which ended up being the wrong decision, because they ended up extending this thing several times now. But I still look at it as—I made this decision. I refinanced it all at under 4%, which is awesome, because the interest rates were so low that I was able to basically refinance that money. And I paid an additional—that’s when I made the big lump sum payment, just before I refinanced it. So I went from—at that point it was like $130,000. I paid $40,000 toward it and then refinanced it all down. So I had about $95,000 left that I refinanced at 4%, and that’s what I’ve been paying on now since then. And it’s just a decision I made. I’m not saying that there’s a good or a bad to it—I wish I would have left it at 0%. But the idea that I have this plan and goal is, I think, worth more to me than wondering, oh, is it going to get forgiven? Is it not going to be forgiven? Are we going to wait and see—maybe it’ll be $10,000? Well, I saved $10,000 just in interest by refinancing the thing. And the other thing about it—I’m not sure, unless you listen to those episodes, but if you go back and look at it, it’s like you’re still going to owe a gigantic tax bill that’s going to be more than the amount that you took out anyway. So why not, if you’ve got the means—and I know that not everybody is able to—but if you’ve got the ability, just take care of the debt that you took on. Because, like I said, I took out those loans to pay off other loans. So it was really money that I took out to pay off my personal debt. So it’s something that I’m responsible for. And I think the responsibility is part of it—taking ownership and saying, yes, I did these things, and I have to solve this problem for myself. And then, of course, help along the way.
Mindy Jensen: I’m glad you brought that up. There is a level of personal responsibility with this. You did take these loans out—and you’re referring to Robert Farrington from The College Investor. He was on episode 267, and then again, more recently on episode 297, talking about what you should do when the student loan forbearance ends, and how to think about paying for college in the future. There is the idea floating of student loan forgiveness, and I have heard $10,000, I have heard $50,000, I’ve heard waiving interest, I’ve heard a number of things. I haven’t heard anything official, because there is nothing official. I like what you are doing—like Scott said, you came up with a plan and you’re working towards it. And that is—
Scott Trench: Joe’s plan is official.
Mindy Jensen: Joe’s plan is official.
Scott Trench: Joe’s going to pay off his student loan debt 100%, after tax, just by crushing his personal finances. And he’s going to get it done by this time next year.
Mindy Jensen: Yes. And I mean, look at all the success you’re having with your repayment plan. It’s amazing that you decided to pay it off, and you’re paying it off. And that’s—I mean, that is going to feel so amazing when you write that last check. My husband had $40,000 in student loans—we paid, or $60,000 or whatever—we paid them off, you know, at the last check, because I’m old enough that I wrote checks to pay them off. And you write that last check and you’re like, yes! I want to write a bad word on this check, but I don’t want to, because I want you to cash it. Go away! No more student loans! Yay! Write a check for the last one—it feels so good.
Joe Bussey: Oh, absolutely. And I actually set these little $10,000 marks. I like to have this little mini celebration every time it rolls down—from like negative $50,000 to negative $40,000 to negative $30,000. So every $10,000 is like this little milestone—like, you’re getting closer, you’re getting closer, you’re getting closer. And so it keeps you motivated. That’s sort of gamifying the whole thing—this little celebration that happens every time you watch it creep down below another $10,000 mark.
Scott Trench: So what are you going to do when you pay off all the student loan debt and go into, I guess, wealth accumulation phase? What’s the plan on a go-forward basis for you?
Joe Bussey: Oh, well, we’re gonna jump to part two there. We’re gonna house hack.
Scott Trench: Love it.
Joe Bussey: And that’s the plan here—you have the $25,000, and then you probably need more than that in California here where I’m at. But that’s sort of the next phase of the whole thing—to house hack, so that I can catch up on the years where I wasn’t saving anything. And I think I’ve proven, time and time again, just listening to the podcast and through BiggerPockets and everything, that that’s the quickest way to sort of hack the entire situation and get yourself in a better situation than you were when you started. So that’s the plan anyway.
Scott Trench: Awesome. And what is your current role at the winery right now?
Joe Bussey: I like to tell people I have no responsibility. I’m just the dude that works there, which is great, because my responsibility is just to make sure that people come in and are happy and have a good time. And it’s incredibly freeing as well, because, you know, you talk about all these people who have these high-pressure, high-stress jobs—my high pressure is when I have somebody who’s having a bad time, and I have to go over and pour them some more wine and say, oh, now, look, time got better, didn’t it? I love it.
Scott Trench: So, but that’s like a kind of leadership role at your winery—to make sure, like, I’m just gonna solve problems wherever they pop up, with this role that was kind of invented for you. Is that right?
Joe Bussey: Absolutely. Yeah. And we actually have all these different locations too, so whenever, wherever I’m needed, I just sort of bounce around and help out—whether it’s washing a rack of glasses, or talking to people, or seating people, or whatever it is. There’s no job title. It’s just make sure things run, without getting bogged down and not letting things run.
Scott Trench: So let me ask you this—would you ever consider owning one of those types of wineries or whatever?
Joe Bussey: I don’t think so. And the reason being, the joke in wine country right now is that if you want to make $1 million in wine country, you need to start with $10 million. So, I think I’d rather stick with somebody who’s figured it all out. I think once this student loan stuff gets completely salted away and I’m finished with it—I’ve started working on it already, but I am putting together a blog, and I’ll be putting a lot of my stories and things out. And what I’m actually going to use is my degree—I’m going to find a way to use my degree to help people, because there are all these little things that we learn in theater that I think are helpful in goal-setting. And I want to take what Scott did for me, in terms of giving me a plan, and actually create a goal-setting plan using acting technique. So that’ll be a subject for a different podcast on a different day. But that’s something I’ve got down the pipeline here that I’ll hopefully be getting up and running soon.
Scott Trench: Awesome.
Mindy Jensen: Well, let us know when that’s out and we will link to that and share that around, maybe make a video for our YouTube channel. With your acting skills.
Scott Trench: All right, absolutely. So within 2 years from now, you’ll have your student loans paid off. You’ll ideally have a house hack. You’ll have your blog and you’ll be continuing to stockpile. You’ll have accumulated another $100,000, $150,000 in cash deployed however you will.
Joe Bussey: That is the plan.
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Mindy Jensen: Okay, well, I want to take a little trip back a couple of minutes and say that I think the best use of your house hack would be some sort of Airbnb or short-term rental house hack, where you can use your wine country hospitality skills along with people who are coming to wine country and have a nice little place for them to stay with a bottle of wine upon entry. And hey, here’s a map of all the wineries, and this one is best, and this one is best for this kind of wine, and yada yada. And I know they all do that too, but why not make money off of that as well? And here’s a discount, come into my place, and you can use your connections in a way that other Airbnbs around you can’t, and make even more money by—here’s $25 off my restaurant. They come in, they tip you big, and they already stayed at your place.
Scott Trench: Yeah, and this might be a place where it sounds like you’ve really impressed the owners of the winery that you work at with this. This might be a place to potentially talk with them about—is there a synergy here? Could they accelerate that house hack for you to some degree? And is there something nearby one of the winery locations or whatever that would make a lot of sense for short-term rental that you might be able to manage? So it might be something to think about as you’re making these plans.
Joe Bussey: Absolutely.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah.
Scott Trench: Oh, that’s a good—that’s a good—
Joe Bussey: Well, wow.
Scott Trench: What a story. Are there any other pieces of it or factors that we should uncover? Actually, one of them that I wanted to dig into was self-education. During this period, it sounds like you read Set for Life and you listened to this podcast, but what was your orientation around self-education with respect to personal finances or self-improvement following this pivot in 2019?
Joe Bussey: Yeah. So upon reading that, I jumped straight in, and any book that was recommended at the end of the podcast, I went and found, whether it was at the library or I found a digital copy. And I sort of just took incremental things from each of them. So, Your Money or Your Life—I read this book, and I have this habit of just reading things cover to cover because I get entrenched in the whole thing. And so I read this book cover to cover, and I’m like, oh, my time—that’s what is enough for me. What is my time worth? And so I take this little piece from that. The other book that really rang home for me was The Early Retirement Extreme, and I’m not saying that that’s a book for everybody, right? But if you want to see what a baseline is, like what it takes to actually just survive, you can design your life around that and go, okay, well, I need a little more than this or a little less than that, but I definitely need these things. And it sort of forces you to figure out, what do I need as a person just to be a person, and go from there. And so this whole self-education became just—what is it—and taking the things that work for you, because not everything’s going to work for you. You know, you guys have episodes of the podcast that are talking about being married and kids, and like, this really doesn’t apply to me. But there’s things within there that people talk about, and I’m like, oh, I can take that. I can take this little piece here. And, you know, whether it’s a little budgeting tip or whatever, but you just take little pieces of all these things. And the most important thing that you can do is actually write them down and keep a list of them, because you’ll forget it if you don’t. And you can go back to your list and go, oh yeah, no, there’s this thing. And let it just sort of always be there in the back of your mind, so it becomes just a part of who you are and not just something that you read.
Scott Trench: How many hours cumulative do you think you put into reading or learning in this fashion over the last 2 years since 2019, since your pivot point?
Joe Bussey: Oh, it’s sort of like having a graduate degree, right? You go and you read these things, and I’ve been through enough school that I know how to teach myself. I have a degree in teaching, so I can basically do that. And so, we’re talking 400 or 500 hours of just—whether it’s consuming the podcasts. Of course, your podcast led me to the ChooseFI podcast and so on and so forth. It just starts to branch, and you just start to accumulate more and more. But I’d say we’re probably pushing probably 1,000 hours at this point, over the course of 3-ish years, of just consuming content and getting these things in my head.
Scott Trench: I think that’s so important because the grind that you’re doing is so—it’s not normal, right? You’re not going to encounter people a lot around your day-to-day life, if you’re not intentional about it, that are willing to or have done or are currently going through that kind of grind to pay down these student loan debts, the willingness to work 60, 70 hours, the healthy pivot to the sustainable job that you currently have with this. But the content that you’re consuming—when you consume 1,000 hours of that content, that makes it—it helps you feel much better about it. And you see, oh, this is something that I can healthily do and sustain. And there are going to be benefits. And there is a plan behind it with that. And I think it’s a major motivating factor that keeps you going to a certain degree if you’re in the middle of this.
Joe Bussey: For sure. And especially when you don’t have other people that are, like you said, on this journey with you, you have to surround yourself with what you can. And that’s been the two of you, and it’s been several other people that are just through the podcast or reading their books—that sort of becomes the people that you’ve surrounded yourself with. And it kind of all comes back to what I’ve discovered is this little acting technique that we used to do, and that was focus on what is attention and what is intention, right? Attention is this mental process, and it’s really where a lot of negative self-talk comes from, because you start paying attention to the things that are bad. Like I was telling you earlier, debt—I’m all money, I have no money, I can’t do this, I can’t do that because I have no money. And if you never get to the intentional part, which is to set the plan, create the plan, figure out what you’re going to do to solve the problem—if you don’t get to that part and you never have any intention to change it, all you’re doing is paying attention to the negative. And it really is a matter of creating the plan and then making it small enough into bite-sized chunks so that you can actually get something accomplished. And once you accomplish something, all of a sudden all this positivity comes around you, and you can just start to solve problems because you’re like, I can do that. I did this thing. Now I’ve got this thing I can do. But it’s about making it small enough and chunk-wise for you to deal with. Otherwise, it’s this overwhelming thing. Yeah, how do I pay off $225,000? I don’t know, I have no answer for that. But let’s see if I can just save $25,000. Yeah, I can do that.
Scott Trench: I think you’ll really like a book I just recently finished called The Gap and the Gain that kind of highlights this concept. Everyone’s stuck in the gap. Hey, this is where I want to be, or this is the problem that seems insurmountable, versus, here’s what I just did yesterday, and look at that, that was a big win. Here’s where I was 2 years ago. Look at that, look at those huge wins. And if you live your life measuring backwards and thinking about where you’ve come from and how you’ve gotten there, you’re going to feel much better about it versus comparing yourself to something on the horizon or a goal you want to achieve that’s still out there with that. And you seem to have this mentality coming in today, which I think is really healthy and going to serve you really well. But you may like that book.
Joe Bussey: Thank you.
Scott Trench: Any other topics that we should talk about today?
Joe Bussey: I mean, there’s a lot of other things that went along with a lot of this story, and I don’t know how much of it you guys want to touch on, but I dealt with my own issues with alcohol—my family did—and that is all part of just, it’s part of who you are, right? Because you go through these things in your life and you learn from the people who were there. My parents were alcoholics, so I learned to be an alcoholic. And that is part of the reason that I ended up in the situation I was in. They didn’t teach me, oh, here’s personal finance, and here’s how you solve your problems, and this is how you pay for school. And so I think there’s just these things that set you up in the wrong way for life. And that is sort of where my background was. And I don’t know if we can go into that or not go into that. It’s totally up to you.
Scott Trench: Well, how did that affect your journey here? And how have you managed that in the last couple of years to achieve the success you’ve achieved?
Joe Bussey: Yeah, so what I learned was, when you have hard things in life, you drink. That’s how you forget those problems. And of course, I don’t know if you know this, but alcohol costs money. And so you start spending a lot of money toward this addiction that is the way that you’re coping with your life. And of course, it will eventually, as it did me, put you in some form of hospitalization or some kind of reckoning that you’re going to have to deal with. And that’s not to say that alcohol is necessarily bad—it’s the misuse of it. But I went through this entire journey during that time where I was so thankful, actually, to go back to school at the time, because it gave me something to focus on besides just continuing to drink yourself into a hole, because that’s the only thing you could do for those 2 or 3 hours before you had to get up and go to work again. And it becomes this really tough thing that you have to work through. And the way that you work through it is give yourself something to do. You can’t be—the thing that you do can’t be to just go drink. You have to have, again, a plan. You have to have something that you’re working toward. Because if you do that, you can self-motivate yourself if you have something you’re working toward. If you don’t, yeah, it’s easy to grab a beer out of the fridge or go to the bar. Or I got addicted to gambling for a while, because it was something to do to fill time when I was coming after work. Because there was a blackjack table right after I walked out of the kitchen. There’s a blackjack table there. And I’d take my paycheck and give it to the guy at the blackjack table, and he’d cash it for me. And I would gamble my paycheck right there after I just made it. Because I had no concept of what to do except, how do I get through today? What’s going to make me feel good right now? And not a concept of what was going to make you happy later in life. And then you end up, you know, 34 years old, and you have to have this come-to-the-real-world moment. And that’s where we were, there at 2019, 2020-ish.
Scott Trench: So, I wonder aloud—and this may not be completely correct—but I wonder aloud, how do you use that as a strength in some cases? Can you addict yourself to making progress against your goals, for example, with that, or harness some of that? Because I don’t think I’ve ever had a struggle with alcohol or anything, but I think I have that kind of addictive personality where I’ll go all in on something and do it for 10 hours in a row or whatever with this. And I try to harness that towards something productive. And it’s certainly in my life been harnessed towards unproductive things there as well. Is that something that you found? Have you been able to harness that productively in the last couple of years?
Joe Bussey: Oh, for sure. I accidentally consumed 1,000 hours worth of content. I mean, it’s this thing that you find something that really speaks to you, and then you just—I’ve always been how I’ve always been, I’ll go all in. There’s no halfway way to do it. Because I know if I do it halfway, I won’t do it at all, or I’ll give up on it halfway through, because you’re only doing it halfway. So I’ve always been one of those people that just throws myself into something. And in this case, it happened to be personal finance. And now I’ve got people that I work with that are asking me like, oh, how did you do that? And they’re starting to ask me questions, like, well, this is what I did, and here’s some things you can read—and I try not to tell people how to do it, because it’s not my arena necessarily, but to give them the same tools. And it still has to be up to the person to go and actually do it. I can’t do it for you. I can only do it for me, and that’s how I approach it and how I do it. So the addictive personality thing definitely helps, and the fact that I can run on 4 hours of sleep, and a lot of people can’t, because I’ve grown up doing that. But I’m a throw-myself-all-in kind of person, so it definitely helps.
Scott Trench: Yeah, I think we’ve heard a couple of stories over the years on the Money Podcast here of folks who have struggled with addiction in their past and then kind of go all out into the self-improvement and personal finance space and then really maintain that for a large number of years. And the transformational power of that can be really, really powerful. I mean, obviously there are lots of challenges there, but perhaps some folks are able to re-harness some of the things that may lead to addiction into something positive in some cases.
Joe Bussey: For sure.
Scott Trench: Sounds like you’ve been able to do that.
Joe Bussey: Yes. And yeah, don’t get addicted to school. That’s the other thing I would recommend. Don’t use it as an escape for life because life is still going to be waiting for you when you get done with school, whether you want it to be or not. In fact, I would go out as far as to say, if you want to get a degree in acting, or anything theatrically, you don’t need to go to college for it. I would go that—I would go as far as to say that because, the main reason is that there are so many just acting schools that that’s all they’re going to teach you. You’re not going to have to spend time in a geology class learning about rocks and minerals and things that aren’t actually going to apply to what you’re trying to do. You can go to LA and there are acting teachers that are professionally connected that will—you can pay them, they’ll pay them a lot less than you’re going to pay for a college education, and they will teach you what you need to know, and they will tell you right away if you are going to be able to do it or not. And you will either listen to them or not, you know, because a lot of people take things as motivation. So if somebody tells you you can’t do it, you’re going to go do it anyway. And then some people will give up, but it will save you if you give up. At least it saved you all that money. And if you don’t and you go through and you make it, you didn’t spend what I spent to go to school. You can go be an actor without having to deal with a college education.
Scott Trench: Last question here on this. You spent 15 years attempting to become an actor here, and now you’re not doing that right now. You’re building wealth and you seem very proud and pleased with your progress. I think you should be. And things are going very well. Where is acting going to fall in your career on a go-forward basis? How do you see that?
Joe Bussey: Sure. I think that the blog is probably one way that I’ll be able to use those things that I learned, but I’ll be using them in a more educational way to teach people how to solve their own life problems, which is basically what I’m doing now, is taking things that I’ve learned and approaching them in a way that makes sense to me. And I think that’s one great thing that I can do. There’s always the option if I get to this point where money is not an issue anymore, which is obviously 10, 15 years down the line, but there’s always people looking for people to teach theater to kids. There’s always that kind of thing that you can do. That is more on a volunteer basis. You’re not going to make a lot of money doing it, but you can go fill your soul if that’s what you want to do, is be a theater teacher. There’s places to do that. There’s also so many community theaters that will hire you to do a show. They may not pay you anything, or they’ll pay you $50, $500, whatever it is for three months of work. But when you don’t need the money, when that $500 is really negligible, you can go do it for free for somebody just to volunteer your time because you enjoy it. It becomes a hobby. It becomes what you actually—that’s like I said, that soul-filling stuff, as opposed to, I don’t know what I’m gonna put on my table tonight to eat because I’m trying to figure out how to make money with this thing that is just not financially viable in a lot of cases unless you’re able to make it on a TV show or pull that one big commercial or whatever the case may be there.
Scott Trench: Awesome. So you think it will still be a major part of your life, perhaps in a hobby or part-time kind of capacity for the love of it?
Joe Bussey: Absolutely.
Scott Trench: On a go-forward basis.
Mindy Jensen: Yeah.
Joe Bussey: Which again, you didn’t need to go to school for. You could have a hobby.
Mindy Jensen: I was gonna say, if you didn’t go to school for all of that time, what would you have been doing?
Joe Bussey: Well, I would have been working. And I don’t know, actually, because of where I was working, I don’t know what would have happened. School, in a lot of ways, was an outlet for me. Like I said, I became sort of, in a way, addicted to school. It was something that I was told by my dad when I was growing up: you go to college, you stay in school as long as you possibly can, because it’s scary out here. And that’s exactly what I did. Anytime that I got in trouble and I got scared of life, I went back to school and I found a way to get another degree and put off what I had to do with my life. And I don’t know, in some ways maybe school did prepare me in a lot of ways. You have some life experience because you have gone through these different things through school. But I can’t really say for sure how I would be different because of not— so it’s sort of a difficult question that way.
Mindy Jensen: Well, we don’t have a time machine. We can’t go back and change it anyway.
Joe Bussey: Right.
Mindy Jensen: We just learn from it and move on. I think you’re doing great, Joe. I think that you were dealt a really cruddy set of circumstances, from starting at age 13 where you chose the job to shovel horse poop, and then when you got robbed at gunpoint—I hope that guy gets diarrhea every day for the rest of his life. But, you know, these are all learning things. And you could have said, well, I guess life just sucks and I’m going to have a bad time of it. You could have just drank all the way down to the end of that bottle every single night and said, hey, this is great, I love it. You chose not to do that. You’ve done a really great job of taking non-ideal circumstances and turning them into situations that you are now thriving in. I love what the future holds for you.
Joe Bussey: Thank you.
Scott Trench: Yeah, I’m excited to see what happens over the next couple of years. See that house hack, see the wealth continue to grow, and see your blog flourish and all those other types of things. This was such a great story and such a powerful story. So thank you for sharing it with us.
Joe Bussey: Thank you.
Scott Trench: Well, before we go, we should go through the Famous Four and hear about some of the things that you’ve—your favorite books that you’ve read, for example, over the last couple of years. So I’ll let Mindy ask that one. Go ahead, Mindy.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, Joe, what is your favorite finance book?
Joe Bussey: Well, outside of Set for Life, because that’s the one that started it for me, I really think that The Early Retirement Extreme—and I’m gonna butcher the name of the author, but I won’t even say it. Early retirement—
Mindy Jensen: Jacob Lund Fisker.
Joe Bussey: Yes. And it was just, like I said, a great baseline just to show you what your bare bones can actually be, and then you can add in the things that you need for yourself. And so it became this sort of baseline—call it the cheese pizza area where you add your toppings from there and say, oh yeah, I do need the pepperoni. I’m good, but pepperoni is probably going to be necessary. So I like to use it in that way. And I think it’s good for anyone in kind of a—like I said, I’ve been in school for so long, it’s very textbook-y. So it was easy for me to read, but maybe not for everyone.
Mindy Jensen: It’s very aptly named, Early Retirement Extreme. It works for Jacob. I think some people have been introduced to early retirement through that book and said, oh, no way, I’m not doing that, and don’t further explore it. It is absolutely the bare bones basics—beans and rice, peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. But he’s okay with that, and that’s fine for him. I think you’re right, it’s a great book to read, but it’s definitely not for everybody. But it’s still a great book.
Scott Trench: Yep. What was your biggest money mistake?
Joe Bussey: Using school as an escape from life, saying, oh, if I go to school, I don’t have to worry about this debt. I don’t have to worry about these things that are going on in my life because I can go focus on this other thing and pour everything into that. And so that was probably the worst thing that I ever did, was continue down a path that I had no plan for. And I would say, don’t take out the money unless you know you have a plan to pay it back. And I just avoided making the plan.
Scott Trench: I think that’s a great way to frame the mistake. I think that’s really wise advice.
Mindy Jensen: What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out?
Joe Bussey: I would say, there’s so many things—create a budget, make a plan. There’s all of these different things. But I think what you have to do is sort of what I did, and that is just write it out. What is the problem? What is the problem in my life? Whatever it is, whether it’s money, it could be anything. But write it out, and when you think you’ve written everything you can write about it, write some more, because you’ll find that there’s more in there. And you’ll continue to narrow this down and narrow this down and narrow this down, and you’ll get to something that I like to call the deeper wish. It’s like, what is this thing that I need in my life? Find that thing that makes you the happiest, and you’re going to find out that it’s not actually going to be money. It’s not actually going to be some material thing. It’s going to be this sense of what makes me happy, and that is having time. For me, it was having time with family, having time to do these things, and money was the tool that I needed to get there, and I’m still working on it, right? But you have to write these things out, and when you get there, continue writing. And then when you finish the writing part, make the plan. You’ve done the attention part. Now be intentional about it, and make the plan for yourself, and take whatever help you can get along the way.
Scott Trench: Yeah, I think it parallels this concept of a vision, right? Do you have that? Do you have a vision? What do you want to be? What do you want your life to be like in a few years at a future date? And how do I back into it? And the plan comes from that. And it’s so hard to help someone, or to give advice, for example, on a Finance Friday, if that’s not crystal clear, right? Because it all depends on what you want, and you can back into it from there.
Joe Bussey: Yeah, there’s no one-size-fits-all.
Scott Trench: Awesome. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties or at wineries?
Joe Bussey: Oh, at wineries, there’s a really bad one which I might tell you, but—
Mindy Jensen: I love it.
Joe Bussey: My favorite of these style of jokes is, did you hear about the peanut in Central Park? He was assaulted.
Scott Trench: Ah, I love that one.
Joe Bussey: That one cracked me up.
Scott Trench: What was the winery joke?
Joe Bussey: The winery—so we have this truffle Gouda that we serve with one of the wines, and it’s this cheese from Holland.
Scott Trench: This sounds like a place where you’re gonna get good tips.
Joe Bussey: The Gouda itself has truffle inside of it, and then we put truffle salt on top of it, and I tell people that way you can get into double truffle. And it either goes way over their head and they don’t laugh at all, or they really appreciate it and they groan a lot, and then I feel really good about myself.
Scott Trench: And this increases your income?
Joe Bussey: It does, surprisingly. See, Mindy, there you go. It’s financially responsible.
Mindy Jensen: Financially responsible terrible jokes. Okay, Joe, where can people find out more about you?
Joe Bussey: So you’ll find me at actingfi.com. There will be the first blog post and the second blog post and the third blog post, because I’m going to really do this as I do most things. I throw myself into it and don’t look back.
Scott Trench: Awesome. So actingfi.com, and we’ll link to that in the show notes at biggerpockets.com/moneyshow311. And then you can also find Joe, as he said, in the BiggerPockets Money Facebook group, which you can find at facebook.com/groups/bpmoney. Awesome. Well, thank you so much. This was a wonderful, wonderful story. And I think the lesson that we’ve learned from you here today, Joe—congratulations on the incredible success over the last couple of years. Thank you for the nice plug for Set for Life, and for listening to The Money Show. And I cannot wait to see how things progress for you over the next couple of years. We’ll have to have you back on and see how the house hack and the next phases of the journey go.
Joe Bussey: Definitely.
Mindy Jensen: Yes, I am super excited to talk to you again soon.
Joe Bussey: All right.
Mindy Jensen: Okay. Thank you, Joe. We’ll talk to you soon.
Joe Bussey: Yep. Thank you.
Mindy Jensen: Holy cat, Scott. I absolutely love Joe. He could have easily allowed himself to succumb to a very cruddy set of circumstances, and his life would be incredibly different, but he wanted something different. He forced a change, and now look at where he’s at.
Scott Trench: Yeah. This is, we hear it so often on the show, right? Someone has a tough set of circumstances, they’re building towards something that’s completely unsustainable, and then boom, a pivot point happens. I’m proud and grateful that for Joe, part of that pivot point was Set for Life. That’s awesome to hear. So thank him for plugging that. But that pivot can come from anything. It can come from a podcast, any one of hundreds of books, hundreds of blogs, conversations, whatever. And then after that pivot point, the journey progresses in a completely different way, and things transform. The self-education protocol changes to where that’s—I’m going to begin the process of absorbing 1,000 hours of content on this. Probably really more than a master’s degree or an undergraduate degree for self-education, if we’re being honest, because we’re paying attention and trying the whole time while we’re self-educating, in a way that maybe some of us, at least as students, maybe we’re doing a little less of. We’re paying attention, of course, but maybe it’s not like, I’m not really that interested in geology, I’m interested in bettering myself or becoming financially free. So that changes. The orientation towards savings changes, where there’s a discipline in tracking with that. And the orientation at work changes, where I’m going to start saying yes to opportunities and trying to go above and beyond because I want those opportunities to materialize in front of me, even if they don’t directly in that day translate to more income. And you can see all of that playing out in Joe’s journey. And it’s really awesome. And it’s a complete ownership mentality, right? And it’s simple—Joe, even in spite of 1,000 hours of self-education, Joe’s like, I’m not even gonna bother pretending about these student loans, whether they’re gonna get forgiven or whether the moratorium’s gonna end. I’m just paying ’em off. I’m just paying ’em off. I’m gonna continue with it, because I made my decision, and that’s what I’m going after with my refinance and all this. And I think that simplicity and that approach is super healthy. I mean, it’s not for everyone. We’ve certainly had great debates about the pros and cons of that, and have plenty of folks on the show who have gone a different direction and are not paying them off early, especially with the moratorium. But I just love how that’s what he’s decided based on his education. He’s plowing forward, executing his plan, and doing it aggressively month to month. And he seems happy about it and cheerful, like things are going his way because he should be, because he’s winning. So that’s my rant on how much I loved Joe’s episode.
Mindy Jensen: He’s winning because he has chosen a plan of action and he is taking steps towards completion. And that feels very good as you watch the balance owed go from $220,000 to $80,000 to $40,000 to $10,000 to—there’s my last check, I don’t have any more debt. It is this huge weight that is lifted off of you when you know what you need to do and you can see progress every single month. And that’s what’s exciting. And I’m so excited for what the future holds for him, because he has a plan and he is taking action. All that education he has is worthless if he doesn’t do anything with it. So he is using that to push himself down the path to financial independence. And that starts with paying off his debt. I love him. I love him. We found Joe through our Facebook group. I want to give another plug for our Facebook group—you can talk with fellow money nerds. Joe said this in his original post—actually, let me read it again, I have it up here: “I’m hoping to find people in this group who are like-minded, to establish some sort of support, because all the people in my life are spenders and aren’t able to understand why I’m as strict with my budget as I am.” That’s what we created the Facebook group for—a place to connect with other people, because not everybody is surrounded by people who have the same goals and the same mentality. Not everybody understands the concept of skipping going out to dinner because you’re trying to pay down your debt or you’re saving for something, and that’s great. The Facebook group is a great place to come and talk with your fellow money nerds. We are at facebook.com/groups/bpmoney. We have a few rules, and number one is: don’t be mean. People have different circumstances, and if you come in and you start making fun of people, I will kick you out.
Scott Trench: Mindy will kick you out.
Mindy Jensen: I will kick you out.
Scott Trench: We have some people who are not fans of Mindy in that group.
Mindy Jensen: That’s okay.
Scott Trench: But the rest of us are very grateful.
Mindy Jensen: If you don’t like me, then that’s not the right group for you, and that’s okay. There are other groups, but we want you—this is a safe place to talk about money. So come in and ask questions and have conversations. And, oh, oh, oh, oh, Scott, do you have a new version of your book coming out? Set for Life 2.0? Is this the five-year anniversary edition? With updated content.
Scott Trench: Yeah, it’s been fun. We’ll talk about this more, I’m sure, another time, but Set for Life version 2 is coming out in July of 2022. And what is version 2? Basically, when I look back at Set for Life, I’m very proud of the path that is laid out there. And it’s the path I would have taken again if I was to start all over for sure. But, you know, I think I could have toned down some things about, you know, calling middle-class America ridiculous maybe 20 times throughout the book. That was unnecessary. And there’s language there that was a little, you know, harsh. The points are still valid, but I changed a lot of the tone. I updated everything for inflation, the significant inflation that’s happened in the last five years, particularly in the last year. It’s all updated as of early 2022, which is when I did the bulk of the updates in Q1 this year. And then we added some things around Bitcoin. I added a bunch of things around travel rewards that I didn’t know at the time, around insurance frameworks that I’ve developed there that didn’t make it into the book, and more clarity on some of the retirement accounts. And yeah, lots and lots of updates. I think we made 10,000 minor edits throughout the entire book. But obviously, of course, the plan remains the same. So I would love feedback from folks on what they think of the new version. And I hope that it continues to help people.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, so that version is available all over America on July 12th, but you can get it next week on June 27th at biggerpockets.com/store.
Scott Trench: That’s right.
Mindy Jensen: Or probably biggerpockets.com/setforlife.
Scott Trench: Thank you, Mindy, for the plug. I appreciate it.
Mindy Jensen: You’re welcome. I think that’s a really great book and clearly it is changing lives, as you heard today from Joe. You changed Joe’s life.
Scott Trench: And as a reminder, Mindy and I also have another book out there called First-Time Homebuyer, which I forget what that one’s about. What was that about, Mindy?
Mindy Jensen: The stock market? Bitcoin? Debt for life? I quit. I quit. I quit.
Joe Bussey: It’s about some topic.
Scott Trench: You can also check that one out anywhere books are sold or at biggerpockets.com.
Mindy Jensen: Why is biggerpockets.com/sfl not a short link for your book?
Scott Trench: I think it’s biggerpockets.com/setforlife, but that’s where you can check out Set for Life. And you can check out the First-Time Homebuyer book at biggerpockets.com/firsttimehomebuyer. So thank you for entertaining the few minutes of plugs here. We’re very proud of our books. You know that feeling you get when checking your finances means logging into five different apps? That’s why I use Monarch. Setup takes about 10 minutes. You can link your accounts, and everything you own and owe lands in one clean dashboard—banking, cards, investments, even keeping track of recurring charges. After that, you can stay on top of your money in just minutes, not hours, per month. Monarch saves you time and actually helps you use it wisely. Use the code POCKETS at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core half off at just $50. That’s 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code POCKETS.
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Scott Trench: We hope you enjoy them.
Mindy Jensen: Okay, Scott, should we get out of here?
Scott Trench: Let’s do it.
Mindy Jensen: From episode 311 of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying, gotta go, Joe.
