BiggerPockets Money Podcast

426: The New Path to Financial Independence is HERE

BiggerPockets Money Podcast
BiggerPockets Money Podcast
426: The New Path to Financial Independence is HERE
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Show Notes

The Financial Independence, Retire Early movement (FIRE movement) is changing. More people are investing, making money, and working from anywhere in the world. Investing education and advice has become easier to access, and self-made millionaires have been created through simple frugality and smart spending. Compared to when the FIRE movement was born, now may be one of the best times in recent history to achieve financial independence. But there’s more than one path to choose from.

Happy Financial Independence Day! That’s right; we’re swapping hot dogs for home equity, fireworks for frugality, and a cold one for some cold hard cash because TODAY is a day to celebrate an accomplishment we all hope to achieve! In this special episode, Scott and Mindy fly solo, touching on the history of the FIRE movement, its most prominent figures, and lessons learned on the path to FI.

But that’s not all; tell your overspending Uncle to tune in as Scott and Mindy debate some of the most common complaints about the FIRE movement and prove that anyone, in almost any situation, can live life on their terms. So sit back, grab those chips you saved for tomorrow’s barbeque (no one will notice), and get your FIRE started!

In This Episode We Cover

The financial independence retire early movement (FIRE movement) explained 

The MULTIPLE paths to early retirement you can take (and which is right for you)

FIRE rules you MUST follow that can help ANYONE reach financial freedom

What to do once you achieve FIRE and planning for it when you’re on the path

Debating the FIRE critics and why you DON’T need to give up everything as you build wealth

And So Much More!

Links from the Show

BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group

BiggerPockets Forums

Finance Review Guest Onboarding

Join BiggerPockets for FREE

Mindy on BiggerPockets

Scott’s Instagram

Grab Scott’s Book, “Set for Life”

Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place

Apply to Be a Guest on The Money Show

Podcast Talent Search!

Check Out Mindy’s 2022 Live Spending Tracker and Budget

Bill Bengen (The Inventor of the 4% Rule)

From Homeless at 14 to Debt-Free Homeowner AFTER Prison Time with Jazmyn Gray

How to Change Your Financial Life with a Money “Reset” with Jill Schlesinge

Mr. Money Mustache on Life After FI: The Truth About Retiring Early in Your 30s

Mr. Money Mustache

Coast FI: The Calculated Way to Retire Early WITHOUT Giving Up What You Love with The Fioneers

Designing a Frugal But Luxurious FI Life by Age 32

Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life with Vicki Robin

Click here to check the full show notes: https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-

 

Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email us: moneymoment@biggerpockets.com

Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

Read Full Transcript

📄 Full Episode Transcript

Mindy: Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast where we have a solo show today to celebrate a totally made up holiday, Financial Independence Day, and talk about the history of the fire movement and how it has evolved over the years. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my ever-evolving co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott: Thanks Mindy, great to be here with my genius co-host, Mindy Jensen.
Mindy: 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 or where you’re starting.
Scott: 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 calculate and plan for your ultimate Financial Independence Day, we’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.
Mindy: Scott, I am super excited to celebrate the first annual Financial Independence Day, today on July 3rd, right before regular old Independence Day. What’s better than independence? Financial independence. Before we jump in though, we have a new segment of our show. It’s called the money moment where we share a money hack, tip, or trick to help you on your financial journey. Today’s money moment is, read your credit card’s terms and conditions. Many credit cards offer theft protection, rental car coverage, and other money saving benefits. This means the rental car coverage means you don’t have to get the rental company’s insurance. Your credit card has its own insurance policy.
Scott: May have its own. That’s why you got to read it.
Mindy: Yeah, it may have its own. Yes, that’s why you have to read it. Absolutely. Do you have a money tip for us? Email moneymoment@biggerpockets.com.

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Scott: All right, everybody, welcome to our Financial Independence Day episode. This show airs on July 3rd, so we decided to make up a holiday to celebrate with you all. So, first we want to start off and, you know, I think this is a question for our resident historian, Mindy Jensen. What is the history of the FIRE movement?
Mindy: Well, way back in the, uh, as my kids call it, in the 1900s, uh, 1992, Vicki Robin and Joe Dominguez wrote a book called Your Money or Your Life. And while that book wasn’t meant to be an early retirement book, when you take that message and you add it to the October 1994 Journal of Financial Planning article by Bill Bengen, you start to see some pretty amazing ideas forming. You could take money that you have saved up and invested and watch it grow. And Bill’s article talks about the safe withdrawal rate. He looked at the history of the entire stock market and decided in what worst case scenario could I advise my clients to take a take out uh what percentage of their their uh portfolio could I advise them to withdraw and they would still have money. And it turns out 4% is the absolute bottom of the barrel that you can withdraw and still reasonably assume that you will have money for 30 years, a 30-year retirement. That’s based on a 60/40 um, stock portfolio, stock bond portfolio. We’ve talked about this several times. Bill was on our podcast twice to talk about his original article and to talk about a followup where he said, you know, it’s actually kind of closer to like 5 or 6%, uh, depending on, you know, your, your allocation. But that was, that was pretty eye opening back in the 90s and people started looking at the this and thinking, you know, I don’t have to work until I’m 65. I could retire a lot earlier if I just saved and invested. Uh, Scott, when did you first find out about the fire movement?
Scott: Yeah, my, I, I, I kind of discovered financial independence and in the concept of FIRE via, I, I want to say, you know, a combination of Mad Fientist and Mr. Money Mustache. I can’t remember which one, you know, was the initial spark. We’ve luckily been able to have both of those folks on the show, uh, in the past, uh, as well. Um, but yeah, that was probably around 2013, uh, when I was just starting my career and a couple months into my job, I really kind of caught the bug there and and went down the rabbit hole. And really, my deep dive down the rabbit hole was with the Mr. Money Mustache blog, and then that quickly evolved to layering real estate investing on top of that in early 2014. And so that’s really when I changed and oriented my my whole the way I live my life and, you know, approach my career um, in pursuit of this kind of uh, ultimate goal of financial independence.
Mindy: Yeah, Mr. Money Mustache was our introduction to financial independence and we quickly discovered JD Roth, who, for some horrible reason, we have never had on the show, but that’s changing. He’s coming up uh in a future episode. And we my husband was having a very bad day at work and he just banged into his Google search, how do I retire early? How do I quit my job early? And Pete’s article came up, uh, the shockingly simple math behind early retirement and that started a rabbit hole uh that Carl dove down very, very far.
Scott: And I’ll, I’ll point out that just because I discovered it then and, you know, we had Vicky Robin and Joe Dominguez, this, this concept of financial independence goes back hundreds of years. Maybe, maybe for as long as as money has existed. There have been people probably trying to achieve financial independence. But I’ll give a couple of examples there. Uh, The Richest Man in Babylon really kind of teaches how to achieve uh, financial independence. That book was published in 1926. And since this is July 4th, one of our founding fathers, Benjamin Franklin, um, I think was a good embodiment of the financial independence lifestyle and movement. This is a guy who was super frugal, uh, notoriously so, uh, so, really kind of pinched, pinched his pennies there, was very, you know, one of his core values was industry. So he would work all day in the morning, make make a show of being there early in the day and working late at night. And he built a very successful business, uh, turned over it to for somebody else to run and split the income from it 50/50, I believe. Some of my fact check me on that, but I I read his autobiography every once, every once in a while. I can’t remember who ended up, who’s the author of that one. Um, but it’s a, it’s a good book. Um, just that was a joke, Mindy. Um, anyways, uh, but yeah, I think, I think Ben Benjamin Franklin’s a great example of kind of the early outputs of financial independence. This guy achieved it early in life, probably in his 30s or late 20s and then went on to conduct a number of experiments and have a lot of value to society. So I think that’s, you know, that that’s kind of this bug has been in the, in the uh, uh, uh, brains of a lot of Americans for hundreds of years to kind of achieve this output. The concept of financial independence retire early and the acronym, that’s a more modern thing, um, that’s really been refined in particular with the internet and lots of great minds kind of adding their twists on the most effective ways to approach it.
Mindy: Yes, that’s absolutely right, Scott. It’s it’s definitely not like Vicky didn’t invent it. Um, the The Richest Man in Babylon was written in 1920 and you read it and you’re like, wow, this is like modern day thought, but in the the early 1900s, girls, they call all all of the 1900s the 1900s and that just feels weird to call a time that I was alive the 1900s. But as the FIRE movement has evolved and as it has, you know, progressed, it has changed a lot. Um, one of my favorite things about the FIRE movement is that it isn’t just one thing. It isn’t like one path that you have to go down. Um, in the beginning, it was just FIRE. And then people started putting their own little spin on it. There was lean fi or fat fi depending on how much you wanted to save up before you quit your job. Uh, Coastfi is one of my favorites. Uh, we had Jess from the Fioneers on episode 323 where she talks about Coastfi where you set up yourself to have enough money that in your investment accounts that it grows so that you will have a comfortable retirement. But you’re not gathering up every dollar that you can right now so that you can quit now. It’s more that you’re planning for a comfortable retirement. And then as you continue to contribute to your retirement accounts, your retirement date gets a little closer, but it isn’t this all out frantic mad dash. Uh, Barista fi is one where you still plan on having a job, but it’s a really low stress job. Um, the the movement has really changed from less about I have to quit my job and more about fulfilling your passions and being able to focus on what fills up your cup. So now it’s about taking care of your finances first and enjoying the journey to the end of your working life, uh, your work life, not, not your, that sounds bad, uh, the end of your, your employment, however long that takes rather than this, you know, frantic, frantic mad dash to get there. And there’s even the idea that you can reach financial independence and then pivot to a new career where money doesn’t matter because you’ve taken care of that. So you can pursue your dreams. We had Jill Schlesinger on episode 398 talking about fine, financial independence, new endeavor. Uh, she has a book out called The Great Money Reset where you are uh, changing the way that you think about your finances. Um, Scott, do you think there will be a new acronym or change in the movement going forward, even more so than what we’ve already seen?
Scott: Absolutely. The people always, people always take what’s what exists and add in a spin to improve it, right? You know, like Brandon, uh, you know, in in the context of house hacking here on bigger pockets in our little tiny pocket of the FI world here, right? Brandon invented this term house hacking, right? Um, I wrote set for life on this. Uh, Craig wrote a book on all the different permutations of house hacking. Now people are doing all these like special evolutions of it where they rent by the room to house hack or whatever with that and they come up with all these fancy terms for it. Everyone always in perpetuity should be improving what was on, what was, uh, uh, uh, posited or what was, what’s been there before, right? These concepts of of fi is not one size fits all. In when you’re asking about how the movements changed, I think in 2013, everybody was right about the path to to financial independence and what to do with your money, right? And what’s changed over the last 10 years is now, I think more and more people realize there is no right answer to the, to these questions with money and there’s a lot more nuance with it even though the goal of having freedom and flexibility um continues to be the theme across all these different things. So absolutely people are going to change create new acronyms. The environment’s going to change. If you, you know, I, I, I would be betting on an environment with higher interest rates. So these formulas that we’ve gotten used to of having almost all your wealth in stocks and having very little in bonds, for example, in the accumulation phase, somebody’s going to figure out at some point there’s an inflection rate with interest rates where that allocation no longer makes sense. And somebody’s going to come up with a new spin on on the the approach to this, right? Somebody’s going to come up with a new asset class, um, or or make something that wasn’t popular two years ago accessible, right? So I think that absolutely the those things um, are going to change in in dramatic fashion in ways we can’t predict. So what we’ve got to do is be open minded and um, receptive to those new ideas and find all these folks, um, so we can share them here on BiggerPockets money because we won’t have all those answers, um, you and I and and our team here.
Mindy: Wait, you don’t know everything, Scott?
Scott: Absolutely not. You know, we learned something new every single time we have someone on the show. So.
Mindy: So, Scott, how has the FIRE movement and your uh, ideas about it changed since 2013, you personally?
Scott: I think it’s that concept of there not being a right way to achieve fi. I think the principles of spend less, earn more, create an invest, those four kind of levers that you can pull. There are only a certain number of levers and I still think that the theme of the application of those levers does change over time and there are general frameworks. The answer is everyone is journey is individualized, um, but has to fundamentally um, increase cash flow, create assets or achieve strong investment returns on a on a on an existing base of capital. Those fundamentals never change and the circumstances that you are in do not change the, the ground rules of the game of financial independence. Just because you’re married and have kids does not mean that that uh, your house, uh, your inability to house hack isn’t going to hold you back, for example, from moving towards fire, right? Um, just because, you know, you feel like you’ve got a floor of expenses and nowhere to move your income, do, oh, then there’s no, there’s no path forward for you for for FI if you can’t change those two things and you don’t have time to create an asset and you have no capital to invest. So you’ve got to be able to flex on some of those levers, but how you do that and the creativity that people bring to it is um, is a limitless within the context of those rules.
Mindy: I really like that. The creativity you bring to it is limitless and there are very few rules that have to be followed in order to reach financial independence. And I think spend less and uh invest what you are uh invest the difference is kind of the only hard and fast rule. I mean, you have to have something to be investing and if you’re spending every time that comes in, you don’t have anything left over to invest. Other than that, what you invest in, how long it takes you to get there is really up to you.
Scott: Mindy, one other thing you asked about how uh, the FIRE movement has changed and whether someone will come up with a new thing. Well, I think Gen Z is coming up with this concept of quiet quitting, which is the same thing, right? It’s just another, it’s just another take on the on the whole situation uh with this. I I also want to point out um, when you think about what’s going on in the FIRE movement in a general sense, I think 10 years ago, it was about quitting your job. People wanted to retire. That word was really important and you already emphasized this, but I think that what’s happened as an underlying shift there is power has shifted to the employee over the last 10 years in a very dramatic way. It may not have felt like it, it may not have happened overnight, it may not have happened for everyone. But, you know, the the options available to us, um, to make money in 2023 are dramatically better than the options that were available to us in 2013, right? The gig economy has exploded from like some 30 odd uh million people to almost 60 million people over the last decade, right? Um, there are just tons and tons of new opportunities out there. Everyone can work remote. You can literally shop the best job uh for your skill set across the country uh in many cases. There may be a slight pullback on that, but the trend line is unquestionably um one that is putting power into the pocket of the uh uh the employee, the worker in this country over the last 10 years relative to 2013, right? And coming out of the the great recession, I don’t think that was the case. And so I think there was a, how do I escape the job? But when power shifts subtly and over a prolonged period back into um, the workers’ hands, all of a sudden maybe your job isn’t so bad. Maybe maybe those things that were that were really making you want to quit, you you have the power to begin changing a few of those things or jump ship and get a new opportunity that isn’t so bad and you can you can feel a little bit better about it. Um, so I think that the the option to retire is still a strong pull and will be there forever. But the hatred of the of the job is lessening to a degree. Not saying there aren’t still tens of millions of people who hate their jobs and would love to quit forever uh and not work at all. But I think that that shift has been um, one that’s been underlying a lot of these changes in the way we talk about FI here on BiggerPockets Money for example.
Mindy: Right, and there’s, I think this this movement has brought to the forefront the idea of the side hustle or like you said, the gig economy where you can kind of cobble together a bunch of different income streams. So you don’t have to go and work for the man that you hate. You could have a freelance writing job and a video channel where you open up boxes and play with toys. I can’t believe that’s a thing. But there is no limit to the ways that you can make money and the amount of money you can make it is there is a limit. It is your creativity.
Scott: I think that’s going on here, Mindy, is in the in the fire world is that a lot of folks, you know, perhaps you and I included, we talked about this with the Mad Fientist a few weeks ago, um, you know, once you become fi and you sit there for a couple of years, maybe you keep earning money, maybe the market has done well or whatever, the number of amount of money you thought you needed, you you soar past it and all of a sudden it becomes, you know, this you have this very good problem of like, oh, what am I doing now? Like, how do I maximize this this opportunity here? And it changes your perspective. So I think there’s an evolution of folks realizing like, hey, you’ve got to go about it with this kind of all out intensity and approach at the beginning stages or many folks find that we find that pattern um repeated very often among folks that get to FI with any amount of of speed, you know, in a couple of years or, you know, under a decade. Um, and then there’s a subtle shift that what got you there isn’t what’s going to be best for you um, on the on the go forward basis. And so I think a lot of these folks who really absorbed the identity of being very frugal, uh, perhaps you and you and me included, have a hard time unwinding that and realize, hey, if I continue to be that frugal going forward, I’m wasting this incredible opportunity to uh enjoy the life that I have an option to pursue now at this point. And so that’s like a really interesting about face and identity problem, I think that a lot of people get here, um, because you almost need that identity at the beginning and you need to shed it, um, when you do if you are able to achieve, to achieve the the financial goals that you set for yourself.

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Mindy: Wow, Scott, feeling real seen right about now. Um, but you’re right. You do need to have some level of frugality in the beginning in order to be able to spend less than you earn. It’s super easy to spend as much or more than you earn, but it is it takes a bit of discipline to spend less than you earn and put that away for the future. And the future is five years, 10 years, 50 years down the road. It’s difficult even for my kids right now to be saving for their retirement. They’re 16 and 13. Um, it’s difficult for a 25 year old to be saving for retirement at 65. Why would I not spend all of my money now? I can save a retirement later. But if you can save a retirement now, little bits, little bits, get in the habit right at the very beginning of your working life. If you’re, if, if you don’t have the, like, if you’re not used to having that money in your bank account, you won’t miss it when it’s not there. Get used to filling out your or or, uh, contributing to your 401K. You don’t have to max it out, but if you could, that’d be awesome. Do that for a little bit. You get used to it, you don’t have that in there. All of a sudden, five years down the road, 10 years down the road, you are coast-fi. And then now you’re at 65, you have a very comfortable retirement. You continue to contribute, now you can retire at 60. You continue to contribute a little bit, and now you can retire at 55 or even 50. And you’re not pinching pennies along the way, you’re not depriving yourself of everything. If you push the frugality in the beginning, it can be a little bit difficult to change that up. As I am experiencing right now, as I start to explore a little bit more of my spendy ways. Um, Carl and I are focusing a lot on experiences. And we’re looking for ways to not just like experiences on vacation. One of the things that comes up frequently in a lot of these, uh, conversations is, oh, when I was on vacation, I took a cooking class. Well, why do I have to wait till vacation to take a cooking class? So I’m looking for a cooking class that I can take with my girls locally. And I don’t want to bring more things into my house. I have a tendency to be a little bit hoarder-ish, but if I can buy more experiences with my kids, I think that’ll be a really awesome way to and an awesome use of my money.
Scott: Yeah, you know, I think that’s like a great example of this, like, hey, make a list of all the things you like doing the most and just like put them in order and forget what cost what costs. And like more often than not, the things at the top of that list are like a hike here in Colorado, a cooking class. I love doing a cooking class with my wife. You know what we found out is that the cooking classes are a pain in the rear because there’s like four other people on the call. They’re like kind of expensive. You have to have the thing on the whole time. And you know what’s way better is just YouTube. Just literally get the YouTube cooking class on there. It’s completely free and you have a great, you have a great evening, you can pause the thing whenever you want uh, to go handle the. And so like, like we’re like, like, we’re like, what are what are the favorite our favorite things to do over the next but, yes, there’s some travel. That’s that that costs money. Um, but a lot of the things we like to do are completely free, my wife and I on, um, you know, and or involve very low cost, right? Rocky Mountain National Park is $75 for the annual parks pass, uh, on an annual basis that gets you all the parks in the country. So like, you know, like how like in some ways, yes, you can spend money and some ways you get, you you realize, hey, if you go too far, um, you’re just going to have this huge surplus. You might as well, um, you might as well spend them. You might you might not be able to spend it because your passions aren’t going to cost that much money.
Mindy: Yes. Uh, another way to look at it is you made a list of the things that you like to do, make a list of the things that you hate. I hate cleaning my house, but it feels like a waste. I think for me is going to call me up and yell at me for saying a waste of money. It feels like a waste of money to pay somebody to do something I could do myself. But I really hate cleaning my house to the point that it’s really not all that clean. So I am going to hire somebody to clean my house. That’s financial independence. Yes, I have a big 4th of July party every year and uh, this show is airing on July 3rd, so I have somebody here at my house right now cleaning my house. And I am now excited about it, but a couple of months ago that would have been like, oh, is that the right choice for me? Totally the right choice for me. My friends, the waffles on Wednesday couple, I was just having dinner with them and they said, you know, we looked at each other and said, how can we take things off our plate that we hate? And this was like three years ago. I should have had this conversation with them three years ago. Um, how can we take things off our plate that we don’t like? And she said, I don’t like to clean my house. And he said, great, let’s hire a cleaner. And she said, it’s the best decision I’ve ever made. So I am embracing this even though it feels wasteful to me, I’m getting over it because I’m providing a job for somebody else and they’re going to do a better job than I could ever do. I hate cleaning and I can afford it.
Scott: Mindy, before we, um, uh, I want to cover one last thing before we get out of here and let people celebrate their financial Independence Day. What are the biggest, uh, complaints that people have about the path to financial independence and the the people, you know, the the people, um, who we bring on for example and and talk about or the what what are the complaints and the naysayers saying about fire?
Mindy: I could never do that because I don’t want to be frugal. I don’t want to give up things. I don’t want to not enjoy my life. Uh, there’s it there seems to be this idea from people who are on the outside looking in that this is a life of deprivation and you can’t have anything enjoyable if you are going to be on the path of financial independence. I think that’s the biggest one, the total deprivation. And it isn’t total deprivation. Was it, um, Frugal Woods, I think has the best example of this. I think she was on episode 10, maybe episode 11. I wish I could just remember that, like that. Mrs. Frugal Woods is on a very early episode and she said when we first discovered financial independence, we’re like, oh, okay, we’re getting rid of everything. And they did. And for a month, she’s like, you know what, this is not fun. I want to add some things back. Like, I got rid of absolutely everything and most of it I don’t miss, but I miss my uh, shelter water, I miss my yoga class, I miss, you know, a couple of things. So they figured out ways to keep those in their life at less expensive prices. And it actually ended up being almost free. The the yoga was free and the the seltzer water was practically free. And that’s what you, that’s how you have success in this is to keep the things in your life that are meaningful to you, that bring you joy. You don’t have to get rid of everything. And get rid of the things that that don’t add any value. I am selling a car today. It doesn’t bring me any value. It doesn’t bring me any joy. So I don’t have it anymore. It was taking up mental space.
Scott: What are some of the biggest complaints you think about?
Scott: Uh, well, I I I see folks saying, oh, this person earns too high of a salary. You know, get somebody, uh, uh, uh, normal, you know, tell me about a normal person who achieved this, you know, in this period of time. I think that’s a big one. Um, because there are a lot of, that this is more accessible uh, in in a lot of ways to folks with those higher salaries. I also see um, some things saying, oh, this person didn’t actually start from scratch, uh, with a completely clean slate with no advantages. And I have kind of two, two comments about that. First up is understanding that this is a journey and that folks that we talk to uh, on that are achieving financial independence or have a a positive trajectory to showcase, you know, if you, if you go from zero to a million dollars in net worth over 10 years, you’re probably not earning $40,000 the whole time. You may start there and a lot of our folks do start in those types of of situations, right? Um, but if you’re, if you’re able to amass a million dollar portfolio and manage it, your your skill set’s probably going to advance over that period of time, right? Like at bigger pockets, if someone was managing a million dollar budget here at BiggerPockets on an annual basis, they’d earned more than 50 grand to manage that budget, right? Or I would, I would, you know, to get somebody competent to do that, we’d have to pay them more than than 50 grand in order to do that, right? So this is a function of the journey itself. I think that as you’re going on there, if you’re, if you’re the kind of person who can amass from from very little or from a close to to scratch position or pay off debt and move towards that, you’re naturally going to get the skills along the way that will showcase a a growth and income across that journey. So that that’s, I think, uh, one part, one part of that, uh, of that story. And the second thing is, you know, it’s very hard to to find examples of people who truly start out with absolutely nothing and no advantages whatsoever and a truly standing start, uh, from from scratch and then go on to build to build wealth, right? We’ve talked to a few of those folks uh, on the show. Um, you know, we we we’ve had a we’ve had a story about a gentleman, um, Tony Gaden who uh, was, you know, weighed himself on the Walmart scare scale and saw a 400 was $26,000 in credit card debt and then went on to build a $500,000 portfolio after shedding 200 lbs, well simultaneously shedding 200 pounds. We’ve had uh, Jasmine Gray here in Denver uh, come in who struggled with addiction and went to prison for a while and now is a homeowner, house hacker and on her way to building wealth. But those, those stories are going to be rare and they’re going to take a lot more time. What’s much more common is people do have some advantage on the journey to FI. They’ve got something, a friend or a family member that can help them out with things, someone to give them a loan or a helping hand in that first in that first little bit. an inheritance from a grandparent or great-grandparent of $10 to $50,000. Like, honestly, those situations are just way more common than the person who truly starts from a standing position with scratch, from scratch with no friends or family to support them and no helping hand and builds it completely from the ground up. Again, it does happen, it’s just not the norm. And really think about it if that’s you and you’re one of those naysayers. Are you really in the position where you have absolutely no advantages, you’re truly on your own, you just have you and your salary and you have no ability to ask for helping hands from friends, family, community, anybody else. If that’s you, look, it’s going to be hard, right? And it’s going to be much more different, different experience than than um, most other folks. I think that that that’s what I’d say to those two, those two common points, right? This person earned a high income. Well, don’t reflect on where they are now, reflect on where they started from with that high income, right? And then where is, um, because, because over 10 years, your income should grow if you give it your all at a career that has a scalable potential and as your your wealth builds. And then two, you know, reflect, do you are you really in a position where you have absolutely no advantages and you’re truly completely on your own and have no support and advantages? Your parents can’t watch uh, your baby for example because you live near them. Even those types of small things, um, on your journey? Because I think you might be surprised if you really go looking for those advantages, you’ll have a couple of secret ones that you can unleash on your journey.
Mindy: That’s a really good point, Scott. I think that everybody has an advantage somewhere. It’s just not all of the advantages, it’s not all the advantages that somebody else has. It’s not even some of the similar advantages that other people have, but you have advantages. You have a high income, you have flexibility, you have family to help out, you have the ability to house hack. Uh, everybody has some advantage that they can take advantage of. Alright, Scott, this was a lot of fun. Happy Financial Independence Day.
Scott: Happy Financial Independence Day. I hope you uh, have a wonderful Independence Day, um for the USA, uh, tomorrow and enjoy everything with friends and family. And thank you to everyone who’s listening. I hope you uh, are able to take this as some motivation and and and keep rolling towards your financial independence day.
Mindy: Yes, and if you have a story that you would like to share with us, if you would like to apply to be a guest on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, go to biggerpockets.com/guest and fill out the form. Let us know what your story is. We would love to hear from you. All right, that wraps up this episode, this financial Independence Day episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench and I am Mindy Jensen saying toodle-loo kangaroo.

Speaker 1: If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.

Speaker 1: BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kalyn Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.

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