Mindy: In Tuesday’s episode, we covered the basics of what Coast FI is, how to calculate your Coast FI number, and how to achieve it. Well, today we are joined by the couple who created the calculator we used in that last episode, famous for Coast FI, the Fioneers. We’re going to hear how they achieved Coast FI in their 30s, the circumstances that led up to it, and why it was the best option for them.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my pioneer of the FI mustache co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott: Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here, and I’m so glad we stubbled across this concept of Coast FI, which we’re going to discuss with Jess and Corey today. Mindy’s already done a great job introducing them, but we’re so excited to welcome them back. Jess and Corey again here to BiggerPockets Money to talk about their FI journey. Corey and Jess, welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money show.
Guest: Thanks so much for having us.
Guest: Excited to be here.
Scott: For the folks that might have missed Tuesday’s episode, can you quickly define for us what Coast FI is?
Guest: Yeah, as we think about Coast Fi, we like to think of it as both a financial milestone and a lifestyle. So as a financial milestone, it’s the point where you’ve saved and invested enough money that you no longer need to contribute another dollar towards your retirement. The amount that you’ve already saved and invested will grow to fully fund your retirement. And so while you think of full financial independence as the point where work is optional, at Coast Fi, savings is optional. The name Coast Fi typically comes from this idea that you’re coasting to full financial independence by reducing or stopping altogether your savings.
Scott: And what did this look like for you guys? Could you give us a little bit of background on your your money journey and how you decided to approach Coast FI?
Guest: We were pursuing full financial independence and retire early because he had followed the FIRE movement and Mr. Money Mustache and sort of came to me on an annual basis and said, “Hey, let’s just save 5% more.” I would say, “Okay, I would rather travel, but if we can travel and we can save more, we’ll do this.” So, it wasn’t until about 2018 that I really started to understand what this all meant and the fact that saving more could give us more freedom earlier. And I got really interested in the financial independence movement. But at the same time, I was already in a job that was really toxic for my mental health. And so I learned about FIRE and I thought, this seems like a really interesting idea, but I couldn’t see myself pushing through for another 10 years, which is what our timeline was, um, at the time. And so we were starting to think about what would our path to financial independence look like, and we wanted it to be a like slower, happier path.
But then really quickly, probably about a week after we like mutually together decided we wanted to pursue this FI thing, I had a mental health crisis and ended up with severe burnout, severe anxiety that had been building over a period of time and needed to take six months completely off of work. And so for us, that threw a wrench into things. I think we had at the time thought we were going to pursue financial independence, but we were just going to do it at like a slightly slower pace. Like make sure that we were still enjoying our lives along the way. Um, and then we really had this fork in the road where we needed to decide like how are we going to live life moving forward? During that time, we were faced with a lot of questions, particularly, how can we start using our financial freedom to improve our lives now?
And that led us down a whole bunch of rabbit holes learning about how people were using FU money, people who were semi-retiring. During that time, I learned about this concept called Coast FI, and it seemed really compelling to us. Um, and so all of this learning led us to say, what if we took our FIRE path really differently than we expected we would?
Scott: Can you tell me a little bit more about maybe three components of this journey. One is, what was the the lifestyle looking like prior to this inflection point, this this mental health crisis? What did your financial position look like and specifically, you know, Coast FI really emphasizes this theme of having enough saved for traditional retirement at traditional retirement age. Was your wealth primarily at that point in retirement accounts? And then the third component of that question is what what did things look like after we began shifting the goal to Coast FI? So, several part question. I can ask them all again in there, but I’d love to hear, you know, that that those components of the story there.
Guest: I’ll start by talking about the lifestyle piece and then Corey, you can jump in and talk about the finances piece. So the lifestyle at that time was really dominated by work. And so we had both started our careers with really, really low incomes, think like one year collectively we made $30,000 a year living outside New York City. And so after that period of time, we both just put our heads down and we’re like, we really need to increase our incomes. And so we had over time really focused on that and really spent the vast majority of our time and energy focused on work and climbing the corporate ladder, which for me led to that really severe burnout, um, and mental health crisis that I had. We had then gone from, you know, barely surviving to increasing our income significantly, which allowed us to start to save quite a bit as well as inflate our lifestyle a little bit at the same time. Pass it to you, Core.
Guest: Yeah, so when we reached this inflection point, I just pulled it up in our spreadsheet, so if you see me glancing over here, I have a net worth spreadsheet that I track and have tracked for gosh, I can scroll over since 2011 or something.
Mindy: Wow, we’ve never had a guest with that much information. Have we, Scott? Every single guest is like, oh, I’ve got a spreadsheet.
Guest: Of course you do. Shocker, the money nerd has a spreadsheet. One of many spreadsheets, I guess, right? But so in 2018 when we reached this inflection point, we had about half of our net worth in retirement accounts, a significant portion in real estate and about $60,000 in cash.
Scott: Can you walk us through what the real estate portion look like? Was that in home equity or were you acquired rental properties at this time?
Guest: Home equity.
Scott: I’m gathering a picture of a pretty intense savings uh, situation, maybe living like we were only making a little more than that 30,000 combined income that you started out with. And the work is getting progressively more difficult or challenging or there’s more responsibility or there’s, you know, more pressure building. And this reaches a boiling point. And what happens next? What what changes about your lifestyle and your financial goals at that point?
Guest: I think the thing that I want to add about the financial picture was at the time, we had somewhat inflated our lifestyle, so we were at that time spending about $70,000 a year, so we had like more than doubled what we were spending compared to what we were when we first started out. I think at that time had about 300,000 in our retirement accounts. Um, and so that did allow us, like we were able to look at our money and say, how much freedom does this actually give us? And really helped me at that time to be able to say, okay, like I could completely quit this job if I wanted to, or I could take a leave of absence and apply for short-term disability not knowing if I’m gonna get it. At that time then, eventually, I took that six-month leave of absence, quit the job that was causing the mental health challenges in the first place. And then when I went back to work, actually, we realized that our $300,000 had actually allowed us to reach Coast FI. And so it left me with the question of saying, maybe I never need to work full-time ever again at the age of 31. And so I went back to work part-time, got a new job where I worked three days a week as my mental health continued to improve. Timeline-wise, right? In lifestyle-wise, had a lot more freedom and flexibility and time to focus on health and well-being.
Mindy: Did you go back to the same employer and just ask for part-time work or did you get a whole new job?
Guest: I got a whole new job.
Mindy: Oh, because I was gonna say I was going to ask how did how did you step down from that? Because I think a lot of people hesitate to ask, can I go part-time? I think a lot of employers hear you ask to go part-time and they think the option is full-time or part-time, when really the option is, you can have me part-time or you can have me no time because I’m going to go find a job that allows me to do part-time. And it’s hard for us to reframe that in our minds as well. So I just want to remind everybody, you know, your option is to go get another job. And, you know, right now when we’re recording in July of 2025, the job market is really tight, but if you’re pursuing this in a few years, maybe the job market opens up and you have a lot more options or maybe you’re in a field that’s in high demand and you have a lot of more options. You know, do what you want. Don’t do what your employer wants.
Curious to learn exactly how Jess and Corey achieved Coast FI? We’ll be breaking it down right after this break.
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Welcome back.
I have another question about the job switch here. There’s some situations where this rule could be reversed. I’ve observed that when, let’s say I’m making $100,000 or $50 an hour at a job and I want to go part-time, usually that doesn’t come with, here’s $60,000 or $50 an hour at that. It’s usually, oh, here’s $35 an hour and part-time. There’s a, there’s both a reduction in the hourly rate of pay and the total amount of pay. That can definitely be changed in some cases, you can make more or whatever. How did you find that in your situation? Was there a sacrifice on both the income and benefits or were you able to basically make the same amount just with less hours?
Guest: You know, what’s interesting because at the full-time job, I was working about 50 hours a week and I was commuting for an hour and a half every day and it was incredibly stressful. And when I took the part-time job, I was working 24 hours a week, no more. I was commuting 20 minutes each way and so I worked 60% of time and I probably made like 55% as much. So it was a slight reduction. Um, but felt to me totally worth it. And I know you guys probably know about like the true hourly wage where you take into account like all of the hours you work and spend commuting or preparing or stressing about work, um, and all the costs associated and found that my like true hourly wage at the part-time job was a whole lot higher and the job was a whole lot easier.
Scott: Yeah, I love that you mentioned that the commuting costs as well because that’s, that’s something I think that I, I was not factoring in or was asking in the question and a lot of people don’t think about. If you’re having, if you have a long commute and you’re working long hours and it’s all confusing from a mental standpoint, that could be a huge change. One thing that I will call out as well is it sounds like, implied in this conversation is you guys were saving at least 50% of your income at leading up to the point where this, this happened. And that’s the, that’s a huge advantage if you can live off one income, it allows these options to develop in life. And so I think that that’s critical to call out here is this was enabled by even $70,000, relatively low spending given your household income.
Guest: Yeah, the other thing that’s really interesting about this one shift in our long journey is that that year after when Jess started working part-time, we actually reduced our expenses without even intentionally trying to do so. So life was so busy up to that inflection point that we were spending a lot of money on takeout and kind of convenience. And then after, when she had a lot more time and flexibility working part-time, we surprisingly reduced our expenses. I remember the point when we were like reviewing our annual expenses and we’re like, wait a second, these numbers can’t be right. Like why are we spending so much money less? You know, like, and we had to like dig into it and figure it out and kind of work backwards. It wasn’t like, oh, we’re earning less so we should spend less. It was just like mindset and lifestyle change.
Mindy: So, Corey, were you working full-time when she went down to part-time?
Guest: I was, yep.
Mindy: And were you still continuing to contribute to retirement accounts even though you discovered that you were Coast FI?
Guest: Yeah, so we were still contributing. So our Coast FI journey has been one of many small steps. And so the first step was like reducing Jess’s to part-time work, but we continued to contribute probably over the next four or five years as we were still earning high income.
Mindy: And why did you choose to continue to contribute if you were already Coast FI?
Guest: Yeah, it’s a good question. I think it was a combination of we had disposable income. At the time, I was really enjoying my work and so I wanted to continue working full-time. And there was also certainly a motivation of like scarcity mindset. Like I wanted to have a little bit of extra cushion, right? The age-old challenge that many of us run into is like, I didn’t want to have to worry about it and so I wanted to save a little bit more.
Guest: As Corey said, we had a progression over time. And I think it can be really scary for people to go from being in this like full accumulation mode where you’re saving 50% of your income to one, like if people are reaching FIRE, to go to start spending down. It can also be really scary to go from I’m saving 50% of my income to saving zero. And so we often recommend and the process that we took ourselves was take a gradual approach. Like what are lifestyle shifts that you can make? And we assumed that me working part-time was going to dramatically reduce our savings rate. It didn’t because we spent so much less. So then we were like, oh, what’s the next change that we can make? And so about a year later then I ended up using some of the extra time to start a business, and then I quit my coaching business. And then I quit the part-time job to focus on that. Corey was still enjoying his job at that point. So why leave, right, when he didn’t need to yet, even though I was like, “Hey, do you want to leave? We can travel, we can like do all of this stuff.” But like he just wasn’t ready to. He was enjoying that.
Um, and so for then the couple years after that, what we did was we decided, okay, what’s our future lifestyle? What do we want that to look like? Are there things that we can do now to prepare ourselves for that? And so we did an expensive camper van experiment where we rented out a camper van to see if that was something that we would enjoy doing. And then over the next two years, we bought and we built out our own camper van, which during that two-year period of time then, reduced our savings rate down to about 20%. So we cash-flowed it, reduced the savings to 20%. And then from there it was like, oh, well, now we have the evidence that the money is still continuing to grow in the background, right? I think everyone tells you that, but sometimes it’s nice to see it from your own life experience. And so then that gave us more confidence to then when, you know, things got frustrating at work for Corey, then he was able to say, okay, maybe it’s time for me to go, um, and take a mini-retirement and then join, um, me as an entrepreneur. So 2023 was the point where we stopped saving entirely for retirement. So we haven’t added a single dollar to retirement since 2023.
Scott: Walk me through that that inflection point too, a similar question around the financial position in terms of cash and you know, we know Coast FI, the retirement accounts were were well set it sounds like to be fully funded by a traditional retirement age. But was there cash or other assets that made you feel more comfortable with both going into the entrepreneurial or leaving the full-time work environment.
Guest: Oh, absolutely. And I’d have to look to get precise numbers, but I remember having about two years of cash or liquid assets that we could tap into to cover our expenses for two years effectively if we didn’t earn any income. By this point, we already had a business that was covering a good portion of our expenses but not all of them. And so we gave ourselves a long runway to then grow the business, for that to be able to fully support and cover just our expenses.
Scott: Awesome.
Guest: It was certainly the combination of like the near term and having the cash and the long term knowing that our retirement was taken care of.
Scott: I have a couple of observations that I love to call out. First, one theme here is people say, oh, I don’t want to pursue Fire because I love my job, right? And that’s where you were, Corey, a few years ago. That changes over time. Nothing stays the same forever. Even though you loved your job then, the fact that you guys were pursuing versions of Fire, Coast Fire, the things that gave you options in life and building liquidity allowed for when that changed for you to have that flexibility and confidence to do that. Second, and again, it’s there is a rule of thumb there, but there are plenty of exceptions. The liquidity position, I think is so critical for the fire journey and taking that leap and moving into the entrepreneurial space, building a cash position. And it’s not everybody, but it’s a big percentage of folks that seem to be much more comfortable with it. I am certainly of that type as well where I feel just much more comfortable having a much greater cash position than than most, you know, portfolio theory would would suggest. I think it’s very compatible with real estate investing and and um, financial flexibility in there. And then the last thing I want to point out is wealth creation in my observation is both a process and an event in the sense that it’s actually I think very good strategy for one spouse in a married couple to work an income where the spreadsheet ties very nicely into it, right? Here’s what we’re going to get earn over the next couple of years, here’s what we’re going to spend here’s how that’s going to accumulate, here are the benefits that are going to apply, and then one spouse to work on a business which has uncertainty, but great upside and flexibility downstream. And I love that that that played out in in your story here specifically because I think that the business could fail, um, 9 out of 10 businesses fail, but if you could repeat that process long enough, if you stick with it long enough, there are good odds that over time that’s going to be very successful and will give you future options in life, um, for many people. So I just, those are three observations that I found across many, many of our podcasts here and and I love that they played out so wonderfully in your situation here and affords you guys a great lifestyle and optionality now.
Guest: Yeah, I think that’s pretty spot on. I think when people see the lifestyle that we have today, they probably think we’re really risky people or like willing to take big leaps forward, but the reality is it’s been a seven-year process to get from where we were to where we are today and it’s been small incremental steps to kind of reassure ourselves and kind of mitigate the risk that we saw.
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Thanks for sticking with us. What was your income at the highest level when you were both working full-time at those high-paid jobs?
Guest: So our highest income years were actually after Jess started working part-time.
Mindy: Yeah, which is is funny.
Guest: Like the progression of my career, it was small leaps for many years, but then there were certainly some key promotions and increased responsibility where my salary doubled within the period of, I don’t know, four years or so. Like our highest income year was in 2021, which was actually the year that Jess left her part-time job actually.
Mindy: And that is because you did the, you created your own company, Jess, is that right?
Guest: Yeah, so basically then, I started doing the Design a Life You Love group coaching programs, um, that I do in 2020. And then I was doing that on the side with my part-time job for the remainder of that year. Got to the point that year where those two combined was more than what my like crazy toxic job salary had been. And so then I decided to quit and then, you know, grew the the income and revenue from from the business alongside Corey growing his income and was doing it in 25 to 30 hours a week on my schedule, doing things that I love to do, which I think was like the best part about it.
Mindy: So what was that income?
Guest: So gross income in our highest income earning year was 240,000.
Mindy: And how much were you saving of that 240,000?
Guest: We saved $124,000.
Mindy: Wow, that’s awesome. What were you doing when you earned $15,000 a year each or $30,000 combined?
Guest: I was working in higher ed, um, and I was earning a lucrative like $24,000 per year.
Guest: So I did an AmeriCorps fellowship and I earned $11,000 a year before taxes.
Scott: This is gross income. And this was in New York City?
Guest: It was in New Jersey, like in the New York City suburbs.
Mindy: Wow.
Scott: Often we’ll have a money story on and folks were like, well, these people, these folks made 200k. Well, almost nobody moves into a fire journey starting at $35,000 in household income and finishing there as well, right? Many many journeys involve this progression when it comes to an income standpoint and many fields, especially if there’s two folks involved in the situation, offer those opportunities over a 10, 15, whatever, however long the journey is, um, journey to financial independence, especially if there’s businesses um or sales roles that are involved that go in there. And so that’s that’s like it’s just fantastic you guys started out this journey in one set of circumstances, really in, I would say in the in the bottom, you know, quartile of earners perhaps in the country at that point in time for a household income and ended, uh, likely in the top decile at that peak over a period of time there. And there’s fluctuations and all that kind of stuff, but that is much more typical of the fire journey than folks staying in a high income the whole way or staying in a low income bracket the whole way.
Guest: Yeah, and I have two thoughts in addition to that. One is there were only three years where we collectively grossed more than 200,000 in our long journey. There were only three years where we earned more than 200,000. The second is it also goes to show that we often plan for the worst case. So when just started working part-time, it was like, oh no, are we going to reduce our savings rate, you know, a little bit? It was an obvious like we’re going to do this for her health, mental health and recovery. And so it made sense, but there was still the financial element of like, oh is this going to work out? So we often planned for the worst case, but often there is upside beyond that which is evidenced by our progression of income.
Scott: I love that and I can’t help myself, I gotta jump in again here. I I talked to a BiggerPockets Money listener recently and this problem is very common among our crew here where people are so conservative in their projections and the numbers they’re putting out. This person was a multimillionaire and they were really worried about things and I was like, okay, look, that’s fair, you can project out the worst case scenario with the conservative portfolio here and in earnings potential and what’s gonna happen with all that. But you should also put in a realistic case scenario where returns are something along the lines of what we’ve had in the past and something works out over time here. And there is a promotion as you continue to work for another 5, 10 years in your career. And when that happens, you’re like, oh, wow, the the odds of something actually working are not zero in my financial model and shouldn’t be. The odds of one spouse’s business succeeding are not zero and that changes the game in terms of how you run things, right? If you just said, I’m gonna assume that there’s going to be no income for my business that just is going to start, that really makes it painful and difficult to to do these things. But if you say, hey, there’s a 50/50 shot, this thing’s going to be generating 100 grand a year in two or three years in a very flexible position, that is a much better way to model things out and you’re probably going to see success in some of these endeavors. And I think that that’s a very real risk among our community as they’re they’re so conservative that they’re not actually weighing the realistic upside potential in their portfolios over time.
Guest: One thing that I would add to that too is I tend to see people in the community think that they’re making forever decisions. That like if they make a decision to work part-time that like they’re making a decision to work part-time for the rest of their lives. Or like if they’re making a decision to start a business like this is a forever thing that they can’t change. And we see this in our community often and need to remind people and remind ourselves that we can pivot if needed. Like we’re not doing something that’s like completely set it and forget it. Like we’re both working on this business right now. Great. We love that. And if in a couple years we find that we’re not generating enough income to cover our expenses and do the things that we want to, like one of us or both of us can go back to work, right? Or we can figure out how to generate income in another way. I think people underestimate their ability to problem solve and be resourceful in the face of challenges.
Mindy: I can’t agree enough with your statement that the people in our community tend to think of these as forever decisions. There’s the stigma around people who are retired and then they go back to work. It’s okay to test out retirement and decide that’s not for you. It’s okay to test out part-time work and decide, you know what, I just really hated that job. I want to go back and get a full-time job at this new place that I’m doing, or I don’t want to even do the part-time now, I want to start my own thing. And I think that there’s a lot of rigidity in our community and loosen up people, loosen up, test things, take a stab at something and if it doesn’t work then, you know, try something new. Pivot. We need to insert that Friends scene where they’re trying to get the couch up the stairs every time I say the word pivot, I think of that.
Scott: I don’t know what that is.
Mindy: I haven’t seen that episode. Now, let’s switch gears a little bit from your specific Fire story to the concept of Coast FI in general. Who do you think Coast FI works best for and is there somebody that this may not work for?
Guest: I think the first thing that I would say is, I think that Coast FI might work best for most people, for those who are, I think, just getting into their personal finance journey, Coast FI can be a more approachable milestone. And for those who are pursuing full Fire, if they achieve Coast FI, they can use that freedom to design the life that they don’t want to retire from earlier. Right? There’s so many people who reach their FIRE number, take a couple years off to recover from burnout and then decide they want to do some sort of productive work. What if they reached Coast FI, thought, what is that work that I would want to do five years down the road once I’m recovered from burnout and then do that and generate income until you reach Fire and then you get there and it’s just like any other day because you’re already living the life that you want.
Scott: I would love to push back respectfully here and say, my observation is that the Coast FI is really a young person’s privilege because the power of compounding allows a 300 or whatever, some thousand-dollar portfolio to achieve that $2.5 million traditional retirement level 30, 40 years down the road. And when you look at someone who’s 50 for example, there is no Coast FI, right? If they’re if they’re starting over they, they’ll be a grind, um, for that. Would you agree with that push or how do you think about Coast FI for for folks who are maybe older than 45?
Guest: I’ll start, Jess, and then if you want to add to this, but I think mathematically, yes, it is, there’s a smaller number to reach Coast FI when you’re younger and have more years for compound growth to take its effect. The part that I disagree with is I’ve seen people in their 50s reach Coast FI and still see that transformational moment where they realize they have more freedom and it gives them permission to start doing more meaningful work in their 50s. And so yes, it is a larger number when you’re in your 50s and you only have 15 years of growth for example, if you’re planning to retire at 65, then it is if a 30-year-old that has 35 years, but I’ve still seen people from a wide spectrum in their mid-50s down to late 20s reach Coast FI. And so I don’t think it’s necessarily a young person’s game. I think it is very possible to reach your Coast FI number in your 50s and still have a meaningful change.
Mindy: Scott, what I like about the concept of Coast FI is that it can give you hope at whatever point in your journey that you’re at. I pulled up a copy of the Fioneers Coast FI calculator and I typed in age 50 and I typed in $100,000 in annual expenses, retirement age of 65, assuming a safe withdrawal rate of 4%, assuming an inflation-adjusted growth rate of 7%, and their Coast FI number would be $900,000 to eventually get to $2.5 million. And if you’re sitting at age 50 thinking, you know, oh, I just started saving a couple of years ago. I’ve got, you know, a few hundred thousand dollars or $500,000. Oh wait, I only need $900,000 to reach $2.5 million by the time I’m retiring as opposed to, I have to save $2.5 million. And for somebody who’s starting off later, I think this could still be a position of, you know, yeah, you can do it.
Guest: I agree. I think sometimes we think like, oh, compound interest only works if you have like 40 years. But really, you know, like your money is probably going to double every 7 to 10 years. So if you want to retire in 10 years, right now you just need half, right, of what your full goal is and then that gives you a lot of freedom and flexibility. I think sometimes the the motivations for people based on their age sometimes are different for reaching Coast FI but we see the motivations across the board for people. So some people want to spend more time with young kids or aging parents. Some people want to start a business. Some people want more freedom and flexibility to live their life outside of work. Or some people want to use it as an off-ramp into full retirement. So for some people, too, as they get older, they may reach Coast FI when they’re 55 and they may say, “Great, this is fantastic. Like this allows me to start scaling back my work moving into a full retirement age of 60, 62, 65, something like that.” And for me, like that’s a huge win. Like anytime someone has any freedom earlier than their full retirement age is incredible and fantastic. And the vast majority of people in our country will never have that. And so looking at that for someone who’s at any age reaching Coast FI, I think is absolutely incredible.
Scott: Yeah, completely agree with with that. If you, if you can say my retirement account is fully funded and I don’t have to keep aggressively saving for retirement, it’s gotta be just a huge mental load off of off your shoulders, um, and freeing you up to really think about, hmm, do I really want to be doing this work or do I want to be doing something else? I mean, I need to generate income to cover my expenses between now because I can’t tap into my retirement accounts, um, until traditional retirement age. That’s by a definition of the Coast FI, but it’s there. I do also think that the power of compounding is a real benefit, and in particular, the 20 or 30-year-olds may find this number of particular comfort because some of these numbers seem very attainable for members of the FI community early in life to get to reach Coast FI. And maybe you can look up and say, “I don’t need a death march to the next several million dollars or whatever it is to get to through financial independence right now, I can kind of look up and be like, hmm, what do I want to do, um, for these next 10 years in a more meaningful way?” And that’s the power of this concept that I think we haven’t really fully explored here and the benefit is exactly what you guys went through here. Is there’s no reason to force yourself into these horrible situations at work or in life if you’re able to achieve Coast FI and take your foot off the gas.
Mindy: Okay, so Jess and Corey, this was a lot of fun talking to you. What is next for the Fioneers?
Guest: So in the next couple of months, we are really excited to be running our third Slow FI retreat. Um, and so we are headed out to Lake Tahoe with 45 other Slow FI Coast FI enthusiasts, um, to learn more about how we apply financial freedom and design the lives that we want today.
Mindy: Okay. And where can people find out more about you?
Guest: They can find us at thefioneers.com or on YouTube @fioneers.
Mindy: Awesome. Thank you so much for your time, Jess and Corey. I really appreciate you talking about Coast FI with us and giving us your experience. I think the Coast FI concept is not something that Carl and I had heard about before we wrapped up our FI journey and I really wish we would have because I think it is a really healthy approach to your finances as opposed to the all-out push for getting there as fast as you can. So I really appreciate the attention that you guys draw to the concept of Coast FI and I’m so glad you showed your calculator to Economi this year because that’s going to be life-changing for people. So thank you again for your time. I really appreciate it and we’ll talk to you soon.
Guest: Yeah, thanks for having us.
Guest: Thanks so much.
Mindy: All right. That was Jess and Corey, and that was a really fun conversation. I just really love the concept of Coast FI, and I truly wish that Carl and I would have, uh, learned about it a little sooner in life. Scott, what did you think of the episode?
Scott: I thought it was great. I think that the before and after is just so fascinating to me of what, you know, there’s inflection points that really break people’s worldviews down and chart a different trajectory. And we often talk about those in the context of the exploration of fire. What what actually can give you awareness about financial independence and began shifting a fundamental change in your lifestyle and spending habits, if your income or career as well. And in this case, the shift from I don’t have to pursue Fire with this relentless death march to FI, uh, concept that we’ve, we’ve uncovered a bunch, is I can actually just take my foot off the gas. And the the wonderful or the beauty of that concept in their story, and I think many stories will be that that actually does not impede progress toward long-term financial goals and brings a lot more happiness and contentment right now.
Mindy: I absolutely agree. I’m super excited for people to start using this calculator on the Fireneers and just see how their life can change, how their mind shift about their finances can change when you see what that number is. I think it’s, it’s eye-opening. All right, Scott, should we get out of here?
Scott: Let’s do it.
Mindy: That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen, saying, Cheerio.
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