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Mindy:
What if financial independence isn’t about hitting a number and coasting, but about designing a life where you control your time right now. Today’s guest, Brian Harriett, author of Time Freedom challenges the traditional Coast FIRE approach and shares why optimizing for time today might be more valuable than optimizing for early retirement decades from now.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my values-his-free-time co-host, Scott Trench.
Scott:
Thanks, Mindy. We’re on the clock, so let’s just jump right into it. Today we’re going to be joined by Brian Harriett. We’re going to be talking about Brian’s financial journey and the concept of time freedom as it is distinct from financial independence and early retirement. Without further ado, welcome, Brian.
Brian:
Thank you, Scott. Thank you, Mindy. It’s really a great to be here.
Mindy:
It’s really great to have you. I met Brian back at FinCon last year and I’ve been excited to talk to him. Let’s start with your financial situation, Brian. What was your financial position when you first discovered the concept of financial independence?
Brian:
I first discovered the concept of financial independence coming out of college. So I’m, I just turned 50. So this is 1997. I graduated with an Industrial Engineering degree and was for some reason targeted by an insurance salesperson who saw that, you know, “Oh, engineers make good money.” I had the typical situation of being sold whole life insurance of which premiums cost me 20% of my salary. I was only making $36,000 at the time.
And the moment I left that office, I had buyer’s remorse. Now, the thing is I stuck with it for seven months thinking that I could persevere until finally I confided in my now wife, then girlfriend that I had made a huge mistake and we immediately went to the Barnes and Noble bookstore on the west side of Madison, Wisconsin and read all the books. But the big one was Personal Finance for Dummies. It was apt at the time. And this was volume two, 1997.
And this was not called, I don’t think it was called financial independence or anything like that at the time, but the way that the book was laid out around stock and bond investing and real estate investing and investing in businesses and using Vanguard and low cost funds and all everything that is financial independence was represented in that book. That’s where I also learned that, you know, the first year of premiums that I was spending on that insurance product were going to a commission.
I told my wife, “I can push through.” And she said, “Get rid of it,” which I did. I got rid of it. I followed her advice. She’s the smarter one of the bunch. And ever since then, I really went heads down into personal finance investing and all of of those good things and, yeah, I mean, that was, that’s my true kind of origin story.
Scott:
Let’s talk about what happens next. So you get, you get sold this life insurance policy, it feels like the end of the world, but you’re talking about the first seven months of a career. This is, this is surely not the setback that it may, it probably felt like at the time. What happens next for you?
Brian:
You know, I do get rid of that and then I start reading, you know, all these things about, you know, maximum savings. And so we did that. My wife and I, you know, the perfect example of cutting our expenses as much as possible is, you know, we lived in New Orleans for a year, place of wonderful food, right? And we overlooked Commander’s Palace. And I would used to watch people going in and out of there, you know, eating these wonderful meals and when we lived in New Orleans for a year, we went out to eat maybe twice, and the rest of the time, you know, we ate rice and beans from the Walmart, you know, from Walmart packages.
Like it it just looking back, I think, hm, you know, that was a choice that we made at the time to, you know, to not go in debt, to not reduce our savings that much more. But it’s like the perfect example of, you know, that kind of sacrifice that we did at the time to, you know, figure like, because what I did is I, I was always fully invested in in retirement and that was like my number one goal, which, you know, come to come time freedom now is actually kind of a different challenge, which we can probably get to at some point. But at the time, that was important to me and that’s what I did and, you know, we lived frugally in order to do that.
Mindy:
Okay. So when did you start thinking that I’m not going to follow the work until I’m 65 and then retire playbook?
Brian:
To start, my wife in 1999 had a double lung transplant. She was my girlfriend at the time, and she survived it, and you know, not without some close calls. And coming out of that surgery, this is, you know, our early, I think we were both 23 at the time. Coming out of that surgery, we, we just had this new, you know, it’s one of those experiences that sometimes people have later in life or they’ve had a cancer diagnosis or something like that.
And we decided, you know, there’s really no guarantee on the future because they would keep, you know, one, three and five year survival rates. We’re like, “Oh my gosh, you know, it’s a 50% survival rate five years out from a lung transplant.” So we were constantly going through this battle of like, do we live for the now or do we hope that you do live longer and save for the future? We did ultimately end up probably tilting more towards saving for the future, which worked out great because, you know, she’s now over 25 years out from a lung transplant, which is actually quite phenomenal.
But, you know, I’ve wrestled with that for years. It’s the difference maker, I think, in terms of, you know, I I’ve been just thinking about this so long, this concept of, you know, the Die With Zero concept now that’s, you know, more infiltrated into FIRE and things like that. I’ve been thinking about that for so much longer because of that unique experience that you know, that I had.
Mindy:
Okay. So a life altering experience early in life with your now wife and this seven months of whole life insurance that you decided not to, that that set you down a rabbit hole. So actually that whole life insurance was a good thing because it sent you down the rabbit hole of personal finance. What sort of steps did you take to plan for the future and start, like start down this path?
Brian:
So we did, like I mentioned, just a lot of basic saving for retirement. Like I just remember that was it. And I remember I got a job with UCF health, which is a public entity. And I remember they also gave us not only a 401k but a 403b and I thought I said, “You can actually double the amount that you put towards retirement.” And I thought that was like heaven. And so like we did crazy stuff like that to push things forward all the way up until, you know how they say, the first million is the hardest.
So, you know, we saved and saved and saved and I’m, I mean, I’m kind of moving through the years relatively quickly here, but in 2020, January, before the COVID crash, that is when we tipped over a million dollars in terms of how much we had in our, you know, stock and bond portfolio. That was the first moment when I thought, “Oh my gosh, we’re, you know, we’re actually doing something here.” Like, you know, you, you work at that for so long.
And then lo and behold in February and March is when that COVID crash happened, you know, and everything went down 35%. And now the, the interesting thing is I had been through the 2008 debacle and, you know, things got much worse then. But back then, I hadn’t saved up as much, I had work so much work in front of me. It didn’t really matter. But in February of 2020, I like freaked out and I knew not to. I had been studying all this stuff for so long.
And I think looking back it’s because I was so close to potentially needing access to the money because I thought I might be able to retire early that just like that, I made a mistake and it went down 35%. I think it came up back up a little bit and I I sold it and I ended up like locking in about $200,000 in losses at the time. It was bad. It was really bad.
And I went to my wife and I said, “This is, this is the origin story of time freedom.” I went to my wife and I said, “Hey, you know how we were going to potentially do that retire early thing?” It’s really ’cause, you know, I I was doing the money stuff apparently even after making that mistake with the whole life insurance, she was cool with that. And she said, “Uh, well, tell me about it.” And so I told her about that loss. I I just didn’t know how she was going to react. And what she actually said was something very different from what I thought she said, which was, “Tell me what retiring early actually even looks like for you.”
You know, people in the financial independence community probably have thought about this, but for whatever reason, I had never really thought about it. I didn’t actually have an answer. I came back the next day and I said, “I think what I’ll probably do is a lot of the same, you know, you know, I’m entrepreneurial, I like these, you know, doing this type of work. I’ll probably just do the same things but less of it.” And she looked at me and she said, “Well, that’s not retiring early.” And I was like, “Oh yeah, duh, it’s not.”
And it what happened was that was like the realization point where I, I realized that I really didn’t want this absolute freedom which was financial independence. I wanted meaningful freedom which was how can I control how I work, when I work, for whom I work and all of those things. And it was at that point where I had this kind of three year runway to figure out a way, you know, can I work nine months of the year to cover 12 months of expenses? And it set us up to this current lifestyle that we live in which is, you know, nine months in in San Francisco, Bay Area where I live and three months not working in the summer at our cabin in in Northern Wisconsin. And it’s this really great kind of we were able to go back and forth and, you know, say goodbye to friends and say hello to old friends and do it in reverse. It’s, it’s, it’s turned out wonderful and I’m so glad that I didn’t take this, you know, sacrifice to get to that ultimate financial freedom many years later only to realize that I still wanted to keep working. And so it was again, one of those bad things turned good.
Scott:
So I have two reactions to that. First, you know, I instinctively thought when you said, “I spend X amount of time in California,” I thought you were going to say 51% in Florida. And I’m glad that wasn’t the…
Brian:
Well, I haven’t figured out the tax thing yet because yeah, you’re right. We’re in California.
Scott:
And then the second reaction is, you know, of course the early retirement police are going to say, “Well, that’s not FIRE.” But it’s also in conflict with at least the BiggerPockets Money community where 60% of people who watch this on YouTube, at least and respond to YouTube polls, say that they intend to certainly continue earning some kind of active income after they FIRE and another 18%, so it’s 78% total, say that they’re open to it.
So I think that the overwhelming majority of people who at least watch this podcast want something more like what you’re talking about and less like true no income whatsoever at all. But I also would couch that, that I think that the vast majority of people who say that they want that also want the portfolio to obviate the need to earn any active income. Is that how you think about it personally? Like I, my portfolio needs to basically cover everything here and I still want to work a little bit. How would you articulate your stance on that?
Brian:
The 4% rule, I call the financial freedom formula. So, right, you you have a certain amount of lifestyle expenses that you need to live in a year and, you know, 4% or what or five or whatever it happens to be some proportion of the nest egg that you’ve built up needs to cover it. That number needs to be so high, it takes so long for people to get there.
And so what I do is I add in just this additional source of income, which is this flexible work concept. So my time freedom formula is lifestyle expenses equals investment income plus flexible work. And you do that math and you figure out, you know, obviously, if you can reduce your lifestyle expenses, that’s great. If you have a higher portfolio and you can increase your investment income, that’s great. If not. But at some point, they need to balance or or your income needs to, you know, outpace your lifestyle expenses a little bit more.
That’s the frame that I think about this in. And like I said, it’s different for different people. So fortunately for me, I’ve always been a big saver and I have some portfolio. So I can rely on that investment income piece, you know, to help with inconsistent income, you know, over the years. But I don’t think it has to be that way because, you know, in addition to the FIRE space, I’m I’m actively involved in the, the entrepreneurial space, the service based businesses where, you know, people are figuring out how to do these high ticket items and things like that.
And some people are incredibly talented at that. And I actually believe now, and the old Brian never would’ve thought this, but perhaps even more freeing than a large pile of money is the ability to just make money on a moment’s notice. And those people too have an equal chance at this time freedom formula. It’s just that their flexible work number is going to be so much bigger than their their investment income number. And the more traditional path through financial independence world, the investment income number will be much higher than the flexible work number. It works for multiple types of strengths.
Scott:
Would you say you’re spending is really locked in or is it kind of a moving target to some degree?
Brian:
My spending is pretty locked in my personal spending. You know, we have our home in California and we have a cabin in Northern Wisconsin. That’s definitely locked in. Our son or how he learns has to go to private school. So I mean, I I live an actually a pretty expensive life, fortunately or unfortunately. This is another realization that I had from like the kind of the conventional FIRE is just life got really expensive for me and I couldn’t figure out how to cut back so much anymore.
Those expenses are pretty pretty locked in. I think what I’ve been toying with more lately as I’ve been working toward building through my authorship and this, this speaking career and things is using money to invest in myself, taking some bets on myself and because I have those other pieces in place, I think I’m able to do that and I’ve, you know, spent much more in the last couple of years on myself and my business and learning and professional transformation and things like that than I ever have, which is kind of been fun.
Mindy:
You mentioned a son, how old is he and how many more years of school does he have?
Brian:
My son is 14 and a half, he’s a freshman in high school and so he’s, you know, three and a half more years.
Mindy:
So I’m hearing you talking about time freedom and I heard you specifically say that your brilliant wife, what are we doing with you? We need your wife on the episode. But your brilliant wife said, “What does early retirement look like to you?” And you’re like, “Oh, I don’t actually know.” I think that there’s a lot of people out there who have never actually asked themselves, what does early retirement look like to me? “I want to quit my job because I hate my boss. I want to quit my job because I don’t like the commute. I want to quit my job because I’m burned out.” They have all these reasons why they want to quit, but they don’t have the next step yet.
And I think it’s really important to have an idea of what you want to do. And like Scott said, he ran a poll and 60% of our viewers are going to continue some sort of work after they have reached financial independence. Not knowing what they want to do afterwards, I think is kind of hampering their current life because if they’re already going to continue working, then why are they forcing this like, “oh, I’ve got to be like on this treadmill going towards financial independence and then as soon as I get there, then I can start thinking about the next step.” So I like this idea a lot and and you know, Scott and I are both location dependent just like you are. I have a a daughter who’s a sophomore, so she’s got, you know, another two years left of school, two and a half years left of school. Scott has little babies, so he’s got 18 plus, what, 20 five? I can’t even do the math. The one’s 10 months old. So he’s got a lot of time where he is here. And even though he’s financially independent, he’s going to fill up his days with something. So having a job, like it, it I don’t really like the RE part of FIRE.
Brian:
I think the the point about I why time freedom is attractive is because a situation you might find yourself in is that traditional path and you’re not happy in it. But at the same time, you can’t just quit everything and move to Malta. I don’t know, like we have responsibilities, right? And so like there’s something in the middle and that’s what time freedom can be. You just have to figure out where you do have some flexibility.
And I think that’s why I struggled when my wife asked me that question is because I said, you know, it’s not like we can pick up and just move to Spain, you know, or France. But, you know, we need to be around because it’s important for our son. And so let’s figure that out. But then you look ahead when he goes to college, what can it look like? And so, you know, for me why I’m developing my speaking career is I want to get great at speaking so that I can do a speech in France and then we can spend two months there as part of it. So it’s these series of kind of incremental ways in which you can kind of slowly move towards, you know, this kind of fun, more interesting lineup than just the traditional pop.
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Scott:
What would you say to someone like me who, who I, I largely agree with what you’re saying and I wouldn’t consider my goal achieved fundamentally if my portfolio alone wasn’t capable of providing my at least a baseline level of spend that I that I wanted to have. How would you argue with that mentality or or debate that mentality?
Brian:
Oh, I don’t think I would debate it. I would just say, “Oh, that’s important to you. So let’s focus on that,” right? What I’ve found is, in my experience and the people I work with, if you do create, start working in that type of work that you absolutely love, right? This work that’s so awesome, it’s like play, you’re going to do a lot better and make a lot more money anyway. And so that should feed immediately over into your investment portfolio.
I do live this time freedom lifestyle, but I still make enough more in nine months that I’m still adding to savings and I like, I like watching that number go up, so I totally understand where you’re coming from, Scott, and I totally agree with it. It’s just that I what I wanted, it was important to me, it was to make a model that worked for, for a variety of people. And here, this is the, I’ll tell you the very specific reason, you know, JL Collins wrote that book, The Simple Path to Wealth, that started as a series of letters to his daughter, right?
And I thought, “Oh, I’m going to give that book to my son because he is then going to become a great saver.” He is not a saver, like absolutely, my absolutely not. But but but I kept thinking to myself, “There’s got to be another way for him to live a really cool life, even if maybe he didn’t save that much money.” And that’s where I figured out, “Oh, no, he, he is the money maker type.” If he could find the most expensive thing to sell, Maserati or whatever, you know, he can just continue to make money and he’ll be able to live a pretty incredible life.
You know, and so I wrote this book so that he could have a path too that’s not just the traditional, you know, save a lot of money, which is my path, which is my wife’s path. Like it’s just so shocking to us that our son is so different. But I don’t want to like give up, I’m sure I’m going to try to carve off some of the money that he makes and put it away for him secretly. But there’s more that, you know, I I want more for him than than that. And so there’s just, you know, there’s a a, a variety of, of options there.
Scott:
There’s a big commission potential in selling whole life insurance.
Brian:
I forbid him. I forbid him. It’s like a Maserati per policy.
I knew my son’s future when, in 2018, when he was seven. He was at the end of his first grade year, my wife and I had a garage sale and we hate garage sales. It’s the only one that we’ve ever had. And we were like, “We’re just going to, you know, do this, we’re going to try to make 500 bucks.” We probably had 1500 bucks. And he’s like, “Wait, what? Can I get on in on this?” You know, he he wanted to make anything above the 500 bucks. And we’re like, “No, no, no, you we’ll we’ll sell together and you get 10%.”
I lose sight of him because so many people are there. He’s, he’s rocking it. I try to find him and I hear the beep beep of our key fob and he had grabbed our key fob and was talking to this woman and trying to sell her our car. The funny thing is he heard us talking about eventually selling it like a couple nights before. And she was interested and he was like, you know, hitting the brakes and showing it a works and stuff. And she’s like, “Your son tells me you’re selling your car. How much?” And I had no, I’t even thought about it yet.
And so I said, “5,000 bucks.” And she went and test drove it and I ran up and looked Kelley Blue Book and found it was worth 7,000. And so she comes back and I’m like, “Hey, sorry, it’s 7,000.” And she said, “Oh no, I looked it up too. It’s 7,000.” And we shook hands and she drove off with the car. So we sold like 700 bucks I think worth of of stuff that day and our son sold a $7,000 car and he took 10% of that. I’m like, this kid is amazing, you know, but he can’t, you know, he can’t save any money.
Mindy:
Yeah. And you know, the commission sales jobs have like no limit to how much money you can make and a really good commission salesperson can make a ton of money. I think now is the time to start teaching him every time you get a paycheck, you automatically put 10% away or 20% or like if it’s over X dollars, then you put even more away.
Brian:
And I will help you. Yes.
Mindy:
But also get him a job now so that he can start contributing to his Roth IRA and his 401k and, or well, probably not a 401k, but like his Roth IRA so that he can start setting himself up.
Brian:
Absolutely. Yes, yes. He wants to do social media for my business. And so I’m like, “Okay, I’ll pay you for that, but we’re going to funnel that right into your Roth.”
Mindy:
Yep. Let him do that. That that’s the part that I’m fine with paying somebody else to do. Okay. So we’ve, we’ve touched on time freedom a little bit. How does this differ from just taking a sabbatical?
Brian:
So I was talking to Julian Johns the other day about mini retirements and what we arrived at is I think the answer to your question and the question that I had asked her was like, “When do you kind of stop counting different sabbaticals that you’ve made?” You know, so I took one and then I took another and then at what at some point for her, she said that the mini retirements became a lifestyle.
And that’s what I would call time freedom is when, you know, this individual sabbatical you love it, you’ve tried some things, you start to take more of them and then it becomes not just something that you do, but a way of life. And so that’s how I think of it.
Scott:
It seems like the basic plan is I’m pursuing this financial independence path and I’m going to continue to build at least some kind of of business, a very flexible time freedom based business. How does that change the way you think about investing and portfolio design for your portfolio? I would imagine you can be a little bit more aggressive than a traditional kind of 4% rule port 60/40 stock bond or one of the various permutations of that that’s been discussed in the FIRE community. How do you think about it personally?
Brian:
The first summer that I took off, during those three months, you know, it was supposed to be wonderful and it was, but there I did have this like gnawing thing in the back of my mind which is like, “I’m not making money like what happens?” And this happened to be in 2023 and that was kind of around when the market was still down. It was like a real life experience of what, you know, what I’ve read about, which is, you know, when you’re 100% dependent on that market, it doesn’t feel great all the time.
And so you’re absolutely right, Scott in that, you know, the, the flexible work in this amazing lifestyle business that I talk about in my book, this is the release valve that allows you to not pull money out when the market’s down or the flip side of that is invest more aggressively in order to gain higher returns, you know, taking that risk. And it keeps you kind of fresh in your skills and you keeps you involved and also I get a lot of joy social status, social connections, all of those things out of my work and I just never really want to give that up.
That’s why I think this lifestyle is different. It, you know, there’s the conventional which is the work till you’re 65 and then never work again, and I know that a lot of your listeners won’t subscribe to that. But then this one is more like as soon as you can. I I still think coming out of school, you need to spend 10-15 years developing skills, developing a network, working hard. But when you’re 40, maybe, you know, it hit me about 45, that’s when you can be like, “You know, I may want to work later into my life as long as I can figure out the work that I absolutely love.” And then you kind of create these little work adventures that you do throughout the rest of your life and do it forever. And if you look at some of the people, you know, that works so late into their life, it’s because work is more than just making money. You know, making money at that point just then becomes a wonderful byproduct.
Scott:
So talk about that, that’s a big theme in your book and I completely agree with, which is once you have time freedom, you can do whatever the heck you want. And if business or some kind of some kind of active income pursuit is part of your goal, you might as a byproduct make way more money because you have that flexibility and can think in a longer term horizon, right? I think that’s the basic premise. But could you could you explain that concept in your words?
Brian:
For a couple of reasons, I mean, if you’re so happy with your work that you work at longer, you’re just naturally going to make more money, right? Because you’re, you’re working longer years. But what I’ve seen is, you know, the in the entrepreneurial space, there’s the the common concept of working, you know, you’re working in your business, but then you can also work on your business and you need to kind of pull out of the day to day details and figure out how to work on your business.
With time freedom and some period of time that you’re able to get away from the day to day because you’ve structured your work to be, you know, seasonal or you’ve engaged the help of an assistant who can kind of take over for you, you have the free time and the space to be able to think creatively and make these connections that you otherwise wouldn’t. And so instead of say working on 10 more things to make your business 10 times better, you can work on like one or two maybe things that will make your business a thousand times better.
And it’s usually some sort of, I call it a catalyst in the book, but it’s some sort of, you know, extremely, exponentially valuable skill, like being excellent at sales or an exponentially valuable idea that you take ownership, which I’m trying to do with time freedom, right? If I become the guy for that, like that can be great or or it’s some sort of exponentially valuable relationship that you have because you know the person who runs the Wall Street Journal and that person’s going to help kind of make your career.
Like if you can figure these things out and have time to think about that, you can take some bigger bets and try some bigger things and maybe blow it out of the water. And and this is I think a big difference between how I see things and it it might be just a branding thing. But the name Coast FIRE, while I agree with all the concepts of it, the name has always, I’ve struggled with the name because I don’t want to coast. You know, I love everything about Coast FIRE, but I have big goals. You know, I I want to do even more than I would do, you know, traditionally. I just want to do it how I want to do it, you know, and in the time that I want to do it. So I just, I love that these concepts of Coast FIRE and time freedom are becoming much more popular now, it seems like, it it feels like to me anyway, I don’t know if you’ve experienced that.
Scott:
I think what the FIRE community desperately needs is another acronym or rebranding of these concepts from Time Freedom or Coast FIRE. So we should come up with that today on this particular show to articulate what this evolution of Ghost FIRE is. I agree. You know, a split is going to happen when Coast FIRE is achieved by by folks. We’ve just articulated this as the middle class trap, right? Like these people, which is again, I don’t really love that name for for it, but it it’s, it’s kind of has stuck now at this point.
It’s this concept of, “Hey, my my retirement’s funded. I can now kind of take my foot off the gas or at least stop accumulating as aggressively.” And you have a, you have kind of a fork in the road there. Do I want to just chill and relax and take a step back or do I want to go into a more entrepreneurial or higher upside path that’s more aligned with my long-term interests? And that’s part portion of what you’re arguing here, I think, in your book and concept with Time Freedom.
Brian:
And what I’m just realizing is maybe the coast refers to the funding of the retirement accounts, right? That’s where you can coast. If we can separate that from what you do personally, professionally, you know, as a as a career or as as as how you, you know, pursue your time, you know, you can do whatever you want. You know, you can go big, go small, whatever. But if we associate just coast with the money part, that totally works for me. I love that.
Scott:
Our argument is like, “Hey, if you, if you try to actually achieve FIRE with Coast Fire and your, your are Coast FIRE, stop maxing out your retirement accounts. All out, like just do something else with that. You could buy real estate or put it in your after tax.” They like whatever, whatever is going to make you feel freer or put together a real plan to begin withdrawing from them in an earlier standpoint. But that’s a mental trap that I actually think is really, is very real for a huge portion of the population that is very aggressive in personal finance. It’s that’s taking all of these best practices to their logical extremes in their personal savings. What it does is it takes away your time freedom. You feel like you’re actually not getting ahead. You don’t have any liquidity because everything’s in these, these other accounts there.
Brian:
Yeah, and the whole retirement savings thing I’d mentioned earlier that it it it turned into kind of a trap for me, which I know it’s been discussed a lot recently and, you know, in in in FIRE podcasts and things like that, which is, you know, I had all this money but I couldn’t get access to it. And so how how can I use it to supplement my income when I’m 47, knowing I can’t pull it out until I’m 59 and a half.
I actually have come to realize through the writing process of the book that I the old Brian never would have said this, but the new one says, and this is the scenario that I kind of painted for myself, which is, “Is it ever okay to pull retirement money out early?” I’d never would have said it is, but now I actually believe there are certain scenarios where it’s absolutely helpful. If you were going to be stuck in a job you hated for 10 years so that you wouldn’t pull your retirement money out or you could pull it out in one year and use that money to invest in a business that will turn your life around in three, oh my God, I would absolutely do it, which is going to sound terrible to a lot of people. But and that’s why, you know, it varies. I, you know, personally, I haven’t really pulled too much retirement money out. I just, but I don’t max it out anymore like you were saying, Scott.
Scott:
This is a side side tangent here, but I got a great message from somebody who was in his, I think, you know, in his 50s had a very successful career, very notable in his profession, you know, multi multimillionaire. And he was like, “I just finished reading Set for Life and I’m very confused because according to your book, my true net worth is $7,000, but I have millions in my retirement accounts. Are you telling me I should be doing all this stuff?” And I’m like, “No, this concept, the middle class trap in Set for Life in in and building this after tax liquidity is really for someone who wants to avoid the 30 year career that got you to where you’re at, right? You that wasn’t what you wanted. You’d be crazy to do any of the things that I talk about in set for life at this point in in in your life, would be preposterous, and that’s why you’re reacting the way you are.”
But I’ll also ask, you know, how’d you feel 10, 15 years ago as you’re on this journey? Was it kind of tight at various times, you know, in your your financial position in terms of in building wealth? Was there a lot, was there a lack of relative liquidity in your life that that didn’t feel harvestable for, you know, the time when your kids are in elementary school or middle school? And an that’s like I I guess I’ll pose that question to you, Brian. Is that how you felt as part of that journey?
Brian:
Absolutely. So I, not only was I like maxing out or doubling, you know, my retirement savings like I mentioned when I had those two accounts, the 403b and the 401k, but we also, after this difficult experience at a family Christmas bought our own cabin in Wisconsin. So there’s some more money invested, remodeled it and then also bought our home in California. So like, you know, we had money in two properties and a ton of retirement and I actually barely had three months of, you know, emergency fund even at that time. Like I was just counting on keeping working and it was, boy, you hit it right on the head. Like, yes, I I felt poor but we were way better than the average person, you know, like is it was a really strange.
Scott:
To make that transition, there are a number of options, right? One option that I think sadly is too popular is just let time pass. Because once you’re locked into those mortgages and your income grows and, you know, time can just make the an in and inflation against the nominal costs of mortgages and paid off, and then the eventual paid off cars and those types of things can age these problems out over a 5, 10, 15 year period. Was that a component of your journey? And if so, to what extent? But and what were the other more conscious decisions you made to get out of that mental trap, that that feeling that you weren’t getting a, you didn’t have a lot of flexibility?
Brian:
That really wasn’t much of a a factor in my personal situation what you describe about just the time. What happened for me was in 2017, I was just wrapping up five years at my last employer, which got me some pension. Again, more further money. After that, and I, I left that job because I wasn’t happy there, it comes back to entrepreneurship. So I did us I went solo and I became an independent consultant.
And again, this is why I think entrepreneurship needs to be looked at closely because I I didn’t start some new innovative idea. I just literally did consulting work, which I had done for 20 years of my life, but I did it independently and I immediately doubled my income. Just purely by making that much more money I was able to actually still invest in my retirement accounts, but I had that much more to build the non-retirement accounts. And then eventually the non-retirements accounts caught up and now like they themselves are approaching, you know, more than the retirement accounts. So it was that flexible work lifestyle business. Like that that was the secret sauce of my personal situation.
Scott:
Nobody, I’m I’m gonna say this respectfully here. You should you’ll tell me if I’m wrong here with this, but nobody doubles their salary in the first few years of entrepreneurship working 30 hours a week, right? So so what did those first couple years? Was there that tradeoff in your situation to to to double to double that income there where you were, you had to put in a lot of extra effort to then get over that hump and then kind of come down that glide path or how did it work for you?
Brian:
I think it’s just more about how the industry, you know, is paid. So when you’re a a staff consultant, you’re making 50% of your billable rate. When you’re working as an independent, you make 100% of it. So that’s really what happened. You know, I just doubled what I was taking home and also as an independent consultant, I had, I think I invested $2,000 to start my business and that’s because I paid someone to do the paperwork here in California because I didn’t want to mess it up because I knew that I’d get caught, you know, in trouble because I didn’t do it right. And I worked from home, like I had no expenses. So literally, I literally I did double it. And then because I doubled it, then I could go down to nine months. You know, I did the math, you know, my effective rate more than doubled because of that fact, but um, yeah, that’s, that’s kind of what happened. And of course, you know, every, every person’s situation is going to be different. However, I would say if you do some sort of activity, like you’re in social media for your company or you’re a, you know, you’re a finance director, like these services can be offered as independent positions and you can charge a whole lot more for it. Now, you have to be good at your job, right? Like I, I’m very good at my job and they keep me around. You know, so I, you know, finding work is very easy, but you know, everyone’s situation is slightly different.
Scott:
You know, I I’m going to take my, my previous assertion that nobody does this and I’m going to roll it back to there’s a difference between a, you know, a corporate CFO going out on their own and becoming a fractional CFO, right? There there’s certainly going to make less money per client than they would as a full-time chief financial officer or financial analyst, right? You could have more clients and there in if you’re very efficient with your work, you could for a time maybe and even indefinitely make multiples of that that original income by serving more clients with with similar services.
But if you’re a lawyer or you know, a consultant, engineer, those kinds of things where you are providing a service that is built out at a higher rate than your employer, then by definition, there’s a chance to arbitrage that. What is the risk do you think that you think, you know, how do you derisk that? Because I think a lot of folks will will see that and then in practice have a hard time actually filling up enough of that spread by generating their own business, right? That’s the challenge is now you’re not just doing engineering but you’re also originating business, which is why most engineers, most lawyers, most most doctors, most most people do not own their own practices in a lot of these in a lot of these fields. It’s why they work for somebody else that that can generate that business.
Brian:
So when I left my full-time employment, I didn’t do it until I knew I had a consulting engagement secured. That helped, you know, kind of the initial stepping off point. But then after that, like I was just 100% focused on doing an absolutely incredible job. And I think I also, you know, in the consulting that I did, I did it for six years at the very same client. And so I had known because I had worked in the industry for 20 years in the Bay Area, which clients are one and done on projects and which ones keep you around if you have established some sort of credibility. And so I went with that client and it and it worked.
Scott:
Over the course of 10, 15, 20 year career after giving it your all, if you do that repeatedly over and over and over again, you will ideally perform have some relationships that well, you’ll be able to parlay into these into these opportunities downstream. And this opportunity will not be available to you if you’re one of these quiet quitter types. This is the result of a hard working career where you show your effort over a very long period of time and eventually want to that next opportunity that will accrue to you over the course of 20 years and what is that? 40,000 hours of activity that generally all showcased your best efforts and best attempts to get good in your field. That’s the the work hard component of this and you, you know, have a better shot at being rewarded with an opportunity like this, then you do if, if you kind of just show up clocking in, clocking out.
Brian:
Yeah, there’s no secret. You just work hard over many years. And you’re right, trying to do something like this when you’re 25 or just out of school doesn’t quite work. And that’s why in my mouth like, you do, you need to put your time in. You know, you need to put some time in and hustle a little bit.
Scott:
That client in year seven where you spend the all-nighter putting together that thing and it’s clear that that was the big, the big piece of it, like that is, you know, you do that, you know, I’m not saying put in a bunch of all-nighters here, but you put in that extra effort in there and then maybe this opportunity comes up in your 15 for that client or somebody else downstream. That’s the rub here on this and every, every path is different. But I think that that’s my skepticism of no, you can’t just like go out and generate your own business as an engineer on day one. Some people can do that, but that’s not a very realistic path for many. It is a realistic path for a professional that’s seasoned and that has a lot of relationships over that have been built in real challenges over a long period of time.
Brian:
And even when you do, I still think that, you know, when you’re thinking about a transition out of a typical employment into your own business is that you need to plan, I, I’d say an entire year of not making any money. So that’s where the the money part and the work part have to go hand in hand. You need to have saved up so that you can focus on developing that business to be the way that you want it to be over the course of a year so that in the second year you’re starting to make the money that you need to make your time freedom formula balance.
Mindy:
So is time freedom just mainly for entrepreneurs, can this work with a W-2 job?
Brian:
I believe that it can and to kind of to the point where um we were talking about before where there’s, you know, these different elements of the formula that you can kind of crank up and down. So if you’re an employee, you may have to be a good saver and investor because that’s going to be the the key component to your to to making this work. I think one of the, the chapters in the book that I’m, one of my favorite chapters is chapter number five where I talk about money personalities and there’s a lot of discussion about, you know, how you how people view money.
The different ways in which you look at money lineup with the different elements of the time freedom formula, and that’s what you want to focus on. So, like I said, if you’re an entrepreneur, you’re focusing on that flexible work piece. If you’re an employee, you’re more likely going to be have to focus on the investments and savings portion. I think there’s a lot of value in trying to find employers that maybe have a four day work week or allow you to work at home on Fridays. And so you can get some level of flexibility, but you’re never going to be able to take four months off in the summer, of course.
But then even if you’re not great at investing, you’re not great at flexible work, you have to look at at the lifestyle expenses side of the equation. So if you know, you’re not big about money, you live pretty prudently, you’re not spending a lot of money, you know, you don’t have to do too much to make your equation work. That’s why I’m I’m most proud of the formula is because it allows a a wide variety of people to live this way in some part of the spectrum.
Scott:
I’ll challenge and say, I think, I think that what you’re saying is inherently entrepreneurial. I think that that’s kind of glossed over by a lot of stuff in the FIRE community is, is folks want to work a job and then accrue a portfolio, have a number, be certain with rules of thumb and I think that, that just doesn’t actually play out, but where the margin of safety comes in is with some level, some kind of entrepreneurial spin on top of that. That doesn’t have to be in generating income, it can also be in managing expenses or you know, finding, finding other other creative opportunities there.
But I do want to also call out that there’s a new challenge here in 2026 with what you’re saying, which is healthcare, health insurance specifically. And if you’re at all good at an entrepreneurship and your your business you know, begins to do reasonably well and you have income from investments on top of that, you can very easily tip over this MAGI cliff, right? The adjusted gross income cliff that puts you into the full responsibility for healthcare premiums and you’re going to be having to get that insurance on the exchange. So how do you handle insurance personally and is that going to change here in 2026 with that the new rules?
Brian:
Insurance is extremely important to our family because of the lung transplant and chronic care. So we are avid users of of health insurance and the healthcare system, which until the ACA existed did not allow me to do entrepreneurship. And so that was a huge uh shift for me. What you talked about like how expensive is your life, my my life is also expensive because of health insurance.
And so um, one of the very, very small businesses that I have is this healthcare consultancy that I run, which has four employees. So I am a small business and I have a small business plan through that business and that’s how I get our our health insurance. Again, because we use so much of it, I have the richest plan possible for me and it costs a lot of money, unfortunately, but it’s just something that we have to put in our budget and make all the other numbers work. So it’s just, it’s our personal situation, but we’ve have have been able to figure it out, but it again, every year we go through the, you know, the renewal, it’s reinforces how important it is.
Mindy:
I think you hit the nail right on the head there. You said it is a line item that we just have to put in our budget. This is a cost that our lives have that maybe other people’s lives don’t have. And I think that the people who are listening to this episode are like, “Well, I’m just looking for a magic answer,” and there is no magic answer. Health insurance is going to cost you X, and next year it’s going to be X plus because it’s always going to go up until you hit Medicare at age 65 and that’s just a line item in your budget and you can do all the things that you can to reduce the costs. But like Scott and I have started saying recently, the ACA subsidies were never intended for millionaire early retirees to take advantage of so that they don’t have to work to get health insurance.
Scott:
I also want to call out that we’re saying it’s a line item in your budget, Brian, but it’s not, it’s a line item in your business’s budget, right? Your business is paying almost certainly if you have four employees for your healthcare premiums and that’s rolling through on a pre tax basis. It’s offsetting business income as an expense. Is that correct?
Brian:
100%.
Scott:
I think that’s an enormous point here. Let’s say that your premiums are particularly expensive in the $3,000 per your household range because you have a super duper plan, it depends on your state of course and and age and all those kinds of things. If you’re in a reasonably high income tax bracket, that that could be offset by 30 or 40% compared to what somebody else is paying on an after tax basis for their health insurance policies if they’re, for example, in the chubby or fat FIRE range and they’re hitting that MAGI cliff. So I think there’s a component to FIRE that is inherently entrepreneurial that is not, not really acknowledged enough. And I think that your answer of I have a business with four employees does not sound like FIRE to a lot of people, right? You are or should be having one on ones with with these people on occasion and those types of things even if that’s flexible, right? And that’s going to involve some work. So what you tell me, you you react to that? I’m I’m challenging you respectfully.
Brian:
No, no, no, I do. However, to to hire four people, it took me seven years. And what I mean by that is these are people that I’ve worked with before, I know how incredible they are. They make my life easier, not harder. They’re in the middle of their career. So they know what they need. I do those things. We meet weekly to make sure that they have their support. But they make my life easier, not harder. These are lessons that you learn, right? Over the course of years, you know, you you hire one person and it just sucks all of your time. And so I we could have had 10 people by now, but I just didn’t want to take the risk. You know, my freedom was much more important to me than that possible extra amount of money. That’s the tradeoff, I think you have to make a little bit.
Scott:
Can we get a quick overview of the numbers governing your situation? How do we think about your your picture today at a high level in terms of your portfolio, the business, the the spend your spending those kinds of things, directional is fine. Could you what how do we, how do we kind of contemplate what what kind of picture you have today?
Brian:
How about let’s do earnings first? So I’ve built up kind of I would call it small assets over the course of my life. So I am a part owner in a software business that we started in 2014. I probably make about $50,000 each year from that. The five with me person consulting practice, I probably make around $200,000 with that. Keep in mind, I’m in California. And that’s pretty much my income now.
How much time do I have to invest to make that $250,000? Not very much. And so what I’m doing now is is is building out this new, you know, I’m an RIA. So I do investment management and I also write and speak. So that’s my new focus and I want to build that into its own asset, whatever that looks like, you know, uh at some point.
Very important to us is our family cabin and so we have a a family cabin on a lake in Northern Wisconsin that’s on the same lake that my wife’s family is there that we bought in 2021. Again, we got really lucky in terms of our timing with interest rates and so we have a very, you know, low interest rate mortgage on that, that home that’s probably worth about $800,000 right now. And then we have our home in California which, again, we got lucky because we bought it in 2010 and now it’s 2026. So I think that’s that’s doubled in value from like 7:50 to like 1.6 or 7 million. Our mortgages are due up in about 10 years on both of those.
And then the investment portfolio that I made that huge mistake on in 2020 went from a million down to $800,000, but now with the business and, you know, recognizing, you know, the fact that the market has gone up, is upwards of $3 million now. We’ve been very fortunate.
Mindy:
Yeah, we’ve had a good upswing, but that includes the rebound of the market and the growth of the initial plus additional contributions, correct?
Brian:
I I also did find another strategy for investing that will be really hard for buy and hold investors to hear that I also use that has been instrumental in helping me grow that money that is a form of momentum investing that I also pair with my buy and hold investing.
Scott:
Can we hear one more minute on this because I think that um, a fundamental question that I’m, I’m starting to grapple with right now is is there’s the rules of FIRE, right? 4% withdrawal needs mechanics or whatever. And that all assumes no work, no active income, no other stuff going on. And I don’t know how to think about some kind of hybrid approach where there’s even, you know, some partial withdrawal and some other income streams in here that in the uncertainties, what is my is my spending a moving target or is it very clear? Is there a what does my income going to look like and how clear is that in addition to my portfolio withdrawal? And I, I don’t know, I actually don’t know how to even think about that or or begin modeling an approach to that. What what is it that you’re doing and why, why does it work for you?
Brian:
Well, we have a pretty good sense for what we spend in a year, like outside of the business, right? And so everything is is is hinging on that. Fortunately, when I, you know, look ahead at some of the consulting contracts that some of my staff are getting, I have a sense for in that year, how much is going to be guaranteed. So what I do at the beginning of the year is really try to figure out how close I can get to the, you know, if we spend around, again, I I feel bad saying this, but like we live in California and we have a lot of private tuition and stuff like that. But if we spend $200,000 in a year, how much of that can I cover from, you know, the the various income sources that I have?
Scott:
Why do you feel bad saying that?
Brian:
I’m very concerned, what I want to do is especially in my book is I want to write a book that’s accessible to everyone and I think I think when you live in New York City or you live in California, things can get out of whack and I just want to make sure that, you know, I’ve had, I paid special attention to make sure that the numbers are, you know, broadly applicable to a lot of different people. That’s all, that’s all I’m trying to say.
Mindy:
Right, but you do live in California, which is significantly more expensive than other parts of the, like, your your life in San Francisco is going to be a whole lot more than your life if you lived in Kansas City, Missouri.
Brian:
To the point where we’ve thought, my wife and I were like, “We could be 100% free right now if we just sold everything and moved to, I don’t know, somewhere in the Midwest.” But we don’t want to live there right now.
Mindy:
And you have the funds to cover it.
Brian:
That’s why I keep working, you know, and um, I like what I do.
Mindy:
And the whole concept of financial independence is the ultimate goal of freedom, freedom to do what you want, freedom to live where you want. You like your job. You like where you live. So continue doing those things. I think there’s a lot of people who are so focused on leaving their job because of their job. Get a job you love, get a job that you like, get a job that you don’t actively hate and your whole life changes.
Brian:
My new thing when it comes to work is how can I navigate my work so that I can hang out with all the people that I really like? That’s my, that’s my new strategy, right? I’m not sure if you’re familiar with, he’s more in the entrepreneurial space, but do you know Mike Michalowicz? Have you heard of him? He wrote the book Profit First.
Mindy:
Yes.
Brian:
And those sorts of things. Well, he has a publishing imprint that I’m publishing through, which means I get to hang out with that guy. And he is a riot. He is so funny, so energetic, so into helping, helping entrepreneurs that are in difficult spots. Like I just, I love all the values that he stands for and I’m so happy that I’ve had, you know, worked so hard for all these years to have the resources to kind of go through that and establish that relationship. And then, you know, with him then he’s introduced me to other people which are really enjoyable and fun to hang out with. And then I get to go to FinCon and meet you, Mindy, and know I know you guys, right? Like this is, this has been like a a fun new goal of mine as part of this next work adventure that I’m on right now.
Scott:
I’m still stuck on the, I feel really bad saying this for 200, you know, grand in spending on this. You you sent the kid to private school, right? One child, right?
Brian:
I do.
Scott:
It sounds like your son is, is close to college age, approaching that, right?
Brian:
He’s a freshman in high school.
Scott:
Okay. So we have eight more years potentially of tuition, private high school and potentially private college depending on what that looks like. Does that change how you think about your annual spending at all or or your your planning in terms of your financial position? Because that will roll off, right, at some point?
Brian:
True. Um, what I think about that is that, you know, that to me, that means I have, you know, seven more years that I need to keep working and earning decent money to make sure that that’s not a a big impact for me. And, you know, I’m 50, I’m like up to 57, I could totally do that. Like I hope, I hope I want to do it till I’m 90, you know, and so that’s, that’s how I look at that equation.
Although, here’s another weird thing that I kind of stumbled upon. If I tell myself that if I love my work and I’m okay working until I’m 80, so long as I can mentally and physically do it, it’s much easier for me to say, “I want to take a year off,” right? Because I’m not going to get behind on my goal, you know, because I know that I’m just going to be working longer. So in this weird way, I’ve kind of stumbled upon working longer is almost more freeing than trying to stop working sooner. I know that I can’t really, I can’t really take that year off though for another seven years back to your original question, and that’s okay.
Mindy:
But also you like your job.
Brian:
And that’s why.
Mindy:
Which makes it easier to, to embrace that, like same.
Brian:
Yeah. Can you tell us where people can find out more about you and find your book?
Absolutely. So I would love to direct you to my book. My book does not come out until September 15th of 2026. However, I have a way that you can get access to it today if you like audio books. So what you would want to do is go to timefreedombook.com. timefreedombook.com will tell you to order it at your favorite retailer.
Then if you take the order number and the special code BiggerPockets Money and you put it in my form and hit submit, then I will send you the audiobook right away. So you’ll have the audiobook and access to the figures right away and then you’ll be surprised in September you’ll get this hard copy book just come right mail to you and it’ll be like a two for one. So I, I just, it’s really important for me to people to get this soon. And so that’s what I want to do. Oh, just one other thing is if you look at the website, it’ll say, “Order three books to get the audiobook.” That’s what that promo code is for. You just have to order the one book and then you can get the audiobook for free.
Mindy:
Oh, well, thank you. Our, our listeners will appreciate that because, yeah, when you first said it comes out in September, I’m like, “Oh, I know the life cycle of a book’s publishing and it’s takes forever for that book to get out.” But now they can get access right away. And I think this book is introducing a really interesting concept of, “Hey, you might be already planning to work so maybe you can just go do that now.”
Alright, Brian, thank you so much for your time today. This was a lot of fun, and we will talk to you soon.
Brian:
Thank you so much for having me.
Mindy:
All right, Scott, that was Brian Harriett and that was really interesting. I want to reiterate what I said near the end of that episode is what does early retirement mean to you? Brian’s wife asked him that and he didn’t know. And I think there’s a lot of our audience who also doesn’t know. So before you go down this giant path and you get there and you’re like, “Oh, now what?” Start thinking about what early retirement means to you and what it is you’re looking for and moving towards. Because if you really like your job and you’re going to do a similar path to Brian, then maybe you are looking more towards time freedom and not so much for early retirement.
Scott:
This is what a significant minority of the FIRE population wants is a life that looks very much like Brian’s, right? The a portfolio that is generally capable of covering core expenses in some lifestyle conditions and a business that produces a good amount of income and provides a lot of flexibility and optionality, but is a real business. I think that that circumstance is wonderful, and something that, that I think is very attainable for folks who are pursuing FIRE, especially if you can build that business without the immediate need for near-term profit.
This looks a lot more like what I think my financial independence retire early journey will look like, if you can call it retire early. And I think what I want out of my life and so I I I really appreciated the the perspective there. There’s a couple of small areas where I I wanted to push back of, you know, I I still think it’s the portfolio has to cover core living expenses and business income isn’t is a, a bonus on top of that that provides additional luxuries or additional optionality on top of that.
You know, I I really feel strongly in that because I think it’s an important safety net and a psychological net for me personally. But I’ve really loved what he had to say and I think for a lot of people, they can get that time freedom much sooner if they pursue a path like Brian’s versus all out slog to financial independence at the 4% rule.
Mindy:
I agree, absolutely Scott. I think that just all these different acronyms of FIRE are just a different way to look at giving yourself some freedom. So time freedom, I think is a great idea. Should we get out of here, Mindy?
Scott:
That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench, I am Mindy Jensen saying, “See you soon, raccoon.”
Mindy:
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