Mindy: Everyone talks about becoming a millionaire. But what if I told you that $500,000 might be the more important milestone? In fact, if you reach $500,000 by age 30 and leave it invested, there’s a good chance you’ll never have to contribute another dollar to retirement. Sounds ridiculous, but it’s not. Today, we’re breaking down why $500,000 is the new million, the surprisingly simple math behind it, and the fastest path to getting there.
Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and stepping in for Scott today is Evan Lawler from The Financial Foundation. Evan, thank you so much for joining me today.
Guest: Thank you so much for having me. I am so excited to be here. You might even say I am fired up to be here today.
Mindy: I said stepping in for Scott. Thank you so much for bringing a pun. Scott will be delighted. As will our audience, they all love them. Evan, you have said on your channel, The Financial Foundation, that your goal is to grow your investable assets to $500,000 by age 30. Why 500,000 and not a million?
Guest: Yeah, it’s a great question. The reason I’m going for 500,000 is because I’m pursuing Coast FIRE, kind of one of the hybrid forms of financial independence. I’m trying to reach $500,000 by 30 because based on my projections with some assumptions we might get into, 500k at 30 puts me at $5 million at 65 years old, which using the 4% rule would give me about a $200,000 per year retirement income. So that’s why I’m pursuing that goal.
Mindy: Okay, and how old are you right now?
Guest: I’m 25 right now.
Mindy: Okay. We had you back on episode 727 where you shared your story. Can you give us an idea of where your net worth is right now at age 25?
Guest: So currently, I’m at about $200,000 in retirement investments, and I’m investing about $3,300 per month in pursuit of this Coast FIRE goal.
Mindy: Oh, okay. I’m not going to do math really quickly. Uh, do you think you are on track to getting to 500,000 based on the 3,300 and the 200,000 that you have already?
Guest: Well, based on my, my 10% nominal growth rate, I’m actually a little bit behind, but that’s kind of part of my goal because I wanted to set kind of an ambitious goal to then go earn more income and get raises and stuff like that so I can invest more money. But currently I’m on track to reach Coast FIRE at age 31. So now over the next five years, it’s just a matter of bringing that one year sooner.
Mindy: Okay. 31. Wow. I remember age 31. I did not have a $500,000 net worth at age 31. And you know, let’s say that the stock market stops bringing back these ridiculous returns that we’ve been seeing over the last few years and you don’t hit it by 30. It’s not like you’re having $0 at 30. Maybe it takes you till 31 or 32. I think this is fantastic and I don’t think that we celebrate people enough. So, hooray, Evan, you are doing awesome. Congratulations. When did you start your journey?
Guest: Thank you, Mindy. I appreciate the congratulations. Like my mom always says, right, aim for the moon and even if you miss, you’ll land among the stars.
Mindy: Exactly.
Guest: Yeah, I started my journey super early. I was extremely lucky that my parents were super into financial literacy, taught me a lot growing up. So we actually opened a custodial IRA, I think at age 16, though my first contribution was at age 17. And my parents said, “Everything you earn from your summer job minus a couple hundred dollars, we can put inside this Roth IRA, invest all the money.” My dad walked me through all the investment options I had. So I really had a great head start. And like you said, the stock market returns have been incredible. So that money compounding over time really gave me a huge head start even going into my early 20s.
Mindy: So, at age 16 or 17, you were starting to invest for retirement. How did that feel to you? Because I have a 16-year-old right now. Today is her very first day at her first job, Taco Bell. And saving for retirement, she has heard me preach about this forever, but that’s not something that a 16-year-old is really excited to do. Like, I’m saving until I’m 60. What am I going to do? Like, 60 is a thousand years away.
Guest: Yeah, no, it was a little bit to wrap my head around. I think initially there were some feelings of like, well, what if I want to go buy a surfboard or a skateboard or something like that, want to go to the movies? But just like it is for any of us, it’s a balance, right? So taking some of that money, enjoying some of it today, but what really motivated me back then was doing the math and saying, well, wait a minute, this $10, do I want $10 now or do I want hundreds or thousands of dollars when I’m older? And that really contextualized it for me and kind of got me motivated to do it.
Mindy: Okay, I will try that. But when we did the marshmallow test with her, you can have one marshmallow now or two marshmallows later. She snatched that marshmallow as fast as she could and then 10 minutes later, she’s like, where’s my other marshmallow?
Guest: Yeah, yeah, no, that’s incredible. I get it. And it is a balance. It is a balance.
Mindy: Yeah. Did you put everything that you earned into your Roth IRA or did you spend a little?
Guest: Well, I spent a little because each track meet that I had on Saturdays, I always wanted to buy a $5 chicken sandwich. So then that was the money that I took from my paycheck each time to go buy that $5 sandwich. And so that was kind of my spending in the moment. But the rest of that money, I was able to put away. And thankfully, my parents were able to cover certain things like gas or if I had sports registration, they would pay for those types of things and allow me to just go invest that money. So I was really lucky.
Mindy: Yeah, I think what we’re going to do is just the Bank of Mom and Dad is going to match her income because she’s not going to be making a lot of money. We’re going to match her income so that she can put it into the Roth IRA while also still not resenting us for making her save until the thousand years down the road when she’s age 60. But you know, we’re in a fortunate position to be able to do that. And I think that any dollar that I can get into my kids’ Roth IRA as soon as possible is the better choice.
Guest: 100%. And I think it’s a motivating, just like a 401K match is motivating for adults, that it’s kind of like, “Okay, well, hey, I can make a little bit of extra money by contributing this.” So I think that’s a great strategy.
Mindy: Yeah, thanks. You mentioned that you’re pursuing Coast FI. Just for our audience, what does Coast FI mean?
Guest: Yeah, Coast FI is kind of a hybrid form of financial independence where you basically frontload your retirement investments to the point where you’re projected to have enough, say at age 30 or 35 or 40 or 50, that you no longer have to contribute to a more traditional retirement age and that money is projected to grow to an amount that using a safe withdrawal rate would sustain you in retirement. So you’re putting a bunch in now, letting it grow over time without adding any more. You get to retirement age and you’re projected to have enough of a nest egg that you can retire comfortably.
Mindy: So why Coast FI and not FIRE as fast as possible?
Guest: It started with the numbers for me. So I felt that FIRE was a little bit too far out there. It was, it was maybe a 15 or 20-year goal, which when you’re first graduating from college, personally, I felt was not the most motivating goal for me because it felt like it was too far away.
Mindy: I really like the concept of Coast FI. It didn’t exist. Nobody had invented it yet when my husband and I started on our FI journey. And I think that might have helped reframe what we were thinking about. Although he had a job that he didn’t really like. So FI as fast as possible was absolutely his goal. He can be a little intense.
Are you planning on retiring at age 65 and you just want to take care of everything? Or are you planning to get to the 500 and then maybe start moving retirement age back a little bit by continuing to contribute?
Guest: Yeah, that’s a great question. And the truth is I’m not 100% certain on either, but probably leaning more towards the latter where I would then try to pull that retirement age forward more and more. But I think that within the FIRE community, I’m so lucky because I kind of stand on the shoulders of giants that so many people have gone and done this journey. And I think people have retired at, you know, 40 or 50 years old, and then they find themselves starting a business or working a job that they really love and earning some income. So I think Coast FIRE just kind of acknowledges that possibility that it’s like, “Am I really going to be earning $0? Can I not cover some of my basic expenses?” I think that I will be able to, but kind of framing it in a way that’s like, well, now my traditional retirement is taken care of.
Mindy: You know, I love that idea. And the first time I heard Coast FI was from Jess from The FIoneers. And she had had an incredibly stressful job. And she had been contributing to retirement. She kind of figured out, “Oh, I’m good at age 65.” So I don’t have to stay in this incredibly stressful job so I can continue to throw money into retirement funds for the future and then, you know, have this whole stressful life, get to age 65 and realize, “Oh, I could have retired 47 years ago because I’ve put so much money in here.” But when I look at my retirement accounts now, as they grow, like I don’t need to have a job that allows me to put so much away anymore because I’m Coast FI.
And I think a lot of people come into the FI community from a similar position as Jess. I have this astonishingly stressful job. I mean, that’s how my husband found it. He was banging on the computer like, “How do I quit my job early? I can’t take this stressful job anymore.” And the RE part is the biggest focus for a lot of people, like, “Oh, I can get out of my job before age 65. Sign me up for that.” And the Coast FI focuses more on the FI part rather than the RE part. When you’re 18 years old or 22, I don’t even remember how old people are when they graduate college. When you’re, you know, in your early 20s, focusing on, “Oh, I need to save a million dollars. I need to save $2 million.” Your eventual age 65 goal is $5 million. That’s enormous when you’re starting from zero or negative net worth because you have student loans. I can see how that would be kind of demoralizing and just, you know, forget it, I’m not even going to try. And here comes Coast FI. Oh, contraire, let me tell you, you only have to have this small amount.
Guest: Yeah, it’s a really motivating concept. And I think that it’s like starting with the end in mind that I think that if you’re in a position where you’re like, “I need to get out of my job as soon as possible and I do not want to work anymore,” then yeah, maybe a more traditional kind of FI as fast as possible as you said, is what’s right for you. But then I think there’s this whole cohort of like young people that maybe are interested in financial independence, but not necessarily in retiring in their 30s or 40s. And I think Coast FI is an awesome option for them.
What are you seeing in your community? Because you’re talking about Coast FI, are you seeing a lot of people who are excited about that or they still on the FIRE as fast as possible route?
Guest: I think there’s a mix. There’s people who are 100% like, you’re crazy. Why would you pursue Coast FI when you’re still going to have to work traditional retirement age versus pursuing kind of a FIRE as fast as possible? And then there’s other people that kind of have a more open mind to the concept, I’d say, and are kind of motivated by the idea. Specifically, I think what has really resonated with people is when you consider how the difference in cost basis between retiring early versus Coast FI is that because you are allowing the money to grow over time, over a long period of time with Coast FI, you can end up contributing far less money towards your retirement and still end up with a very large portfolio that can sustain you in traditional retirement. So in a way, you end up spending the availability to spend more money on this path towards financial independence.
Mindy: You said that you are calculating that you will have approximately $5 million in net worth by the time you reach age 65. And I did some pretty quick math and that is assuming a 7% return. Do you think that’s realistic?
Guest: I think that’s realistic. I mean, looking at kind of the long-term broad market historic averages, if we continue to see similar returns as we saw over the last 20, 30, 50 years, we could expect to see something like that. However, I did build, I think like a lot of people, build a solid amount of margin into my plan. So with a $200,000 per year income, currently I spend about $36,000 per year. So I have a lot of margin in there, so even if we saw lower than historic market returns, my hope is that I’d be good.
Mindy: I really like that your current expenses are not what you are factoring your FI number to be because at 36,000, all you need is a million. You’re almost there. Why not just push that? And that’s a mistake that my husband and I fell into as well. We’re like, “Well, we spend $40,000 a year,” it was like 36 or whatever. We spend really low. We just need a million. And then we reached our FI number and we looked at each other and we’re like, maybe a little bit more. He wasn’t ready to retire and quit his job at that time. And around the same time, I started working again after being a stay-at-home mom to, you know, raise my kids until they got into kindergarten. And then we had an amazing stock market year, I think maybe two years, and we had doubled our initial 1 million FI number to 2 million and it was still like, “Well, is this enough?”
And I think that at age 25, spending $36,000 is awesome, but I’m going to point out that you’re not married. You don’t have kids. Are you renting or do you own a house?
Guest: We’re renting a super cheap apartment. I’m driving a really old used car, so definitely a lot of room for my expenses to grow.
Mindy: Yeah. And I think that as much as the FI community preaches don’t fall victim to lifestyle creep, a single guy versus a family, there’s just going to be a lot more expenses.
And there might be more income. Perhaps you get married and your partner has, you know, the same income that you do. That’s great. But also now you have two people who are paying expenses. And then you throw a couple of kids in there. Now there’s four people that are, you know, kids can be cheap, but they can also, they need stuff. They need to eat food.
Guest: Again, the option to kind of stand on the shoulders of people who have done financial independence before, reading the stories of people who are pursuing that like FI number that they’re going for and they reach it at age 30, but then by age 40, they realize, hey, I actually think that I want to spend a little bit more money. Even though I’m a frugal person, even though I’m somebody who is against lifestyle creep, these things happen, right? As life happens, as it evolves, these things happen. So that’s exactly why I kind of set this ambitious retirement income goal because I think that it’s an income that I can kind of grow into over time.
Mindy: I agree. And we’re in an inflationary period right now. Inflation doesn’t typically go down and expenses are like they were five years ago. They just kind of keep going.
Guest: 100%.
Mindy: I love that you’re thinking about this so far down the road. So how aggressive is your savings rate right now given that you spend $36,000 a year?
Guest: Yeah, my savings rate currently using my W-2 job is about in the mid-40s. So about 46% or something like that, including my company match, which I think is a pretty aggressive savings rate, but you know, we’ve all heard the case studies of people that are in the high 80% savings rates. So I think that it’s aggressive, but it’s not, it’s not super uncomfortable right now.
Mindy: So we had a fairly aggressive savings rate. Honestly, I don’t even know if we tracked it or not, but my husband was making a lot of money and we weren’t spending very much money. I think it was like 50, 60, 70% savings rate. But also, we weren’t living. We were nose to the grindstone, head down, save as much money as you can, spend as little as you can. And it wasn’t, and we still had fun, but we didn’t have nearly as much fun as our money would have allowed, which has been kind of a double-edged sword. Like it allowed us to get to financial independence pretty quickly. But also our children’s childhood was spent working and not playing and going on vacations and having fun and doing all these fun things. So the ultra-aggressive savings rates, I don’t think are always serving you so well.
Guest: Right. And when did you realize that, Mindy? When you guys, had you reached your FI number and kind of looking backwards, you were saying, okay, maybe that was a little bit high or was it somewhere along the journey that you kind of realized that?
Mindy: Oh, like three years ago.
Guest: Okay.
Mindy: We did an interview with Ramit Sethi on his podcast. That was when we, like we had started thinking like our money isn’t working for us. We are working for it. We are financially independent. Carl had already been retired for years. I could have quit my job, but I didn’t want to. I enjoy what I do. But we were still very cheap. We weren’t even frugal, we were cheap. And a conversation with Ramit was really, really helpful. We’re still working on exercising our spending muscle. That’s another thing I like about Coast FI is that you are exercising your spending muscle because you’re not so hyper-focused on FI as fast as possible.
Guest: Yeah, 100%. And spending is totally a muscle. I think Ramit has done a lot for the community and kind of bringing that to everybody’s attention.
Mindy: So are you frugal or are you cheap?
Guest: That’s a great question. I like to think of myself as frugal and not cheap. I heard a great example a while ago. I’m not sure who said it, but they said like, to be frugal is to take the train maybe instead of the Uber home from the baseball game. To be cheap is to take the Uber and not tip the driver. So like kind of inconveniencing others and kind of being a pain about it. Whereas being frugal, it doesn’t hurt anybody if I make coffee at home instead of going out and buying it from a coffee shop. So I would say that’s a frugal decision. So I like to think of myself as frugal, but maybe I’ve made some cheap decisions too.
Mindy: So, I think that’s a great example. Shout out to whoever said that. I’m going to credit Evan because it was the first time I heard it was right from Evan. How does one on the journey stay frugal without veering off into cheap? Because it’s so easy to be cheap. I mean, it’s easy for me to be cheap and I’m trying really hard.
Guest: Yeah, I like to think that it’s about not inconveniencing others. Now, if you have a bunch of friends that like to collect rare diamonds or something like that, then yeah, maybe you would be inconveniencing them by not participating. But like, you know, we’ve talked about a bunch, you know, it’s the big three, it’s the housing, it’s the transportation, it’s the food. So if you know, it doesn’t inconvenience my friends or family if I live in a cheap apartment or drive an older used car, but it saves me a ton of money. It really moves the needle. So I would say that’s something that’s frugal. But you know, if my friends have a birthday party and it’s out at a restaurant and, you know, we’re going to go out and spend like $100. So be it, right? You know, I’m saving all this money each month on those big things. And so I’m happy to go out and enjoy those things with my friends. So that’s where I would say the balance is is being cheap versus frugal.
Mindy: I love that so much. Yes, save money where you can to quote Ramit again, save money where you can so you can spend it where you want to. I want to celebrate my friend’s birthday. And if I have to drop $100 at a restaurant because, you know, it’s my meal plus a portion of their meal, because you can’t make your friends pay when it’s their birthday. That’s okay, because A, you’re not celebrating your friends’ birthday every single day. And B, keeping friendships going is really kind of hard. And if you can throw a little bit of attention, a little bit of money towards celebrating your friends in such a way, I love that. I really do like that a lot.
Guest: Yeah, and something that we like to do is is try to host people as much as we can. So me and my buddies will will play Dungeons and Dragons sometimes, not to get too nerdy with the nerds out here.
Mindy: Too late.
Guest: Yeah, yeah. So we’ll do that. And so I posted a video of I had my buddies over and I made everybody breakfast sandwiches. It was like a breakfast for dinner kind of thing.
Mindy: I loved that video.
Guest: Yes. Yeah, yeah. So it was awesome. And and you know, the all in cost was maybe like $50 or $60 to get all the ingredients and whatnot. And but we all had a great time and everybody, nobody had to bring anything. We all ate. We had a lot of fun. We hung out for hours. And it didn’t cost us much money. So that that was awesome.
Mindy: And to be cheap, you could say, “Hey guys, I would love to host you at my house, but I’m not going to give you anything to eat. So you can have water and eat before you get here.”
Guest: Absolutely. Exactly right.
Mindy: We are talking about $500,000 is the new million, but for some of the people in the FIRE community, $500,000 might only be 25 or 50% of their total FI number. Why do you think 500,000 is a better target versus a higher FI number?
Guest: Like what we were saying, like beginning with the end in mind that I think that if you’re somebody who is like, “I really do not see myself ever earning an income. The things that I want to do day-to-day will never ever earn me money.” You know, maybe a traditional FI number for you is the right way to go about that. But I think that if you’re somebody who is maybe a bit more balanced in the sense that, “Yeah, I don’t like my job, but I don’t think that I would never want to work ever again.” Kind of acknowledging, well, maybe there’s like an incremental goal, right? Maybe there’s something where I can coast fire a portion of my portfolio. And I love something that Andy Hill talks about, and he talks about building up that Coast FIRE portfolio and then also building up kind of that FU money that it’s like a big savings, and then maybe you can go take a risk. Maybe that’s a new job, maybe it’s starting a business, maybe it’s getting into real estate or something like that. But can give you an opportunity to earn income and cover your day-to-day expenses. But Coast FI gives you that peace of mind that you’ve basically bought yourself a traditional retirement already.
Mindy: Yeah, I think when people talk about Coast FI, they talk about, “I’ve got enough money so that when I reach traditional retirement, I’ll be set.” And I think that there’s not enough focus in the Coast FI community on the, “Okay, I’m set for traditional retirement and I don’t have to put any more money in, but if I do, this day gets shorter.” So I put a little bit more and you’re already used to putting money away. You said you’re putting away $3,300 a month. I just did super quick math. That’s $39,000 a year. You’re putting away every year what you’re spending in this current year. Like you’re putting away, okay, now it’s not 65, it’s 64. Next year, okay, now it’s not 64, it’s 63. And next year, so you’re like moving these numbers closer. If you continue to put money away at the same rate. But let’s say you don’t. Let’s say you get married and you have kids and now instead of 39,000, you’re only able to put away 25,000 because now you’re spending more. Okay, so now it’s not a year for every year, it’s a half a year for every year. You’re still moving these barriers closer together and it’s just optionality that you’re giving yourself.
Guest: Yeah, you’re buying yourself freedom. And I think in the FI community, we’re all acknowledging the fact that it’s yes, I want to buy freedom for tomorrow, but also can I buy some freedom for today? Can I buy some spending freedom? Can I buy some flexibility? I think also building in some margin to my plan, I ran the numbers. So 500K at 30 gives me about 200k in retirement income at 65, but at 59 and a half, if I were to pull that forward as soon as I can access my retirement accounts, would still give me about $140,000 per year. So maybe I get to 59 and a half and I’m only spending 115,000 in inflation-adjusted dollars. And I think, okay, maybe I’ll retire now.
Mindy: You can just keep doing this math. I think that a lot of people do the math once and they’re like, okay, that’s set. Play around with it. See what the options are. Maybe you do want to absolutely stop contributing at age 30 and just live like a king. You can do that. Or you can decide, you know what, this year I’m not going to save anything, but next year I’ll start again. Or, you know, it doesn’t have to be so absolute. And I think that this could be a super fluid journey and you can save and spend and be fluid, be financially independent, and then all of these different options just present themselves.
Guest: You mentioned, Mindy, on your journey, was it called the death march to FI? Is that, have I heard you say that?
Mindy: Okay.
Guest: And so I recently made a video and I called it like meandering to FI. So rather than marching or running or walking, you know, kind of stopping and smelling the roses here and there, still making my way towards my goal, but you know, in a more lackadaisical way, kind of meandering my way there.
Mindy: Evan Lawler just coined a new phrase, Meander FI.
Guest: Yeah, I like that. I like that.
Mindy: So you’re very publicly talking about your finances on your channel. What’s been one of the most surprising things about the journey so far that you didn’t see coming?
Guest: One of the most surprising things about sharing my numbers online is first off, how supportive people are. They love, people are nosy, I think a little bit, right? They love to hear about the numbers. They love to hear about what you’re saving and investing. And it’s been really gratifying to see those people who take an interest in maybe what I’m spending or what I’m investing, and then they kind of get interested in their own numbers. So that’s been really interesting that people are more willing to dive into their numbers and kind of start considering these ideas of financial independence than I initially thought. I kind of thought that I was a part of a very small and radical group pursuing financial independence. But people learn a lot from this kind of stuff. And so that’s been something that’s really surprising is that people are kind of willing.
And then the other thing is the different spending psychology that is out there and like, you know, there are the people on my end of the spectrum and Mindy, your end of the spectrum that are, you know, frugal by nature and like, you know, we might struggle to spend and it’s like maybe you would categorize that as a good problem to have, but at the end of the day, it’s still a problem that we need to acknowledge and overcome. And then there’s other people who are on the other end of the spectrum, you know, they get $100 and they spend 110 before it even hits their bank account. And so it’s kind of acknowledging both of those realities and trying to understand the psychology to find a more happy medium has been super interesting and and fulfilling for me.
I was probably 49 or 50 when I discovered that I need to start flexing my spending muscle and make my money work for me in a way that is enjoyable. I’m not just spending money willy-nilly on things that I don’t care about. My husband and I are building a house right now, or having it built for us. I’m not swinging a hammer at all, which is a departure because we usually do all the work ourselves in our living flips. But we are having it built and every time a decision comes up, “What kind of countertops do you want? What kind of cabinets do you want? You know, all these little things,” we have decided that we are taking price out of the equation. That’s not the first thing we look at.
So we went with the cabinets. We went to IKEA. I’ve done two IKEA kitchens in the past. I’ve had a great experience. Their cabinets are great. And I went there and I don’t know if I got like the worst cabinet designer ever or somebody who just did not care, but he designed probably the ugliest kitchen I’ve ever seen. And I’m like, thanks. And we left and my husband was like, “Well, I guess we can talk to the people at Home Depot and you know, look at these other cabinet lines.” I’m like, “I’m not buying IKEA kitchen cabinets. This like this kitchen is not going to be what I’m doing in this house.” And he’s like, “Well, I mean, I don’t want to spend twice as much.” The IKEA kitchen was $14,000 and we ended up spending, I think, $35,000 on the cabinets that we actually did get, but they are so much better and so much more beautiful and they fit in with the thing. And five years ago, I would have had the ugly IKEA kitchen and just been done.
Guest: Right. Actually, on Monday, I bought a brand new espresso maker. I love coffee. I love espresso. Bought an espresso maker, $500. And I talk about spending psychology all the time. I talk about money every single day, encouraging people to save and invest for tomorrow while enjoying today. But I will tell you, Mindy, when I was checking out and I saw after tax $529, a cold bead of sweat rolling down my face. But I think it’s like anything else, right? It’s like, it’s like public speaking. It’s like going to the gym. It’s about learning a new skill. Everything feels uncomfortable at first. And so it’s about kind of pushing through that discomfort. And it’s cool to hear. I’m sure it was a similar situation for you that you’re looking at these newer, more expensive cabinets and you want them and you know that it’s the right decision to make. But there’s a part of you, right, that is a little uncomfortable with it and and pushing through that is huge.
Mindy: Yeah, it wasn’t just twice as much, it was more than twice as much and they’re beautiful and I’m so happy with them now. I actually just bought an espresso machine too, and it was $700. I went to my friend, has a huge espresso machine set up at his house and he’s very into coffee. So I went over there and I talked to him about his setup and I started looking at the same type of machines. Like his is like $3,000 or something. I’m like, “I don’t think that I enjoy coffee that much.” But I did a lot of research. I decided on the $700 machine and it’s been perfect. I had a $20 crappy coffee maker that I’ve had for, you know, 15 years or whatever. It wasn’t bringing me joy anymore. Now I am so excited to make espresso every single morning and it’s delicious and it makes my heart sing and I’m glad I spent the money. But five years ago, I would have looked at that $700 price tag and been like, “Oh, no.” Just because it was $700. $700 compared to my net worth is nothing. It’s like a rounding error. It’s like I dropped a $700 bill out of my pocket when I pulled out my wallet to pay for something else. But why am I so fixated on the price? It’s hard to get over that. So I think one of the best things you can do when you’re trying to exercise your spending muscle so you can use your money to make your life better, not just so you can spend money willy-nilly, is to experiment. What is something that you think is great? Oh, I think that I would really enjoy having an espresso maker at home. Look, I was right.
Evan, what do you think is the single biggest lever that someone can pull to get to $500,000 faster? Savings rate, income, investment returns, something else?
Guest: I think that the biggest lever that most people can do is their savings rate, which is made up of two parts, right, which is your spending and your income. And I think a lot of people maybe they feel as though their expenses are fixed in a way and they can’t possibly do that. I would say that’s not often the case for most people, especially people my age that are renting different places or, you know, they are maybe leasing a car or something like that. You can kind of confront those big expenses. And I think that if you’re a young person and you can reduce your fixed expenses and move into the cheaper apartment when your lease ends or consider the used car instead of the new car, that will have huge impacts on your financial journey throughout the rest of your life. However, if you’re someone who reviews your expenses, maybe you have a mortgage, maybe you already have the cheap car and your savings rate is still pretty low, maybe it’s single digits, 5 or 6%, but you want to get into this financial independence world. I think it’s reasonable to acknowledge the fact that maybe you need to go pull that income lever and you need to go out and consider different jobs, work a side hustle, do some job hopping, you know, build up the thank you inbox or folder that I think you talk about, Mindy and so then go ask for that raise from your boss can really make a big difference.
Mindy: Evan, I did some quick math and assuming a 7% return, your 500,000 will bring you a little over 5 million at age 65. With a 10% return, do you know what that number is?
Guest: I have no idea.
Mindy: 14 million.
Guest: Wow.
Mindy: Is $500,000 still the right number?
Guest: I think that it might be the right number for me, kind of just using the math as far as the 10% versus 7, we’re looking at like a nominal versus a real rate of return. Nominal being not considering inflation, real being considering inflation. So that $14 million, that’s really exciting. And that will, you know, using those historic returns, that would be the number that I see on my screen. But you know, maybe a cheeseburger from the local restaurant costs $48. So, you know, in real dollars, I think that the 500K still holds out.
Mindy: I think it’s a great goal for age 30. I did just Google what’s the average stock market return over the last five years? They said 13% to 15% and I don’t think that’s realistic. I’d love it. Hey, if you want to keep bringing back 13% to 15% S&P 500, I approve. But I like that you aren’t being super aggressive with your projections. Conservative projections and then you get a really aggressive return. Awesome. You came in low like we said, 5 million versus 14 million. If you get to age 59 and a half and you have $9 million, I mean, are you going to stop looking at it? No, I promise you, you will continue to look at your stock market return just as much at age 40 as you are doing right now. You’re just curious. Oh, what’s it at today? Oh, I’m at 5 million. Awesome. Or hey, it’s been kind of a low couple of years with all this inflation. So I’m at 2 million right now when I thought I was going to be at three. Either way, you’re growing your net worth and you’re watching your retirement date still come closer than 65. So, I just, I love the concept of Coast FI so much.
Evan, I really appreciate you joining me today. Where can people find you online?
Guest: Thank you so much for having me on. I think it was an awesome conversation. You can find me online across all social media platforms at The_FinancialFoundation.
Mindy: All right. Do you want even more financial independence information? Hop on over to our website biggerpockets.com where we have resources, templates, and all sorts of calculators to help you on your financial independence journey. You can also follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and YouTube @biggerpocketsmoney.
That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Evan Lawler from The Financial Foundation. I am Mindy Jensen saying, got to fly, Skye.
