9 Things No One Tells You About Financial Independence

Summary

Podcast Summary: BiggerPockets Money Podcast

Episode: 9 Things No One Tells You About Financial Independence
Hosts: Mindy Jensen (with guest and husband Carl Jensen)
Date: April 17, 2026

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Episode Overview

In this engaging and relatable episode, Mindy Jensen teams up with her husband Carl (subbing in for Scott Trench) to share nine often-unspoken truths about the journey to financial independence (FI), especially as it pertains to the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement. Drawing from their personal experiences, they tackle nuanced emotional and lifestyle changes that come after achieving FI, highlighting challenges, misconceptions, and surprising side effects. The episode is packed with actionable advice, humor, and candid storytelling for anyone striving toward or living FIRE.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Actions and Mindset That Get You to FI Might Hurt You Afterward

[04:43]

• Key Insight: Habits like extreme frugality or DIY-ing everything are valuable for building wealth but become counterproductive post-FI, when time becomes more valuable than saving money.
• Anecdote: Carl was tempted to DIY the electrical work on their new build to save $20k, but Mindy pushed back. The time saved and expertise was worth more.
  • Quote (Mindy): “Even though he doesn't have a job, he's very, very, very busy all the time. I didn't want you to do the electrical work.” [07:03]
  • Actionable Exercise: Assess and regularly reassess what your time is worth to you in this phase of life.

2. It Is Hard to Spend Money After Reaching FI

[09:29]

• After years of frugality, both hosts admit they still find it tough to loosen the purse strings, even when it makes sense.
• Travel Example: They’ve implemented rules, like only upgrading to business class if the extra cost is <$100 per travel hour (inspired by Mark Troutman).
  • Quote (Mindy): “Experiment with your spending. Try the better cheese at the grocery store, or try the better vacation.” [13:11]

3. Making Money Is Addictive

[14:10]

• The skills and success mindset honed over the years are hard to turn off. Even after achieving FI, opportunities and investment ideas remain tempting.
• Quote (Carl): “At the time you reach financial independence, you're better at whatever you did to get there than any other time in your life. So, man, it's hard...but it's the wrong attitude.” [15:33]

4. Money Fixes Money Problems—But Little Else

[19:28]

• FI “cures” financial stress but doesn’t fill happiness or relationship gaps. True happiness largely comes from within and from relationships, not from circumstances like FI.
• Referenced Study: Sonia Lyubomirsky’s happiness research: 50% genetics, 40% perspective/attitude, 10% circumstances (like FI).
  • Quote (Carl): “Money will fix money problems and it won't do much of anything else.” [19:28]

5. FI May Expose Unexpected Relationship or Identity Issues

[22:23]

• The transition can upset household dynamics and expose communication gaps between partners.
• Personal Story: After Carl quit his job, new routines and household chores had to be renegotiated. Open, early communication is key.
  • Quote (Mindy): “We just needed to adjust what was going on in our household. And it's hard to make these changes, but you have to work on these changes.” [23:56]

6. FIRE Life Might Be Lonely

[26:47]

• Post-FI loneliness is real, especially when one’s social circle is still working full-time.
• Carl describes his first day off and feeling out of place among retirees and parents with young kids at the park.
  • Quote (Carl): “I don't have my co-workers anymore to talk to for eight hours a day. It is a change.” [28:10]
• Advice: Build and maintain a FI community early via local meetups, online groups, and FI-focused events (e.g., ChooseFI, CampFI, 5 Friends Travel).

7. You Have to Reinvent Yourself, and Likely More Than Once

[31:41]

• Leaving a career creates a void—filling that space with new identity, purpose, or routines is essential for satisfaction.
• Quote (Mindy): “Have a plan before you leave your job so that you are forcing the narrative...and then work towards that.” [35:32]

8. Jobs Are Underrated

[35:44]

• Jobs provide structure, socialization, and purpose. Without them, you must intentionally create your own routine.
  • Quote (Carl): “A job gives you all that. It gives you a routine, gives you money, it gives you friends, it gives you purpose. And once you retire, you're going to have to come up with all those things yourself.” [35:49]
• Weekend routines can hint at your future retired life—plan accordingly.

9. The Hedonic Treadmill Never Stops

[38:05]

• The excitement of “newness” wears off over time, prompting many FI-ers to seek novelty (like travel).
• Flexibility is both challenging and rewarding; regularly redefine your passions and routines to stay fulfilled.
  • Quote (Carl): "What lights you up today and what is interesting for you now eventually gets boring. And that's why people like to travel." [38:37]

Bonus: No One Will Understand FI (Except for a Select Few)

[41:35]

• Family and friends are rarely enthusiastic about FIRE or even openly hostile/confused; teaching by example is the best approach.
  • Quote (Carl): "No one will understand financial independence. Some might, but they're very few and far between." [42:59]
  • Quote (Mindy): "Usually, no, I don't want to do that. I'm young. I don't want to save my money. I want to spend it while I'm young enough to enjoy it." [42:15]

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Notable Quotes & Moments

• On DIY vs. Outsourcing
  • Mindy: “How long is it going to take you? Carl thought he could do all the electric in a week... But I promise you it would have taken more than a week.” [08:08]
• On Upgrading after FI
  • Carl (on flying business class): “The seats go out, you can actually lay down up there and they bring you like, champagne when you get on and then like food and those wet towels. Like what, what even is the purpose of the wet towel?” [12:25]
  • Mindy: “You wipe your hands, you wipe your face, you just like, get a little refreshment.” [12:32]
• On Redefining Identity
  • Carl: "You have to reinvent yourself. You have to figure out what you're going to do. Post FI, establish a routine." [32:00]
• On Community
  • Mindy: “Even if you’re nowhere near financial independence, make some FI friends.” [29:03]
• On Others’ Attitudes
  • Carl: "Or my favorite response. Do you have a terminal disease? Is there something you're not telling me?" [42:41]

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Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [04:43] — Point 1: Mindset post-FI
• [09:29] — Point 2: Difficulty spending money after FI
• [14:10] — Point 3: The addictiveness of making money
• [19:28] — Point 4: What money solves (and doesn’t)
• [22:23] — Point 5: Relationship dynamics and new challenges
• [26:47] — Point 6: Loneliness post-FI, building community
• [31:41] — Point 7: Reinventing yourself
• [35:44] — Point 8: The underrated value of jobs
• [38:05] — Point 9: The hedonic treadmill and seeking novelty
• [41:35] — Bonus: Most people won’t get FI (lead by example)

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Final Thoughts

This episode gives a deeply relatable and experienced look at the real challenges and joys of FI, balancing practical exercises with humor and self-awareness. Mindy and Carl emphasize that the journey doesn’t end at reaching your “number”—it brings new growth, new problems, and continual evolution. You'll depart with a toolkit for self-reflection, resilience, and community, whatever your spot along the FI path.

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For further resources, calculators, and the newsletter, visit BiggerPocketsMoney.com

Transcript

[Scott Trench]

Mindy and I are so grateful for the following sponsors who make BiggerPockets money possible. When I evaluate debt funds, I look for things like first position loans, personal guarantees, deep experience by the fund operator, low fund leverage, fast liquidity and consistent returns. These are some of the reasons why I'm excited to partner with Pine Financial Group. Their Fund 6 offers investors exposure to real estate credit largely for construction and rehab, with loans originated by an experienced originator with over $1 billion in origination volume. They offer investors an an 8% preferred return paid monthly and a 7030 LP GP split of everything over 10% paid annually. The lockup period is nine months with liquidity available within 90 days. After that nine month commitment, the fund is open to accredited investors only. The fund's minimum Investment is typically $100,000, but Pyne Financial is able to reduce that minimum for BiggerPockets Money listeners to a minimum of $25,000. Full disclosure I am personally invested in this fund through my self directed ira. Pine Financial is sponsoring this message and our podcast. Go go to biggerpocketsmoney.com Pine P I N E Please note that returns are not guaranteed and may vary based on fund performance. When the change in season hits, some people suddenly just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets and get everything all organized. And that's great if that's you or if it's not you. Either way, let Monarch do the financial spring cleaning this year for you. One dashboard gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no more mess, no more scattered logins. Just accounts, investments, property and more all in one place. Another feature I love about Monarch is the weekly AI recap. It catches spending spikes before they become problems and flags big net worth shifts or upcoming expenses. It's like having a quick personal check in every week so nothing sneaks up on me. Get your first year of Monarch for half off just 50 bucks with the promo code Pockets. Use the code [e-mail] to get your first year half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first [e-mail] with the code pockets pocket s DIYing. Your financial strategy can actually become a liability. I recently sat down with David Jackson at Domain Money to pressure test my own plan. What I loved was the objectivity and how comprehensive it was. Domain is strictly flat fee. They don't sell products, so the advice is unbiased and personalized to your situation. They integrated everything from my cash flow to my real estate strategy into one clear actionable roadmap. If you're ready to graduate from guessing to knowing, go to biggerpocketsmoney.com CFP book a free strategy session and see what a real pro like David can do for you. This is a promotion for Domain Money, a registered investment Advisor with the SEC. BiggerPockets money may receive compensation if you choose to work with Domain Money as a client. I, Scott Trench, am a current client of Domain Money and receive non cash compensation related to this promotional activity. This is not personalized investment advice. For the full disclosures, visit biggerpocketsmoney.com CFP

[Mindy Jensen]

Everybody talks about starting their financial independence journey, investing, retiring early. But there's a lot of things that people never tell you. In this episode, we are breaking down nine things you probably don't know about financial independence that can make or break your journey to financial freedom. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and joining me today is my husband, Carl Jensen. Hi, Carl. Hello.

[Carl Jensen]

How are you?

[Mindy Jensen]

I'm good. How are you doing?

[Carl Jensen]

Good. This is my first time on in a long time. And before we begin, I have an important question for you and it might be an issue, actually. I know Scott's out now, so I'm substituting for him, but what happens if he listens to this and he's like, well, maybe Carl should replace Mindy? Are you worried about that at all?

[Mindy Jensen]

You mean Scott might listen to this and think that you should replace me and it'll be the Scott and Carl show?

[Carl Jensen]

Yes. He'll be like, Carl is so good that he should just continue on and Mindy is out.

[Mindy Jensen]

Well, I've heard you on podcasts before, so I don't think he's gonna say that.

[Carl Jensen]

Somehow I knew you would go there. But that's fine. I know my limitations.

[Mindy Jensen]

I am very happy you are joining me today. While Scott is off playing hooky, let's jump into this. You and I went through and talked about things that we discovered through the school of hard knocks on our way to financial independence. So let's not make my not our. My listeners learn these lessons the hard way.

[Carl Jensen]

I think they're kind of my listeners now too, because I'm here talking. So. And like we just talked about, I might end up taking over for you.

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay then, our listeners, thank you for listening and here's some lessons you don't have to learn yourself. Carl. What's number one?

[Carl Jensen]

The actions and mindset that got you to fire might hurt you post financial independence. What do you mean so when you're young and broke, money means everything. And saving $1000 when you're 20 means something drastically different than saving $1000 when you're 50 because of that compound interest. It's going to do a lot more for you when you're young. Also, you're going to be in a different place in life. You might be able to hustle more. You might be able to have 10 roommates. I don't think in our place in life, we would want to have any roommates. Like, how would you feel about that?

[Mindy Jensen]

We have roommates. They're called our kids, but they're getting ready to leave. And then after. We don't have kids living at home anymore. Yeah, I'm not getting a roommate besides you.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah. And the issue with this is it's hard to break our old habits. We might have been doing these things for two decades, and our inertia is to keep doing them, but we can't, because we're not going to live our best life. But postfi if we keep doing the same things.

[Mindy Jensen]

Oh, I have a good example. So we in part reached financial independence due to live in flipping, where we, meaning him, did all the work ourselves. And then one day a couple of years ago, he came to me and said, what if we tore down the rental house and rebuilt it? And I'm like, no, I don't want to build a house. He's like, whoa, will hire somebody to do it. Oh, okay, maybe. And then he said, well, I mean, I'm going to do the electrical. And I'm like, and I'm back to, no, I don't want to do any work on this house. I personally don't. And I also don't want him to do it. And he said, what? What did you say when I said, you're not going to do the electrical?

[Carl Jensen]

I said, oh, that's fine. I completely agree with everything you say.

[Mindy Jensen]

Wow, revisionist history here. So what he actually said was, but we could save $20,000. And yes, $20,000 is a lot of money, but not when you look at our net worth and our amount of time that we have available. Even though he doesn't have a job, he's very, very, very busy all the time. I didn't want you to do the electrical work. Then the builder that we eventually hired has subcontractors to do everything. And their electricians were amazing. I'm so glad you didn't do that. I'm sure Carl's dad was an electrician. Like, it's not like he's just figuring this out as he goes. But Carl doesn't have the time to do the electric work and it would have taken him significantly longer. How many guys did they have? Like nine.

[Carl Jensen]

A lot.

[Mindy Jensen]

They had a team that came in and how tall are our ceilings?

[Carl Jensen]

Very tall.

[Mindy Jensen]

20ft in some cases. And we're putting lights in the ceiling. So no, you don't have that time. But 20 years ago we had more time than money and therefore it would have been a better choice for us to DIY it. In fact, we did DIY a lot of that stuff. Yeah, or all of it.

[Carl Jensen]

You hit on something critically important there. And the key word there is time. When you're young, you have a lot of time, right? You come home. I remember coming home, I was single. I had like nothing to do in my life. I would come home and sit on the couch and watch TV or do whatever for the next six hours. Fast forward 30 years, two kids, jobs, all this other stuff going on. Time becomes much more valuable. And the whole point of this point is you need to realize that and elevate time to a higher level and diminish money. It's worth buying your time back.

[Mindy Jensen]

So one exercise that I want to give to our audience, our audience, our listeners, is to determine the time value of their dollar. How much is your time worth? Is it worth $10 an hour? Then if you're contemplating doing a job that would cost you $100 an hour, it's worth it for you to do it yourself. If your dollar value for your hour is $1,000 and it would cost you $100 to hire it out, it's a no brainer to hire it out. Give somebody else the job and save yourself the time. And also be honest with yourself. How long is it going to take you? Carl thought he could do all the electric in a week. He didn't do any of the electric. But I promise you it would have taken more than a week. How much time did it take? Our team of nine?

[Carl Jensen]

It took them a week or two, but if I would have stayed up and worked non stop, I probably could have done it in a week.

[Mindy Jensen]

Stop talking, we're done. So, number one, the actions and mindset that got you to FI will probably hurt you after financial independence. So evaluate the dollar value of your time to make sure that you're spending your time wisely.

[Carl Jensen]

One question for you. Do you still look at the price per ounce of cheese or whatever when you go to the grocery store?

[Mindy Jensen]

I look at the price per ounce of Everything for everything.

[Carl Jensen]

I still do too. And that brings us to point number two. It is hard to spend money. If you've pursued five for decades. Maybe you've house hacked, maybe you've had hustles. You've probably been really good with money and really trying to save and invest. Now you might be a millionaire and you don't have to do that anymore. But good luck with that.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, it's funny to hear you say that because what was that about? You wanted to. You wanted to do all the Electric to save $20,000. Do you know what the dollar value of your time is?

[Carl Jensen]

No.

[Mindy Jensen]

No. Because you've never contemplated that. So you should listen to my show more. It is hard for us to spend money. We have been frugal our whole lives. We were raised with frugality. If you listen to that episode of the Ramit podcast, you heard us struggling. It's less of a struggle. We just got back from a five friends travel trip. And how did we get there, Carl? Did we fly coach?

[Carl Jensen]

No, we flew in the big fancy seats in the front of the plane. My first time ever doing that.

[Mindy Jensen]

And was it the same price as coach?

[Carl Jensen]

No, it was a little bit more.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yes, it was a little bit more. It wasn't like significantly more. We actually got a really smoking hot deal. One of our friends, Mark Troutman from Mark's money mind, has a formula that he uses for traveling. He says, my baseline is economy plus. I don't even look at the price of economy. I want to sit in a nicer seat. So I look and I book the economy plus. And then I look and see how much more it is to fly business class or first class. And if it is less than $100 per travel hour, then I book it instantly. No brainer. Those are my travel rules. And so I think it was like $400 more to fly the first class, but it was an eight hour trip, so that's $50 per travel hour. That made it a no brainer. We have adopted Mark's travel rules for upgrading to the lie flat seats and business class. We have some of our own travel rules and I think that creating rules around things like this are really helpful to get you to like you're not making the decision anymore. I've already made the decision that I don't fly on a trip that leaves before 10am from our home airport unless it's the only option is it leaves at nine or whatever. So now I don't even have to look at the 6am flights and just

[Carl Jensen]

one caveat, you said my podcast. If I happen to take over, because Scott and what we talked about, I will still buy you the first class seats as you bought mine for international travel. We don't need to do that domestically. That's just ridiculous. It's so strange, right? You sit there, the seats go out, you can actually lay down up there and they bring you like, champagne when you get on and then like food and those wet towels. Like what, what even is the purpose of the wet towel? Are you just like. I'm unsophisticated, as you can probably tell.

[Mindy Jensen]

I'm sorry. That he's not cool and doesn't know what you're supposed to do with a wet towel. You wipe your hands, you wipe your face, you just like, get a little refreshment.

[Carl Jensen]

Okay. It's kind of strange, but whatever.

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay. So our advice to you, if spending is hard for you, is to experiment. Don't jump off the 6am multiple stops flight journey and instantly go to first class to go 100 miles down the road. But what, what do you value? I value being able to sleep in or not having to set an alarm. So I don't fly before 10am I don't want to get home at midnight and then be a wreck the next day. So we don't fly on a plane that lands after 7pm Again, unless there's no other options. And if there's no other options, we might get a hotel and near the airport because we live an hour away. This is an experiment that we've done that works and we're completely fine with it. Stay in a better hotel. Have you ever stayed in a Motel 6?

[Carl Jensen]

Oh, I've stayed in much worse than that.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yes, they'll leave the light on for you, but so will all the other hotel chains. So see, if there's a hotel chain that you like better. We used to stay at a lower tier hotel chain and now we stay at Hyatt and Marriott or better. And the pillows are nicer, the bed is more comfortable, and we're actually able to get a better night's sleep, which enhances the vacation. Experiment with your spending. Try the better cheese at the grocery store or try the better vacation. Try the better hotel. See what works and see what doesn't. If you don't like it, then you don't have to do it anymore. We've decided that if we are flying domestically, we're probably not going to upgrade to first class. Unless it's the same price.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah.

[Mindy Jensen]

Which it never is because we just don't need the space.

[Carl Jensen]

What if I take over the podcast? If I flew first class, since I'm bringing in the money and you sit back in the coach seats, would you be okay with that or no? Okay.

[Mindy Jensen]

Nice try though. Point number three, making money is addictive. At the point when you reach financial independence, you're probably really good at making money. Carl, are you retired?

[Carl Jensen]

Yes.

[Mindy Jensen]

Am I?

[Carl Jensen]

Kind of.

[Mindy Jensen]

Kind of, Yes. I am partially employed as a real estate agent. And as the host of this podcast, you're supposed to say, for now, for now, for always. We are really good at making. Well, I am really good at making money. He's retired. He's not making any money. I could quit. We are financially independent. We don't need any more money coming in. But it's hard to stop.

[Carl Jensen]

And I have another point to this. Do you remember when we did our first live and flip and I'll back up a second. We made the core of our nest egg through live in flips. And I remember we had a condo in the city and the toilet started to leak. And when it did that, it was like an emergency. Alarm bells are going off in my head. I. I had no idea how to fix this. And this was pre Internet, so you just had to try to. You had to go to this big building called the library. They had books there that told you how to do stuff like this. But it was like, in my head, it was the end of the world. And since I've probably swapped on 100 toilets, I could do that all day long. I could do it by myself. The first one probably took us multiple hours and we probably screwed it up. We weren't so good at the liven flips when we started, but now we're great. But now we don't really need the skill anymore. But it's so addictive because you see these houses and you could do the calculation instantly, like, oh, wow, that house is 4, 400. I could spend 100 on this. And then we could sell it for $200,000 more, make all this profit. We'll live in it for two years, and then, boof. We make all that money, but we don't need it. But we're so good at it now, and that's what makes it addictive. And that applies to anything. Like, you might have been okay at house hacking or being a real estate agent or whatever you did to make your money, but at the time you reach financial independence, you're better at whatever you did to get there than any other time in your life. So, man, it's hard. I still, I still think about stuff like this. Look at houses around our neighborhood and man, if we got that, what we could do with this. But it's the wrong attitude.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, easily made money is a hard spigot to turn off. But money isn't the goal. Living a good life is the goal. Define your goals. Work to accept that those are the goals. And then figure out how to trust the math and turn off the spigot and do as I say, not as I do. Because I still really like being a real estate agent. Although I could work a lot more than I do. I choose to work with one client at a time, and if it takes me a long time to help that one client find a house, so be it. I'm not going to take on other clients just so I can have this steady pipeline. It's just, I. I don't want to work that much.

[Carl Jensen]

Should we go on? Oh, well, you might not have to. If Scott chooses me, this is a gift that keeps on giving.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, this is the joke that never ends.

[Carl Jensen]

Scott's like, we will never have him on again.

[Scott Trench]

When I evaluate debt funds, I look for things like first position loans, personal guarantees, deep experience by the fund operator, low fund leverage, fast liquidity and consistent returns. These are some of the reasons why I'm excited to partner with Pine Financial Group. Their Fund 6 offers investors exposure to real estate credit, largely for construction and rehab, with loans originated by an experienced originator with over $1 billion in origination volume. They offer investors an 8% preferred return paid monthly and a 70.30lpgp split of everything over 10% paid annually. The lockup period is nine months, with liquidity available within 90 days. After that nine month commitment, the fund is open to accredited investors only. The fund's minimum investment is typically $100,000, but Pine Financial is able to reduce that minimum for Biggerpockets money listeners to a minimum of $25,000. Full disclosure, I am personally invested in this fund through my self directed ira. Pine Financial is sponsoring this message and our podcast. Go to biggerpocketsmoney.com Pine P I N E Please note that returns are not guaranteed and may vary based on when the change in season hits. Some people suddenly just want to declutter the garage, clean out the closets, and get everything all organized. And that's great if that's you or if it's not you. Either way, let Monarch do the financial spring cleaning this year for you. One dashboard gets your entire financial life organized. No more clutter, no More mess. No more scattered logins. Just accounts, investments, property and more all in one place. Another feature I love about Monarch is is the weekly AI recap. It catches spending spikes before they become problems and flags big net worth shifts or upcoming expenses. It's like having a quick personal check in every week so nothing sneaks up on me. Get your first year of Monarch for half off just 50 bucks with the promo code pockets. Use the code [e-mail] to get your first year half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first [e-mail] with the code Pockets. P O C K E T S

[Mindy Jensen]

this episode is brought to you by State Farm. You know, those friends who support your preference for podcasts over music on road trips? That's the energy State Farm brings to insurance. With over 19,000 local agents, they help you find the coverage that fits your needs so you can spend less time worrying about insurance and more time enjoying the ride. Download the State Farm app or go [e-mail] like a good neighbor, State Farm is there. Okay, what is point number four?

[Carl Jensen]

Point number four, money will fix money problems and it won't do much of anything else. And I know this from personal experience because I wasn't super happy in my job and I thought as soon as I reach financial independence, I will quit and it'll rain beer and there will be unicorns and there will be rainbows and everything will be awesome. And then you quit and you feel pretty much how you did before. So after this happened, I started researching happiness and it turns out this is from Sonia. Do you know how to pronounce her last name?

[Mindy Jensen]

Lyubomirsky.

[Carl Jensen]

That's perfect pronunciation. She's a psychology professor from Stanford, I think. So that's very impressive. So I think what she has to say is true. And here is what she has to say. 50% of happiness comes from genetics. Like, you know, some people are just naturally happy. They're smiling all the time. Like Ned Flanders on the Simpsons or Ted Lasso. Yes, yes. So there's people like that. And that is not me. 40% of happiness comes from within. And this is stuff like gratitude. The perspective you see the world, the filter you see the world. And that is a. There's a lot of genetic stuff to this too, because you have to work at this. The really interesting part is the remaining 10% comes from circumstances. And financial independence is a circumstance. It's a really great circumstance. And it's a circumstance that will allow you to work on happiness.

[Mindy Jensen]

And.

[Carl Jensen]

But that's why just quitting won't make life instantly better for you, as I found out.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, and this is the knob that most people try to turn. They upgrade their house, they upgrade their car, or, you know, insert your favorite material possession here. You need something more and that'll make you happy. And it makes you happy for a minute and then it doesn't anymore. I have a brand new car. It's new to me. It's not brand new. It's super old. I love it. But do I love it as much as when I bought it? No, because it's not new anymore. Chasing that new thing all the time is not really part of a successful financial independence journey. So financial independence is a circumstance. It's a really wonderful circumstance, but you need to figure out how to move the needle on your happiness outside of that circumstance. Because if you are miserable before you reach financial independence or just not happy, you will also be miserable or just not happy after you reach financial independence. So our advice is that money won't make you happy, but while it won't make you happy, you can use it to work on yourself to see what will make you happy. Make a list of things that you enjoy and do them. Maybe you think you're gonna enjoy it, and then do it and you discover, oh, you know what? That wasn't so great. Stop doing it and go find something else to do.

[Carl Jensen]

I'll throw one small caveat into here. Your money to buy me the nice seat on the plane does make me happy.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, I bet it does.

[Carl Jensen]

It's short term happiness, though.

[Mindy Jensen]

I do like that you said your money, so my money is mine until

[Carl Jensen]

I run this podcast. Then things change. Then we'll have to revisit everything.

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay, Carl, point number five, Financial independence might expose other problems. This one's a fun one. Let's give a personal example. Remember when you quit your job and I hadn't quit my job? So actually, let's back up a little bit. I was a stay at home mom for the first eight years of our oldest daughter's life. And then I went back to work at Biggerpockets when our youngest daughter was five. She was just going into kindergarten and we decided that I would go back to work. I loved my job at the same time that Carl was kind of like, I don't really love my job. I want to quit. We. We had reached financial independence, the number that we had set for ourselves, but we had one more year syndrome. We discovered after both of us working for a year that our family didn't really know how to function when both of us worked. And because we had reached our financial independence number, both of us didn't need to work anymore. I still wanted to work. I mean, you gotta pay for healthcare. And we had two small children. You can't not have healthcare when you have two small kids. So we made the decision that he would leave his job and I would stay at mine. Now that you had all this newfound time on your hands, you discovered all these little things that should be done. When I was a stay at home mom, I did the cooking and the cleaning because he was working outside the home and he would, whoa, this needs to be cleaned. Yeah, well, you don't have a job, you can clean it. Do you remember that?

[Carl Jensen]

Sort of.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. Oh, sort of. Oh, look at this revisionist history coming up again. And we just needed to adjust what was going on in our household. And it's hard to make these changes, but you have to work on these changes. You have to work on adjusting them. When you both have a full time job, there's a lot of conversations you just don't have time to have. So financial independence will expose other problems. You need to have open communication with your partner well in advance of both of you leaving your job so that you can figure out how your new dynamic is going to be.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah. To be clear, this is all on me. If you couldn't tell by that.

[Mindy Jensen]

Oh, no, no, no. Some of it was me too.

[Carl Jensen]

I really appreciate your cooking. If it was up to me, we would have Spaghettios every night. And when we went out for a fancy meal, it would be Taco Bell

[Mindy Jensen]

on down, which is why I do all the cooking. I also really like it.

[Carl Jensen]

She's a wonderful cook. I am extremely

[Mindy Jensen]

limited, no, limited in his abilities. And I love it. So that's a, that's a dynamic that we have discovered. I like doing it and I'm good at it. He doesn't like doing it and he's not as good at it.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah. But time to get serious for a moment. Like us. I had a full time job. It was a very demanding job. Sometimes I'd work 60 or 80 hours a week and at the same time we're doing a house flip. We have two kids, I'm writing on a blog, and then all of a sudden a lot of that goes away. A job and being super busy can bury a lot of other problems. And then once you have this vacuum of time, you start paying attention to it and it's up to you to figure out how to Adjust. I can actually think of two people. I'm not going to name names that I think they probably got divorced because of financial independence. All of a sudden these people were around each other all the time and they realized that they weren't as compatible as they thought they were. So, you know. Yeah, this is. Tread very carefully here. I think we've adapted pretty well. Not perfectly, but it's a big adjustment. Right. I think quitting your job is equivalent to. It's not as big as getting married or having kids or a job change, but it's up there. It's a huge, huge change. And don't underestimate the work you have to do to adjust successfully.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, it, it requires a lot of communication and I think the communication should start at least a year before you quit your job. Yeah, we navigated it. We had some bumps in the road, but we came out on top on the other side. So, yeah, tread carefully is a really good bit of advice. Now I want to know who these people are that got divorced.

[Carl Jensen]

Thank you for not throwing me out. And if you continue doing the podcast, I will take over more of the cooking. I'm going to go to the grocery store, stock up on Spaghettios right after this. I think they're like five for $4 right now.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. No.

[Carl Jensen]

Okay.

[Mindy Jensen]

Point number six, fire. Life could be lonely. Fire's great, right?

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah.

[Mindy Jensen]

I mean, if fire wasn't great, you would not be listening to this right now. You wouldn't be pursuing it. You know that not trading so much of your time for your job in the future is going to enhance your life. But many don't handle it well. Male traditional age retirees lead the league in suicide. And loneliness is a key factor. Loneliness and social isolation, loss of friends from work. Like you build your whole life around the people that you're spending the majority of your waking hours with, and then all of a sudden you're not there anymore. You're the only one. Especially if you are an early retiree. You might be the only person in your friend group who, who doesn't work anymore. And what are you going to do? How are you going to socialize? We build our lives around our careers. I do think that early retirees can be better equipped to handle the change, but at the same time, they have a bigger change. Because when you're 65 and retiring, there's other 65 year old retirees. When you're 40 and retiring, there's not that many. One thing you could do is move to Longmont again. I'm A real estate agent in Longmonth. You want to come live in Filandia? Come on over.

[Carl Jensen]

I have a real quick story about all this. I remember my first day off. I had quit work on a Thursday and on Friday I went walking around Roosevelt park, which is this big park near us. And I'm looking around and who do I see? There were two groups of people there. There was younger ladies pushing baby strollers and senior citizens walking around the park. I'm like, I'm introverted enough. I'm certainly not going to. These people are not in my, my Venn diagram of like I'm not going to talk to anyone to be clear. But especially I have little in common with either of these. The old people would probably be suspicious and the ladies would probably call the police. So I'm like wow, what happens now? How do I. I don't have my co workers anymore to talk to for eight hours a day. It is a change but thanks to the Internet, as you said, there's so many resources to build a nice healthy social life. Post fi.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, start now. Start right now. Even if you're nowhere near financial independence and make some FI friends, the Facebook group Choose FI has a whole lot of local groups. In fact they've got. You don't even have to go on Facebook to find them. Go to choose fi.comlocal and you will see what do they have like 500 and something local groups around the globe. If they don't have one near you, email Brad bradoosefi.com and he'll help you set one up. It's a great low cost or no cost way to meet local people who are interested in financial independence. You can start to make friends and by the time you are able to retire you already have people to hang out with. There's other FI groups available. There's meetup.com has financial independence groups that host meetups locally. 5 Friends Connect is a traveling group. They travel around the country. I'm sorry. They travel around the world doing different fun things with other people who are also in the same path. Why am I drawing a blank at all these FI things? Oh Campfi, there's a campfi.org there's a. There's probably a Campfi location near you or close travelable distance to you. That's a great place to connect with people in all parts of the spectrum of financial independence.

[Carl Jensen]

Oh, there's economy too and it's so interesting to go to these things because. I'll back up a second real quick. When I first Discovered financial independence. I thought I would dip into, in and out of this community. I dip into it, learn how to become financial independent, get my money straight, and then retire. And then I would move on with my life. Instead, it took over our lives. Like, what did we just get back from a river cruise in Europe with 38 FI people, 5 friends, travel.com. shout out to them. Shout out to Kristen. At first I thought, what's the matter with me? I'm only spending time with these retired people. But it makes perfect sense because the people who have jobs can't take a three week trip to Europe or do some of these other things. And additionally, you're probably going to have a lot more in common. Money informs a lot of the other values in life. So it's worth engaging with the FI community. Even if you're an introvert like me who is terrified of people. The FI people are less scary.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. I will say that a large portion of the people in the FI community call themselves introverts, but they have a lot of conversations, they have a lot of. They get energy from the people in the community because we have so much in common. All right, Carl, point number seven. You have to reinvent yourself. And probably more than once.

[Carl Jensen]

God. I'm going to do some quick math, which is probably a mistake, but let's see, 16 times 7, that is 102. No, 112. And that is about. Did I do just 7 times 16? Yeah, 112, I think. Never do math live. That's. That's a mistake.

[Mindy Jensen]

First rule of podcasting.

[Carl Jensen]

So 112 hours is how many hours you are awake. If you sleep eight hours a night. If you have a job, your job takes up over a third of those and maybe more. If you've got a commute or a demanding job, all of a sudden you've got this vacuum to fill. You're no longer Dr. Whatever or software developer, whatever you are, whatever you decide to make yourself be. And this takes work. This is another thing. I screwed up just about every mistake in financial independence I made after I retired. Like, I thought life would just come to me and there'd be all these amusing things to do and people would come out of the woodwork and life would be glorious. And it turns out none of those things happen on their own. You have to make them happen. So you need to reinvent yourself. You have to figure out what you're going to do. Post fi, establish a routine. We could probably have a whole show just on this because it's very simple and Complex all at the same time.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. Uh, let's. Let's look at an example. When you were working, you were the frugal guy. You didn't go out to lunch with all of your co workers. You brought your lunch. Um, maybe they even called you cheap. Once you retire early, you, all of a sudden, you're the oh, my goodness, how did you do it guy. Uh, no one can connect the dots on how you were able to retire early. If this isn't the person you want to be known as, change your narrative. How do you want to be spending your days? Have a plan before you leave your job so that you are forcing the narrative. I am the fit guy now. Or you are the fit guy now because you spend your days working out in the morning. You go to the gym every single day. You are the hiking every Thursday guy. You are the, yeah, I can help you move that couch on Friday morning guy. Because you don't have a job. And you have become very helpful. You become very fit. You're also the always there at school drop off and pickup guy.

[Carl Jensen]

I have a real interesting story about that that connects to it. So great segue. I didn't even tell you to say that. My point with this story is do not listen to what anyone else tells you or thinks about you. The only thing that matters is you. So I retired, and I was. I think I was talking to a friend who also was tuned into this community, but I'm like, hey, I got to go. I'm going to go pick my kids up from school. He's like, don't you feel a little weird doing that? I'm like, no, I have no idea what you're talking about. Is it the driveline? Like, why would I feel weird about that? He's like, well, how many other guys are there? I'm like, I don't know. It's probably like five out of a hundred. It's mostly moms, I guess. He's like, that doesn't make you feel weird? I'm like, no, why would it? And I thought that was the weirdest thing to be judged on or even think about. I mean, what do you think about this? It was like, one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had in my life. Like, even if they did care, why would I care?

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay, that's hilarious. Because when I was the mom dropping kids off at school, I would notice the dads because there are so few dads. And my first thought was, oh, I wonder what they do for a job that they can drop off their kids. What a sexist thing for me to think, wow, yeah.

[Carl Jensen]

Maybe it was you who made this comment. Although I. You didn't make it, but you were thinking it, apparently.

[Mindy Jensen]

But I mean, It's. It's probably 5 out of 100 kids are getting picked up by their dads, and everybody else is getting picked up by their moms. I know one kid that got picked up by his dad because his dad worked at the building around the corner. So he'd pick him up, bring him to the building, and then the babysitter would come and pick them up from his work because Driveline's awful.

[Carl Jensen]

Driveline is awful.

[Mindy Jensen]

Driveline is awful. Yeah. So you are going to have to reinvent yourself. Start thinking what you want to be known as.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah.

[Mindy Jensen]

And then work towards that. All right, Carl, number eight.

[Carl Jensen]

Yes. Jobs are underrated. I'll bet you didn't see this one coming.

[Mindy Jensen]

No.

[Carl Jensen]

So there's a phrase I heard. I think it might have even been Warren Buffett who said this. And it went something like, people love the cages that bind them, or something like that. And what he meant by that is a lot of people just like being told what to do. They like having a routine. They like having a structure in their life, and that's imposed on them by other people. And a job gives you all that. It gives you a lot of what you need. It gives you a routine, gives you money, it gives you friends, it gives you purpose. And once you retire, you're going to have to come up with all those things yourself. Or IOPA does that. Like you're staying at this job not for the money, because you enjoy doing it. Correct.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yes. I love talking about money and finance and real estate and. And this job gives me a platform to do that. You know, if you are looking for somebody to tell you what to do, I'm happy to tell you what to do.

[Carl Jensen]

Well, no surprise there. So maybe your wife, if you're wi fi like me and your wife is bossy, like some wives are assertive. Your wife will assert your routine. But I think this is probably why, like, I think a people like Pete is very independently mine. Pete, Mr. Money Mustache, and a lot of other fi people don't enjoy routine and they don't like being told what to do. And I think that might be the number one thing that makes people both go for fi and then become successful post fi.

[Mindy Jensen]

Because they do whatever they want.

[Carl Jensen]

Yes. They don't want a job. They don't want that cage around them.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. So our advice is in Retirement, you're going to have to figure out how you are going to spend. Spend your days. Your boss isn't going to make you be there at 8 o' clock in the morning so you can sleep in if that's what you want to do, if that is what your body allows you to do, mine doesn't. If you want to stay up late, you can. If you want to go on a hike every single day, you can. But start thinking about how you want to fill your time. What, what I like to say is what you do on the weekends is what you're going to be doing in retirement. So on the weekends, if you get up at the, the crack of noon and you watch TV for eight hours a day and then you go to bed, that's probably how a lot of your retirement is going to be. If that's not what you actually want to do, start thinking about things that you can fill your time with.

[Carl Jensen]

Oh, and now we come to the big number nine, the very big one. Before we get to this, I'm going to ask you a question and then I'll lead into this. Why do people like travel? Especially in the. I think everyone loves travel, but especially in the financial independence community. It's such a. I don't know if value is the right word, but it's such a thing that many of us like to do. Why do people enjoy it so much or why do they strive for it?

[Mindy Jensen]

Is it the freedom to just see new things and experience new places?

[Carl Jensen]

I don't think it's quite the freedom. I'm looking for a different word here.

[Mindy Jensen]

I don't know.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah, so I think it's the novelty of it. You're doing something new, you're going to a place you haven't done before. I think we've got this term hedonic treadmill. And number nine is you never step off that hedonic treadmill. What I was getting at with that is what lights you up today and what is interesting for you now eventually gets boring. And that's why people like to travel. There's challenges involved, there might be a language difference, you're in a new place, you have to figure out how to navigate the transportation, housing, all that stuff. So I think travel allows people to get off that hedonic treadmill. And this is yet another one of the big challenges of fi. Like, my life is completely different than when I retired, like nine years ago. It's completely different from what I was doing a year ago because we've got this house project going On. But I love it. I'll back up and say one more thing and then let you talk. When I was young, I remember having these performance interviews at a job, and the person would be like, where do you want to see yourself? Where do you see yourself in five years and 10 years? And I kind of like those questions because I liked planning and I liked knowing exactly what my life would be like. And since then, I've completely changed course, done a 180. Because my favorite part of life now is I have no idea what we're going to be doing in two years, especially after the youngest baby bird leaves a nest. It's so neat that those chapters are completely blank. We might be living in Portugal, we might be living here. Who knows what we're going to be doing? And I really like that. I think doing the same thing would be so boring. I can't imagine being in a cube for four decades. I mean, I was happy with it at the time. Then you remove yourself from that cage and you see what life's like on the other side.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. You don't miss the cage. I think that's a good point. The newness of everything. You're constantly looking for something new, and the world is huge, and you can find a lot of new things. How many countries have we not been to? What are there, like, 280 countries or 180 countries?

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah, we still have a lot of.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, we've been to, like, seven. Have we been even to seven?

[Carl Jensen]

Yes, we have. Does it. Does the country we live in count?

[Mindy Jensen]

Yes, it's a country we've visited. We have visited the U.S. but not all of the U.S. i still have two states.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah. And this kind of number nine here goes back to our reinventing yourself. You're going to have to do that frequently. You can't just do it once after you quit work. You're going to have to do that as soon as your hobby or whatever you decided to do post retirement gets boring.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah. But you do need to work kind of consistently to define and redefine what it is that you love.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah. So my favorite part of Phi life is I have a routine. I work out every morning. I do a little bit of writing. So I've got the routine in my life. But then I have novelty, too. So it's nice, at least for us, for me, to have these touchstones, the things you do every day. But then there's variety in every day, too. Like when I go for a walk, I try to do it a little bit differently every time. And try to notice new things. I think we should do the bonus one too.

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay.

[Carl Jensen]

This is one of my favorite ones.

[Mindy Jensen]

What's the bonus?

[Carl Jensen]

The bonus one is. And I'll back up a second. I'll tell a little story too. When I discovered financial independence, I had a bad day at work. I discovered the Mr. Money Mustache blog. And I thought, this is like the best thing I've ever read. Like, this is amazing. I could quit my job. We were already savers. We weren't quite ready yet, but. But it just blew my mind. So the first thing I thought is, I'm going to tell all my friends and family about this and they're going to think the exact same as me. They're going to think this is the best thing ever. And they're going to do the same thing. And then it'll be great. We'll all go on vacations or ride our mountain bikes together. And then you tell other people, how do they react?

[Mindy Jensen]

Usually, no, I don't want to do that. I'm young. I don't want to save my money. I want to save, Spend it while I. While I'm young enough to enjoy it. And it's kind of shocking how many people are opposed to this. Not just, oh, that's not for me. They're like adamantly opposed to the idea of saving a little bit more money now so that you can retire early.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah. Or my favorite response. Do you have a terminal disease? Is there something you're not telling me?

[Mindy Jensen]

No.

[Carl Jensen]

You don't have to work.

[Mindy Jensen]

No, I like my job. That's another good one. I really like my job. Great, then work there because you choose to, not because you have to.

[Carl Jensen]

So this bonus point, no one will understand financial independence. Some might, but they're very few and far between. I'm trying to think. Have we convinced someone?

[Mindy Jensen]

No. I mean, on this podcast maybe.

[Carl Jensen]

Yeah, we might have convinced random strangers on the Internet. But there's that saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. They were already set. They just needed someone to give them the message, like Pete, Mr. Money Mustache did for me. So, yeah, and I've realized the best thing to do is just lead by example, like have a great life. And then if people are curious, inquisitive, they'll ask you about it. And then you can talk non stop for eight hours about the loveliness of fire life.

[Mindy Jensen]

And then they get a restraining order.

[Carl Jensen]

That's only happened a couple times and I think they've expired. I'm good now. I'm in a better place.

[Mindy Jensen]

Well Carl, thank you so much for stepping into Phil Scott's shoes while he is gone. You don't need to come back. It'll be my show. Still not yours.

[Carl Jensen]

For now.

[Mindy Jensen]

For now. For always. If you, my darling listener would like more financial independence information, head on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com to sign up for our newsletter, which I send out once a week on Wednesdays. We also have free resources and calculators that Scott has been featured, furiously typing up and templates to help you accelerate your fi journey. That's biggerpocketsmoney.com that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. I am Mindy Jensen. He is Carl Jensen. Thank you so much for stepping in again and we will see you later.

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[Mindy Jensen]

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