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- [00:00]
Scott Trench
Mindy and I are so grateful for the following sponsors who make BiggerPockets money possible 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. I 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 pockets@monarch.com to get your first year half off at just $50. That's 50% off your first year@monarch.com 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 it's time to refresh your yard during Spring Backyard Days at the Home Depot. Low prices guaranteed on propane grills starting at $179 like the next grill 3 burner gas grill or get $50 off a select Weber Spirit Grill and bring big flavor to your backyard. Then set the scene with Hampton Bay string lights that bring it all together. Shop Spring backyard days for seven days at the Home Depot now through May 6th. Exclusion supplies to homedebo.com Pricematch for details.
- [02:20]
Kim Hunter Borst
Foreign.
- [02:26]
Mindy Jensen
Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Today is our last episode of our New York City series. This has been so much fun to talk to so many people in the FI community who have reached financial independence, all while living in a very expensive city and proving Scott wrong that you don't have to live in a low cost of living area in order to reach fi. Kim Hunter Borst didn't start her financial independence journey in New York City, but it's where everything changed. Changed. After moving from the Philippines and building a high earning life with her husband, they found themselves $69,000 in debt thanks to lifestyle inflation. Instead of letting New York City costs derail them, they got intentional. They cut out expenses, leveraged a rent stabilized apartment, and maxed out retirement accounts. Her story proves you do not need to leave a high cost of living city in order to reach financial independence. You just need a plan. Let's get into it. Kim Hunter Borst, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today.
- [03:25]
Kim Hunter Borst
I'm excited to be here especially for this topic.
- [03:28]
Mindy Jensen
Yeah, let's jump right into your story. You were earning high incomes. You and her husband were earning high incomes, but you were still $69,000 in debt. What was the moment that made you think, oh, I got to make a change?
- [03:42]
Kim Hunter Borst
So we were, as you said, high earners. And as high earners, we often think, oh, I'll always make that kind of money. I can make it again next year is not a big deal. And we were a blended family. And as stepmom, I thought it was my job to bring the fun, so I bought a lot of it. And then by the time, I think six or seven years into our marriage, we recognized that we were both working in recession proof industries. I was in health insurance and he was in health care. We recognized it was no longer recession proof. So I was in the process of laying off half of my team when I thought, hey, I might be laid off as well. And if I were, what type of position would that put us in? And we were living at that time not even paycheck to paycheck. It was the day before the next paycheck that we were going, oh my gosh, we're, we're in trouble.
- [04:30]
Mindy Jensen
What are some of the changes that you made? Because getting to a place of paycheck to paycheck is pretty easy, but pulling back is, can be really difficult, especially if you're the fun one.
- [04:40]
Kim Hunter Borst
It's difficult to pull back when you're the fun, but it's Also difficult to pull back when you are a high earner because you tend to move in circles of friends that are also high earners and they're spending freely. So when you make the decision to make a pivot and say, oh, we can't go to brunch every Sunday, or no, I'm sorry, we can't go out tonight for a bite to eat, no matter how great that happy hour is, it's still money spent. It was a matter of making those concessions and decisions to say, what are the things that are important to us. Our oldest was heading off the college that next year and we were just like, do we want them to end up in a whole bunch of debt? Like we're in debt or do we sit down and the conversation with them? And that's what we did. We sat down as a family. We talked about where we were with relations to retirement and the income that we had coming in and how we weren't being very smart with it. So we started looking at things critically like eating out, buying groceries and still eating out, throwing those groceries out and spending money on things like cell phone services and being able to jump to the next phone. Just crazy things that we were spending money on that didn't make sense. We were paying for cable, home phone and Internet. Who uses a home phone anymore? No one. The only person that was calling us on their home phone was my mother in law. So we just went through and started cutting out things that were unnecessary or things that are needs but they're wrapped in wants. Like we needed cell phones, but did we need the cell phones that we had? We needed a cell phone plan, but did we need the one that we had? So we just started thinking differently. For example, we had AT&T and we were paying an exorbitant amount of money for AT&T. Nothing against AT&T. We then switched to Cricket Wireless, which was still owned by AT&T runs on the same network, but we were paying a flat $100 for a family of five versus $300 for a family of three. So those are some of the changes we made.
- [06:31]
Mindy Jensen
Was it hard to get buy in from your kids?
- [06:33]
Kim Hunter Borst
I think it was easier for our youngest. Our oldest was going off to college at the time. And so we made a deal with them. We said to them, while we are digging out of debt, we're going to need you guys to focus on school and during the summ, we need you guys to work and your summer earnings are your pocket money and you'll be responsible for your books when you go to college. And that was the deal. And we said to them, while we're digging out of debt, we don't expect you guys to go into an exorbitant amount of debt. We are challenging you to look at student loans as the last possible option. We found scholarships through this organization called Scoli. We also went to both of our employers and found out that his employer would pay a third of our kids tuition, the rest of it. We challenged them, we said, listen, if you can come out of school, school, the four year program with $24,000 worth of student loan debt or less, we'll pay it all off for you. But if you come out of school with 24,050 cents, we won't pay a dime. And because we gave them that challenge, they met the challenge. So knock on wood, we were able to dig our way out of debt in 18 months. When the plan was two years. And after we dug our way out of debt, we started throwing all the money that we were paying towards debt, towards our retirement. We started investing. And Mindy, I mentioned this earlier, I'm not sure if I mentioned it, but I think I mentioned it before that as a blended family, we got married late in life. I was 42, he was 47. So by the time we got married, I had all my credit cards, he had all his credit cards. So we didn't have one American Express, we had three, we didn't have one capital one, we had two. Blending a family, blending finances. You end up with all of this stuff that you find you don't need. By going through with a fine tooth comb and eliminating things, we were able to recognize that we were paying like one American Express bill. We were paying $6 a day in interest. Ridiculousness. Oh, wow.
- [08:23]
Mindy Jensen
So where were you living at the time that you decided to get your financial self in order?
- [08:28]
Kim Hunter Borst
We were living in Manhattan. So we live in Manhattan now. My husband peripherally was in a rent stabilized apartment. He moved here I think when. So when I met my husband, he was raising two children and the youngest, our daughter was I think born six months after he moved into this apartment. So it is rent stabilized. It is a pre war building in New York City. We pay half of what our neighbors pay to live in New York City. But it afforded us the opportunity to be able to cut back and live in a manner that was, I guess, a bit more savvy, where we weren't spending every dollar. But I think initially not paying so much to live in New York, we overspent in every other category. So we were like, oh, we don't need three or four thousand dollars for rent, let's spend that money having fun. And. And then when we recognize we overdid it on the fund, we had to just dial it back.
- [09:23]
Scott Trench
Walk us through what your housing costs are in this I think rent stabilized apartment.
- [09:28]
Kim Hunter Borst
So I have to be honest. We live in a rent stabilized apartment, but we also co own a lake house. So do you want the cost of just living here in New York City or the cost of all housing?
- [09:38]
Scott Trench
I would love to get an overview of your whole housing, how you think about your housing costs in a broad sense.
- [09:43]
Kim Hunter Borst
Our apartment in New York City costs, it just went up to seventeen hundred and twenty dollars a month. Which I guess folks in New York that's a lot of money but in New York City that's pennies. And so our rent is 1720 bucks a month. Our utilities, it comes with heat and hot water. So we just pay for electricity and that runs between $75 to 125amonth. It depends on if it's summer and we are running AC versus not. We pay for Internet, which is $60 a month for streaming and I think that's it for housing costs. And then the lake house. Our portion of that we taxes, mortgage, insurance expenses. We don't pay for sanitation or water because there is a well and we pay for propane. We put a thousand dollars a month towards that. That's for all expenses plus any emergencies that might come up.
- [10:38]
Mindy Jensen
How far away is the lake house?
- [10:39]
Kim Hunter Borst
Two hours. We own a car, we drive up there, we pay for parking, we bought a used car, we put miles on the car. But we have a great time. We go up to the lake maybe one weekend out of the month. Initially we were going more frequently during the pandemic, but now we go a little less often because we're both retired and we travel a lot.
- [10:58]
Mindy Jensen
When you started this, we, we were talking about being $69,000 in debt. How old were you and how long until you retired?
- [11:05]
Kim Hunter Borst
It was 2016 when we recognized we were in debt. We got married in 2009 and I was 42. So I was like 48. 49 when we started digging out of debt. And my husband at the time was seven years older than me. So I was 48, he was like 55. And I have to say, being high earners, when you start looking at your finances, you recognize you're not starting from ground zero. So I was fortunate enough to have put money in my 401k. I didn't understand what I was putting money into. As a young 21 year old. A friend of mine just happened to say put 3% in to get the match. Just put 3% in every year, increase it. Well, I put the 3% in and by the time my husband and I looked up, I was still only putting in the bare minimum. I think I got up to like 6% by the time we got married. But at that time I've been working in my career for quite some time. So I had about $219,000 in my 401k and he had about $17,000 in his 403b. But other than that we were bringing in about $334,000 a year between income and bonuses. But we were spending every dime of it and then some. But by the time we found out about five and got ourselves together, got our act together, we recognized we didn't need all that money to live on and we scaled down.
- [12:26]
Scott Trench
How many years into your careers were you each at the point where you're making this 335,000?
- [12:31]
Kim Hunter Borst
I think I was 20 some odd years into my career by the time I started figuring out finances. Way too late.
- [12:39]
Mindy Jensen
I should say not too late because you were able to retire exactly at any age. So it wasn't too late. But you could have, I mean we could talk all that the coulda woulda should us, but that's not going to help anybody, you know, oh, everybody could have started saving earlier, everybody could have saved more. Everybody could have, you know, done whatever. How does rent stabilization work? Because that seems like a huge boost for your five journey. I mean we can't discount the high income, but again, if you're spending every single dollar that comes in, then your income, like it doesn't matter how much you're making.
- [13:12]
Kim Hunter Borst
This is true rent stabilization. I don't know how it works everywhere else in the country, but in New York City there is this organization that oversees, I think it's nys, H, C R I think are there initials for it? I can look that up and give it to you. But it's usually a building that was built prior to 1974 is usually six plus units. And then you can reach out to this organization and find out. Your landlord should tell you if the apartment is re stabilized, but they don't always do so. But you can go online and confirm whether or not your unit is rent stabilized. And rent stability just means that they are not able to raise the rent as often and not as high as they would like annually. There Are regulations in place that says all rent stabilized apartments will see a 2% increase this year or 3% increase, and sometimes it's no increase at all. But that's regulated by the state.
- [14:03]
Mindy Jensen
Oh, by the state. Okay.
- [14:05]
Kim Hunter Borst
Each state has different rules for rent stabilization.
- [14:08]
Scott Trench
This seems very clear cut to me. Right? Yes, you had $69,000 in debt, but you brought in so much income, $335,000 is still probably in the top 25% for sure of Manhattan area for a household in terms of household income. So that's a wonderful income. And that's. Those are opportunities that are real in Manhattan for many people. Not everyone, but meant for many people, especially after, you know, a few decades in the workforce and ramping one's skill set. But the real cheat code here is the rent stabilized apartment. How long have you or your husband been in this apartment?
- [14:39]
Kim Hunter Borst
My husband moved here when my daughter was born, so she is now 27. So he moved in right before she was born and he received the rent stabilization. I don't know what he was paying to live here at that time, but by the time we got married in 2009, our rent was $1,200. When we moved in, I was the person saying, I can't live in an apartment. I've always lived in a home. I own my own house. What is this? This is ridiculous. And I kept saying we needed to move and he kept saying, this is the only house my kids have ever known. So I would prefer that we stay here at least for a little while while they adjust. They live through a divorce, they're adjusting to a blended family, let's not uproot them. So I listened. And after a couple of years, especially when we started looking at ways in which to better manage our money, I recognized having this rent stabilized apartment afforded us an opportunity to live on half of our income. So While we made 334 by the time we retired, we were only living off of half of that. And we were also being generous without giving because I think if you are fortunate enough to earn any type of income, if you have the ability to give back, then you should look at doing so. So we were carving out say 10% of our income to donate each year.
- [15:57]
Scott Trench
Walk me through what's, what's market rent for this apartment. How many square feet? What kind of place are we talking about here?
- [16:03]
Kim Hunter Borst
So we have a two bedroom, one bath, hardwood floors, 12 foot ceilings. We live in a building that has an elevator, which is huge in New York. We have laundry in the building. It's in the basement. It's not in our unit, but some units, some apartments have been flipped and they now have dishwashers and washing machines and dryers in their units. And those units can run about 30 $500 a month where we're about half of that.
- [16:31]
Mindy Jensen
Anybody who is moving to New York City could find themselves a rent stabilized property, right?
- [16:38]
Kim Hunter Borst
Absolutely. I had a friend move in down the street from me. He moved in maybe six years ago and his was a rent stabilized apartment. He had the choice between choosing a rent stabilized apartment which was maybe $20 higher than an unstabilized apartment, and he chose the rent stabilized apartment because he knew that the rent wouldn't go up as much.
- [16:57]
Mindy Jensen
That's why I asked how does rent stabilization work? Because I don't live in New York City and I don't live in a rent stabilized. I didn't know how that worked. I was wondering if maybe because your husband moved in so long ago, got a great rate, but then anybody else wouldn't get that great rate. But this applies to everybody.
- [17:14]
Kim Hunter Borst
Yes, the waiver stabilization works. If we were to leave this apartment. Most people with rent stabilized apartments never leave them. But if we were to leave this apartment right now, we're paying seventeen hundred and twenty dollars. Whoever moves in, they can only increase the rent, say 3%. They can't bring it up to regular market rate.
- [17:32]
Scott Trench
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- [18:27]
Kim Hunter Borst
Stock your fridge now. How about a creamy mocha frappuccino drink? Or a sweet vanilla smooth caramel maybe? Or white chocolate moza? Whichever you choose, delicious coffee awaits Find Starbucks Frappuccino drinks wherever you buy your groceries.
- [18:40]
Mindy Jensen
Chronic migraine 15 or more headache days a month, each lasting four hours or more, can make me feel like a spectator in my own life. Botox Anabotulinum toxin a prevents headaches in
- [18:50]
Kim Hunter Borst
adults with chronic migraine. It's not for those with 14 or
- [18:53]
Mindy Jensen
fewer headache days a month.
- [18:54]
Kim Hunter Borst
It's the number one prescribed branded chronic
- [18:56]
Scott Trench
migraine preventive treatment prescription Botox is injected by your doctor. Dr. Effects of Botox may spread hours to weeks after injection causing serious symptoms. Alert your doctor right away as difficulty swallowing, speaking, breathing, eye problems or muscle weakness can be signs of a life threatening condition. Patients with these conditions before injection are at highest risk. Side effects may include allergic reactions, neck and injection site pain, fatigue and headache. Allergic reactions can include rash, welts, asthma symptoms and dizziness. Don't receive Botox if there's a skin infection. Tell your doctor your medical history, muscle or nerve conditions including als, Lou Gehrig's disease, Myasthenia gravis or Lambert Eaton syndrome, and medications including Botulinum toxins as these may increase the risk of serious side effects.
- [19:34]
Kim Hunter Borst
Why wait? Ask your doctor.
- [19:36]
Mindy Jensen
Visit botoxchronicmigraine.com or call 1-844botox to learn more. So from a tenant standpoint, New York City just got a whole lot better. You're looking for pre1974 properties with six or more units. I think in New York City you can find that pretty easily.
- [19:53]
Kim Hunter Borst
Not all of them are rent stabilized, but a lot of them are. Some of them received the rent stabilization simply for tax abatement reasons and it ran out or expired after a certain period of time. But for the most part, the rent stabilized apartments are either still available or the building has gone co op. But they can't turn those apartments into co ops without offering the tenant that's there with the rent stabilized contract the opportunity to buy it below market value.
- [20:20]
Mindy Jensen
This sounds like a really big cheat code that it's probably available in other cities, but we're not talking about other cities. But it's not available to me in Longmont. If I were to go out and rent a two bedroom one bath apartment in Longmont, I'm paying more than your seventeen hundred dollars a month.
- [20:38]
Kim Hunter Borst
There's also I have neighbors so they're maybe paying more money than I'm paying, but they're sharing with roommates. Most people that move to New York City are not moving to New York City thinking oh, I can afford the rent by myself Or I can afford to buy something. Because in New York City, if you buy an apartment, my, my mother in law, for example, owns an apartment in Manhattan near Lincoln center and she pays not only to own the apartment, but she also pays maintenance. Most buildings in New York City, even if you buy them outright, you still have monthly maintenance, which is the equivalent of rent or mortgage. So most folks, when they move to New York, they know it's high cost of living and they're going to split that cost with someone. So my husband and I contribute. So you can look at it as if we're two roommates sharing an apartment. Although we're cozy roommates, we're trying to
- [21:26]
Scott Trench
understand what are the relative advantages and disadvantages of fire in New York City. And it seems like I can summarize what I've learned so far. I want to hear, I want to hear your full take on this. But it seems like it's in this case, rent stabilization and high income, relatively high income opportunities. And those two things are a huge boost to your fire journey. Is that what else? It sounds like you're going to react and have more.
- [21:50]
Kim Hunter Borst
I look at my neighbors in my building. So we have a mixture of folks. We have some folks that are appointed judges and others are attorneys. But then we have some that are working in the creative space, they are on Broadway or they're traveling or they work for the symphony and they're not working in high incomes. But there are things that New York City affords you that most cities don't. So for example, we own a car, and we only own the car because we have a lake house and we drive up. But if you live in New York City, the subway system is so affordable. And most people that live in New York City and work in New York City, their companies offer them a commuter discount. That commuter program, you're paying less than 1% of your income on transportation. Where most people outside of New York City have to own a car and have to pay for auto insurance and gas and the car note and all of those other things. New York City also affords you opportunities that are like, I guess, mind blowing to most people that come into the city For Broadway shows. We have things like the Lincoln Center Theater Group or the Roundabout Theater Club where you pay 70 bucks a year to be a part of it. And they give you 60 to 70% off on Broadway tickets seven or eight times a year. You get a list that says these are all the shows you can choose from. There are just so many opportunities here. The museums are free if you're a New York resident, most people don't realize that. They think, oh, I have to pay to go to the museums. We don't. It's just afforded to us. And there's so many things that are happening here that are low cost or no cost. I can go out and eat dinner for as low as $8 in New York City or $200. It's up to me what I choose. It is affordable. Most of the units, they prefer roommates or prefer to have folks move in. And most of the landlords are renting spaces out to multiple people at one time. So instead of one lease, like my husband and I are on one lease. But most of them, because this is a two bedroom unit, they would have two separate leases. In this unit, one person would rent one space and the other one will rent the other. And if one person moves out, they can just find a replacement for that one person.
- [23:54]
Scott Trench
Kim, what do you spend on an annual basis?
- [23:56]
Kim Hunter Borst
We just had this conversation yesterday. It was so funny. My husband was concerned, but we spend about 125,000. But that's because we are recently retired and we're in our go go years. So we baked in an amount of money for our fun and travel and having a good time. But normally without that extra money, extra spend, our numbers are somewhere about $75,000 a year.
- [24:20]
Scott Trench
And what is the typical day look like on that spend? Or like what, what is it like? What are some of the highlights, you know, from a Tuesday and. Or some of these big trips?
- [24:28]
Kim Hunter Borst
So for example, today I spent about three hours in the gym. I'm a member of Lifetime Gym. I don't know if you know about it, but it's a bit expensive and I don't care because it allows me to pamper myself. After a hard workout, I can go get in a cryo chair, I can go in the steam room, I can swim a bit. So a typical day is my husband is a coffee snob, so he has a roaster that roasts his beans within the last five days. Otherwise it's an issue. So I get up, he makes his great coffee, we chat about our day. He may go out and go for a walk. He also plays instruments so he may spend some time playing his upright bass. I head to the gym, I give myself a routine of allowing myself no less than three hours, three to four times a week at the gym so I can pamper myself. Then we come back, we decide, are we cooking dinner tonight or are we going to grab something out? Do we have Plans with friends. It can be a number of things. We can go to a show, it varies from day to day. We're never bored. And then I have my five friends and our community, our neighbors. We have a community garden that we plant together, we have mixers together. We have one neighbor that just recently moved into a assisted living space. So a couple of neighbors got together yesterday and went to visit her, bought her brownies. It's just a typical day. I don't think it's different than anyone else in any other city. Gym, bike to eat dinner, spending time with friends and family, catching a show, traveling. Like I'm going on a Fintox cruise this coming weekend and we'll travel for a week doing that.
- [26:02]
Mindy Jensen
You're gonna have such a good time.
- [26:03]
Scott Trench
I know that sounds like a wonderful, wonderful day to day life filled with lots of adventure and fun and healthy and wholesome pursuits. So congratulations on what you've achieved and you know, I thank you for sharing all of the wonderful perspective on fire in New York City. Not just the two obvious advantages of income and relatively low housing costs in your situation specifically. So really, really fascinating. Deep dive. Thank you so much.
- [26:27]
Kim Hunter Borst
Yeah. And most people I think, think once you retire, you have to leave New York City, but you don't.
- [26:32]
Mindy Jensen
Now if you got a rent stabilized apartment for seventeen hundred dollars a month. Yeah, I mean when I think of New York City having never lived there, I think that rent, I mean, when you say three or four thousand dollars, I'm thinking, I thought it was more. I did. I was on the High Line and I was walking and I saw an ad that said, oh, here's this. And the pictures were beautiful. They're like $10,000 a month. And I thought, oh, is that what rent is like in New York City?
- [26:58]
Kim Hunter Borst
No, it, it depends. In my neighborhood we are rent stabilized. But I have a neighbor that lives in a duplicate apartment to me that's right next door. And they're, they've been here for some time, so they're not paying 3, $300, they're paying like 28. But right across the street there's a building where a two bedroom apartment is like $7,000. It depends on the building and the amenities. But that building that has the $7,000, they have a rooftop terrace, they have a gym, they have all these amen. People are paying 4, 5, 6, $7,000 rent in new York. They're not paying for all these other things that most people pay for because it's all built in.
- [27:37]
Mindy Jensen
Okay, but still, like, I don't know. I just. I can't swallow $7,000 a month for rent.
- [27:43]
Kim Hunter Borst
I can either. But you know what? In New York City, we have several fire groups. There is the New York City fire group. There's Choose Fi. They're the Bogle heads. There's Irish Journey. And we never have a mixer where there's. Or a meetup where there's less than like 45 of us. But there's several hundred people that are part of all of these groups. There's tons of us doing it in New York, and we just do it together.
- [28:05]
Mindy Jensen
I love that. And several of them reached out to us.
- [28:09]
Kim Hunter Borst
I have to say, there is young people you probably spoke with Eli, who was a part of the sparks.
- [28:13]
Mindy Jensen
We did.
- [28:14]
Kim Hunter Borst
Those are the folks that are under 30 trying to figure out how to do this in New York City. And they're thriving and they're not making tons of money either, but they're being smart about it.
- [28:24]
Mindy Jensen
I think that's the underlying theme here, is that you have to be smart about it. Make good choices. Don't choose the $7,000 apartment. I love that your husband was like, hey, can we just stay here for a little bit? And then you see. Yeah. I mean, what if you had moved to the $7,000 apartment? That makes it so much harder to cut your expenses. So start off with as low as possible.
- [28:44]
Kim Hunter Borst
My advice to anyone moving to New York City, regardless of how much money you make, that you move here with a realistic notion of not putting yourself in a position where it, it, it you just recognize it's not a Sex in the City movie. Living here every day. You're not walking down the street in Manolo Blahnik shoes. It's just for everyday life. Find a couple of roommates if you really want to live here and make it happen.
- [29:07]
Mindy Jensen
That's awesome. Kim. I really appreciate you taking the time to share with us how you make FI work in New York City. Thank you very much for your time. Now I know that you have a women's retreat. Is it just for you have a retreat, A FI retreat along the lines of campfire, but different. Please tell us what that's called and when it's happening.
- [29:29]
Kim Hunter Borst
It is called is Women of Fi and it is women centered events. And we run this retreat annually, every April, and we just sold out. But the women that come say that they'd like to bring their partners and their friends that are five, but not really fluent. So now we offer two events a year. We offer a woman centered event in April and then the Fall, we do a coed event and they bring their partners along and and it is wonderful. I recognize the fact that women currently are in control of about $1.8 trillion and with this great wealth transfer that's about to happen, that's going to climb to 3.5 trillion. And if women are not educated and don't have agency over their finances, what are they going to do? Go sit in advisor and let them charge them 1%? No way.
- [30:13]
Mindy Jensen
No. They can use an advisor like domain money.
- [30:16]
Kim Hunter Borst
Exactly. So we are focused on our mission is to make sure the ladies come get plugged in and learn from one another and that they continue their relationships in the fi community far beyond the weekend event. We also co moderate a wewealth collective that was born out of economy. There's about just under 700 women now that are part of that private virtual group on Facebook and we co moderate monthly events where we have folks come in and teaching insight sessions. Jackie Kaminskowski from Catch up the Fight came in and talked about taxes that every fight woman should know about. But it's wonderful so people can follow us women of phi and join us in person or they can join us monthly on the We Love collective.
- [31:00]
Mindy Jensen
Do you have a waiting list just in case somebody can't go to the April event?
- [31:04]
Kim Hunter Borst
Yes, the waiting list should be published shortly. We apologize for that one. It moves so quickly. We sold out in 30 hours. We were blown away.
- [31:13]
Mindy Jensen
That's awesome. Okay, Kim, well, thank you, thank you for starting that group group because I just, I think that there's so much value in in person phi events, so. And now there's one up in the northeast too, so perfect. All right, Kim, again thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it and we'll talk to you soon.
- [31:32]
Kim Hunter Borst
Thank you.
- [31:32]
Scott Trench
Thank you, Kim.
- [31:33]
Mindy Jensen
All right, that was Kim Hunter Borst. And one of my favorite parts about Kim's story is the fact that she had a rent stabilized apartment that allowed her her to really accelerate her journey because she's not worried that rent's going to go up all the time. And that's just not something that's featured in these lower cost of living areas. You could be living in a quote unquote low cost of living area and still be paying more than Kim is for rent. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast and this series of living in a high cost of living area like New York City. We would love to hear from you and hear how you let liked this story. We'd love to hear from you. If you have a similar story, you can email mindy@biggerpocketsmoney.com or scott@biggerpocketsmoney.Com Would you like more financial independence information? Hop on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com and sign up for our newsletter. We also have free resources, templates and calculators to help you accelerate your journey to Phi. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trent I am indeed Jensen saying See you later, navigator.
- [32:38]
Kim Hunter Borst
Some Follow the noise. Bloomberg follows the money because behind every headline is a bottom line, whether it's the funds fueling AI or crypto's trillion dollar swings. There's a money side to every story. And when you see the money side, you understand what others miss. Get the money side of the story. Subscribe now@bloomberg.com.