How to Save 50% of Your Income Without Sacrificing Your Lifestyle

Summary

BiggerPockets Money Podcast

Episode: How to Save 50% of Your Income Without Sacrificing Your Lifestyle

Date: September 12, 2025
Hosts: Mindy Jensen & Scott Trench

---

Episode Overview

In this episode, Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench discuss practical strategies to achieve a high savings rate—up to 50%—without drastically lowering your quality of life. Building on ideas from their previous conversation with Mr. Money Mustache, they share personal stories, specific tactics, mindsets, and critical levers that enable financial independence (FI). The hosts emphasize the significant role your savings rate plays, how to grow it over time, and how creative approaches and entrepreneurial thinking can transform your financial journey.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

1. The Importance of Savings Rate Over Income

• Savings rate, not income, is the real driver of early retirement.
• Many people believe they need to earn more to become financially independent, but the secret is often how much you save relative to what you earn.

Notable Quote:

"The truth is, early retirement isn't about how much you earn. It's about how much you save. The math is very simple.” — Mindy Jensen [00:00]

2. Personal Savings Journeys

• Scott's trajectory:
  • Started earning $48,000/year, saving about 30% out of the gate, moved to 50-55% after increasing income and house hacking.
• Mindy’s family:
  • Both she and her husband prioritized maxing retirement contributions and investing after-tax, hitting a 50–75% savings rate by living off one income and increasing savings as their earnings grew.

Notable Quote:

“That's the big key is if income expands while expenses stay relatively flat, or better yet, if they can go down... then your savings rate's gonna naturally shoot up.” — Scott Trench [03:40]

Timestamps:

• Scott’s path: [01:20]
• Mindy’s path: [01:57]

3. Making Incremental Changes

• No jump from 0% straight to 50%; start small and ramp up.
• Track your numbers and make changes over time. Phrasing savings goals in multiple ways helps solidify understanding.

Notable Moment:
Mindy reflecting on grasping Scott's “savings rate math” from his book Set for Life—the idea that every year you save 50%, you accumulate not just savings but multiple years' worth of expenses for potential early retirement. [04:41]

4. Double Benefit of Saving

• High savings rates both increase your invested assets and reduce the total you need to retire (the “FI number”).
• The ability to keep expenses flat as income rises multiplies the impact.

Notable Quote:

“Savings rate is a double whammy. It's a double benefit to your financial independence goals.” — Scott Trench [06:36]

5. Optionality Through Frugality

• Discussed “lumpiness” in wealth journeys—having a high savings rate creates room to take professional risks (e.g., pursue equity, side gigs).
• People often underestimate the options they unlock by keeping expenses low.

6. Frugal Tactics & Creative Cost Reduction

• Example from Mrs. Frugalwoods: Take a “frugality sprint” by eliminating everything, then adding back what you miss creatively (e.g., volunteering at a yoga studio for free classes). [14:25]
• Leverage community knowledge—ask others for frugal hacks and creative solutions.

Memorable Tip:

“The immense creativity of this entire community is overwhelming. Ask in any Facebook group... you will be overwhelmed with the responses.” — Mindy Jensen [15:45]

7. Cut Out Big Ticket Items First

• Scott recommends focusing on eliminating or reducing largest expenses:
  • Housing: House hacking or living with roommates
  • Transportation: Buying used, reliable cars
  • Beware “status traps”: Acquiring luxury items can lead to ongoing lifestyle inflation.

Notable Story:

• The “Millionaire Next Door” anecdote—businessman rejects a Rolls Royce because it’s incongruent with his desired frugal identity. [16:24]

8. The Time Component & Life Stages

• Savings rate is easiest to ramp up early (pre-family) or later (empty nester) but trickiest for young families locked into current homes/cars.
• Advice: If you can’t make dramatic changes now, avoid lifestyle upgrades and let your savings rate improve gradually. [20:00]

Notable Quote:

“The trade off. You do have to make a change. You can't continue leading the life that you have been leading with your, you know, 0 to 10% savings rate and retire in 10 years.” — Mindy Jensen [21:13]

9. If Cutting Back Isn’t Possible, Focus on Income

• If you’re unwilling or unable to cut expenses, the lever left is income (side hustles, entrepreneurship, investing, W2 promotions).
• Encouragement to avoid “spreadsheet-only,” ultra-conservative approaches: Try real estate, small businesses, or entrepreneurial paths.

Notable Quotes:

“At some point, take your shot. At some point, start a business, buy a rental or live and flip or do something that could possibly move your financial position forward faster…” — Scott Trench [27:38]

“Odds are... if you’re the kind of person who’s listening to a finance podcast... eventually you have a great chance of being successful in business.” — Scott Trench [32:13]

10. Entrepreneurial Stories & Creative Hustles

• Mindy shares examples:
  • Starting simple business like cleaning Airbnbs or washing windows can be lucrative, scalable, and accessible.
  • Garbage can cleaning and hanging Christmas lights are viable microbusinesses.

Memorable Segment:

• The “garbage can cleaning” anecdote—local window-washing businesses and Christmas light installers as examples of starting small and scaling up [29:43–31:38].

---

Memorable Quotes & Moments (with Timestamps)

• “Savings rate is a double whammy. It's a double benefit to your financial independence goals.” — Scott [06:36]
• “Cutting expenses for most people is not going to be difficult. You have to want it.” — Mindy [14:25]
• “If you just stay put in the house, in the current vehicle... and don't allow the next big purchases to come into your life, then you will naturally grow out of this problem over time.” — Scott [20:00]
• “We're just introducing this concept. Hey, your savings rate is the most important factor to your financial journey. So how bad do you want it, how much do you want to give up and how much do you want to keep in?” — Mindy [21:13]
• “There's a million ideas out there, one of them is going to work… Odds are, and I'll bet, and I think you should bet…you're probably going to reach fire faster...” — Scott [32:13]

---

Key Timestamps for Major Segments

• [01:20] Scott’s initial savings rate and career approach
• [03:40] Impact of growing income and flat expenses on savings rate
• [04:41] Savings rate explained through multiple lenses
• [14:25] “Frugality sprint” — Mrs. Frugalwoods’ creative expense-cutting
• [16:24] Scott: Focus on big expenses first (housing, cars, “status items”)
• [20:00] The challenge of ramping savings with family/locked-in lifestyle
• [21:13] Trade-offs and personal experience with rapid FI
• [27:38] Increasing income as an alternative to cutting costs
• [29:43+] Small business creation stories (Airbnb cleaning, window washing, garbage can cleaning)

---

Community & Resources

• Action Step: Share creative cost-cutting or business ideas in the BiggerPockets Money Facebook group [16:06, 33:48].
• Encourage listeners: Don’t fall into analysis paralysis—incremental change, creativity, and risk-taking all play roles in financial independence.

---

Tone & Closing

The episode is candid, supportive, and practical, welcoming all listeners regardless of their current situation. Mindy and Scott maintain a friendly, slightly playful tone, balancing “tough love” with inspirational stories and encouragement to think outside the box.

Final Words:
“Take care, teddy bear.” — Mindy Jensen [34:19]

---

Episode Takeaways

• Saving 50% or more is possible for many by combining gradual expense reductions with creative living choices and, if needed, boosting income through entrepreneurship.
• Your personal “FI math” is under your control: make savings rate, not income or investment returns, your primary lever.
• Leverage not just spreadsheets, but community creativity, actionable hacks, and willingness to pivot.
• Start now, make incremental changes, and let time do its work.

---

For more on practical financial independence, visit the BiggerPockets Money Facebook Community.

Transcript

[Mindy Jensen]

On our last episode, we had Mr. Money Mustache on to talk about the shockingly simple math to early retirement. The truth is, early retirement isn't about how much you earn. It's about how much you save. The math is very simple. So why isn't everyone doing this? Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me, as always, is my has a high savings rate co host Scott Trench.

[Scott Trench]

Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here. Here as always, with my 401. Okay. Co host Mindy Jensen. I don't know if that works, but we'll. We'll. We'll go with it. We've talked about this thing often that people desperately want to achieve financial independence, but they don't want to make any changes to their current lifestyle. And I think that there's a little bit of tough love and some good news on either side of that that we'll be able to highlight in this episode. I think that you have to voluntarily reduce your current lifestyle in order to achieve financial independence. But on the other side of financial independence, you may be able to spend much more than the entirety of your current income, even adjusting for inflation, and still have plenty left over. And so that's the silver lining.

[Mindy Jensen]

Scott, I am excited to talk about this episode and kind of wrap up what we learned from Pete. Let's start off with our actual savings rates on our journey to fi. What was yours?

[Scott Trench]

When I first started my career, I was making $48,000 a year, and. And I was probably at a 30% savings rate out the gate that was, you know, three months in. I have a Corolla or whatever, and there's just like a limit at that point based on how I set things up to how much I could possibly save. By the end of year two, my savings rate was closer to 50 to 55%. And that was because I purchased a house hack property and I switched jobs and was able to increase that income from about 48,000 to 60,000, $65,000 annualized after that first year. It's between those two things. So how about yours when you first started out?

[Mindy Jensen]

So we have always been savers. And I distinctly remember, like, one of the earliest jobs, I remember actually doing a big savings. I had discovered that at the time, the contribution limits to the 401k was $15,000, and I happened to be making a whopping $30,000 a year. So I went into my HR department and I said, can I put 100% of my salary into my 4, starting in January. And she's like, well, no, you wouldn't get a paycheck then. And I'm like, well, be that as it may, can I do it? Is that allowed? And she was like, well, you could do it, but you won't get a paycheck. I'm married. My husband makes enough to cover us. Like, it's okay, I want to do. It's three times. She came back and checked with me three separate times. So at one point I had a 50% savings rate, but that was just my salary. And then Carl was also working. He was also contributing to his 401k, but he made a lot more money than I did. I was making 30 and I think he was making about 100. At that time, our savings rate was 50% of my salary and probably another 50% of Carl's salary because we were living off of half of his. He was contributing some to the 401k. And then when my salary came back in, then we would live off my salary and he would supercharge his 401k savings. But then we were also doing after tax brokerage investing, so. So I would say at a minimum our Savings rate was 50%, but it went up probably. I don't think we actually tracked this, but I think at one point we were probably at 75% because Carl started making more money and then we started spending less.

[Scott Trench]

That's the big key is if income expands while expenses stay relatively flat, or better yet, if they can go down like in your situation, then your savings rate's gonna naturally shoot up. And that's a problem I think a lot of people have when they begin their fire journey is many people, I think, discover fire when they're making somewhere close to a median, maybe a little bit above a median income. And they don't realize that if you're on the fire journey and you're diligent at work, it is almost certain that over a 10 year career, if you're starting at an entry level, you're going to advance into something that is not entry level by the end of that career and that's going to result in a huge income or much, much greater income than when you start. This is actually a frustration in the fire community because everyone's like, I want to hear the story about the person who makes $50,000 a year and achieved fire. Well, we have a lot of people who started out making $50,000 a year. We have very few people who finish the play as a multimillionaire close to retirement who are still making $50,000. And that's the challenge with computing your savings rate. It's very hard to get to those really high savings rates at a low income. It's very easy at a high income if you keep your expenses flat.

[Mindy Jensen]

Scott, I think that a lot of people are going to be pushing back, especially people who are newer to the FI community are going to be pushing back on this. Well, I couldn't save 50% of my income, okay? I don't think it's reasonable to assume or to expect that somebody goes from a 0% savings rate to a 50% savings rate. But you can go from 0 to 5 or 0 to 10 probably pretty easily. And you can go from 10 to 12 or 10 to 15 or 10 to 20. You can incrementally ramp this up. And the reason that we are sharing this information is because there's still a lot of people who don't understand that your savings rate is so important to your overall ability to reach financial independence. You said this so succinctly and so well in your book Set for Life, talking about how if I can't remember the name of the person you use, let's call him Scott. If Scott earns $100,000 a year and spends $100,000 a year, he has nothing left over to save. But if Scott spends $75,000, he's saving 25%. He's also saving one third of his spend. So every year he works, he is accumulating another third of a year of spending. If he drops that down to spending $50,000 every year he works, he's generating two years of spend. I think there are some people, I know there are some people because I am this person. You need things phrased in, in multiple different ways before it clicks. And when I read that in your book, I was like, oh, of course. If you are making 100 and spending 50, then year one, you have generated year one and two expenses. But it didn't occur to me to think that way. That's why I love you so much, Scott. You think differently than I do.

[Scott Trench]

That's a logical extension of the work that Mr. Money Mustache did in his article. Right. Like, all I'm doing is taking that point and condensing it down to the savings rate component. Right? Savings rate is a double whammy. It's a double benefit to your financial independence goals. And I think the way I phrase it in the book Mindy, is a little bit more extreme example of, let's say you're making $100,000 a year and you save 10%. That means you spend $90,000 and you're going to accumulate 10 a year. Nine years to accumulate one year of cash. That would support your financial position. Let's say you spend $50,000 on that $100,000 year income. Now, in one year, you're going to accumulate $50,000. And for simplicity, I'm assuming after tax. So not only are you accumulating another $40,000, but you're accumulating your freedom nine times faster because you've committed a year of cash in one in the first example. So it's so exponential. And the benefits don't stop there, because when the next opportunity comes along at work, for example, you can say, you know what? I don't need more cash. I really don't. I'm already saving plenty. I really like equity. Or I'd like a bigger bonus potential. Or, boss, could you give me a chance to sell some something on the side? And maybe that doesn't work if you're working at, you know, Walmart in a massive corporation, but that does work if you're working at a small business. Absolutely. Someone will be interested in that. That's what I did, right? Yes. That's what my savings rate is. Right. Well, after that first year, it becomes really hard to compute my savings rate because I got an equity position in Biggerpockets, and I didn't ask Josh a single time for a raise. I never asked our private equity sponsors for a raise. And the entire time that I was working at Biggerpockets, I just consistently said I'd love more opportunities to sell and I'd love more equity when those times come. I didn't even ask for specific amounts. Everybody knew the whole time, the whole way along that I wanted more upside. And I could do that because I spent such a small percentage of my income. And if you don't think that that mindset greatly benefited me over the long term, you're crazy. Right. I could have gotten a higher base salary and missed out on huge amounts of potential at my job. That would have been a huge mistake. Now, is that always going to win? No. And did it always win? No. But it was a consistent, over a long period of time, much better way to approach things. And so, yeah, like, what's the savings? Right. Well, when biggerpocket sold in 2018, for examp example, to our first private equity sponsor, well, that, that I had an enormous savings rate. Right. Like 80, 90%, because I made multiple years of my annual salary in one go. That's an enormous contribution to my my financial position. There's a little bit of lumpiness that will begin coming into your financial position if you have the opportunity or set of circumstances that could even somewhat mirror a journey with a startup or a small business.

[Mindy Jensen]

For example, we need to take a quick ad break, but more when we're back.

[Scott Trench]

Finances can be messy and confusing.

[Virginia (Scott's wife, ad voice)]

And it's a lot of work for many of us just to get to the starting point in personal finance, which is understanding what you've got and where your money is going. That's why Virginia my wife and I use Monarch Money as our personal financial command center for our bank accounts, our investment portfolio, and as our budgeting and spending tracker. Monarch automates everything. It's all linked and every transaction is automatically categorized into buckets of spending. In just a few minutes a month, I have a complete picture of where every dollar is being spent and I get a real time update of my net worth whenever I open the app. I could not be more thrilled to be partnering with Monarch Money, my favorite net worth tracker and spending Tracker here at BiggerPockets Money. I've recommended them for years, ever since Mint.com shut down. Now, however, I'm excited to announce that BiggerPockets Money listeners get 50% off their first year with Monarch Money. Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money, the app I personally use to manage my finances. Use the code [e-mail] in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first [e-mail] with the code Pockets.

[Ad voice / Guest voice]

When it's cold in the New York area, we always want to go somewhere warm. Last time we stayed at an incredible Airbnb in Florida. We walked to restaurants and the beach. It was great. While on this trip, I thought maybe someone can enjoy our home while we're away too. Have you thought about hosting on Airbnb like I have now? It's easier than ever. With the co host network you can hire a high quality local co host to take care of your guests and do the work for you. Co hosts can manage reservations, message guests and more. While you could earn a little extra cash, find a co [e-mail] host.

[Mindy Jensen]

When did making plans get this complicated? It's time to streamline with WhatsApp, the secure messaging app that brings the whole group together. Use polls to settle dinner plans, send event invites and pin messages so no one forgets. Mom 60th and never miss meme or milestone all Protected with end to end encryption. It's time for WhatsApp message privately with everyone. Learn [e-mail].

[Scott Trench]

All right, let's jump back in.

[Mindy Jensen]

I love that you're thinking about it in a different way. Most people just want to be shown the money. So I love that you're looking at different equity plays and that benefits you greatly down the road.

[Scott Trench]

So.

[Mindy Jensen]

So your savings rate allows you to take advantage of these alternative ideas. If you were making a hundred and spending a hundred, you would still have the ability, but you probably wouldn't think about that because money is not your primary focus. Like saving money is not your primary focus. Another aspect of a higher savings rate is a lower total by number needed. So if you're spending a hundred thousand dollars and you want to retire early, you're going to need $2.5 million amassed before you can retire. If you're spending 50, you need half of that 1.25 million in retirement money. And if you're spending 25, you need a quarter of that. Just like a quarter of the spend, you need a quarter of that. It's a lot easier to amass a $500,000 net worth than it is to amass a $2.5 million net worth. Math doesn't lie.

[Scott Trench]

And it's all a spectrum here, right? Like very few people in the bigger pockets money community want to spend 25,000 dol year for their entire life. I'm not necessarily saying that that's what you ought to do. I'm saying that, however, that you should attempt to spend $25,000 a year, ridiculously small amount of money, maybe adjust it for inflation to $35,000. Yeah, that's where I was spending about 25,000 10 years ago now when I was getting started on this journey. But you start there, you start there, and you do that for a little bit and you get happy with it and find contentment there. Your asset base begins to swell and then you can ease off, right? And once you get on the other side of the capitalism snowball, you'll find that the average return, especially if you're using safe withdrawal rates of like a 4% to compute your portfolio, the average return is almost always higher than that, which is the reason why we use the 4% rule. And so you'll begin to see your portfolio expand and expand and you can begin spending more on there. That's why Leanfire is such a good that 1 million mark or so, maybe even a little less, is such a good milestone for many. It's freeing because then you can begin thinking about other things. Like for example, I think you'd be silly to turn down a really good risk adjusted bet on equity in your company and instead opt for a higher base salary if you're approaching those numbers, because that could massively multiply. It has potential upside for you and is often comes with with additional benefits or better overall risk adjusted compensation. There's only trade offs here, but the game gets so much easier if you're able to keep your expenses low relative to your income or your asset base, because you can take more and more and more chances. It's not just like a little bit more optionality, it's exponentially more optionality.

[Mindy Jensen]

Cutting expenses for most people is not going to be difficult. You have to want it. I mean, this isn't going to be you're living the exact same life that you have been and now you're just able to save more. You're going to have to change your life. And one of the best examples that I can remember us ever talking to on the show is Mrs. Frugal Woods. Way back on episode 10 she said, and I'm paraphrasing, but it's a great episode, she said, you know, we discovered this concept, concept of Phi and we decided we wanted to get there as fast as we could. So we cut out every expense. We could absolutely everything for a month. And then we decided, you know what? That month wasn't our favorite. We miss these three things, but we cut out, you know, these hundred things. We missed these three things. So they found a way to inexpensively add them back in. Specifically, she liked to take yoga classes. But yoga classes are $20 a pop. Or they were when she was taking them. And she discovered that if she would arrive yoga studio early and check people in, she could get a free class. And she's like, well, I'm going to do that. I want to keep the yoga, but I don't want to pay $20 a class for it. There's all sorts of examples of creative ways to be frugal, creative ways to reduce your expenses so that you can get down to a 10% savings rate this month or a 20% savings rate increase just a little bit. Look for creative ways and ask in the Facebook communities, asking your whatever frugal groups you're in, whatever fire groups you're in, the immense creativity of this entire community is overwhelming. Ask in any Facebook group. Ask in the bigger Pockets money Facebook group, what are ways that you have found to reduce your expenses? And you will be overwhelmed with the responses. In fact, we're going to post that in our Facebook group. So hop on over to facebook.com/groups/bpmoney to share your favorite frugal tips and your favorite tips for reducing your expenses.

[Scott Trench]

I'll share mine here, which is you always like to start with all these examples of things to cut out, whatever, but I always start from the opposite spectrum of like what are the absolute largest line items in your, in your budget and how do you eliminate them? And like the most obvious one is housing house hacking or living with a roommate. You know, are you going to live with a roommate or house hack and then blow $2,000 in a month on eating out or you know, entertainment or whatever? No way that one choice of house hacking is going to have so many downstream effects on the overall way you use your spending. You're going to go, go home every night and remember, oh yeah, I'm doing this in order to become financially free and I have so much. I have a huge surplus of course, but like I'm not going to go and just blow it. Now on this other thing, if you sell that fancy pickup truck and buy a Corolla that's eight years old, you're not going to have to go and get it washed on a regular basis, right? You're not going to be you spending a lot of money to maintain the thing. There's a great example in the millionaire next door about this business owner who was gifted a very successful business owner deca millionaire. You know, in 1990s his friends gave him a Rolls Royce like business associates who he'd made a lot of money and he said I don't want it. He just gave it back because his hobby of throwing bloody fish that he was that he would catch at a local lake into the back seat of his, you know, 15 year old pickup was incongruent with driving Rolls Royce, right? As, as was the image that he wanted to project in a general sense to his employees. They didn't want to show up to the facility in his uniform and a Rolls Royce. And I think that's a great mentality to adopt in these early years. Especially a fire, it's probably a good one for life. But it's so important to assume that identity for yourself in these early years to get things going right. And that applies to so many other areas, right? If you're not going to wear a super expensive watch, for example, and then not have a nice shirt to go with it or not these other things in many cases so the accumulation of even one of these status artifacts, even as a gift, can actually be a curse. Right? There's examples again in Millionaire Next Door. Parents will buy their children homes and that seems like such a good gift. But now the children who are not in the same income tax bracket as the other their neighbors, yeah, they don't have a mortgage payment, but they have property taxes. They have the schools that the other neighbors are sending them to, the hobbies that the people that are surrounded. So it's putting yourself in that environment that's conducive to saving money. And it becomes easier and easier over time. One thing that I think you were mentioning here is the time component as well. This is not an overnight exercise, right? You're not going to go from spending a lot to spending a little in a month. You can cut out some things and do a cold turkey reset, but to really dragically cut your spending over a long period of time, you've got to make these changes one after the other in the biggest areas of your life over time and get comfortable with them and let them roc ride for a while. And then again, the optionality to live a middle or upper middle class or even fat fire lifestyle may come back to you in spades one day from your asset base if you are able to start the journey by cutting them in a semi permanent way in the big areas.

[Mindy Jensen]

I hear what you're saying, Scott. I'm going to push back a little bit and say that it might be difficult for somebody to embrace the concept of house hacking, especially someone who has children who has discovered this idea and decided that they want to pursue financial independence. But maybe they bought the house five years ago and they've got the low interest rate. Their house doesn't necessarily work for house hacking with their current situation. So if that's you, I hear you yelling at the radio saying, scott, I can't do that. There's other things that you can do and every dollar that you take out of your expenses can go into your investments.

[Scott Trench]

And I think there, there are things you can do, but one of the biggest realities there is just don't upgrade from here. If you just stay put in the house, in the current vehicle that you drive, pay them off, whatever, and don't allow the next big purchases to come into your life, then you will naturally grow out of this problem over time. I wish there were a faster option, but you know, I do think you will not be able to dramatically ramp your savings rate from, you know, 20% to 60% if you're in that situation, it'll creep up year by year as you make the conscious choice year by year to forego these large additional expenses that could come in, like the remodel for the house or the next car or whatever. It's harder for someone who's in this, you know, that, that middle phase of life. It's so much easier for like the 23 year old, the 25 year old to who's single to make these decisions to get that snowball moving. Or I would also argue the 50 year old empty nester than it is for that person who is, you know, just starting or about to start a family, for example, and doesn't want to make those trade offs. Because I would argue that the nice house maybe is more important than fire for a lot of people in that stage of life. Maybe, maybe, maybe the aggressive pursuit of fire inside of seven years isn't worth that trade off for a lot of folks.

[Mindy Jensen]

That's a good comment, Scott. The trade off. You do have to make a change. You can't continue leading the life that you have been leading with your, you know, 0 to 10% savings rate and retire in 10 years. That's just not going to happen unless the stock market just takes off. And I don't predict that like I'm some prognostic indicator. Right. Anyway, I think that you have to determine how bad do you want it, how much do you want to give up and how much do you want to keep in? Carl and I got to our position of financial independence in seven years, six years. It's been so long I can't even remember, which makes me feel bad. But we got there rather quickly. But we gave up a lot. We gave up more than I would be willing to give up. If I were to go back and do it again, I would have had a longer timeline and a more enjoyable life. So this isn't something that you have to make a decision with right now. We're just introducing this concept. Hey, your savings rate is the most important factor to your financial journey. So how bad do you want it, how much do you want to give up and how much do you want to keep in?

[Ad voice / Guest voice]

Yep.

[Scott Trench]

All right. After a final ad break, we're going to talk about the levers you can pull if you don't want to decrease your spending but still want to increase your savings rate. And we're going to talk about Mindy's trash cans. I promise they're related.

[Mindy Jensen]

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed when it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's Sponsored Jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works. Sponsored Jobs on indeed get 45% more applications than non sponsored posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you. 23 people just got hired through Indeed Worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed and listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at indeed.com biggerpocket just go to indeed.com biggerpockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com biggerpockets terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need.

[Virginia (Scott's wife, ad voice)]

Finances can be messy and confusing, and it's a lot of work for many of us just to get to the starting point in personal finance, which is understanding what you've got and where your money is going. That's why Virginia, my wife and I use Monarch Money as our personal financial command center for our bank accounts, our investment portfolio, and as our budgeting and spending tracker. Monarch automates everything. It's all linked and every transaction is automatically categorized into buckets of spending. In just a few minutes a month, I have a complete picture of where every dollar is being spent and I get a real time update of my net worth whenever I open the app. I could not be more thrilled to be partnering with Monarch Money, my favorite net worth tracker and spending Tracker here at BiggerPockets Money. I recommended them for years, ever since Mint.com shut down. Now, however, I'm excited to announce that BiggerPockets Money listeners get 50% off their first year with Monarch Money. Get control of your overall finances with Monarch Money, the app I personally use to manage my finances chances. Use the code [e-mail] in your browser for half off your first year. That's 50% off your first [e-mail] with the code Pockets.

[Ad voice / Guest voice]

Traveling from the New York area, we wanted to visit a destination that was warm and we chose to stay at an Airbnb in Florida. While we were there, we went to the beach, played putt putt and ate tons of crab at local restaurants, all within walking distance. We really had the best time and we really loved having our own private space. This trip got me wondering about hosting our own home with Airbnb the next time we're away. Maybe guests can enjoy our home while we're gone. Hosting may seem a little overwhelming, but it's really easier than ever. A co host can do the hosting for you with the co host network. You can hire a local co host to take care of your guests while you're away. They can help create your listing, manage reservations, message guests, and they can even provide on site site support. Find a co [e-mail] host ever feel.

[Mindy Jensen]

Like managing your business finances is a full time job on top of your actual full time job? Well, you can find some of that lost time with Found. Found is a business banking platform that helps you effortlessly track expenses, manage invoices and prepare for taxes. You can even set aside money for different business goals and control spending with different virtual cards. I've saved so much money because Found helps me identify tax write offs. And I've saved so much time that I can now devote to chasing new opportunities and doing the work that enjoy the best part about Found is that everything is in one place. No more juggling multiple apps or losing track of receipts. Found helps you stay organized and rest easy knowing everything is handled. Oh and by the way, other small businesses are loving Found too. This Found user said Found is going to save me so much headache. It makes everything so much easier. Expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even. And found has 30,000 5 star reviews just like this. Open a found account at found.com money found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Banking services are provided by Piermont bank member fdic. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. So you're about to make a trade based on a friend's text, but which you do you listen to is it we could buy a house in Tulum, get optioning those options. We could lose everything. Or let's do a little research, get your head in the trade and make the investment decision that's right for you. Learn [e-mail] TradeSmart thanks for sticking with us, Scott. Let's say that we've got somebody listening who says, you know what, I just don't want to reduce my spending. What would you suggest to them? What levers would you suggest they pull so that they don't have to decrease their spending?

[Scott Trench]

Well then of course it's going to be income, right? I mean this is someone who is by definition not retired so they don't have a lot of assets. And then so how do you increase income? And I think that a good portion of the fire community can be a little bit myopic on this topic, right? They're going to be saying, hey, we both work w two jobs and we're going to work them for the next 20 years. Here's our spreadsheet. And retire them. And it's like, why, why is that your plan, right? Like, you spend half of one spouse's income, right? At some point, take your shot. At some point, start a business, buy a rental or live and flip or do something that could possibly move your financial position forward faster so you don't spend 20 years grinding it out to fire per your spreadsheet map math. That's the answer, right? And I think that that's the problem with like, I look at a lot of these, like folks who seemingly have everything, right? They know they're spending, they know their income. They both work, for example, in a married household and they spend half of the half of their income they're saving at an aggressive rate. And it's like, guys like the challenge here is nothing can work that can go beyond that, right? All that can happen is your promotions come at a slightly faster pace. Why doesn't one of you start that business and take that shot? And if they do that for five or seven years, surely you're going to hit a couple winners or your odds are going to be fairly successful on that front. Now, this is different if somebody's three or five years away from fire, right? Then just finish your plan and get it done. But it's those longer timelines that say, I'm saving 15% of my income. What do I do here? Well, get your savings rate up. But once you get that, don't just chug it out for that length of time. Do something that could work in there and that is typically going to be again, a real estate or a business or a side hustle play. And again, it's, it's. People need to think in these terms of, yeah, you're going to fail, but you're also going to succeed if you keep doing these things. And you don't have to plow hundreds of thousands of dollars into these things. You can plow a few thousand dollars or a few months of time into an idea. Either scale it or exit it. Go again and again and again. So that's my answer to that. What do you think?

[Mindy Jensen]

I really like that answer. The create a business. I can hear people yelling at the Radio and Scott, I don't know what kind of business to create. There's nothing that comes to mind. I'm not an entrepreneur. I want to tell two stories. The first story is about all the Airbnb owners out there who are desperate to find somebody to clean their property. It's not a glamorous job, but it's a steady job. I bet if there's one Airbnb in your town, there's 20 Airbnbs in your town. And every single one of them has a hard time finding people to clean. The second one is. Is far more lucrative. That's. That's an easier to start. All you need is cleaning supplies. Easier to start. Not as lucrative. The second one. I have a friend whose son graduated from high school last year. College was not his path. He decided that he was going to start a window washing business and he did. And he bought like a used truck and he does window washing around our town in like, I think there's like a three or four town radius. He is so busy in just about a year that he has hired multiple of his friends. Every couple of months he goes and buys a new truck and hires two more people to go do this again. He's hired somebody full time just to answer phones and do scheduling, and he is booked solid. Maybe that doesn't make your heart sing cleaning windows, but did you catch the part about where he's hiring people to do this work with him? Him? You don't have to be in the trenches doing the work. You just have to be able to have the work done. So there's a lot of business opportunities, a lot of business creation opportunities if you are just a little bit creative. Scott, we had someone on one of Dan Chic's kids who cleans garbage cans and then morphed into hanging Christmas lights. Do you remember that story?

[Scott Trench]

Yep.

[Mindy Jensen]

That was an amazing story.

[Scott Trench]

I saw somebody cleaning garbage. Garbage cans on our street the other day. I was like, that's all that?

[Mindy Jensen]

I had to clean my own garbage can because there was a bunch of gross things in there. I would have gladly hired that out.

[Scott Trench]

I'll hire somebody before I do that.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yeah, it was disgusting. I don't know who cleans garbage cans in my area. Hey, if you're in Longmont and you clean garbage cans, email mindy biggerpocketsmoney.com you can come clean my cans. Can I please rephrase that? Hey, if you're in Longmont and you clean garbage cans, even email [e-mail] and you can come and clean my garbage cans.

[Scott Trench]

Moving on past the garbage can business, though, I just think it's, it's this concept of like, there's a million ideas out there, one of them is going to work. You know, you know you're adding way more value than what you're getting compensated for if you're an employee. That's the point. You not get the job if you're not adding more value than you cost. That doesn't continue over time. So you know, that's there, that's fine. Lots of people work a job. I've done that for years. That the whole time, I still do that. There's nothing wrong with that. But know that the odds, if you're the kind of person who's listening to a finance podcast regularly, consuming books and information, bettering yourself, eventually you have a great chance of being successful in business. And odds are, and I'll bet, and I think you should bet that if one of the two of you, the more maybe entrepreneurial inclined, find one in a couple, for example, is starting a business or attempting that on a regular basis, you're probably going to reach fire faster and you're probably going to have a much higher fire number faster. You can be thinking about chubby or fat fire potentially within a decade or two if you're just getting started, than if you just both crunch out a very formulaic approach to it. And that's my big criticism of a big portion of the fire community, is it's all numbers in a spreadsheet with a very prescriptive save this, max out the retirement accounts, march it out for 15 years. I don't think it has to be that way for most folks in here. And I think, I think you can have at least a crack at a better outcome, but it's not going to show up in your spreadsheet. So I can't compute the odds for you.

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay, Scott, I think we gave our listeners yet more things to contemplate. Shall we wrap up?

[Scott Trench]

Let's do it.

[Mindy Jensen]

Okay. This was a super fun conversation. I really appreciate you, Scott. I am encouraging all of our listeners to hop on over to the BiggerPockets Money Facebook group, facebook.com group bpmoney and join in the conversation about ways to reduce your expenses, creative ways to reduce your expenses, and have you started a business? Share what kind of business you started and how much it costs you to get started, the ups and downs of it. I would love to hear those stories too.

[Scott Trench]

Bendy's trash. It's another man's treasure.

[Mindy Jensen]

Yes. And if you clean garbage cans in Longmont, email me. All right, that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen. Saying, take care, teddy bear. Trip planner by Expedia, you were made to outdo your holiday, your hammocking, and your pooling. We were made to help organize the competition. Expedia made to travel.