Transcript
A (0:00)
Hindsight really is 2020. Today, Scott and I are going to look back at how we both would adjust our retirement planning if we had to start all over today, both at our current ages and if we were 23, spoiler we might have done things a little differently. Hello, hello, hello and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always, is my probably would change some things co host Scott Trench.
B (0:29)
Thanks Mindy. I look forward to looking back today here on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast with you. I'm super excited about this episode. This is just a fun kind of what if scenario. I think there will be a couple of what ifs. Like what was our journey like? Will we have changed anything in our journeys and then how would we approach it if we were starting over today? And I think that'll be a fun discussion here. So Mindy, can you give us the quick 60 second overview perhaps of your journey to fire for folks who may not be familiar with it?
A (0:55)
So my husband and I started investing in the late 90s basically because we're saving for retirement. He worked in tech, so our portfolio has always been tech heavy, like up and coming tech heavy stocks. We were also live in flipping. So that's when you move into a house that is unattractive and you make it really beautiful and updated and then you sell it. You have to live there for two of the last five years in order to pay $0 in capital gains taxes. So that is also what we did. I became a real estate agent in 2014 to help us find these properties. I had no intention of being a real est agent but then I started helping friends and then I started helping friends of friends and real estate agents make a lot of money. This is a really great and fun for me way to generate a lot of income. So as Carl left his job we weren't tapping into our retirement funds because I had the real estate agent job that was generating income as well as finding a dream job at this little tiny company called biggerpockets.com so Scott, how did you get to fi?
B (2:01)
I love it. If I would summarize what you just said there about your journey. There's a frugality component for a long time. There's a handiness in working on live in flips, which is a substantial boost in income over and over and over and over again that is very tax advantaged. There's a good, maybe not incredible top 1% household income from Carl's tech career. And then right as he was leaving his job or in that period there was a little bit of overlap, but. But as he left his job, you had the job at Biggerpockets and this agent income that was more than enough to support your family and that allowed this aggressively invested, well positioned tech portfolio to just balloon to way past your fire number. And that's awesome, right? Is that the story in a nutshell.
