Proof You Don't Need a High Salary for FIRE (Teacher Retires at 50)

Summary

Podcast Summary

Podcast: BiggerPockets Money Podcast
Episode: Proof You Don't Need a High Salary for FIRE (Teacher Retires at 50)
Date: November 21, 2025
Host(s): Mindy Jensen (A), Scott Trench (B)
Guest: Andrew Lumen (C), Music Teacher, Private School

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Episode Overview

This episode showcases the inspiring financial independence story of Andrew Lumen, a private school music teacher on the verge of retiring early at age 50—without the benefit of a pension. Hosts Mindy and Scott dig into Andrew’s journey, highlighting the strategies, mindsets, and incremental steps he and his family took to make FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) possible on two teacher salaries in a high cost-of-living area. The episode aims to prove that achieving FIRE isn’t just for high earners or tech workers, but possible even in traditionally lower-paid professions with conscious strategy and real estate savvy.

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Key Discussion Points & Insights

Andrew’s Early Money Mindset

• Discovery of FIRE: Andrew was introduced to the FIRE movement in 2018 after a friend sent him a New York Times article about Vicki Robin. That night, he pored over his tax returns, seeking to understand his financial position and realizing for the first time that early independence could be possible.
  Quote:

  “Somewhere between reading [the article] and later that night, I had all my tax returns spread out … trying to calculate everything I’d ever made… I just thought this was a different way for me to frame the future for myself.” — Andrew, [01:08]

• Career & Values: Andrew and his partner both chose teaching for the time flexibility it gave them and their kids, valuing time over a high income.
  Quote:

  “Even before the financial independence movement took hold of us, we’ve been about time over money. That was a conscious choice… I want to be around for my kids. Teaching was one of those things.” — Andrew, [03:10]

Initial Financial Position

• Starting Point: Nine years ago, Andrew’s family had a net worth of ~$200,000 (mostly in investments) on a household income of ~$50,000, living in a high-cost area near Boston.
  Quote:

  “Teachers don’t make a ton of money. When I started this journey, I was a full-time sub making maybe $40k, and we’d managed to accrue about $200k net worth.” — Andrew, [04:21], [05:37]

• Early Decisions: Small employer matches, buying a house post-2008 crash, and living modestly shaped their foundation.
  • “That was just us plugging away… not knowing what our stuff was invested in, but doing it.” — Andrew, [06:59]

The FIRE Shift: Mindset & Strategy

• Mindset Evolution:
  • Before FIRE: Cautiously frugal, time-oriented, creative pursuits, not focused on maximizing earnings.
  • After FIRE discovery: Became highly intentional, tracking every dollar, seeking incremental improvements, reframed possibilities (“a big switch flipped”).
  • Quote:

    “I felt like we’d crossed a bridge. It became like almost an evangelical moment where you want to tell everybody… this is possible!” — Andrew, [16:15]

• Budgeting & Savings Rate:
  • Aggressively increased savings rate—eventually up to 65%—by cutting expenses and strategically increasing income through real estate.
  • Savings optimization was incremental (“aggregation of marginal gains”): moved money to high-yield accounts, maximized tax-advantaged accounts, and focused on living below means.

    “The deeper we got into the journey, the more it became a reality… at one point, we got up to almost a 65% savings rate, which is huge.” — Andrew, [15:58]

• Living Arrangements & Real Estate:
  • Leveraged creative housing hacks. The family partnered with another teacher couple to buy and fix up their first multi-unit home, living together before splitting profits and buying their own properties.
  • Now live in one unit of a three-unit home, with rental income offsetting mortgage and living costs.

    “No way we would be able to stay in this area as two teachers in a high cost of living area without our multi-unit. It just would not have been possible.” — Andrew, [16:15]

Real Estate: The Unsung FIRE Superpower

• Context:
  • Hosts note that nearly every moderate-income early retiree on the podcast leverages some kind of housing hack or real estate strategy—an approach frequently met with resistance but extremely effective.

    “Sorry YouTube commenters, this is it. This is the largest expense in your life… I don’t know how people in high cost areas can do it without something like this.” — Scott, [20:39]

Practicalities of Living Small & Side Hustles

• Intentional Choices:
  • One-car household, four-day work weeks, part-time teaching, prioritizing family and creative time.
  • Side Hustles: Real estate agent, private music lessons, wedding photography, editing photos—all coordinated to suit his flexible schedule.

    “I’ve worked mostly four days a week… I wanted to have a day to regroup, do things for myself and the family. My partner’s worked part-time most of her life as well.” — Andrew, [22:57] “I made a lot more money per hour as a wedding photographer than as a teacher, without a doubt.” — Andrew, [27:08]

The Practice of Money

• Skill Development Parallels:
  • Andrew likens financial independence to practicing music—a process requiring continuous incremental improvement, not a single event.

    “The practice of music is what we’re trying to get to, and I think the practice of money is what it’s more about. Not everyone who’s wealthy is financially independent, but everyone who practices money well can become financially independent.” — Andrew, [30:14]

Portfolio Construction & Withdrawal Approach

• Investing Approach:
  • Majority in low-cost total stock market index funds (Vanguard), smaller allocations in 403b, Roth IRAs, brokerage, and a well-used HSA (“triple tax advantage”).
  • Rental property is a key part of the portfolio and future cash flow.
• Asset Allocation and Liquidity:
  • About 60-70% stocks, the rest in rental real estate (lightly leveraged, high equity), larger emergency fund for multi-unit repairs.
  • Uses the HSA creatively—pays medical bills out of pocket, allowing the HSA to grow as a supplemental “emergency fund.”

    “I recently added up all of our bills from HSA, and we have almost exactly the same as in our HSA right now. So we could theoretically take all the money out today because we have the bills.” — Andrew, [46:55]

• Withdrawal Rate:
  • Plans a conservative 5% withdrawal rate due to flexibility—can downshift to part-time work, has rental income, or can draw on HSA/Roth IRAs as needed.
• Risk Tolerance:
  • Comfortable remaining 100% allocated to stocks, values simplicity and long-term growth over complicated asset strategies.

    “The only reason I obsess over money is because I don’t want to have to think about it… I’ve learned enough and set the wheels in motion.” — Andrew, [39:23]

• Host’s Portfolio Analysis:
  • Scott highlights that with real estate being “bond-like” in stability, Andrew’s allocation justifies higher equity exposure.

    “The real estate component can be thought of almost like as bond-like in its very lightly leveraged state… that justifies a pretty high concentration in stocks.” — Scott, [44:13]

Life After Financial Independence

• Teaching with Optionality:
  • Having achieved FI, Andrew reflects on whether to continue teaching, possibly at reduced hours, emphasizing that the mindset and process of getting there have brought meaning, not just the arrival.

    “Knowing I have the ability to retire changes my outlook. I’m looking at [teaching] now in a light of, what do I really want out of this?” — Andrew, [35:41]

• Balance Between Now and Later:
  • The family prioritized “living in the now” with meaningful experiences (like biennial trips to Europe) while still saving aggressively for the future.

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Notable Quotes & Timestamps

• “[FIRE] gave me a picture that was different than I had ever expected.” — Andrew, [01:08]
• “Nine years ago, I think we had about $200,000 as our net worth … on a salary of $50,000 total household income, I didn’t really think it was possible.” — Andrew, [05:37]
• “We decided to go further…at one point, we got up to almost a 65% savings rate, which is huge.” — Andrew, [15:58]
• “We bought with another set of teachers…one house together to buy our first home, spent two years working on it and fixing it up so that we could sell it and then split the profits.” — Andrew, [16:15]
• “We’ve been a one car family our whole life. That’s been a hard thing. My friend’s like, how do you do that? Well, it takes some maneuvering.” — Andrew, [30:14]
• “Money is a process … the hard thing is the practice, practicing it over time like learning music.” — Andrew, [30:14]
• “We’re living in the moment as we’re doing it on purpose, not trying to just hold back and withhold the whole time. We’ve traveled…we just went to Europe … every two years.” — Andrew, [36:41]
• “The only reason I do this is because I don’t have to think about it… I’ve learned enough and we have now set the wheels in motion where I don’t have to think about it.” — Andrew, [39:23]

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Key Timestamps

• Discovering FIRE Movement: [01:08]
• Starting Net Worth & Salary, Early Money Habits: [04:21]-[05:37]
• Initial Real Estate Approach (multi-unit & house hack): [16:15]
• Hitting a 65% savings rate: [15:58]
• Frugality & Career Flexibility (four-day weeks, side hustles): [22:57], [27:08]
• Money as Skill/Practice—Music Analogy: [30:14]
• Portfolio Construction, Asset Breakdown: [36:41], [41:37]
• Cash, HSA, and Withdrawal Strategies: [46:55]

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Memorable Moments

• Teachers Buying a House Together:
  • Andrew describes the creative leap of purchasing a single-family (legally multi-unit) house with another couple, living together for two years to build equity (“people thought we were crazy” — [16:15]).
• Savings Rate Spike:
  • The moment when rental income surpassed their mortgage, allowing for massive savings rate increases.
• Living in High-Cost Boston—Why Real Estate Was Essential:
  • Hosts and Andrew both acknowledge that without house hacking via real estate, achieving FIRE as teachers in an expensive metro would have been impossible.

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Final Reflections & Takeaways

• Anyone Can Do This With Intentionality:
  • The journey is less about extreme earnings and more about creative solutions, conscious spending, and asset leverage.
  • Real estate, side hustles, and living intentionally (even four-day workweeks and one-car living) all play a part.
• Mindset Over Money:
  • Consistency, education, and viewing financial independence as an ongoing “practice” are key.
• Enjoying the NOW While Preparing for the FUTURE:
  • Andrew and his family didn’t deprive themselves of experiences while pursuing FIRE.
• Flexible Independence:
  • FIRE is not necessarily about quitting work, but gaining the power of choice.

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Guest Contact

• Andrew Lumen: cadenceofcash.com — writing about music, money, and finding the rhythm of what matters most.

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In Summary:
Andrew’s story explodes the myth that only high earners or those with traditional pensions can achieve early financial independence. Through intentional living, continuous learning, skillful real estate use, and a commitment to quality of life (not just the grind), the Lumens crafted a path that is inspiring, practical, and above all, replicable for motivated listeners.

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End of Summary

Transcript

[A]

Today's guest is proving that teachers don't have to wait until 65 to retire. He's on track to achieve financial independence and retire early at just 50 years old. Today, we're exploring how an educator is building wealth on a teacher's salary and what strategies he's using to escape the classroom 15 years ahead of schedule. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me, as always, is my enthusiastic About FI co host Scott Trench.

[B]

Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here. Super excited to talk about how a music teacher scales their way to financial dependence. See what I did there? Yeah. I'm going to beat that drum of music puns today. Just kidding. We won't go too far. All right, well, we are so excited to be joined by music teacher Andrew Lumen today. He is a few months away from achieving fire at age 50, and we are so excited to hear his money story today and sneak peek. It does not involve a pension. This is a private school teacher who is doing it without a pension. Andrew, welcome to BiggerPockets Money.

[C]

Thank you so much.

[B]

Well, could you give us a little bit of a background here? Where does your money journey begin, and how did you discover the fire movement?

[C]

About eight years ago, around 2018, a friend of mine texted me or emailed me, who knows, at that point, an article and said in the text, this sounds like you. And it was a New York Times article about Vicki Robin and how she had inadvertently started a revolution without her knowing. And I had never heard of her. Neither had he, actually. I remember reading through it, and somewhere between that point of reading it and later that night, I had all my tax returns spread out on my kitchen table and was going through and trying to calculate everything I'd ever made in my whole life and just trying to get a bigger picture of what this looked like. And, I mean, this is not that uncommon story now that I've been reading so much. You know, everybody has her as kind of a central figure often. And I just thought this was a different way for me to frame the future for myself. And I had never considered that this was even a possibility. I was happy in my job and, you know, still am and having a great life, but this just gave me a picture that was different than I had ever expected. And so, like my friend said, it did sound like me. He knew me well. I took it from there as far as just, like, digging into every little avenue that I could to find out more about financial independence and what that Meant for me.

[A]

What was your job at the time?

[C]

Time I was a teacher. I've been a teacher now for I'm going my 25th year in my the school I'm currently in but I was a substitute teacher before that at a bunch of places. Been doing this most of my life. My partner is also a teacher as well. I was teaching middle school which is. I'm still there now. I guess elementary school is the technical term for it because I'm. I mostly focus on 5th, 6th, 7th and 8th graders but I have also taught our pre K and our kindergarten our first grade as so two teachers.

[A]

Aren'T a lavish lifestyle. You're not making a ton of money, right?

[C]

You are correct. And you know I've always said and we, we even before the financial independence movement kind of took hold of us. We've been about like time over money. That was a conscious choice for us of saying we want to have time. My dad was wonderful loving father. He was a traveling salesman though he would go away on weeks and I remember riding in the car when I was really young and on the way to the airport on Monday mornings. Then my mom we driving again to pick him up on Thursday evenings. He'd be gone Monday through Thursday. And I remember thinking as I getting older I was like I don't want that. I want to try to be around for my kids. I want to try to have a life that allows me to be there for them. And teaching was one of those things that kind of caught my eye as a possibility. Stumbled into teaching in a lot of ways too. But it was, it was something that's really worked well for us especially since my partner is also a teacher. We have the same holidays and our kids go to school where we're at. So it's been able for us to you know, utilize those vocations for sure.

[B]

So tell us about what, what was your household income when you started this journey?

[C]

I was a full time sub when I first started and I think I remember making $40,000, maybe even lower than that, maybe 35,000 and feeling really excited about that at first in our life and we live in a high cost living area so for us it was great because we wanted to stay here because we had a lot of friends in this area and we went to school around here and we loved it but it wasn't a lot to make it worthwhile for our living. And in fact a lot of our friends who have been teachers or other professions have had to move out and go to somewhere different where the cost of living was less expensive.

[A]

So nine years ago, when you started in earnest, your five journey after this article about Vicki Robbins was forwarded to you by your best friend ever because he did such a great service to you.

[C]

True.

[A]

When you were sitting there and you had all of your tax forms spread out on the bed and you were going through everything, what was your financial position? Because again, your two teachers. Unfortunately, teachers don't make a ton of money. They should. I don't want to do that job. I'm so thankful for people who do that job because I have two kids and they need to be taught and I'm not going to be able to do it. But you're. You're not making a ton of money. What was your financial position like? Did you have investments? Had you been saving for something or was it just like kind of starting from scratch?

[C]

Nine years ago, I think we had about $200,000 as our net worth at the time, maybe $150,000 in investments total at the time. And that was just because I was getting a little bit of a match. In our 403, we had bought a house. We weren't as underwater as we were before because when we first bought, it was right around 08. So we lost some to start in the housing crisis there. And then when it came back, we had a little bit of equity, but not very much. So really, when I was looking at it, I was thinking, is this even possible? I didn't even know what this means to try to become financially independent. I just read this article and started digging and understood this was a concept that seemed real, but I really didn't understand what the path would actually take me down, how I would have to make those steps. So, yeah, we didn't have a lot at the time. And like, again, on a salary of $50,000 total household income, I didn't really think it was possible.

[A]

Well, let's reframe that because you essentially had $200,000 in retirement savings on a salary of $50,000. That's awesome. That is huge. Because there's a lot of people who are making 50,000 household income and they have $0 invested. So change that framing a little bit because you, you did have a significant amount. That is awesome. And that was over, what, like, 16 years of being a teacher?

[C]

Yeah, that's right. So that was just by us kind of. I think we had 3% match or something. Like that was just us kind of plugging away at it and not knowing what our stuff was invested in. But we were just doing it because I remember a teacher coming to me and saying, I was like, what do you even do with this? It was a guy, maybe after being a year or two there, I was like, what do you do with this retirement? How do you. He's like, he's like, put everything you can in it. And I was like, you're crazy. You know, and. Right. And you want to be like, yes, thank you back then. But I didn't listen to him, you know, I didn't know. But that was his thing. He's like, right now is the time to do it. And he's still there and we still talk. And I don't even think he understood as far as why. He just knew that that was what was important to help secure your life.

[B]

Let's reframe a little bit here though, because you sound like you're beaten up a little bit. This version of you from eight or nine years ago before you got serious about the fire journey. But let's also reflect a couple of things. One is you're living in a high cost of living area with two teacher salaries and you've accumulated wealth up to that point. Second, it's very reasonable to a degree for a two teacher household to rely to some degree on the pensions that are likely accumulating over that period of time. And for many teachers, millions and millions of people and firefighters and police officers and other folks who are employed by some form of state or local government, it is very reasonable to assume that that is going to take care of a big piece of retirement there. So your position is not bad at that point in time. It just sounds like there's a big switch that flips that allows you to propel your position forward. Is that, is that fair? Is that, is that Giving your, your 8 or 9 year old, you know, version of you more credit, Fair credit?

[C]

I think you're right. We were conscious about money. You know, I could go into the whole money scripts in the background of what my partner and I both had in our heads playing, but we are ones that our friend group knows that we've been a little bit more just cautious about spending in our lives and just trying to match. Like again, we valued time more than we valued money. That was already a thing that was built into us before I even went down this path. Because we knew that time is what we did when we were musicians. We're both musicians and she and my wife's an artist and so we spend a lot of time doing things that are creative. We enjoy doing that and we do that with our kids too. So for us, the focus was not on making money. We wanted to make sure we could live and live and people say comfortably, whatever you want to say about that, that was part of our journey for sure, even before we started. So, yes, we had a mindse that we knew and I think that's why my friend knew it would click with us too. That was like, oh, there's a way of kind of orchestrating or at least structuring scaffolding, however you want to say it, your life, that you can make something where you could create more free time, you could create more time to do those things that you want to do, creative or not. And then one note on that, Scott too, is that we're both in private school, we don't have a pension. So for us it is a different world to have friends who are teachers who have the pension. And there's, you know, all kinds of things they have to do to correctly make their pensions possible for themselves. And we have our own healthcare savings account, but also 403B. So this has all been on our own, not out of a pension.

[B]

Thank you for correcting that. There's an assumption I think people have when talking to teachers and I assume that was wrong in this case.

[C]

Yeah, because that's something a pension actually is for me at least. I don't understand it really well, but I know that there's definitely something. There's not as much autonomy in a lot of ways. So we were able to kind of fast forward, I think because of the autonomy of the 403B and the HSA, we were able to say, hey, let's do more with this. And this is what that looks like. And so it gave us, you know, the ability just to look at it and control it a little more on our own.

[A]

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[B]

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[B]

Thanks for tuning back in. So let's go into that. What did change? You have this epiphany, you know, what's lifestyle like before and after? What's the investment approach before and after? What are the big moves you make and how do you propel from this position 8 or 9 years ago, with 200, 300k in net worth, you know, or you know, net worth of 200k and maybe 150 in investments to financial independence today.

[C]

We got to a place where after I started going through this and saying, I think this is possible, and the next day I'd be like, I'm not so sure. And the next day I'd be like, I think that we could do it. And my partner would be like, okay, this is just crazy. And it's actually taken us nine years, I think, to get to a place where we actually feel comfortable too, which is just expresses like the breadth of this journey and the depth of what it does to you internally and psychologically. You really are cataloging and also considering all these options about who you are. When we started looking at this, I went through our budget, I made a budget, and I think we already had budgets that I kept pretty loosely. I've never been somebody who's balanced a checkbook. Even back when balancing checkbooks was something that was actually people did, I still was not a person who did that. I just knew as long as I had a little bit more than what I needed, I could be okay. So occasionally when I go to the, you know, ATM to get money out when I was in college, I would just look and check my balance and be like, okay, I'm still fine. And I would kind of keep a running calculation in my brain. And it wasn't in these major shifts. You know, the older you get, you start to have bigger bills, you start to have kids. There's bigger things that bite off larger chunks. So for us, after we made a budget, we looked at our numbers and we realized, okay, what are the things? If we absolutely had to cut everything at first, just like we went down to just bare bones, what would that look like? And we started calculating back and we said, how much could we put away? And is this worth it? Like, how is our happiness going to be after this? What do we really love? What's important to us? And I think we got to a point where we said, okay, I think we can save or invest a certain amount of money. And I think when we first started, we were looking at like 25% or maybe even more than that to start. But the deeper we got into the journey, the more became a reality. Right. So then the more it kind of clicked with us as, oh, maybe that timeline can shrink. And we decided to go further. And I think at one point we got up to almost a 65% savings rate, which is huge, is really big.

[A]

And the teacher's salary.

[B]

Yes, that's 65%. So. Oh, we made a budget and then we began. Excuse me, Was that a process or an event? Did it take you months to get to that or years to get to that 65% savings rate, or were you able to make a pretty big dent immediately? How would you describe that?

[C]

I'm having a hard time separating myself from the now as opposed to the person back there right now. You know, like, right now I'm seeing this whole thing as being a giant process. And so looking back at myself, I felt like it was an event. I felt like we had crossed a bridge. You know, I felt like we had. We were all of a sudden on the other side going, oh, my gosh, everybody come over here. You know, it became like this almost evangelical moment where you want to like, tell everybody in the world, this is what's going on. This can be. This is possible that way. That. That actually came to a 65% was. Multiple things were converging. We had bought. This is our third house that we had purchased multifamily. Well, yes, third multi unit. We'll keep it simple. And it was just at a place, I think we hit that 65% right at a place where what we were paying for a mortgage started to get less than what our rents were. So we were also able to save more because now our mortgage was being paid for more by the rents, our rental income than before, as opposed when we first started. So, you know, my friends, like, well, you have a rental income. Well, it didn't start out that easy. Like, when we first started doing it, it was actually more scary because we're like, we have three burners, we have three hot water tanks, there's three refrigerators, there's three toilets, more than three toilets. But, like, you know what I mean? Like, you have three or four of everything. So the cost was bigger. And so we weren't 100% sure how that was going to work out. But the thought was, eventually the mortgage stays the same, the rents will go up. And that has been part of this journey, without a doubt. Kind of an invisible thread in the background that we haven't been changing to make happen. But that's helped us a lot. I tell my friends all the Time, there's no way we would able to stay in this area as two teachers in a high cost of living area with. Without our multi unit. It would not have been impossible. When we first started even looking at multi units because we were teachers, we were approved for $80,000 at the two of us. Now, just to give you like context, we live north of Boston and the average home is, you know, $400,000. Back then, the average home price was at least 250 or 300, you know, so we looked and there was nothing in the region that we could get. So what we had to do to start this process was to we got together with another set of teachers, another couple who are teachers, and we bought what really was a single family. It was zoned as a multi unit, but we bought it together and we all lived in one house together to buy our first home and then spent two years working on it and fixing it up so that we could sell it and then split the profits. And then we took that money to buy our own places. But that was huge. That was like. People thought we were crazy. And in a lot of ways it really is crazy. We wouldn't recommend it looking back on it, but that's what actually got us to a place where we could do this house now. So, yes, lots of things converged to make us exist right where we are now. And I couldn't have orchestrated it all myself. Impossible. But yes, this, that was the beginning of the event of everything kind of shifting.

[A]

Your story is the embodiment of Dave Ramsey's quote, live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. I also did those, we call those live in flips. And they're not the most fun way you can spend your life. But all of that money that I have made over all of these live in flips that I've done, the money that you made has allowed me to get to a point where I will be living like nobody else. Well, I live in Longmont. I live like a lot of people here, but I'm not going to work until I'm 65. I'm not. I. I get to work here. Like, why? You know, this is, this is a pretty awesome place to be. But my husband has been retired for I think eight years now. And he is a much happier person because he doesn't have to go to this job that was like sucking his soul out. And you're not, you're a teacher. You can, once you reach financial independence, choose to continue being a teacher because you Love it or decide I want to go and do something else. You can go back to just substitute teaching so you get a little bit of the teaching, but not all of the, you know, full time, all the time teaching. How many of your friends were buying houses with other couples so that they could then work on them for two years and then sell them? Like zero. I remember people inviting me out, you know, when I, when we were really in the thick of this and oh, I'm sorry guys, I can't go out after work today. I have to go home and work on my house. I'm like, wow, that's so boring. And now they're calling me up. How'd you do it? Yeah, I guess we'll never know.

[B]

I just want to chime in as well with the, you know, every time we have a guest on like yourself who has achieved a pretty extraordinary outcome, you know, in a pretty short period of time without a remarkable income, leap in generation. Often as not it comes back down to house hack. And this seems to rile up the YouTube commenters a little bit like, where's the guy? No, stop. Enough with the house hack. It's like, sorry guys, this is it. This is the largest expense in your life. And if you're going to live in a high cost living area, the other costs do not scale nearly as much as the housing cost does between Boston and Memphis, Tennessee. Right. So I just don't see how you're going to do it if you're not going to be an entrepreneur, have some sort of side hustle, or be some kind of wild stock picker, venture capitalist investor in these areas, which we have yet to hear a story of on BiggerPockets money without doing some version of this. And I think that that's just a painful reality. I keep coming back to sorry YouTube commenters as just like a reality. Like I don't know how other people are going to be able to do it without doing some version of what Andrew did here.

[C]

There's a sense that you can just make more money, which is totally true for a lot of people. But for us, we didn't want to leave where we were. We live our. Let's. We live like on a little town that's like a little sea village that's on the ocean and for us like to be able to. I just took a walk today and I go down and walk down on the boulevard and it's on the water and like that's something where my kids are going to feel like we grew up here, like they talk about this a lot like. Like, they feel really fortunate. I grew up from Oklahoma originally, you know, and then Connecticut. My wife's from Western Massachusetts. So this is not something we've had in our life. And we chose to do this even though we knew it was gonna be tough. We. We realized there's no way we're gonna be able to do this. We can't just keep renting. For us to keep staying, because the cycle's not gonna break, we had to make a change in one of the bigger arenas of our life. So you're right. The house was a big piece for us to make that difference for sure.

[B]

How else did you invest? You know, it sounds like we have. We have a budget. We have this very intentional, frugal decision on the housing to live in a beautiful place. But to keep those costs manageable and to defray them to a certain extent, how did you deploy the cash accumulated to work towards financial independence? From there?

[C]

What we did is we took our money and just put in a brokerage account to start. I was just. This was the easiest way was to. How do we invest in doing a lot of reading? You know, read all the, you know, simple path to Wealth. You know, choose fi. You know, Vicki Robbins book. The. We just put as much as we could at first into a brokerage account. And I opened it up through Vanguard, did the whole 100% total stock index fund and member thinking and just seeing. And I'm one who wants to, like, learn from people who have walked the path ahead of me. So, like, I think that's part of the reasons I love teaching is because I'm like, listen, you as a student can do change, can orchestrate your life the way you want. And here are some of the tips. So I was reading about everybody who had already done this, trying to figure out how to do this on our own. And a lot of it was just. Just start. Just start investing. So I took that leap, and we started just putting money aside every month. You know, then by doing calculations, we could kind of figure out if we kept doing this, we could have enough money by X using the, you know, the Trinity study and the 4% rule and all those things of going through that and trying to calculate backwards how much would we need? And then also looking at our rental income and saying, okay, if we had rental income this much, if we decide to keep this. So we're using the materials, we have to bake the cake, right? We weren't sure what ingredients were going to be there when we're finally there at nine years. But we knew what we had in front of us and that really started. And then as I got further along, we started realizing, oh, there's better ways to do this. You know, for example, just keeping, instead of keeping our money in just a plain checking account, we move stuff over to a high yield savings account. And you know, one of my friends was like, yeah, but that's like, you know, just a couple hundred bucks. I was like, dude, if I could give you 100 bucks right now, a couple hundred bucks, would you take it? He's like, yeah. And I said, so that one switch makes just a little bit more. And I know this is like the death by incremental gains in some ways that people are frustrated by. But at the same time that's the only way we would have done this. We didn't want to change our prescription on life. We didn't want to change what we were doing. We decided we wanted to stay teachers. We really love our jobs. We wanted our kids to be here. So you know, even my kids would go over to friends houses and they're like, why don't we have a house that has a big backyard or has the woods. We live like in the downtown where we're buildings all around us. You know, we're in an apartment in our building. And we said, well, you can't have it all. You know, like you get to have your downtown areas where some of your friends are going to come and they would sure enough, they come over here, you get to walk down to Boba tea. This is so cool. You know, and then, and there was that sense, sense that we started saying everything's a trade off, everything is a difference for, you know, so they're going to be able to pick what they want. But here's a chance for you to say, all right, we chose this as a family so we could do these other things. And just like as an aside on this, like, yes, we've picked time as over money. I've rarely been full time as a teacher. I've worked mostly four days a week. And so our salary, that's one of the reasons our salary has been smaller probably too is because we've never had full time pay. I've always been about 80% out of those 25 years. So that's again was a choice because we wanted to be, have more time. I wanted to have day where I could like regroup, do things for myself, do things for our family. And my partner has worked, you know, part time most of her life. As well. So that's been how we've been able to exist and enjoy our lives at the same time.

[B]

On the surface, four days a week sounds like you're going to get not only less pay but also maybe fewer benefits and fewer other those compounders from a job. But I think that a hidden underneath that analysis that looks bad in your spreadsheet is the fact that that allows at least a portion of that extra time to be devoted to other money making enterprises. So maybe managing your multi unit, maybe managing your investments or other things like that, which actually produces astronomical outputs over a long period of time if put to reasonable use. Now if you're playing video games all day, which I like to play video games, I actually played a video game right before this call.

[C]

Me too.

[B]

People thought I was making fun of gamers. I do that to make fun of myself here a little bit. But if that time is not used productively then of course it's a loss in your spreadsheet. But if it is, it can actually produce compounding returns. So it sounds like I see you nodding in agreement with this that that may be your experience here.

[C]

Absolutely. I mean one of the reasons I think maybe in my mid late 30s I realized I've got to switch it up like we can' continue just to live like this. I can see the expenses are going to get bigger. I can see that we're going to need, you know, more so we try to figure out other things to do. I got my real estate license for a while, was doing that a little bit on the side. I helped a lot of friends buy houses in that process. I still teach private lessons, you know music so I could do that on off times. I'm a wedding photographer and I've done that a bunch in summers. That worked out really well. Where you know, those are the best month times to do it around here in this area. Because New England and that was where I knew like those that day off a week I would edit photos, you know. But it also felt like it was my time, you know what I mean? Like I was spending it on my own thing. That psychological shift was probably more important in a lot of ways for me to feel like I was living even though financially I made a lot more money per hour as a wedding photographer than as a teacher without a doubt. And that played in a lot. But now we're at a place where we're starting to shift that away and we're starting to simplify and not having to do many things like that. Now I'm able to choose that I don't need to do that. And I'm actually looking at my job now and thinking what do I really love and what do I want to do for next year? And it's given me the freedom to rephrase and reframe my moving on in my life.

[A]

I love that your story is similar to our trajectory. You pile up a bunch when you don't have kids and and then you start to taper down when you are closing in on the end of your fi journey. You're like, it was great to get me here, but I don't want to keep being this busy.

[B]

I feel like becoming financially independent at an early age without one of these income superstar advantages is kind of like developing any other very high end skill, like becoming very, very fit or a professional athlete in these areas where it's an aggregation of marginal gains, you have to do the big things right, of course, course working out whatever or spending less in your ear and investing all that kind of stuff. But it's this consistent application or the aggregation of marginal gains over a very long period of time through self education. A few hundred bucks here, a few hundred bucks there, on top of these other outputs that got you to where you're at. I want to go back to for a second. The four day a week component of your journey which is sticking out to me is presenting itself as a key variable, key advantage in your journey from both a mindset perspective, hey, I don't want to work full time here and a time freedom. And I believe that that time, I'm hypothesizing before you go back to me, that that time was used to fix up this multi unit to progress your real estate investments to generate side hustle income that got you much more comfortable with all these different scenarios over time. Plenty of them failed, I'm sure, or failed in the sense that they didn't generate a better return than what your day job would have been. But I bet some did result in dramatic outperformance in terms of what your wealth would be if you just worked the fifth day. Can you go into more detail and tell me where you agree or disagree with that hypothesis?

[C]

It's funny, when people knew at school would find out like oh you're four days a week, I'd like to work four days a week. And you know, depending how good friends I am with, I'll be like you can. You just have to get paid 20% less. And that's where they end the conversation sometimes. And I think I'm the type of person my partner and I both are, the type of people that like to have projects, we like to be moving, we like to have things going on in our lives. And for us, it was hard to have the five day a week where I get the end of day of Friday and I feel like Saturday is like, I'm coming down off that a little bit. And then Sunday, I'm all of a sudden gearing back up. And I really didn't feel like that was treating my life with the respect that I wanted. And we had to make sacrifices, I mean, to do. We've been a one car family our whole life. That's been a hard thing. My friend's like, how do you do that? Well, it takes some maneuvering, you know, to like figure that out. Sometimes I live in a place where the train is 10 minutes away, so if I need to, I can take the train. Then I walk to work from there, but it's like another 20 minute walk, so I don't do it that often. But if we have to, like, that's the kind of thing that's built in a little bit to make it work for us. That four day switch was really like intentional prior to the fi thing, you know, it was. This was, this was for us really about wanting to have time that was ours. And I really. I'm resonating right now with what you said, Scott, about it not just being like this switch that you flip that. It's a skill set that you've learned. I'm really big into connecting music with finance in this way because, like you learn a scale on the guitar. I have kids that I teach and they'll learn the scale and it's like, da da da da, da da da. And they're like, okay, what's next? I'm like, no, no, that's just the first beginning. It's really the practice of music is what we're trying to get to. And I think the practice of money is really what it's more about. Like, not everybody who's wealthy is financially independent, but everybody who practice money well can become financially independent. There's a very big difference. That process is massive. Compared to the arrival fallacy of just having money, it becomes less of a binary thing and more of a. This is a skill set that you learn as a musician. You know, I lean forward to my kids all the time at school and I say I have the secret to learning guitar. And they're like, what? They lean me in more. And I've said practice and they Roll their eyes and they get really frustrated. But I say, this is really what it is though. It's no more than what we have to do. And that is the work. Right? That is the hard thing to actually do. Making money, a process is actually the difficult piece for us. It's been going through and just trying the little thing here and here and seeing if this worked and then keep moving forward. And so for us, having that day off made all the difference for us to be able to like, have the time to really think through what our life was and how important these things are and what we wanted to do and what we valued too.

[B]

One other thing that I'm picking up here, or I'm going to hypothesize next is with this time off, with this intentionality, with this devotion to the practice of getting better with money, I'm pulling another concept here, which is this concept of independence, self reliance, the ability to do a lot of things yourself. I would guess that that skill has been a massive transformation for you personally over this nine year journey as well, to the point where you're comfortable perhaps taking on a much greater response set of responsibilities with regards to home improvement, maintaining your finances, thinking through even maybe basics of estate planning or those types of things, things that I think maybe your previous self would have been helpless to take on 10, 15 years ago now, or do not scare you, which I think is perhaps very empowering. Is that also something that has happened over this journey?

[C]

Absolutely. I mean, I just read Cody Garrett's like tax book or whatever that was, just looking through it. I would never have bit off anything about taxes. That's like, I understand finance and I feel like that's. It's like working on my car. I don't really ever have friends who love working on their cars. I have no desire to do that. But like taking those bigger picture things now and trying to boil them down, I mean, that's what I do as a teacher. I just told my kids I teach financial literacy to eighth graders. And I was just saying to them, like, if you don't understand it, that is my problem. Like, it means I haven't simplified it well enough for you. So trying to break it down into simplified chunks is part of the deal. And I still don't feel like I understand finance even after doing it for nine years like this. Because there's, there's so many variables that. Me neither. That has to do with me. Like on day one in my class, I write out and say I said good. Personal finance is not about the numbers, it's about. And I put a blank underneath there. And they talk about that for a while, what it is. And ultimately, I write you underneath here that it's really about them. It's about. Because I can tell them exactly what to do financially. Here's what you could do and make all these things happen, but it's how it integrates with your life, which is just like me, music, right? Like, you can hear a song here at one point in your life and hear it later and have different meaning. And you can hear it in a group of contexts, other people, and have different meanings. So music has that same kind of, like, organic movements that I think you end up kind of figuring out this has meaning now. What does this mean for me? And this is more of a process than, like. Like I said, like an arrival. Like, I've landed on this destination.

[A]

So we have talked about your journey. Let's talk about the. The destination. You are almost financially independent. What. What do these numbers look like? And what does life after Phi look like? Will you continue to work?

[C]

I'm working on that right now, trying to figure that out. I love my job. I feel very fortunate about that. It's not always been easy, and there's been moments where, as a teacher, you're kind of like, I don't want to do this. But actually knowing that I have the ability to retire at the end of this year has completely changed my outlook on my job. I'm looking at it now in a light where what do I really want out of this? You know? And I'm realizing that I love the unpredictability of students. A lot like that. Unpredictability. The classroom is like the definition of unpredictability. And I can go in. And some of the biggest moments that I've learned from my life have been things that I haven't created on my own. So I'm looking at it with eyes that maybe this is something that I need, and maybe it's something that I really enjoy doing enough that to. I want. Want to stay with it, which is awesome place to be, but I don't have to. And that's also an awesome place to be.

[B]

Could you really walk us through your portfolio? Like, what are the numbers that support financial independence?

[C]

Right now, I'm 100% on total stock market index funds. My brokerage account is about 20% of all our investments. And then my 403B is about half, and that's also in index funds as well. My HSA is something I've been Putting money in forever and been trying to, you know, tell other people the benefit of that of being like the triple tax advantage. And that's been awesome. So we've just been paying for our medical bills and pretending that we do that. That's our money we're putting into our retirement. So if we get a bill for going to the Doctor that's like 400 bucks, we pay for that with our own credit card or cash. And then we say that's we're pretending we're putting this in our retirement because then that money just stays in our HSA and we collect those bills. So at any point now we could just go and take those bills and trade them in for the money that's on the HSA. My partner and I both have Roth IRAs and those are probably, I think about 20% as well of our total portfolio and, and other things that we have in there. I mean, like I said, our rental property is part of our end game here as well. And I will say that we have some backups on backups too. Like we've built into our retirement plan the flexibility that we know we can continue to work that's purposeful. Knowing that if we wanted to, we could just say, hey, we can just get a job and pick up some extra cash here if we need to or we can stay at part time work. But we didn't set this goal to be able to say, hey, we're just going to stop everything instantly and do something different. We have been kind of structuring and building our life the way we want it for these whole nine years. So we're living in the moment as we're doing it on purpose, not trying to just hold back and withhold the whole time we've traveled. You know, we just went to Europe for our whole family and we do that every two years because we have friends who live in Croatia and so we go and visit them every two years and we save up credit card points. And my kids know that this is part of our lifestyle too, that we don't spend sometimes on certain things so that we can do this. And they love it and they want to do it, so they're willing to kind of participate in that as well.

[B]

You know, when we think about Fire journey, you know, a lot of people are in your shoes where in the context of our world, right where we're getting close to our fire number, but we're all IN S&P 500 index funds or the equivalence of those, you know, maybe a total market index fund Something that is very aggressive. A very aggressive, like concentrated stock portfolio. How do you feel about that? And do you have any thoughts about shifting to the more traditional retirement portfolio versus staying in a aggressive. With this more aggressive allocation as you approach your fire target?

[C]

Right now I am comfortable saying I'm going to stay in 100% in total stock market index funds. But this is something I've been toying with the past even two years of just why and what. I don't mind the volatility because I do. Like I say to my students, you have to have a belief in humanity. You believe that humanity is going to continue to make their jobs better and want to keep working. If you're going to put stuff in the stock market, I'm believing in the United States that I think that the companies here are going to keep doing better. They're going to try. So right now I'm comfortable saying 100% and because the volatility doesn't bother me as much, because I'd rather take the risk of having it be in there and potentially making more and being able to have more than doing bonds or. I've looked at like risk parody, you know, and just trying to understand a little more about that. But it just. The complexity of that is not appealing to me because again, time is more important. The reason my friends are like, you just obsess over money. And I'm like, the only reason I do this is because I don't have to think about it. It that is the truth is. The truth is that I've learned about it so much because I don't want to have to think about it. And I'm at a place now where it doesn't stress me out. Like, I've learned enough and I understand and we have now set the wheels in motion where I don't have to think about it. And I really appreciate that. And the 100% in the stock market total index funds makes that that much easier for me. So I think there is like a time is greater than money for me piece to that, that me trying to understand it a little more may not make that much of a difference. Even though you've heard me say we've been hacking off these little aggregational nominal gains over and over and over again. Right. This one for me has just not been as big for me to make that choice.

[B]

If I were to look at your portfolio overall, it looks like you've got a position that's like 60, 70% stock market index funds, which is what we refer to as 100% index funds. Then you also have a real estate component to the portfolio, which is relatively lightly leveraged, I'd imagine at this point and in the process of amortizing. Could you give me an idea of what your real estate portfolio looks like right now, how much debt and how much equity is in it?

[C]

Our house is worth somewhere around $900,000 I think. And our I think we owe like 150 on it.

[B]

This property has other additional units, is that correct?

[C]

There's three units in it. Yeah, we live in one of the three.

[B]

All right, we're going to take a quick break. We'll be back in a beat.

[A]

Really.

[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[C]

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[B]

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[A]

Thanks for sticking with us.

[B]

If we really look at your portfolio, we've got what's called 6040 stocks real estate. Here you happen to live in a component of the real estate and the real estate component is extremely lightly levered. It's almost paid off essentially I imagine with very low interest rate debt which is why you haven't bothered paying the rest off. Now we have a very different overall portfolio construction. That real estate component can be thought of almost like as bond like in its very lightly leveraged state given where you're at. And that justifies a pretty high concentration in stocks for the rest of your portfolio using traditional portfolio theory. So there you go. Without having to change anything. We've gotten into a much better place I think in there. That's what I've done with my portfolio to a large extent as well. This last year is really allocate more to real estate to make myself feel better about the stock market and how that work plays around with traditional and 4% saved withdrawal rates. I also couldn't justify by going super heavily into bonds with low yields and pretty long time horizon for myself.

[C]

Oh it makes total sense. I mean even with like the new 4%, you know, being 4.7 with Bobergen and all that just being higher. We I'm actually I round that up I'm going to make a little shamed face but a 5% and just say that this is what we're going to do and we're going to take the 5% knowing that we have flexibility built in from a lot of different angles. You know, real estate being part of it but also the ability for us to make some extra money. Like we could stop work you know, at the end of this year which would be awesome. But again, you know, when you read any of these blogs or we talk to anybody have something that's meaningful in your life, they all talk about how important this is and I've been looking at that for the past two years and thinking what do I really want to be about? What do I really want to do? And so it makes me look at my job and think one of the reasons I got into teaching is because I actually love it. You know, I really have enjoyed being with students. I really enjoyed being with kids. I don't want to just give that up just because it's under the umbrella of work. I need to understand what work means and what that work looks like that can be significant for me in my life. So I have that as an option. So even if we were to stay on and work, you know, 40% or 60% or whatever it is, then we're still making some extra money there and we don't have to take that 5% we're going to take out, you know, with when this whole thing starts for us.

[B]

I bet wedding photography at North Boston is also pretty good side hustle.

[C]

Yeah, it's been great. It's been really good. I've enjoyed it. Haven't had to market myself much, but it's been really good in the long haul for sure and I've enjoyed it. I mean you can tell I'm kind of a people person, so it's a good place to be.

[B]

Last question I have on your portfolio here, how do you think about your cash position as you kind of approach financial independence?

[C]

We've tried to have enough for like in emergency fund that covers six months to almost a year actually for us. And that's I think more because we own a multi unit that I want to be able to have enough on call for when, you know, I have a guy coming tomorrow to look at one of the burners. You are already, you know, so it's just things break, things are breaking more frequently because we have more things that can break more frequently. I think I'm a little bit more conservative in that, that we just want to have a little bit more on hand. But at the same time that emergency fund becomes something that we save for, for our kids education too because they go to school, private schools like we teach in. And so every month we put money aside so when the bill comes we can pay it. So we're kind of putting money into this fund that's just like a, almost like an ongoing extra fund that we just have because that's, it's in the high yield savings account so we know that we're going to get return on that. So that's where we keep our cash position mostly. I wouldn't say we're like, it's not like we're keeping two years of expenses and of everything, but we try to make it so we have enough no matter what. But I also look at our HSA and what we've contributed to the Roth as being really liquid, you know, so we have the ability to pull things out of both of those. I recently added up all of our bills that we have from HSA and we have have almost exactly the same amount that we have in our HSA right now. So we could theoretically take all the money of our HSA right now because we have bills that are associated with that amount. So I feel pretty easy to, you know, grab that money and it's pretty flexible for us already.

[B]

So you, you have your liquidity situation really well thought through. It sounds like I love that approach with the hsa. I have not thought about that in terms of adding that to an emergency reserve and being able to just like have, have a one, one step process to reimburse myself with all that. That's a great concept.

[C]

Yeah, I can take my HSA card and I can go to the ATM and you can take money out with that, you know, or I can just go on the app and click and it goes right to my account. I just kept not wanting to invest so many things when I didn't know a lot about it that I felt like it was going to be trapped and locked. So as soon as I found a version of that that wasn't, didn't lock the money in a way for retirement forever, even though we know that's not the case with 72T and as he said, step. But like I knew that that was important. So the having the Roth and the HSA were really key for me for sure.

[A]

Yeah. If you structure your portfolio correctly or you put money into the different types of accounts correctly, you might not have to access your retirement funds early at all because they will just be there like the hsa. I do the same thing. I've got a big stack of bills waiting to be reclaimed from my HSA and I don't need the money right now. So I'm not taking the money out of the account. I'm just letting it grow. I've got it invested in a little bit more aggressive than just the Total Stock Market Index Fund. We lean tech heavy in our investments, but I might even have the HSA and some individual stocks just because I want it to grow big. Because like you said, it's triple tax advantage and I like not paying taxes. If I don't have to. That's my favorite way to pay taxes.

[C]

Yeah. What was the book? The book, the tax book was saying his big overarching theme was pay taxes when you pay the least amount. It's like, yep, that's it right there.

[A]

All right, Andrew, thank you so much for your time today. Is there any place people can find you online?

[C]

Yes, I [e-mail] that's my kind of music slash finance world. And it's just in its beginning stages, but I'm starting to be a little more writing about this process for me and also how we got to where.

[A]

We got music, money and the rhythm of what matters most.

[C]

There you go.

[A]

I love it. Andrew, thank you again so much for your time today. This was a lot of fun. And anybody listening who says you can't do it on a teacher salary, well, Andrew did it, so you can too. All right. That was Andrew Luman and that was a very interesting conversation that we had with him, Scott. I was a little surprised that he didn't have a pension. And actually I like that better for him than most teachers who are essentially forced into contributing to a pension. I like that he was able to put it in after tax brokerage accounts, his 403B and really direct it himself.

[B]

I wonder, you know, if in the next couple of years or decades if you're going to see a lot more of this kind of a lot more, the emergence of a lot more private school or private school, like educational programs, home school. There's, there's programs in a lot of Republican states, for example, that allow parents to use funds that would otherwise be allocated to public schools for other educational purposes. And whether you like that or not, that's not the point of this. It's not a political discussion that is likely to create changes in the educational environment for both parents and teachers, which will be really interesting, I think, in the coming years. And I think Andrew's approach to financial independence from a private school background is illuminating here. There's a little bit more flexibility that came into his life and I think and the approach that he could take maybe than what would have been commonly available at public schools. And I think it was really interesting to hear about how someone who's working part time as a teacher or not full time as a teacher in a high cost living area was able to achieve this. And it really comes down to mindset. This is a creative individual who made incremental changes over a very long period of time to improve his financial position and the compounding is absurd in this particular story. Congratulations to him and I hope he just loves life over the next five, ten years. Years.

[A]

Scott I don't have to hope that he loves life. I know he's gonna love life over the next five to 10 years and beyond because he's loved life the last nine years that he's been on his journey. That's one of the best things about his story, is that they didn't save and save and save for the future. They lived in the now while saving for the future too. I I really love that part of his story.

[B]

Well, should we get out of here?

[A]

Mindy we should, Scott. But that wraps up this episode of the Biggerpockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Mindy Jensen Saying don't pout Sauerkraut Starting a business can seem like a daunting task unless you have a partner like Shopify. They have the tools you need to start and grow your business. From designing a website to marketing to selling and beyond, Shopify can help with everything you need. There's a reason millions of companies like Mattel, Heinz and Allbirds continue to trust and use the them. With Shopify on your side, turn your big business idea into Sign up for your $1 per month [e-mail] special offer.