Your Complete Guide to Financial Independence (2025)

Summary

BiggerPockets Money Podcast: Your Complete Guide to Financial Independence (2025)
Release Date: July 1, 2025
Hosts: Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench

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Introduction

In the episode titled "Your Complete Guide to Financial Independence (2025)", Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench delve into the comprehensive strategies and principles essential for achieving financial independence (FI) and early retirement. With over 10,000 hours of research on early retirement, this episode serves as a distilled, actionable blueprint for listeners aiming to secure their financial future.

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Defining Financial Freedom and Early Retirement

The hosts begin by clarifying foundational concepts:

• Financial Freedom is achieved when your assets multiplied by their returns generate a stream of income that exceeds your annual lifestyle costs.

  Scott explains:
  "It means that your assets times the return that they generate creates a greater stream of spendable liquidity than what your lifestyle costs."
  [00:40]

• Early Retirement follows when this equation is satisfied, allowing you to live off your investments indefinitely.

• The 4% Rule: Established by Bill Bengen in 1994, this rule suggests that withdrawing 4% of your investment portfolio annually, adjusted for inflation, has a 96% success rate of sustaining your retirement funds over 30 years.

  Scott elaborates:
  "If you want to spend $100,000 per year, you need a $2.5 million portfolio such that you can withdraw $100,000 per year or 4% of that portfolio."
  [01:39]

• Net Worth vs. FIRE Portfolio: While net worth includes all assets, the FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) portfolio focuses solely on investable assets that generate passive income, excluding non-liquid assets like personal residences or depreciating items.

  Mindy emphasizes:
  "The FIRE portfolio is only your investable assets that you'll be able to withdraw from."
  [04:04]

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Timeframe to Financial Independence

A pivotal factor in achieving FI is the savings rate—the percentage of your income that you save and invest.

• Mr. Money Mustache's Insight:
  Scott references Mr. Money Mustache's article, highlighting that the time to retire is largely determined by how much of your income you save.

  Scott states:
  "Your savings rate as a percentage of your take home pay is the most important variable for almost everybody."
  [04:24]

• Savings Rate Examples:

  • 10% Savings: Approximately 51 years to retire
  • 20% Savings: Reduces the time by 14 years
  • 30% Savings: Cuts another 9 years
  • 50% Savings: Achieves retirement in about 17 years

  Mindy adds:
  "It's just eye-opening and mind-boggling how shockingly simple it is to retire early on a different timeline."
  [05:55]

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Core Principles for the FI Journey

The hosts outline four essential themes guiding the path to financial independence:

1. Lowering Expenses:
   Reducing annual spending directly decreases the required investment portfolio, accelerating wealth accumulation.

   Mindy explains:
   "If you can reduce your spending from $100,000 per year to $80,000, you lower the portfolio needed from $2.5 million to $2 million."
   [06:18]

2. Increasing Income:
   Boosting income supplements savings, allowing for a higher savings rate without compromising lifestyle.

   Scott concurs:
   "More income always helps speed up that journey as long as your spending remains constant."
   [06:18]

3. Investing:
   Whether through passive index funds or active strategies like real estate and business ventures, investing is crucial for growing wealth.

4. Tax Efficiency:
   Utilizing tax-advantaged accounts (e.g., 401(k), Roth IRA, HSA) to minimize tax burdens and maximize investment growth.

   Scott notes:
   "Using these advantages that you have to put high tax income into tax-deferred accounts and then convert that into a Roth account or access it early is key."
   [06:18]

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Expense Reduction Strategies: Cheat Codes

Mindy provides actionable tips to drastically reduce expenses, enhancing the savings rate:

1. Track Your Expenses:
   Understanding where every dollar goes prevents mindless spending and identifies areas for savings.

   Mindy advises:
   "Know where your money is going and track your expenses. Be intentional with your spending."
   [08:54]

2. Housing Costs:

   • Live-In Flipping: Purchase a less desirable property, renovate it, and sell at a profit without immediate tax implications.
     Mindy illustrates:
     "I move into an ugly house, make it beautiful over two years, and pay no taxes when I sell it for a higher price."
     [10:16]

   • House Hacking: Rent out portions of your home to offset housing expenses.

3. Transportation Costs:

   • Opt for low-cost, fuel-efficient vehicles or alternative transportation like biking or walking.

   Mindy states:
   "Drive an unsexy paid-off economy vehicle or better yet, bike or walk as a primary mode of transportation."
   [12:29]

4. Food Expenses:

   • Cook at home frequently and shop at affordable grocery stores to minimize food costs.

   Mindy emphasizes:
   "Make most of your meals at home with reasonable food from reasonable grocery stores."
   [13:36]

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Boosting Income for Faster FI

Increasing income can significantly shorten the path to financial independence:

• Strategies to Increase Income:

  • Negotiating Raises: Regularly assess and negotiate your salary based on market standards.
  • Career Advancement: Pursue new job opportunities with higher pay or equity options.
  • Entrepreneurship: Start or acquire businesses that can generate substantial returns.

  Scott highlights:
  "Start or buy a business and control everything yourself."
  [14:18]

• Mindset:
  Embrace opportunities for higher earnings by managing expenses to afford taking calculated risks.

  Scott advises:
  "Control your expenses so you can take a little bit more risk, whatever that means."
  [14:18]

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Investment Approaches for FI

The episode discusses four primary investment strategies common among aspiring early retirees:

1. Passively Managed Index Funds:

   • Investing in broad-based, low-fee index funds (e.g., Vanguard, Fidelity) is the most prevalent approach.

   Scott recommends:
   "Check out the Simple Path to Wealth by JL Collins."
   [16:00]

2. Real Estate:

   • Building a portfolio of rental properties can generate passive income and leverage property appreciation.

   Scott notes:
   "Real estate can accelerate your wealth building journey through the use of leverage."
   [16:00]

3. Business Ownership:

   • Starting or investing in businesses can offer significant returns and scalability.

   Scott states:
   "If you want to become very wealthy or approach fat fire, this is the best approach you will find out there."
   [16:00]

4. Alternative Investments:

   • Unique or niche investments, such as training and selling horses or seasonal businesses like Christmas light installations, can also contribute to FI.

   Scott shares an example:
   "A gentleman who had a Christmas light installation business made almost six figures a year in just a few months."
   [17:24]

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Investment Order of Operations

Mindy and Scott outline a prioritized approach to investing, especially tailored for high-income earners pursuing a passive index fund strategy:

1. Emergency Fund:

   • Initial Step: Save $1,000
   • Extended Goal: Build a fully funded emergency fund of 3-6 months of expenses.

   Mindy advises:
   "If you already have this, great, let's move on."
   [17:57]

2. Pay Off High-Interest Debt:

   • Tackle debts with interest rates of 8-10% or higher first, as this provides a guaranteed return by eliminating costly obligations.

   Scott emphasizes:
   "It's a guaranteed return if you're to have interest at that level."
   [18:28]

3. Employer 401(k) Match:

   • Contribute enough to your 401(k) to receive the full employer match, maximizing free compensation.

   Scott mentions:
   "Contributing to a tax-deferred account in this situation like the 401(k) is critical."
   [18:54]

4. Employee Stock Purchase Plan (ESPP):

   • Take advantage of discounted stock offers from employers, which can yield immediate returns.

   Scott highlights:
   "Participate in that employee stock purchase plan even if you don't intend to hold the stock."
   [19:25]

5. Additional Emergency Fund:

   • Build your emergency fund to cover 3-6 months of expenses for greater financial security.

6. Health Savings Account (HSA):

   • Utilize HSAs for their triple tax benefits to cover medical expenses during retirement.

   Scott asserts:
   "HSA tops the list of tax-advantaged accounts that I'd be going into."
   [20:13]

7. Maximize 401(k) Contributions:

   • Continue contributing to your 401(k) beyond the employer match to benefit from tax-deferred growth.

8. Roth IRA Contributions:

   • Invest in Roth IRAs for tax-free growth and withdrawals, especially beneficial when you're younger.

   Mindy enthuses:
   "I super love [the Roth]. The earlier you are in your actual career, the more you should focus on getting into your Roth."
   [21:00]

9. 529 College Savings Plan:

   • Save for children's education using 529 plans for tax-free growth and withdrawals for qualified expenses.

   Scott advises caution:
   "Be careful to fund about the amount you need for college with a comfortable margin of safety."
   [21:49]

10. Taxable Investments:

    • Invest in after-tax brokerage accounts for additional growth, accessible without penalties.

    Mindy concludes:
    "Put everything remaining into your taxable investments."
    [22:37]

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The Grind: Navigating the Decade-Long Journey

Achieving financial independence often involves a prolonged period where progress seems minimal—a phase referred to as "the grind."

• Perception of Stagnation:
  During the grind, the consistent growth of your portfolio might feel slow, leading to doubts despite steady progress.

  Scott explains:
  "It takes 10 years, it's boring. It doesn't feel like things are changing."
  [24:52]

• Mental Resilience:
  Understanding that this phase typically lasts between 7 to 15 years can help maintain motivation and commitment.

  Mindy advises:
  "How do you make the grind more palatable? You enjoy it. Include enjoyable things so that the grind isn't just such a slot."
  [26:04]

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Achieving Financial Independence and Early Retirement

Once FI is achieved, accessing and managing your funds becomes crucial:

1. Accessing Retirement Accounts Early:

   • Substantially Equal Periodic Payments (SEPP or 70(t) Distributions): Allows penalty-free withdrawals before age 59½ through a structured payment plan.

     Scott references:
     "You need to understand this in depth if you want to employ these strategies."
     [26:52]

   • Roth Conversion Ladder:
     Convert traditional retirement accounts to Roth IRAs incrementally, paying taxes now to enjoy tax-free withdrawals later.

     Scott highlights:
     "If I'm in a high income tax bracket... I can seriously save on taxes."
     [29:23]

2. After-Tax Brokerage Accounts:

   • Withdrawals can be made at any time, paying taxes only on capital gains. With long-term capital gains rates being relatively low, this is an efficient way to access funds.

     Mindy explains:
     "The long-term capital gains tax rates for the year 2025 is 0%... up to $96,700 if you're married."
     [30:18]

3. Health Care Considerations:

   • Health Insurance:
     Early retirees must secure health insurance outside of employer-sponsored plans, typically through the health exchange.

     Scott notes:
     "For us, that would be $1,800 a month."
     [31:35]

   • Alternative Options:

     • Health Share Ministries: Offer alternative health coverage with specific rules.
     • Part-Time Work: Secure part-time employment with benefits.
     • Nomadic Lifestyle: For those traveling extensively, certain plans are more affordable.

     Scott mentions:
     "These are fairly rare but they do exist and they are an option."
     [32:27]

4. Insurance Needs:

   • Life Insurance, Long-Term Disability:
     Evaluate the necessity based on personal circumstances and potential financial risks.

     Scott advises:
     "These are not major expenses for most people who are generally healthy, but they can be a major blocker for some."
     [32:46]

5. Expense Management in Retirement:

   • Potential Decrease in Expenses:
     Retirees often spend less on work-related costs and can reduce other discretionary expenses.

     Mindy observes:
     "Our expenses have gone down significantly in other categories... DIY all of our home expenses."
     [33:33]

   • Portfolio Growth:
     Utilizing the 4% rule conservatively ensures that the principal continues to grow, potentially allowing for increased spending over time.

     Scott notes:
     "Your principal balance, your wealth will increase greatly over the ensuing 30 year period."
     [34:12]

6. Purpose Beyond Retirement:

   • Having a "Retire-To" Goal:
     Maintain motivation and fulfillment by pursuing activities and passions post-retirement.

     Mindy emphasizes:
     "Having something to retire to makes the journey more exciting."
     [35:17]

   • Continuous Growth:
     Opportunities for growth and higher earnings often continue beyond achieving FI, allowing for a dynamic and fulfilling financial journey.

     Scott concludes:
     "It should be a sliding scale, not a hard cutoff if you're doing it right."
     [35:56]

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Conclusion

Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench provide a robust framework for listeners aiming to achieve financial independence and retire early. By focusing on key principles such as expense reduction, income enhancement, strategic investing, and tax efficiency, they offer a clear roadmap backed by practical strategies and real-world examples. The episode not only addresses the mechanics of reaching FI but also the psychological endurance required during the long-term grind, ensuring that listeners are well-equipped to navigate their own financial journeys.

Notable Quotes:

• Scott on the 4% Rule:
  "If you want to spend $100,000 per year, you need a $2.5 million portfolio such that you can withdraw $100,000 per year or 4% of that portfolio."
  [01:39]

• Mindy on Enjoying the Grind:
  "How do you make the grind more palatable? You enjoy it."
  [26:04]

• Scott on Tax Efficiency:
  "Using these advantages that you have to put high tax income into tax-deferred accounts and then convert that into a Roth account or access it early is key."
  [06:18]

This comprehensive guide serves as an invaluable resource for anyone seeking to understand and implement the steps necessary for financial independence and early retirement.

Transcript

[A]

We have studied early retirement for easily 10,000 hours plus. This episode is the distillation of the entire early retirement playbook in the simplest, fastest, most actionable way we can come up with. We hope you refer back to this episode for years to come. Let us know in the comments below if you have any additional tips, tricks or suggestions to help others speed their journey to early retirement. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me, as always, is my fundamental masters co host, Scott Dredge.

[B]

Thanks, Mindy. Great to be here with you. I never get tired of talking about financial independence and I know you never get retired with that lame joke. Let's get into it. We're going to try to move rapid fire through all of these concepts so that this is again, a referenceable, reviewable piece of content that you can come back to for years to come. Let's kick things off by explaining what financial freedom means, what early retirement means. It means that your assets times the return that they generate creates a greater stream of spendable liquidity than what your lifestyle costs. You can solve this equation in a large number of ways. If you've got a million bucks and you think that you can generate a 10% steady eddy return, you're retired if you want to spend $100,000 a year or less. Now that brings us to the question, what is a reasonable set of assumptions in the context of this equation? And that brings us to the next concept which Mindy will introduce, the 4% rule.

[A]

This was created in 1994 by Bill Bengan, who was a traditional financial planner, and he was trying to answer the question all of his clients had, what is the safe withdrawal rate? To make sure that I have enough money through retirement. So he did a whole bunch of math and based on historic returns and came up with the safe withdrawal rate of 4%. So you take your portfolio, you withdraw 4% the next year, you adjust for inflation and withdraw 4% again, so on and so forth. He said you have a 96% success rate for having enough money to last you 30 years in retirement. Early retirees have taken this and kind of twisted it a little bit to work for their situation. And this is now very commonly cited in early retirement is, oh, I need to get to my retirement number, which is essentially 25 times my annual spending.

[B]

Yep. So this is a way of satisfying the financial freedom equation. If you want to spend $100,000 per year, you need a $2.5 million portfolio such that you can withdraw $100,000 per year or 4% of that portfolio. And you can do that indefinitely. And yes, it adjusts for inflation. It is the answer to how much is enough for early retirement. Let's introduce the third concept that we think is critical to understanding early retirement, which is net worth versus a financial portfolio or a fire portfolio. Financial independence Retire early portfolio. There's a common debate about whether you should include your home equity, for example, in your net worth statement. Yes, you should. Home equity absolutely counts in a net worth statement. However, you probably shouldn't include your home equity, for example, or your cars or your other depreciating assets or the assets that you do not intend to sell. Home is an appreciating asset, of course, in most cases. But the assets you do not intend to sell or which do not generate cash flows, for example, that you will be comfortable spending in early retirement, you should exclude those from your financial portfolio or your Fire portfolio. If you want to spend $100,000 per year, you should not include the $500,000 or whatever it is of your home equity in your financial portfolio. You will need 2.5 million in financial assets in order to safely withdraw 4%, $100,000 per year to live off of in early retirement.

[A]

Yep. I do think that it's really important to keep track of your net worth, including your home equity. But the FIRE portfolio is only your investable assets that you'll be able to withdraw from. Okay, Scott, now that we have defined what we're talking about, we've discussed the 4% rule. The fourth concept we want to talk about is how long does it take you to get there?

[B]

And the answer to this question is remarkably simple in terms of the mathematics. Thanks to a wonderful financial blogger called Mr. Money Mustache. He has an article called the Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement. I think this was written 10, 12, 15 years ago at this point. But the amount of time it will take you to retire early with a stock bond portfolio that has been researched thoroughly with such research as the work by Bill bangan On the 4% rule, the amount of time it will take you to retire early is primarily a function of your savings rate. Your savings rate as a percentage of your take home pay. So if, for example, you save 10% of your income and you invest that 10% in a traditional stock bond portfolio earning about 7% per year, it will take you about 51 years to meet the requirements to retire per the 4% rule. But if you can increase that to a 20% rate, you're going to Shave the time to retire by 14 years. If you can increase it to 30%, you're going to drop another nine years. If you can increase your savings rate to 50%, you can retire in 17 years. And of course the math gets absurd once you get past a 50% savings rate. Your savings rate as a percentage of your take home pay is the most important variable for almost everybody. With the exclusion of some outlier entrepreneurs or superstar investors, which most of us aren't, that will determine the speed at which you arrive at early financial freedom.

[A]

I think it's so important to read this article and and check out that chart. There's a couple of charts in this article. It's just eye opening and mind boggling how shockingly simple it is to retire early on a different timeline. A much accelerated timeline. Okay, Scott, let's discuss the principles that guide the journey. Number five in our list.

[B]

For the typical person who's looking to retire early, there are four core themes to this journey. Okay. The first is lowering expenses. Lowering expenses is so critical to this journey because of what we just showed, right? The lower your expenses, the faster you accumulate wealth. In the first place, liquidity with which to invest. And second, the less smaller an asset base you need to sustain early retirement. Right? If you can drop your spending from $100,000 per year to $80,000 per year, for example, by having paid off cars or pay the mortgage or whatever that looks like for you, you can reduce the asset base by 25 times that amount. Reducing a spend spending from $100,000 per year to $80,000 per year increases your savings rate by 20 grand and it reduces the portfolio that you need in retirement from 2.5 million to 2 million. That's a huge difference. Massive, massive contribution. The second principle here is obviously more income always helps. This is an obvious statement. We don't need to harp into it too much. We'll talk about it very briefly here. There's a ton of content out there. But yes, more income always helps speed up that journey as long as your spending remains constant. The third principle is that you need to either accept average returns by passively investing in stock market broad based index funds, which is the most popular method for investing in the early retirement community. Or you need to be prepared to actively invest if you want to chase higher returns in strategies like real estate or business. The last principle here is tax efficiency for passive or index fund investors. Their investment strategy. The work here, the knowledge that you need to develop is how to minimize your tax burden by taking advantage of tax Advantaged accounts like the 401k, like the Roth IRA, like an HSA, like 529 plans. And using these advantages that you have to put high tax income into tax deferred accounts and then convert that into a Roth account or access it early in early retirement. That's the strategy and complexity of most people's bread and butter approach to retiring early.

[A]

Okay, Scott, surely there's some cheat codes that we can use to get us there a little bit faster.

[B]

So going through those guiding principles, we're going to talk about each one, right? Lowering expenses, increasing income investing, and then tax efficiency. Mindy, can you give us a preview of number six here? The point, number six, about the expense cheat codes that can dramatically accelerate financial independence.

[A]

Number one is knowing where your money is going and tracking your expenses. This is by far the most beneficial first step in your journey to financial independence. Because I find that most people are not hyper focused on where their money's going. And this doesn't mean that you're not spending money on things you enjoy. This means you are intentionally spending money, not mindlessly spending money. And I think that anybody listening right now has a space in their budget to remove mindless spending so that they can either start paying down debt, start investing, start doing something more intentional with their money. Scott, you wrote in your book Set for Life, the top three expenses that most Americans have are housing, transportation, and food. So let's knock those out or knock those down. Housing. I've been able to knock out my housing costs by doing what's called a live in flip. I move into an ugly house, I make it beautiful over the course of two years, and I pay no taxes when I sell it for a much higher price than when I bought it. That's called live and flipping. There's a bunch of rules around it. But another option, if you're not handy, if you don't want to live in a construction zone, because that's essentially what you're signing up for is something called house hacking, where you are renting out extra portions of your house so that you can generate some income and help offset the cost of your housing. Get creative.

[B]

All right, we're going to take a quick break. We're going to retire for just a minute here. And we'll be back after this.

[C]

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[B]

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[A]

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[A]

Welcome back to the show.

[B]

Next up is going to be transportation. Transportation is usually not always, but usually the second biggest line item in most Americans budget. The answer to how to keep your transportation costs low is to drive an unsexy paid off economy vehicle or better yet bike or walk as a primary mode of transportation. If you're hardcore, the other portion of transportation expenses usually applies to traveling like airfare and those other items. Check out travel rewards. There's an odd opportunities and a lot of research out there about how to use regular household spending to defray or offset most or all of those types of travel expenses. Yes, it's unsexy. Yes, it's work. This is really important though, if you want to crank that savings rate into that 10, 20, 50 or even higher percent rate. The last component is food. Food is a constant always on discipline, where your choice of housing and your choice of what vehicle you drive are one time decisions that can shorten your timeline to financial independence by decades each just those single decisions. Your food decision is a constant always on decision that you've got to control month to month, just like your budget. And that comes down to making most of your meals most of the time at home with reasonable food from reasonable grocery stores.

[A]

Scott the path of financial independence is not a lazy path. You don't end up there. You go there on purpose. And to do something on purpose takes work. That's the bottom line. Now let's talk about income. Number seven. Your income is important. Duh. And the more income you have, the easier and faster you will get to financial independence. So a good income review is to review market compensation and ask for a raise or go and get a new job. Better is to get a job with major upside equity in the company commissions. There is no limit to the commissions you can earn in a lot of jobs. Profit sharing is also awesome. Best start or buy a business and control everything yourself.

[B]

Absolutely. There's a ton of discussion out there about how to make money. We assume that if you're listening to this, most people feel that they're optimized for base salary at their current job. If you want to explode your income, you got to control your expenses so you can take a little bit more risk, whatever that means to have a little bit more upside. And as you move toward financial independence, those opportunities will explode if you look for them, even if they do not appear obvious right now. All right, let's move on to the eighth concept here, which is the most common approaches for investment from aspiring early retirees. The four most common approaches that we see are first, passively managed index funds. A lot of investors for very good reason invest primarily in things like broad based market cap weighted low fee index funds such as those offered by Vanguard or Fidelity. That's the most common approach. A lot of research out there. If you're interested in really diving into the philosophy, check out the Simple Path to Wealth by our friend JL Collins. Great book on that subject. The next most common approach is going to be real estate. We know there's 17 million people, many of whom are on bigger pockets, who invest in rental properties and that's a great way to build passive income over time. That's adjusted for inflation and can accelerate your wealth building journey through the use of leverage. It is not totally passive. You will spend a lot of time learning how to invest in real estate and potentially actively managing your property in pursuit of those higher or at least different returns than what you can get in broad based index funds. The third most common option is some kind of business ownership. The spectrum from side hustle to large business is a large spectrum, but we see people from all over the place coming on the BiggerPockets Money Podcast and talking about how that business turbocharged their wealth. If you want to become very wealthy or approach fat fire, this is the best approach that you will find out there. And there's plenty of resources out there about entrepreneurship. And the last investment approach that I want to call out is this long tail of alternatives or oddball investments. A surprisingly large percentage of the people who come on biggerpockets money and share journeys or stories of early retirement success have some kind of oddball investment or asset that they've accumulated. One example of those that's not very oddball is a pension. A lot of teachers have pensions that kick in around the age of 50. The same thing is true for military folks. But we hear also stories about folks who have started side hustles. We have folks who have inheritances that come in. We have folks that have some kind of weird side business, like for example, someone who trained horses and would actually buy a horse, train it up for equestrian or riding shows, and then sell that horse for a meaningful profit. Obviously that's an extreme outlier example, but you'd be surprised at how many people have a story like that that seems weird or unusual or specific to their circumstance that they have found a way to monetize and make into a major part of their financial journey. One last example I'll give on the subject before we move on is a gentleman who had a Christmas light installation business, seasonal business made almost six figures a year just in a few months putting them up, pulling them down.

[A]

Now that we've talked about that you need to invest, let's talk about the investment order of operations number nine, just to preview this.

[B]

This investment order of operations assumes that the individual is a high income earner and is investing in the passively managed stock bond portfolio that is most common among people approaching fire. If you are considering investing in real estate or prioritizing business or a Side hustle investment that may trump some of the items in this order of operations.

[A]

Yes, very important to note, this is for stock market investments. Number one, I want you to have an emergency fund. And similar to the Dave Ramsey's baby steps method, I want you to initially have a $1,000 emergency fund. If you already have this, great, let's move on. Next up is your bad debt. This is your interest rates of 8 or 10% or higher. Your credit card, your student loans, your car interest, anything that is more 8 to 10%. You want to knock that out?

[B]

Absolutely. It's a guaranteed return if you're to have interest at that level. And that trumps most types of stock market investments in my opinion.

[A]

Up next is your 401k to the match that your employer offers. This can actually be done in tandem or flip flopped with the bad debt, depending on your personal preference. But you want to be contributing to your 401k to get the full match if your employer offers one.

[B]

Next up, we've got the employee stock purchase plan. At my old employer we used to have an option where we could buy the stock at a 15% discount and flip it basically immediately the next quarter for a 15% gain. There is no emergency fund, no other investment that can possibly match the odds of an investment like that, a participation in that employee stock purchase plan. Even if I didn't intend to hold the stock, which I didn't, it absolutely comes before even building up up the next step here which is to fully fund the emergency fund.

[A]

Yep, your fully funded emergency fund is $10,000 or three to six months of spending. And I think this is a really personal one. But how easy is it for you to get another job should you be fired from your job immediately? And how comfortable are you with reducing your expenses so that you can make your emergency fund last longer? So this is again just a ballpark, but $10,000 or three to six months, months in spending. Next up is your HSA. If you have a high deductible health care plan, you can participate in the HSA which is triple tax leverage. You pay no tax going in, it grows tax free and you pay no tax coming out for qualified medical purchases. Again, you have to have a high deductible health care plan in order to take advantage of the hsa. But I think this is absolutely one.

[B]

Worth looking into if you're generally healthy and you're approaching fire. HSA tops the list of tax advantaged accounts that I'd be going into. Next up is the rest of the 401k finishing out the contributions to the 401k. Remember this order of operations is for a person who has a high income and is using a passive index fund style investment approach who intends to retire early. Contributing to a tax deferred account in this situation like the 401k is critical because we can defer tax on high income in our high income earning years and we can harvest that income in lower tax retirement years. That's a critical assumption here and that's why the 401k is before the next item on our list which is the Roth ira.

[A]

Roth IRA or if you don't qualify due to a higher income, the backdoor or mega backdoor Roth ira. You are paying taxes now and then your money grows tax free. I love the Roth for all ages, but I super love it. The earlier you are in your actual career. So the younger you are, the more money you should focus on getting into your Roth just because it grows tax free for so long. Up next, Scott, is the 529 plan. If you have children, you have children you would like to fund their college accounts for. This is in many states tax deductible. Your contributions going into the 529 plan, but not all states. So definitely look that up. But it just allows your money to grow so that you have a larger amount to contribute to someone's higher education costs.

[B]

It allows the gains to grow tax free as long as they are then used for qualified educational expenses like college tuition for example. So really important if you plan to fund college. We discussed this at length. It's important also not to over fund these. You can contribute I think up to $29,000 per year here in 2025. That can add up to a much larger amount than what is needed for college. If you want are an aggressive go getter and get started very early. So you want to be careful to fund about the amount you need for college with a comfortable margin of safety because excess funds in there may be a little bit harder or just to have a little bit more of a penalty to access for other early retirement options. So once you have hit the goals that you need for saving for college, next up comes our taxable investments, the after tax brokerage that we've got going and everything else kind of gets dumped in there and put into those set it and forget it index funds.

[A]

Scott, last up is the optional low interest debt or the mortgages. I am personally not choosing to pay off my mortgages and that's the only debt that I have. But I am instead choosing to put everything remaining into my taxable investments. You have chosen a different route.

[B]

I chose not to take a mortgage when I bought my house. I bought my house after interest rates rose here in 2024. I chose not to get a mortgage on that purchase, which is similar in style to choosing to pay off the mortgage, of course. And I am not choosing to pay off some of the really low interest rate mortgages on my rental properties. So I'm in a hybrid place on this particular decision. Personally, I carry no personal debt, however.

[A]

Yeah, and again, Scott, you just used a word choice. I choose not to pay this off. This is a absolutely a choice. And I just encourage you to make thoughtful decisions as opposed to. Well, I heard somebody say it once, so that's what I'm going to do.

[B]

Absolutely. All right. Before we invest in the final steps of our journey to early retirement, we're gonna take a quick break.

[C]

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[A]

Thanks for sticking with us. Welcome back the show. Now we come up to the point in everybody's fi journey that is not so fun. Number 10 on our list is the grind.

[B]

Yeah. So I'll preview this. There's a question that we get from a lot of folks who come in and they say, what am I doing wrong? I earn a high income at a good job. I am maxing out my HSA. I'm maxing out my 401k. I'm getting a little money set aside for taxable investments. I'm three years into this. What's going on it feels like things are far away. Well, yeah, that feeling, this bored feeling, everything is going fine. I seem to have this whole stack down. Takes about a year, maybe two, maybe three for a lot of folks, even the most hardcore go getters to fully figure out and turn on to an autopilot style investment portfolio. And then that's the grind. It takes 10 years, it's boring. It doesn't feel like things are changing during a large period of that. But that feeling, that vague discomfort with am I doing everything right on there? The balance seems to be going up, but it seems far away. That's the feeling of becoming rich and that's the period of time that needs to pass. Usually 7, 10 years at minimum. Most people it'll be probably between 7 and 15 years if you go fairly hardcore on the fire journey in order to have a realistic shot at retiring early. So this just needs to continue for a decade, usually at minimum, before you'll really kind of find yourself getting close to that finish line.

[A]

Yeah. And you should be really thoughtful in your grind. How do you make the grind more palatable? You enjoy it. So you don't pull all the joy out of your life and just slog through life for 10 years. What are things that really bring you joy? What are things that you value? If you value travel, continue to travel. Just don't take extravagant thousand dollar a day cruises. Don't take extravagant vacations that are 20, 30, $40,000 unless you can really truly afford it. Unless that's really something that makes your life better. But be thoughtful in your spending. Just make sure to include enjoyable things so that that grind isn't just such a slot. All right, Scott, we have reached financial independence. We are early retired. How are we accessing that money?

[B]

Yeah. So this is the mechanics of accessing the money that most people who are pursuing financial independence have put into retirement accounts. And it's important to remind folks, why is all this money in retirement accounts? It's tax efficiency. Right. During the period in which one is grinding to early retirement or this the grind period, it is likely that you will be in a high income tax bracket. And it's important to play the tax efficiency game. Right. We talked about housing, transportation and food as the big three expenses. There's another huge expense which is tax. If you follow the order of operations that we outlined previously, you will pursue in most cases a highly tax advantaged strategy for saving towards retirement. But your money will all be, or a huge percentage of your wealth will be in tax advantaged retirement accounts. Those Accounts typically carry a penalty for early withdrawal. That penalty is not very large, but it's about 10%. We want to avoid that penalty and we can access that money in those accounts through advanced strategies to withdraw that money early or convert that money into a Roth ira. So I'll walk through those very briefly. The first approach is if most of your money is in a 401k and you want to withdraw it early, you can do what's called a substantially equal periodic payment or a 70t distribution. We talked about this for an hour in episode 649 of the BiggerPockets Money podcast. Go check that out. You need to understand this in depth if you want to employ these strategies. But basically, if you have a million bucks, you can set a distribution approach according to one of three rules and begin withdrawing chunks of that. You will pay taxes on any distributions. Early distributions from a 401k, but it is a way to access that money penalty free before age 59 and a half. The second common advanced strategy for early retirees is what we call the Roth conversion ladder. This is where if we have money in a 401k, a tax deferred retirement account, we're able to convert that in a given year. We pay income on the conversion. Let's say that we have $100,000 that we're converting. We have to pay income tax on that $100,000 conversion, but we can put it into our Roth IRA where it can season for five years while it grows and while it remains invested. And we can withdraw that $100,000 conversion conversion tax and penalty free after that five year seasoning period is up. This is very powerful because if I'm in a high income tax bracket in my earning years and I'm in a low income tax bracket when I retire, I can seriously save on taxes. Maybe as much as 30, 35% depending on how much I'm earning during that grind period.

[A]

And the last one, Scott, accessing those after tax brokerage funds that you have been investing in throughout your career, those.

[B]

Ones you can access any time. You'll just pay taxes on the gains. Whenever you sell that part of your.

[A]

Portfolio, you will pay taxes on some of the gains. Scott, this is fun. The long term capital gains tax rates for the year 2025 is 0%. If you are married filing jointly up to $96,700, it's 0%. If you're single up to $48,350, you're paying 15% on 96,701 all the way up to $600,000. And that's just taxing the gain. When you sell a stock in your after tax brokerage account, there's the money that you paid for it and the gain on top of that. So your tax bracket could be incredibly low or zero while still accessing up to $96,700 if you're married.

[B]

Yeah. For all the work we do into using these very complex rules to put our money away in tax advantaged accounts. Taxes are really not a meaningful barrier to retiring early under today's tax code.

[A]

That's a very important consideration, Scott. Today's tax code. All right, Scott, we are retired. We have started accessing our money. There's still some things we need to consider.

[B]

These are kind of more of the miscellaneous considerations, if you will, for early retirees that involve the mechanics of actually retiring early. So first I want to call out that the vast majority of early retirees that we talk to here on BiggerPockets money seem to have a one to two year cash cushion. There's not a lot of research that says you have to have a one to two year cash cushion, but we find that mentally that seems to be a requirement among the vast majority of people who actually pull the trigger and retire early. Mindy is one exception. But Mindy is also going to get jailed by the early retirement police because she is an active real estate agent and brings in other sources of income there. I have this one to two year cash position personally.

[A]

Yes. If you don't have other sources of income, other sources of cash you can access, one to two years is a great number. Scott, you're going to need health care in your retirement and health care is currently tied to jobs. So the only other way to get health care is through the exchange.

[B]

We've talked about a couple of other ways that are very unpopular and very rare among the fire community in practice. Right. So the most common way, of course, is to get health insurance on the exchange for a family of four. For us, that would be 1800 bucks a month. While I have two dependents, children, that's a major expense. This is America. You got to plan on it. Put it into your fire number. There are other options that are lightly considered by folks. One, for example, is these health share ministries. We've talked about those at various times. They often come with a set of rules that make folks a little uncomfortable and again, are fairly rare. But they do exist and they are an option that is available to folks. And the other option is to get some kind of part time work or accept a job that's pretty easy with benefits, which is another fairly popular tactic among those who are retired early. One last option that's worth calling out in healthcare actually is the nomadic lifestyle. If you travel around the world for a year, for example, there are actually options that are far cheaper than the exchange for health insurance.

[A]

Paradoxically, yes, but you do have to be outside of the United States for more than half of the year. So six months and a day or more. Scott we've also got regular insurance, life insurance, long term insurance, disability insurance. That's something to consider. Do you think you're going to need it? Do you feel comfortable being self insured?

[B]

There's not really a big gotcha here. It's just a reminder. These are not major expenses for most people who are generally healthy. It can be a major blocker for folks that have some sort of long term issue. For example, if you're generally healthy, you just need to remember, hey, if you had life insurance or long term disability or short term disability through your employer leading up to your departure, when you retire early, you'll be responsible for those on your own. And even if you're one of the folks are who, folks like me who thinks that financial independence obviates the need for, for example, life insurance, you may still want long term disability because if you are costing several hundred thousand dollars a year or tens of thousands of dollars a year for long term care, that can be a burden that you may not have planned for in early retirement. So you want to make sure that you've checked the box on those types of things by perhaps talking to a fee only financial planner.

[A]

Scott Another thing to consider is your spending actually might go down considerably during early retirement. I know that our spending has up in some categories as we develop the skill of spending, but our expenses have gone down significantly in other categories. Carl is not buying work clothes. He's not traveling to the office. You know, when we go traveling, we do travel during the weekdays because weekdays travel is less expensive. We DIY all of our home expenses and home projects because we have the time to do it now. There's a lot less going out in early retirement. Among a lot of my friends, there's.

[B]

A meme out there with kind of three levels of wealth. The first is cutting your own grass, the second is hiring somebody else to cut your grass, and the third is cutting your grass. That framework hopefully is helpful to folks thinking about how that those expenses can actually go down in early retirement to some degree. And so you Want to be aware of that. The other side to that coin of spending potentially going down is if you're retiring using something like the 4% rule. Understand that in the vast majority of cases, adjusting for inflation, your principal balance, your wealth will increase greatly over the ensuing 30 year period, to the point where you may find yourself with way more money after you've retired than you ever thought you would have. And you will be able to likely flex up spending. You shouldn't count on that, but you should be aware of that phenomena because that is the likely scenario that will happen after your retirement. And of course you can increase those odds greatly if you bring in in any type of part time income, start any kind of side hustle, factor in things like Social Security, inheritance, whatever those are in your life that is going to be likely in. The 4% rule in early retirement is extremely conservative take on personal finance.

[A]

Scott. The last thing I want people listening to this to consider is having something to retire to. There are so many people who are on this path to financial independence. I can't wait to quit my job. And then what happens next? Next, having something to retire to makes the journey more exciting. Oh, I can't wait till I get to do this. I can't wait till I can do that. And you don't have to wait until you're retired to start doing that. That's just. You'll be able to have more time to do it when you're retired, start learning the skill, enjoying the journey, adding things to your grind so that it isn't a slog, and then have something to retire to.

[B]

Absolutely. Yeah. I want to call out here that a lot of people search for early retirement, especially really early retirement, you know, in 30s or 40s even, because they really dislike their current job or current set of circumstances. And I love that. I love that. That's a motivating factor. That's awesome. Right? Go take control of your financial situation and use that intense dislike of your current situation to fuel your financial journey. But it shouldn't take you 10 years and the accumulation of millions of dollars for your situation to, to improve somewhere along the way as you amass wealth, you should have the option to get a better job or higher pay, or start that business well in advance of early retirement or otherwise be thinking about what you want to be doing in early retirement and spending more and more time doing that along the journey. This is a sliding scale, not a hard cutoff if you're doing it right.

[A]

All right, Scott, I think this was a great rapid fire discussion on the fundamentals of the journey to financial independence. Thank you so much for sharing your expertise. I had a great time with our chat.

[B]

Yeah, me too, Mindy. If anybody watching this enjoyed this video, please save it. Please watch it again in the future. Please subscribe to our YouTube channel. Please give us a follow on our podcast on Apple Podcast or Spotify or wherever you listen to podcasts. And please come on biggerpocketsmoney.com and check it out. This is all we do all day long is try to figure out how to help people accelerate their journey to early financial freedom. Or make it a little bit more enjoyable.

[A]

All right, Scott, that wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Minnie Jensen. Saying take a bow, Highland Cow.