← ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
2024 Year-End Celebration: Inspiring Wins from the ChooseFI Community | Ep 526
01:15:43
Our Favorite episode of the year, listeners share their remarkable financial wins and transformations throughout the year. These stories highlight the power of financial independence (FI) and showcase actionable steps taken by individuals and families...
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- [00:00]
Jonathan
I love the sound of winning in the morning. Another year of winning. 2024 is almost in the dust, almost behind us. I love to win. You love to win. Some of you shared your wins, and today on the show, we get to share them with you. Welcome to the ultimate crowdsource personal finance show. This is Choose Fi. All right, guys. Yeah, I get it. You're like, who is this guy? I'm excited to be here and I'm excited to do this episode. And to help me with this, today, I have my good buddy Brad here with me. How you doing, buddy?
- [00:36]
Brad
I am doing quite well. Jonathan, I like having you back on the show. This is fun.
- [00:40]
Jonathan
Yeah, I know. You're like, now get out of the way, man. I'm doing the intros now, right?
- [00:44]
Brad
Yeah, come on. This is my show. I've been doing this for two and a half years already.
- [00:47]
Jonathan
And you've been doing great. You've been doing great. I could talk about that for a lot. But just, first of all, I should just say out loud, gotta say, man, while you were gone and you were gone for a few weeks there I was loving these episodes that I'm hearing. Ginger is doing an incredible job. That episode with Katie was just fantastic.
- [01:04]
Brad
Yeah, Ginger is rocking it. She's such a fun co host and, yeah, she just took this whole getting personal with personal finance and ran with it. And I think she's done three or four of those episodes that have gone live so far. And yeah, each one is better than the next. So I. Yeah, kudos to Ginger. Big thanks to Ginger and, yeah, maybe we'll get her on this year end wins next year. That'd be fun.
- [01:26]
Jonathan
Ooh, that'd be cool. All right, well, today we're going to do. We are. We're going to cover some wins. And we were looking at the list. Brad and I were setting it up earlier. And thank you, first of all, to everybody that took us up on that. I know there were a few of you that probably wish we had made it easier to find where to give us a win and we'll work on that for next year. But, Brad, this is now. Have we done this for seven years now? Six or seven years now?
- [01:47]
Brad
This is eight, if you'd believe it. This is the eighth annual Year End Wins episode. So it started in 2017 because. Yeah, we essentially started Shoes of I January of 2017. So, yeah, December 2017 was the first one. And this is the eighth annual. It's hard to fathom that. We've been doing this podcast for eight years now.
- [02:07]
Jonathan
And as you're saying this, Brad, I'm realizing for people that are maybe, you know, just started listening within the last two years. And by the way, having gone back and listened to all 500 episodes, do I blame you? No, I certainly don't. I. But if you haven't, I'm Jonathan. And back in 2017, I asked Brad, or back at the end of 2016, I asked Brad to help me put together a podcast. And I wanted to talk about, you know, all the wins that I wanted to achieve in my own life to reach financial independence, as he had already gotten there following kind of the same path that we've been talking about this entire time. So it was going to be this dual perspective of someone that's there and someone that's on the way there. And let me tell you that eight years later, I'm going to just say this outright. I saw the title of an episode. I think it was around episode like 500 or so, and the title was it Just Works. And I want to say, I want to stress this. It is not binary, right? It is not, you know, you're not financially independent or you are. You're a one or a zero, quite the opposite. It's a journey, it's a continuum. But it is up to you to be intentional because it does not happen by accident. Almost everything we're saying, when you hear it, you know it's right because it's right. It's true because it's true. It's like a natural principle, but it's also goes in the face of every natural instinct that you have. And a lot of those natural instincts have been ingrained in you by a system that profits from your lack of intentionality. Right? There's a lot of institutional pieces of this board game called Life that that profit by your lack of intentionality. And so it is up to you to just hit pause, slow down for half a second, long before you've reached financial independence, evaluate current life choices, life choices already made, and prospective upcoming life choices, and say, can I lean on the scales while we're there? Can I increase the percentage of wins in my life? The heartbeat of this show is just highlighting what those wins are, the consistency in their efficacy, and making them practical and applicable.
- [04:13]
Brad
Yeah, Jonathan, I totally agree. And I think this is something we hit on from the very beginning at choose the Phi is Fi is a life superpower. And like you said, it is fundamentally true at its essence. And that's what's so beautiful about it at its heart. Right? And why this appeals to so many millions of people when they learn about it. You can't unsee it because it is fundamentally true. And something that I've hit on is this is really the one reliable way for middle class people to get wealthy. It's following the path to phi. You don't need to win the lottery. You don't need to find some startup and get lucky. You don't have to get lucky. You just. This is the reliable path. And that is what is so beautiful about fi. And to your point, it's not binary. I mean, I think, Jonathan, this is one of the things that we have opened our minds about so much. Probably the biggest thing over these eight years is I think a lot of people at the outset thought it, it simply was, let's get to that number on a spreadsheet, right? Let's get to that. That mythical phi number. And I think we've all learned together that it's so much more than that. There are so many different flavors of Phi. There's so much power that you accrue in your own life by following the path to FI, regardless of whether you have 1 times your expenses saved up, 0 or 25 or your fatfire some crazy number, right? Like you accrue power on your side of the ledger every step of the way and every little action you take. And that is why choose a phi is and always has been about taking action, truly.
- [05:49]
Jonathan
And the crowdsourcing aspect of this is none of us, and certainly not Brad or myself, are born with an innate understanding of what all those wins are, what all those patterns are. The crowdsource aspect of this is identifying consistent patterns of success or consistent patterns that lead to increased likelihood of success, and then highlighting those to get feedback, to get criticism to be vetted, and then passing those along, implementing them in our own life and passing it to the next generation. Now. Cool. We're all caught up. We know why we're here. One more second. So I've. I took a step back and Brad will tell you, taking a step back is an interesting way to put it. I probably worked harder, as he knows, over the last two years than I ever have in my entire life. And I think even that points to a little bit of a misconception that there's very few people in the financial independence community that, that are pursuing financial independence so that they can then do nothing. What they really want is more of an input, more of a say on where that time goes. How many people feel stuck, how many people made a series of life Choices between, you know, 15 and 22 that have dictated the last 15 years and don't see any options until they hit 59 and a half or 65. Right. And they've kind of written it off. They've literally written it off. All right. Financial independence. Yeah, sure, it could look like the point where you could choose to do nothing. I'm just saying I have a lot of choices in my life. I love Mondays. Love them, love them. You know, and it's because I get to work on something that I'm passionate about, and so just think about that. But through this context, one of my frustrations with, you know, really being able to have this platform and to be able to discuss this concept was the fact that no matter how good the conversation was, no matter how valuable the information was, it was lost to, like, a Facebook discussion feed. It was lost to a post that was buried from three years ago. It was lost to a podcast episode, which. Hey, guys, go back and listen to episode 3021. You know, like, it was 400 episodes ago, bro. I'm trying to stay caught up. Right? Personal finance, podcasting, media consumption is extraordinarily transactional. You could have the best conversation ever the next time you're starting from scratch. And I mean that both as the person that has the information, but also the person that's trying to take action. How many of us at one point had an awesome spreadsheet, and four years later, we're still starting from scratch, trying to do the next one right? Brad tells us about these epic things. I've looked at them. I want no part of it. Zero part of it.
- [08:39]
Brad
Not only do you want no part of them, you will not allow me to publish it anyway because it's so ridiculous and convoluted.
- [08:45]
Jonathan
I was like, I mean, can I get, like, a Rosetta Stone or something? Like, I mean, I'm gonna need some GPT to decipher this. And how many of us hear an idea or a concept that sounds incredible, but there's so many unanswered questions, and, in fact, we don't even have the questions, but we know that wasn't enough. We know what we heard one enough to get there that we just said, nah, you know, and it stops there. And at the same time, we know there are people that are winning on all of these levels. You don't know what you don't know. And sometimes even once you're aware of it, you have so many unanswered questions that you know, you don't know that you don't want to go farther. So with all that in mind, I took a step back and I started attempting to build the solution, right? Attempting to say, what if we could take what we've done on this show and we could turn that into a platform that grows with you? What if I could build a tool for myself? What would the perfect tool look like? What would the perfect platform look like? What would the perfect aid to take a transactional process and turn it into a relational process? What if it was not just, you know, a platform somewhere that was kind of useful for someone that was interested in financial independence, but just a platform that was built for someone that's on the path to financial independence? And so, like, in the current environment, you know, there's. There. I've noted that even in the world of social media, there's different ways to aggregate different types of information, right? So if you have a very focused question, maybe something like Reddit, where you're going to be able to upvote and downvote the best content, and maybe in contrast to Reddit, you have something like Twitter, which is really about an individual creating more of a brand, aggregating, you know, followers. And if you like said person's opinion, you're going to be able to see more of their opinion. And then you have Facebook, which is maybe like this hybridized model which has various aspects of groups. But all of that, all of those come with their own types of baggage. And importantly, because those are social media platforms first, whatever information you find there, you then have to go off platform to go do something else. So then we have our own set of financial tools, and everybody has their own picks here, their own personal favorites, the ones that kind of do something for them. But if you would really think about it, a lot of times, because you're rarely the target market for the tool that you've discovered, you have to translate whatever it is that it's telling you into the verbiage that meets your goals of financial independence. Right? A lot of these generic personal finance tools are not targeting someone on the path to financial independence. So the thing that strikes me is it would be nice if the tools would grow with me and grow with my journey, would have some way of recognizing my progress. It would be nice if the tools were a little bit closer to the conversation. So if I got stuck on something, you know, I could go back and I could have easy access to see where the community is talking about this. And really, the conversations that were fantastic from a couple years ago are the ones that should still be fantastic, you know, now as long as it's still relevant to the action that's being taken. It would be really nice if those evergreen conversations could stay a little bit closer to the tools where they're being used. You're. It would be easier for you to take action and then the actions you take would be able to follow you. Right. So when you came back in, you could pick back up where you left off. And then not for nothing, as a community, we were able to focus on an aspect of our financial independence journey and the conversation could continue not just like on a Facebook thread somewhere where it's getting buried, but on a platform where we could legitimately all take questions and then do follow up questions and get the best version of the answer. Where the show really starts as the beginning, not the end of that conversation. And then I don't wanna say finally here, but the last aspect of that is the local. Choose a file. Local has been a big focus for many years. There's over 300 local groups all around the world. And two things with that, we have individuals that are asking us, hey, I really want to get involved in a local group, but I don't want to get onto Facebook to do it. How can I do that? And then also not for nothing, our admins reaching out to us to say, hey, you know, we've really gotten value from doing this, but you know, we're having to cobble together a set of tools to make this work. Isn't there something that we could do to make this a little easier? Just to, you know, quite literally send out an announcement that we're going to have an event, that sort of thing. So to button all of that up, the underlying premise, the question was what would a platform look like that was built for someone on the path to financial independence, someone that had them in mind and their journey beginning to end. So obviously we'll be talking about this more in the upcoming year. But Brad, that was the underlying frustration question problem to solve.
- [13:34]
Brad
Yeah, and let's be a little more concrete about this because it's, it's fun and I love how you set that up. And this frankly, and why we're talking about this now is this was your win of 2024. So we're not talking about this in some nebulous fashion. This is Jonathan's win and I think, frankly it's going to be a massive win for the whole FI community. I think that's the point. Jonathan and I conceptualized choose a FI in 2017 as, as he said at the outset, the ultimate crowdsource personal finance show. And the lifeblood of the show has always been you, the community, because it has never been limited to the knowledge of me and Jonathan. Just hard stop, end of story. So Jonathan has, over the last year probably spent two plus thousand hours learning how to code and build functionality that we always dreamed of but could never find. So the upshot for all of us is Jonathan's immense amount of hard work and his massive win for 2024 is going to hopefully revolutionize the FI community in 2025 and beyond. So what I see just real quick is we're going to go live with this probably in January of all goes well. And another cool thing is Jonathan is going to join me on the podcast much more often going forward, starting in January. And what it really is going to be is ultimately the constraint in the system of Choose a VI has been me, it has been you all send in these incredible questions, you send in all these wins. Everything that's going on and the constraint that stops everything is me and my time. So when I get an email, it's limited to my response to that one person. And ultimately, what would this look like if it was perfect? That's a question Jonathan and I have always asked ourselves. What would it look like if it was perfect? Right? And what it would look like is you, the community, come to our website. You have a question about a particular topic that you specify. I have a question about safe withdrawal rates. I have a question about real estate, I have a question about health and fitness. Fill in whatever blank. And when you submit that question, instead of again it being the constraint being me, that question then gets routed and answered by our amazing friends and colleagues and world class experts. So what if you had a safe withdrawal rate question and it got sent to Carsten Big Earn? What if you had a health and wellness question and it got sent to Dr. Bobby who we had on last year, Right. A real estate question goes to Chad Carson or one of our friends from Biggerpockets or Paula Pan and then that gets answered by them. It gets published on our website for everyone to see again, not just stuck in that one email. And then some of those answers end up on the podcast. It's this virtuous circle and then you come to choose a com and, and our website and our homepage and you see all this discussion, all these questions and then you're emboldened. Hey, I have a real question. I know it's going to get answered by one of these amazing experts, very, very Quickly. So this to me is the ultimate virtuous circle. And again, Jonathan and I talked about this. Jonathan, we've been talking about this since 2017 and we didn't have the wherewithal to do it. And we finally do now.
- [16:38]
Jonathan
You know how many ideas we've like, like how many times we false started. We've had hopes that we could get there and we've just, we just saw it just wasn't going to work. I mean, you know, for us to be making this announcement right now, I hope everyone knows and I want you to think about this in terms of timeline. Like I don't want to over promise here, but I do think this can transform, like truly transform personal finance and the financial independence community. The full implementation of this is going to be over the next 36 months. And so I want all of us to be thinking not just in terms of this platform, but in general about. You're listening to this now. You're about to get into the wins and we are going to lean in, all of us lean in for the next 36 months. You're in debt up into your eyeballs. You've really, you can't do another year like this year. You just can't. All right, all right. You got started on the path to fi. You feel flustered by the calculations and you're looking for encouragement on really, is it making any difference? Okay. You feel like you're almost there, you're getting close to the finish line and you're starting to get concerned about safe withdrawal rates and balancing your portfolio and these types of things. You're a parent trying to reach their kid and you're trying to get them interested in personal finance so they can get a head start. You're trying to figure out college. You know, like there's so much. Right. And that actually is part of the problem in that when someone visits the website, everyone has to figure out for themselves where they are on the journey. They have to self select into something and so you then have to die. It's on you to put together your own planning guide for, for how to interact with the content. And I mean, okay, that life's unfair and that's just how it is. So the super, you know, engaged and invested get the answers right. But it doesn't have to be that way. What if by actions taken by small steps taken, you could have the content serves you where you are. I don't need you to go interact with episode 21 or 32 or 38 or whatever. No, no, no. This is Where I am on the journey, this is what I need help with. Great. You know, here's all the trillion things that we're going to do, but guess what? You know, no kids. All right? We're probably not going to need to worry about college funding that we're not going to. We're not going to clutter up your thing with that. All right? And you're happy and thrilled in your job. All right, well, we're not going to focus on entrepreneurship. Maybe we're going to focus on salary negotiation, raises. You know, everyone is on a different path in the journey, but all of us want to win. We want to do a little better. That is why you're listening. And in that spirit, the next 36 months are going to allow all of us to both win and then, to the degree that we want, be able to share those wins with the larger community and to ride a tidal wave of momentum like the financial independence community has never seen before. Millions of dollars of debt will be paid off. Millions of dollars of raises will be gained. Right. And people's lives will be transformed, and they will reach financial independence, and they will do it through all sorts of investment strategies, and they will do it through all sorts of vehicles like real estate and entrepreneurship, etce. The goal is to identify the patterns, and once we've identified the pattern, to make sure that we have rocksteady guidelines for how to implement that personally for the people to which it's relevant.
- [19:43]
Brad
Agreed. Jonathan, we're going to queue up the wins here, so.
- [19:46]
Jonathan
Oh, should we get back to the wins?
- [19:48]
Brad
We should. I should. It's all about the wins. But. And that's the cool thing. So just last word for me on this is if you go to choosefi.com feedback that's where you can see the beginnings of what this is going to look like. As Jonathan said, this is a process, and we are building this together. I think that's what's always been fun, frankly, about Choose a Pie from the very beginning is if you go back and listen to some of those early episodes, Jonathan, if you remember, like, we would talk about something, and then the very next episode, we'd recite an email that somebody wrote in that said, hey, guys, you got it mostly right. But I really wanted to add this little bit of flavor. Yeah, that's the point of this, right? It's how can this be a rising tide? Lips all boats, not only from, again, these experts that I talked about, but all of us. We all have something to add. And the cool thing is, Jonathan has become basically a world class coder and he can create anything. That's what's so fun. So if we want to see functionality, if there's something you want to add, we can do that. Finally. Finally. I'm so happy. Like finally. It took us seven and a half years to get this and this is not about choose a 5. This is not about our website. It's this is about building something that is going to be remarkable for all of us and I'm just so excited. So with that we're going to get started on the wins. And Jonathan, why don't you queue up Justin's voicemail?
- [21:02]
Justin
Hi Brad, this is Justin. I always enjoy your year end wins episode. Last year I had sent in my 2023 wins too late. So I'm catching up for two great years now. My wife and I have been fully fire for a few years now, but in January of last year I left full time work for good. My wife had left her job the previous July while I successfully underwent a six month chemo treatment for lymphoma. My wife and I sold or gave away all our possessions, turned our house into our second rental unit, moved from Virginia to Washington State, no state income taxes and we started traveling as full time nomads with just a carry on and a backpack each. We were inspired by Tim and Amy from episode 79. In 2024 we completed our first full calendar year of nomadic travel. We slow traveled in Spain and Mexico seeing the total solar eclipse, spent several months in the US seeing friends and family and now we are on a nine country tour of Asia. I'm recording this from Chiang Rai Taio. Embracing minimalism has been my biggest win. I used to be a aspiring musician, a cyclist, gardener, canner, soccer coach, coin collector, stamp collector, homeowner and DIY handyman. I am no longer those things. I found that by selling, giving away or otherwise disposing of my guitars, soccer gear, biking gear, coins, stamp collections, work files, house and many many other possessions related to those lower priority pursuits, I was freed from the Personas that took away my time and focus from things that I wanted to be and do the most husband, father, friend and student as well as nomadic traveler, camper, hiker, reader and historian. By eliminating my many other Personas and lower priorities, I released myself from numerous commitments and freed up enormous time and resources. Having this extra time and resources to focus on world traveling, my relationships, reading, sleeping, working out and hiking has been amazing. I've traveled more this year than any other. I walk and hike and read way more than in my pre fire life. I have spent more quality time with my close family and friends than I have in 34 years. I'm constantly learning new things. I took a two week Spanish language course in Oaxaca to help tackle my foreign language proficiency goal. Doing fewer things better is, well, better. Removing the physical possessions around my lower priority identities made it happen. By getting rid of these possessions, I gave myself permission to be who I really wanted to be. Thanks to you and Jonathan and so many other members of this community for providing inspiration and motivation to keep improving and pursuing life goals. Early retirement is great and I'm looking forward to 2025.
- [23:30]
Brad
Happy holidays, Justin. Congrats, my friend. That is incredible. Everything. I mean it's funny because. And I think what's so interesting about Fi and life is different things appeal to different people. I'm curious to hear Jonathan's thoughts on this. But I mean this appeals to my soul for how minimalism and focusing on, as you said, doing fewer things better is, well, better. Right? Removing the physical possessions around my lower priority identities made it happen. By getting rid of these possessions, I gave myself permission to be who I really wanted to be. And it's interesting because I think one of my wins this year is actually moving towards minimalism and getting rid of the clutter. And I think going on a longer trip like I did, I took a three plus week trip to Asia. It made me realize how little I need in life and how the things that don't cost money. Like you said, world traveling, relationships, reading, sleeping, working out and hiking. I mean that's a pretty darn good list as far as I'm concerned that that's kind of a list for my life as well. And I think you're able to focus on those things when you take away a lot of the clutter. But again, obviously to each his own. This is not to say there's one one particular path to five, but believe me, you have a kindred spirit in me. So Justin, huge congrats and obviously congrats on the successful treatment and thanks for getting the voicemail in this year.
- [24:52]
Jonathan
Justin just sounds like a fascinating person. He's moved fully through more full identity, lower priority Personas than most of us will on our life. And he's moved past them, is now on to these more focused ones with the clarity of who he wants to be. But I mean just the guy does not live a boring life. It sounds like he's very in tune with the life he wants to live, which is unbelievably motivational. I always see these little beautiful desktop images on the back of your, you know, computer screen. That's the closest I get to them, you know, that's it. That is stunning. Do you think that's an AI picture? Oh, man, that's real. Oh, cool. I guess I'll take your word for it. What if you didn't, you know, like that's what he's doing. That's what he's describing. And so that's. That's incredible.
- [25:37]
Brad
Yeah. Love it. All right, Jonathan, next voicemail up is from Heather.
- [25:42]
Jonathan
My husband and I have been on the choose a five path for the last four years. This year's wins revolves around our son who was born in July. He already has a E trade stock account where we're saving money for him. He has a 529 plan and I was able to switch to a part time position so that I can spend more time with him. All of this is thanks to us making decisions that help us towards our path to phi. Second generation fireman. This is another one of these things that I find so encouraging, but it's also urgent. Right? Like if you don't get those money lessons into your kids. Right. If you have kids and you're just thinking they're just going to figure it out on their own, they will. And it's going to cost you and them.
- [26:33]
Brad
Yeah. I mean, Heather's rocking it first, obviously congrats on the birth of your son and just the fact that you're taking these steps. Right. The path to FI is about action and goodness. I mean, it's December when we're recording this, so it's only five months later. He already has a stock account and a 5 29. I mean, Jonathan, his mom was able to take a part time position to spend more time and talk about second generation fi. That little guy is going to absolutely be rocking it. And yeah, Heather, huge congrats to you and your family and yeah, onward and upward from here for sure. All right, Jonathan, our next voicemail came in from Mike.
- [27:10]
Mike
Howdy. This is Mike from Houston, Texas, and I'd like to share a big year win for my family. My wife and I went through multiple surgeries this year and we've been told that the issue has been fixed and we are so thankful. These treatments cost us around 150,000 and we did have to take out a 401k loan at around 5% interest rate for 50,000. We are grateful that my wife has gone through all these treatments and we essentially cash flowed most expenses this past year and focusing hard on the cash flow. The Choose Fi podcast helped us stay focused on wellness and not letting this hurdle disrupt our happiness. And I think one of the great tactics we came up with this, the staycation. Instead of traveling somewhere for vacation, we would stay home with our toddler. And we found that this greatly reduced any kind of stress of traveling. And ironically, whenever we would go out to eat during the staycation, my wife and I, we would always discuss about how pleasant and relaxing the experience was and about how we were going to continue focusing on paying down these bills with the cash flow. So thank you, Brad and everyone at Choose a five for the great fire discussions and crowdsourcing. You are spreading fire, Jonathan.
- [28:22]
Brad
Mike is somebody who actually emails me quite, quite often back to my five weekly newsletter. There's a. A good handful of people who write right back to me almost every week. And I've been following along with Mike's journey and yeah, it sounds like everything is going really well for him and his wife. And I'm just so happy and thankful. And it really shows the power of Fi when something like this happens that obviously nobody would wish for, clearly. But you're able to take steps and you're able to come from a position of strength that allows you to not frankly be bankrupted and to be able to make decisions that can still move you forward. And I think that's what Mike and his wife have done. And yeah, I mean, it's, it's hard to overstate sometimes just how important this path defy us. And it enables you to live a better life, right? I mean, Jonathan, like at its essence, I think that's what it is. It enables you to live a better life. And obviously that life is going to look different for everybody and there are going to be situations that we can't anticipate. But it helps you be resilient, right? You're not fragile when you're on this path, when you have some money in the bank, when you have a savings rate, you're not fragile. And I think that is a critical piece that we don't highlight often enough. And I think Mike's example here is a perfect one.
- [29:46]
Jonathan
When I hear encouraging messages like this, and huge thanks to Mike for sharing, you know, his experience with us. A couple things come to mind. One is just again, that idea, it's not a continuum, right? And this idea of financial resilience being able to handle it, like, because this happened to Mike and his wife, they are now, you would be mischaracterizing and frankly, flat out wrong to say, well, now FI isn't possible for them, right? Or now they're not really on the path because look, they did this and then this happened. No, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no. It's a continuum and they were able to roll with it in a way that very few other people outside of this community could have done. Right? Bankruptcy is a thing that happens a lot and they were able to cash flow something. And then I wanted to point something out. 401k loans are not ideal. No one hears 401k loan and thinks of myself, ooh, is that a tactic for early retirement?
- [30:46]
Brad
Let me get one of those.
- [30:49]
Jonathan
I got some money in my 401k. But having said that, there is a time and the play like it is, let's be very clear, it is your money, right? It is your money. And the idea that you would let financial catastrophe happen without going through every single possible research in this context, what you really want is you want to be aware of all of your options and then you want to be able to make an educated decision, an educated action based on what you know, the consequences of said action will be. And if you've been maxing out your 401k for, you know, many years, you have some assets there and yeah, you're not going to go to it first, but after you run the numbers, and that's the thing, and Mike said this crowdsourcing, it's a scary place when you got to start making unexpected big financial decisions like this. And you probably want a place where I'll give you two aspects just in this conversation, you want to one, really have an easy way to find out the implications of the 401k loan. What are the consequences? Are there penalties? What's the interest rates going to be? Is there any nuance to how you make your payments? Like, how does it work? What do you need to be aware of? And then also in this conversation, and this is specific to your local area, hey, I want to do staycations, but I'd like to do it in a pretty cool way. What are my options in my region? Geo arbitrage is a term that's floated throughout the financial independence community. And certainly it's useful to think about it through the lens of tax optimization, etc. But really, how familiar are we with the area in which we've chosen to live our lives? Some of these made these choices just passively because where we grew up, we never moved on. Some of them aggressively move to a new region, yet we stay within the two and a half loop of our, you know, work, office cycle and our two to three, you know, destination, quick service, food, restaurants. Every other weekend. There's more in every area of the country. There's little gyms and so when we had family visiting us this year, I made a plan to go out and come up with an itinerary of trips that we could do to local venues and destinations all within a one and a half hour radius of our area here in Richmond. And I would say, and I'm biased, that it was legendary. You know, it was a legendary two to three weeks of activities that we had teed up. I was set for the whole year after that, but that exists wherever you are, you can achieve this and wouldn't it be cool to be able to crowdsource that? So, Mike, thank you for the encouragement. Thank you for sharing, you know, a difficult situation that you went through and inspiring us to think about the possibilities of crowdsourcing things as we go into this next year.
- [33:22]
Brad
Agreed. All right, Jonathan, the next one came in from Crystal and this was a written one. So I'm going to, I'm going to read this here. Crystal said, my husband Scott found Choose a fire in early 2020 and we have been avid listeners ever since. We've booked multiple hotel stays. Our next biggest will be in Iceland 2025 and flights using points and miles and have been maxing out our Roth IRAs for the last number of years. My husband has also had an HSA that he has maxed out and a couple of years ago I finally signed up for one as well. We are currently saving all the qualified expenses for later use and letting the money grow in the investments. We also took the plunge on the projection lab software that I talked about on a prior episode and they love it. It outlines everything, lets you play with different scenarios. It's given us real hope of me going part time at age 47 or 48. I'm currently 43 and being done at 53 with my husband, who's also age 47, being done by 55. This was something we never thought was even possible until we found shoes of I. The biggest win of 2024, however, is for the first time ever, I get to say I'm hitting the max on every vehicle I have. I will max my 403B, my Roth IRA through Vanguard and my HSA. My husband will max his Roth IRA and HSA and come close to maxing his 401K also. All of this wouldn't be possible without this community and the idea that you can look at life a little bit differently. We are looking forward to many more episodes and many more wins. Jonathan, how good is that?
- [34:48]
Jonathan
She's crushing it, man. She should just write slogans for the show. You want to come in and do the copy? That'd be great.
- [34:56]
Brad
I don't think either of us could do as good a job as that. Right? I mean, looking at life a little bit differently, that's a cool thing that we talked about in the early days of choose a vibe. But really, it's like I said earlier in this episode, the one way for middle class people to get wealthy. But really this is you can live the same middle or upper middle class life as everybody around you and get wildly wealthy at the same time. That's what I always found so fun about it. It feels like, like a cheat code at life that. Oh, you mean just by making these couple little changes and being intentional and taking some action that I can get wealthy while everyone else around me is living paycheck to paycheck? Like, it just feels like a superpower. And I mean, goodness. Crystal and Scott, that is awesome. And that's four short years. And you've changed your entire lives and you've gotten to, like you said, this point that you never thought you'd get to where you can max all of these remarkable accounts. I mean, that's not. That's not chump change. That's real money that we're talking about here between all those accounts, between the two of you. And by the sound of it, you are six to eight years away from reaching fi and being done. And based on the ages you're talking, when you started, that probably didn't seem altogether plausible just a few short years ago. So, I mean, Jonathan, that's incredible.
- [36:13]
Jonathan
Huge wins.
- [36:15]
Brad
Thanks for listening to Choose a Vi and for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support choose a Buy is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page at choose a buy.com cards. I keep this page constantly updated so it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. All right, Jonathan, the next voicemail came in from D. I'd like to share.
- [36:42]
Heather
My year end wins. 2024. I feel like 2024 was a year for financial growth, for financial wins. In 2024, we were able to pay off our car. Paid about $17,000 this year toward our car. We paid off one of our student loans and all of our credit card Debt. We were also able to max out our two Roth IRAs for my wife and mine. My wife started her second year as a fifth grade teacher and I'm coming into my second year in the financial services and financial advising space. I was also able to in about a week now I'll be graduating with my bachelor's degree in finance. So just major progression, both personally, professionally, financially, and this was in large part due to the fact that we made some sacrifices, especially in housing. We decided to stay with my parents and we've been there for about a year and a half and that has allowed us this housing decision, this lifestyle decision, even though sometimes a little uncomfortable, has allowed us to save a large portion of our income, about 40 to 45% of our income, depending on the month.
- [38:02]
Jonathan
Wow.
- [38:03]
Heather
We also did not give up a lot of our other lifestyle decisions, such as travel. We were able to go on multiple trips. We have a trip to Tokyo, Japan scheduled in the spring. And because of travel rewards, we were able to afford that trip. We were able to get our flights covered through our Venture X card and our Chase Sapphire card. And then for hotels, we'll still pay some for hotels, but a large portion of that is going to be covered through our World of Hyatt card for five free nights offers. And a lot of this does come from choose a 5. Being part of the community, listening and learning and implementing what I have learned. So I feel like 2024 was a major success and I cannot wait for.
- [38:52]
Jonathan
The wins that will come in 2021-2025-2026-2027. Three years of wins, legendary status, legendary.
- [39:02]
Brad
Action, and a lifetime of wins beyond that. It sounds like they are rocking it, right? So I love the. So just major progression, both personally, professionally and financially. And I mean, that's what it's all about, right? Like, this is not just about the nuts and bolts of money. I mean, Jonathan. Right. Like, Choose a Phi would have stopped a very long time ago if this was just, hey, let's explain the nuts and bolts of Fi. That's really the easy part. It's about the continual taking action. It's about that progress psychologically, personally, with our health, with our relationships. It's having the space to be able to think about that stuff because you're not stressed constantly with the barrage of financial issues that really hinder most people. And I think that's what's cool. And it allows us to be in positions where you can make decisions. And I think the two of them, I mean, they made it. They made a Tough decision to stay with his parents. And I mean that's not something that 100% of people would do, but it's a decision that catapulted them and it's going to change the trajectory of their entire financial lives. And it's just really cool to see people making decisions like that. And that's not for everybody, but it worked pretty darn well for them. And I think that, again, think a little bit differently, think outside the box. See what works for you, not what is societally acceptable, right? Like, oh, you're 22, you go out and buy a brand new car and get an apartment, well, there goes most of your money, right? Like that's just sadly the way that it works. But what if you can think about it a little differently? What if, like me, you can go live with your parents for two to three years after you graduate, save 90% of your income. I didn't need to prove how tough I was, what an adult I was. I saved 90% of my income for two to three years and that changed the entire trajectory of my financial life. And it sounds like it did for them. So just absolutely love this win. And yeah, onward and upward from there.
- [40:58]
Jonathan
Brad always, you know, is wondering how long I'm going to comment. After a voicemail, he's like, oh, Jonathan, we got, we got 45 of these.
- [41:07]
Brad
We got so many more, we're going to get seven.
- [41:09]
Jonathan
He's like, I know what words you're going to say, but Donald set me up, man. I can't just leave this alone.
- [41:16]
Brad
Do it.
- [41:17]
Jonathan
All right, thank you, thank you. I'm holding back. There we go. So as he says this out loud, you know, it strikes me I have a younger sibling that is a first time homeowner. It's a very tough time to be a first time homeowner. I don't know if you guys are looking around, but with interest rates where they are and prices, you know, very close to 25, 30% higher than they were four or five years ago, and the mortgage interest rates have not decreased homes the way they, you know, maybe a lot of people hoped. The thing about life, the board game of life, is the game changes, right? The underlying rules are based on math is the same, but the facts and circumstances change and the challenges at given times change. You know, when, when the stock market's on a nine year bull run, you know, that's one wonderful set of circumstances. When interest rates are at all time lows, you know, ever, that's one set of circumstances. But it doesn't mean that when you're in the opposite of that, that the game is broken, you can't win anymore. But it does mean you have to be willing to reject broken paradigms. And there's really, you know, like we're talking about the math, we're presenting the common principles of the relationship between the two sides of that equation. Really, it's three what you can earn, how you invest, and then what your life actually costs. Right? It's that intermeshing, the intermingling of those that will give you the outcome. But at the same time that we're seeing this craziness and the home market, the whole country, you know, world, but the country is what we're going to talk about in this context. United States has been unlocked for remote work. It has never been easier to get a high paying job without college as it is right now. When you combine geo arbitrage high paying incomes without a college degree, that is equally as impactful as what has happened in the mortgage department. But to the good, right? So I'm just pointing out to you, all of us know someone that has gotten a mortgage right now, got an interest rate and they're like, you got the little shivers, right? You got to think about what do I have control over? What are my options? Is there anyone out there that's winning? And this. Yes, yes they are. And guess what? Through the context of this show and this platform, they're thrilled to share it. Not in a braggadocious, obnoxious, look at me pity you, but in a, hey, look over here. There's something we're seeing. You need to be paying attention to the patterns, right? And you need to be evaluating. Do I have a fixed belief system that's based on a paradigm that doesn't exist anymore? Dallin reminds us that no, you don't have to be locked in. You can be flexible and you can win. All right, Brad, that's all I got, man. I'm done.
- [43:52]
Brad
Love it, love it, love it. All right, the next one came in from Hannah and Hannah wrote, my wins for 2024 are a massive life design win. When we started working towards five, we didn't have a set. This is what life will look like. We just knew we wanted options. Fast forward to 2024 and it feels like we're here, even if the phi number isn't quite in the bank yet. My husband quit his job in July and is now a full time stay at home dad. Our two girls are in school so he has time during the day to get all the Little life tasks done, go to the gym, have lunch with me, and take his time discovering what, if anything, he wants to do for work in the future. I have a job that I absolutely love. I get to work one on one with clients as their financial coach. I work for a nonprofit, so I'm helping people who otherwise wouldn't get the advice and help they need. I have a side business that I can do as much or as little as I want. Since we don't need the income from it because we've been so intentional with our finances, I can now take the job I want instead of worrying how much it pays. Our girls get more time with both of us and we're so much more relaxed and engaged with them each day. It's been a win for us all and I'm so pumped we're here. Oh, man, Jonathan, this. These are the kind of ones that I just absolutely love. Talk about changes. And like we've said, it's not about just hitting that fine number. Like, this is not binary, okay? Everyone who still for some reason is living with that myth, it is so not true. You accrue power each and every day. Each and every decision that you make, it moves more of that power and autonomy and freedom to your side of the ledger. And Hannah and her husband and their family, they are just rocking it in every possible way. They are living the thigh life regardless of whether they've hit some mythical number on a screen or not. It doesn't matter. And I mean, geez, the girls get stay at home, dad, they get to spend all this time. Hannah gets to spend her time doing what she wants with her job and something that she absolutely loves. I mean, Jonathan, come on, man. Right? Like, this is just exactly it.
- [45:59]
Jonathan
All right, guys. Well, I realize maybe time is short. Brad's like, no, it's not. We can record for four hours. Have you seen Logan?
- [46:04]
Brad
We got plenty of.
- [46:06]
Jonathan
Sure. All right, here we go. I tell you what, Brad, how about this as a counter offering? I'm going to go ahead and read two of these wins back to back and then I'll get your comments on them. And I've got them teed up here from Kat and from Weston. Ready?
- [46:17]
Brad
Deal.
- [46:18]
Jonathan
All right. Cat says I've been self employed for nearly a decade. During that time, my husband was working a W2 job that was becoming increasingly stressful. We had FU money saved, so he quit his W2 job towards the end of 2023. He had a side hustle that we worked on together for the last 3 years. That was making about 25k a year, but we didn't have the time to expand until he quit. We expanded in 2024. He made 150% of his previous W2 income. Because of the added income and the market gains, our net worth has increased by nearly 500k since he quit his job. I was most worried about health insurance since we had it through his previous job, but we got on an ACA plan and we've been pleasantly surprised with the quality of the coverage. We are a few years from fi, but this newfound freedom of our schedules has changed our thinking a little bit and I planned a downshift and take a half schedule in my business next year. We will continue to grow his business and we both look forward to more travel and making memories with our family. That's from Kat and I got one more. Let me tee this up and we'll get your feedback on both of those. Weston says hey Brad, longtime listener. First time sharing your newsletter got me thinking about how this year has gone in my FI journey and I just had to share this year marks the third year of my wife being a stay at home mom. The fact that we've been able to pull this off has been amazing, especially for her. Now somewhat tied to that, we realized with three kids aged five and under. Man, that's an adventure right there. We would likely not be traveling as much so we use credit card points to get the highest end imac we could buy. This has allowed my wife to start doing freelance work and bringing in additional income which is essentially buffered the impacts of inflation. It's also worth noting that I got my employer to start adding a match to our 457B plan and as of next year I'll be maxing that out. We've also been in talks about offering an HSA in the future. While being down to 1, income has slowed down our phi date a bit, our quality of life is higher than ever and it's only a matter of time before our youngest starts public school. Allowing my wife to rejoin the workforce and our current financial stability allows her to take her time to find the right job. FI equals freedom and we can taste it. Your podcast is a recurring and helpful reminder in staying on this journey and I appreciate all you do. Weston.
- [48:50]
Brad
Nice Jonathan. Those were two great ones. And yeah, it's just so cool to see these things right? So Kat and her husband. It actually sounds similar to what I did right where okay, you have a W2, you have a side hustle that's going reasonably well, on the side. But hey, maybe sometime you have to take that leap and you have to go for it. And it sounds like he did that and just blew up their income and they're doing remarkably well. And it then gives options. So that's what's neat about, I think, entrepreneurship. And that's something that was a blind spot for us at the beginning of choose a 5 was just how important entrepreneurship can be. Doesn't mean it's a requirement, obviously, but it can be for so many people in the FI community. And you can do it in all different ways. You don't have to burn the boats, as they say. Maybe you can test, maybe you can figure it out and then go with it, then dive in. And Kat also said something about health insurance. And I think this is something that has long been just like, obviously an issue in the United States. We all know that. But I think a lot of people are like, oh, what am I going to do when I leave my W2? The nice thing is you have almost the exact same options now with healthcare.gov and the ACA. So it's not some big surprise. And again, if you don't make a lot of income, there are significant subsidies too. So this is not the time or place to talk about that by any means, but options are there. This is not something that I have to stay in my W2 job until I'm 65 because of health insurance. Like, those days are long gone and I fear that a lot of people are still stuck in that old paradigm. So that's why I wanted to double down on that. And Weston, I love this stay at home mom and the flexibility that affords. But it sounds like, as you said, I got my employer to start adding a match to our 457B plan.
- [50:36]
Jonathan
Not a small thing.
- [50:37]
Brad
No, not a small thing at all. Right, Jay? Like, I mean, how cool is that? And Jonathan, I cannot tell you how many emails I've gotten over the years that say almost verbatim that whatever it may be, like, hey, my company didn't have not only a match, but didn't have a 401k plan. And I talked to HR and I helped them, or oh, we only had these terrible high fee options and I explained to them how this is robbing all of us. And like Jonathan, it's taking action. And that that doesn't help just our community member who took the action. It helps everybody.
- [51:08]
Jonathan
But it's more than that, Brad. Like, you know, someone at the weekend says, hey man, what'd you do this week. And, you know, if you say that out loud, it's great. And they go, that's cool. You know, and then they move on, right? Like. Like. Like, no one cares. We care. That's huge, dude. That's incredible. Like, you know what I mean? And I get this. I get this from family, from friends. You know, like, there's an internal code that we have, right? Like, there's a set of things, actions taken, that someone in the financial independence community gets and will respond to in a way that you will appreciate because they understand what it means. You go tell stranger I got my. I got them to HSA their response. What's an hsa? Interesting. Fun fact. Well, I saw the last issue of wast. Dude, that show's been done for, like, 20 years. Oh, it's on Netflix. Yeah, like, from 20 years ago. You know, like, I got them to match my 4:57. I got them to match my HSA. Dude, you're changing the game for yourself and for your coworkers.
- [52:11]
Brad
Yeah. And that's the way that Weston closed the email. And it's. While being down to 1, income has slowed down our Friday a bit. Our quality of life is higher than ever, and it's only a matter of time before our youngest starts public school. Allowing my wife to rejoin the workforce, and our current financial stability allows her to take her time to find the right job. Phi equals freedom, and we can taste it. I love that. Huge congrats to you, Weston.
- [52:36]
Jonathan
I just looked at my audio track and I saw that I blew up my audio. I blame that on you for your awesomeness.
- [52:40]
Brad
Too excited. Too excited.
- [52:42]
Jonathan
You need to calm down, sir. All right, I'm gonna read these wins that we got from Isaac and Christie. And this is from Isaac. My win for this year was the birth of my daughter. The biggest win, of course, is my beautiful new daughter. But my wife and I had some financial wins as well. I've only been working for two years, but because we've been saving around 50% of our income, we put a lot away by this point. When we were thinking about how much the hospital bills might be, we looked at our out of pocket maximum, and we realized that even if we had to pay the maximum, it'd only be about 4 to $5,000, which, while obviously not nothing, it wouldn't affect our overall financial picture at all. We also had a win when it came to my paternity leave because of the way that my company policy works with my state's paternity leave laws, I'd get one Month of full pay and two months of fractional pay, which is a bit less than one third of my normal salary. I wasn't sure how that play out in practice, especially after withholdings, but I knew it wouldn't cover our expenses. The win is it just didn't matter. I planned to take time to bond with my daughter and help my wife. And because we had been saving, we weren't concerned about having a brief dip in income. That's the biggest win from this. There were so many stressful aspects of the transition to being parents, but finances never one of them. And ultimately, this is exactly what I'm saving for. To be able to spend time with the people I care about. He says, I know that this was really long and feel free to trim it down. Dude, no, no. You maximize the impact of your words. Good job. Awesome. Awesome win. All right, I'm going to the next one, Brad, and then I'll let you respond to that. Christy says I stumbled upon the Choose a five Facebook group earlier this year. Normally I would reluctantly give one brain cell to anything finance related as I found it incredibly boring. To my surprise, a fire was lit and I'm actually enjoying learning about fi. This year I paid off a credit card, opened a High Yield savings account emergency fund and saved $16,000. I started investing in my HSA instead of just leaving it all in the money market fund and I haven't touched the money. Last year I used the full amount of HSA funds to cover my deductible, but my behavior has shifted to trying to save the HSA money for future health expenses. It's options. I opened a roth and I'm 100x more comfortable with where I am investing my retirement money. Oh, and as bonus, also helped my teenage open a high yield savings account and get into the rhythm of building and maintaining an emergency fund. Your work is life changing. Thank you and God bless you and your team. This is fun. Brad. I'm feeling hyped.
- [55:26]
Brad
This is. I think this is why we continue to do this episode every year because not only does the community love it, but I mean, frankly, you and I just love this. This is just really wonderful. It's amazing that we can talk into a microphone and people all over the world are taking action to make their lives better and I will never, ever, ever, ever tire of that. And it's take it for granted. Take it for granted. Yeah. No, you're right. You're absolutely right. And you know, it's funny. Alan and Katie Donegan are in New Zealand Right now. And they keep sending me messages of, wow, we just had another meetup in this random place in New Zealand. And you wouldn't believe how many people listen to choose if I hear all the way across the world. And it is really remarkable. And, and to hear a story like this with Christie, right? Like, hey, normally I wouldn't give one brain cell to this, but a fire was lit. And you think about all the things she did, right? Pay off a credit card, open a high yield savings, save $16,000, change behavior with the HSA. I think that's what's cool. It is a total reframe on thinking short term versus thinking long term. And I think what we know is thinking long term is the way to have a successful life. And now that you're not just worried about cash flow anymore, you can, in this case, hsi, this is just. But one example, you can not just reimburse the expenses you paid out of pocket this year. You can let that money grow and compound for the next 50 years. And that is just a piece of information that you just simply might not have had before. You found choose a pie. And now you do. And now, because you're coming from a position of financial strength, you can do something like that. And I just find that remarkable. And again, this is another second generation phi and that gets into Isaac and birth of his beautiful daughter. Huge congrats. And I love when he said the win is it just didn't matter, right? Like, hey, I'm down to a third of my income, we're not able to cover our expenses. The win is. You know what, it just doesn't matter, Jonathan.
- [57:22]
Jonathan
Right?
- [57:22]
Brad
Like, how cool is that?
- [57:24]
Jonathan
Yeah, you're right. The numbers increasingly become less relevant and that's, that's directly correlated with your, your stress levels, you know?
- [57:34]
Brad
Yeah, that is exactly right. And that's, that's exactly how we close it out, which is that there was so much stress this year. I mean, Jay, you and I know both having kids, it's a lot of stress. It's a big change. But finances were never one of them. And yeah, Isaac, that is just awesome. And I think yet another way that following the path to five just makes your life better. It just does. This is that superpower that we've all been looking for.
- [57:58]
Jonathan
All right, Brad. Well, I'm going to keep this pattern going because I think there's a plausible chance we can get through a few more of these and a pretty respectable number of wins. And we just, we do appreciate so much everybody that sends them in we realize you took time out of your day to share and we want to do our best to publish as many of them as possible. If we weren't able to publish yours, it's a true apology. Let's now tee up. I got this one from Patrick and then one from Rick and Kelly and Patrick says hi Brad and Jonathan. My name is Patrick from the Bay Area, currently Coast Phi. Do I need to have a sidebar to talk about Coast 5? Because I love the concept Coast 5, but we'll have to do that in the new year. Gonna go and save the energy and spare Brad on this one. This year I'll end up maxing my HSA and Roth IRA. I will also get some money into my 401k both on the traditional and a little bit on the Roth side. For shorter vacations I went to Seattle, Portland, Honolulu, Puerto Vallarta and Shenandoah. Not that far from Brad I believe. For events and more purpose driven travel, I went to Economy and two events with the Financial Planning Association. Those were in Denver and Phoenix. Also had the amazing opportunity to take a sabbatical to South Korea. Was there for a little over two months and I don't know when or even if I could do something like that again. But I'm even more excited about the career wins. So I'm now a part time engineer, part time financial planning intern at ria. I completed my CFP curriculum, not easy by the way. And I passed the Series 65 exam. I'm now serving in an FPA position that aims to help those attempting to make the career change to financial planning. And I'm currently studying for the CFP exam. Can't articulate how grateful I am. Well, Patrick, you know how grateful. Maybe, maybe not. But how excited and zestful for the next year you are. That's coming through loud and clear and we're thrilled for you. You're crushing it. Keep it up. Keep that momentum. Really cool stuff. All right. This other one from Rick and Kelly. So Rick says my year end win is a simple one. It's the fact that my wife and I discovered the FI community in 2024 and finally pulled our heads out of the financial sand. They were doing that ostrich technique. Just don't think about it. It'll be okay. I'm coming into five much later than I would have preferred with a divorce at 40 causing me to start at zero and several years of digging myself out of a financial hole after that. That was 15 years ago. I was lucky enough to find the partner of my dream seven years ago, and we've been working together on our Phi education and journey for six months now. One thing we found is that while we had much room for improvement after listening to untold hours of Choose Fi and other podcasts, we had each made some solid decisions and are well on our way to phi. So I'm 55 years old now and if the market is at all kind over the next five years, my hope is to retire at least from my day job or by the age of 60. We have our home, which we plan to sell within two years to downsize and build a much smaller dream house with the profit from the proceeds. We also own two rentals, which we're doing everything we can to have both be mortgage free within three years. That would result in a positive cash flow, $4,500 a month. We should have enough in our 401ks and our IRAs to take up to a 4% distribution to make it work after determining our 25xfi number. Now, the thing that inspired our FI education is that we traveled to Spain and Portugal this past May, and while in Portugal, we stayed with a longtime friend of mine with his wife and kids, and he retired there at the age of 50. He asked us a simple question, when will you be retiring? My answer was as it had always been, and by the way, I'm going to read this answer, but I think that's probably the default answer for most individuals coming up here. I'm not sure, Maybe never, certainly not sooner than 65 or 70. His response was perfect. Why? All right. We then learned all about their FI journey and they turned us on to all sorts of podcasts and resources, starting with Mr. Money Must Stash. And after we got home, we dove in. And now I feel so incredibly on top of our financing, knowing where every penny is spent. Through ynab restructuring our 401ks and IRAs to a mix of index stocks and index bonds. As a bonus, We've amassed around 300,000 Ultimate Rewards points through Chase and then also through Capital One Cards. And we're continuing to add more to our Travel Rewards points portfolio. I feel like we found the easiest to learn secret financial life rewards of all time. My next goal is to help educate our adult children. They're mostly in their twenties to begin their journey and achieve their financial and life goals. Younger than me, I realized I did a lousy job teaching them about financial matters. So this Christmas, their gifts will be a collection of books, your Money youy Life, Simple Path to Wealth Rich dad, poor dad, as well as start an IRA for each with an index fund portfolio. My plan is to give them the IRA with the instructions. If you simply don't touch it, look at it in 20 years, you'll be very happy. Invest even just a modest amount each month and you'll be shocked. It may not be the most exciting gifts they've received, but it will be the most rewarding. Thank you for all the education, resources and inspiration. We still have much to learn, but we're loving the process. And my thought on that is it may not be exciting to them, but everybody listening to this show and certainly you and I are geeking out over how awesome it is. And that's the point. You found your tribe. When you share it in this community, we get you, we love it, and I'm inspired by it.
- [63:40]
Brad
Yeah. And you have found your tribe. That's what's so cool about a community like ours is we have people all across the world and those people understand you. That's why I talk about live events all the time. That's why we talk about our choose of I local groups all the time. Because those in real life meetups make a massive difference. Those connections make a massive difference. And yeah, Jonathan, when Rick said, my plan is to give them the IRA with the instructions, if you simply don't touch it, look at it in 20 years and you'll be very happy. That reminds me of, I think it was the John Bogle quote about, hey, if you just keep putting in to, you know, I'm paraphrasing obviously, but to your index funds, wake up in 30 years and you, you might need a cardiologist with you. It's really, it's astonishing how regular savings and compounding can just make such a massive difference in your net worth. That is hard to fathom. It's hard for our brains that are kind of linear brains to understand exponential growth, but when you see it on a computer screen, it is remarkable. And yeah, I mean, Rick nailed it. And what a cool question that their friend in, I guess Spain and Portugal asked them is, when are you going to retire? I mean, talk about, like just putting their feet to the fire. And I mean, Rick's answer was right. Like, what the hell? Nobody's ever asked me that before. I don't know, maybe never. And then, I mean, talk about a forcing function for a conversation of like, hey, this is what we've done. Oh, wow. It kind of opened their eyes, too.
- [65:09]
Jonathan
Is it kind of like the same question? I mean, I think it's much easier. But just, just for context, I think people put it this way, it's kind of like saying, so how do you feel about this latest presidential election? Let's just, let's just, let's do a little softball in there, you know, like.
- [65:24]
Brad
Throw a grenade into the room.
- [65:26]
Jonathan
I love that he felt confident enough, the friend. And I want to say that we as a community have an opportunity to transform people's lives, not by anything we've done, but just quite literally by just asking engaging questions, you know, whether it's this one or a version of this. But just why did he listen? Think about that. He listened because he recognized his friend had unlocked decades of his life and his current track was maybe being okay after 65. Do you realize that everybody's on the maybe be okay after 65 path, even if they're good at personal finance? Because that is what the system teaches, right? It is what personal finance teaches, how to be okay after 65. And if you do good things and truly they will not interact with the possibility that you can reclaim not just your golden years, but your best years. It is astonishing to me, but when you're speaking inside the financial independence community, you're listening to Choose Fi. This niche is the only niche that even presents that as a possibility. Think about that.
- [66:24]
Brad
Isn't that fascinating, right? It's a reframe on your entire financial life. And yeah, again, it is power from the very beginning. And just going back to Patrick, maxing all these accounts, doing all that incredible travel, going to a live event at Economy, which I think is a wonderful one, and having these incredible career wins. I mean, I just, I love hearing all these. It is really awesome. So, Patrick, Rick, and Kelly, thank you, Jonathan. I think we should close it out with the last voicemail that we got. So this one came in from Jake. And just as a heads up to everybody else, I am trying to put in in my newsletter in December all the remaining written wins that we received. So if you are not signed up to my newsletter, choose the Vet.com newsletter. I send it out every Tuesday. It's usually three segments from me. And then six of these wins that people have taken that week or that month to make their life better. It's a really. Honestly, it's a really good newsletter. And in December, I can say that.
- [67:23]
Jonathan
Brad, I can say it's a really good newsletter. You do a great job on it. You can tell. You lean into it every.
- [67:29]
Brad
I enjoy it. I really genuinely do. And yeah, so December, I highlight all these wins. So It's a really cool way to close out the year with year end wins. So choose a comm slash newsletter. But Jonathan, let's close out this episode with Jake's voicemail.
- [67:44]
Jake
Hello Brad. Jonathan and the Choose a 5 community. My name is Jake, I live in Milwaukee, Wisconsin and I'm calling in to share some 2024 wins, the biggest of which is definitely that I quit my job to become an entrepreneur and start my own business. And that's a huge win, big leap, and also a little scary. But it was made a lot less scary because of our journey towards FI and many of the things that I've learned from the Choose a Fi podcast. And I wanted to share a few of these factors with you all. So first, my wife and I were talking about this in 2023 and up until this point I hadn't really considered it super seriously. It was more just an idea of becoming an entrepreneur. My wife asked me, when are you going to do that? I said, I don't know, in the next few years. I wasn't in a rush. I enjoyed the work I did. I wasn't trying to leave my work or anything like that. So I didn't really push myself to really think about it deeply. And she pushed a little bit harder and asked me a really good question, which is why not do it now? And I didn't have a good answer except some vague unease around like financial stuff. And so we decided to dig into the idea of what it would take for us to feel comfortable having me leave my job and basically cut our income in half. And when we ran the numbers, which we hadn't done in a little while, we realized that we were at Coast FI and no longer needed to put a huge emphasis on like saving for the future. We had done a lot of that work already and so that took a huge pressure off of the decision to leave from a financial perspective because we realized that we could live off my wife's income and then take this leap. So being on the path to FI gave us the freedom to make this decision. So that's like the first kind of takeaway for me. Also the book Die With Zero, which needs no introduction on this podcast. If you're listening to this and you still haven't read that book for some reason, go do that, please. It's a great book and it changed my relationship with money tactically for this decision. It helped me kind of reframe losing my income from a loss to a I'm spending my money on this experience of starting a business so, yes, like, I didn't have the income anymore when I quit my job, but I gave up that income, effectively spending it, because I could have kept at my job and effectively gave up that income to start this business. So I kind of framed it from a loss to let me spend my money on what I actually want in my life. And then the third piece here, which comes up a lot on the podcast, is, don't just focus on the number. Think about what you want to do in FI as well as how to get there. Like, the journey along the way is important as well. But thinking about that end result of what would I do when I hit FI and I leave my corporate job, the answer was basically what I'm doing now. And because I had the ability to do that now it makes sense to just make that leap now. You might as well start that process now and start doing the things that I would want to do when I actually hit fine and get that freedom. So basically it was just realizing I'm at freedom to start it now, even if I'm not at my fine number.
- [70:29]
Jonathan
So, Brad, I'm noticing this pattern that someone that we trust, someone that means a lot to us, ask us a question that we never gave ourselves permission to ask. Why? Think about it. Like, we've seen that pattern twice, and it's questioning assumptions that allows us to just think about it and realize, well, there isn't really a good reason. Right. And I just, here's where I want to go with this. This path to financial independence. At bare minimum, at absolute bare minimum, it's going to give you the space to answer the question why? And it's going to give you, you know, this community is going to give you the tools to then map out the game plan from there. That's the heart of this.
- [71:17]
Brad
Yeah, Jonathan, I hear you. And Jake said some really interesting things that jumped out to me, and it was, don't just focus on the number. Think about what you want to do in FI as well as how to get there and to enjoy the journey along the way. But what was cool, what he said was, but thinking about that end result of what I would do when I hit FI and leave my corporate job, the answer was, basically what I'm doing now. And isn't that poignant and powerful? And I think that's what having that little bit of space allows you to take that step back, kind of survey the field that is your life and figure out, hey, what do I actually want to do? And I think this is where we've Looked at the concept of FU Money, which Jonathan, you always love calling freedom Unlimited money.
- [72:02]
Jonathan
Family show, brother, Family show.
- [72:04]
Brad
It allows you to make decisions that like, hey, look, I might really like 20% of my job. I might really like 75% of my job, and I really hate this remaining stuff. What would it look like to go in there with a position of power and say, hey, look, I'm going to leave? Or I think I'd really like to do this 75% of the job and I'm really darn good at it and you won't have to replace me. Okay, that sounds like a win to everybody as far as I'm concerned. And I think that's what's cool about what Jake's saying here is, okay, look, the answer is basically what I'm doing now. And that is a wonderful realization. And this show and this community have never been the anti job platform. Like, we are not anti job. Anybody who thinks that is really mistaken. This is about making decisions that make your life better and opening your eyes to what those are. Whatever it may be. We are agnostic as to what those decisions are in your life. But I want you to go in with eyes wide open and make decisions from that position of power. And it sounds like Jake has done that and it sounds like Jonathan, honestly, all of these wins, all of these people have made incredible decisions across this year. And I know you and I are just super excited about 20, 25 and beyond. It is incredible. We're coming up on year nine of this, and I'm as excited about this as I've ever been. And I think we just have a lot of good stuff coming just for us here. I think what we can add back to the world and what this community can do together.
- [73:32]
Jonathan
All right, well, that tees us up, guys. This is the mandate. This is the movement. The fire is spreading, right? We have three years, all of us, to go from where we are right now. You're listening to this week of Christmas, you know, and actually for those of you that took time out of your weeks, I mean, maybe there's a lot going on to listen to this episode this week. I hope that you just got a little pep in your step. I hope that you feel the encouragement. You're feeling hyped. You're excited about what's coming. We're going to hit the ground running in January, Brad and I. We have a tentative recording date for an episode in early January. Probably come out about halfway through the month, something like that. Brad, I don't have the Hard date on that yet. But we're going to lay out the game plan, right, and we're going to give you a lot more details than what we talked about at the beginning. But this is going to be effectively a new chapter in the life cycle of Choose Fi. And the biggest thing is that we expect and anticipate that the conversation will be continued following many podcast episodes. The podcast episode will be the place where we focus on something and then as a community, the larger Choose A five community. But then maybe also with a large emphasis on the local groups as well. We are able to continue that in a meaningful way that ensures that you're able to take action on the steps and you're able to get the questions that you had or that you encounter after thinking about it answered. And then as that happening, it trickles back and it informs everyone. So we all kind of can increasingly talk about these concepts, hash them out, polish them, and turn them into game plans in our own life when they're relevant. So we will give you more details, and we will probably be asking for your input and feedback. But that is what I think all of us, if we were really thinking about it, we would come to a similar conclusion on what would improve the experience for all of us. I think this is directionally the right approach. I feel more confident in this than I ever have of any idea that we've circulated or had in the past. And really, this early January will be about us laying it out for you and inviting you to join us and partner with us on it. Brad, thanks for letting me come back on the show with you, man, and do this episode. It was a lot of fun.
- [75:41]
Brad
It was a lot of fun. Love doing this. And, yeah, talk to you in January.
- [75:45]
Jonathan
All right, buddy, we'll see you then. The fire is spreading, my friends. We'll see you next time as we continue to go down the road.