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ChooseFI | Financial Independence Podcast
Coast FI Masterclass | The Fioneers | Episode 538
00:58:16
Brad dives into a CoastFI MasterClass with Jess, and Corey from The Fioneers —where saving for retirement becomes optional. ?? Jess and Corey, popularizers of the term, share their unique journey transitioning from high savings rates to a fulfilling...
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- [00:00]
Brad
Hey, it's Brad. Before we get started with the episode, I wanted to pass along some incredibly exciting news in the Choose a Buy world. As we talked about on a previous episode, Jonathan has spent the last couple of years building something incredible and we actually just rolled it out. This is our brand new Choose a five member site. It's obviously entirely free to sign up for. We're hoping this will take the place of our Facebook groups, both for the main Facebook group and especially for our local groups. So how this is going to work, you just go to our main homepage, choosefi.com and and you will see front and center register, sign up for an account log in. It's really, really easy. We made it as simple as possible. So right now, Jonathan is building this in public. Every single day he posts an update with the 20 or 30 things that he updated from the last day that people reported that. Hey, I want to see this. I'd love to see this new feature. How can we do this? This is the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance website and community. We finally built it. We've dreamed of this since 2017 and we finally have the technology. We are not beholden to Facebook anymore. We can actually send out events and you will get emailed notification of it. So it's not just the 1%, if you get lucky that Facebook shows you the notification. Now for your local groups, when you sign up, you tag hey, I'm a member of this local group. And when your admin sets up an event, you will get email notified so you can't possibly miss it. This, this is so exciting. We already have thousands upon thousands of people that signed up just in the first three days and I expect there to be tens of thousands before very long. So I wanted to jot this off before the episode started. Go to choose a fi.com our main homepage and sign up for an account today. Hello and welcome to Choose a Phi. Today we have a real treat. This is going to be what I'm calling a Coast Phi masterclass from the people who popularize that term. This is Jess and Corey from thefioneers.com and they're back to talk about their journey from really the concept of coastfi to actually taking this to fruition in their own lives. And it's really remarkable to see people who, who thought about this for so long, who planned for it, to see it actually happen. And their story is really incredible. And I think you're going to absolutely love this one. This is really, to me, one of the most important changes in the entire FI community is understanding that this is not just about I'm fi or I'm not fi. There are so many different flavors, and frankly, I think Coast Fi is the most interesting of them. And Jess and Corey really popularized this and now they are living it. You can't ask for better than that. You're really going to love this. And with that. Welcome to Choose Fi. Corey and Jessica, welcome back to the podcast. It's always good to see you both.
- [02:54]
Jess
Thanks so much for having us back.
- [02:56]
Corey
Yeah, it's good to be here.
- [02:57]
Brad
Yeah. Corey, it's been four and a half years, I think, since I've seen you on the podcast. Obviously, Jess is on all the time, so.
- [03:03]
Corey
Yeah, four and a half years. Gosh, isn't that crazy? I knew it had been a few years, but yeah, that makes sense.
- [03:09]
Brad
Yeah. So that was episode two, 29 of Choose a Phi, and it was titled Managing Stress by Leveraging Fi. And I think to a large degree, that was where cos phi, this term came into the popular language in the FI community. I think you two are really credited with popularizing this. And now it's. It's a massive concept. And first, it's really cool, actually, that, that you guys did that. But second, most importantly, you've been living this Coast Phi life for the last two plus years. You had worked up to it for a number of years, and now you're actually living it. And I think this can be absolutely awesome for people because Coast Fi has really gotten into our imaginations because fi is not zero or one. It's not not fi or fi. Like, maybe people thought back in the 2013 through 2019 days, but I think we realized there are a lot of flavors of Phi and this is a really, really important one. So why don't we just simply start with how do you define coastfi?
- [04:13]
Corey
Coastfi is the financial milestone where saving and investing for retirement becomes optional. It's the point on your investing journey where you have enough already invested that you no longer need to contribute and you will still reach your financial independence number by the time you're aiming to retire. So many people, the term COSFI often comes with this idea that you've done all the legwork up front and now you're coasting to financial independence.
- [04:42]
Jess
So financial independence we think of as when you reach fi, your work optional, whereas coastfi is your savings optional.
- [04:51]
Brad
Oh, I like that. You both are very succinct with this. I love it. This is really great. So, okay, so savings optional. Now I assume that CoastFi can really be any length of time, right? Because the math would work whether it's a. I'm just thinking back of the envelope, like using the rule of 72. And we will talk about that in a minute. Maybe one of you can explain that because it's really important for the concept of Coast Phi. But if you were nine years out, you need basically one doubling of your money to get to FI. If you're 18 years out, you need two doublings of your money, right? So I assume, just based on my little mathematical knowledge that this really, it could be any length of time that you could coast. But it's just where the amount of money you've saved is now working in the background compounding to get you to FI while you are effectively saving 0%. Now, if you happen to be saving a little more than fine, like you said, Jess, it's savings optional. Is that like a reasonable overview?
- [05:53]
Jess
Yeah, for sure. And we have a coastfi calculator which we can share with you to put in the show notes, but you can put in 65 or 60 or traditional, you know, any traditional retirement age that you want into that calculator to see how much would I need, you know, to have saved today if I want to generate $0 after that traditional retirement age. But if you're also like, I'd really like to be fully work optional at the age of 50, you could put 50 or 45, right. Or whatever year in that calculator to see what amount of money would I need today to grow to be what I would need at that date to be fully work optional.
- [06:36]
Brad
So, okay, yeah, that all makes sense. And you can work either way, obviously, and just as a real quick sidebar. So Rule of 72, it's actually a really simple calculation and you don't need to know like the underpinnings of it. Essentially, it's just okay when I want to know how long it's going to take my money to double. That's essentially what we're trying to calculate here. So you just take the number 72 and you divide by your expected annual return. Now everybody can put in whatever they decide on that. We at choose a pie, use 8% as kind of a back of the envelope number. Now nobody can guarantee that, of course, but historical average, that's the number we use here. So just very simply, you take the number 72 and divide by eight and that comes out to nine. Okay? So nine is the number of years it will take your money to double. Now, when I said a minute ago, like one doubling or two doublings. It's important to understand the exponential nature of compounding, right? So let's say the day you decide, hey, I'm coast fi, I have $500,000 saved up, okay? Now you can expect that money to double in nine years based on an 8% annual expected return, right? So 500,000 doubles to a million, but then another nine years later that money doubles again, right? So it doubles from 1 million to 2 million in that case. That's the beautiful thing of compounding, right? So this money went from 500,000 to 2 million in 18 years. In another nine years it would go from 2 million to 4 million. Right? So that's why understanding this rule of 72, I think is pretty important for the timeline. Now, obviously you have this coastfight savings calculator on your website which we're going to link to in the show notes. That's a lot easier than doing the calculations yourself. But I think just to have an understanding of, hey, my money is actually going to compound in the background. Like that's really important for understanding cosfi.
- [08:30]
Jess
Absolutely. And I think one thing that's incredibly important to understand too is the longer your time horizon, then the smaller the balance is that you actually need to actually achieve Coast 5 because it will double and then it will double again, and then it will double again, right? So for us, when we realized that we were coast by at the age of 31, we only needed like 245k in our investments to be coast 5 for the age of, I think 62, because we had so long for that money to compound and grow in the background. And then that gave us so much freedom because once you actually reach coastfi, all you need to do is cover your actual expenses. And so for us, we were at that point saving 60% of our income. We were charging toward financial independence and early retirement. And so for us to then be able to say, what would life look like if that 60% that was going towards savings, just like we either one could spend it or two, we didn't need to earn it, how much freedom would we have in our lives? And so that's what over the last six years, since 2019, when we realized we were coast by, we've worked to figure out like, how do we use that freedom now?
- [10:02]
Brad
Oh, okay, this is awesome. So, right, so this is a six year process essentially of exploration, right? Like it's, hey, we're on this path to FI and now we've figured out coast FI, this can change everything. We don't need this crazy 60% savings rate because what would it look like if we just have to cover our expenses every year? So Corey, I'd love to know basically at the beginning of that, that six years when you're, you're saving 60% income, where are both of you in your lives in terms of jobs and rough salary bans, like that kind of thing is, is that. Because I think this would be a really good starting point for people to understand, like, okay, this is what this actually looks like as you've gone through that process.
- [10:43]
Corey
Yeah, absolutely. So six years ago, Jess and I were both in the middle of our careers. We had, gosh, we had been working for almost a decade at that point. We graduated in the, the recession of 2009. So. Right. So we had many years until we were earning a decent living. But we were, I think, probably combined we were earning somewhere around $190,000. And so at this point also, it was right around the point when Jess was in a very toxic job. She ended up actually having to take a six month medical leave. And that really forced us to reevaluate our plan. That's actually when we learned of coastfi, when Jess was going through her mental health crisis. And it gave us tremendous freedom because it took the pressure off of us having to save that much money because we learned about it and we actually did the calculation and realized we had already reached cos phi, we didn't need to continue saving and yet we would still reach 5 by a traditional retirement age. And so that gave us the space to prioritize her health and allow her to take the time she needed to recover. And then she ended up turning to work part time because we didn't need to earn as much.
- [11:58]
Jess
So when I went back to work part time, we had just assumed that I would go back to work part time now because it's what my mental health could handle. And then I would increase and you know, go back to full time work and then we would continue toward our path to full financial independence, which, you know, we had a timeline of like 10 to 12 years at that point. And then we learned about this idea of coastfi. And I remember we were on this vacation on like a beach in Panama and talking about the book Work Optional, where Tanya Hester was talking about semiretirement. And I remember turning to Corey and saying like, what if I never had to work full time ever again at like, you know, the age of 31, 32 and really having that realization that like, this could be a Real possibility for us because of the work that we put in up to that point.
- [12:56]
Brad
Yeah. So at that point, you were on this path to traditional fi before the mental health crisis. Right. And now I think one of the. The hallmarks of today's FI mindset is flexibility and optionality. Right. And as you said, Tanya Hustler's book Work Optional was pretty timely there. Did it feel like there was any sense of loss? Actually, was there ever a time where you said, like, where you lamented that we couldn't do the traditional fi and get there in 10 to 12 years, or when you discussed it together as a couple, was it only looked at positively? I know it's hard to put yourself back in your shoes from, from six years ago, but I'm curious if you could place yourself back in your shoes, like, because that is a big shift, I think, frankly. And this is, this is the crux of it for a lot of people who have been ultra savers, we have a lot of them in the fight community. Certainly not. Not exclusively, because there are a lot of people who are coming after getting themselves into debt. Right. But for the. The natural savers, taking your foot off that savings pedal is hard. And I'm curious if there was any aspect of that.
- [14:03]
Jess
So I would say yes, I think in the sense that, like, I remember realizing, like, wow, I will be able to get all of this freedom and flexibility, right? Like, I'm going part time, I'm building this business on the side. I'm getting all of this freedom and flexibility and, you know, the ability to work from anywhere. And Corey was continuing to work full time at the time. And I, you know, remember some conversations that we had where his ideal was like, I want to work for five more years and get a lot closer to full financial independence and then make a transition. Whereas I was in a place where I was like, I think you should quit now. And, you know, like, I was ready for that. And so we definitely needed to work together to sort of figure out what we wanted that path to be. I think the other thing that I would say was just because I started working part time, like, doesn't actually mean that we dramatically reduced our savings rate right away. Right. I think one thing that we learned when I went part time was we spent a whole lot less money on convenience and escape, a lot less on takeout, a lot less on convenience foods at the grocery store. We started travel hacking. We started having time to, like, be intentional about borrowing books from the library instead of just buying them off Amazon because we were so busy and deserved it. And so in that first year, we realized that we actually spent about $17,000 less than the year before. And so it didn't actually have a difference to our FI timeline. And so then that gave us confidence too to say, okay, well here's another reason why I don't need to increase my hours. But then the goal for me was let me build my business on the side. This work that I'm really passionate about, the group coaching work that I do. And in that sort of second year, we actually increased our savings rate. Does that make sense? So like we were technically, we had achieved coast by, but Corey was still working, he was still getting his raises and promotions at work. I was working part time, I was making, you know, 50% less at my day job, but building up this side business. And so I think at that point, Coast Phi gave us this feeling of freedom to start exploring changes and taking risks and doing things a little bit differently. But it didn't actually impact our phi timeline at all until later.
- [16:47]
Corey
And I do remember that initial moment where we were kind of wrestling with Jess leaving her job, taking a medical leave, reducing her income for a short period of time. And I remember the immediate feeling of like, man, like we're not going to make as much progress towards our phi goal. But I think it was much easier to make that adjustment because strangely enough, because it was a result of her mental health crisis, because it was like, someone I care about and love is going through this. And the obvious answer is like, yes, we need to prioritize your health and look at life holistically, not just think about money. And so I think that helped make the adjustment. Obviously not fully, and it's been a long process over six plus years, but I do remember distinctly having that like compassion and feeling like, oh, like this makes sense. It's a no brainer even for someone who, you know, for the previous 10, 12 years was like, how much more can we save next year? You know, and coming to Jess with my spreadsheets and saying like, hey, I think we should increase our savings rate 5%. And so I think, you know, it was almost kind of the silver lining of a really bad situation is that it helped shift our approach and we now, you know, have built a life that is much more enjoyable even along the journey to fi.
- [18:05]
Brad
Yeah, and I definitely want to talk about that shift because it's not altogether obvious. Right. As Jess just said, Corey, it sounds like you were planning on working full time for maybe another handful of years. And also we can't presuppose anything. I think that that's another kind of cool part of the flexibility of phi is okay, yeah, you're spouses, but it doesn't mean that okay, just because we're co spy, each of us have to do anything. It's a team and it's a, a series of discussions. And it's an evolution also. And it sounds like you very much underwent this evolution because the really frankly would have been, there's no Coast 5 police. Right. Like there would have been nothing wrong, Corey, if you decided to stay working for a couple of years full time. That's perfectly fine. Again, this is about how do you get benefit from making decisions that work for you, Right? So clearly for Jess, working part time or maybe eventually just working on the side hustle. And I'm making this up, of course, but maybe that was the Coastify decision. And Corey, you continued working in a capacity to cover your annual expenses. That's perfectly fine. There's like, what I want to get across the listener is there's nothing prescribed about any of this. You have to figure out what works for your life and your situation now. And you also have to update your thinking because listen, life changes all the time. It constantly does. I know that very personally. Sometimes things change and you have to stay up in that. Right? And it's just, I think it's a sign of an intellectually honest and intellectually intelligent person when they understand, hey, when new information comes in, I update my thinking.
- [19:42]
Corey
Yeah.
- [19:42]
Brad
And that's not a bad thing. That's not a flip flopper. That's a perfectly logical, wonderful way to look at life. So kind of my monologue over here. I want to hear about this evolution because Corey, this wasn't altogether obvious for you at first, right? Especially with your spreadsheets and hey, Jess, let's increase our savings rate 5%. Like, how do you go from being, okay, this is really important to hey, maybe I need to start thinking about what does life look like over the next 2, 4, 6, 20 years and how is that evolving?
- [20:13]
Corey
So before I answer that question, I want to expand on what you just said too, because I think you just touched on a really important point. I think of coastfi as giving you options, right? And when we defined coastfi at the beginning of this episode, we defined it as a financial milestone, but I actually think it can be both a milestone and a lifestyle in terms of like your net worth accumulates to a certain point where you cross the milestone, and yet it can be a separate decision to then change your lifestyle, to then coast to financial independence. And I think it separates that from that. Like once you cross this threshold, you have to do X, Y and Z. This prescriptive actions, as you were saying. And I actually think that coastfi gives us the option of decreasing our income, which we've already talked about, increasing our expenses. So spending on things you value or the things that bring you joy. But you can also take on more risk. And that could mean a number of different things of investing in a risky business or changing the way you approach your job, knowing that you don't need the job or you know, you could find income in other ways. And then you also have the fourth option of continuing to save. Like there's nothing wrong with continuing to save if you're being really intentional and you know the reasons for doing so.
- [21:29]
Brad
Jess, Corey said something interesting in there that I think is going to perk up some ears, which is you can increase your expenses.
- [21:36]
Jess
Yep.
- [21:37]
Brad
Now I think I understand the math of this, but I think a lot of people are going to be surprised. Oh, you mean I'm on the Coast 5 plan and I can increase my expenses? How could that possibly work? You know, I'm setting up the strawman argument here, but talk to me about that.
- [21:51]
Jess
Yeah, so actually I think this sort of brings us to the next part of the story anyway. Right. So I was then working part time, starting my own business. Corey was working full time. In some ways we had almost taken the approach of coastfi gives us this option to take more risk, like I can work part time and start a business kind of thing. But it panned out and so we were still saving significantly and realizing but we're coastifying, we don't need to, but we're both pretty happy with what we're doing at the moment, if that makes sense. And so we didn't feel the need to decrease our income at that point yet. But what we realized was what do we want our life to look like and what kind of experiences do we want to have and how can we invest in those experiences? And so for us then we decided that we wanted to explore possibly living a location independent lifestyle in the future. We have always been interested in the outdoors. And so for us and it was Covid time. And so RV lifestyle or camper van were things that we were exploring. And so we decided to use some of that money to do a camper van experiment. So rent out a camper van and take it on like a two week jaunt around New England to help us See, like, is this a path that we're interested in taking in the future, assuming we'd probably do more, you know, another rental and da da da. And we loved it so much that we came home from that and we were like, we need to get our own van. So then that was really the next step of our coastfi journey was over a two year period of time we bought a van and we like paid for all of the stuff to build it out into a camper van. And that was over two years. And over that two year period of time, so 2021 and 2022, we had about 50% of those costs in each year and that reduced our savings rate to about 20%. So we went from having a 60% savings rate to a 20% savings rate, particularly because we were spending more and we're spending more on this thing that was going to add tremendous value to our lives. So that's an example of a way that you can increase your expenses, right? You, you don't want to necessarily increase your baseline expenses because that increases your fine number, but you can increase your expenses on. Here's this large one time purchase that I want to do like an RV camper van, I don't know, a sailboat, you know, if you want to do big home improvement projects, right? Like stuff that there are these like larger one time purchases that aren't going to add a ton to your baseline expenses. You can do that. And so then for us, that I think really gave us a taste of saying, like, oh, we reduced our savings rate to 20% and like we were fine. And I think that like that was a thing that I think was mentally challenging to even think about, right? Is to go from this 60% savings rate to 0% savings rate. That would have been really hard and scary except for we had two years in there where we reduced it to 20% by increasing our spending and we.
- [25:11]
Brad
Were fine and right. Both fine economically, but more importantly fine psychologically. That's really the key that we're talking about here because again, I think for a lot of natural savers, it is hard to see that number, that savings rate number go down even if you are still saving. And then obviously we're going to get into a point where you're saving zero, which is a whole separate issue. So yeah, I love the concept of just experimenting and figuring out, hey, what do we want our lives to look like? And you both did this in a really interesting way, I think, which was, all right, this camper van lifestyle, this sounds pretty good. Let's take a test, right? Instead of let's go spend X number of tens of thousands or hundreds of thousands of dollars on a camper van, let's do a two week camper van test where we rent one and we'll go around New England. I think to me that's something that's really important is this like low level testing. And I think this is whether you're on the coast phi path or even frankly the regular traditional path or any flavor of fi. It's. You can have an idea of what you want to do, but unless you experiment, you don't really know. And I think that's so, so critical. Any other thoughts on experimenting or anything interesting that you've done in the intervening years?
- [26:24]
Corey
I do think experimentation is so important. Like when we were experimenting with van life, it felt so natural and organic. Like it was just like us stumbling into this passion of like, hey, this feels really interesting and something we would enjoy. We didn't come at it from like a more lab approach of like, ooh, I need to do five experiments this year and what are my five experiments going to be? But I do think the experimentation approach is really key because the huge transformation that we've seen in our lives has come through small, intentional decisions. And so it's not just one big leap of faith. It's been, okay, I'm going to take this one step and gain a little bit more confidence because I got feedback and I saw that we're okay. And then I'm going to take another step and another step and another step. And I think that's how we've gotten to where we are now. And I think one of the biggest changes we made most recently, which has now been two years, is that I left my day job. So as we were experimenting with van life, we took a three week vacation, which was the longest vacation I had ever taken in my career in one stint. Of course, it was a challenge working with my employer to be like, no, it's going to be fine, you know, even with all the preparation. But we came back from that three week trip and thought, like, we can do longer, but yet it's going to be really difficult to take a longer trip while working a full time job. And so for a moment I experimented or I thought of doing a sabbatical where I would stay with my current employer, but I would take a 6 to 12 week sabbatical. And then as I thought through it more, I realized the obligation of returning to work for the employer if they were to give me Some sort of compensation while I was away would be there. And I realized I didn't want to. There were other things that I wanted to pursue. And so we ultimately decided that I was going to leave my day job in February of 2023. So about two years after, as we're recording this and now having left that job and having the benefit of hindsight, it was definitely the right decision. I know I had a lot of fears going into that decision of like, do we have enough saved? And are we far enough along on our fi journey now? Looking back on it, I wish I had left earlier. Right. And I think that's what I've heard from many other people in a similar story of like, I stayed too long. And that's the beauty of it is like, you get to choose your own journey and figure out what's the right time for you. And also be really intentional and know that you don't necessarily need the hundred thousand dollars more that you might be telling yourself that you do.
- [29:02]
Brad
It's easy to get sucked into one more year syndrome. No matter where you are on your phi journey or what kind of flavor of phi you're. You're looking for it. And first off, huge congrats, Corey. That's awesome. That's really, really awesome. So right as we're recording this, it's 24 months after and that's. Yeah, that's really, really awesome. Thanks for listening to Choose a V 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. So I think sometimes having a sense of like the actual numbers of this can really help people because this is not easy. It's not a slam dunk for most people. And I'm curious if you could just give either generalities or specific numbers of like, okay, two years ago you made a fairly significant decision, right. Can you give a sense of what Coast 5 look like for you at that point and how maybe more importantly, how you were able to make that decision in terms of the psychological aspect.
- [30:13]
Jess
So in terms of where we were numbers wise, two years ago we had about 750k in investments and then we had about 1 1/2 to 2 years of a Runway of cash saved.
- [30:30]
Brad
Now that's separate Jess from the 750.
- [30:33]
Jess
That'S on top of separate from the 750. Yeah. And then within that 750, there was some. Some, but not a lot in a taxable account. So most of it was tied up in retirement accounts.
- [30:47]
Brad
Okay.
- [30:48]
Jess
So at that time, that gave us a lot of confidence. Well, I look back and I say that it gave us a lot of confidence, but it did. It gave us confidence even when we had moments where our scarcity mindset and these money fears popped up. Like, we had confidence and knew that one, our future selves were taken care of because we were close by and we had this Runway that if we generated zero dollars for a year and a half or two years, we would still be okay. And the very strong likelihood is that we would generate more than $0. Since I was running my group coaching and we were running our first retreat that was sold out, you know, that, like, we had evidence that we were generating income that was going to help us to be able to, if not cover all of our expenses, cover a good portion. And so we'd be spending that Runway down more slowly. And so then that gave us the confidence to, you know, have Corey take almost like a six to nine month sabbatical where he really needed to decompress from work and really take time to figure out what he wanted in the future. Would he go back to employment of some sort? Did he want to join me, you know, doing the fine years? And so we had that confidence from that Runway that we had built.
- [32:20]
Brad
I like that. So, yeah, I think this is important for everyone listening to understand. You really did split it up. Because you could have mathematically just lump those numbers together, Right. Lumped the amount you had saved in your quote unquote net worth. Plus this Runway. It's really, at the end of the day, it's all net worth. You could have used that as your coast phi calculation and said, hey, we're going to make enough money. Because it would have actually made the coastify calculation a little easier. Right. It would have made it a more advantageous number. But you very purposely said, okay, this is, again, math is math, and that it's all well and good, but most of money, most of personal finance is psychological. And I think at the end of the day, you need to do what works for you. So are there people who are saying, oh, you should have lumped it in. It's all your net worth. Come on. Blah, blah, blah. Okay, well, be quiet. Nobody cares. Right? Like, for you, the decision was, all right, this is our safety. This is our. Let's experiment for a year and A half to two years. If we make zero dollars, which is almost inconceivable. We have two years of Runway, we're still coast phi. Then between the two of us, and now a couple years prior, we were making about $200,000 together. In your regular jobs, can we cover, between the two of us, our expenses each year? Because you're still coast fi, Right. Even if you blew through all that Runway, you're still coast fi, just based on the 750 that you have that's operating in the background. And if anybody knows what's happened the last couple of years, you know, the market's been okay. Right. So more than okay. And that's a really neat thing. So, okay, we have two years to play around with this, and then worst case, we just have to cover our expenses.
- [33:57]
Jess
Exactly. And I think it was helpful to have that as a separate bucket because, yeah, like, we weren't incorporating it into our coastfi number because the expectation was we could spend it. If we had incorporated it into our coastfi number and we needed it to be coastfi, then I don't know if we would have had the same confidence. Right. It gave us this confidence to say, like, we are planning on spending some of it down or we could potentially spend all of it down. And I think the reality is that we ended up spending most of it down. And we actually started to withdraw from our taxable account in the last two years because we decided to sell our Boston condo and move to New Hampshire. And so we pulled out money from our taxable account to buy our home in cash and do some, like, necessary house projects that we weren't able to cash flow right away. We would have to save up, like, a longer period of time for them. And so we definitely had to work through then all the emotions around that. Right. Of saying, let's start to withdraw. And it was helpful that the market has done well. Right. And it was helpful to go back and look at the numbers and actually run the scenarios to say, if we do withdraw this, what does this mean for our One, are we still coast phi? Which we were. Two, what does this mean for our phi timeline? If we actually take this amount out of that nest egg, and then, you know, for us, we were moving to a lower cost of living area. So in some ways it was almost like six of one, half a dozen the other. Right. Because we were eventually going to be reduced. You know, our expenses will be reduced because we no longer have the mortgage and live in a lower cost of living area. But there was that fear of saying, wow, are we going to just take out like half of our taxable account to do this so we don't need to take out a mortgage, you know, whatever crazy rate was happening at the time.
- [36:04]
Corey
And as Jess was saying, it was helpful to give it that, the cash Runway, that distinct purpose, because then it made it easier to spend down that money. Because I think there is a huge shift for many of us on this journey of like accumulation mode. Accumulation mode. You're just like adding to accounts, seeing the accounts grow, and then when you first like start to spend that money, it's like, wait a second, am I doing something wrong? Is this okay? You know, and am I jeopardizing my future by spending this down now? And so by giving me that purpose, that was one of the many things that helped us make that transition from saver to spender.
- [36:44]
Brad
Yeah, and that certainly makes sense. But Corey, I have to imagine, especially with all these spreadsheets and such, that going from a 60 plus percent savings rate, 4 and change years prior to now, okay, not only are we not really saving anymore, but now we're spending down. Even though, again, like Jess said, it's really important that, that everybody understands this. Like, spending usually implies expense and the money's gone, it's vanished. Right. Like you're essentially reallocating your net worth from investments to a home and then you're lowering your monthly expenses, like you said, in theory, like once, you know, work on the house and et cetera, et cetera. There is a light at the end of the tunnel in terms of. All right, theoretically our lives should cost less. So therefore we have to change the calculation for our fly number and our coast flight timeline. But nevertheless, Corey, 60% savings rate to 02. We just took half of our taxable accounts and put it into the walls of a house in New Hampshire. Like I imagine there were some, some fields on this in terms of like, wow, how does, how do we do this?
- [37:50]
Corey
Yeah, I mean, the last two years, even the last year when we moved to New Hampshire and spent the money on the house, but I would say even the last two years have been challenging. And I think that's what often doesn't get talked about is the money fears that come back and back over and over again and they, they flare up, I would say, from time to time where that's maybe not necessarily a constant fear, but there are these, these flare ups of like, are we spending too much money? Am I going to have to get another, like, real job? Real job in quotes, right. But, like, am I going to have to get a traditional job to, like, help support the cash flow? There have been several moments over the past couple of years where we've had to, like, sit down with the numbers, talk through it as a couple, and say, like, hey, are we fine? Like, are we okay with how much we're spending and the cash Runway depleting? Are we going to generate enough income in the coming year to be able to sustain our lifestyle this way? So there have been a number of conversations that way, and I won't sugarcoat it. Like, it's been really hard at moments, but there's also been so many more positives and moments that make it worth it. And it's. We often use the phrase that we choose our own hard. And so the hard of us four years ago was either being stuck in a job that we kind of enjoyed or, like, that we didn't really have a lot of freedom. And now our heart is, like, wrestling with these money fears from time to time and having to work through them.
- [39:24]
Brad
Yeah, there's something really poignant about that. The money fears come back and back again, as you said, and the flare ups. I can vividly picture that. And I know it's visceral for me, too, because I think money fears plague a lot of us. Right. No matter how long we've been in this five world. And I think it's important to say it's okay. That's very normal, especially when things are going crazy in the world during certain times. And that's okay. So just give yourself some grace. I think that's. That's the important takeaway for everybody. And so just a quick question, Jess, and then I want to follow up with another one. So just doing the back of the envelope math, it sounds like maybe about five years ago when you made this decision, you were around 31. So, you know, you're somewhere in the 35 to 37 range now. Plus or minus, what is your time to fi. Like, what's your coast phi time number at this point? Each.
- [40:16]
Jess
Yeah, so we actually, it's interesting because we moved last year, and so we were also waiting to see, like, let's shake out, figure out what our expenses are going to be. And we did the calculations last fall, and because we finally felt ready to say, okay, here's what we think we're going to spend moving forward and all of that. And it's interesting because with everything that's happened in the stock market, like, we've made all of these changes in our lives, we've taken three multi month, like trips of a lifetime in the last two years. And people constantly tell us like, that's a once in a lifetime opportunity.
- [40:59]
Corey
Until next year.
- [41:01]
Brad
Oh, gotta love.
- [41:02]
Jess
And at the same time, in the background, you know, we had about 750k of investments and now we're at about 1.12 years later because the stock market has gone gangbusters in the last couple of years. And so for us then we looked at those numbers and we realized, like, if we didn't invest a single dollar for the next, like two or three years, we'd reach fi. Which is wild, right? Because that was not at all what we were expecting this, you know, five years ago it was like, oh, we're coast five for the age of 60. And even when Corey quit his job, it was like, oh, well, we're coast five for like the age of 50. And then with the combination of like reducing our expenses, not having a mortgage, the stock market going big, gangbusters. And then, you know, one interesting thing was last fall. It's interesting, right? Because we're in this place, yet these scarcity mindset and financial fears flare up. And so last summer we spent four months traveling around the Pacific Northwest, Montana, like such awesome place. And it was like a million degrees. And so we did like no work for the whole summer because it was just so hot. And we were in a camper van. So like, what were we going to do? We're not going to sit in our camper van and work when it's like 90 degrees. We need to be like in water somewhere. And so when we got home, I was like, oh my gosh, I have like only worked like five to 10 hours a week for the last three months. I really need to like, get in gear so that. Because I need, you know, we need to like cover our expenses. And like, in my mind I'm like, oh, we have this goal of like, how much money do we need to generate? And like how much money we need to eventually generate. But then my mind tells me, well, you got to do that this year, you know, right? Because there's this like scarcity mindset coming up. And then I'm working a lot more than I want to be because I like stressed out about money for some reason. And then we actually step back, right? Zooming out on the finances is so incredibly important because then we actually put those numbers in the calculator, which we hadn't done in a couple of years at this point, and realized, you know, if we don't Invest at all. It's two years to five. Or if we reduce our income, like, if we reduce our income and only generated, like, 50% of what we needed, we could still reach fine, like, five years, which was incredibly wild to me. And it was like, let's just remove all of that pressure that I'm putting on myself to say, like, I need to generate all of this income when the reality is, like, I don't need to have that pressure because compound interest is doing its thing in the background and it's like, not this all or nothing thing. Like, I fall back into that. Like, we're either. It's like we're fi or we're not phi sometimes. And realizing that, I feel like many people listening to this podcast are in a much better position than even they think that they are to be able to make changes to improve their lives.
- [44:14]
Brad
Yeah, I totally agree, and I love that. So it's not even just we're phi or not phi. It can also be we're cos Phi or not coast Phi, because as you just described in there, Jess, it's so important. I really want to slow down on this and have one or both of you talk about it. Okay. We've come up and you have popularized this concept of coast fi, but that presupposes, okay, we are earning enough to cover our expenses. So maybe some people think that is a prerequisite. But what you just said in there was, hey, what if we only earned enough to cover half of our expenses? Now, that's an interesting wrinkle, right? Because some people may think, oh, does the math not work? Does this make it impossible? Am I going to run out of money? From the sound of it, and obviously you have to run your own numbers, but from the sound of it, your withdrawal rate under that scenario would be, well, low enough that your money is still compounding in the background. Certainly it just extends your time to that true coast phi slash phi number. Right. The fi date. That's an interesting thing that I really. I want us to talk about. So whichever one of you wants to jump in on that. But I. I think it's. I think it's really important because again, it's not 0 or 1. I think that's maybe one of the big takeaways from this whole episode is none of this is just, I'm not or I am. There are shades of gray on all of it. And that's the beautiful thing.
- [45:34]
Corey
Yeah, There is definitely a danger of just moving up that mile marker from, like, full financial independence to coast Phi where you don't give yourself permission to make changes in your life until you reach that threshold. And so while I love the direction that the fire movement is going and that we have more people embracing a coast fire lifestyle, there is that risk of then moving up that milestone of either you're either coast fire or you're not. Right. It's similar to like you either FI or you're not, as you're saying. But it is helpful to think about financial freedom as a spectrum, I think, and it is gradual. And even when someone is debt free, they can make decisions that improve their everyday life and get out of a toxic job or reduce their hours if they can afford to do so. I think it is. There's so many options and sometimes when we talk about financial independence, it can be so linear and it's, it's really like the number of paths to FI are infinite.
- [46:37]
Brad
Totally agreed.
- [46:38]
Jess
Yeah. So sometimes I, you know, like to think of it as like, if your coast phi, like number and timeline coincide with like the number of years it would take you to reach Coast Phi. Right. If that's the same as the date that you want to retire, that just means you're on track for a traditional retirement. And if you're on track for a traditional retirement, bravo. Because not many people are. Right. And if your timeline to reach coastfi is even like you're going to reach coast by. If you're 35 and you're going to reach it at 45, bravo. Like you at 45 then can totally reduce your income or you can, you can do all of these things and have more freedom, or you can make changes right now that could extend your coast five day a little bit. That could be worth the trade offs for you. Right. And so you could say, ah, I really though, I want to save up this Runway and I want to take this mini retirement for a year, you know, and that might push back my date to reach coast by until like 47, 48. Is that a trade off that's worth it for you? Right. And so I think it's helpful to look at the numbers to then be able to say, is this worth it to me to be able to do this thing that I want in my life that like, even if it would push back your coast by timeline, that's okay. As long as you're enjoying your life and you're on track for a traditional retirement and you're, you know, are not going to live in poverty in your old, old age, live the life you want.
- [48:16]
Brad
Yeah. I think that is it's so important. And it goes back to the experimentation, right? Like at the end of the day, that's what all of this is. There's nothing prescribed, there's nothing set in stone that to be a card carrying member of the FI community, you have to do X, Y and Z. That nonsense died a long time ago, right? That's like circa 2014. That's not today's FI movement. And I think we all need to experiment in lots of ways in our lives. And just we talked about this on an episode where we talked about the cure for the boring middle, right? And it's, hey, you need to figure out what do I want my life to look like? And you might have some ideas of things you like and whatnot. But again, without it truly experimenting, without going through that iterative process, you don't really know. And I think that's what's fun to me about life is I get to experiment, right? If I'm really lucky, I get 80, 90 plus years on this planet. And I don't want to be stagnant. I just want to constantly experiment. And like you said, and it's really important that people understand this is, hey, if I make a decision that might extend my FI date or my coast fight date, that's okay. That is really okay. But as long as you do it with eyes wide open, right? And you make that decision very intentionally, I think that is critically, critically important. So I definitely wanted to slow down on that. And yeah, you just figure it out. And I think that's, that's kind of fun. So I did want to kind of circle back to some of those money fears. So talk about flare ups. And I know that sometimes that can be a mutual thing. If there's some like outside exogenous thing happening in the world, like you both might be freaked out. There might be times that one or the other is having a flare up of, of some kind of stress or money fears. How did you two work through this together? Because clearly this has been an evolution over the last five or six years, and it's a massive one at that. Talk me through because I think, I think a lot of couples are trying to figure out this five thing together. And sometimes one person is taking the lead and one person's along for the ride. Sometimes it's mutual. There's. There's just lots of different flavors. I'd love if you could give us some sense of how you've worked through maybe this entire process, frankly, together, but especially these money fears.
- [50:39]
Jess
So it's Been really important for us to be open with each other when these money fears are coming up. And I think we've found that there are moments where one person is experiencing it and then the other person is able to help them see things in a more logical way or to be able to, you know, ask some compassionate questions and help problem solve and, you know, do all of that. And, you know, there have been moments where we've both been like, you know, at the same time. And so, you know, we at those moments have sat down and looked at our numbers and talked through it when we've needed to. There have been a few particular examples, and I think it would be helpful to share a couple of those specifically. And so, Corey, I think you have an example.
- [51:35]
Corey
Yeah, I was actually just thinking of. So the first year that we did an extended van trip, we did it without any bikes with us. So we, we traveled for three and a half months across, like, southwest US and we came back and one of those stops on that trip was the Grand Canyon, which I was like most anticipating on all, probably of all the stops on our trip. And it ended up being the probably my least favorite stop, which is ironic, right? Like, I was like, the build, maybe it was because of the buildup, I don't know. But that's probably a conversation for another day. But what saved that stop for me was renting E bikes for the day and just riding along the rim and being able to experience it in a different way. And that was like, salvage that stop for me that we, like, got back from the three and a half month trip. And we're like, we need to get E bikes and we need to bring it on our next trip. And so this was like the fall of 2023. And so we're like, okay, let's do all the research so that next time when we go out on our, our next trip, we'll have E bikes and we'll be able to bring them with us. Ends up, E bikes are very heavy. And so to get an E bike that can fit on a like, bike rack that goes on a van, you have to spend a decent amount of money for an E bike. And then the bike rack that carries the E bikes is pretty expensive. We ended up spending like $8,000 for these E bikes and the bike rack, which, like, we had the money. So it didn't, like, I didn't really think about it at the time. But then we also, like, had a slow month in the business where we didn't generate as much income as I was anticipating. And so the kind of the confluence of both of those events at the same time really like, got to me. And it was one of those unique flare ups of like, wow, are we wasting away our money? And like, not thinking about, like, how long of a Runway we have left and do I need to get this, like, I went through this cycle of like, wow, all these fears coming back to the surface. And so it was really important to like, sit down with Jess and be like, okay, like, this is what I've been thinking. Like, I know it's probably absurd, but like, let's talk through this. Let's look at how much we actually have in savings left now that we've spent this money and like, how long will that last us? And so really looking for the evidence or the facts and being able to work through those fears was tremendously helpful and just such a poignant example of a flare up of money fears and how it can just come out of nowhere and you may not be anticipating it.
- [54:04]
Jess
And I think together we were able to look at the numbers and actually think about scenarios. And I feel like the most important thing I think is thinking through what would actually happen in different situations. Because I think sometimes so much of our fear comes from I don't know what I don't know versus, you know, like, I'm, I'm scared of something I do know, which is often doesn't actually, like, the fear isn't as much when that's the case. And so for us, we actually then we looked at the business and we said, okay, what's our realistic revenue target? What's our everything goes really well revenue target? And what's our, like, things don't go very well and like, what's the baseline revenue target? And like, are we going to be okay in each of these scenarios? And so it was helpful for us to look at, you know, that sort of lowest scenario and realize like, okay, this is probably like the lowest it could be and like, we'll still be okay if that happens, you know, so that's always really helpful for me is to look at like, what's the worst, likely, worst case scenario? And one, do we need to adjust if that happens when? And I think at a certain point there were times where we were saying, okay, well, we're in sort of wait and see mode and we don't need to find work yet. Like, there were moments where we said, neither of us needs to look for external work yet and we feel like we're on a good path that we don't need to. But, like, let's continue on the path we're on but recheck back on this in May, if that makes sense. And so like, that was helpful too, then to say, okay, we have this hypothesis of like, what we think is going to happen right in this experiment and we are going to trust ourselves and trust the process until that point and then we'll assess it and see if we need to adjust versus, you know, constantly living in this state of stress.
- [56:13]
Corey
Yeah, and I, I think one of my reflections as I think about how we've worked through money fears is that I used to assume the presence of fears was an indicator that I was either doing something wrong or that I needed to change course. Like, if I'm feeling afraid of X, Y or Z, it means like, either I don't have enough money saved or like I need to do something different. As I've worked through this and realized that money fears don't go away and then it's something we'll have to continue to revisit from time to time. It's kind of given us that permission to like, kind of sit in this, like, hard, difficult moment and just acknowledge that, like, we're going to have to work through this. And it doesn't necessarily mean we have to abandon, like, our plans or like shift gears. So I think that's really important to call out and normalize that. We all have these fears and have to work through them.
- [57:08]
Brad
Corey, that was a beautiful way to end this because I think these money fears are really important. They're important for all of us. We have to understand that, like, and again, give ourselves a little grace, that this is part of life. They don't go away. I think for a lot of us who certainly deal with, I think most of us deal with money fears, but I know personally dealing with anxiety and recurring thoughts and things like, it just, it happens sometimes and you have to give yourself some grace. And I think it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong with phi here or Cos phi, it doesn't mean you're doing it wrong. Just means you're human and that's okay. We're all human. We have to, we have to understand that. And just because you're on the path to phi man, it sure makes life easier, but it doesn't take away all worries and all concerns and all stress. That's just not practical. It's just simply not. You two are living wonderful lives, but yet money fares flare up. That's okay. So I think this was a Beautiful masterclass on coastfi generally and also just very specifically the amazing journey you guys have had over the last certainly six years about this coastfi. But even before that, this is a long fi journey of savings and seeing it really come to fruition. I'm really happy for you both. So, yeah, it's just really, really incredible. I just wanted to say a huge congrats. So okay, everyone knows you from thefioneers.com and of course we'll have a link in the show notes. But where do you want to send people to these days? Is it just the homepage of Finers or Talk me through that so people.
- [58:37]
Jess
Can find us on our website. We also have a YouTube channel that people can find. So we've been doing that. Actually that's been Corey's main focus with the Pioneers for the last two years and so we're doing that together. But he puts a lot of work into that and then people can find out more information about coaching courses, our retreats, all on our website and then find us on social media, on Instagram and threads at the Fine Ears.
- [59:05]
Corey
And we're also launching our next cohort of Coast With Confidence, which is a four week course that we ran. The first beta group, if you would call it that, in November of last year, had amazing results coming out of that that we decided that we're going to run it again. The exact timing isn't clear yet, but probably late April, early May for launching the cohort. So if anyone is interested in gaining more confidence in their numbers and working through those money fears to be able to make a lifestyle change, it may be something of interest. And we can also share the link to the wait list page for people to learn more about that course.
- [59:43]
Brad
Great. We will definitely have that link in the show notes. And yeah, that's Coast With Confidence. So again we'll have that link in the show notes. But right this is going out mid March and you said that'll probably launch sometime in April or May, but I assume that waitlist will go to a real, real thing sometime before then. So definitely when you're listening to this, you can sign up for that waitlist, just click through that link and like you said, you can find everything@thefioneers.com Jess and Corey, this was amazing. Thank you both for coming back. I really appreciate it.
- [60:14]
Jess
Thanks so much for having us.
- [60:15]
Corey
Yeah, this was really fun. Thanks so much.
- [60:18]
Jonathan
Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Choosetify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player. Just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com subscribe and it's really, really easy to get on the the newsletter list right there and I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails and it comes directly to my inbox.
- [60:54]
Brad
So that's the way that I keep.
- [60:56]
Jonathan
A pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in real life community, we have choose a vi local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a vi.com local and you'll find a list of all of Those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways choose a Fi episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the Fi community and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life and then choose a VI created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free? Just head to choose a vi.comfi101 and again, thanks for listening.