1954: How FIRE Parents Hack Childcare, Housing and Education

Summary

So Money with Farnoosh Torabi

Episode 1954: How FIRE Parents Hack Childcare, Housing and Education
Guests: Christy Shen and Bryce Leung
Date: March 9, 2026

---

Episode Overview

This episode challenges the prevailing myth that the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) movement is only for childfree techies and minimalists. Host Farnoosh Torabi reconnects with Christy Shen and Bryce Leung—pioneers in the FIRE movement who retired in their early 30s—to discuss how becoming parents changed, and didn’t derail, their pursuit of financial freedom. Drawing from their new book, Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One, Christy and Bryce share strategies for hacking the high costs of childcare, housing, and education while still honoring the core principles of FIRE.

---

Key Discussion Points & Insights

Background: Becoming FIRE Parents

• Early Retirement Journey
  • Christy and Bryce recap their journey to retiring at ages 31 and 32 with over $1 million invested ([06:26]).
  • They stress their path was born from workplace stress, housing unaffordability, and discovering the “4% rule” via Mr. Money Mustache ([06:33]-[08:49]).
• From Immigrant Roots to Millionaires
  • Christy shares the contrast between her childhood in rural China (living on 44 cents a day) and achieving financial independence ([08:50]-[09:56]).
  • “The idea of having being able to invest until your portfolio grows to a million dollars, and then to have with this passive income...I thought it was a scam” – Christy ([10:02]).
• What Happened Since Early Retirement?
  • Despite retiring, their investments grew—initial $1 million became $2 million, with nearly another $1 million from side hustles ([11:33]).
  • Lived nomadically and have kept costs low, spending as little as $2,000/month in Spain using home exchanges ([12:29]-[13:49]).

FIRE and Parenthood: Myths vs. Reality

• Common Myths
  • USDA estimates $300,000 to raise a child to 18, not including college—but “the more money you make, the more kids cost” due to lifestyle inflation ([02:21], [13:13]).
• Budget Breakdown
  • Despite living in expensive cities, Christy and Bryce spent ~$5,000 in first two years of parenthood, much less than USDA averages ([13:13]).
  • “Did the kids suddenly get more expensive when you got a raise? Or...is it because it’s also part of a lifestyle inflation?” – Christy ([15:08]).
• Lifestyle Choices and Adaptations
  • They emphasize there are many versions of FIRE; their nomadic lifestyle is just one example ([16:21]).
  • Stationary FIRE (homeowners, kids) is possible—many U.S. FIRE early adopters do it ([16:21]).

Childcare Strategies & Systemic Challenges

• Childcare Cost Anxiety
  • Common belief: “If every penny I make is spent on childcare, I should quit my job”—they dispute this with their own calculations ([19:27]).
  • It takes ~$200,000/year in childcare costs for quitting a job to mathematically make sense—meaning, for most, staying in the workforce pays off long-term ([30:21]-[31:45]).
  • “The amount that you have to spend in daycare is so significant for you to quit your job that even...you will easily claw back that money that you spent” – Christy ([30:42]).
• Actionable Hacks
  • Babysitting co-ops: trade hours of care with other parents, tracked by app ([19:27]).
  • Daycare + coworking spaces: flexible part-time arrangements, cheaper and more adaptable than full-time daycare ([19:27]).
  • Social Capital: Adopting communal models for childcare as seen in their upbringings and in Scandinavian countries ([29:01]).

FIRE Lessons That Ease Parenting

• Pause Is Okay
  • Permission to “put FIRE on pause” during the most draining years of parenting ([33:43]).
  • “This book is actually not about FIRE and how parents can achieve FIRE—it’s the lessons that we learned from FIRE to make parenting easier.” – Christy ([34:09]).
• Planting ‘Money Trees’
  • Shift from always “putting out fires” (constant crisis monitoring) to “planting trees” (setting up passive income to cover recurring expenses).
  • Example: Invest enough so that dividends/interest cover annual diaper costs ([35:07]).
  • “Instead of just treating that [diapers] as a cost...invest some money...so that the passive income from those investments is enough to pay for your diapers.” – Bryce ([35:10]).

Rethinking Education Costs

• Invest for College Early—100% Equities is Okay
  • Given a known 20-year time horizon, investing aggressively (100% stocks) is statistically sound: “Over any given 20 year time frame…the stock market has never lost money” – Bryce ([36:50]).
• Community College Detour
  • Start at a community college, then transfer to a university—“way cheaper, like less than half as much” ([36:50]).
  • This detour also gives kids “skin in the game” by requiring GPA for transfer ([36:50]).
  • “The worst student debt issues are...people who went into college and then failed out or realized this isn’t for me. And so...they still have all the debt.” – Bryce ([39:27]).

Mindset, Freedom, and Parenting Philosophy

• Supporting Kids’ Autonomy
  • “If [my son] wants to go the traditional route and that makes him happy, I just want him to do something that he feels proud of...100% supportive” – Christy ([41:21]).
  • Acknowledgment that parents have limited control; modeling happy, intentional living is more effective than lecturing ([44:54]).
• Letting Go of Control & Leading by Example
  • Story of J.L. Collins’ daughter: Attempts to indoctrinate early failed, but living a happy FIRE life attracted her back independently ([44:15]).
  • “Lecturing and telling people what to do doesn’t work. Living your life and being happy...that tends to get people’s attention.” – Bryce ([43:56]).

---

Notable Quotes & Memorable Moments

• Christy: “The idea of having being able to invest until your portfolio grows to a million dollars, and then…have this passive income...that you don't have to work for...I thought it was a scam.” ([10:02])
• Christy: “Did the kids suddenly get more expensive when you got a raise?...Or is it also part of a lifestyle inflation?” ([15:08])
• Bryce: “Our version is one version of FIRE, but it is not the only version. In fact, ours is like more of a special version.” ([16:21])
• Bryce: “Having a kid is not nearly as expensive as other people tell you it is.” ([17:40])
• Christy: “If you have a babysitting co-op…you can trade babysitting services. And there’s actually apps for you to track how many hours you’ve taken care of their kids, how many hours they've taken care of yours.” ([19:27])
• Christy: “The amount that you have to spend in daycare is so significant for you to quit your job that even…you will easily claw back that money that you spent.” ([30:42])
• Bryce: “Living your life and being happy and other people seeing how happy you are—that tends to get people’s attention.” ([43:56])

---

Timestamps for Key Segments

• Recap of Early Retirement & Immigrant Background: [06:26]-[10:02]
• Costs of Parenthood Myth-Busting: [13:13]-[16:21]
• Childcare Strategies & Social Models: [19:27]-[22:00], [29:01]
• Math on Childcare and Job Quitting: [30:21]-[31:45]
• Putting FIRE On Pause/Parenting Easier, Not Harder: [33:43]-[34:09]
• Passive Income to Cover Kid Expenses: [35:07]-[35:10]
• Education Funding & “Community College Detour”: [36:28]-[40:44]
• On Children Choosing Their Own Path: [41:00]-[41:37]
• Parental Influence by Example, Not Instruction: [43:56]-[44:54]

---

Episode Takeaways

• FIRE is absolutely possible with kids—even in high-cost locations—if you resist lifestyle inflation and make strategic choices.
• Most parents overestimate the lifelong costs of childrearing; many core expenses are temporary.
• Childcare, despite feeling insurmountable, often isn't reason enough to leave the workforce; maintaining earnings and career momentum pays off long-term.
• There are creative, community-based, and international approaches to saving money on childcare, housing (like home exchange), and education (community college detour).
• The goal isn’t to make parenting another arduous money project, but to borrow useful principles from FIRE to make family life less stressful and more flexible.
• Ultimately, modeling happiness and autonomy matters more than financially coaching your kids into FIRE.

---

Further Resources

• Book: Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One (Christy Shen & Bryce Leung)
• Workshop: Free investing/retirement planning resources from Christy and Bryce (referenced in episode)
• Related Books: Simple Path to Wealth by J.L. Collins

---

Summary prepared for listeners seeking transformative financial strategies for families—without spreadsheets, deprivation, or giving up on dreams of both financial independence and a happy family.

Transcript

[Bryce Leung]

We all prefer things a certain way, like groceries.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

If you want groceries just how you

[Bryce Leung]

like them, you gotta try Instacart. They have a new preference picker that lets you pick how ripe or unripe

[Farnoosh Torabi]

you want your bananas.

[Bryce Leung]

Shoppers can see your preferences upfront, helping guide their choices. Because when it comes to groceries, the details matter. Instacart get groceries just how you like.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

You're a pro at running your life. At committing to your workout. At showing up every day. At Bombas, we're pros too. Pros at making socks. Our sport assortment has specialized socks for whatever sport you're committed to running, hiking, golf, Pilates and so much more. Made with sweat, wicking yarns, blister fighting details and targeted arch support. Bombas sport is pro level socks from the Pros of Socks. For another pro, you go to bombas.com audio and use code audio for 20% off your first purchase. That's bombus.com and use code audio. Dell PCs with Intel inside are built for the moments that matter. For the moments you plan and and the ones you don't. Built for the busy days that turn into all night study sessions. The moment you're working from a cafe and realize every outlet is taken, the times you're deep in your flow and the absolute last thing you need is an auto update throwing off your momentum. That's why we build tech that adapts to the way you actually work. Built with long lasting batteries so you're not scrambling for the closest outlet. And built in intelligence that makes updates around your schedule, not in the middle of it. We don't build tech for tech's sake, we build it for you. Find technology built for the way you [e-mail] that's Dell.comXPS built for you.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

So money episode 1954 how fire parents Hack Childcare, Housing and Education

[Bryce Leung]

you're listening to so Money with award winning money guru Farnoosh Torabi.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Each day get a 30 minute a

[Bryce Leung]

dose of financial inspiration from the world's top business minds, authors, influencers and from Farnooche herself. Looking for ways to save on gas

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

or double your double coupons. Sorry, you're in the wrong place.

[Bryce Leung]

Seeking profound ways to live a richer, happier life.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Welcome to so Money.

[Christy Shen]

One of the statistics that everybody talks about is USDA says you're going to spend almost like $300,000 when adjusted for inflation per kid outside of college costs to the age of 18. So that works out to be around $17,000 a year. And we ended up spending around 5,000 for his first two years of life, despite the fact that we lived in one of the most expensive cities in North America. And I think one of the reasons for that is people don't know this about the USDA number, is that the more money you make, the more kits cost. When you actually look at it, it's an average, but when you actually look at how much people make, the more money they make, the more they reported their kids to be expensive.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Welcome to SO Money, everyone. I'm Farnoosh Tarabi. If you've ever looked at the fire movement that stands for financial independence, retire early and thought, yeah, that's great, but what about when you have kids? Today's episode is for you because for a long time, the unspoken assumption was this. Fire is for child free tech workers, minimalists, people willing to live on lentils and spreadsheets. But what happens when you want both financial independence and a family? My guests today, Kristy Shent and Bryce Leung, are some of the original leaders of the modern fire movement. The couple retired in their early 30s with over a million dollars invested. They last appeared on this show in 2019, where they shared their story, which has inspired thousands of people to rethink work, money, and freedom. And since then, they've had a child. Even after retiring early, even after achieving financial independence, the couple was still worried about the cost of becoming parents. And that's what makes this conversation so important. Because if millionaires who retired at 30 are nervous about affording kids, what does that say about the rest of us? In their new book entitled Parent Like a Millionaire Without Being One, Christy and Bryce tackle the financial realities of raising children without abandoning the principles of fire. They talk about resisting consumer pressure, hacking child care, rethinking housing, taking unlimited family vacations, and giving your child what they called a quote, world class education, regardless of your budget.

Today we get into whether fire is

realistic when you're raising a family. The biggest myths about the cost of kids. How to think about childcare, housing, and education strategically. Here's Christy Shen and Bryce Leung.

Christy Shen and Bryce Long. Welcome back to Sew money. It's been, oh, gosh, seven years. Lucky seven.

[Christy Shen]

Lucky seven. Oh, yeah.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah.

[Christy Shen]

It's been a minute. Thanks so much for having us back, man.

[Bryce Leung]

Lots lot has happened since then, hasn't it?

[Farnoosh Torabi]

They say your money doubles every seven years, your investments.

[Christy Shen]

Right.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

If you've been riding the market, so you are doubly rich. However, you have had a child since then, so maybe not. Maybe you're poor.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah, that's what everybody's saying it's, once you have a kid, then you will be begging your boss to let you go back to work. So thankfully, that has not happened.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah, the opposite has happened. It's like. It's like applying the principles of fire to child rearing actually seems to have really worked out really well. And since the last time we talked to you in 2019, about like four years into retirement.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah, I think it was just, wow, maybe like one. Definitely like less than 1.5 at the time. Maybe. Okay, close to 1.5, but not quite at 1.5. Yeah.

[Bryce Leung]

And then right now we're sitting at three. So it really has done that hockey curve thing.

[Christy Shen]

Pretty much done that even.

[Bryce Leung]

Even as we were spending and as we were, like, living off of it and having a K. So I'm happy to report that this, that all this fire stuff really does work.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Well, I want to talk about all of that. I want to talk about how becoming parents and parenthood has influenced or changed your approach to fire. But let's backtrack a bit because we have some new listeners who may not have been with us when you first were here in 2019, the two of you original leaders of the modern fire movement, you both retired at age, what,

[Christy Shen]

30, 31 and 32.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yep, 31 and 32, with over a million dollars invested. Recap that story.

[Christy Shen]

Oh, for sure. Yeah. The crazy thing is we were not trying to follow the fire movement at all. Back then. There was no fire movement. It was just a handful of bloggers trying to figure out what to do. Because the original script of get a job, work until you're 65, buy a house, and retire with the same job no longer applies. At the time, I was actually trying to buy a house and everything was super expensive. We lived in Toronto at the time. Very similar to New York in that everything is really unaffordable. Even though we had two engineering salaries, every time you try to save money towards buying a house, the house price would keep creeping up. And then at the same time, I was also worried about losing my job. So these days, we're worried about AI taking over. Back then, I was worried about outsourcing. And then one day, my coworker collapsed and almost died at his desk. His lung collapsed and he was rushed to the emergency room. And then he found out that from his doctor saying that he was working so many hours, it was as bad as smoking two packs of cigarettes a day, even though he's never smoked in his entire life. So that was my wake up call. To stop chasing the script that we've been prescribed. Because I didn't even know if I was going to have a job in the next year. Nevermind, have a buy house and have a 25 year mortgage and try to retire at 65. That was just a dream that may have worked 20 years ago, but it didn't work at the time that we were struggling to try to get a house. So instead that's when we discovered these. I think we discovered Mr. Money Mustache first. It was a blog back then that he was talking about how if you save enough and put it into a portfolio, then you can safely withdraw 4% a year. And that means you are financially independent, which means you don't need to have a job anymore. The portfolio, the passive income from the portfolio will pay for your expenses. So at the time we did our calculation and if you live on $40,000 a year, you would need a million dollars to be able to withdraw $40,000 a year without depleting the portfolio. And then that should be enough for you to live on. So at the time when I discovered this, and I originally thought it was a scam because I'm someone who actually grew up in my childhood, I lived on 44 cents a day. So first of all, becoming a millionaire was just a pipe dream. And then the fact that you can actually.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Where did you grow up?

[Christy Shen]

I grew up in like a rural village in China. And at the time my dad was over for a while, he was overseas and then my mom was taking care of me by herself and she had shift work, very precarious work. So at the time it was very hard to basically like the idea of hot showers was something that blew my mind when I first immigrated to the west and, and heating all that, all the amenities that we have today, that was just amazing to me. Like the first time I saw a grocery store and the fact that you can just walk into a grocery store and there's all this food with choices,

[Farnoosh Torabi]

with options, with choices.

[Christy Shen]

Yes. And when my parent, my dad was showing me you could put this food into a grocery cart and then you wheel it. And I was afraid that we were going to get arrested for stealing food because I had never seen that before. Like back in a village, you actually go up to a counter of a very small mom and pop shop and then they hand you the merchandise and you pay for it. There was no putting it into the shopping cart. Like that scared the crap out of me. I was amazed by libraries that you could have free books, you could take out free I thought I was going to get arrested for that too. It was a lot of worried about getting arrested. Very stressful childhood. But yeah.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

So that from here we shared a lot of.

[Christy Shen]

The immigrant fear.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, the immigrant fear, yeah.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah. So from that kind of background, the idea of having being able to invest until your portfolio grows to a million dollars, and then to have with this passive income, that is the capital gains, the dividends, and the interest of your portfolio, that you don't have to work for it, that money actually makes money, and then that actually pays for your living expenses. I thought it was a scam. It's like, is this really possible? How is this possible? I did the math. I put it on a spreadsheet. It still seemed impossible, but after three years of discovering this financial independence, retire early idea and strategy, we were actually able to retire at the ages of 31 and 32. And then we quit our jobs to travel the world. And then a lot of crazy things happened after that. So once we started writing about it, because we wanted people to actually know about the strategy, and then we created a free workshop. And that workshop has been there for over eight years now. And there's actually people who have written in and said, multiple people, that they use the workshop strategies. They started with $40,000 when we retired, which was around 2015 or 2018, maybe, when they discovered the workshop. And then now, eight years later, they are millionaires. They went from earning $40,000 to becoming millionaire in eight years. And more than one person wrote in and told us this. So it kind of blew up my mind that it's reproducible.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Okay, so to clarify, that workshop did make you money and is making you money, right? So you're not just living off that $1 million?

[Bryce Leung]

Yes, yes. So there's some money that we made writing and side hustle work that we did, but we separated the portfolio that we retired on. Then everything that we earned afterwards we put into a separate brokerage account so we could see how the original portfolio did, how we would have done had we not done all this extra stuff. And so when we left in 2015, we had a million dollars. Now, I think what we're looking at is that original 1 million has become 2. And the side hustle stuff, like all the stuff that we've earned from that, as well as invested growth from that, has is almost a million on its own. It's like from one to two and then an additional million. So the total that we're looking at now is like $3 million, which is a little Mind blowing that we are actually able to like not only has the portfolio maintained its value, it's actually

[Farnoosh Torabi]

gone up and tell us, where do you live, what is your monthly cash flow or what are your monthly costs? I should ask? Yeah.

[Christy Shen]

In the last few months we've been traveling in Spain with our kids. So we actually did nomadic living for a while. Right now we are in Vancouver and that might change in the future. We might settle down. We decided with parents, as parents is that you don't plan too much ahead. My A type personality of I need to have the next five year plan, the next ten year plan. Once you become a parent, that goes out the window. You just figure out in his different stages what, what he's used to, what he likes. And then plans change as time goes on. When we were in Spain, we were nomadic for three months and we used something called home exchange, which is one of the most amazing things we ever we discovered as a family. So what you do is you can exchange your home with another person and then you basically stay for free when you travel and then they stay with you for free. So as a result of hosting a French couple in our apartment in Toronto, we were able to get something called the guest points. So there's no money involved. You're not paying them, they're not paying you. It's basically IOU points. We were able to use those points to stay with someone. We were able to be hosted in Valencia, Spain for a month. And so that dropped our cost significantly. So it was about, let me see, when we were in Spain, because we didn't really have to pay rent, it was less than $2,000.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Wow. Yeah.

[Christy Shen]

But it would have been maybe like three. It wouldn't be been too crazy even with the rent because when you actually travel outside of Canada in the United States, it's a lot less expensive than being at home.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Do you think like achieving fire, having a kid, multiple kids, living in America, not being nomadic is possible?

[Christy Shen]

Yes, because we actually had to move back home. Oh yeah. Here's another thing that crazy thing that happened was so after we were on your show and then the pandemic happened, we were actually dragged back to Canada and we had to live there for multiple years during the pandemic where we had to take care of Bryce's dad. So there's like a. Yeah, we definitely experienced living in an expensive place. Back to Toronto, one of the most expensive cities in Canada, because of a family emergency. And we discovered that even if you are not nomadic, it is still possible to do with a kid. And I actually ended up spending much, much amount than the USDA number suggested. So one of the statistics that everybody talks about is USDA says you're going to spend $300,000, when adjusted for inflation, per kid outside of college costs to the age of 18. So that works out to be around $17,000 a year. And we ended up spending around 5,000 for his first two years of life, despite the fact that we lived in one of the most expensive cities in North America. And I think one of the reasons for that is people don't know this about the USDA number is that the more money you make, the more kids cost. When you actually look at it, it's an average. But when you actually look at how much people make, the more money they make, the more they reported their kids to be expensive. Which is interesting, because did the kids suddenly get more expensive when you got a raise or when you got another job? Or is it because it's also part of a lifestyle inflation? That happens because you think, I have more money now, so I might as well put them in a better school. I might as well buy a bigger house. I might as well do X, Y and Z, because I want to feel really good. I want to be a good parent. And I believe that it'll be good for my kids to have all those things, which I completely understand. Everybody wants the best for their kids, but it made us question, is there another way to get the same result without spending all that money? And then that kind of blew my mind that we actually spent much, way less than the USDA number. Even though we lived, we had to be dragged back to one of the most expensive cities in North America.

[Bryce Leung]

And to go back to your answering your original question, is fire possible, like, being stationary? The vast majority of the people that did the fire thing are American, and they have multiple kids and they own a home in the U.S. so we're like special snowflakes even inside that industry because we love to travel so much and our lifestyle allows us to do this. But, like, people like Money, mustache and Mr. 1500 and these other mad scientists and these other kind of early adopters of the fire movement. Like, they're all homeowners. They all live in one place, and they all have kids. Yeah. Like, our version is one version of fire, but it is not the only version. In fact, ours is like more of a special version.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Was becoming parents part of the plan initially, when you pursued fire, was it a surprise to the two of you?

[Christy Shen]

It was an entire journey.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Did it Force you to recalculate for financial risk or any of that.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah, we definitely did not have our son as part of our original plans. We weren't even sure if we wanted to have kids at all. So, yeah, the fact that he is definitely planned, he's not a surprise. And there was definitely a fertility struggle getting there. But yeah, surprisingly, even though he was not part of our original spreadsheet, when we quit, because we were able to live off such a low amount, the fact that the portfolio grew so much, it paid for his extra expenses and more.

[Bryce Leung]

And the fact that we. And what we discovered is that having a kid is not nearly as expensive as other people. Other people tell you it is. Which kind of inspired why we wanted to write the second book, which is apparent. Like a Millionaire. It's like, how does all this stuff apply to fire? Do kids ruin everything? And the answer is no, not at all. And that really surprised us too. So that's the kind of message that we wanted to go back out into the. Into the world and try to get out there. Kids don't ruin everything. And if you like kids, they can absolutely ruin everything, but they don't have to. If you apply some of the lessons we learned from FIRE into parenting makes the whole thing a lot easier. And as we were talking before we started recording, and you can snag some business class slice out of it if you're clever about it.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Thanks for transitioning us because I was going to get to your newest book, which is subsequent to your first book, Quit Like a Millionaire. And you've got Vicki Robin, who gave you the front cover blurb. Vicki Robin, of course, the New York Times bestselling co author of youf Money or your Life, the iconic personal finance book of. I don't know, she's like the OG in personal finance. Got us originally thinking about really thoughtfully about money in a way that wasn't about spreadsheets. It was like the value of money and what it means to us on a personal level. But Parent Like a Millionaire is your new book, and we've gotten to some of the principles already. Things like just outsmarting big baby, right? Like, it doesn't have to cost several hundred thousand dollars, but let's drill down on childcare because this is something that I would say is a systemic problem is a structural problem. Right. And parents, families have their hands tied in some cases, depending on where you live especially. But tell us your hacks.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah, I totally agree. It's definitely a systemic problem. It's not something that can be solved within a day. We have the same problems in Canada, the States. I've talked to some people in Europe. They even if they have subsidized childcare, it's very competitive to get those spots, even if they have free childcare. One of the things we discovered when we did the math is when people, a lot of people worry about, okay, if my entire salary is taken up by childcare, do I have to just quit my job? There's no other way to go about this. There's no other option. I can't. If I just. Everything goes in, everything coming in, everything goes out. There's the only option is to quit your job. And once we did the math in the book, it's actually very surprising, it's not necessarily true that you have to quit your job. And the math actually shows that you'd have to spend 200,000 on childcare for it to make sense for you to completely give up your career. Because what happens is when you actually retain your career and even if every single penny goes out and pays for childcare, there is a period in which you actually get back to black from red and you will be able to claw that back. And over the life of your career, you still make back that money and more so the traditional belief that childcare, if everything, every penny that I make goes out into childcare, I should immediately quit my job. That is not true. And it's definitely a systemic problem and it's something that we can't solve in a second. But there are other strategy in the book that we talk about. For example, if you have a babysitting co op, it's one of these things that you can do depending on other people. If they have a more flexible schedule, can you perhaps trade babysitting services and there's actually apps for you to track how many hours you've taken care of their kids, how many hours they've taken care of you, your kids. One thing that we've actually used ourselves when writing this book is daycare combined with a co working space. That became more popular after the pandemic. Just because so many families had to take their kids out of school and these daycares popped up to fill the need. And if you have a flexible schedule, you can pay for as much daycare as you need. Instead of paying for the entire one year in advance or like month, you have to commit to an entire year or multiple years. And those services have a different license. It's not a daycare license in that you have to be on site, but if you're actually working in the co working space and next door they have childminders that take care of your baby, that actually saves you a lot of money and it's a lot easier to run those services versus having a full fledged daycare in which you need a license for the parents to be able to leave the site

[Farnoosh Torabi]

let's talk about something we all love in theory but don't always notice in practice. Found Money this branded segment is brought to you by Boost Mobile and Acast Creative Studios and it's about how some of the most powerful financial wins don't come from earning more money. They come from spending less on things we already use every single day. When extra cash shows up unexpectedly, like a bonus or a refund, it feels great. I'm not denying that. But when you quietly free up money month after month without changing your lifestyle, that unlocks real momentum. And that kind of found money often comes from places we're not really paying attention to anymore. Most people think of found money as something that shows up out of the blue. A tax refund, a work bonus, a gift. And those things are helpful. But there's another kind of found money that I think is even more powerful. It's the money you uncover by paying less for the same essentials. The stuff you're already using and already paying for. That's money you can direct towards goals that actually matter to you. Paying down debt, adding to savings, investing or honestly just making your month feel less tight. I talk to listeners all the time who say they don't feel like they have any extra money. And when we start looking closely, we often find it hiding in plain sight in recurring bills that haven't been revisited in years. Wireless bills are a big one. It's a necessary expense. It's not optional for most of us. And because it's so embedded in our daily lives, it's also something we rarely reevaluate. We sign up, we keep paying, and over time the cost just becomes background noise. A lot of people are paying more than they realize, simply out of habit. This is why I think Boost Mobile fits really naturally into this conversation about found money. Boost Mobile offers a $25 Forever Unlimited plan that's unlimited data, talk and text for $25 a month. And the price doesn't go up over time. That's important because the whole point of unlocking savings from found money is that it sticks around. It's not a one time win, it's something that improves your cash flow month after month. What also makes this work in real life is how Easyboost Mobile makes the switch. There are no contracts, so you're in control. There are no minimum line requirements and there's a 30 day money back guarantee, which takes a lot of the pressure out of trying something new. You can also keep the phone you already have, which honestly lowers the barrier for a lot of people. No new device to learn, no disruption, just a lower bill. I've seen this play out with so many people I talk to. When they find one place to save, especially on something they use every day, it changes how they think about their money overall. It's not about deprivation. You're not cutting something out of your life, you're just paying less for it. And once people experience that, they start to look at their finances differently. They get more curious, more confident. They realize that small, intentional changes can actually make a big difference. This is also why I'm such a fan of changes that don't require a lot of willpower. You don't have to remember to do anything every month, the savings unlock and just happen in the background. That's found money doing its job. At the heart of this is intentionality, making money choices that align with how you actually live instead of just staying on autopilot. Found money gives you options. It gives you flexibility, and sometimes it gives you peace of mind, which is just as valuable as the dollars themselves. You don't need to overhaul your entire financial life to make progress. Sometimes one smart change is enough to get the ball rolling. If you've been looking for ways to create more flexibility in your budget without adding another thing to your to do list, this is one of those changes that can quietly make a big difference. With Boost Mobile, you can keep the phone you love and switch to the $25 Forever Unlimited plan. That's unlimited data, talk and text for just $25 a month with no contracts and no fuss. To learn more, visit boostmobile.com After 30GB, customers may experience slower speeds. Customers will pay $25 per month as long as they remain active on the Boost Unlimited Plan. Thanks to Boost Mobile and Acast Creative Studios for supporting this episode and helping us think differently about where our money harder for us. Picture this. It's late at night, you're scrolling, and suddenly there it is. The exact product you've been searching for. You click Add to cart, maybe browse a little more. Then you head to checkout and realize your wallet is nowhere near you. But then you see it. That purple pay button. All your info saved. One simple tap. Shopify is the commerce platform behind millions of businesses around the world and 10% of e commerce in the US powering brands from Mattel and Skims to entrepreneurs just getting started at their kitchen tables. If you've ever thought about launching something of your own, Shopify makes it incredibly simple. Choose from hundreds of beautiful templates to build a store that reflects your brand. Use built in AI tools to write product descriptions, create headlines, even enhance your product photos and manage everything inventory, payments, analytics, shipping, returns all in one place. Plus shop pay helps reduce abandoned carts so you turn browsers into buyers. See less carts go abandoned and more sales go with Shopify and their shop pay button. Sign up for your $1 per month trial today at shopify.com so go to shopify.com so money that's shopify.com so. Shipping, billing, admin, payroll, marketing. You're managing all the things, so why waste time sending important documents the old fashioned way? Mail and ship when you want, how you want with stamps.com print postage on demand 247 and schedule pickups from your office or home. Save up to 90% with automated rate shopping. That's why over 1 million small businesses trust stamps.com. go to stamps.com and and use code podcast to trystamps.com risk free for 60 days.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Hi, it's Mark Bittman from the podcast Food with Mark Bittman. And I'm here to tell you that Whole Foods Market is in the midst of its fabulous Taste the Mediterranean event with terrific sales on flavors and ingredients both from and inspired by the region everyone loves. You can save 30% using your prime membership on extra virgin olive oil from California olive ranch deco pasta, Rao's pasta sauces, San Pellegrino sparkling waters and flavored bubbly waters, and cedar's hummus. Save during the Taste the Mediterranean event now at Whole Foods Market.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah, what's really interesting about the childcare paradigm that's in North America, in Europe, in China. Like Christie grew up in China back in the 80s and there wasn't a lot of government services that the Chinese communist government provided. And so a lot of childcare in China was based off of like social capital. Like it's not saying that it takes a village to raise a kid. That was literally true back then where they would have like kind of informal aunties that would be part of the village that would just like that her mom would just be able to just dump.

[Christy Shen]

Oh, neighbors. Yeah, my mom left me with the neighbors for an entire day, like lots of times.

[Bryce Leung]

And everyone.

[Christy Shen]

And they did the same for us.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah, everyone Just helped each other. And this model is still true in China, it's still true in Scandinavian countries where there is this, where they're, you know, there are these kinds of like, co ops in which people take care of each other's kids and they just kind of exchange services without exchanging money. Here in North America, we've commercialized that relationship. We have to pay taxes, those services. So some of the stuff we wrote about is, okay, how do we take that whole, like, how do we take that social capital idea of it takes a village to raise a child and kind of bring it back? Because, like, if, because if the governments were doing such a good job that, that they were able to provide cheap, subsidized services that were available to everybody, we wouldn't be having this problem. So if the society is not doing a great job of providing the service, maybe let's figure out how we can help each other out. So that's where some of the strategies and the hacks come from.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Christy, go back to that statistic. You said $200,000 is the point at which it makes sense to quit your job because that you would actually repeat that because who's quitting their job making $200,000 a year? That's good money. That's the irony, right? The point is that it's, it's like,

[Christy Shen]

it's a lot, it's a lot like the, it's, it's the math. We actually did it ourselves. So it's not actually from an existing statistic. Okay, yeah, basically we did the math and in the spreadsheet, it told us that it's. That threshold is much higher than most people believe. Most people believe, okay, if I, if daycare is costing, if it's costing me like 50,000 for my two kids to go to daycare and I'm earning 50,000 after taxes, I should immediately quit my job because it doesn't make sense. But then when we actually did the math, it. Even if you continue, the amount that you have to spend in daycare is so significant for you to quit your job that even in that situation that I just described, the 50,000, you can continue working and keeping your career. And over the lifetime of your career, you will easily claw back that money that you spent. Because another thing that we forget, especially when we are new parents, is that daycare is not a forever cost. It is a shocking cost initially because you're going from not having to pay that at all to all of a sudden tens and thousands of dollars. So your mind immediately projects this. I'm going to pay this forever. This is how much kids are going to cost forever. But it is not a forever cost. And once they go to public school, that cost drops off.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah, it's because of the parent and let's be honest here, the mother. If they're keeping their foot inside of the labor market, they're retaining their working power, they're retaining their relationships. It's hard to leave a job for five years and then come back to it. And if you do even manage to come back to it, your earning power is probably going to be a lot lower. And we were, when we were writing that chapter, we were trying to figure out when we weren't actually expecting that answer. We were initially trying to prove the point of if it costs this much, you should quit your job. And then we actually did the math. We're like, oh, wait, no, the math actually says something completely different. It actually says that even if you're like, even if you're like, break even during the daycare years, it still makes sense to stay in there because by the time the daycare ends, your earning power will be even higher and then you'll get all your salary back. So it's, it only makes sense if daycare is so expensive that you're going into debt by working and you're losing so much money that even when you come back to work, you're not able to pay back that debt over the next 20 years of working. So that was what we realized and we're like, oh, hey, that actually goes against what the alarmist narrative usually is, which is daycare is so expensive, you may as well just give up.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah, we try to put on our

[Christy Shen]

scientist hats and think about what are some of these well known beliefs that we've been told that kids are $300,000 per kid until age 17. If your job is not paying for daycare, you should immediately quit your job. All these kind of things that terrify parents from a financial standpoint. We try to scientifically prove that. Hey, is this like, we decided to see if that's actually true or not. And a lot of the times it's actually not as scary as it is made out to be.

[Bryce Leung]

Yes.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah. I gotta wonder though,

like, there is something called financial stress. Have you heard of it? And being a new parent coupled with the emotional stress and the financial stress, and now you're trying to still maintain and uphold the principles of fire. I wonder if you can give people listening some permission to say, put fire on pause for a few years because.

[Christy Shen]

Oh, totally.

[Bryce Leung]

Oh, Absolutely.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

It's a draining few years. If for no other reason, you're not sleeping a lot and you're not working with a lot of faculties and a lot of things are going to have to be put on the back burner. So you're. It's okay if you can't be on the fire journey until maybe your kids are back in school, or in school, I should say, and you're out of the child care phase.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah.

[Christy Shen]

This book is actually not about fire and how parents can achieve fire. It's the lessons that we learned from fire to make parenting easier. So one of the concepts we discuss is how to plant trees instead of putting out fires. We're all volunteer firefighters now as parents, whether we want to or not. Okay, fine, volunteer firefighters. Because we'd have no choice. It's just we're constantly putting out fires. How do we plant trees instead? So.

[Bryce Leung]

So one of the things that we talk about is it's just, it's not so much about making parents go, you should. Do you have this, all this homework to do. It's more. Here's some of the lessons that we learned that can make your life easier. So one example of this is instead of worrying about retirement, let's take a small micro expense that you have to deal with, like diapers. Diapers. Every parent, unless you use one of those disposable ones. Sorry, those washable ones.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Reusable ones. Diapers.

[Bryce Leung]

But ew. So let's assume that you're not doing that. I'm not. Yeah. No, but let's say you're spending 40 dol.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Power to you, man. If you can do that. Yeah.

[Bryce Leung]

Anyway, $40. Let's say you're spending $40 a month. $40 a month on diapers is about $480 a year. So if you are just constantly just like buying diapers like on the go and just like refilling your supply and then not thinking about it, then that money is just a straight up cost. But we ask another question is, okay, how do you make diapers self sustaining? And the answer to that is using the same principles that allowed us to retire from the fire movement is instead of just treating that as a cost and spending the money on that, how to invest some money in the stock market and the bond markets so that the passive income from those investments is enough to pay for your diapers. And then we teach people how to do that. So instead of putting out fires and always being like on your back foot, invest a little bit of time and effort to plant A money tree. So once you plant the tree and then it starts bearing fruit, you just take the oranges and then you eat them, but you don't cut down the tree. And if you do that for diapers, for example, then you can have the tree pay for your diapers. And that all of a sudden is an expense that you no longer have to worry about.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

How do you both think about college and funding college within a fire framework? Are you in the camp of thinking we want our kid to have skin in the game or we're going to fund 529 plans? Or you know what, we don't know if college is even in the future.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah, we actually have a chapter called make the stock market pay for college. So the thing that is deterministic about college is that when your child is going to go to college, so you actually have the set number of years to be in the market to use the stock market to your advantage. And another thing that we talk about is the college, the community college detour, which Bryce is going to explain.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah. So there's two kind of main things in that chapter. One is when you know that you have a well defined investment time frame, which is 20 years or so from birth to meeting college, that allows you to make some really interesting decisions. Because over, like the stock market Specifically S&P 500, over any individual year it can shoot up 30%, it can drop by 50%, it's very volatile. But when you widen out your investment window into 5 year time frames and 10 year time frames and 20 year time frames, the results become a lot more productive, predictable. So over any given 20 year time frame, over the course of the history of the stock market, in any 20 year time frame, the stock market has never lost money. In fact, the worst performance that stock market has ever done in a 20 year time frame is 5%. And that's on one of these like 20 years that end on like a massive crash, like 1929 style crash. Right. The average return is something like 12 to 14%. So if you know that, first of all you can invest very aggressively. So instead of balancing between equities and bonds, you can just, you have our permission completely to go 100% equities because again, 5% annual return is the worst that has ever happened on the stock market over that time frame. And the average return is more than double that. So knowing that it allows you to, and because you have that really long time frame, it allows you to run them. When you do the math, you realize that you don't have to invest nearly as much as you think you do because you have such a long investment time frame. And you can pretty much depend on the investments making money during that time. And there's a second thing that we write about which we talk to a lot of other fire people that have kids that are older, is that there, there are ways of reducing how much college costs. There's the stuff, like the usual stuff like applying for bursaries, applying for, applying for student aid, optimizing student aid and FAFSA and all that kind of. But there are also some really interesting ones that people have discovered like using magnet schools and using community college as a way to reduce your costs. So many state schools have a, they're called articulation agreements with community colleges in which the credits are transferable so you can graduate from college. But if you start inside of a community college, then the first couple years are way cheaper, like less than half as much. Now there is a requirement that in order to transfer into the college, you, the student has to meet a minimum GPA and keep the grades up. And that's our way of saying, you know, they should have some skin in the game. College is not something that I think that my personal belief is not something that a parent should just pay for. And then the kid just shows up and goes, okay, I guess I'm doing this now. They should have to work for it. And even if it's not and they can help contribute it to it financially, sure, but they, but another way of getting them to contribute to it and having skin in the game is making a requirement of they have to work hard, study hard and actually get the grades that are necessary to actually graduate into college is one way of making sure that they have skin in the game. Because the worst thing that we do, a lot of people write into us with a lot of like student debt issues. And the worst student debt issues are the ones that went into a lot of student debt, went into college and then failed out or realized this isn't for me. And so they got, they got four years of a medical degree and then they didn't actually get the degree, but they still have all the debt. That's the worst possible situation to be in because you don't have the earning power, you have the massive amount of debt and you can't get rid of the debt because it's non dischargeable now.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

So true.

[Bryce Leung]

We don't want, obviously none of us want our kids to fail out of a program, but if they are stuck into a program that they're really not good at. It's like. But it is a lot cheaper for them to discover that inside in a much lower risk situation rather than having to failing out and then realizing, oh, I have all the student debt now and I have no way of paying it off ever. So that's one solution that you can have that A, makes your job easier and B, does put some skin in the game because the kid now owns part of the solution. And it also makes the situation of. If they discover that this program really isn't for them, it makes failing out a lot cheaper.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Okay, last question. If your child grows up and doesn't want fire and Christy, why don't you answer this one? If they want a traditional career and they want to retire at 65 and buy the McMansion. Sorry. How are you going to feel about that?

[Christy Shen]

That's actually one of the things we joke about all the time. It's like we do all this traveling and then we reach financial independence. What if our kid is like, mom and dad, stop making me travel. All I want to do is get a job and then live in one place. Because that could be it. Like, they're. This is their normal. And then they want something that's different from their normal. And you know what? More power to him if that's what he wants.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Yeah.

[Christy Shen]

If he wants to go the traditional route and that makes him happy. Like, I just want him to do something that he feels proud of and is actually something that he works for. And I'm 100% supportive of that path. If he wants to follow the traditional. Which is the exact opposite of what we did.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah. Becoming parents realize there's only so much control that you have over your kid.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah.

[Bryce Leung]

We could tell him to go to bed, but what we say really doesn't matter. It really is more of a business decision.

[Christy Shen]

It doesn't really matter what I think.

[Bryce Leung]

Yes. Yesterday we spent three hours putting him down for a two hour nap. It was a ridiculous waste of time.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Oh, no. Yeah, I'll get you put him in the car. Because then. But then you're training him to sleep in the car and then.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah, he also doesn't like being in cars. So that's another thing.

[Bryce Leung]

That struggle that we're dealing with. By no means are we parenting experts here. We're money nerds. So that's. That's where like this whole parenting thing, we're still struggling. Yeah, we're like, we're struggling just like everybody else. But I do have to admit, compared to, there's a Lot of moments in which we just collapse onto the couch at the end of the day and we're just, oh, my God, if I had to get up right work tomorrow, I don't know what I would do. Fire and getting your money situation under control. It doesn't make parenting easy, per se, but it definitely makes it easier.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Yeah. My daughter, yesterday, she came onto my bed. I was working on typing on my laptop, and I was putting together a presentation for my so Many Members club. I have this private group that I do monthly workshops for. And she said to me, she's nine, Mommy, are you doing this because you have to or because you want to? Do you have.

Wow.

[Bryce Leung]

Interesting question.

[Christy Shen]

That's a very precocious question.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

I think she was genuinely wondering did someone put me up to this? Or like, she. I think she wanted to know, like, what the engineering behind it and what prompted it. And I said, no, this is like my doing. I initiated this. I have a program, and isn't that cool? I get to decide what I put out in the world and I sell it. And she's.

But she's like, how. Like, how does that work?

I go. I promote it, and people pay me for it. And she was like, wow.

[Christy Shen]

Wow, that's amazing.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Can you have a boss? I was like, no. It's like, I just. And I couldn't even believe the words that were coming out of my own mouth, honestly, at the moment. In the moment. And then the more I thought about it, I was like, was she trying to guilt trip me? Like, I. Because I was working during, when I could have been playing with her? And she was like, do you have to be doing this or do you want to be doing this instead of sitting with me and playing Uno? And I was like, oh. But I think she wasn't.

[Bryce Leung]

That's the best way to do it, to be honest.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Your kids always keep you on your feet.

[Christy Shen]

That's the. Oh, totally. Yeah. They're watching everything. They know everything, even though we think they don't.

[Bryce Leung]

But what I realized after 10 years of being fire evangelists, if that's even a. If that's even a job title, is lecturing and telling people what to do doesn't work. Living your life and being happy and other people seeing how happy you are, that tends to get people's attention. Have you spoken to JL Collins? He wrote Simple Path to Wealth.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

He has been on the show.

[Bryce Leung]

Yeah.

[Christy Shen]

Yeah.

[Bryce Leung]

So he wrote that book for his. He wrote that book for his daughter Jessica, and he tried to do the exact wrong thing and he's telling us not to do this, which is he likes all this money stuff. So he, at a very young age, he started trying to get her, like, interested in fire and interested in money way too young. To the point where he was reading her the Wall Street Journal when she was like six. And then she was like, ew, I don't know what this is. I don't know what you're talking about. I don't want anything to do with this. And for many years, she ran in the opposite direction. She didn't want anything to do with fire investing in this kind of stuff. But over time, when he stopped doing that and being like, okay, I guess she's just going to do her own thing, she started to see what the life, like, how different life is when you get this stuff under control.

[Christy Shen]

Control.

[Bryce Leung]

And then gradually, like on her own terms, she came over to his side. And then I think recently a year or two ago, she achieved financial independence, quit her job, and now she's like, oh, yeah, awesome. Yeah, this is awesome. So, yeah, you're doing the exact right thing here. Which is just.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Well, I did. I said to her, I said, this

could all be yours.

And she just was like, what are you talking about? She was like, yeah, anyway, mom, whatever. I was like, okay, I guess it'll just. Just die when I die. But anyway, thank you both for joining. This has been such a great conversation. It's been great to catch up. Your book is called Parent Like a Millionaire without being One. Outsmart big baby, save on child care, and secure your family's financial future. Christy Shen and Bryce Lung, thank you.

[Christy Shen]

Thank you so much for having us.

[Bryce Leung]

It was great talking to you again.

[Farnoosh Torabi]

Thanks so much to Christy and Bryce for joining us. Their book again is called Parent Like a Millionaire without being One. I'll see you back here on Wednesday. And I hope your day is so money.

[Christy Shen]

Parle tu francais, Hablas espanol?

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Parl italiano.

[Christy Shen]

If you've used Babbel, you would. Babbel's conversation based technique teaches you useful words and phrases to get you speaking quickly about the things you actually talk about in the real world. With lessons handcrafted by over 200 language experts and voiced by real native speakers, Babbel is like having a private tutor in your pocket. Start speaking with Babbel today. Get up to 55% off your Babbel subscription right now at babbel.com acast spelled B-A-B-B-E-L.com acast rules and restrictions may apply.

[Sponsor/Ad Voice]

Over 90 of the top 100 US accounting firms trust Bill to handle bill pay processes. Why? Because our tools are built on over a trillion dollars of secure payments. We're not just moving money, we're powering financial workflows for half a million customers. That's a level of expertise you just can't fake. Ready to talk with an expert? Visit bill.comproven to get started and grab a $250 gift card as a thank you. Terms and conditions apply. See Offer page for details.