0:00

Hello and welcome to Choose a Five. Today

0:02

on the show I have my good buddy

0:04

Chris Hutchins from the All the Hacks podcast

0:06

back on the show with me. And last

0:09

time he came on we had just kind

0:11

of far ranging conversation that we conceptualized as

0:13

a random show where we would just touch

0:16

on a whole bunch of different things we

0:18

had going on in our lives. And when

0:20

we originally sat down to record this episode

0:22

that's where we anticipated this one was going

0:25

to be. But then it very quickly shifted

0:27

into a real in-depth

0:29

conversation about financial independence, about the

0:32

spectrum of financial independence, how FIE

0:34

has changed over the years, different

0:36

terms like Coase-FIE, which actually Chris

0:38

realized that he was literally the

0:40

day we recorded this, Lean-FIE, Fat-FIE,

0:42

all of these things. And then

0:44

we do touch on some other

0:46

topics like different tools to track

0:48

your FIE journey, plus a little

0:50

bit of health and longevity, my

0:53

personal trainer that I hired this year, and

0:55

then cold plunges and saunas. So touches on

0:57

a little bit of everything, but the vast

0:59

majority of this episode is all about

1:01

the spectrum of financial independence. I think

1:04

you're really going to enjoy this. With

1:06

that, welcome to Choose a FIE. Brad,

1:15

thanks for joining me. Yeah, man, this should

1:17

be fun. I always love chatting

1:19

with you whether online or off, so this

1:22

should be a good time. Yeah, so we

1:24

did our first conversation. Well, first

1:26

one was many years ago on your podcast. Yeah,

1:29

you first joined me April for what

1:31

became episode two of all the hacks,

1:33

and then we did it again for

1:36

episode 100. And we talked

1:38

a little bit about FIER at the beginning, but

1:40

I think both you and I have

1:43

had an evolution of perspective on financial

1:45

independence, so much so that in researching

1:48

this episode, I found out that I didn't

1:50

even know what coast FIER was. And it

1:52

turns out that that's actually the thing I'm

1:54

probably most in tuned with myself. So lots

1:56

of stuff to talk about when it comes

1:59

to financial independence. and how our

2:01

perspectives have changed. Yeah, agreed. Going way back

2:03

to episode 71 on ChooseFI. So

2:07

that was almost six years ago when

2:09

we recorded this. I think, yeah, unquestionably,

2:11

both of our perspectives have changed significantly.

2:13

And I think, frankly, changed for the

2:16

better in a lot of senses and

2:18

changed for the healthier, certainly. I think

2:20

both of us probably veered a little

2:22

bit too much towards the frugality

2:25

and over-optimizing at the expense

2:27

of maybe enjoyment of life

2:30

sometimes. And there's been an

2:32

evolution, certainly for both

2:34

of us, clearly. But I think, frankly,

2:36

in the greater financial independence world. And

2:38

this is one of the very few

2:40

things that I will pat ourselves in

2:43

the back for at ChooseFI. I

2:45

mean, we have really been the center

2:48

of the Fi world for, I mean, the

2:50

last handful of years. And we have made

2:52

this very strongly anti, like

2:56

the miserliness, the just, hey, let's

2:58

race to some number at the

3:01

expense of life. And

3:03

I think we've tried really, really, really

3:05

hard to make it about, hey, what

3:07

are you running towards? Not what are

3:09

you running away from? And I think

3:11

just that little shift in orientation has

3:13

made a big difference in a lot

3:16

of people's lives. Yeah, now for anyone

3:18

who didn't listen to the

3:21

hundreds of episodes you've done, the few we've

3:23

done, hasn't ever introduced themselves to fire, which

3:25

will maybe only be a few people. So

3:28

briefly, briefly, since you're the pro for

3:30

anyone out there, how would you just define

3:32

financial independence and the difference between financial

3:35

independence and fire? Yeah, that's

3:37

a great question. So, okay,

3:39

fire the definition. So where

3:41

financial independence retire early. And

3:43

now that was en vogue,

3:45

certainly five to 10 years

3:47

ago. It was this really,

3:50

there's an allure to it. And frankly, Chris,

3:52

it's that cute little acronym,

3:55

right? Like fire just sounds cool. Like,

3:57

hey, I'm pursuing fire. But

3:59

honestly, Honestly, there was

4:01

so much overemphasis on the

4:03

retire early that it

4:05

just became this horrible distraction.

4:09

There are just people who love

4:11

to rip on the fire movement

4:13

because all they hear is that

4:15

RE. It really

4:17

takes away from people who

4:19

are pursuing financial independence to

4:22

live a better life. That

4:24

is how I see financial independence

4:26

as a universal good in that

4:29

people are resting control of their

4:31

lives back from this elusive

4:33

they. You always hear the

4:36

doom and gloom of, you can never

4:38

retire, it's impossible. You need 10 to

4:40

20 million dollars to retire, healthcare is

4:42

going to be unaffordable. Boom, boom, boom,

4:44

boom, boom, you can't do this, you

4:46

can't do this, it's impossible. As opposed

4:48

to reorienting around what can you control?

4:51

And you, to a large degree,

4:53

can control your expenses. I know again

4:55

this is probably where people overemphasize just

4:58

the cutting and because obviously we'll talk

5:00

about that in depth here today, but

5:02

you can control what does your life

5:05

cost? And then essentially you can

5:07

say, okay, I take what does my life

5:09

cost per year and then multiply by some

5:11

number. It's usually by 25, so let's say

5:13

your life costs $80,000 a year, multiply by

5:15

25, that's two

5:19

million dollars. That's your

5:21

FIE number, your financial independence number because I

5:23

think many of us, most of us have heard of

5:25

the 4% rule. We're

5:27

not going to get into this really in depth

5:30

here today, but in essence you can pull 4%

5:34

out of your investible assets. So again,

5:36

we'll turn it around and say that

5:38

two million dollars times .04 is $80,000,

5:42

right? So it's just the inverse of where

5:44

we started at 80,000 for the expenses. So

5:47

that two million dollars can spit off

5:50

80K to cover your living expenses.

5:52

Now it is index for inflation,

5:55

normal inflation, not the inflation we've

5:57

seen recently. So there are some

5:59

potential adjustments. But how some people

6:01

adjust for that is say, okay, maybe I

6:03

want to be a little more conservative and

6:05

make it 30 times my expenses Or 33

6:07

times something like that, right? so you can

6:10

play with this at the margins because I

6:12

think really the essence of it is You

6:15

actually have some degree of certainty and you

6:17

have something to shoot for maybe for the

6:20

first time in your life And it's not

6:22

just this doom and gloom of oh you

6:24

can never do this. You can never do

6:26

that There's some elusive day that's gonna impact

6:29

you you can control that So yeah, how

6:31

does that sound for a rough definition? No,

6:34

no, it makes sense And I will come back

6:36

and at some point to the 4% rule because

6:38

I have some thoughts But you know

6:40

when I think about financial independence on

6:42

one perspective, it doesn't even have to

6:44

get that Detailed it's you

6:46

know You could have a large emergency

6:49

fund and that's a form of financial

6:51

independence because it gives you time to

6:53

look for the right job You

6:55

know every bit of savings that gives

6:57

you some flexibility is layering in financial

6:59

independence And sure when you get to

7:01

the point that your savings can cover

7:03

your entire life and you can choose

7:05

not to work to work To work

7:07

for free Obviously, you know

7:09

that's even more independent and if you

7:12

truly could replace your entire income then

7:14

yeah You could retire early The

7:16

irony is that most people end up

7:18

using their free time to do things

7:20

that very much resemble work and very

7:22

often generate income And they're not truly

7:24

retiring early But I think that's

7:27

why it's actually helpful as much as

7:29

I thought it was confusing that there

7:31

are many different types of fire it

7:33

was actually helpful to Look

7:35

at them and talk about what they

7:37

are because it gave some perspective to

7:39

the concept that it's not all

7:41

about one Particular style which I think historically

7:44

it has been it's always been saving up

7:46

enough money So you have 25 times your

7:48

income and don't think about anything else. Yeah,

7:51

I think you're spot-on I think that's exactly

7:53

right and that is why

7:55

that caricature existed right is like

7:57

this was for a very specific

8:00

specific type of person is what it

8:02

seemed like. High income, maybe in a

8:04

tech job, maybe a white guy in

8:06

his 30s, right? Because some of the

8:08

very famous early fire bloggers,

8:11

I guess I even have a hard time

8:13

saying it at this point, because the early

8:15

fire bloggers fit that caricature, right? Or fit

8:17

that profile, let's say. So I agree with

8:19

you that A, nobody that I

8:21

know of actually just sits on their

8:23

butt and retires and doesn't

8:25

do anything. Most people, if they had

8:27

the wherewithal to reach financial independence at

8:30

some fairly early point or

8:32

expedited time, they are

8:34

gonna do fantastic things. Like

8:37

you said, they're gonna earn money somehow.

8:39

They're gonna add value to the world.

8:41

They're gonna do interesting and varied things.

8:44

And to imagine this, again, you can tell

8:46

I get bothered by this, right? So like,

8:48

they're just gonna sit there and do nothing

8:50

and sip umbrella drinks. It's just so silly

8:52

and laughable, which is why to focus

8:55

on the RE makes no sense. And then

8:57

like you said, the power starts

8:59

accruing essentially from day one, right? It's

9:01

like that first time, if you're living

9:03

paycheck to paycheck, and you're now all

9:06

of a sudden you found out about

9:08

choose a five and you're pursuing financial

9:10

independence, okay, maybe it's not gonna

9:12

take you 10 years to get to

9:14

five. Maybe it's gonna take you 20 years. Maybe it's

9:16

gonna take you how many every year. It almost doesn't

9:18

even matter. But your life

9:20

is vastly better that first time you have $5,000

9:22

saved up, even $1,000, right? Chris,

9:26

how many people live paycheck to paycheck

9:29

and think that an emergency is a

9:31

$200 expense that

9:33

came out of the blue, but was perfectly

9:35

foreseeable in a given year, but

9:37

that to them is an emergency, but it's

9:40

really not, right? Like it's just life is

9:42

lumpy, expenses are lumpy. That's the way it

9:44

works. But man, that first time they have $1,000 saved

9:46

up, $5,000 saved up, like

9:49

their life is dramatically better. So yeah, I

9:51

mean, you're absolutely right. Like the

9:53

five journey starts from day one. And

9:56

I think that power starts accruing from day

9:58

one. I think it's... really

10:00

radically transforms people and their entire

10:02

mindset. Yeah, I think a

10:04

handful of people I knew, myself included, probably

10:06

went off the deep end with one version

10:08

of it in our minds. I'm gonna run

10:11

through, because there's an unlimited number of types

10:13

of financial independence, right? There are ones that

10:15

I will leave off and maybe they're ones

10:17

you're excited about. But I'm just gonna share

10:20

a few of the ones. I wrote down

10:22

a couple quick definitions because I think having

10:24

a few options of what financial independence could

10:26

be actually gives

10:29

you more flexibility. So,

10:31

the one we talked about, just traditional

10:34

fire is have enough money to quit

10:36

your job and never work again. But

10:38

the other four are pretty interesting. So

10:40

I'm gonna talk about first with lean

10:42

fire, which would be the very tight

10:44

end of the spectrum, which is retiring

10:46

early, but bringing your expectation for expenses

10:48

way down, really tightening your belt so

10:50

that you can do it even earlier.

10:53

And I would say this one probably gets

10:55

a lot more flack than practically shows up.

10:58

But this is, I'm going to change

11:00

where I live, change what I eat,

11:02

change the activities I do so I

11:04

can stop working. And I

11:06

don't know. I'll run through them all and

11:08

we can talk about them. The

11:10

next one, which is interesting, is

11:13

kind of coast fire. And it's most interesting to

11:15

me because I didn't really actually understand what it

11:17

meant. I thought it

11:19

was a version of fire for people who

11:21

live on the coasts where cost of living

11:23

is higher. But it turns out it's actually,

11:26

instead of focusing on saving up enough money

11:29

so that you can stop working,

11:31

it's saving up enough money so

11:33

that you can stop contributing towards

11:35

retirement, whatever time in the future

11:37

that might be. So let's say

11:39

you're fine working till you're 65,

11:43

fill up your retirement accounts enough early

11:45

on so that all of your income

11:47

each year can just go to life

11:49

and not go towards savings, which

11:52

dovetails into another option, which

11:54

is called barista fire, and then you could choose to

11:57

make a lot of money and spend a lot of

11:59

money, You could choose to

12:01

just have a side job that only

12:03

covers the expenses because you don't need

12:05

to contribute to your savings. And

12:07

so you could take a less stressful job. You could

12:09

take a job that earns less income. And by the

12:11

way, this is all a spectrum, right? In

12:14

order to meet your retirement needs, you need to save $30,000 a year.

12:17

It's not zero or 30. There's

12:20

stops along the way. And then

12:22

the last one that I'll mention

12:24

is Fatfire, which has a wonderful

12:26

Reddit community and Facebook group, which

12:28

is really just not sacrificing, right?

12:32

I would like to save up enough money so

12:34

that I'm not beholden to a job. I'm not

12:36

beholden to anything, but I don't want to sacrifice.

12:38

I want to be able to go on really

12:41

nice vacations. I want to be able to travel

12:43

around the world, eat at whatever restaurants I want

12:45

to, and spend money and live in

12:47

a nice house and choose to live in the Bay

12:49

Area even if I'm not working or wherever it is

12:51

for you. So I think that's like,

12:53

I want to live whatever life I want on

12:56

my savings and not stress out about it. And

12:58

I don't know, I'm curious what you think when you

13:01

hear all of these things, whether you're like, this is

13:03

silly, this is helpful. Yeah, I think it's helpful. I

13:05

think it's mostly helpful. And like you said, there are

13:07

a lot of these different ones. I think these are

13:09

the four probably main ones that I've heard of. I

13:11

suspect there are some that you and I have never

13:13

even heard of at this point. But

13:16

yeah, I think, like you said,

13:18

lean fire is probably the one

13:20

that appeals to me least. But

13:22

I suspect it's maybe, I don't

13:25

know, like the easiest to achieve. It's the easiest,

13:28

certainly easiest to achieve. It's

13:30

right. Like essentially, how little

13:32

could you humanly spend more or less

13:35

to live? And then

13:37

have you achieved FIE based on

13:39

probably the 25 times rule? So

13:43

let's say, right, your life, maybe

13:45

your actual structural expenses and some

13:47

food to get by costs $30,000,

13:49

right? Well,

13:52

okay, then your lean FIE is 750,000, which is very doable for

13:54

a lot of people. I

13:58

mean, Chris, I can't imagine that sounds like a very very

14:00

appealing life to either me or you,

14:02

but I can understand why people potentially

14:04

pursue this. What I think's

14:06

interesting, and it's something I've actually said

14:08

a lot, and I guess maybe I've

14:11

been describing Lean Fire, is that it's

14:13

helpful for me to have the security

14:15

to know that I've saved enough money,

14:17

that there is a lifestyle I could

14:19

live, especially once you have a family

14:21

and children. If you have that

14:23

$750,000 and something happens, you

14:26

lose your ability to work. Knowing

14:29

that there is a place in the world

14:31

that you could live, maybe even in the

14:33

US, maybe even nearby, there is a ability

14:36

to buy food, feed your family. That's a

14:39

lot of security. It gives you the flexibility

14:41

to do a lot of things in your

14:43

life and be a lot less worried. Now,

14:46

it's not enough money to live in a major

14:48

city and go out and take expensive vacations, but

14:50

it will give you some peace of mind. I

14:52

think the challenge is, when you get to the

14:55

point that you hit it, do you really want

14:57

to stop? Do nothing for the rest of your

14:59

life and live that life or keep going. To

15:02

me, there stops along the journey that

15:04

starts with being out of debt, building

15:06

up savings and whatnot, but I think

15:08

what I've seen in my life, leaving

15:11

to start this podcast, my wife leaving to

15:13

join me, those were things we were able

15:15

to do because we have savings. Do we

15:17

have enough savings that we could live off

15:19

of it in our current lifestyle with zero

15:22

income? Probably not, but do we have enough

15:24

savings that we could adapt our lifestyle, move somewhere else

15:26

and live off it? Yes, and that gives us a

15:28

lot of comfort. Yeah, the security, I mean,

15:31

there's a real allure to that, certainly,

15:33

and I don't think any of these

15:35

are all or nothing, I mean, especially

15:37

something like lien-fi. So, I mean, I

15:39

can use the example of my brother

15:41

and his wife and family. I

15:44

mean, maybe you could call

15:46

it a mini-retirement, but there's

15:48

some intersection of a mini-retirement

15:50

and lien-fi in that they

15:53

just had a daughter and

15:55

she's a year old now, and

15:58

basically he was staying home. raise

16:00

her for the first year and then his

16:03

wife, Chris, and realized, hey, I don't

16:05

want to miss this time. This is

16:07

a once-in-a-lifetime thing. We're not at F.I.

16:10

but we're certainly at a

16:12

lean F.I. number where we could

16:14

easily live off the 4% rule

16:17

based on earning zero income. So

16:19

they wound up almost doing exactly

16:21

what you described, Chris, which was,

16:23

hey, maybe you could even do

16:25

this within the United States. They

16:27

moved to Wisconsin where she's from.

16:29

They bought a condo, don't have

16:31

a mortgage on it, and

16:34

they're living for a year or

16:36

two or maybe even more in

16:38

this lean F.I. style. But

16:40

the benefit they're getting is

16:42

they're seeing those first formative

16:44

years of their daughter's life

16:47

as a family. And the three of them are

16:49

there every single day. So like you talk

16:51

about security but you also talk about benefits of

16:54

something. I mean that is literally priceless. I

16:56

mean I don't know precisely what's going on in

16:58

their lives but are they going out to fancy

17:00

dinners all the time? Are they doing this

17:02

and that? Like no, but I

17:05

mean man, they're there with their daughter every

17:07

single day and that's an astonishing thing.

17:11

Yeah, so I think you could choose what

17:13

you want to do with your financial independence.

17:15

You can choose how it exists. But

17:17

let's come back to Coast-5 because it's the

17:20

most interesting one to me because it feels

17:22

like what I'm interested in and what I

17:24

actually would care about more than quitting my

17:26

job is having the flexibility

17:28

to work but also save. I'm curious

17:30

what you think. Yeah, so it's funny

17:32

actually that today is the day you

17:34

found Coast-5, right? And you realized, oh

17:36

wow, this is interesting to me. This

17:38

is what I'm living at this point.

17:40

And yeah, I mean I think this

17:43

has a real appeal to a lot of people.

17:45

This is maybe one of the newer of these

17:48

flavors of F.I. but it was

17:50

one of those aha moments for a lot

17:52

of people. And that, yeah, I mean essentially,

17:54

and because obviously there's the intersection of like

17:56

the rule of 72 and compounding money. So

18:00

just to take a quick sidebar

18:02

and explain that, I think most

18:04

people understand that, okay, you have

18:06

some investable net worth saved up,

18:09

right? And while we can't

18:11

guarantee what a stock market return is,

18:13

I think you have a general

18:16

annual return over

18:18

a long period of time. Like at Choose a Buy, we

18:20

generally say 8%. We use that as

18:22

the back of the envelope. So using what's

18:24

known as the Rule of 72, and

18:27

I don't wanna get into the weeds here, but this is actually a

18:29

really useful and pretty easy thing to figure

18:31

out, is it basically tells you

18:33

how long it'll take for your

18:36

assets to double based

18:38

on a certain rate of return. So more or

18:40

less, you just take the number 72 and

18:43

then divide by your expected rate of return. If we're

18:45

saying 8%, so 72 divided by eight, very

18:48

simply is nine, that's the number

18:50

of years it'll take your money

18:52

to double. So that's really, really

18:54

important for COSFI in that

18:57

basically how COSFI works is, let's say

18:59

you've saved up, I don't know, 300,000. Let's

19:02

just, let's start there. Something that's reasonable

19:04

and is certainly a nice net worth,

19:06

but is not gonna get just about

19:08

anybody to five, right? So you've saved

19:10

up 300 grand and

19:13

now you want to not save any

19:15

more money. So that's the point where

19:17

COSFI comes in is essentially your money

19:19

is working for you in the background

19:21

and you're not adding anything to those

19:24

assets, you're not saving. You're either earning

19:26

less and spending it all or

19:28

potentially spending more money and

19:31

just increasing your lifestyle to meet where your

19:33

income is. So either way, not a bad

19:35

option, right? And basically using

19:37

that rule of 72, let's

19:40

say your actual FII number was,

19:42

I don't know, 1.2

19:44

million just to make the math easy. So that 300,000

19:46

will double to 600,000 in nine years and

19:52

then that 600 will double again to 1.2

19:54

million in 18 years total. So

19:57

18 years from now, if you had a 300,000, $1,000

20:00

net worth again in theory, we're not saying this

20:02

is a guarantee but assuming an 8% annual return

20:04

It would be 1.2 million in

20:06

about 18 years and at that point you

20:09

would be phi So you're more or less

20:12

Coasting into it based on the

20:14

work that you've done previously By

20:16

saving in this concerted manner to get your

20:19

current net worth and yeah I mean Chris

20:21

like I think there really is a

20:23

great allure to that I know again This

20:26

is something that you're thinking about in your own

20:28

life, right? Like you clearly have a nice net

20:30

worth but I think you are

20:32

not at phi as you would traditionally define

20:34

it, right? I mean, it's funny because

20:36

10 years ago. I probably would have said yes Then

20:39

you know you have children you move into the Bay

20:41

Area and you spend a lot You know you realize

20:43

how much more money you're spending and you come out

20:46

of it So it's like you come into it and

20:48

come out of it for me I think we've saved

20:50

enough that it'll cover retirement if it continues to grow

20:52

and that we can not focus

20:54

as much on Saving in the short term,

20:56

but we do need to focus on covering

20:58

our expenses And so that's where I think

21:00

there it seems like oh I could do

21:02

whatever I want no No, you have to

21:04

whatever we want and still need a reasonably

21:06

high pre-tax income to cover you know where

21:08

we live and how much we spend each year and Probably

21:11

will save more but in

21:14

a strange way, you know for me

21:16

It's weird to ever withdraw money from

21:18

you know, you're savings So for me

21:20

the money we put away in our

21:23

brokerage account our retirement accounts, that's for

21:25

retirement Whatever year that starts TBD I

21:28

feel weird taking money out of it the

21:30

strange thing in this new kind of coastify

21:32

world that I'm hours into Is

21:35

this idea that well, maybe it makes

21:37

sense to withdraw some of it so

21:39

that we can put other money We

21:41

make into more tax advantaged accounts So

21:43

I could actually see us start to

21:45

draw down on our long-term savings Which

21:47

for us is in our Wealthfront account

21:50

so that we can increase our solo

21:52

401k Contributions because there's just

21:54

a more tax advantage to doing that. That's

21:56

something that will probably still do so, you

21:59

know, we're still going to save but we're

22:01

going to also withdraw at the same time,

22:04

which I'm sure will make some financial model confused.

22:06

But I think for us, this feels – it

22:08

feels like the first time I found a part

22:10

of the fire movement, if you will, that I'm

22:12

like, oh, this kind of makes sense now. Like

22:14

I don't necessarily want to quit my job. And

22:16

I think a lot of people I talk to

22:18

don't want to quit their job or at least

22:20

don't want to stop working. The one

22:22

nuance to calculating this is thinking, when do

22:25

I want to stop working, work backwards from

22:27

there to figure out how much you need

22:29

now. So like you said, if you

22:31

want to stop working in 18 years, I'm a bit

22:33

more conservative. I probably use 6%. So

22:36

for me, that takes your 18 to 25. So

22:39

if you're cool with a 65-year

22:41

retirement age and you want to

22:43

work backwards, by 40, you

22:46

need one-fourth of what you think you need to live on

22:48

in retirement. So if that number is a million dollars, you

22:50

need 250 because you're not going to touch

22:53

it. It's just going to grow until

22:55

that day. I don't know. I've got

22:57

a lot of rabbit holes here, but I've been

22:59

really intrigued. I will say, I will just take

23:01

a quick tackle on the 4% rule

23:04

because I went down the early

23:06

retirement now website, which had this

23:08

great whole thing on safe withdrawal

23:10

rates and sequence of return risk

23:12

and everything. It was like a

23:14

60-part blog post series, which I will just

23:16

say is a lot. I'll link to

23:18

the first one in the show notes. But

23:20

I think the 4% rule often gets misinterpreted

23:23

because it was truly built for a

23:25

30-year cycle to end at

23:27

zero. And so if you're using the 4% rule

23:31

starting at age 30, the

23:34

certainty with which it has worked in the Trinity

23:36

study that it was based off of would have

23:38

only gotten you to age 60. However,

23:40

if you look at a lot of the calculations

23:42

and the early retirement now blog actually has a

23:44

lot of them, you'll notice that if you just

23:46

reduce it to like 3.5% or even 3%, it

23:51

works in perpetuity. So if you want to be

23:53

really safe, which is what I do in all

23:55

my projections, I use the 3% rule. I'm

23:58

probably underselling things. I'm also

24:00

not factoring in Social Security or

24:02

anything else, but that's where I

24:05

come out with on the 4% rule. I

24:07

think for a handful of reasons, it's

24:09

probably both too aggressive to

24:11

be certain and too conservative for what

24:13

I imagine we will see with returns.

24:16

Yeah, isn't that interesting? And

24:19

yeah, Karsten, so listeners of Choose a

24:21

Vai will be very familiar with Karsten

24:23

from early retirement now. He is just

24:26

an amazing, amazing intellect. And yeah, like

24:28

you said, if you're looking to dive

24:30

deep on safe withdrawal rates, his 60-part

24:32

series, it's almost laughable to say 60-part

24:34

series out loud, but yeah, it is

24:36

amazing. And by the way, each part

24:38

is not like three paragraphs. Each part

24:40

is like seven pages of content. Right,

24:42

thousands of words and graphs

24:45

and charts and stuff. But right,

24:47

I think on our show, he basically

24:49

has said it's almost a

24:51

guarantee, and he would never use the word

24:53

guarantee, but in every Monte Carlo simulation, he's

24:55

come up with that like 3.25% will

24:58

get you there in virtually every

25:00

single scenario. So like you said,

25:02

using a 3% safe

25:04

withdrawal rate is very, very conservative and not

25:06

including social security. I mean, we're all, I

25:08

think those of us that are inclined to

25:10

think that way, and I am as well,

25:12

because I mean, I use that 33 times.

25:15

So that's the 3% rule, 33 times

25:17

your annual expenses. I think

25:20

we all understand we're being ultra,

25:22

ultra conservative. But again, a lot

25:24

of this, a lot of personal finance is

25:26

psychology, it's more than it is numbers. And

25:28

I think if that helps you sleep well

25:30

at night, because again, that word security,

25:32

right, we'll come back to that. I think that

25:35

is a really important word. It's a really important

25:37

concept. And if that helps you sleep all night,

25:39

then so be it. It's fine. Like,

25:41

but you have to understand like, what's the

25:43

opportunity cost, right? So the opportunity costs potentially

25:46

are years of your life that you're

25:48

working. Now, if like you, you're doing

25:50

something that you love. And again, I

25:53

just wrote down as you were talking,

25:55

like, who says you have to stop

25:57

working as if you need to stop

25:59

working. to be part of the fire movement

26:01

or something. That nonsense is

26:03

gone. It was gone years ago. That's

26:06

not a prerequisite to being a member

26:08

of the financial independence movement, certainly. You

26:11

can do what you want. That's the whole beauty of this,

26:13

Chris. You have the freedom to do

26:15

what you want in life. And if that means you

26:17

wanna work, because you love it, then do it. That's

26:19

great, but do it on your own terms. So

26:22

again, we're being a little

26:24

conservative, but that's okay. Again, understanding

26:27

what's the opportunity cost. For people

26:29

who are working in jobs that

26:31

they don't love, and it's

26:33

that one more year syndrome. How many people fall

26:35

prey to that? Like, oh, I don't feel safe

26:37

enough yet. I don't feel safe enough. What if

26:39

I need the 2.5% safe withdrawal rate? What

26:42

about 2.25? And I

26:44

don't think social security is gonna be here.

26:46

And you can come up with all of

26:48

this stuff that will keep you working in

26:50

a job that you potentially hate forever. And

26:52

that's not a good alternative either. So clearly

26:55

I'm kind of setting up almost like a

26:57

straw man ridiculous argument here, but

26:59

maybe not, because I fear there are

27:01

people that could fall prey to that.

27:04

I think the one thing that you gotta remember is

27:06

that it's not binary. If you have

27:08

a job you hate, you don't have

27:10

to just quit that job and never work again,

27:12

and be able to replace your income for the

27:14

next 30 to 60 years. Like,

27:17

if you build up enough to get you by

27:19

for a year, then you can go try to

27:21

find another job that you might like more. And

27:24

it turns out if you love it more, you

27:26

might be able to advance better, negotiate a

27:28

salary better, be more productive. You might end

27:30

up making more money in the long run. So

27:32

I just wanna highlight that I know a lot

27:34

of people that find themselves sometimes in their career

27:37

not happy with their job. And if I look

27:39

back now that I've kind of had

27:41

the professional experience, most of them found

27:43

other things pretty quickly that they loved.

27:45

Some took longer than they needed. So

27:47

a lot of them worried that they

27:49

couldn't quit their job because they needed

27:51

enough money, millions of dollars to cover

27:53

their income forever. And I know that

27:55

because I was one of them. But

27:57

I quickly found other things that I

27:59

loved. So that's... more of an emergency

28:01

fund issue than a financial independence issue.

28:03

You don't need to have your

28:05

entire life covered in costs before you can

28:08

take time to find something you love. And

28:10

I have a good friend who did this.

28:12

He knew he was ready to find something

28:15

new and knew that it might take a

28:17

year and had enough savings to do that.

28:19

Didn't think he needed financial independence, retire early

28:21

money. And about six months in,

28:23

he found a thing that he's really, really

28:25

excited about. And it took time, but he's

28:27

going to be much happier. And I think

28:29

his career will flourish because of it.

28:32

So I don't know. That's just one perspective I

28:34

have. Yeah, no, that's really

28:36

cool. I mean, that resonates with me

28:38

in my own life, frankly, and you

28:40

as well, right? We both did this

28:42

with our own entrepreneurial ventures and it's,

28:44

it's cool to have options and I

28:46

think that's what pursuing FIDE gives you.

28:49

It gives you options that, I

28:51

mean, for me, if I didn't have any

28:53

type of side business and I was

28:55

just, I mean, I was a middle manager

28:57

at a doing corporate state tax returns, I

28:59

was a CPA and I was

29:01

on the path to FIDE. I was still a

29:03

number of years away and I had built

29:06

businesses on the side. I mean, Chris, they weren't

29:08

bringing in a ton of money, but it was

29:10

something that like, I had proved the concept to

29:12

myself and I said, Oh, if I

29:14

could actually do this full time, maybe I

29:16

could turn this into something and it's, you

29:19

know, in the points and miles world. Yeah.

29:21

You didn't even realize that. I don't think

29:23

all this time that we've known each other,

29:25

that that was really my first foray into

29:27

entrepreneurship was through points and miles and it

29:29

was for basically regular people. I

29:31

was helping people get to Disney world, take

29:33

Disney world trips, not first class on Singapore,

29:36

sweets or anything like that. Just literally

29:38

trips to Disney world because I figured if I could

29:40

save $4,000 for my

29:42

family, there are millions of other families who

29:44

want to go to Disney world. And yeah,

29:47

is that super attractive to a 24 year

29:49

old kid who's looking to fly first class

29:51

and do all the travel hacking type of

29:53

stuff? No, but is that appealing to tens

29:55

of millions of families who want to go to Disney

29:57

world? Yeah, you bet. And then I kind

29:59

of scaled that. with my next business, Travel Miles 101,

30:02

and it was just, I wouldn't have had

30:04

that opportunity. I wouldn't have had the guts,

30:06

frankly, to leave my job, my nice safe

30:08

job, when I had two daughters and a

30:10

wife, if I wasn't pursuing fine, if

30:12

I wasn't 80% of the

30:14

way to my fine number. It was that security

30:16

blanket. It made a massive difference, you know? So

30:19

you said 80%, so I'm curious, how

30:21

are you tracking this, right? What are the

30:23

tools that you use? Because I think I

30:26

downloaded Carsten's kind of toolkit,

30:29

which is a spreadsheet that, you know, I

30:32

spent about 20 minutes on it, and I made it

30:34

about 10% or less the way there, which is not

30:36

to say it's not a helpful tool, but I think

30:38

there's a world where you can go down a lot

30:40

of rabbit holes. So just to be clear, his tool

30:42

is incredible, especially when it comes to modeling a lot

30:44

of the things he talks about. If you wanna nerd

30:46

out, I'll also link to that in the show notes.

30:48

But high level, what are the tools you're using

30:51

on a daily basis to kind of manage your

30:53

money and track your financial

30:55

independence journey? Yeah, well, you, the

30:57

all the hacks guy, are gonna

30:59

be very disappointed in me. I

31:01

am as low key and

31:03

low tech with this as one could possibly

31:05

be. I still use

31:08

the Microsoft Excel spreadsheet

31:11

that I've been using for like

31:13

my entire FIE journey. I have

31:15

it literally quarter by quarter saved,

31:18

my net worth saved for the last

31:20

10 plus years now, and which

31:22

is actually a really cool exercise. I just

31:24

love, and I know our good friend, Paula

31:26

Pant does this as well, loves

31:29

really getting into the nitty gritty of like,

31:31

I know it sounds silly, but entering those

31:34

numbers into the spreadsheet, there's

31:36

something really visceral about it that

31:38

is better for me personally than

31:41

using some fancy tool or some

31:43

fancy projection software. And I know

31:45

you've dove into a whole bunch of these things.

31:48

So I wanna get back to you on this

31:50

because you have a better answer. But yeah, I

31:52

mean, I very simply, I have my CPAs brain.

31:55

So I've come up with like income statements and

31:57

net worth statements that I just track in Excel.

32:00

And I basically maybe spend an

32:02

hour every month just kind of

32:04

really tying everything out to, I

32:07

run everything through my checking account. So I

32:09

use that as the account that I run

32:11

everything off of and then any transfers

32:14

into other accounts and then obviously

32:16

increases or decreases in the account balances

32:19

at Vanguard or Fidelity or Schwab or

32:21

Wealthfront or wherever it may be. And

32:24

that then ties out to my

32:26

net worth. So basically I'm doing

32:28

this probably like I said, about

32:30

an hour a month, give or

32:32

take to track my checking account.

32:34

And then at the end of

32:36

every quarter, I spend probably no

32:38

more than 30 minutes logging into

32:40

every account that I own that

32:42

I have assets at and just

32:44

jotting down in this Excel spreadsheet

32:46

my balance there. So it ultimately

32:48

then ties out to my, I

32:51

get my net worth. So yeah, I know it

32:53

sounds like a lot of work. It's really not. And

32:56

there is something fun about it. So I know that

32:58

doesn't appeal to you at all. But but

33:00

yeah, tell us about where the rabbit holes you've dove

33:03

down. Yeah, I mean, obviously, I

33:05

took a more tech forward approach than than a

33:07

spreadsheet, although I use the spreadsheet for a long

33:09

time. But I just found that if I didn't

33:11

update it for six months, you know, it was

33:13

just a lot of work. So I think that

33:15

for everyone, there's kind of two to three tools.

33:17

And I think for a lot of people, it

33:20

can just be two. And all

33:22

of the stuff we've talked about this

33:24

entire episode really comes down to knowing

33:26

two things. It's knowing how much you're

33:28

spending and knowing how much you have.

33:31

And I guess knowing how much you make also, but that's

33:33

usually a lot easier number for a lot of people to

33:35

peg. And so it's how do you track your spending and

33:37

how do you track your net worth? And

33:40

you know, how do you project from that would be

33:42

the third piece of the puzzle. I

33:44

used to try to track spending in

33:47

mint along many years ago, I've

33:49

done an entire episode where I

33:51

broke down, I actually went and

33:53

used all the tools mint, wine,

33:55

ab monarch money, co pilot, the

33:58

one that quicken launch simplify. and

34:00

a couple others and I played with all

34:02

of them. I think all my 2022 transactions

34:05

looked at everything and the end goal

34:07

was like, I'm gonna pick the best one. And

34:09

I had some ideas of what it would be,

34:12

but at the end of the day, I went

34:14

with Co-Pilot. I think it's for anyone who's on

34:16

Apple products, it's the best. If

34:18

you're on Android or Windows, you

34:20

know, it's an iOS, Mac, iPad

34:22

only, only adventure. But for me,

34:24

it almost makes it

34:27

so easy and fun and

34:29

simple and that's just like what

34:31

I've chosen. Then after I reached

34:33

out to them and I was like, hey guys, I've

34:36

been pitched by a handful of companies in

34:38

this space to work with them as sponsors

34:40

of the podcast. But at the end of

34:42

the day, I wanna work with the products

34:44

I use and that's how I've actually done

34:46

most of the sponsorships we have. So I

34:48

did end up working with them. So full

34:50

disclosure, they are a partner of the show.

34:52

And if you go to allthehacks.com/Co-Pilot, you'll get

34:54

a discount. But I think that

34:56

is how I manage how much I spend. I

34:58

did a whole episode on all that. So I'm not

35:01

gonna go down that rabbit hole. Then for how much

35:03

money I have generally, Wealthfront has a

35:05

free version of linking your accounts, seeing

35:07

how it's going, doing some light projections.

35:09

I'd put it in the like, I

35:11

don't wanna play around a lot. I

35:13

want you to kind of give me

35:15

best practices on everything. What I

35:18

think goes a step further than that

35:20

is a product called Kubera, which

35:22

I first heard about at FinCon when

35:24

they presented on stage. I later started

35:26

using and then later, I would say

35:29

partnered with, they're not a sponsor of

35:31

the show, but we work together

35:33

on the All the Hacks membership. So All

35:35

the Hacks members get their first year of

35:37

Kubera free. Both of these tools are not

35:39

free. So your option of a spreadsheet is

35:41

free. My option of two apps, I pay

35:43

for both of them. They're not

35:45

huge expenses, but I think Kubera

35:48

is like, imagine if someone wanted to

35:50

build the website version of the spreadsheet

35:52

you have, where you can put it

35:54

in categories, you can look at, especially

35:57

on the investment side, you can look

35:59

at cost. or IRRs, but they're

36:01

calculating it all on there all

36:03

for you. They're pulling all the info and

36:05

then they just launched recently this fast forward

36:07

feature where you can put in a set

36:09

of simple rules in multiple scenarios and be

36:11

able to just see what happens. So

36:14

this isn't the full on financial projection

36:16

tool that you could go down every

36:18

rabbit hole of tax assumptions and everything,

36:20

but you could say, and I'm looking

36:23

at mine, it's like, let's

36:25

say my assets grow by 3%, you

36:28

know, factoring in inflation. Let's say

36:30

my salary continues for this many

36:32

years. Let's say inflation is this.

36:34

Let's say I have a future expense for

36:36

college starting in this year, lasting for four

36:39

years, kind of some simple rules. I have

36:41

on mine, I have six and it'll project

36:43

forward and say, here's your net worth in

36:45

a year, five years, 10 years, 20 years,

36:47

and what that'll generally look like. I

36:50

think Kubera, I've abandoned my spreadsheet

36:52

for Kubera for tracking net worth

36:54

and everything. The thing that I

36:56

think has always been the problem

36:58

is there are a handful of

37:00

providers of linking services, meaning where

37:02

you'd log into your bank account

37:04

and they'll pull data on a

37:06

read-only basis. And most

37:08

apps use one and Kubera works with

37:10

two or three of the top ones.

37:12

So they know that if you're trying

37:14

to sync that obscure Vanguard, a census

37:16

retirement account that I have, they know

37:18

to make sure you use Yodlee instead

37:20

of Plaid because it syncs better. So

37:23

I love that. And then the

37:25

third one is one that I recently started

37:27

playing with after a bunch of listeners emailed

37:30

in and said, hey, hey, you haven't included

37:32

Projection Lab. And so I said,

37:34

oh, you're right. I haven't included Projection Lab.

37:36

I'll make sure at some point to go

37:38

look into it. And I had a call

37:40

actually with Kyle, the CEO or the founder

37:42

of this company. And it's really

37:44

interesting. I think if you're the kind

37:46

of person that wants to model out

37:48

a lot of scenarios, toggle things on

37:51

and off, look at the tax implications,

37:53

look at the flow of capital on

37:55

a year by year basis, like Projection

37:57

Lab is amazing. I will say

37:59

I think. jumping into it, it's not going

38:01

to be the I want to set up

38:03

three simple rules. Like there's an onboarding and

38:06

you walk through a lot of stuff,

38:08

but once you're done, the flexibility you

38:10

have is really cool. And you can

38:12

define steps along the way. Like when

38:14

will I get to financial independence at

38:16

33 times income? When

38:18

might I get to fat fire at

38:21

50 times income? You know, you can

38:23

set these milestones and see these projections.

38:25

So I would say if someone needs

38:27

a app to track their spending, I'm

38:29

a fan of Copilot. If someone wants to

38:31

track their net worth, I'm a big

38:33

fan of Kubera. And if you're an All the Hacks

38:35

member or want to be, it's free for your first

38:37

year, which is cool. Then finally,

38:39

I would say if you want to go

38:41

really deep in the weeds, you can use

38:43

Projection Lab. And I don't say deep in

38:46

the weeds, like it's not interesting for most

38:48

people. I just, you're going to spend more

38:50

time on it. And if your money's important,

38:52

I like, I love putting my money on

38:54

autopilot, but if I'm trying to figure out

38:56

big decisions, I like having all the data.

38:58

And so right now we're looking at school.

39:00

Like if we ended up paying for college

39:02

or doing private school, what are those kind

39:04

of like huge costs? What kind of

39:06

impact do they have? And I think those

39:08

are really interesting questions to ask. And

39:11

when you want to factor in the taxes

39:13

of it and you want to factor in

39:15

required minimum distributions from retirement accounts, and like,

39:17

it's pretty interesting. Yeah, you showed

39:19

it to me right before we jumped

39:21

on and yeah, it looked fantastic. And

39:23

there is a spectrum, right? I mean,

39:25

clearly, I think we are, we are the

39:27

spectrum here of mine is aside from people

39:30

who aren't tracking anything, which please, please, please,

39:32

please track something. You just need to, at

39:34

the very least, what do you spend?

39:36

What's your net worth? You just, you need to do that

39:39

up to you who are trying out all these

39:41

different tools and want to get it. I

39:44

would say by any measure, you are being

39:46

more accurate than I am. Right. And, and

39:48

having these major expenses, like just seeing that.

39:51

Hey, from in my case, 2026 to

39:53

2034, I'm going to have college for each

39:55

of my daughters. It's

40:00

going to be eight straight years of college. That

40:03

clearly needs to be factored in somehow. If

40:06

I was earning zero dollars, then

40:09

we would potentially have an issue. Am I

40:11

really at phi? I think it's

40:13

an interesting thought experiment in my case,

40:15

but for a lot of people, hey,

40:17

if you've quote-unquote reached phi, maybe you're

40:19

earning a fraction of what you were

40:22

and you have these massive expenses coming up that

40:24

you haven't modeled. There

40:26

are many of these software options. I know

40:28

there's a new retirement. I think there's on

40:30

trajectory. I've just loosely seen those in the

40:32

past, but yeah, this projection lab looks amazing.

40:35

Yeah, and just to be clear, normally when

40:37

I want to do an episode on this,

40:39

I'll go play with every tool. Projection

40:43

lab does not get the seal of I have

40:45

gone and played with every tool, but I

40:47

just got so many emails from listeners to check it

40:49

out. Many of those people have gone and played with

40:51

every tool that I thought it was worth looking at.

40:54

Honestly, I say that because

40:56

I enjoyed spending an afternoon going to

40:58

enter it in, but I equally

41:00

enjoyed on Kubera creating four or five,

41:03

I guess six rules that's like to

41:05

college, growth, inflation, when does my income

41:07

end and how do my expenses change,

41:10

and just having like a very simple

41:12

form of how do things project out

41:14

to the future. I care

41:16

more about people being aware of the

41:19

circumstance than I do about them going

41:21

deep, deep down rabbit holes,

41:23

but those are the three tools that I

41:25

say all of my financial life

41:27

kind of lives through that's not related to

41:30

business, right? There's like QuickBooks for business and

41:32

all that stuff, but for me, it's those three

41:34

tools are how I'm

41:36

doing almost all the tracking. We'll

41:39

see where projection lab fits in in the long

41:41

run, whether it's a thing I check every month,

41:43

every year, or whether it's a thing I use

41:45

to make big decisions. No, that makes

41:47

perfect sense. Chris, I actually wanted

41:49

to double back to something you said before because

41:51

I think there might be some people who are

41:53

looking for some additional clarity on this. So we

41:55

were talking about lean fi. You

41:58

were saying that you were potentially... going

42:00

to be taking money out of some

42:02

accounts. It sounded like you're a taxable

42:04

brokerage account, but you're gonna be putting

42:07

money in also into

42:09

let's say, solo 401k or some other

42:11

pre-tax options. You mentioned that very much

42:14

in passing and I always

42:16

love to close the loop on things. Can you give a

42:18

little more detail on that because I think there are gonna

42:20

be a lot of people who are like, Chris, I want

42:22

more info on this, like the real nuts and bolts of

42:24

how people are doing this. Yeah, I mean, I

42:26

think I did some aggressive

42:28

saving early on and built up

42:31

a good taxable brokerage

42:33

account. Now, we

42:35

could have a whole conversation

42:37

about was the deprivation of

42:39

skipping dinners, not ordering appetizers,

42:41

like, was all that worth

42:43

it? Conversation for another day. So

42:46

now, most of my savings

42:48

is non-retirement savings. However, and

42:51

our expenses have gone up and right now,

42:54

with Amy leaving her job to work on

42:56

all the hacks, I would say our income

42:58

has gone down, right? 12

43:00

months ago, we had two jobs and a podcast

43:03

and now we have zero jobs and a podcast

43:05

and so, we just frankly do

43:07

not have the income right now to

43:12

both live and contribute

43:14

to retirement accounts. And that's not to say

43:16

you should feel bad, like no, we're in

43:18

a fine financial position. It's just if you

43:20

look practically at the dollars coming in, all

43:24

the expenses we have related to the podcast,

43:26

we have full-time employee, like all this stuff,

43:29

practically, we wanna cover our expenses and

43:31

there's just not a big buffer leftover

43:33

to fund retirement accounts. However, there are

43:35

a lot of great options, whether it's,

43:37

you know, Backdoor Roth IRAs or Solo

43:39

401Ks or I

43:42

just got this cool email about

43:44

this option that I'm not entirely

43:46

sure how it works, but something

43:48

that goes one step even further

43:50

than just Solo 401Ks, it

43:52

was called a Cash Balance

43:54

Plan. So I'm just gonna read this

43:57

description. This is an advanced retirement plan

44:00

owners that are making mid-hundreds of thousands of dollars a

44:02

year in profit and want to put away more than

44:04

the 66,000 a year solo 401k plan allowed. Unlike

44:08

the solo 401k, a cash balance plan

44:11

is a defined benefit plan and does

44:13

not cap total contributions. Instead,

44:15

the plan is set up to achieve

44:17

a maximum allowed balance of 3.4 million

44:20

at retirement, which in turn allows you to

44:22

deduct hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.

44:24

It's an advanced retirement plan. It costs considerably

44:26

more to set up, about $2,000 to set

44:29

up and maintain each year, but it's

44:32

unparalleled in the size of the benefit and it

44:34

can be combined with the solo 401k. So

44:37

I don't even think... When I read this, I wasn't

44:39

thinking this is for me. I was just thinking it

44:42

made me realize that there are

44:45

a lot of things as a business owner or

44:47

even if you were just an employee that you

44:49

could use your money to be more tax efficient

44:52

in the future. If you don't have the

44:54

spare cash, what do you do? It's

44:56

always been crazy for me to think, let's withdraw

44:58

from our long-term savings. If you look at our

45:01

wealth front balance for the last, I don't know,

45:03

five years, it has not been touched. We don't

45:05

withdraw from it ever. It's

45:07

our long-term kind of retirement

45:09

plan. But now I'm like, psychologically,

45:12

I'm talking about pulling money out of it so

45:14

that I can take income somewhere else and

45:16

put it somewhere else, which in turn might mean

45:19

investing my savings

45:21

into the business and in the business contributing

45:23

to a retirement plan. It's a little complicated

45:25

and we're working with our accountant to make

45:28

sure we don't mess it all up. But

45:31

it's just something that we're considering right

45:33

now in that interim stage. Once you

45:35

go full quit your job financial independence,

45:37

you tap into your savings all the

45:39

time. But now that I'm living this

45:41

CoastFi thing, which is so funny

45:43

to say, having not really actually known, having

45:46

misunderstood what it even meant as early as

45:48

this morning, it's like, I don't want to

45:50

touch my savings anymore. Even though

45:52

I had that attitude, now I have a name

45:54

to define why I'm not touching that savings. And

45:57

then almost immediately, I'm like, no, no, no, I'm going to touch it, but

45:59

I'm going to replenish it. through another door. Yeah,

46:01

I love that. So right, in essence,

46:04

you're netting to zero in the sense

46:06

that you would be pulling money out

46:08

of your taxable brokerage account to cover

46:10

your life expenses, but also

46:12

contributing to retirement accounts, whatever they

46:15

may be, whether it's this crazy

46:17

cash bounce thing with Jake or

46:19

401k, et cetera. But in essence,

46:21

what you're doing then is getting

46:23

the tax benefit from those contributions.

46:26

Yeah, it's like I'm basically shifting

46:28

my after-tax, subject

46:31

to tax in the future

46:33

investments to tax-advantaged investment accounts,

46:36

which will reduce my income

46:38

and give me more

46:40

growth in the future. So it actually

46:42

is not a zero sum, it's actually a

46:44

net positive sum, other than

46:46

the short-term capital gains hits of

46:48

selling my portfolio, which fortunately,

46:51

because we've been keeping this money in Wealthfront

46:53

for a while, we've built up a ton

46:55

of tax loss harvesting. So I think I

46:57

can actually mitigate most of the capital gains

47:00

with kind of built-up capital losses. So

47:02

yeah, it'll be a net

47:04

positive. Yeah, that's very, very cool. And

47:07

for anyone listening, I think, look, you might not be

47:09

a business owner, you might not be in a situation

47:11

in any way similar to Brad or mine, but if

47:13

you work at a company and you're not maxing out

47:16

your 401k because maybe

47:18

you just had two children and you decided

47:20

to quit one of your jobs and you're

47:22

in a situation where cash is tight, but

47:25

you do have savings in a taxable

47:27

account, just a standard brokerage account. I'm

47:30

not gonna talk about what you should do,

47:32

I'm not gonna give personalized financial advice, but

47:34

definitely worth considering using

47:37

some of your long-term savings to live

47:39

on so that you can put some

47:41

of your income into a more tax-efficient

47:43

vehicle for long-term savings. Yeah, and

47:45

it's important just for people to be cognizant

47:47

of just this concept. So yeah, it's very

47:49

cool that you're doing this in real life

47:52

and welcome to the COSFI world, I like

47:54

it. Yeah,

47:56

so one thing we haven't touched on,

47:58

now that we've kind of evolved our

48:00

thinking. on financial independence over the course

48:02

of, for you probably a decade, for

48:05

me, probably a handful of years, I'm

48:07

curious to hear some of the changes

48:09

you've made. I think we both kind

48:11

of went from more deprivation, less spending,

48:13

to training ourselves to spend. So I'm curious

48:15

if you could talk a little bit about how did you

48:17

learn the skill of spending and what have you been using

48:20

it for? Yeah, the skill of spending

48:22

is such a great way to put it. And yeah,

48:24

Mr. Money Mustat should come up with this earlier in

48:26

the year as a phrase that really

48:29

just appeals to me. I think skill

48:31

of spending on the front side of

48:33

FIE is largely, okay, you

48:35

do have to be more optimized, especially if you're living

48:37

paycheck to paycheck or getting into debt every month. Okay,

48:40

you have to cut, you have to be a

48:42

little more efficient. And that doesn't mean deprivation necessarily,

48:44

but it means being smarter with your money. But

48:46

yeah, Chris, you and I are now at points

48:48

where I think we've evolved. The

48:50

other side of the skill of spending is

48:53

learning how to spend for

48:55

life benefit, for memory dividends, for

48:58

just enjoyment and for connection. For

49:00

what we talked about last time,

49:02

something that you're working on is

49:05

trying to buy back your time in a

49:07

lot of senses, right? Like there's lots of

49:09

ways to spend and to spend well that

49:12

can really help your life. So yeah, I

49:14

mean, I am really thinking about this in

49:16

a lot of ways. We're certainly spending

49:18

to get time back just in

49:20

little ways, even something like that

49:22

is very obvious to most people,

49:24

getting a cleaning service at our

49:27

house, which we never did forever,

49:29

spending more on food

49:31

now than we ever have, because we

49:33

just spend a lot of time cooking and

49:36

cleaning. And it doesn't

49:38

really make that much sense anymore. And

49:41

we're at a point in our lives where, okay,

49:43

the ease, especially with having two daughters

49:45

now in middle and high school, and

49:47

we're driving them all over the place

49:49

and to spend an hour cooking and

49:51

20 or 30 minutes cleaning up, it

49:54

just, it doesn't make any sense for

49:56

a couple dollars. So clearly spending

49:58

more money there. I mean, Christa. The biggest

50:00

thing is experiences. I think this is

50:02

something that I've been honestly really proud

50:04

of myself this year. And this also

50:06

comes back to the memory dividends and

50:08

Die with Zero and Bill Perkins. I

50:11

love music and this is

50:13

a part of my life that has really

50:16

not been an important part of my life for the

50:18

last 10 years because I've let it kind of fall

50:21

by the wayside. And I think in a

50:23

lot of senses, since my daughters were born,

50:25

I lost myself. That

50:28

might be hyperbolic, but I lost myself in

50:31

a lot of the things that I love

50:33

doing. I used to love watching the English

50:35

Premier League on Saturdays and going to concerts

50:37

and doing just a lot of

50:40

fun stuff that I just had let,

50:42

like I said, flip away. And this

50:44

year, I challenged myself to really make

50:46

moves on this and see what I

50:48

can do. And I actually planned an

50:50

impromptu, last minute, solo trip

50:52

to New York City to see

50:55

Bono from U2. So

50:57

he was doing this really small

50:59

concert at the Beacon Theater that

51:01

was partially a book tour. So

51:04

it was like half one man show, half

51:07

book tour slash concert, it was

51:09

very interesting. But I bought tickets

51:11

on StubHub, bought flights, got a

51:13

hotel, and it was like the week before. And

51:16

I'm like, this is the coolest thing ever. I'm

51:18

gonna take a trip to New York. And Chris,

51:21

it was really awesome. And that is

51:23

something I never would have done in

51:25

my entire life before reorienting the skill

51:27

of spending. What do you think

51:29

changed that made it possible now when it

51:31

wouldn't have been possible in the past? Yeah,

51:34

I think in a weird way, it

51:37

is understanding that time is

51:39

finite. And maybe that's

51:42

that I'm 44 years old and

51:44

not getting any younger and my

51:46

kids are growing up. And

51:49

like I said, I might have lost

51:51

some part of myself over the last

51:54

10 years where I haven't focused on

51:56

things that bring joy. And I just

51:58

really want to do that. There

52:00

was no moment. It was just understanding

52:03

that you gotta do it. You gotta

52:05

live life. You can't be worried about

52:07

saving money all the time. And even

52:10

just little challenges, Chris. Like as silly

52:12

as this sounds, the Richmond Airport, it's

52:15

not very expensive, long-term parking or even the short-term

52:17

parking, but I was like, on this trip to

52:19

New York City, I'm like, what would doing this

52:21

trip like a rich person look like? And

52:23

it was almost like a remit-sati kind of

52:26

thing. And it was not parking and economy

52:28

parking. It was parking in the daily lot

52:30

that was right there and I could just

52:32

walk over to the airport. And Chris, this

52:34

cost me like nine extra dollars because it was a

52:36

24-hour trip. So this was not

52:39

that big of a deal, but it just

52:41

felt great. It was really cool. And it

52:43

was like, okay, how can you find these

52:45

little things that actually make a difference? And

52:47

going back to the food, we're

52:49

now getting these amazing meals brought into the

52:51

house and it's like, it's just a couple

52:53

dollars more, but it's just reorienting to what's

52:56

the value here? So it's like this

52:58

valuist play is like this term valuist.

53:00

I've talked about this on the podcast

53:02

for so many years, but I never

53:05

really embodied it in actuality. I think

53:07

I did to some degree, but I

53:09

didn't get there. And now it's just,

53:11

all right, look, like I said, and

53:13

I know it sounds a little morbid, but

53:15

I think it's important is understanding the

53:18

finite nature of your life, right? And like

53:20

the finite nature of seasons of your life.

53:23

I took a trip to see Taylor Swift in

53:26

Pittsburgh with my older daughter, and

53:28

we bought very, very expensive tickets

53:30

on secondary. And man, Chris,

53:32

we had the time of our lives. And like, we'll

53:35

be talking about that 30 years from

53:37

now. It was amazing. And I don't regret

53:39

any single one of those dollars I spent

53:41

on that trip. It was astonishing. And

53:44

I'm just, I'm really fortunate to be in

53:46

this position, but I'm really proud of myself

53:48

that I've made these changes in that shorter

53:50

period of time. A lot of

53:53

the language you're using, memory dividends,

53:55

seasons of life, were languages

53:57

from Bill Perkins' book, Die with

53:59

Zero. I know I had

54:01

him on for I want to say episode 91 But

54:05

I can't quite remember the number did

54:07

that have a big impact on you. Yeah was episode

54:09

91. Thanks Yeah, that

54:11

book had a massive impact on me It

54:13

really did and it was just the conceptual

54:16

framework and I mean cuz I knew all

54:18

this stuff, right? like sometimes it just crystallizes

54:20

and hits in a moment when

54:23

it matters and I think that's

54:25

what's also interesting about taking in a lot of

54:27

different content like I probably listen to way more

54:29

podcasts and read more books and I that I

54:31

probably should frankly But like sometimes you

54:34

just you hit on something like this where

54:36

it is just a life-changing Thing

54:38

and I don't know what it was but

54:41

again, like I'm even doing like little things now

54:43

like I went to a Yoga

54:45

and meditation retreat last month that like

54:47

that's something I never would have done

54:49

I never would have had the guts

54:52

to like just go off for two

54:54

days by myself and just Be

54:57

and it was awesome. It was just

54:59

really fantastic I'm like again just trying

55:01

to build these things into life like

55:03

I'm part of a mastermind group where

55:06

it's about 24

55:08

25 of those guys and Now

55:11

we're trying to do more in-person events and like

55:13

Chris. I always had an excuse it was

55:15

always like oh, it's too far Oh, I need

55:17

to be home for the weekend with my

55:19

wife and my daughter's like it's selfish to leave

55:22

This is the script that I always had running in my

55:24

head like it's selfish to leave But you

55:26

know It's really important to take care of yourself

55:28

to and to find joy in little ways I'm

55:31

like we had this day of fun at one

55:33

of my buddy's house 12 of us kind of

55:35

converged on his house and in New Jersey And

55:38

we had like eight hours of playing

55:40

like this like Olympics of games And

55:42

it was just because it was the most fun

55:44

I've had in years and like one of the

55:47

guys cooked this amazing like Michelin star Dinner

55:49

it was just like one of those days

55:52

I'll remember forever and like I know I

55:54

could tell you for certain a

55:56

year ago I would have said no to that weekend. I

55:58

would have just said out of hand No, so

56:01

again, this reorientation. So I

56:03

think, yeah, I mean, a lot of things

56:05

have changed in my life, and I think they've changed for the better.

56:07

Yeah, I mean, I don't think it's selfish to take

56:10

care of yourself. I think it's selfish if you don't

56:12

encourage your partner to also do the same. Right, right.

56:14

So I'm sure you found that balance as well, and

56:16

I think that's the important thing. I

56:18

had a similar moment, which was more serendipitous in

56:20

that it wasn't something I would have said no

56:22

to, but we had this

56:24

moment where we invited some friends up to

56:27

a house we were staying at in Napa,

56:29

not ours, and there was a volleyball court,

56:31

and for like two hours, we were all

56:33

just playing outdoor volleyball, probably getting sunburned, but

56:35

like, you know, we're blasting some good 80s

56:37

rock, and I just had this moment where

56:39

it's like, wow, this is, like, I want

56:41

more moments like this, and

56:44

the downside is that with kids and stuff, you

56:46

have to really plan them. You can't just expect

56:48

to text five friends and be like, hey, do

56:50

you all wanna go do this thing an hour

56:52

away right now? No, like, it's just, it's not

56:55

practical anymore. Maybe when I get a little older

56:57

and my peers and friends or kids

56:59

are a little older and easier to travel with,

57:01

maybe it'll get a little better, but you have

57:03

to plan ahead and you have to commit earlier,

57:05

and I think I'm still learning, but you've got

57:07

a couple years on me and your kids do

57:09

as well, so I hope I get to that

57:11

place where you are, but I had the same

57:13

impact when I talked to Bill Perkins and

57:16

I made that episode, and we actually planned a

57:18

trip to London and Paris, right, I talked about

57:20

it in the episode, and then we just booked

57:22

it, and we were like, we just have to

57:24

do it, and in a weird way, we stopped

57:26

tracking our net worth after that episode, we stopped

57:28

caring about whether it went up, and we started

57:31

focusing on, do we just have enough now, and

57:33

when do we wanna spend our money, do we

57:35

wanna spend it later, do we wanna stop working,

57:37

and for us, now we've both

57:39

found something we like doing, so I don't

57:41

know, it changed a lot for me. I'd encourage

57:44

anyone to go pick it up and read

57:46

it, or if you wanna preview the hour

57:48

version, I interviewed him in episode 91, which

57:51

we can link to in the show notes, but yeah, that

57:53

changed a lot for me, and we started

57:55

spending a little bit more on things that some

57:58

have an ROI, some don't. But

58:00

I actually am surprised at

58:02

how much we've been able

58:04

to accomplish with the podcast

58:07

now that we have a little more free

58:09

time because we've, you know, spent

58:11

a little bit of money on other things,

58:13

whether that's someone to clean or

58:16

someone to help with food, or that's

58:18

hiring an assistant or an employee for

58:20

your company, like these things that felt

58:22

like they were big expenses we were

58:24

nervous about. But now that

58:26

we have them, they've unlocked a little bit

58:29

more creativity, a little bit more time, and

58:31

we've been good in our career at turning

58:33

that into opportunity. And so you'll

58:35

never know unless you try. You know,

58:37

that's some expenses, right? The Taylor Swift

58:39

concert is probably not one that's going to make

58:41

you more money in the long run, but it's

58:43

certainly one that's going to give you memories that

58:45

far exceed that. And I, whatever version

58:48

of that exists when our daughters are a little

58:50

older, I'm very excited to do the same thing.

58:52

Yeah. Yeah. And

58:54

it's important to prioritize it. And I think

58:57

just, just it being in your mind. And

58:59

like you said, going back and listening to

59:01

that episode 91 of all the hacks, that

59:03

episode was more impactful to me than the

59:05

book was, honestly, hearing him talk it through.

59:07

So yeah, I think that's a perfect starting

59:09

point for people. Well, to go back to

59:11

the early retirement now blog, he gave a

59:13

review of that book. Yeah, that was part

59:15

60, right? Yeah. And what

59:17

was interesting was, you know, he justifiably said

59:19

a lot of these things aren't new. And

59:22

I think the thing that Bill Perkins

59:24

did was he took a bunch of

59:27

concepts that we've all known, right? We've

59:29

all known that experiences are valuable. We

59:31

all know that, you know, money diminishes

59:34

our health diminishes everything. But if

59:36

you could package it in a good way, like,

59:38

ultimately, a lot of things are just storytelling. And

59:40

I will say that when it comes to telling

59:42

a story about money, most people aren't that great

59:44

at it. Like, it's something that a lot of

59:46

people get bored with aren't interested in. And Bill

59:49

Perkins weaves a story around it that I think

59:51

just comes alive when you hear him

59:53

talk more than when you read the book. So

59:55

you'll hear a reminder if you go listen to

59:57

it and I'll give it to you here. it

1:00:00

is not an episode to listen to with

1:00:02

young children in the very colorful vocabulary.

1:00:10

He does indeed and yeah i

1:00:12

mean even like you said talking about

1:00:14

health right and health and longevity and

1:00:16

vitality like. Spending money on that

1:00:18

is important i think we both become a little

1:00:20

more cognizant of that i know this year i

1:00:23

hired a personal trainer who

1:00:25

i met through twitter actually and which

1:00:27

is kind of wild but, that again

1:00:30

is something i can guarantee you two

1:00:32

years ago there's no chance that i would have

1:00:34

done that zero percent chance and it

1:00:37

has been the best money i've ever spent on my

1:00:39

health in my entire life. Now i

1:00:41

got a question about this yes you so

1:00:44

i was watching video that a past

1:00:47

guest of mine desire yasen not daily

1:00:49

made and he hired a personal trainer

1:00:51

in india from this company called

1:00:53

fitter and i haven't done it

1:00:55

yet i haven't pulled the trigger on the service

1:00:57

yet but i was thinking about it. And i

1:01:00

want your perspective so your personal trainers

1:01:02

remote right they're not located where you are you don't

1:01:04

see them in person they don't come to the gym

1:01:06

with you. Is there

1:01:08

a reason that they need to be in the u.s. Because

1:01:11

if you look at the cost of living around

1:01:13

the world if someone could motivate you just as

1:01:15

well but in india they can certainly live on

1:01:17

last and i was blown away and by the

1:01:19

way i have no connection to this company so

1:01:22

i don't want to endorse it at all. But

1:01:24

i was looking at it and

1:01:26

the personal training sessions were like five dollars

1:01:28

a session and you could do it five

1:01:30

days a week monthly for like a hundred

1:01:33

dollars a month or something in that ballpark

1:01:35

i don't want to quote the prices because

1:01:37

i'm not an expert here. But i

1:01:39

was just surprised and then it just

1:01:41

got me thinking there are some services

1:01:43

and practices that are really tied into

1:01:45

our system right hiring a tax

1:01:47

accountant you want someone who's really familiar with the

1:01:49

rules and the regulations here. I like

1:01:52

a personal trainer someone to just throw

1:01:54

on a tripod and you know motivate

1:01:56

me to work out and whatnot live

1:01:58

video sessions every time. why

1:02:00

couldn't that person be over to these? So I

1:02:02

wanna hear your perspective on whether you think that

1:02:04

you could get a similar output from

1:02:07

that, and if so, how does

1:02:09

that change your thinking? Yeah,

1:02:11

that is really interesting. I

1:02:13

definitely think that you could hire someone

1:02:16

from anywhere in the world. So it

1:02:18

depends what you're looking for, right? So

1:02:20

how you described it, if you're looking

1:02:22

for somebody to be there

1:02:24

with you, or just create a

1:02:26

video or whatever, five days a week,

1:02:28

motivation, a little accountability. Absolutely,

1:02:30

it makes no difference where they

1:02:33

are. Yeah, my guy, Dean Turner

1:02:35

is my personal trainer, and he's

1:02:37

fantastic. deanturnertraining.com is where he's located.

1:02:39

But he's in Philadelphia, which is not

1:02:42

that far for me, but I'm never gonna meet him in

1:02:44

person in all likelihood. So yeah, he could be in India,

1:02:46

he could be in Australia, it would make no difference whatsoever.

1:02:49

I am paying for his

1:02:51

expertise, though. Okay. Not

1:02:53

for the motivation. So

1:02:55

yeah, clearly, if I was

1:02:57

paying for motivation, I would

1:03:00

move to that service you just mentioned. That

1:03:02

sounds like a slam dunk. I mean, that

1:03:04

actually sounds amazing. I suspect a lot of

1:03:06

people would benefit from them. You could even

1:03:08

pair the two, right? You could probably find

1:03:10

Dean and be like, help me come up

1:03:12

with the curriculum, and then say, great, now

1:03:14

someone else. This is

1:03:16

my big challenge with a lot of

1:03:18

services, is that you wanna pay for

1:03:21

experience and execution. And you can't get

1:03:23

good experience without paying for it. People

1:03:26

charge a lot more for their time when they have

1:03:28

experience. But then it doesn't make sense to pay

1:03:30

for the execution also. And I think about

1:03:33

this with financial planning. A

1:03:35

human financial planner will give you a

1:03:37

better financial plan that kind of connects

1:03:39

your emotions and stuff. And I'm not

1:03:41

against people paying a fixed price for

1:03:43

that. I think that's really valuable. It's

1:03:45

just, if you then on top of

1:03:47

that tack on a ongoing 1% of

1:03:49

your assets forever fee to manage the

1:03:51

investments, that's where I'm

1:03:53

like, I don't know. So I

1:03:55

wonder if there's a hybrid approach

1:03:57

here where I think it's totally

1:03:59

fine to pay financial planning fixed

1:04:01

fees. annually and then a much

1:04:03

smaller fee for investments. Is there

1:04:06

a Dean Turner plus fitter super

1:04:08

combo where you get daily motivation

1:04:10

and workout regimens following the curriculum

1:04:12

of someone who has a lot

1:04:14

more experience and personalization? Yeah, that's

1:04:16

fascinating. This now is turning into

1:04:18

a business lesson for Dean,

1:04:20

I think. Because

1:04:23

I wonder if he could scale

1:04:25

his business more that way if

1:04:27

he used his expertise to create

1:04:29

the programming but then he

1:04:31

found these people wherever they may

1:04:33

be in certainly a lower

1:04:36

cost area and he could

1:04:38

then potentially outsource part of the

1:04:40

day to day with knowledgeable people

1:04:43

who are well versed in his

1:04:45

methodology, that would actually be really

1:04:47

interesting. Dean, if you're listening, at a

1:04:49

minimum, if you go down this path, I'd love

1:04:51

to give it a try. That

1:04:53

would be really cool. I bet he'd be super interested

1:04:55

in that. So yeah, to be continued on that. But

1:04:59

yeah, I think accountability

1:05:01

is important. I think that's why people

1:05:03

like group exercise classes also. Somebody

1:05:06

else is waiting for them, whether it's CrossFit

1:05:08

or yoga or whatever it may be, Orange

1:05:11

Theory Fitness, all these things. When you have

1:05:13

people waiting for you and they text you

1:05:15

when you're not there, why it's so easy

1:05:17

to fall out of an exercise routine. And

1:05:19

I think to me, accountability

1:05:21

and motivation are really, really

1:05:24

important. That's why I thought this was so interesting

1:05:26

because I was like, you know what? I would work

1:05:28

out to avoid losing $5. I

1:05:31

might have gotten comfortable in my life spending

1:05:34

money, but I have not gotten comfortable losing

1:05:36

money. It seems so

1:05:38

much harder to be comfortable just giving

1:05:40

up money even though you probably,

1:05:42

in some cases, should. So in

1:05:45

this particular case, I'm like, it would almost be worth it

1:05:47

just to say, I'm going to work out three days a

1:05:49

week from 8 to 8.30 and I'm

1:05:51

going to book it with a person, just any

1:05:53

person. It could even be non-existent. It's like, I'm

1:05:55

going to pay this money and my wife gets

1:05:57

to light it on fire if I don't work

1:05:59

out. but even better if you have someone that can

1:06:01

sit there and kind of motivate you along the way.

1:06:05

Anything else you've been doing in health that's worth covering?

1:06:07

I know the last time you were on, you said 2023 is gonna be your

1:06:09

year to get healthy. Yeah,

1:06:12

yeah, my bold move was healthiest

1:06:15

year ever. So yeah, I mean,

1:06:17

a lot of it has, I

1:06:19

talked last episode about DNS that

1:06:21

I have been doing to

1:06:24

kind of maybe deal

1:06:26

with some nagging shoulder and

1:06:29

hip issues that I had, and that's helped

1:06:31

dramatically. I think I've just been much more

1:06:33

open again to spending money on massage.

1:06:36

I get a massage in that cupping thing.

1:06:38

I don't know if you've ever seen that

1:06:40

on Swimmers at the Olympics, so I do

1:06:42

that once a month. I found something in

1:06:44

a Tony Robbins book that he was talking

1:06:47

about this thing called Facial

1:06:49

Counterstrain, and it's

1:06:52

like a massage slash facial release,

1:06:54

which I really, really enjoy. Wines

1:06:56

up, what's so funny is the

1:06:58

guy who owns the business here

1:07:00

in Richmond is in the

1:07:02

financial independence world. He's like, are you

1:07:04

by any chance Brad from Choose a

1:07:06

Buy? It was hilarious. So yeah,

1:07:08

I mean, I've been doing that. I

1:07:10

bought an Ora ring to track my

1:07:12

sleep, so I've been really focusing and

1:07:14

trying to dial in in my sleep a lot.

1:07:17

I think I mentioned to you that I

1:07:19

bought a hot tub, and

1:07:21

I just bought a cold plunge, but it was

1:07:24

actually not one of those super duper expensive ones.

1:07:27

One of our listeners, a guy named Mitch, reached

1:07:29

out to me and told me about this thing

1:07:31

called the Ice Pod. So it's by- Oh, I

1:07:33

thought you were gonna go down the path of

1:07:35

the ice barrel, but the Ice Pod. No, no,

1:07:37

no, yeah, this is, yeah, it

1:07:39

is something you can buy. So it's by the

1:07:41

Pod Company. It looks like podcompany.com. This thing's like

1:07:43

150 bucks, and honestly, because

1:07:46

it's nothing special, it's just kind of

1:07:48

like an insulated little, if

1:07:50

you've ever seen one of those blow up hot

1:07:52

tubs that cost like 500 bucks, this

1:07:55

is something similar for cold plunge, but the

1:07:57

last handful of nights, we just got it

1:07:59

up in- My two

1:08:01

daughters and I have gone out

1:08:03

after dinner. It's getting dark now,

1:08:06

getting later in the year. So darkness, we

1:08:08

go out, go in the hot tub, go

1:08:10

in the cold plunge, back in the hot

1:08:12

tub. And it's just like this cool little

1:08:14

experience together. And I mean, this

1:08:16

cold punch, like I said, it was like 150

1:08:19

bucks, it was fantastic. So even if we don't

1:08:21

use it much beyond the next month or two,

1:08:23

it would be well worth it. So yeah, just

1:08:25

all these little things that I'm just trying to

1:08:28

add to my life. And some

1:08:30

of the stuff is really cool, like these experiences that I'm

1:08:32

having now with my family. I love it. Yeah,

1:08:34

one of ours will be a sauna, which

1:08:36

is days from now we're

1:08:39

getting added on, which will finally, I

1:08:41

think, get our cold plunge more usage.

1:08:43

Oh. I think for as

1:08:45

much as I enjoy hot tubs, I

1:08:47

enjoy saunas a lot more. Yeah, is

1:08:49

it an infrared sauna or a barrel

1:08:51

sauna? It is neither. It is a

1:08:53

full kind of finish. I've

1:08:56

been working with this company that I'm not

1:08:58

ready to share, but when I am, they're

1:09:00

building like, they might be like

1:09:02

the best sauna makers in the US, at

1:09:05

least making it accessible. So it's kind

1:09:07

of a much more finished sauna experience.

1:09:09

I went really deep down the rabbit

1:09:11

hole of saunas. Surprise the

1:09:13

front. And they're like, there's this Trumpkin

1:09:16

guide to saunas, which is like this

1:09:18

crazy guide and barrel saunas have plenty

1:09:20

of critique. And so I was on

1:09:22

the fence about it and I actually

1:09:24

met someone who was like, no, no,

1:09:26

no, I'm building this company and we're

1:09:28

gonna make the best saunas. And

1:09:30

we're gonna do it in a way that is modular

1:09:32

and easy for people to order and set up at

1:09:34

their home and build something really nice. And yeah,

1:09:37

I'm very excited, but this is like

1:09:39

a proper finish sauna style experience that

1:09:41

gets hot. And so, I don't know,

1:09:43

Amy and I are very excited to

1:09:45

add this to our routine. And ideally

1:09:47

it'll be like a, put the girls

1:09:50

to bed and have a little time

1:09:52

together in the sauna, dip out to

1:09:54

the cold plunge, finish off in the

1:09:56

sauna and sleep better. Heck yeah, I

1:09:58

love it. That's really cool.

1:10:00

All right, so to be continued on that

1:10:02

one for sure. To be continued, maybe the

1:10:05

fourth edition of Brad and

1:10:07

Chris record a podcast together. If you make

1:10:09

it out to the West Coast, we can

1:10:11

see if the audio equipment handles the heat.

1:10:13

Ha ha ha, sounds good. Might

1:10:15

not be a video version, but you know.

1:10:18

20-24 goals, I like it. Love it,

1:10:21

awesome. This has been great. The

1:10:23

emails I got after the last time we did it,

1:10:25

I think I got 20 emails that were just like

1:10:27

subject more Brad. So for the 20

1:10:29

people who wrote in asking for more Brad, here you

1:10:31

are. Hopefully there was at least a more Chris email

1:10:34

in your inbox too. I'll just pretend there was. You

1:10:36

know we got flooded with them. I

1:10:38

copied you on all the responses, so you know

1:10:40

they came in. Awesome, well this has been great.

1:10:42

I'm excited for your healthiest year ever. I

1:10:45

hope you finish it out strong and we'll chat

1:10:47

soon. Yeah, thank you my friend. As always, it's

1:10:49

good to chat with you and yeah, until next

1:10:51

time. Thank you for listening

1:10:53

to today's show and for being part of

1:10:55

the Choose If I community. If you haven't

1:10:58

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1:12:00

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1:12:03

And even though it's a couple years old

1:12:05

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