436: How to Get Rich Slowly and Retire Earlier Than Most with a Modest Portfolio

27:10I don't need a Tesla. And so I'm able to prioritize what's important to me and my million dollars of invested assets plus my real estate, it all works out. And like I say, if I get desperate, well, maybe then I'll write another book or start another plot or go get a job. But so far, not even close to desperate. Support for BiggerPocketsMoney comes from Northwest Registered Agent. Your business identity is everything that shows what your business is about from what customers see to what they don't see, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and compliance paperwork. Get more for your business, more privacy, more guidance, and more free resources with Northwest Registered Agent.

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29:31Complete disclosures available at public.com slash disclosures. My husband and I have multiple investment accounts across several different companies. Throw in vehicles, investment properties, and private equity holdings, and it can be difficult to get a good idea of our actual net worth. And frankly, between the kids, work, and just life in general, I don't have time to be logging into 47 different places. So I just didn't. Scott walked me through setting up my Monarch account and suddenly everything was easy. It's all in one spot, so I can check in quickly. Just like everything else on Monarch, the dashboard is customizable, so I can see at a glance what's most important to me and dive deeper when I need to.

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31:15There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a$75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash BiggerPockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. Indeed.com slash biggerpockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring Indeed is all you need. Do you feel any pressure to do more or make more money? Or like there's this always be hustling. And there are some bloggers who blog about how much money they make blogging. And there are bloggers who are constantly posting net worth statements.

32:02And this is how much money I made last month. And look at all of my income streams and look at all of the money that I'm making. And do you have any pressure to do? Do you feel any pressure to do that, too? Because you are from the beginning? Sure. Absolutely. How do you deal with that? I want to make it clear that I never set out when I started blogging. I was doing it just as an outlet. So I never sat out to make money from the blog. And in fact, I had to have a fellow blogger come to me and say, JD, why don't you have that? Back in the day, I had the top search result for savings accounts. If you search for savings accounts, Get Rich Sully came up first.

32:43And I didn't have that monetized in any way. And I had a fellow blogger. It was actually Jim Wang from Wallet Hacks. He came in and he said, JD, why don't you have your savings account page monetized? you mean? And so he had to explain it to me. And once I monetized that, well, thanks to God. So anyway, I hang out with people. I go to blogging conferences. I participate in mastermind groups. And I hear how much people make. And I'm like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. So of course, I'm like, oh, I could do this too. Why don't I do this too? And I think the answer is it doesn't feel true to who I am, right?

33:21So I started my blog to help myself and to try to help other people, not to make money off them. And I know that it's possible to help people and make money at the same time. I'm perfectly aware of that. And another thing is when I start monetizing what I'm doing, it feels like work. Instead of feeling like something fun to do, instead of feeling like a hobby, it feels like, oh my God, this is a job. So that's kind of a long answer about like, yes, I do feel the pressure, but then I also feel the pressure because we live in a society that's deeply steeped in the Protestant work ethic. And this idea that I'm still youngish, I'm 54, I'm healthy, I should be working, I should be productive, I should be doing something demonstrably make society better right now.

34:07And so for me to take this time off, it's difficult. And one of the things I've been doing is like reading books about how to do nothing and reading essays, there's a, someplace I've got it, Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, even 100 years ago, he wrote an essay on, I think it's called a praise of idleness. And he was talking even then about how there's all this pressure in modern society back in 1923 or whatever it was to just be go, go, go, go. And of course, that's only gotten infinitely worse by, well, not infinitely worse, a magnitude worse in the past 100 years. There's just this pressure to do things and be things.

34:45And we no longer take the time to just decompress and be, just exist. And I think that's unfortunate. So, I'm going to jump in here with this. Today, I woke up at 5.45, hopped on a bike, did a workout, ate breakfast while, you know, hanging out with my baby and wife when they were up, you know, when they got up and all that. I drove to work, got in at work around 8.15, was in meetings from 8.30 until 1 o 'clock now. We're doing this podcast, which is my favorite part of the day. Another couple of meetings after that, we're going to get dinner with a coworker who's flew into town. I'll be back at 6.30 or so to put baby to sleep and hang out for a little bit.

35:31And then I'll do a little bit more emails and go to bed. So that's life of a CEO. What's a day in the life of JD at this point for you? And I want to get really jealous here. Well, first of all, Scott, I want to say that I've never been that busy, but I mean, if you're happy doing that, that's awesome. If you can find balance and pleasure and enjoyment and fulfillment from that kind of lifestyle, absolutely pursue it. Typical day for me. This is a great question. Okay. So, I get up. I drink my coffee. And as I'm drinking my coffee, I'm reading what's going on in the world. I think most people do this or many people do this.

36:09after I'm done with my coffee I take the dog for a walk we're usually out for an hour hour and a half walk it all over Corvallis I live in Corvallis Oregon I come home go to the gym it's usually after the dog walk I'll go to the gym three four five times a week I come back make myself something to eat and then I've got the afternoon to myself and so I get to decide okay what is it I'm going to do? Often I have house tasks. I have a full list in front of me, house tasks that I need to do. But I've also, this year, I've made it a point to try to get back into reading, reading for pleasure. For so long, and I know many people have struggled with this recently.

36:55When I was younger, I read for pleasure all the time. But somehow over the years, I've gotten so that I can only read short form stuff. And I think it's because of the internet. It's kind of conditioned me. And I've gotten so that I don't read just science fiction novels like I used to. And so I'm trying to make myself read. Right now, the book that I'm really enjoying is this book from Rick Rubin called The Creative Act, A Way of Being. This is one of the best books I've ever read. It's just fantastic. So, okay, I read, I do stuff around the house. I might run errands. And then in the evening, once Kim is done with work and she comes home, I make her dinner.

37:35We watch something random on television. And I've got a couple of things that I'm doing. Like I have this thing. We have a second run movie theater in town. And so my thing is every Wednesday night when they play their second run movie, I go see it. So like last night I went and watched Batman from 1989. And I think the next movie is Raiders of the Lost Ark. And then Stand By Me is coming up. So I go do that every Wednesday night. It's just a way to get out of the house and do stuff. But what I really want to do is take art classes. So that's an awesome day. Yeah, and JD, I love what I just described to you.

38:09It's a full action pack. I don't have a minute to breathe. It's this classic representation of the Protestant work. I wouldn't have been able to articulate it like that before you said it. And it's good, you know. But I also look forward to the day and, you know, at some point down the line when I can, And, you know, like that life, that life, that day that you just described sounds like a wonderful, wonderful Thursday, you know, weekday to just go out and hang out or Wednesday at the movies. And so I think that that's the goal for people is to get to that point and kind of enjoy those things and explore these different outlets.

38:45So one question I'd have as a follow-up to this is, yes, I'm working full-time currently, and I have this busy schedule here. Is there a book you'd recommend or a resource you'd recommend that can help say, hey, go check this out, and you can begin bringing elements of what you just described into your life today. You don't have to wait until you're jobless or whatever, fully retired. you can do parts of this mind. You can adopt parts of this mindset much earlier than that. It seems strange for me to recommend this Rick Rubin book. So Rick Rubin is a music producer. He's a very prominent music producer.

39:24And he wrote this book, The Creative Act, A Way of Being. And I'm not finished with it. I'm only about halfway through. But I really, in a way, it's the answer to the question that you're asking. Because what he's urging people to do is to embrace life as a creative person. He says, everyone is creative, no matter what they're doing. Whatever your job is, you are creating. And he urges people, in a way, it's also very Buddhist, very Zen. He urges people to be more aware of their surroundings. And I think this is something that even somebody as busy as you, Scott, could probably find a way to set aside 20 minutes each day.

40:10Okay, here's something that people have always told me I needed to do, and that's meditate. I have never been able to meditate. I've tried so many times and it's, I have that monkey mind. It just jumps all over the place. And I think the issue that I've had is I'm trying to get all the thoughts out of my head. And what Rick Rubin wants you to do is sit and just notice everything. And so I think somebody like you, Scott, you probably have 20 minutes you could set aside to either do traditional meditation where you're trying to just notice the thoughts as they come up and mean, or do the Rick Rubin thing where you're like, just paying attention to the world around you and trying to soak it all in and to appreciate it and be grateful for it.

40:54I think that's one thing that almost anyone can. I will definitely check that out. Yeah, I need to incorporate more of that in my life because I'm just go, go, go, go, go, go, go all the time. And the piece that I think some of the things that you're doing in your day, those are things I can incorporate today without having to be retired at this point. And I think it would other less. And I will say this. So, and who knows, maybe you end up cutting this part out, but maybe you don't. So, I've struggled with my mental health. I've struggled with depression and anxiety and ADHD. And maybe you don't wrestle with any of that, Scott.

41:29And so, for me, a lot of what I'm doing is an attempt to address the mental health issues, to find ways to live so that I'm happier and not suffering from this. And so what he's describing and what I'm doing with the year of JD is a way to address all of this and to, I don't know, become more grounded, it'd be more true to who I am. No, absolutely. I think I certainly struggle with some of those elements. I wouldn't, you know, yeah. And I think if these are really important things to incorporate. So I definitely need to hear this message today. And I think that's really helpful. I'm going to go check out the book.

42:06Do you think our busy culture adds to these issues? And do you, would you recommend taking a year for yourself to wind those down? Would you recommend more than a year? Do you think that a year is enough? Well, I think a lifetime is probably the best way to do it. That's hard. No, I would absolutely recommend, if a year sounds too daunting for people, start with a month. Make it the month of you. But I think it takes a while to get ramped up and to get comfortable with doing this. So I think saying, oh yeah, 2024 will be the year of me. That's a great way to do it. But yeah, Mindy, I think our culture, when you start paying attention, you will see that our culture is very much driven by productivity and action and activity.

42:58Everything places value on this. And if you are inactive or you're still or you're calm or you're not doing anything that seems to be productive, it's viewed negatively. not 100 % of the time, but in most cases it's viewed negatively. And I think that's unfortunate because this decompression, when you create margin in your life, you're happier and you have room to breathe. And yeah, I have a lot I could say on the subject. I'm trying to like, one of the things that I've done that's really helped myself is I'm trying to spend much less time online. Because of the work I've been doing over the past 15 years, most of my life has been spent online.

43:50And I've come to realize that that has probably contributed heavily to my mental health struggles. And so I'm deliberately staying off social media as much as possible, although I do post to Facebook, but I use it as a blog. So I'm trying to get out of my computer games that were all lying. Reddit, I have a huge Reddit problem where I just, I go in. I know a lot of people get sucked into Instagram or to Facebook or to Twitter. I get sucked into Reddit. And so for the past two months, I'm trying my damnedest to quit Reddit. I still struggle with it. Last night, I spent an hour on it. But for the most part, I've really squashed that habit.

44:29And it helps me be happier. You just said it takes a while to decompress. If I choose for 2024 to be the year of Mindy, what can I be doing now to prepare for the year of Mindy so that I can hit the ground running, which is not the point of decompressing, I know, but so that I can set myself up for success? So, the short answer, Mindy, is to spend time in the rest of 2023 getting clear on what it is that's important to you so that you can then spend the time in 2024 focused on those things. So, last year, probably around this time, because I remember listening to the audio book during the summer, a good friend recommended a book called Designing Your Life.

45:21How to Build a Well-Lived Joyful Life. It's by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans. I read it, thought it was amazing, read it again. And then a buddy and I, we worked through it. So the book, it has all sorts of exercises in it. And a buddy and I worked through the book. We got all these note cards and paper and we'd meet once a month to go over the chapter we were working through. And one of the amazing things about this is it has you eventually draw up three different five-year plans. So you draw up a five-year plan based on, okay, what is your life like now? What might that look like five years from now?

46:06One is like, okay, if you couldn't do what you're doing now, what would your fallback be? What would that life look like five years from now? And then the third one is like, okay, just dream project. If money was no object, if there was nothing holding you back, what would you do? And so that's your third five-year plan. Andy, it's a pretty powerful exercise. And so I, long answer again, because that's how I work, I guess. if somebody were trying to come up with a year of me for 2024, I would say start now in 2023, working through designing your life or a similar book or similar exercises to figure out what's important to you and what kind of things you might want to focus on.

46:54Because when I did this, I came up with art. And so that's why I'm pursuing the art issue. That's an awesome answer. I love that, right? I mean, how do you know what you should do in 2024? before, you should think about what you want to do in 2029 or 2028, five years from now. Yeah. That in a perfect situation, I've never heard of, I think I have that book and I read the first chapter and somehow I got distracted. So it's sitting in my bookshelf. I'm going to pick that one up. But yeah, I got to go check that out. That's an awesome, I never heard about dealing with three different visions there, three different five-year plans that incorporate those things.

47:28So I'll have to go check that out and actually complete this one here. That's awesome. It's a great exercise. I recommend it. Even if you are content with what you're doing, it's a great exercise to do. So I have one last question for you, JD. It's a two-parter here. In this context, in the context of the discussion that we've had today and how you're living your life and approaching 2023, do you think that people tend to still oversave or delay this point of early retirement far too long to get to that point? And second, we talked about taking a year of JD or potentially a 2024 year for Mindy here.

48:04Do people need to wait until they're FI to achieve that? Or would you recommend, you know, looking back, people do this much earlier and maybe do it on the journey to FI at some point? Okay, so you're going to have to remind me the second part when we get there. The first part, do people tend to over-save? Well, I think obviously average people do not over-save. But I would say that people who are interested in financial independence, the people who are actually focused on it and committed to it, yes. from my experience talking with them over the past 10, 15 years, they tend to over-save. And the thing is, they know they tend to over-save.

48:50They just can't help it because it's a risk aversion. Again, I have a buddy here in Corvallis, love him to death. He has far more money than I do. He's frugler than I am. He cannot pull the trigger, cannot pull the trigger. And it's because he's scared. It's like, what if X happens? What if Y happens? I'm like, yeah, those are possibilities. You have this balance you have to do. You have to think of today and you have to think of tomorrow, right? And that's where the struggle is. If we knew what day we were going to die, all of this would be so easy because we would just like, oh, I'm dying on January 1st, 2039.

49:32Well, then you just optimize for that date, right? but we don't know when we're going to die. The thing is, today is knowable. We know what our life is today. We don't know what life is like tomorrow. So to me, in some ways, you can't neglect tomorrow, obviously, but you've got to make sure that you're enjoying today. I think too many people in the fire movement sacrifice happiness today for theoretical happiness tomorrow. I think you've got to find a balance there. And that balance is different for everybody. So I hope that answered the question. No, I think it's a great answer. And I think that the other part of that question was, should I just go ahead?

50:15Hypothetically, I have$500 ,000 on the way to financial independence. I think I need 1.5, 1.6 to get there. Should I just keep grinding for another five, seven years? Try to enjoy, try to pull back a little bit and enjoy myself. Or should I just take that leap year now and that year off now, year of me, and spend$50 ,000 of that and enjoy that year tremendously at this point? What would be your advice to that person? My answer is it depends. I'm not a person who believes in like one answer for everyone. Situations are different. But I would say that generally speaking, if you think you might want to try something now, you should try something now.

51:05Don't let fear hold you back. If you've got, say, your hypothetical I think was half a million saved and your goal is 1.5. If you would like to try to take a gap year, take a sabbatical, do it. In my experience, talking with all sorts of people who've done this sort of thing, nobody has ever regretted doing that. I've never talked to anybody who's saying, damn, I took a year off and now my whole life is f***ed. I've never talked to anybody who said that. The opposite is usually true. And the thing is, when you take these gap years or when you take time off to explore, when you take a sabbatical, Often, you discover new things about yourself or about the world, and you're able to go in new directions that you would not have otherwise been able to do before.

51:55I think that's a really, really powerful answer, Rand. Yeah. I don't think we're ever going to find the person who regrets taking that gap year off, or they're going to be few and far between. In the fire world, I think this is true. I mean, again, you could look at lottery winners or whoever, people who get windfalls, and then they spend it all at once. But that's not what a person in the fire community is going to do. They're going to go live their life within their means for a year and see what it's like. And I think, I can't say everyone, that it'll be right for everyone. But I think that for many people, if not most people, they'll find that, oh, okay, I can do this.

52:36And I should have done this earlier. Well, JD, thank you so much for joining us today. A lot of really good insights here. It's just a privilege to know you, to have had the discussions with you over the years and watched your journey, seen how many people you've helped, and then gotten an insight today into what life is like in the FI community, the good, the bad, and the ways to kind of make the most of the position of power you've put yourself in from a financial standpoint. Thanks. okay jd i normally ask our guests where can people find out more about you but you're taking a step back from social media so how can people get in touch with you well uh what i would say is even though i'm trying to like do nothing uh i do i really enjoy writing i'm going to be writing at my personal website it's just jd roth.com i mean if you want to read about my cats and my computers and my comic books and all that come hang out there it's just going to be a place to have fun And it's interesting.

53:37I've neglected the site for like the past five, 10 years because I've been focused on other things. It's always in disarray. And I'm undergoing the process, as many knows, of like trying to revitalize it. I've got to pull in things from all over the place and get it fixed up. But my aim is that going into 2024, this will be a robust place where it's fun for me to just write about whatever. And just a fun place to hang out like old school blogs were. I want it to be like blogging was 20 years ago. Awesome. That's jdroth.com. Go check that out. And then we'll also link to that in the books mentioned on the podcast today at the show notes here for this episode.

54:19Yes. And I actually just bought that book, Designing Your Life. Thank you to J.D. Roth for recommending that. And thanks for Amazon for making it so easy. J.D., this was super fun. I got so much out of our conversation. I really appreciate your time. I always love spending time with you. Thank you so much for joining us today. Thank you. I appreciate it. This was great. And we'll talk to you soon. Okay, Scott, that was probably my favorite episode that we have ever done. I love JD. I love talking to him. Again, I can't believe it took us so long to get him on the show. And I had a wonderful time talking to him.

54:57I love that over the last 14 years, his net worth has stayed the same while he continues to live his best life. And anybody who thinks that's a failure is flat out wrong. I agree. I like define winning in a financial context. JD is winning. Like that is a win. This is someone who has a over$1 million net worth. We're not like trying to pretend that's a small number or anything, but this is someone who's been successful there and then has really been able to use that to optimize the life that he wants to lead. So this is what we should all be striving for here in terms of wealth. And I don't think that JD is going to look back one day and say, gee, I wish I'd earned a lot more money here.

55:43He's going to say, I'm happy with the way that I built wealth and how I tried to optimize my time and the efforts I put into living my best life. And I think that's the aspiration here for a lot of folks. Yep. I love his tip at the end, the book, Designing Your Life. If you want to make 2024 or heck the rest of 2023, the year of you, go get that book, check it out, do the three different five-year plans and see what you can do to make the rest of this year, next year, the year of you. I'm very excited to get that book. It comes in two days. Yeah. Look, I think that's great advice. We've talked in the past about this on the show here, but it all starts with what do you want?

56:35And that is what designing your life I think will potentially give you is a clear definition, pen to paper of what you want. And once you know what you want, you can then begin to build a plan to get there. And it's the root of all the finance Fridays, all the things that we discuss on BP Money, it all starts with what do you want, If you want the biggest pile of money possible 30 years from now, there's a strategy for that. If you want the freedom and flexibility to do what you want five years from now, there's a plan for that. If you want to take 2024 off and go travel the world and backpack around Europe, there's a plan for that.

57:10You have to figure out what you want. And no, you can't have all three of those. Maybe you can if you're particularly creative, but it'll be hard to have all three of those things, but it won't be hard to have any one of those or maybe even two of those that you choose. Yeah. What does Paula say? You can afford anything. You can't afford everything. So you can have anything. You can't have everything. Make a list of what it is you want. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPocketsMoney podcast. He is Scott Trench, and I am Indy Jensen saying farewell, turtle shell.

57:43If you enjoyed today's episode, please give us a five-star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you're looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com slash biggerpocketsmoney. Bigger Pockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kaylin Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the Bigger Pockets team for making this show possible.