9 Things No One Tells You About Financial Independence

20:11Mindy Jensen:Yeah, and this is the knob that most people try to turn. They upgrade their house. They upgrade their car. Or, you know, insert your favorite material possession here. You need something more, and that'll make you happy. And it makes you happy for a minute, and then it doesn't anymore. I have a brand new car. It's new to me. It's not brand new. It's super old. I love it. But do I love it as much as when I bought it? No, because it's not new anymore. Tasting that new thing all the time is not really part of a successful financial independence journey. So financial independence is a circumstance.

20:45Mindy Jensen:It's a really wonderful circumstance. But you need to figure out how to move the needle on your happiness outside of that circumstance. Because if you are miserable before you reach financial independence or just not happy, you will also be miserable or just not happy after you reach financial independence. So our advice is that money won't make you happy. But while it won't make you happy, you can use it to work on yourself to see what will make you happy. Make a list of things that you enjoy and do them. Maybe you think you're going to enjoy it and then do it and you discover, oh, you know what?

21:23Mindy Jensen:That wasn't so great. Stop doing it and go find something else to do. I'll throw one small caveat into here. Your money to buy me the nice seat on the plane does make me happy. Yeah, I bet it does. It's short-term happiness though. I do like that you said your money. So my money is mine. Until I run this podcast. Then things change, then we'll have to revisit everything. Okay, Carl, point number five. Financial independence might expose other problems. This one's a fun one. Let's give a personal example. Remember when you quit your job and I hadn't quit my job? So actually, let's back up a little bit.

22:01Mindy Jensen:I was a stay-at-home mom for the first eight years of our oldest daughter's life. And then I went back to work at BiggerPockets when our youngest daughter was five. She was just going into kindergarten and we decided that I would go back to work. I loved my job. At the same time that Carl was kind of like, I don't really love my job. I want to quit. We had reached financial independence, the number that we had set for ourselves. But we had one more year syndrome. We discovered after both of us working for a year that our family didn't really know how to function when both of us worked. And because we had reached our financial independence number, both of us didn't need to work anymore.

22:43Mindy Jensen:I still wanted to work. I mean, you got to pay for health care. And we had two small children. You can't not have health care when you have two small kids. So we made the decision that he would leave his job and I would stay at mine. Now that you had all this newfound time on your hands, you discovered all these little things that should be done. When I was a stay-at-home mom, I did the cooking and the cleaning because he was working outside the home. And he would, well, this needs to be cleaned. Yeah, well, you don't have a job. You can clean it. Do you remember that? Sort of. Yeah. Oh, sort of.

23:18Mindy Jensen:Oh, look at this revisionist history coming up again. And we just needed to adjust what was going on in our household. And it's hard to make these changes, but you have to work on these changes. You have to work on adjusting them. When you both have a full-time job, there's a lot of conversations you just don't have time to have. So financial independence will expose other problems. You need to have open communication with your partner well in advance of both of you leaving your job so that you can figure out how your new dynamic is going to be. Yeah. And to be clear, this is all on me, if you couldn't tell by that.

23:59Mindy Jensen:Oh, no, no, no. Some of it was me, too. I really appreciate your cooking. If it was up to me, we would have spaghettios every night. And when we went on for a fancy meal, it would be Taco Bell. Which is why I do all the cooking. I also really like it. She's a wonderful cook. Look, I am extremely suboptimal at it. No, limited in his abilities. And I love it. So that's a dynamic that we have discovered. I like doing it and I'm good at it. He doesn't like doing it and he's not as good at it. Yeah. But try to be serious for a moment. Like us, I had a full-time job. It was a very demanding job. Sometimes I'd work 60 or 80 hours a week.

24:35And at the same time, we're doing a house flip. We have two kids. I'm writing on a blog. And then all of a sudden, a lot of that goes away. So a job and being super busy can bury a lot of other problems. And then once you have this vacuum of time, you start paying attention to it, and it's up to you to figure out how to adjust. I can actually think of two people, I'm not going to name names, that I think they probably got divorced because of financial independence. All of a sudden, these people were around each other all the time, and they realized that they weren't as compatible as they thought they were.

25:07So yeah, this is a tread very carefully here. I think we've adapted pretty well, not perfectly, but it's a big adjustment, right? I think quitting your job is equivalent to it's not as big as getting married or having kids or a job change, but it's up there. It's a huge, huge change. And don't underestimate the work you have to do to adjust successfully.

25:32Mindy Jensen:Yeah, it requires a lot of communication. and I think the communication should start at least a year before you quit your job. Yeah, we navigated it. We had some bumps in the road, but we came out on top on the other side. So yeah, tread carefully is a really good bit of advice. Now I want to know who these people are that got divorced. Thank you for not throwing me out. And if you continue doing the podcast, I will take over more of the cooking. I'm going to go to the grocery store and stock up on SpaghettiOs right after this. I think they're like five or$4 right now. Yeah, no. Okay. Point number six, fire life could be lonely.

26:12Mindy Jensen:Fire's great, right? Yeah. I mean, if fire wasn't great, you would not be listening to this right now. You wouldn't be pursuing it. You know that not trading so much of your time for your job in the future is going to enhance your life. But many don't handle it well. Male traditional age retirees lead the league in suicide and loneliness is a key factor. Loneliness and social isolation, loss of friends from work, like you build your whole life around the people that you're spending the majority of your waking hours with. And then all of a sudden you're not there anymore. You're the only one, especially if you are an early retiree.

26:57Mindy Jensen:You might be the only person in your friend group who doesn't work anymore. And what are you going to do? How are you going to socialize? We build our lives around our careers. I do think that early retirees can be better equipped to handle the change. But at the same time, they have a bigger change. Because when you're 65 and retiring, there's other 65-year-old retirees. When you're 40 and retiring, there's not that many. One thing you could do is move to Longmont. Again, I'm a real estate agent in Longmont. You want to come live in Finlandia? Come on over. I have a real quick story about all this.

27:33I remember my first day off, I had to quit work on a Thursday. And on Friday, I went walking around Roosevelt Park, which is this big park near us. And I'm looking around, and who do I see? There were two groups of people there. There was younger ladies pushing baby strollers and senior citizens walking around the park. I'm like, I'm introverted enough. I'm certainly not going to. These people are not in my Venn diagram of like, I'm not going to talk to anyone to be clear, but especially I have little in common with either of these. The old people would probably be suspicious and the ladies would probably call the police.

28:07So I'm like, wow, what happens now? How do I, I don't have my coworkers anymore to talk to for eight hours a day. It is a change. But thanks to the internet, as you said, there's so many resources to build a nice, healthy social life post-Fi.

28:23Mindy Jensen:Yeah. Start now. Start right now, even if you're nowhere near financial independence, and make some Fi friends. The Facebook group ChooseFI has a whole lot of local groups. In fact, they've got – you don't even have to go on Facebook to find them. Go to choosefi.com slash local and you will see, what are they like, 500 and something local groups around the globe. If they don't have one near you, email Brad, brad at choosefi.com, and he'll help you set one up. It's a great low cost or no cost way to meet local people who are interested in financial independence. You can start to make friends. And by the time you are able to retire, you already have people to hang out with.

29:09Mindy Jensen:There's other five groups available. There's meetup.com has financial independence groups that host meetups locally. Five Friends Connect is a traveling group. They travel around the country. I'm sorry. They travel around the world doing different fun things with other people who are also in the same path. Why am I drawing a blank at all these five things? Oh, shoot. Camp Fi. There's a campfi.org. there's probably a Camp Fi location near you or close travelable distance to you. That's a great place to connect with people in all parts of the spectrum of financial independence. Oh, there's economy too.

29:48And it's so interesting to go to these things because I'll back up a second real quick. When I first discovered financial independence, I thought I would dip in and out of this community. I'd dip into it, learn how to become financial independent, get my money straight, and then retire. And then I would move on with my life. Instead, it took over our lives. Like, what did we just get back from? A river cruise in Europe with 38 FI people, fifriendstravel.com. Shout out to them. Shout out to Kristen. At first I thought, what's the matter with me? I'm only spending time with these retired people.

30:17But it makes perfect sense because the people who have jobs can't take a three-week trip to Europe or do some of these other things. And additionally, you're probably going to have a lot more in common. Money informs a lot of the other values in life. So it's worth engaging with the FI community. Even if you're an introvert like me who is terrified of people, the FI people are less scary.

30:39Mindy Jensen:Yeah, I will say that a large portion of the people in the FI community call themselves introverts, but they have a lot of conversations. They have a lot of, they get energy from the people in the community because we have so much in common. All right, Carl, point number seven, you have to reinvent yourself. and probably more than once. God, I'm going to do some quick math, which is probably a mistake, but let's see, 16 times 7, that is 102? No, 112. And that is about, did I do just 7 times 16? Yeah, 112, I think. Never do math live, that's a mistake. First rule of podcasting. So 112 hours is how many hours you are awake if you sleep 8 hours a night.

31:26If you have a job, your job takes up over a third of those, and maybe more if you've got a commute or a demanding job. All of a sudden, you've got this vacuum to fill. You're no longer doctor or whatever or software developer, whatever. You are whatever you decide to make yourself be. And this takes work. This is another thing I screwed up. Just about every mistake in financial independence I made after I retired, I thought life would just come to me, and there would be all these amusing things to do, and people would come out of the woodwork and life would be glorious. And it turns out none of those things happen on their own.

32:01You have to make them happen. So you need to reinvent yourself. You have to figure out what you're going to do post-Fi. Establish a routine. We could probably have a whole show just on this because it's very simple and complex all at the same time.

32:15Mindy Jensen:Yeah. Let's look at an example. When you were working, you were the frugal guy. You didn't go out to lunch with all of your coworkers. You brought your lunch. Maybe they even called you cheap. Once you retire early, all of a sudden you're the, oh my goodness, how did you do it guy? No one can connect the dots on how you were able to retire early. If this isn't the person you want to be known as, change your narrative. How do you want to be spending your days? Have a plan before you leave your job so that you are forcing the narrative. I am the fit guy now, or you are the fit guy now, because you spend your days working out.

32:53Mindy Jensen:in the morning. You go to the gym every single day. You are the hiking every Thursday guy. You are the, yeah, I can help you move that couch on Friday morning guy because you don't have a job and you have become very helpful. You become very fit. You're also the always there at school drop-off and pickup guy. I have a real interesting story about that that connects to it. So great segue. I didn't even tell you to say that. My point with this story is do not listen to what anyone else tells you or thinks about you. The only thing that matters is you. So I retired and I was, I think I was talking to a friend who also was tuned into this community, but I'm like, Hey, I got to go.

33:31I'm going to go pick my kids up from school. He's like, don't you feel a little weird doing that? I'm like, no, what I have no idea what you're talking about. Is it the driveline? Like, why would I feel weird about that? He's like, well, how many other guys are there? I'm like, I don't know. It's probably like a five out of a hundred. It's mostly moms, I guess. He's like, that doesn't make you feel weird? I'm like, no, why would it? And I thought that was the weirdest thing to be judged on or even think about. I mean, what do you think about this? It was like one of the weirdest conversations I've ever had in my life.

34:02Like even if they did care, why would I care?

34:05Mindy Jensen:Okay. That's hilarious because when I was the mom dropping kids off at school, I would notice the dads because there are so few dads. And my first thought was, oh, I wonder what they do for a job that they can drop off their kids. What a sexist thing for me to think. Wow. Yeah. Maybe it was you who made this comment, although you didn't make it, but you were thinking it apparently. But I mean, it's probably five out of a hundred kids are getting picked up by their dads and everybody else is getting picked up by their moms. I know one kid that got picked up by his dad because his dad worked at the building around the corner.

34:41Mindy Jensen:So he'd pick him up, bring them to the building. And then the babysitter would come and pick them up from his work. Because driveline's awful. Driveline is awful. Driveline is awful. Yeah. So you are going to have to reinvent yourself. Start thinking what you want to be known as. Yeah. And then work towards that. All right, Carl, number eight. Yes, jobs are underrated. I'll bet you didn't see this one coming. No. So there's a phrase I heard. I think it might have even been Warren Buffett who said this, and it went something like, people love the cages that bind them or something like that. And what he meant by that is a lot of people just like being told what to do.

35:23They like having a routine. They like having a structure in their life that's imposed on them by other people. And a job gives you all that. It gives you a lot of what you need. It gives you a routine, It gives you money. It gives you friends. It gives you purpose. And once you retire, you're going to have to come up with all those things yourself. I hope it does that. You're staying at this job, not for the money, because you enjoy doing it, correct?

35:48Mindy Jensen:Yes. I love talking about money and finance and real estate. And this job gives me a platform to do that. If you are looking for somebody to tell you what to do, I'm happy to tell you what to do. Well, no surprise there. So maybe your wife, if you're Wi-Fi like me and your wife is bossy like some wives are, your wife will assert your routine. But I think this is probably why I think of people like Pete is very independently. My and Pete Mr. Money Mustache and a lot of other Fi people don't enjoy routine and they don't like being told what to do. And I think that might be the number one thing that makes people both go for Fi and then become successful post-Fi.

36:32Mindy Jensen:because they do whatever they want. Yes. They don't want a job. They don't want that cage around them. Yeah. So our advice is in retirement, you're going to have to figure out how you are going to spend your days. Your boss isn't going to make you be there at eight o 'clock in the morning so you can sleep in if that's what you want to do. If that is what your body allows you to do, mine doesn't. If you want to stay up late, you can. If you want to go on a hike every single day, you can. But start thinking about how you want to fill your time. What I like to say is what you do on the weekends is what you're going to be doing in retirement.

37:10Mindy Jensen:So on the weekends, if you get up at the crack of noon and you watch TV for eight hours a day and then you go to bed, that's probably how a lot of your retirement is going to be. If that's not what you actually want to do, start thinking about things that you can fill your time with. Ooh, and now we come to the big number nine, the very big one. Before we get to this, I'm going to ask you a question and then I'll lead into this. Why do people like travel, especially in the, I think everyone loves travel, but especially in the financial independence community, it's such a, I don't know if value is the right word, but it's such a thing that many of us like to do.

37:44Why do people enjoy it so much or why do they strive for it?

37:47Mindy Jensen:Is it the freedom to just see new things and experience new places? I don't think it's quite the freedom. I'm looking for a different word here. I don't know. Yeah. So I think it's the novelty of it. You're doing something new. You're going to a place you haven't done before. I think we've got this term hedonic treadmill. And number nine is you never step off that hedonic treadmill. What I was getting at with that is what lights you up today and what is interesting for you now eventually gets boring. And that's why people like to travel. There's challenges involved. There might be a language difference.

38:24You're in a new place. You have to figure out how to navigate the transportation, housing, all that stuff. So I think travel allows people to get off that hedonic treadmill. And this is yet another one of the big challenges of FI. My life is completely different than when I retired nine years ago. It's completely different from what I was doing a year ago because we've got this house project going on. But I love it. I'll back up and say one more thing, and then I'll let you talk. When I was young, I remember having these performance interviews at a job, and the person would be like, where do you want to see yourself?

38:55Where do you see yourself in five years, in 10 years? And I kind of liked those questions because I liked planning, and I liked knowing exactly what my life would be like. And since then, I've completely changed course, done a 180, because my favorite part of life now is I have no idea what we're going to be doing in two years, especially after the youngest baby bird leaves the nest. It's so neat that those chapters are completely blank. We might be living in Portugal. We might be living here. who knows what we're going to be doing. And I really like that. I think doing the same thing would be so boring.

39:26I can't imagine being in a cube for four decades. I mean, I was happy with it at the time. Then you remove yourself from that cage and you see what life's like on the other side.

39:38Mindy Jensen:Yeah. You don't miss the cage. I think that's a good point. The newness of everything. You're constantly looking for something new and the world is huge and you can find a lot of new things. How many countries have we not been to? What are there, like 280 countries or 180 countries? Yeah, we still have a lot. Yeah, we've been to like seven. Have we been even to seven? Yes, we have. Does the country we live in count? Yes, it's a country we've visited. We have visited the U.S. Check. But not all of the U.S. I still have two states. Yeah. And this kind of number nine here goes back to our reinventing yourself.

40:15You're going to have to do that frequently. You can't just do it once after you quit work. You're going to have to do that as soon as your hobby or whatever you decided to do post-retirement gets boring.

40:25Mindy Jensen:Yeah, but you do need to work kind of consistently to define and redefine what it is that you love. Yeah. So my favorite part of FI life is I have a routine. I work out every morning. I do a little bit of writing. So I've got the routine in my life, but then I have novelty too. So it's nice, at least for us, for me to have these touchstones, the things you do every day. But then there's variety in every day, too. Like when I go for a walk, I try to do it a little bit differently every time and try to notice new things. I think we should do the bonus one, too. Okay. This is one of my favorite ones.

40:58Mindy Jensen:What's the bonus? The bonus one is, and I'll back up a second. I'll tell a little story, too. When I discovered financial independence, I had a bad day at work. I discovered the Mr. Money Mustache blog. And I thought, this is like the best thing I've ever read. but this is amazing. I could quit my job. We were already savers. We weren't quite ready yet, but like, it just blew my mind. So the first thing I thought is I'm going to tell all my friends and family about this. And they're going to, they're going to think the exact same as me. They're going to think this is the best thing ever. And they're going to do the same thing.

41:28And then it'll be great. We can all go on vacations or ride our mountain bikes together. And then you tell other people, how do they react?

41:37Mindy Jensen:No, I don't want to do that. I'm young. I don't want to save my money. I want to spend it while I'm young enough to enjoy it. And it's kind of shocking how many people are opposed to this. Not just, oh, that's not for me. They're like adamantly opposed to the idea of saving a little bit more money now so that you can retire early. Yeah. Or my favorite response, do you have a terminal disease? Is there something you're not telling me? No, you don't have to work. No, I like my job. That's another good one. I really like my job. Great. Then work there because you choose to, not because you have to.

42:19So this bonus point, no one will understand financial independence. Some might, but they're very few and far between. I'm trying to think, have we...

42:30Mindy Jensen:Convinced someone? No. I mean, on this podcast, maybe. Yeah, we might have convinced random strangers on the internet, but there's that saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. They were already set. They just needed someone to give them the message, like Pete Mr. Money Mustache did for me. So, yeah, and I've realized the best thing to do is just lead by example, like have a great life. And then if people are curious, inquisitive, they'll ask you about it. And then you can talk nonstop for eight hours about the loveliness of fire life. And then they get a restraining order. That's only happened a couple of times.

43:04And I think they've expired. I'm good now. I'm in a better place.

43:07Mindy Jensen:Well, Carl, thank you so much for stepping into Phil Scott's shoes while he is gone. You don't need to come back. It'll be my show still, not yours. For now. For now, for always. If you, my darling listener, would like more financial independence information, head on over to biggerpocketsmoney.com to sign up for our newsletter, which I send out once a week on Wednesdays. We also have free resources and calculators that Scott has been furiously typing up and templates to help you accelerate your FI journey. That's biggerpocketsmoney.com. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

43:43Mindy Jensen:I am Mindy Jensen. He is Carl Jensen. Thank you so much for stepping in again. And we will see you later, alligators. I'm skeptical of a lot of financial products, but life insurance isn't one of them, at least not term life. For the vast majority of you listening, term life is simply the right answer. And the smartest way to buy it isn't one big policy, it's a ladder. Your need for coverage isn't flat. It declines over time. You've got a 30-year mortgage, a couple of young kids, maybe a spouse mid-career. In 15 years, the mortgage is going to be smaller and the kids are almost launched. So instead of buying one giant 30-year policy you'll overpay for, you stack a few.

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