In short
ChooseFI Podcast Episode 448 Summary: July Roundup: Working Backwards Into FI
Podcast Overview Title: ChooseFI Hosts: Jonathan and Brad Barrett Episode: 448 - July Roundup: Working Backwards Into FI Release Date: July 2023 Description: The hosts reflect on insights gained from July's guests, discussing topics ranging from spending for happiness to Roth conversions. The episode aims to summarize key takeaways and prepare listeners for upcoming discussions.
Episode Timestamps
- 1:44 - Introduction
- 2:17 - Listener Updates/Travel Rewards
- 7:08 - Spending for Happiness
- 18:35 - Saving Addiction
- 22:01 - Fundamental Truths of Investing
- 31:12 - The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor
- 41:11 - Roth Conversions/Breaking Up with Your Financial Advisor
- 49:50 - Purposefully Not Optimizing
- 55:58 - Conclusion
Key Themes and Discussions
- Introduction and Community Updates
- Introduction of Ginger: A listener who has become a recurring guest.
- Community Engagement: The hosts emphasize the value of listener contributions and insights, reinforcing the community aspect of the podcast.
- Listener Updates/Travel Rewards
- Hyatt Award Chart Update: Discussion about changes in Hyatt’s award chart for travel rewards, illustrating the importance of staying informed about loyalty programs.
- Spending for Happiness
- Discussion with Carl Jensen and Doug Cunnington:
- The hosts reflect on contrasting views about spending and happiness.
- Key Insight: It's essential to recognize shifting values over time and to focus on what requires attention now.
- Takeaway: Consider what brings true happiness and value in spending rather than adhering strictly to a savings mindset.
- Saving Addiction
- Concept of Saving Addiction: Recognizing that an excessive focus on saving can be unhealthy.
- Importance of Experience: Emphasizing the need to enjoy life and invest in experiences that bring joy.
- Fundamental Truths of Investing
- Investment Strategy by Brian Feroldi:
- Advocacy for dollar-cost averaging into index funds as the best strategy for most investors.
- Simplicity: Investing should be straightforward and accessible, focusing on long-term strategies rather than short-term gains.
- The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor
- Discussion with Chad Carson:
- Shift in mindset from maximizing property ownership to optimizing income with fewer properties.
- Working Backwards: Determine the income needed to cover expenses and strategize real estate investments accordingly.
- Focus on low-hassle and manageable investments.
- Roth Conversions and Financial Advisory
- Breaking Up with Your Financial Advisor:
- Discussed the challenges of leaving a financial advisor and navigating appreciated stocks.
- Donating Appreciated Stock: Insightful strategy shared on how to avoid capital gains tax by donating appreciated stock instead of selling it.
- Purposefully Not Optimizing
- Discussion on Balancing Optimization:
- The importance of finding balance between financial optimization and quality of life.
- Acknowledging that not all decisions should be based strictly on financial returns.
Key Takeaways
- Value in Spending: Understanding personal values and spending accordingly can lead to greater happiness.
- Investment Education: Emphasizing the fundamentals of investing, particularly for novice investors.
- Real Estate Management: Adopting a pragmatic approach toward real estate investments, focusing on fewer but more effective properties.
- Tax Strategies: Leveraging charitable donations as a way to manage capital gains effectively.
- Community Engagement: Encouraging listeners to share their own experiences and insights for collective learning.
Resources Mentioned
- [The Invisible Nature of Spending | Ginger Roundup | ChooseFI Ep 443](https://www.choosefi.com/the-invisible-nature-of-spending-ginger-roundup-ep-443/)
- [ChooseFI's Top 10 Recommended Travel Rewards Cards](https://www.choosefi.com/top-recommended-travel-cards/)
- [Spending for Happiness | Carl Jensen & Doug Cunnington | ChooseFI Ep 444](https://www.choosefi.com/spending-for-happiness-carl-jensen-doug-cunnington-ep-444/)
- [Fundamental Truths of Investing | Brian Feroldi | ChooseFI Ep 445](https://www.choosefi.com/fundamental-truths-of-investing-brian-feroldi-ep-445/)
- [Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor | Chad Carson | ChooseFI Ep 446](https://www.choosefi.com/small-and-mighty-real-estate-investor-chad-carson-ep-446/)
- [Mailbag: Breaking up with your Advisor | Sean Mullaney | Ep 447](https://www.choosefi.com/mailbag-breaking-up-with-your-advisor-ep-447/)
Conclusion The episode encapsulates the essence of the FI movement: making informed choices that enhance life while pursuing financial independence. The discussions are rooted in community insights, reinforcing the notion that financial education is a collaborative effort.
Written by AI. May contain mistakes. Listen to the episode to check what was said.
Transcript
Automatic transcript. May contain errors.0:00Hello and welcome to Choose a Fi. I'm your host Brad Barrett and if you're new to the show Welcome to the largest financial independence community in the world. This is a community that numbers hundreds of thousands across the world. Our show has existed for six plus years, and it's been a remarkable ride. And we're just so happy you've found us. The beautiful part about this community is, as we call it, this is the ultimate crowdsource personal finance show. And the entire point of this podcast is to harness the collective wisdom of our entire community. And I think that is just such a wonderful, wonderful aspect.
0:35And what's cool about today's show. So we have one of our listeners. Her name is Ginger. And she reached out to me a number of months ago when my co-host Jonathan decided to step down and she wanted to come on the show and we've become friends over the intervening months. This is now she's been on the show numerous times and she had the idea to bring back something that we used to do, which was the roundup episode. So we used to, every Friday, we used to do a roundup, which was kind of a summary of our biggest takeaways from the Monday episode. She thought that was missing and it would be something fun to bring back.
1:12So while we're not going to do that every week, what we're trying to do, and this is an experiment just like anything else, we're trying to do this the last Monday episode of each month, where we essentially go back and talk about our biggest takeaways from that month's episodes. So again, this is the first in a series of experiments, but I think this is going to to be a really positive development for the Fi community and for Chooseify. So with that, welcome to the show.
1:43Ginger, welcome back to Chooseify. This should be a lot of fun. Thank you. I'm excited to be back on the show and I'm excited to do this more structured kind of roundup. I think one of the things that's so important about this show is it isn't just about entertainment. It's also about education. And so for me, I always liked the roundups because it helped me to sort of integrate some of those ideas and hearing them from a different perspective made me think about it differently. And so I think this is just a good opportunity to review some stuff and help us to learn it a little bit better. Nice.
2:14I love it. So before we get in, let's just do a couple of quick little updates. So first, again, under the guise of Ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show is what's beautiful is when we talk about things on the podcast, sometimes we get listeners who write in and the easiest way to do that is to get on my newsletter. So choose a by.com slash subscribe, literally hit reply to any of them. And it comes directly to me. So Dennis actually reached out to us about something ginger, you and I talked about on episode four 43, which is the last time you're on, we were talking about Hyatt and Dennis is, He stayed at Hyatt, I think, 98 times last year.
2:50So he's a massive Hyatt fan. And he just wanted to update me. I was saying how there's one award chart. And regardless of what's happening in that city, that it's just that one points charge. So I think my example is where the Pope coming to town or the Super Bowl was there or Berkshire Hathaway event in Omaha, Nebraska. And I think I was directionally accurate. but Dennis wanted to update that Hyatt now has a new award chart that has a peak, off-peak, and I think a normal. So there are slightly different charges, but I still think what I was saying was directionally accurate in the sense that they're not egregiously expensive.
3:29So if a category one for the standard night, which is the old award chart is 5 ,000 points a night, it doesn't mean if, like I said, the Super Bowl is in town, it's going to be 50 ,000 points a night. The peak is actually only 6 ,500 points a night. And actually off peak, interestingly enough, is 3 ,500 points a night. So there's some give and take here. But I think directionally, my point was accurate in that, hey, it's not based on what the actual cash charge is. There still is that award chart. But Dennis so appropriately updated that it's not just that one award chart anymore. So that was really important.
4:04And I also talked about the all-inclusives. And he wanted to note that as of March of 2023, there was a slight devaluation. So some of the all-inclusives went up significantly. But the one thing that I mentioned was that Hyatt has recently purchased a number of all-inclusives. They now own dozens of them, whereas it previously was only four or six of them. And there's a whole range of points per night. So while some of them were devalued, certainly, and that's absolutely true, there are so many more options now that I think it kind of balances out. maybe neutrally and probably to the good. So again, definitely wanted to update it because I never want to get things like egregiously wrong, but I thought that was an important update.
4:46Oh, and there was another rewards travel thing that you created, right, Brad? Yeah. So, okay. Yeah, this is important. I actually spent a whole lot of time, probably more than I should have on creating probably more than I expected it to take, honestly. And I think that's maybe my own fault on how slow I can be sometimes. But for a very long time, I have wanted a top 10 travel rewards cards page on our site. So we've always had, okay, here's our top recommended card. And that's usually the Chase Sapphire preferred. But that said, that's just one card. And many people have opened that card already.
5:22And we have an entire list of travel rewards cards at chooseofi.com slash cards, but that then is 50 plus cards. So there was no balance there, Ginger. Okay. What if people are looking to go beyond the Sapphire preferred, but they don't want to muddle through 50 cards. So what I did was I created this top 10 cards page and it has a lot of my favorite cards. Like the current one I'm using is the Venture X card. There's a new American express green card that has an amazing bonus that just came out of nowhere. So that's included in there. And the other thing is I actually put into, you know, my favorite is my to do list app where I have all my, my to do list.
6:02I'm going to update this the first of every single month. So this page will be updated literally monthly, if not more frequently when a, when a new card offer comes out. So I hope that this can be a real valuable resource for our whole community. And as always, and it's important to note that really the best way to support us because we don't have advertisements on the podcast. we try not to be upfront about, hey, we need to earn money or anything crazy like that. But if there's a win-win situation where somebody can use an affiliate link of ours and we make some money, and in this case, they get free or close to free travel, that seems like that win-win to me.
6:37So using our links certainly supports us. So if you go to choosify.com slash top cards, so that's plural, top cards, or we actually have this in our navigation bar now of if you go to travel rewards or travel, you can find it right there. So again, I hope this is a real significant resource. I know it's useful for me because I get to keep updated on what are the best bonuses at this point in time. So yeah, that was a labor of love, but I think it's important. All right, Ginger. So I think let's get into the roundup now. Yeah, absolutely. Okay. So we're doing a month's worth of episodes. So let's start with spending for happiness, Carl Jensen and Doug Cunnington.
7:14That's episode 444. And we're just going to go ahead and talk about sort of our main takeaways or what were the things that stuck out to us. So I will start with something that I'm wondering if you were curious about. I listened to this episode pretty much right after I had listened to Carl on Ramit's podcast. Have you listened to that one where he was on with Mindy? Yeah, I've listened to bits and pieces of it. And I certainly saw the media uproar after it. Oh, okay. I didn't see the uproar about it. But what was really interesting is listening to the Choose FI podcast. He was talking about, you know, he said, we don't bat an eye when we spend money on beers for our friends or whatever, right?
7:52And it was really in contrast with some of the stuff that he had talked about on the other podcast about it's so painful to spend. We haven't practiced how to do this. We have so much money, but we're not enjoying it, right? So my first takeaway, my first, I was like, who is this inconsistent person, right? And then when I took a step back, I thought, okay, well, well, Carl is a person. He's not a character in a movie, right? And we change our minds about things and we feel differently about things on different days. So I can get over that pretty quickly. But then you want to ask yourself, like, what is going on?
8:26And here's what I came up with, and I wonder how you feel about it. I think what's happening is Carl is at a place where his values are shifting. And so if we think about, like, what's the takeaway for us? he used to really value, I think, financial security. That was the most important thing. And while that's still a value for him, it's not the one that requires his attention right now. So now what is requiring his attention is, hey, I value time with my friends and being generous and time with my family. And I thought this was an interesting way to think about it because it doesn't force us to say, well, what is the most important thing?
9:03What's the most important value? It's saying what value needs my attention right now. So if you listen to both of the episodes back to back, you can kind of get like, oh, he's going through this process of where does that attention need to go? And it did make me think, well, for me, maybe I don't need to spend a lot of time on what do I value, but maybe I do need to spend on time on where does my attention need to be? Like what value needs my attention right now at this stage of my life? Does that make sense? Yeah, it does make sense. I like that, the attention. And yeah, I think to your point, it may have been jarring to hear those two episodes back to back and it may have been inconsistent.
9:41But like you said, Carl is just a regular human being who's trying to figure it out. And I think one of the frustrating things to me, the very few frustrating things just in creating this podcast is sometimes people are like, oh, why don't you bring normal people on? You're only bringing bloggers and podcasters on. And I just find it such a preposterous thing as if bloggers and podcasters, most of whom the vast majority, like as if the implication is these are some famous people making boatloads of money and 99 % of podcasters and bloggers make$0 from their podcaster blog. And in fact, it's probably mostly negative.
10:17So it is literally a labor of love. There's somebody who just wants to document what they're doing. Maybe they think they can help somebody. So to say that these are regular, normal people is such an understatement. These are all of us, myself very much included, regular, fallible people who are just trying to figure out life as we go along. And sometimes we get it right. Sometimes we don't. And like you said, sometimes we're just trying to figure it out and update our thinking. And that's okay. That's a sign of an intelligent person who it's not somebody who sticks their head in the sand and only has one opinion for 70 years in a row.
10:55That's just not the way the world works. It's been interesting to see Carl update his thinking in a lot of ways. I mentioned in passing, we'll probably come back to this, but his thoughts, him and his wife, Mindy, on the money they might give to their children. That has updated dramatically, where for years he was outspoken about, we're not going to pay for this, we're not going to give them an inheritance, et cetera, et cetera. Part of them growing up is them struggling and I made it, et cetera. And then it seems as if that has changed 180 degrees now. Not that they're going to be pampered and they can just live ridiculous lives, but that, hey, maybe there's a way to do this better.
11:37And maybe there's a way to make their lives easier and facilitate them living lives of purpose and value. And I think that's kind of cool. So anyway, that is a bit of a sidebar here. I don't really think it is because I think it gets to the heart of like what we're trying to do with the takeaways. And when you talk about that, he's a person who changes his mind about things. And then we recognize we're people who can change our minds about things. That can be so freeing. And especially when we think, oh, I'm so scared to take action because I might make a mistake. I might do it wrong. And if you say, oh, well, actually, I can change my mind about this later.
12:15Or I can assess later. I can think about this differently when my life is different. That can be a thing that can move people forward. So it's good to see examples, I think, of people changing their minds about things. Yeah, I think you're right. And yeah, you know, it's funny going back to Ramit and his show and kind of the sensationalism that occurred after the fact. Basically, the context was, oh, look, these are these two fire people who have$4 million in the case of Carl and Mindy, and they still can't spend. They're miserable. well, they can't do this. The implication is, doesn't that mean the fire movement is broken or that everybody's cheap and misers?
12:54And it just frustrates me to no end. And honestly, it shouldn't frustrate me as much as it does. But I mean, we here at Chooseify have tried for six and a half plus years now to change the narrative of the entire fire. We don't even call it fire because they retire early as a distraction, but the fire movement to now really the FI movement to make this accessible for regular people and for it not to be extreme. And I think we've done a pretty darn good job of it. I think we've democratized this for people all across the world. And then you have, of course, the Ramses and Ramit, who Ramit is very well-meaning.
13:32He's super intelligent. I think he's just, he knows how to get attention. So I want to be fair to Ramit, but who of course just uses as like a cudgel to attack us. And I mean, frankly, I think we, the FI community and the FI movement, and frankly, Choose FI, we are the largest community of people pursuing FI in the entire world. We get to decide what the FI movement is, not these other people who are just looking for attention and looking for clicks. And we have decided that this is a movement based around value, purchasing what you value, spending time on what you value, and freedom and autonomy and purpose.
14:13And I think that's the definition of FI, not let's be a miser and let's be miserable and oh, look at these jokers basically as these guys are sensationalizing this too. Yeah. That's something that you talked a lot to Carl and Doug about, this idea of figuring out what it is that you really value. and I guess my follow-up question to you is how do we do that? So how do we buy what we value? Yeah, how do we figure out what we value? Because that is a process. What do you think you have done to help you figure that out or what do you think are things that other people could do? Yeah, so I think this is all an experiment.
14:53I think honestly life is an experiment and there are different ways to approach this but I think it all stems from and I don't want to sound trite, but it all stems from taking action. So you can sit and think about this forever and never know anything, or you can make choices and try to see where you fall out on this. So some people, and I'm not necessarily advocating this, but some people decide to cut, cut, cut, cut things out of their budget, essentially, and then slowly add things back. or when they cut everything or cut many things, they'll wake up and say a month later and say, oh, I didn't miss any of that.
15:35I missed none of it. So then therefore there was very little value there. But what if there are certain things that they absolutely missed? Well, you add them back and then it's obvious, right? That's one way to do it. I think another way would be simply adding something and then determining, hey, am I, I think that's a little harder. honestly. But I think this is really important to talk about spending and spending for value. For instance, my wife and I, we're not big coffee connoisseurs, but I kind of got taken by an advertisement that there was this really cool coffee company. They're a startup.
16:14And I wound up getting a free pack at the beginning. It's a company that's called Cometeer. And they send you these coffee pods, these frozen coffee pods on dry ice in the mail. And they're pretty expensive. They're like maybe$2 a cup, but honestly, like$2 a cup pales in comparison to what you'd spend at a fancy coffee place. And it seemed like a nice luxury. And we're like, oh, let's test this out. Laura and I, I have to say, Ginger, they're like, it's the best cup of coffee I've ever had in my entire life. And now like going back to my Dunkin' Donuts coffee grounds, it just tastes really bad.
16:54So, you know, it's one of those things where, okay, I added this into my life and I have to say it adds a lot of value and sure it's$2 a day or$4 a day, depending on if I have one or two cups of coffee, is that really going to break the bank for me? No, it's not. And I tried to essentially stop. And I'm like, oh, I actually really kind of like this. This was something that was worth spending on. So I think that's kind of another way to go about it. I love that example. And it made me think of another way into figuring out what we value is looking at what are the things that we talk about. Like, have you told a lot of people about this coffee thing?
17:29I have not. This is the first time I've mentioned it publicly like this, but I did within the first week, like tell three of my friends about it who all signed up. Yeah. So that's the little signal to us. And we're like, oh, I keep telling people about this thing. That's a time for reflection of like, wow, this must be something that I really find a lot of value in. That's brilliant. I like that a lot, Ginger. Yeah, I didn't even actually think about that, but you're absolutely right. Like, yeah, I'm not going to put, you know, putting my reputation on the line sounds a little hyperbolic, but like, but that's what you're doing when you're recommending something, right?
18:00You're basically saying like, hey, I'm putting a little bit of my reputation on the line to say like, hey, this is something I think is worthwhile and I love it and I'm talking about it and hey, maybe you should try it too, even though it costs money, obviously. So yeah, that's really cool. I like that. Okay. So to summarize, if you're a person who's like, yes, I'm on board with being a valuist, I want to do a deeper dig into what it is that I value. We talked about three ways to do that. Cutting and then noticing what it is that you really miss. Adding something and having that be a point of reflection.
18:29And also taking note of what it is that you're talking to other people about. Yeah, I like that a lot. Ginger, did you have any other takeaways from the episode with Carl and Doug? Well, one thing I did want to talk about a little bit was something you had said about the addiction to saving being unhealthy. Yeah. Do you remember that part of the discussion? Yeah. I think Doug said, quote, we were addicted to saving. Right. And yeah, I know that was kind of part and parcel around two other things I took note of. the skill of spending, how we need to optimize our spending on the front side of FI, like the beginning of FI, where clearly for most people pursuing FI, you do have to cut some things because just by its very mathematical nature, if you're making a certain amount of money and you're saving zero, the quickest way to start saving is to start eliminating some items from your life.
19:24So I think getting smart about your spending on the front side is important, but then on the backside of FI is, okay, hey, maybe we were addicted to saving and that is unhealthy. And we have to realize that we have a finite amount of time and we need to start spending this for experiences, for the memory dividends, as we've talked about numerous times. So yeah, I mean, I think that's important. And I think it can start getting into this all pervasive, the thing I hear in my life. And I think people say this around me specifically, when like they feel bad about spending something and they're like, oh, I know that's not very FI, but dot, dot, dot.
20:04And then they talk about something they were, they were spending on. And I just, it almost, it makes me feel bad every time somebody says that, because as if like I'm judging anybody, I mean, I don't care what you do. You do you live your life. But the beautiful part about FI is there's no dogma. There's no dogma at all. It's you spend on what you value. And I think that, again, is the choose FI version of FI is there truly is no dogma. You have to save money. You have to take action. But I don't care how you do it. Do it however you want. But saving money can become unhealthy. And I think when you try to optimize and Ginger, when when it becomes a keeping up with the Joneses, the Joneses in the FI community of, oh, my savings rate is higher than yours.
20:45And that doesn't exactly happen, but there's some little strain of it somewhere where people do feel like, oh, I'm getting to find eight years and two months instead of eight years and four months by cutting this out. And I just think that can be really unhealthy. There has to be some balance ultimately. Yeah, I think it's important to note that where you said, oh, and it quite makes me feel bad. And when I think about, well, what makes it unhealthy? Like, how do you know when you're at that point where what you're doing is an unhealthy behavior? Maybe it's around looking at, okay, what are my emotions that are coming up around it?
21:22And where there is those feelings of shame or those feelings of urgency, then maybe that's a place to kind of take a pause. Yeah, I hear you. And yeah, I mean, I think just trying to find those triggers. Have you gone across some line of, hey, maybe I'm obsessing about this too much? Maybe I'm trying to optimize too much at the expense of living my life. And I think that is a really important update to the entire mindset of FI. Maybe from five or six years ago, we might not have thought that way. And I think it's very important to have some balance. Yeah. Okay. So let's move on to the Fundamental Truths of Investing by Brian Feraldi, episode 445.
22:07Yeah, this is a great one. So Brian's amazing. I absolutely love Brian. And it's so wonderful that while he clearly is an individual stock investor, and we've talked about that numerous times on our show, he still says that he recommends to 99 % of people to dollar cost average into index funds, and that being your best chance of success in building wealth. And I think that's really important. And that's from someone who is an individual stock investor. So I think there are fundamental truths, interestingly, right? So that's the episode title, Fundamental Truths of Investing. And I think if you're kind of rounding to what should every single person do, and we don't give financial advice on this podcast, obviously, but I would say for the vast, vast, vast majority of cases, I think 99 % plus is probably a good estimate.
23:00dollar cost averaging into index funds is going to be your highest likelihood of maximizing your wealth over an investing lifetime. And Ginger, I mean, the coolest part about that is that is really the brain dead way to do it. And I say that in the most loving way possible. You don't have to outsmart anybody. You don't have to have insider knowledge. You didn't have to go to school to learn about finance or anything ridiculous like that. You just have to match the market and you have to match the market at the lowest fees possible. And I think that's what is so beautiful about index fund investing.
23:32And I think even though that this obviously wasn't the vast majority of what we talked about in the episode, I thought it was just such an important thing. Yeah. And of course, it's something that we've heard a lot. And yet I think there's a lot of value in hearing it again. And it really makes me think about how, oh, yeah, something you always talk about is it's not the math. You know, it's not like the show is not about the math. The community is not about the math. The math is really easy. And so highlighting, okay, here's the thing that most people find success in doing. And now the chunk of what we want to spend our time thinking about is what gets in the way, right?
24:10What stops us from doing that? What's hard about doing that? But it's the, that itself is pretty straightforward and what a relief. Isn't that great? It is. It's amazing. And, and what gets in the way is usually our brain. Yeah. And so not only our brain and the maybe biases we have, but also short termism, which I think a lot of people think in terms of quarters or what was the morning star rating on this on this stock or on this mutual fund. And that just is, in most cases, looking at a very short period of time, as opposed to I think we should all be thinking in terms of decades, multi-decades.
24:48And when you reorient around that, well, you say, okay, I'm going to keep my expenses low. I'm not going to buy expensive mutual funds. I'm not going to sell that often and incur taxation. So I'm just cutting down the friction. And again, because almost nobody rounding to zero, vanishingly few people can beat the market over 30 to 50 years. Almost nobody, honestly. Then what's my best bet is to just match the market. Why do I need to, I can't outsmart it. I cannot outsmart the market over 50 years. I'm just going to match it. And that again is just a really reassuring place to be. One thing I wanted to talk about from this episode was the idea of optimism and pessimism.
Read the full transcript
25:29And one thing that you said, you said people think they're smart when they talk doom and gloom. And you said something about it's kind of hard to articulate why that is. So let's try to articulate it. Here's what I think. I think it's just about vulnerability and it's so much easier to be critical than to approve of something. And we see that across many different disciplines, many different subjects, right? It's something that I personally find pretty irritating, but it's so much safer. It's so much safer to be critical. So I'll give you an example from an old career I used to have. So I used to teach at a university and we would do this thing called norming.
26:09So I was in the English department. So we all get the same paper, and then individually we grade it. And the idea is we're hoping that we come up with the same grade, or we talk about how to get to the same grade, so that grading isn't this arbitrary thing based on the individual instructor. But what actually happens and why norming doesn't really work is that it's easier to criticize than to approve. And because the highest value in this culture is I want to appear smart. I don't want anyone to be able to poke holes in something that I say. So it's safer for me to say this paper is terrible. And here are all the reasons that it's terrible, right?
26:50Because no one's going to argue with that. Whereas if I say, actually, this is pretty good for what this student is trying to do, then my colleague can say, oh, no, like, look at all these horrible things. I can't believe you would you don't have high enough expectations. And so everyone ends up giving the paper a D, even though in their own classroom, they wouldn't do that. So that's the same thing, I think, in what you guys were talking about, where it's way easier to criticize this community or to criticize different arguments, because it makes you vulnerable to say, hey, I find value in this, or I can see that this is a good idea.
27:25Yeah, I like that. And I think it's funny, even the words that we use to describe, it's always like naive optimism, right? As if, oh, they're just silly. They just have these rose colored glasses and they think the world is wonderful. But I mean, if we're all honest with ourselves, the world is pretty wonderful. I mean, obviously it's not to suggest there's not bad things going on because there obviously, obviously are, and there always have been and always will be. But on a whole, the optimistic viewpoint is the right one in my estimation. And I think a lot of people like to sound smart and that, oh, that realistic pessimist, you know, like they're applying their intellect and cutting through and seeing all the negative.
28:07Like it just, I don't know, there's some allure to that doom and gloom. There's some allure to, oh, I've figured this out, right? Like I see the never ending inflation coming and I see the next recession and they're just BSing. They're just making it up. Anybody who claims to know anything about the macro landscape is just like they're a charlatan. I mean, there's vanishingly few people on earth who know anything about macroeconomics, who can predict anything with any degree of accuracy. They are charlatans and they are just trying to pull one over on you, in my opinion. You can tell how annoyed this gets me.
28:41But yet they sound smart. They just do. And there's some allure to that negativity. so yeah I mean I think sure you see the word naive optimism but I gotta be honest that's the right approach okay so I mean I think the the takeaway here from what we're saying or where we're coming from is just like what's the end game here and if the end game is this person really wants to sound smart and protect their ego then I'm not going to give as much value to their opinion I'm not going to weight it quite as much yeah I agree and and yeah just a closing word on that particular thing is as Brian said I think he was quoting somebody else maybe Morgan Housel but perma bears get the clicks, but optimists make the money.
29:21And yeah, I mean, I think it's just really, really important. And again, also, as Morgan Housel said, save like a pessimist and invest like an optimist. And I think that's the takeaway for maybe us in the FI community is, I think that's what we do is we focus on savings rate, but we also invest optimistically of saying, hey, by investing in, let's say, the TotalSack Market Index Fund, you're investing in 4 ,000 approximately companies and the ingenuity and hard work and discipline of 100 plus million workers in America, mostly, and around the world. And if that's not a recipe for wealth building, I quite literally don't know what it is.
30:04And that's a very optimistic viewpoint. So maybe we should wrap up our discussion of this one with a Brian Feraldi quote that sort of says it all, which is make money, spend less, invest simply, and wait longer is the best financial advice there is. Yeah, that about covers it, right? I think we talked about this towards the end of the episode, and I think it's nine words if you throw in the end in there. And those nine words pretty much sum up what we're doing here in the FI community. It's, hey, you want to optimize your income, make money, you want to spend less, that doesn't mean spend nothing, It doesn't mean be miserable, but on some level, it means optimizing that skill of spending.
30:46Invest simply, like we've talked about. Probably the highest likelihood of success over the long term is low-cost index funds. So there's nothing simpler than that. And wait longer is, again, we're optimizing for long-termism, long-term thinking, and thinking about this in terms of decades. So yeah, I mean, Brian cut it down in nine words to what I've probably spent a couple million words talking about here on the podcast, Ginger. Okay, next up is Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor with Chad Carson. This is episode 446. Yeah, this was a great one. I really enjoyed this episode with Chad, one of my favorite conversations in a while.
31:24And I think it's because, well, maybe it's some confirmation bias on my part. So let's be entirely clear here. But I think Chad just has it right. where so many real estate investors talk about what's the most I can build, right? Like how can I optimize for a hundred doors? And that's the silly term they use to describe the number of places. Because I guess like if you were saying, and just as a sidebar, oh, I own a condo complex. Well, that doesn't exactly tell you how many units you have. So they basically break everything down into number of units and they call that doors. So it's basically the number of different rentals they have more or less.
32:03That's the layman's version of how to approach that. So for most real estate investors, it's how can I build this empire? Whereas Chad reoriented to essentially the exact opposite of what's the fewest number of rentals I can have to have enough to cover my life expenses and still live wonderfully. I mean, he was talking about, I think,$10 ,000 a month of expenses. And that's not nothing, obviously. But when you've built an income stream, that's easy. And I think that was another massive takeaway was everything him and his business partner are doing in their business is to make their lives easier and to cut down friction, cut down stress.
32:43And sometimes that means essentially culling some properties that may have previously been something that they thought was great. And they don't fit the criteria anymore. We're going to get rid of these and we're going to look for, we talked about baseball a lot, but like a fatter pitch, right? We're going to find something that, okay, we've built up this knowledge over 15 years. We can sit around and wait now. We can wait for that next fat pitch to come along and find a property that's absolutely perfect for us and just makes our overall portfolio that much stronger. Yeah. And I think this ties into something we were talking about before about how you don't want to let perfectionism get in the way of taking action and how you have to be able to change your mind later.
33:26And this is kind of part of that too, hearing him talk about, it wasn't about, is this the absolute perfect property for me to hold for the rest of my life? It's, this is the right property now and we can reassess later, right? Exactly. And yeah, as he said, it's try to find the 5 % of the least hassle properties. that's what they're optimizing for amongst the working backwards and ginger that was something we didn't plan this but sometimes in an episode you just you hit on a phrase and it seemed like everything we were talking about in that episode was oriented around that working backwards which is hey in this case they have a number that they want to reach for their expenses in almost like a fat five version of of their life and all right we're going to work backwards from that to build a portfolio that works for us and gets us to that number with the least amount of hassle possible.
34:19And, you know, I know I've said this repeatedly now, but I just find that so wonderful and like heartwarming in a, in a real estate world where it's always, and you just, you see this, unfortunately on, on Twitter and places like that of just, Hey, what are the most I can have? What's the most leverage I can have? It's just like people who don't learn from history. And I think one of the things we actually didn't talk about in the Brian Feraldi episode was he talked about history and psychology essentially being the two most important fields to study. And I think that holds true in a lot of life.
34:54And in this particular case, when you're talking about real estate, a lot of these people, if you really think about it, so we had the great financial crisis in the late 2000s, and it's been about 15 years. So if somebody was 23 in 2008, they're 38 now and they've never experienced an issue with housing other than just up and to the right. It always goes up. Interest rates are always low until they aren't right now. And of course you can leverage as much as possible. Of course you can, right? Like, and I say this sarcastically, but they've only seen the good times. But I think people who have an understanding of history have seen, oh, you have to actually plan for a rainy day.
35:36And you have to realize that things can go bad. And sometimes they can go bad really, really quickly. And if your entire portfolio is predicated on, we're going to pull as much cash out of this as possible and just keep on buying more properties. Well, when things go a little bit bad in the economy and a couple percent of your rental properties aren't paying, this whole thing can come down like a house of cards. And I think it's just a really naive in the worst sense way to invest in that assuming everything is going to go wonderfully forever. It's just, that's not the way of the world. What about, where are you at with real estate?
36:13You've mentioned before that you've kind of have at least dipped your toes in. Yeah. I have two rental properties in Georgia and I bought them both in cash. So it's similar to Chad in that he has a little bit of debt. I think he said 15 % or thereabouts, but it sounds like he's paid way, way down. But for me, it was, okay, how can I sleep well at night? And having no mortgage, buying very low cost properties, that was the way that I could sleep well at night. Because frankly, if nobody lives in them, then the only thing it costs me is my, I guess, property taxes and insurance. And that's a little over maybe a thousand or$2 ,000 a year.
36:54That's the worst that could happen. And so I'm capping my downside in this sense. And in fairness, they've been wonderful. I mean, Ginger, they've been absolutely wonderful in the sense that they've been continuously rented and they've provided a good return. I haven't had any major, major repairs other than when I bought them, I had to pretty much overhaul the entire thing. So I spent a lot of money on the front side and little things happen every now and again. I mean, there's things break or you need to take a tree down and it's whatever,$800 or$1 ,000, or something like that. But overall, they've been pretty good returns, but yet I haven't bought any more.
37:30So I think that's kind of like when I get down to the proof is in the pudding type scenario, it's like, okay, these have been great, but I still don't feel that strongly about them because obviously I haven't turned around even amidst the success and bought a third property, a fourth property, even though I basically could have. So they have been working for me in their very small sense. But yeah, I just, I still don't, it doesn't sit all that well with me, even though I've cut the downside so much, Ginger. But I wonder if that's because you have enough, you know, to get back to his thesis. And I would say too, for anyone who is not really interested in real estate for themselves, I think this episode is still worth a listen for that discussion of, yes, we want to optimize, but optimize for what?
38:16And that gets to that point you were making about, you know, where he was saying, I really don't want the hassle. And so that's something that's important to him and something he values. And so even just that discussion of what does it mean to have enough? What does it look like? You know, how do we know when we're kind of moving beyond that? Yeah. And it's interesting you talk about, about hassle, right? So there was actually two of our former guests. So we had Nick Majuli on a number of episodes ago, and then the five couple, they were on episode four 30 and Nick when Julie talked about the return on hassle in our episode.
38:50And I thought this was interesting. So yeah, there's obviously a return, but there's a very different hassle level between index funds and real estate, for instance. Regardless of how passive you believe real estate is, it's not passive. It's just not. There's a mental hassle. There's a time hassle. And there was a kind of big, I don't know, kerfuffle, for lack of a better term, on Twitter this week about the five couple had a post how in like six years they've grown to basically netting like$30 ,000 a year from their real estate portfolio. And I think a lot of people were surprised that that was a smaller number than they expected in that there's a lot of hassle and that's a six years of growth.
39:35Now we know them to be wonderful people who are just building up this small portfolio and trying to do it right. But I think it highlighted, and I'll put the tweet by Nick Majuli in the show notes here, but I think it really highlighted that return on hassle better than anything. And it had like a million plus views, Ginger, and this really took off because I think a lot of people don't overtly think about that hassle, but I think they really should. And that was actually, again, we know the five couple to be some of the good people in real estate from what I know of them. But I think a lot of people took it as an opportunity to say, oh, you know, all those real estate evangelists who are constantly talking about this is the best possible investing type.
40:17And this is so easy. It's passive income. And then use it as an example of, oh, you mean you've spent all those thousands of hours and you're only netting$30 ,000 a year? Couldn't you have possibly done something better? So again, I'm not sure how well this is translating to the podcast, but I think it's an important thing to think about that return on hassle. And I'm actually going to put a link to Nick wrote up an article about this specifically. I'm going to put that in my newsletter, most likely tomorrow that goes out. So again, choosavite.com slash subscribe. That's really the best way to keep up to date.
40:50I write that on a weekly basis. So if you're listening to this podcast, you like the podcast, get on the newsletter. It's equally as important. So yeah, that's just a cool thing to be able to update almost in real time, Ginger, of what's going on in the community. Okay. And last, we're going to discuss the mailbag episode with Sean Mullaney, episode 447. Okay. Maybe I'll start with a little clarification that I thought might be helpful for some people. So you guys talked a lot about the Roth conversion and the rules around that. And you can tell me where if I've got this wrong, but I thought if you're new to this idea of what a Roth is and what the penalties around it are, it could be helpful to understand that your contributions, we're not talking about doing a weird conversion, just like right now today, you contribute to a Roth.
41:37At any time, my understanding is you can take out those contributions without a penalty. The thing that you can't take out are the earnings on it, right? Correct. Yeah. So I thought if you didn't have that information beforehand, you might not have got that from the episode. And I do think it's a really important point to make because for some people, it can really be a safety net to think, okay, well, I'm not sure I have enough to invest in a Roth. Well, what if you think about it as part of your emergency fund? Yeah, I love that, Ginger. You do? Does that make you uncomfortable? No, I think that's actually really good because, right.
42:14And we did mention that at the end of the episode, not the emergency fund. I think that's the brilliant point. But we did mention that Roth IRA contributions can be withdrawn at any time for any reason, tax and penalty free. And like Sean said, they come out first in the ordering rules. So when you do pull out of a Roth, the contributions come out first. So that's really important. But yeah, like you said, it's kind of an interesting way to think about an emergency fund in that, okay, if I wasn't going to make a Roth IRA contribution and I was eligible because, oh, oh, I need to have my emergency fund.
42:47Well, you can actually make that contribution and you may never need that emergency fund or you may in the intervening months and years save a whole lot more money, which in all likelihood, if you're on the path to FI, you will be doing that. And there's a high likelihood you'll never need to pull that contribution out. So it's actually then you've made the contribution to the Roth IRA and it grows in that case tax-free because a Roth IRA is already after tax money. Yeah. So now that's why you can pull out the contribution, tax and penalty free, because you've already paid tax on it. That's the nice part about that whole concept is that is conceptually, that's why you can pull out the contribution because you've already paid tax on it.
43:28It's your money. Yeah. It was one way that I got my husband on board a long time ago when I was like, oh, I think we should start to, you know, we should open a Roth. Here are all the advantages. And we just weren't making very much money. And so he was like, what? We need to have some money set aside more than we do. And when he learned this thing about how actually if we really need it, we can take it without there being any kind of penalty. And then he was totally on board. So that might be the case for someone else out there, especially if you're just getting started. Yeah, I like that a lot.
43:57So yeah, one major thing we talked about was how to break up with a financial advisor. And this is a question I get more than almost any other. And I think Sean did a really good job of covering it in the sense that, okay, he actually talked about the psychology of, all right, it's pretty hard to tell your financial advisor who you've worked with for a long time, hey, I'm leaving. So really the best way to do it is to physically call the new institution that you're moving the money to and have them lead it. This happens all the time. At that point, it's not personal. It's business, certainly for them.
44:32And they just start the process. And he talked about the ACAT, which I never heard before, but it's the automated customer account transfer. And you basically just ACAT out those existing funds and it just kind of moves along. And the other point he made, which is so appropriate is it's really, it's in the new institution's best interest to do this, right? They want to have your money located with them. So they're going to help you and hold your hand every step of the way. and I know I from my own personal experience it really is pretty easy and I think I've done this Vanguard and Fidelity possibly don't quote me on that ginger but really they do they just walk you through it and I mean they do this millions of times a year this is old hat to them so there's there ultimately is nothing to it but if you started by calling your old financial advisor what are they going to do you know exactly what they're going to do they're going to try to sweet talk you into staying right yeah and I think it is that is a really valuable part to listen to because that's one of those things that people can get hung up on, right?
45:35I don't know how to do this one step. It feels like too much emotional work to figure out how to do this step. And it's those times where it's really nice just to have a template for, okay, this is how most people do it. You take this step, done. And yeah, I thought to me, one of the most surprising takeaways, and this was a brilliant point by Sean, was if you have appreciated stock, right? So he called this the problem of appreciated stock. And I think this is actually a big issue for people when they're moving from financial advisor to some other institution is, okay, they ideally want to get out of their old expensive funds or individual stocks in some cases into low cost index funds.
46:20And in a lot of cases, there are unrealized capital gains. So if you sold everything and moved it and kind of ripped the bandaid off, you might have a large tax hit at that point. So for a lot of people, it might mean, all right, I'm going to restart my any new contributions that I make. I'm going to buy into low cost index funds or ETFs. But what do I do with all those all those unrealized gains? And again, this problem of appreciated stock. And he talked about if you're going to make donations and this is so critical and it doesn't have to be in a donor advised fund, but that is one way to do it.
46:56when you make a donation of an appreciated stock or fund, you never have to pay the tax on those unrealized capital gains. So Ginger, just to make this more concrete, there would be two ways to do it, right? So let's say I bought a share of stock for$1 and it's appreciated to$1 ,000. And I want to make a charitable contribution for$1 ,000. Well, how most people would think is, oh, I'm going to sell this stock and then I'll have a thousand dollars cash and I just donate the thousand dollars cash just like I would make any donation right I'm making a hundred dollar donation to here a hundred dollars to there I need the cash but what would happen in that scenario is and this is obviously a kind of ridiculous one but when you sold that share of stock you would have a capital gain of$999 because your basis is$1 in it you sold it for a thousand so that's a$999 $59 capital gain, you'd have to pay tax on that at whatever your rate is.
47:53So assuming it's long term, it's probably 15 or 20%. So that essentially makes your donation that much more expensive in that case. But the other way to do it, and most people don't realize this, is you can donate that appreciated share. So you actually donate the share of stock that's worth$1 ,000 to your charity of choice. And what happens is that$999 unrealized capital gain vanishes forever to you. It is completely gone. So you will never pay tax on that is a permanent, permanent change in that it is gone forever. And you get a thousand dollar charitable contribution because it's the fair market value, the market value of that share of stock when you donated it.
48:37So, I mean, that is such an aha moment when you realize that of, oh, wow, this is one way that especially if I'm a charitable person and I might have some of these unrealized gains that have built up over a long time, especially in things that I ultimately don't want to hold anymore. Well, maybe over a period of years, I can donate these appreciated shares and essentially never have to pay that capital gain on it, which is pretty darn cool. Is that complicated to donate stock? It shouldn't be. It should not be. I think it's actually almost similar to what we're talking about with when you want to move something to a new institution.
49:12I personally would call up the charity and just make sure that this is something that they've done before and that they're okay with it. And I suspect it would just take a very quick call to them and or your financial institution. So probably the first time you do it, Ginger, it might be a little bit annoying in that you just need to make sure, okay, here's how my financial institution does this. But similar to what we talked about before with something happening millions of times a year, this happens millions of times a year, I'm sure with Fidelity, Vanguard, Schwab, etc. And they know exactly what to do.
49:45So yeah, I mean, this is something that it's definitely very replicable. Mm-hmm. Okay. One thing I wanted to talk about from the episode was when Sean said, no one regrets not optimizing on their deathbed. And it made me think, okay, we need a little segment where we talk about what are the things we are not purposefully not optimizing. So I've got one. Can you think of one? Ooh, that's quite a challenge. I'm not sure that I'm ready for that, but let me hear yours first and then maybe I can think of one on the fly. Okay. So I am a counselor and I am paid per client, right? So that means I don't have any vacation time.
50:28So when I take off work, I just don't get paid. If I take off for a week, I don't get paid for that week. That is hard for me, right? And it's psychologically, it can make it hard for me to take vacation or to even if there's some time where I just want to take one day, I I do way too much work inside about like, do I really want to give up that day's pay for this other thing? Well, that can get to a point where it's actually, this is that thing where it's actually not super healthy. Like I should take vacation and I don't want to do these mental gymnastics every time. So I was thinking about how I'm kind of jealous of my friends who have paid vacation.
51:06Well, there's nothing really to be jealous about. Paid vacation isn't a magical thing. it's just actually your rate your hourly rate is a little bit higher than you think about it as and your employer puts it in a special place and gives it to you at a certain time that's all that it is so I thought okay I can do this myself and every month I can take out a little bit of money that's my vacation fund and then when it comes to those months where I take vacation I pull from that. So I have a more even paycheck. Okay, this is not the optimal way to do it. I'm going to lose money doing this. Because what I should do is when I have the money, I should take the money, I should put it into savings or whatever else I shouldn't be putting it in this crappy checking account, where it's just going to sit until my February vacation, right.
51:59But to me, I was thinking when I thought about doing this, I felt such relief. I thought, Oh, my gosh, I'm going to feel so great when that month comes and I'm able to pull from that fund and feel good about my paycheck that month. So that's one way that I'm not optimizing, or I guess we could say I'm not optimizing for the best return. I'm optimizing for peace of mind. I like that a lot. So yeah, it's funny, as you were talking, the two things that came to mind for me were exactly that. So I'm optimizing for something. I'm just not optimizing for total return. It's also peace of mind in my case.
52:38So the most obvious one for me is I keep way more money in my checking account than I should. And now there is an opportunity cost to that. In fact, you could argue that's my emergency fund to a large degree. Like I just leave it there. If I have a higher credit card bill or something, because something popped up that month. Okay. well, there's a buffer there in the checking account and I don't have to worry about it because what I'm actually optimizing for is stress mitigation. That is literally what I'm optimizing for. I don't want to think about, oh my goodness, am I going to overdraw my checking account?
53:13Or is the electric bill$170 this month instead of$99 or whatever it is, right? Because if I kept, I know people who keep their checking account essentially down to the dollar of what they're going to have come in or out. But what if something else popped up? Like what if you had some recurring bill that you had coming debited out of your checking account that you just forgot about? You overdraft the thing? I mean, that probably works for some people and I don't doubt it, but that doesn't work for me. So I definitely want extra money sitting in there, even though I could be investing it. And yeah, I guess the other one is almost similar in that I moved some cash over to my investment company.
53:56And instead of just investing it all in one fell swoop, which I know is the mathematically optimal way to do it. And it's such a small percentage of my net worth. I know every part of me says, Brad, you're being an idiot. You should just invest this all right now. I just set up a recurring investment over a number of weeks to put it in essentially dollar cost average. So that's probably not even the exact right term in this scenario. But because I just, it makes me feel better. And you know, what I'm foregoing in opportunity costs is so small that, that it makes me feel better part just far exceeds any downside for me at least.
54:34Yeah. And I suppose that's an important part of the equation too. When I was doing it, I was like, oh man, I feel so much better when I think about it this way. Well, yeah, I'm going to lose money, but I don't know,$200, maybe less than that. And that's worth it to me for, Hey, I'm going to feel good about taking vacation for a year. Yeah. And in your case, like you said, I mean, that's a big deal too, right? Taking vacation as opposed to feeling guilty about it every time or, oh, why am I not optimizing? I shouldn't be doing this. It's no, I mean, taking vacation is really important. So yeah, I mean, you found like a really great hack to kind of work around that maybe bug in our human operating system to some degree.
55:12I would love to throw that question out to the community as well. Like what are the other things that you're doing where you are not optimizing for return. What does that look like and how has that played out in your life? Yeah, that is a great one. That's a really great one. So as always, like we said before, choosavite.com slash subscribe will get you on my email. I write the thing. Any response to that comes directly to me and yeah, I'll collate them. And Ginger, we can talk about that again, ultimate crowdsource personal finance show. Let's show that that's what this is all about. So we We would love to hear your ways that you're not optimizing maybe for return, but optimizing for life.
55:51So yeah, that's a cool challenge, Ginger. Optimizing for happiness. Yeah, I love it. I love it, love it, love it. All right, well, this was fun. Yeah. I think round one of our experiment here, this certainly worked. So we'll have, I guess, the last Monday in every month, as long as we continue the experiment, will be this roundup episode. So yeah, I think this is great. And Ginger, as always, thanks for joining me. So if people want to find you, you have a website? Yep. You can head on over to fiisfun.com. Nice. That never fails to bring a smile to my face. Fiisfun.com. That's so great. So, all right, Ginger, until next time.
56:26Thanks again. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand, and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to choosefi.com slash subscribe, and it's really, really easy to get on the newsletter list right there, and I would greatly appreciate it. It's the best way to get in touch with me. You can actually just hit reply to any of those emails, and it comes directly to my inbox.
57:04So that's the way that I keep a pulse of the community and how we keep this the ultimate crowdsourced personal finance show. And finally, if you're looking to join an in-real-life community, we have Chooseify local groups in 300-plus cities all around the world. So head to chooseify.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20-plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI, or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways. Chooseify episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. and even though it's a couple years old at this point, it still stands up and it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence?
57:46What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then Choose a Vi created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.
58:11Thank you.
From the publisher
As this month comes to a close, we think it's only fitting to reflect on what July's incredible guests have had to say, and what new knowledge and perspectives they've brought to the table. This week we are back with Ginger and introducing a more structured Round-Up, where we will be revisiting topics from this past month's episodes and discussing our favorite moments and takeaways. While the subjects of this month's episodes have varied from spending for happiness to understanding Roth conversions, there is still more to learn and unpack before moving onto August!
Timestamps:
- 1:44 - Introduction
- 2:17 - Listener Updates/Travel Rewards
- 7:08 - Spending for Happiness
- 18:35 - Saving Addiction
- 22:01 - The Fundamental Truths of Investing
- 31:12 - The Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor
- 41:11 - Roth Conversions/Breaking Up with Your Financial Advisor
- 49:50 - Purposefully Not Optimizing
- 55:58 - Conclusion
Resources Mentioned In Today's Episode:
- The Invisible Nature of Spending | Ginger Roundup | ChooseFI Ep 443
- ChooseFI's Top 10 Recommended Travel Rewards Cards
- Spending for Happiness | Carl Jensen & Doug Cunnington | ChooseFI Ep 444
- Cometeer
- Fundamental Truths of Investing | Brian Feroldi | ChooseFI Ep 445
- Small and Mighty Real Estate Investor | Chad Carson | ChooseFI Ep 446
- Nick Magguilli Return on Hassle
- Mailbag: Breaking up with your Advisor, I Bonds, 4% Rule, Accounts for Kids, Roth IRAs | Sean Mullaney | Ep 447
- FI is Fun
More Helpful Links and Resources:
- Earn $1,000 in cashback with ChooseFI's 3-card credit card strategy
- Share FI by sending a friend ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence
- Keep learning or start a new side hustle with one of our educational courses
- Commission-Free Investing with M1 Finance
