468 | Year End Wins 2023

24:06That's not enough of a why to put this level of work in when you're already financially independent. And I, I think this episode has a particularly, you have a very soft place in your heart for this episode because it is a confirmation of the fact that this means something, this community, this message, it means something. It's changing lives. It's changing not just the individual's lives, but the people that they're responsible for, that they provide for the next generation. And we're only able in our little amount of time, if Jonathan talks just a little bit less to squeeze in 10 or 12 voicemails or whatever in an hour.

24:43But that's a representative of hundreds of thousands of people who have been able to take these choices over the years. I mean, I was thinking, I was looking at something like 65 million downloads since, you know, this podcast started just a few years ago. I mean, that's just an insane number when you think, yeah, forget, forget the 25 boxes, the single action that was taken, the single action that was slotted in, that they don't have to think about anymore. It's just, it's very cool, man. It's very cool to think about. And I just, all that to say, thank you, man. You know, it's a season of gratitude and you keeping this show going and really just taking it to a whole nother level has really been a gift to all of us.

25:20And we're thankful for you. Thank you, Jonathan. I really appreciate it. And yeah, this is truly my, our life's work and yeah, it's something really special. So I just, I love doing this episode. So, all right, let's get back to the voicemails here. So we got one, And I think it's pretty timely here from Donna. Hi, Brad. My name is Donna McGovern from Queens, New York. And I don't know where to begin, but I'll keep it short for the five minutes. So many wins this year. It's the day before Thanksgiving. And my mom passed away October 28th from a year and a half with pancreatic cancer. But that journey alone will talk about a win with so much peace and faith.

26:03And just even being able to have amazing conversations was a huge win. My mom passed away with such peace and so much joy that it is something that we can't even describe, but a lot of miracles in between. That's one. Another amazing win was I've been following and listening to the show for about two years now. And the amount of wealth of information that I have put into my life and has made a huge difference. just to be able to pay for my mom's funeral and knowing that when I pay, I have the money to pay for it because I've been consistent with following up on automatic and putting money away.

26:44I'm 59 years old and no kids, never married by choice. And I'm really grateful that I have that kind of financial security. I'm not independently, you know, yet where I'm like the true fire financial dependence, but I'm on my way and doing really well. And the third one is of the many, many, many is that I'm able to help support emotionally and sometimes financially my aunts, one who's 94 with dementia and the other one who's 80 with scoliosis and supporting my aunt to rebuild her home in Puerto Rico that she lost her home in the hurricane eight years ago. So again, it's just so many different wins.

27:26And I'm grateful for the show. Because not only do I learn a lot, expand my knowledge, expand my spiritual practices through a lot of your shows. And just even you always sharing about with your wife and your kids and where you're willing to go with yourself really supports me and all the different kind of people that you have on your show. So thank you, thank you, thank you. And again, there's so many other wins. But those are really the biggest highlights right now on this Thanksgiving week. Have a great holiday. Donna, thank you so much for sending them in. That is fantastic. I was thinking about this recently as I was signing up for You Need a Budget, YNAB.

28:03If you don't know what that is, you can find out more at chooseify.com slash YNAB. But it's a simple budgeting tool that we talk about. But the thing is, you have money in your bank account, but how much is actually free? How much doesn't already have a name to it? Because everything should have a name. The name just might be savings. But what you have in your bank account doesn't necessarily reflect what you have access to, if you have variable income, if you're self-employed, if you have complex expenses, you just don't know. The peace of mind of knowing that the number that you see there, forget what your bank account actually says, what you have actually available in terms of handling disasters if they strike, handling unexpected events, handling whatever, being able to put that together, it can give you a peace of mind.

28:44And so as I was renewing my thing each year, because there's a small cost to that. And I was just thinking, for me, I find that very, very useful. I find it really, really good to just know, here's my actual state. And because of that, when things happen, when Murphy hits on the door, when a crisis strikes, whatever, here's the margin that I have. And it gives me just a little more wiggle room in terms of, do I need to tap into investments? Is this outside of that? Or we're good. I find that as I get older, I like to have a larger buffer than I did when I was. I remember when I was, I remember when, I remember someone's like 80 right now and they're looking at their 60 year old.

29:18I remember when I was 60 and I was like, we don't whippers. I remember when I was in my late twenties and my early twenties and my teens, I could have five bucks in my bank account and feel fine. Like, yeah, that's good. You know, two weeks till next paycheck. Yeah, we're good. We're making it worse. No big deal. It needs to be a little bit more now. Like I need a lot of buffer in my life, you know, in order to feel, you know, more resilient. And it's just interesting to kind of think about one, that psychology shift as you get older, but then also the tools that you use to manage that. And the cool thing is, as you've been on this path longer, your financial life does get more complex, but you also are more educated and you have more tools to manage that and allow you to handle everything in a more robust and resilient way.

29:57That just scratches the surface of all everything Donna shared with us, but it did strike me at a personal level because I was making that choice recently. Yeah, no, I hear you. And Donna, thank you for calling in. It's amazing how much support you're able to provide to your family. and because of this path to fi, you're in a financial position where you can do that. And like you said, consistent with automated investments and just plugging away with this, just plugging away at this. So yeah, thank you again. All right, Jonathan, got a couple more here. We got a couple longer voicemails to finish up the episode.

30:29All right, this one came in from Brian. Hey, Brad and Jonathan. First time, thank you all for everything y 'all are doing. Y 'all are literally changing lives. I found you back in May of 2020. And like you've said in a recent podcast, it truly is a superpower to know everything that you all teach here on ChooseFI in the personal finance world. I just want to shout out to the big wins of this year. Going back to that May of 2020, our net worth was just under 200K and most of that was the house. Since then, our mortgage just paid off. Our net worth is just shy of a million dollars. This past year, I took a 10-month sabbatical from my work.

31:15I just told them, hey, this is what I'm doing. My daughter, she's now 14 months, but I wanted to spend an extraordinary amount of time with her. And it just took a 10-month sabbatical and was able to do that because of the strategic moves in place that I've learned here on choose FI. And so I've been able to take vacations more so than I have in previous years. Like I said, our net worth is just under$1 million. Other wins would be my wife got a new job that's 100 % remote, that is less strenuous and gets paid more than her previous job. And she was a big four accountant, which Brad, you know how that goes.

31:59And now she's in a less strenuous job that pays more and had a sign-on bonus. And these are moves that we now feel comfortable doing in our lives in making the decisions we've made solely based on this podcast and the resources this podcast puts out. Since 2020, my personal knowledge and personal finance has grown so much. I've read 25 plus books and there's a connection between each book and each podcast that you listen to and everyone speaking the same thing. It was either get on board with it or not. Do the same thing I was doing or change. And this podcast, I can't say it enough that it's changing lives.

32:44Being able to take the sabbatical this year and de-plug and connect with my family, it just speaks volumes and it's life-changing. And it's something I'll look back on living in the now, spending for now, Not deprivation, not, as you all say, bruised bananas or nobody's doing anything like that. This is about spending what you really value on. And time is truly your most precious, not renewable resource. Got it. You guys can put out the same podcast saying these same words over and over again. And I think you'd still be highly successful because that's how much the world needs it. and I try to spread what I've learned to people.

33:27And it's just, it's shocking how much, how much people really don't know. I was one of them who just totally clueless. So again, thank you all so much. Just want to share those wins and keep up the good work and look forward to everyone you bring on the show. Jonathan, hopefully making some more surprise appearances. I love the rants he does.

33:53and you're teeing me up brother there's a rant incoming right now you know it you know as he was talking brad i was just thinking about this stuff there there are better options out there whatever you like as a parent with your kids you give them the false choice all the time do you want to stay up for five more minutes or do you want me to read you a book before bed right this is how we think as adults it happens to us all the time yes i hope my kids don't pick up on this Maybe they won't listen to this episode. That's not the only two options. Well, I want both, dad. Can I have five more minutes and a book?

34:23As an adult, you have the right to just, but you have to have time to process that and think about it. That idea might not hit you unless it's injected into your brain. I was listening to a conversation recently. I say listening eavesdropping is a better word. Where is this going? But okay. I have some sympathy here as I'm saying this. The fellow is a little bit older and he was kind of relaying a series of somewhat unfortunate events about how he was in one path. He was good at this, but he should have taken action on it, but he didn't. He ended up in this career path. Something happened and he happened to step out and he had an extended absence outside of that.

35:04And then his skills were obsolete. He couldn't explain his time out and he just ended up in whatever he is now. And that is his script. And that certainly does account for where he is. It's a completely false choice. You know, it's a completely false script. It's true for him. It's what he lived. It doesn't have to be true for you. You can choose to take 10 months off. And when you go offensive with it, you're going to have people begging you to come back through the lens of skills. not because you think you're an awesome person, but through the lens of the interest led learning that allowed you to crew a skill stack that is useful in any industry.

35:43And you took 10 months to forge this and Oh, here's what I've done. You can get back in anytime. I was at another event the other day where someone was telling me how, you know, Oh, well, you know, the real thing you did, you could go get a job. Well, yeah, I could, of course I could go get a job. You know, you can get back into the industry. But as long as you believe that this person did not believe that, right? In any way, at any point. And with head down, he went through the submissions process and got the result he expected that matched up with the script. We don't have that script. And why do we not have it?

36:16Because we're confronted daily with thousands of people that have made choices from a more difficult place than we made it and got in these unusual, but spectacular results. And through that, our script changes. Well, right. That script is really about choosing to have an empowering mindset, right? And believing that you can affect change on your life. And Brian certainly did, right? He said, I could do the same thing I was doing, or I could change. And frankly, a lot of people keep on doing the same thing they were doing, but Brian decided to change. He decided to read 25 plus books and listen to a ton of podcasts and synthesize all that info until it was part of him.

36:57He decided to make a massive change and take a 10-month sabbatical to spend time with his one-year-old daughter. These are remarkable things, but we can do them when we set our mind to it, right, Jonathan? I mean, it's as simple as that. It's about taking action. That is the secret sauce behind ChooseFI and the entire financial independence movement as we characterize it. It is about getting up off the couch and taking action to make your life better. Simple, hard stop, end of story. One story sponsoring our story, but I'm going to resist. Let's move forward. Next voicemail. All right, Jonathan, this next one comes in from Paul.

37:33Hey, Brad. Love your newsletter. I wanted to share my year-end wins with you. Before I do, I wanted to remind you who I am. My name is Paul. I'm actually Paul from the case study that you and Jonathan did with me over six years ago now. I'm going to episode 24. Still listening, but this is my first opportunity to catch up with you since the case study. I did ultimately pull the plug at the end of 2018 and have been fire ever since. So let's get to my year-end wins for 2023. I got several categories. First is travel. I earned the Southwest Companion Pass in February of 2022, and we leveraged it to the hilt this year before it expires at the end of the year.

38:13My wife accompanied me to places for just taxes and fees like Dallas. Chicago, Washington, D.C., Punta Cana in the Dominican Republic, Cabo San Lucas, Mexico, Aruba, and the trip that we just completed, three weeks in Hawaii. And most of my fares were on points, so we really racked up the freebies there. Let's move on to healthcare. At ages 56 and 49, we scored a plan on the marketplace for 2023 with a monthly premium after-tax credits of$203. No deductible and very low cost shares. Next year looks to be very similar. As far as our home goes, we saved$500 by paying cash for siding on our house, and that was a savings of approximately 8%.

39:01Education. This isn't really for me, but I thought this was great. Our 20-year-old daughter, 20, finished her BS degree in nursing with zero student loan debt, is working full-time as an RN and has started her doctorate program to become a nurse practitioner. Yes, I did say she's just 20 years old. That's just awesome. You don't have to wait. You can just do it. Let's move to work. Even though we fired at the end of 2018, well, my wife worked another year. I had picked up some contract work. I teach classes for American Management Association, and I'm paid$500 a day, plus travel in per diem if the class is in person.

39:39That's led to a nice $21 ,000 of income for this year. The best part is that I can pick and choose to take the classes that are offered to me. So if it doesn't fit my schedule or I don't want to travel to a particular city, I simply decline. When I do travel, my wife often goes with me again because of the companion pass. It's been a great addition to keep me busy, to slow the spending from our taxable accounts, and to give us a few getaways that we might not otherwise choose. Now let's go to financial. Our portfolio has grown nicely this year, up just over 16%. From the time that I fired until now, which has been just about five years, our portfolio has grown just over a million dollars from where we started.

40:21Not too bad for sticking with index funds and living well below the 4 % rule. In a year and a half, I'll be able to access my retirement portfolio. And in four years, I'll be eligible to start Social Security. And lastly, on the personal side, this year, we had our first grandbaby. Of course, I had nothing to do with that, but we're just blessed. You can still get some credit. Again, thanks for this opportunity. Thank you for the great show. And thanks for all you do to the community. Man, I remembered him within just like a few minutes. As soon as he, I was like, oh, and I was close on the episode too.

40:53You were real close. I wish I were on it. Yeah, 20R was the very first one. And there were a couple right around there. So it was like April of 2017, Jonathan, which is crazy. We did it 21R, 23R, 25R, chooseify.com slash zero two three. And 26R. Yeah. He came on like three or four times and we would just go back and forth. It was, it was really, really cool. He was a good sport about it and gave us all of his numbers, gave us a lot to work with. And man, it sounds like it's worked out very, very well for him. And Brad, I don't know how, I mean, how many episodes now? Like 500, 600, like there's a lot of episodes.

41:27All right. So how come it really just took me to now to process that you say to someone just casually, I don't know. I fired. You got fired. No, I fired. I fired my job. I fired. It took you that long to see that it was teed up for you the entire time.

41:47How many thousands of hours have you thought about this stuff? It took you into that. It's like a missed opportunity. Oh, that's amazing. Paul, so good to hear from you. Thank you for calling in and congrats on everything. All right, Jonathan, we have one last voicemail. And this came in from Sabrina. Hi, Brad. My name is Sabrina. As I sit here in my new home drinking coffee on a Saturday morning, I thought it was finally time to tell you about how much Chooseify has impacted my life and changed it forever. And to let you know about how grateful I am for that. So I'll tell you a little bit about my story.

42:28As a kid, I was an only child of a single mom, and we were on and off welfare and homeless twice. And thankfully had some support from some people at that time, and always on the edge of financial disaster. As a kid, this made a big impact on me, and I wanted to do better. So I went to school and more school and more school and ended up with a PhD in epidemiology, which people used to never know what that was. And when I was 40, I had decided to separate from my husband and become a single parent. so at that same time concurrently looking into financial stability and how to do that on my own after having gone through lots of school and having student loan debt and ending up in a toxic work environment too so i was in quite quite a state when i found choose if i my kids and i were living in a little two-bedroom apartment right down the street actually from the house that I lived in with their dad.

43:36And we would shuttle the kids back and forth along the same street. And in January of 2020, I found Chooseify and started making changes and am basically the poster child of the aggregation of marginal gains that you all always talk about and finding small ways to do 1 % better every day. So, you know, initially I started with changing what my retirement investments were. And then I started increasing my allocations. And then I looked into 457B, which I haven't heard people talk about this, but as somebody who doesn't have a financial security of parents to fall back on and didn't have a built up emergency fund, I use the 457B as an emergency fund.

44:22If I lost my job, then that money would become available to me. And so it served as sort of retirement compensation package situation, but also emergency fund if I were to lose my job. I also have a number of these written down, but some of the highlights are from the things that hit me the most were the Coach Carson episode. It was like 16 or something from early on. And it kind of blew me away that you could write to somebody and ask to buy their house. And I work with data and know that there are plots of land available. And you can look and see in the town registries that if the address of the owners doesn't match the address of the land, they don't live there.

45:05So it's a rental property or it's abandoned or whatever. And so as I was walking around town during the pandemic, when people were just out walking, I noticed a few houses that I put on my list and looked them up and wrote to two of the owners of a house. And that's how I ended up buying an abandoned house that needed a lot of renovation and work. But after having spent a year and a half house hunting during the pandemic, when housing costs were super high, that was the only way I could get a house. And I ended up buying a house, renovating it, and house hacking now. I have an Airbnb in my basement apartment or garden apartment.

45:45Pardon me. Marketing is all that matters here. I also, because of increasing savings, was able to negotiate for better pay because I had the ability to walk away. I found this magical mortgage situation during the low mortgage rate time, been able to use points and miles and that urgent student loan episode ended up with student loan relief for me just in April of this year. There's so many more things, but I think that's as much as I can fit in my five minutes. Thank you again. Wow, Brad. There's a reason we're listening to hers right now, isn't it? That's got the feels, man. Get opportunities to make sure all your emotions are still intact.

46:26Yep, we're good. Yep, check, check, and goosebumps check. Yes. Sabrina, that is remarkable. Right, Jay? Yeah, I mean, I'm speechless. You know how rarely I'm speechless. I'm just watching the words that are falling out of my mouth, trying to get to the right ones, because this is just mind-blowing that you can do that. The aggregation of marginal gains, Brad. The poster child for aggregation of marginal gains. You can do better, not because you're worse, but because there was a gap in your knowledge. There was a gap in your knowledge, and it's not knowledge that the system, and I mean the collegiate system, the educational system, that's not structured to give it to you.

47:03And that is not even a scheme. It's just the absence of any intent to give this to you in any way that's actionable for you at a personal level. You know, it's just incredible to think about what that means for her. Yeah. And I mean, just what's so interesting about this podcast, right. Is we've done, yeah, 620 odd episodes and just something like Sabrina mentioned episode 16, going way back to house hacking with Chad Carson and just a little thing he mentioned. It was probably, Jonathan, it was probably two minutes, but that changed Sabrina's life because she was then, her aperture was open. She was looking in this case for houses as she walked through town, found a couple that fit and literally purchased one of them.

47:44That is remarkable. Actually didn't process that you could still do that now. And I had a interesting story about that. So Brad, I think I've got to go. My daughter has a little singing carols thing today at her school. So, you know, time is your most precious resource and your kids go use it. This is what we're doing. This is what we're here for. But thank you to everyone for letting me come back and share this microphone with Brad today and share your wins. And Merry Christmas to all of you. And just look forward to seeing what this community is doing next year. Brad, I'm going to head out the door.

48:13But thank you, brother. Appreciate you. Yeah. Thanks for being here. Thank you, everybody, for listening. And chooseify.com. So subscribe to get on that newsletter. And you'll see the written year end wins. We'll see you next year, everyone. The fire is spreading. 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.

48:48So 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. So 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 choose a local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to choose a by.com slash local and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world.

49:25and 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. Choose a FI 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, what 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.

50:00Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.