484 | A Family Journey From Debt to Early Retirement in a Decade | Joel and Emily Allen

25:12Like it's not, we're not talking 10 or $20 ,000 of income. You actually pay$0 in long-term cap gains tax. And like, that's just a remarkable thing. And when you have the ability to control your taxable income to a large degree with many of those tax-deferred vehicles that you just mentioned, HSA and 401ks and IRAs, et cetera, a family in your case of seven, you can earn a whole boatload of money and actually get down to a very, very low marginal rate. And then again, you have a lot of just fun planning opportunities with, hey, we can tax gain harvest, which is another one of those interesting superpowers in the fight community.

25:49Like who else in the world says, Hey, I want to sell these long-term gap gains and basically tell the government, please tax me. Well, we do because we know the rules. And we know that there's a, if you're under a certain threshold, you pay$0 in tax on that, which is just, it's just such a cool thing. And you were talking about like knowing the rules. So to just take that a step further, you know, we were Dave Ramsey on the credit card thing, but then we just got this whole world open to us on your podcast about travel rewards and we have just sprinted away with that and you know we earned over two million chase ultimate rewards points but it's like you know it really helps if you don't know that a game exists it's kind of hard to play it but we do the same thing with our taxes as we do with travel rewards and then you know going back to the tax when you guys had the millionaire educator on which opened a whole world on college planning too for me, which I went down a rabbit hole and it's hard to get out of those things.

26:48But his article, like the free money article that he comes out with every single year, we have a lot of kids. So we can make a substantial amount of money and pay zero federal tax, which is, it's just really fascinating because people get locked into thinking that taxes are, you know, death and taxes. It's the only guarantees in life, right? But it's like timeout. You're in control of what you get taxed, especially when you throw in a side hustle or a business that really opens up a lot of very interesting tax planning, things that you can do. Yeah, you're right. And yeah, I mean, I thought of you guys as millionaire educators, right?

27:22And regardless of what the net worth is, it's the ethos. And it's, hey, how can we lower our tax liability, our taxable income down significantly by just being smart, right? And layering it upon each other. And yeah, Yeah, 2 million chase points is just absolutely crazy. I mean, that's probably even just at a conservative, two cents per point, that's$40 ,000 worth of free travel, which is, I mean, that's wild. You guys found us four years ago. And obviously in the Dave Ramsey world, it's anti-credit card. And now you've earned at least$40 ,000 of free travel, which is insane. So right, for anybody listening, we probably have about 15 podcast episodes on travel rewards just strewn throughout the 600.

28:05but just go to choosefi.com slash travel. And we have all the information there. We have our list of podcasts. We have my top 10 rewards cards. So I update this really probably multiple times a month at this point, but at minimum monthly. And it's just a quick glance of, hey, here are the 10 best bonuses that I've found and curated. So I think that's a pretty good resource for people because like you guys know, it can be daunting to get started. But just like anything, you have to take action and you have to get started, right? That's exactly right. And you just got to have a little bit of courage to do it and then know the rules in the game you're playing.

28:42So speaking of the credit cards, the fact that you can get multiple inks for the business cards. Sorry, I went off on a tangent there, but it's like knowing that rule. I didn't know that until I was reading someone on the community. He's like, yep, you can keep on getting more inks. I'm like, OK, here we go. Right. And there are very specific rules, right? Like the Sapphire cards, you can only get one bonus every 48 months and you can't, you're not going to stockpile millions of points that way. But yeah, just knowing the rules makes a massive, massive difference. I wanted to ask, cause I think we alluded in passing about college hacking.

29:15This is another one of those just kind of remarkable things that it is amazing how much you guys have internalized and taken action on like in such a short period of time. So I guess give an overview of college hacking. We've done a couple episodes on this throughout the years and most recently with Brian Ufinger talking about, okay, now there are lots of merit aid scholarship options, but I don't think that's exactly what you're talking about. So I'd love to hear an overview. Yeah, great. Okay. So to start out, I shifted, I was in the classroom for a decade teaching social sciences, history, psychology, sociology.

29:52and then for a variety of reasons we won't get into, I made the shift to physical education and, you know, have the best job in the world, teach a spin class, self-defense and in the weight room. It's a great deal. But in that process, I had to learn what the rules were to get accredited, you know, to get the BOE, the Board of Educational Examiner's certification for that. So, you know, I found a few websites that are very affordable and it can be done in a very quick and timely basis. So that kind of started the deal. So I went through this on my own and then I got certified to be PE and that's what I've been doing for the last few years.

30:29But then take a step further, you know, that kind of started it. But then, you know, millionaire educator came on, I got introduced to Sophia.org and, you know, testing out of college classes, right? The CLEP test. So that's where it started. And then I kind of started to be a disciple of those things to my kids to my mentors at school, but it just never really clicked for them. And I hadn't really put it in a message that made a lot of sense to them yet. So this past January, I taught a J-term class that I coined. It was called like life hacks, something like that. And one of the areas, actually in my unit of study, I literally just pulled the 10 pyramids of financial independence off of your website.

31:12And that was what each unit was over. But we got into talking about college and how we can do it cheaper. So then I introduced Sophia to them. I introduced the CLEP tests and now it's eluding me a little bit, but there's a website that will pay for your sitting fee of the CLEP tests at zero cost to the kids. It's out East. So it's out on your area. If you can find that, if it comes to my head, I'll make sure and tell it to you. But to be completely honest, I started it. I had a couple of kids that really got interested in it. And then I did a little bit of unpacking. So we're at Iowa and we've got three state schools, University of Iowa, Iowa State, and then Northern Iowa.

31:51And I started to uncover some of the rules of the game. Start there, know the rules. So if a kid in Iowa takes an AP course, for example, and they get a three, University of Iowa, they're not going to accept that. You usually got to have a five. That's pretty stinking hard. So what I had come to find out though, in our local community college, which we've got a ton of dual enrollment courses, that if you get your AA, and I can unpack that a little bit, but if you get your AA through that, then our community college and any community college in Iowa certifies that credit. And then the University of Iowa has to accept the AP.

32:32So the junior college will accept three and give you a ton of credits. And then once you get your AA, the universe of Iowa has to accept those as credits. So it's like a little work around, but it's pretty fascinating. And then as in Iowa, if you take 15 credits through that community college, so for us, it's like Northeast Iowa community college, you can fill all the rest with Sophia courses. And anyone that's not familiar, Sophia is a hundred dollars a month. and I've mentored kids that have knocked out 12 credits in a month, you know, for a hundred dollars in a month, in a month. Yeah. That's amazing.

33:13So when you put these things together that we can clep and you can do that for free, it's called modernstates.org. That's what it is. Yes. I remember millionaire educated talking about that. That's the one that's how he's the one that got me on that one. So when you couple clep, when you couple Sophia and then kind of a recent area of my focus is to expand our teachers and our building their ability to teach these dual credit courses. So remember what I talked about with getting my PE certification. I know the rules of the Board of Educational Examiners. I've called the university so I know what it takes for us to teach these courses.

33:51And I have a pretty quick and financially able way to become certified to teach these college classes. Now we've been able to up our number of courses that are offered at the college. We use Sophia, we use CLEP. And I do have my first two kids this May will graduate with their AA at our school, but it's a program that my principal has kind of got excited about. And I think we can do it with as many AP courses as we offer at our school, as many as 40 % of our kids with an AA. Really? Wow. Okay. So they're coming out of high school with an associate's great. So that's what an AA is, right? Associates of Art.

34:26Yeah, first two years of college. That is amazing. Right. And it gives them an end around to potentially, A, get credit for AP exams where they might not have otherwise. So on a, maybe a three or four in some cases, which is, I mean, pretty fantastic score to get a four in an AP exam. But if your four-year university might not accept it, we're saying we can kind of end around and the community college or junior college might accept it, give you credit for it. And then also, I guess in your case, and obviously everybody needs to look into this for their particular community college, junior college, et cetera.

35:02But in this case, if they take, what was it? 15 credits actually through the college, then they can get the Sophia.org credits as well. And an unlimited amount of those to earn towards their associates, right? Correct. And I forgot to actually tell you the best part of this whole deal is that in the state of Iowa, and this is very similar in many states across the United States, the state government will pay for every college class that the kids take while they're in high school. It's called PICC, PICC courses. So the state of Iowa is footing the bill for these kids to take their college classes and they're knocking out two years of their college by the time that they're in high school, right?

35:43Yeah. So when they graduate high school, they're going to walk with AA and a high school diploma. Okay. So you have my wheels turning because I have a 10th grader. So she's a second semester, 10th grade, and you know, she's getting ready to pick courses next year. There might be some opportunity here to look into the local junior college, right? Yeah, I would certainly encourage you to do that. And as you will be able to find out a lot, and I met this too, and we have wonderful people that work at school, but you know, I did meet some resistance with Sophia. And then I said, Hey guys, timeout.

36:17If it's okay for the University of Iowa, it's okay for our high school, right? Like University of Iowa is a very prestigious, very nice school. So there's been a little bit on that, but it's like knowing the rules and then just playing to that. So I know the two boys that I have that are going to graduate with an associate's degree have followed that hook, line and sinker. And they're pretty excited to have the first two years of college done at a cost of, I think they had two months this summer where they knocked out those credits of$200. Otherwise the state even picks up the tab for their books.

36:48Wow. Okay. That is just crazy. Now, last question on this, and obviously everybody needs to look into this for themselves, but I guess, so in that case, they're recent high school graduates, but they have an associate's degree. Do they apply to a four-year university as if they were an incoming freshman? Are they considered an associate's like, hey, we just finished junior college and they get a different way of applying? Because I think, again, it always comes down to the nuts and bolts, right? There are going to be people out there who, wow, this sounds great, but I don't know what to do next.

37:20Is that something that's crossed your path? Yeah. Here's the best part about all of this, as in many states across the country, to increase college enrollment and all these different things and more kids with college degrees. If you have an associate's degree from an accredited community college in Iowa, they have to accept you at the four year. Right. So it's like win, win. There's not. And I have met with this with a couple of parents where they're like, well, you know, an associate's degree, that's not, you know, something we're going for. We'd rather, you know, have the AP courses. And I said, look at it as a college, you know, someone that's going to bring you in.

37:56Like you work so hard that you have an associate's degree. Like that's going to far outweigh any AP course that you could take to be completely honest. So I would, in my opinion, I would certainly weigh these college credit courses much more heavily than the AP courses. Yeah, it's interesting. So that's, you know, obviously there are 50 states in the US, but we're talking Iowa. I know Virginia has a what's called the guaranteed admissions program. So it's just like it is written into law, essentially, like you can go and look at the at the contracts and it's all right, look, if you dot certain eyes and cross certain T's and you get a certain GPA, but it's not even that significant.

38:35It's like a 3.4 at a community college. And again, take certain courses, etc. Yeah, know the rules, right? I think that's like what we're trying to get across here is know the rules. You can get guaranteed admission into the university of Virginia or William and Mary, which are two of the top probably 50 universities in America. And we have a whole lot of other just amazing top tier universities here in Virginia. So it's like, wow. Okay. This is something that most people wouldn't think of. But I mean, just looking at some of these ridiculous scandals, like those parents, the varsity blues scandal who paid millions of dollars to get into like elite colleges.

39:10I mean, this is a wonderful workaround for you can get admission into an elite school if you're a Virginia resident or fill in the blank for whatever state you're in just by knowing the rules. It's just it's so, so cool. So, yeah, I'm glad we dialed in on that. That's going to help a lot of people, I think, for sure. I'm not really in on the college thing apart from like this is really awesome to learn. And I'm totally supporting him because our kids are coming down the pipes, you know, and he loves teaching. And that's like one of his passions, too. So it's cool to have. He experienced it and now he's passing on that knowledge and experience and it's going to kind of just spread and help so many other students and families.

39:50And I kind of think back to our story, if we can kind of help other people to not be saddled with$150 ,000 of debt, though we learned so much from that and wouldn't have it any other way because it informed a lot of other things that came after. If we can keep that stress off of people in the future, that's pretty cool. Yeah, Emily, I totally hear you. And I mean, that's, it's, it's paying it forward, right? Like it's, how can we help people? And I think that's what I've always tried to do here at Choose a Via. And it's like, oh, wow. Like we, the three of us here, we figured some things out. We figured some things out that really do feel like superpowers and it's not that hard.

40:28That's the thing. It's just that like, nobody has this knowledge, but yeah, if you can help another family or many other families, hundreds, thousands of other families not get saddled with student loan debts because they know the rules, that's incredible. If you're five children, I mean, the likelihood of them having student loans seems close to zero or thereabouts, right? Like, and it's just from knowing this information, you listen to a choose-fi episode with millionaire educator. And I think again, it was episode 386 was the one where we talked about a lot of this stuff. We titled it the, uh, the hundred thousand dollar glorified sleepaway camp, which is a little bit much, but I thought it was kind of cute.

41:08I love it. That was great. That reels in the end. Yeah. Sometimes we do the sensational titles. I've been a little more boring lately, so maybe we'll up our game Jonathan style here in 2024. Thanks for listening to Chooseify and for all your support of our mission here. The absolute best way to support Chooseify is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards page at chooseabout.com slash cards. I keep this page constantly updated. So it should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. So, okay. You know, we've touched on a lot of these, these amazing little areas of, of life hacking, but let's again, Emily, go back to like the 30 ,000 foot view.

41:55And Joel said something in an email to me. He said, the hustle of our life never quit until we made it quit. And I think this kind of transitions us into this adventure that you embarked on in the middle of 23. Yeah. So this will take me back to pregnancy with our fourth. And I had just started, I transitioned jobs in 2020, which is not a great time, but from healthcare to education, occupational therapy, So there was a big shift. And then I was like eight months pregnant that following fall. And I just had a really real conversation with Joel about like, you know, we're on this five learning journey.

42:39I'm not sure if somebody were to look at our lives and say, here's what they value, if they would be able to know what we value based on how we were living our lives. So we were, you know, we're both people that like to serve others. However, it felt like we were both getting home at the end of the day with a pretty near empty tank and not giving the best to the people that we cared about the most. So that was 2021. So a year and a half later, I guess. I don't know. Quick math isn't my thing. But at that point, Joel just kind of went to work and thought, how are we going to make this happen? How are we going to help you be able to stay home and focus your energy on our family where, you know we feel like we needed to connect a little bit more that was kind of our why for this year and yeah that's kind of the backstory of it we love to travel we've always loved to travel we've loved to do that with kids and then also like we just felt like something wasn't jiving we kept doing the same thing over and over expecting a different outcome so it was time to make some changes to our lifestyle and those are pretty hard decisions and long conversations over the course of the last couple of years to get us to where we were in August ready to kind of take that leap.

43:51Yeah. And what that leap was, was taking a year off. So there was a lot that went into that conversation and conversations because, you know, I was listening and reading every book and doing all the things that many of us do in the FI community. And I thought, you know, we could get pretty dang close to doing the fire thing in six years is what I thought. But then, you know, this year has really been impactful because it's like the RE part of that. I do, I really feel called to be in the classroom and to work with kids and to coach kids through it. So I don't think I could ever step away from that, but I've been able to, you know, this year we have completely shifted our focus and we're living a pretty, pretty wild life right now.

44:39Yeah, it certainly sounds like it. And Emily, you're just a quote machine. I just wanted to go back to that before the FI learning journey. I thought that was just super cool because that's what it is, right? It never stops. That's one of the fun parts and maybe overwhelming parts about FI is there's always new information. I'm learning new things. Even that episode that I referenced a couple of times with Sean Mulaney on how to take our money out of our accounts early. Like I learned something that was like a total out of left field piece of information that is like an absolute game changer for a certain way to access the 72T, the way to access our money early.

45:16And it was like, wow, that makes a big difference. And now that's a piece of information that I'm going to have forever and talk about on the podcast and refer people to that episode, which is kind of cool. And so, yeah, five learning journey that just really stuck out to me. So Joel, I mean, obviously you guys made a significant change, but like nuts and bolts wise. So like you've kind of alluded to, there's three incomes in essence. So there was your teaching income, Emily's income as a, as an occupational therapist, and then the business income, right? The wrestling camp. So it sounds like the wrestling camp, obviously you're involved in it, but it sounds like it would not fall apart if you took a trip, but maybe you work the timing around that, which I'm actually curious also.

46:00Maybe it was, hey, we're going to leave after this year's wrestling camp and come back before next year's. That might be part of it. So there's that, but also, okay, you have full-time jobs. What do you do? Do you quit? Do you take leaves of absence? How does that work? That's a great area. And to be honest, I teach in a Catholic school. Sabbaticals are virtually unheard of in school settings. There's not a lot. Excuse me, I shouldn't say that. Like in college, you hear that stuff all the time, but in high school is not a lot. So it started with a conversation and I don't even know why, but it was after the talk that Emily had talked and we'd been going back and forth.

46:38And then just one day I just went into my boss and said, Hey, here's what I'm thinking. Would you ever allow this? And then through a series of many, many of these talks and really explaining our why and what we wanted. And as a quote person, you know, I think the most profound one is, you know, my son, Declan, he just turned 11. And, you know, what's that phrase? By age 12, 75 % of your face time with your kids is over, right? Like that alone, like when we started this whole journey, like that is what kind of propelled us to have the courage to say, you know what, this is going to be different, but we're going to do it.

47:13So it started with conversations and really having the courage to ask those things, but nuts and bolts things. In the beginning, they told me that I had to find my own replacement, which I did actually. Yeah. And lots of blessings there. But then in terms of like a finance way, we're shutting down Emily's income, we're shutting down my income. And then you talked about the business thing. If I stepped out of it, it would probably fall apart. But I'm working on those systems and my partner's the same way. If he stepped out, it wouldn't be good. So it's still very much reliant on us, but we are timing it around those, right?

47:48So our last camp was like early July last year, and we left for Cuba in August. So we had a little couple of weeks there to kind of get stuff figured out. But what do we need to do nuts and bolts wise? We need to have a pool of money as an emergency that if something hit the fan that we could go off of. And we had a decent pool of money off to the side. And that's where I think I've alluded to it already, but I automated it. And as you have talked in every episode, just taking the brain out of it, I've automated it. So out of our business account, Emily and I receive$1 ,500 twice a month. And in the beginning, I kind of thought it's about where we're at, around$3 ,000 a month.

48:33But here we are in January and it's been able to maintain our lives. So we had to have a pool of money and we still had our savings goals and all those things. And the fun thing is we've been able to still maintain our savings goals and then live the same lifestyle that we have been because, you know, we really want for nothing, but we just had to have that pool of money. And then if you want to go down the rabbit hole of, of what about insurance? We certainly could go there, but I'll just tell you the answer to that goes back to knowing the rules of the game. Yeah. Well, okay. We're not going to leave people hanging there.

49:03Let's dive into it. Tell me about it. Okay. Well, um, I talked you into it. Yeah. All of the listeners should, uh, just move to Iowa cause it's a great place. Uh, Except, you know, it is minus 20 degrees out. Yeah, I was going to say the Iowa winter might be a little bit. But in terms of, you know, living here, it is a really nice place. And based on the way that we tax optimize, so we can't really pick one thing. It's a whole picture. You know, it's like, what's the one thing you could do to do all this? No, it's all of the things. We're tax optimized with 401ks and HSAs and every other thing that you can think of.

49:36Throw the business in there as well. Even a little rental income that we were able to kind of be tax efficient with. It reduced our taxable income to a level that qualified our kids to be on state health insurance, which I know this is kind of a little bit of a controversial thing. But it's with early retirees. It's very much something that should be in the conversation of like knowing the rules. So we were able to and just to kind of put numbers to this thing, just to show you like how very easily this is. We have a lot of our friends and family members that are really just scraping by, to be completely honest.

50:10And if they just knew the rules, you can take a big portion of your expenses out of it. So, for example, we have something called the Hawkeye Health Insurance for kids in Iowa. And really, the only caveat is that you fall within the taxable income threshold and they don't have other health insurance. Well, the fun part is you can just drop them from your insurance and then utilizing your 401k contributions. contributions, you can make sure that you fall within that taxable income and then they are covered. Right. I mean, that's been a huge blessing for us, especially this year. So with a family of seven, so five kids in Iowa, you can earn one hundred and seventy thousand dollars a year and still qualify for the program.

50:54Like that's a lot of money. That is a whole lot of money. And yeah, like you said, it's knowing the rules. And, you know, listen, like you said, it's somewhat controversial, but we don't make policy. I think like we can help. Obviously, you can talk with your representatives and your senators and you can try to influence policy, but we don't make policy. We obviously we have no bearing on it. So you have to know the rules and you're entitled to certain benefits based on those rules. You shouldn't feel bad about it. And I think it also goes back to helping people. And there are plenty of people out there who don't even realize, like you're saying, that they could get benefit from that in the state of Iowa.

51:31But even just more broadly is understanding like the ACA and subsidies on the exchange and buying health insurance that way. We have friends who they were paying for insurance through their company because that was just what they've always done. They did that predating the ACA. Nobody told them that because they make such a small amount of income, that their premiums would be almost zero. So that was one conversation and that made a massive difference in their budgets and their life really. And that was just one offhanded conversation that we had with them. How many people just don't know? And I think that's, it feels like criminal that, but that's what we're doing here.

52:12We're trying all three of us. We're trying to educate people. Yeah. And I think, you know, so you're talking nuts and bolts. We had to figure out an insurance plan. We had to have a pool of money that was set aside. And then obviously we had to be okay on the work side as well. So each one of those, we said that kind of quickly and offhand a little bit, But each one of those was a dogfight and it went down a rabbit hole for every single one of those. Well, how do you talk to employers? Right. And you have a whole bunch of episodes on that. And you know what? Just start with asking, number one.

52:42And you have that you want to raise, ask for it. And then, again, being introduced to just the rules of the game with insurance and that there's a whole fun, interesting story on how we kind of came to that part. But then the saving the money part, that's just kind of came natural to us. So once we had those boxes checked, it's like, well, why wouldn't we do this? You know, we're 36 years old. We've got five kids. And let's go write a story that people are going to want to hear about. Oh, man, Joel, that was so tell a story. Yeah, that people want to hear and people want to learn about like that.

53:15I mean, you've done that, obviously. I think that the last hour plus has been a testament to that. But it's funny because that feels like the perfect way to stop the episode. but I know we can't because what you've done since August, what your family now of what was six when you embarked and is now seven, I think there's something special that you've done as a family and made these memories. And I'd love to see if we can just kind of jump off there. I'm going to just throw it open-ended to you to just talk about that because I think there's a lot going on here that's important. So I think where we all started here and kind of our story that we said is we finished our camps in early July.

53:53And then we had a date when we were heading to Cuba. We booked flights to Cuba. And a lot of people ask like, well, why Cuba? And our response is usually like, well, why not? But we knew that we were going to leave on August 13th. And that was our date. So there was a whole bunch of like craziness that led up prior to that time leaving. But we put everybody, got everybody ready. We packed our bags and, you know, we're homeschooling the kids. We knew that we were going to be gone for a few months. So we had to take, you know, what we needed to live for those few months, including school. And we were going to start in very impoverished country in Cuba.

54:31And I say that whole packing thing, because my wife, Emily, she is an absolute professional at packing. And that we've been reminded by that. And there's a whole story on that stuff, right? Like there's a, there's a whole technique on all of that, but there was one time we checked in at the airport and this one was a pretty easy trip that we had taken to Mexico. And they're like, okay, you can check your bags. And we're like, nope. So we didn't even have carry-ons. And the gal goes, whoa, you guys are professional, which is kind of fun. No, we just have Emily. Yeah. So the packing thing for me is like the less, I'm going to just throw out another little nugget the less you bring with you the less you have to manage so like the reason for traveling is to create experiences not to like be picking up a bunch of toys like you can do that at home right so like I've gotten really good from even when we just had our oldest and I'd be going to state wrestling tournaments like I learned pretty quickly even going a couple hours from home like the less I bring with the less I have to manage and the more I can focus on creating memories and being with my family and like just really having fun because visual clutter stresses me out.

55:44So that is a skill that I've built through the years. And so, yeah, usually when we travel, we only travel with a personal item per person. And there again, knowing the rules, like a pump's not a personal item for all the mamas listening. And then a diaper bag for lap babies is something that you can bring to. So just little things like that. But then, yeah, this was a whole new adventure thinking ahead. The other piece of that, like traveling for two months, if you know where you're going would have been a little bit easier, but we really only had our flights to Cuba and then the next place. So we were considering climates basically from cold to need winter gear to the beaches in Cuba.

56:23So we had to bring all that for six people and try to keep it to the least amount of checked bags that we could. Yeah. Because it's also just hard to get to shuffle little kids through an airport, you know? So like the less you have to carry through an airport, the better it is too. Maybe I'd give like a 30 ,000 foot view of the trip. And then if, I mean, we could honestly go on any country and talk for a long time. So if something spurs, you can just tell us. Cool. Yeah. That sounds great. I would love to hear it, but hold on. I need to, I got to dial in on this Emily packing ninja thing. Cause people are going to be yelling at me if, if I don't.

56:56So, okay. Just a personal item. So in essence for like, I know when I bring my personal item, it's just like a backpack that I had when I was, when I was a kid. So is there a certain length of trip that once you get over a certain length, you need to have like carry-on luggage? Or do you just plan for, Hey, we can fit four days or I'm making this up obviously, but four days of clothes and a carry-on plus like a, whatever, like a Kindle or something. And, and everybody's, everybody's fine. And if the trip is eight days, then we just know we're going to wash clothes. Like, is that the mindset or how do you think through that?

57:31Yeah. Four is my number. So we take four. Yeah. No, I'm not kidding you. four outfits per person. And then honestly, that doesn't fill a lot of space. So then the kids get to pack what they want with whatever room they have left in their backpack. So yeah, four, and then we do laundry if it's longer than four days. Brilliant. And the kids have to carry their own bag in the airport as well, which is really cute and funny watching that happen too. That's really cool. As a dad who has rolled multiple suitcases through the airport at the same time. That appeals to me on a significant level. And Emily, I love the visual clutter stresses me out thing also because that appeals to me significantly.

58:15I've always called it, I want an oasis. I just want to not see clutter anywhere. It makes me psychologically satisfied and just content on a deep level that I can't even describe. So yeah, I definitely feel you So, okay. So we're looking at four days now. Do you ever consider on like a longer trip where, all right, we can't know where we're possibly going to go. Is it, Hey, look, it's, you know, nowadays it's 2024. We can pretty much buy things in countries. Like, is that another aspect of it? Yeah, definitely. That was something that stressed me out early on with traveling with kids is like, well, what if we need this?

58:53What if we need that? And Cuba was a unique challenge because you can't just get things that you need or want like you can in other places that basically before cubo it was like well there's going to be a target there's going to be you know we've had to go to pharmacies we have to call you know whatever medicine to a pharmacy wherever we're traveling so we've been through all that but we hadn't yet been through a situation where it's like well i don't think we're going to be able to access these things that we normally could buy so what could we possibly like what are the things we might need took a little more forethought with that one but But yeah, all in all, I mean, you can pretty much get what you need where you're going.

59:30Yeah. If you forget something, we've all been in that position where you forget something and you just have to go without or get it when you get there. Yeah, that's been a big shift for me too. Yeah, like the compulsive packer of I need to bring every single thing possible. But I mean, listen, I know you guys went to London. That was a recent trip for me. I'm like, I'm going to a major metropolitan city that has everything in the world, more than my little Richmond, Virginia, right? So like, what am I worried about? So anyway, Joel, let's go back to that 30 ,000 foot view. So yeah, let's talk about the trip.

1:00:02Okay. So we started off in Cuba and because Cuba is not in the international banking system, we knew we had to have a flight somewhere else. So that was the extent of our planning though. And that was going to be to England. So we spent a couple of weeks in Cuba, had some amazing experiences. We want to preface this whole thing is it wasn't a vacation. We didn't go for a vacation. We were looking for experiences for our kids, new situations that they wouldn't have come across. So in a lot of these locations, they would be kind of the last big thing was it just so happened that we did a number of meals with local families, right?

1:00:38So we were invited to a Cuban family's home. They fed us. Our kids got to see how Cuban people actually live, what that looks like. Very eye-opening with some really profound conversations with our littles from that. So from Cuba, we went to England and got to do the London thing in England. From there, we went to Scotland. We took a train. We went to the highlands. Yeah, rented a car, which was terrifying. The most terrifying. I drove throughout Scotland too. I will never forget that. Oh my goodness. And we have a bunch of goofy stuff that happened there. But then from Scotland, we were in Scotland at a hostel.

1:01:15And we didn't have anywhere to go the next day. But we knew we were done with Scotland. like we were out of there. Emily took the kids and I couldn't even pronounce it, but due to Point.me and Travel Hacking, we came across Greece and Thessaloniki, which is the number two city. And I picked that up on All the Hacks, which I know you're friends with. I was like, check out the number two city. So we went to Thessaloniki in Greece, spent eight or nine days there. And then from Greece, we went to Turkey, Istanbul. Got another continent out of it because we took a boat to Asia, which was a lot of fun.

1:01:55And then talking to people in a laundromat, we stumbled across Jordan. And we flew to Amman, Jordan and just had incredible experiences and were invited into family's homes in Jordan. I got to go to a wrestling practice in Jordan, which was phenomenal. Yeah. So that's kind of the high level stuff. I want to drill down on this getting invited to family's homes. and going to a wrestling practice. Like those sound like offhand things like, oh, no big deal. Maybe we just went to a family's home. But I mean, I've traveled a lot. Like I might not be the most outgoing person in the world. So maybe it's self-selecting here, but like I've never gotten invited to anybody's house.

1:02:34I couldn't even imagine getting invited to someone's house. Like how do you swing that? You travel with an extrovert. I need my very own Joel. I think a little bit of it was, I mean, courage too. Like, honestly, we were at a in Cuba, we were at this inflatables park with the kids and this really nice family just came up and started talking to us in Spanish as much as we could because neither of us are fluent. So, yeah. And then they invited us and we just said yes. And then we were visiting the Coliseum in Amman and somebody saw Joel's ears and a shirt. I was like, hey, you're a wrestler and started talking to him that way.

1:03:15And it just kind of went from there. I think that was probably the biggest takeaway from us from this experience or from that two months and really since we've been home is that people are just really good. They're just beautiful people all over the world. So, yeah. But then being a little brave and saying, yeah, we can go to essentially a stranger's home and accept that invitation and be humble and allow them to show us their culture. Yeah. And we got introduced to, we have a Christian family and we went to Muslim territory there. And that was just a really unique, eye-opening experience for our kids to be able to interact with people from a much different world than what we were at.

1:03:57And then just to see just how welcoming and gracious they were. And really a lot of the preconceived notions just completely shut down there. We were welcomed every step of the way. And to kind of add evidence to that. We were in a desert in Jordan, a hundred miles from anything, camping with a Bedouin tribe. And Emily thought she was going into preterm labor. So she was at that point 34 weeks along. We still had Egypt on our list. Those were bought and paid for tickets already, but she thought she was going into preterm labor. So we were really taken care of by the Bedouin tribe that we were with.

1:04:36But the group of friends that we had met that I went and wrestled with, they're like, my mom will come and take care of you. Like, here are the doctors that you can feel like. I mean, it was a red carpet that was rolled up. Yeah. We did not feel at any time like we were alone. We had a community that we could rely on and it was just such a neat experience. That's amazing. I mean, I think that's for people who travel, that's like the universal experiences. Like it's remarkable how good people are and how much common ground we have. And it's hard to travel the world and come back closed-minded. It just is, right?

1:05:13You know, and it was just so fascinating for us to give to our kids this gift of, you know, what their complaints are or what their, you know, conceived problems in their life are, but then to actually live and see, well, you know what, this boy in Cuba, he's got literally two toys that he's playing with and he's so happy and he was playing with you and everything was great. And then, you know, when we're in Jordan and we went into that family's home and just how welcomed. And when we say we went to Jordan, it was kind of a spur of the moment deal that we ended up at this family's home. And Ahmad, his mom, you should have seen the spread that they prepared for us.

1:05:53And this is at like 10 o 'clock at night we were eating, but it was full on, like you will be taken care of and protected in our home. Yeah. So it was really neat. It was really need. And what an incredible, incredible experience. Yeah. I mean, to be able to give that to your kids, to have this amazing adventure as a family, this is like a tale of action for the ages. I mean, it's like you said at the outset, like we are doing everything that we talk about. Your family is doing everything we talk about here in the fight community. And it's just an amazing thing. I just, I really want to thank you guys for coming on the show, for sharing your story.

1:06:29I suspect this is the first of maybe a couple of future episodes. I feel like, Joel, I'm going to go back and listen. And every time you said, oh, there's more to that story, dot, dot, dot, I think we're going to have to fill in the blanks at some point. But I think this was an amazing, amazing introduction. So just what an amazing family. Thank you guys so much for coming on. Brad, we want to thank you and Mina from the bottom of our hearts, the work that you do and how it's impacted the way that we're living and what we're doing. Really, this is kind of like a surreal thing to even be talking to you.

1:07:02Yeah. Thanks, Brad, for having us on. There is more that I want to say, but I'm a thinker, so I'll probably think of it in like a half an hour. All right. Well, to be continued. I think that's the perfect way to leave it. And again, wonderful to meet you. Congratulations. This is just truly remarkable. So until next time, to the audience. Thank you for being here. And this is just yet another example of the power of five, the superpower of financial independence. Thank you for being here. And thank you most importantly for taking action to make your lives better. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community.

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