489 | Freedom Before FIRE | Trip of a Lifestyle

25:39That's amazing. So is your story, if you had to encapsulate it, obviously there's so many layers, but is one of the driving forces just the fact that you learned how to live very inexpensively? Is that like one of the bedrock principles? The single most important contributor to our financial success was learning to live happily on dramatically less money than our peers. Yeah, I would say the moment that we kind of noticed that was right after college graduation. We had moved to California for Steven to go to grad school. And he was bringing in a stipend of like, I think about$20 ,000,$22 ,000 a year.

26:23And I took a full-time job as a receptionist. So I wasn't really making super great money. But for us to be both bringing in real incomes now, low but real, consistent, we were just out of college. We were now living on another campus now for Steven to go to grad school. And we were just saving a lot of money. Incidentally, money was piling up in our accounts because we were just still living that college lifestyle. of, you know, I think we literally moved all of our old college furniture to this new place. Like we were just doing the same thing of what was fine two months ago for us. And even now we're like in this new place, it was easy to just keep living the way that we love to live.

27:08I mean, we would go on bike rides down to the beach, like we would do fun stuff and it just wasn't costing us. And that's actually how we got into investing is because we had all this money kind piling up in our accounts. And we were like, what do we do with this? I don't need to really spend it. I'm pretty happy as is. Is there something else we could do with this money? And that's how we discovered investing and all that. Yeah. Really, from the beginning, it was just we lived frugally. We lived, like Lauren said, kind of like college students because we were straight out of college. And so we never really had to try super hard to save money.

27:41We were just sort of naturally that way. And when we got jobs, it was like, oh, this money is just starting to pile up here. Like, what do we do with this? And yes, started down the investing path and importantly, did not increase our expenses from there significantly for a really long time. And even still to this day, our expenses are pretty low compared to American middle class, I guess. Yeah, I definitely want to talk about your investment strategy. And we can get to what your expenses are now. But just real quick, what do you think it was about you two that you were okay spending less than all your friends and peers?

28:16Because you take it as a given that that's like, okay, this was our decision. It was just very obvious. And it's funny because I live the same way in my own head. It's like, hey, this is clear cut. This is how I'm doing it. But it's not so clear cut. Let's be straight. Most of your friends needed to prove how adult they were. Right. So they got fancy cars or I'm thinking back to myself, like fancy cars or they needed to live in an apartment by themselves. Like, how did you guys not succumb to any type of lifestyle inflation when you're 22, 23 years old? And with the stipend and Lauren's salary, you're making, I don't know, somewhere around 50 grand, I would imagine.

28:54So I'm 40 to 50 grand. How do you not succumb to that? Honestly, I think it was kind of a bunch of factors combined. I mean, one thing about both of us is that we legitimately just enjoy stuff that doesn't cost a lot of money. I mean, we're both like pretty outdoorsy. We like going on bike rides and hikes and stuff like that. Neither one of us has ever been like a big drinker, which just kind of automatically saves you a lot of money incidentally. And then for sure, once we actually discovered the idea of like investing, turning your money into more money, financial independence, early retirement, that was definitely a motivator to go like even harder with it to say like, hey, there's actually a point to all the extra money that you accumulate, right?

29:36Because it's one thing to incidentally be piling up money. It's another thing to have a purpose for that money and to say, wow, if we accumulate enough of this, we can be free from mandatory work for the rest of our lives. That's pretty crazy. And so that led us to do things like, you know, keep from buying a brand new car, which is like a default thing to do, right? Why would you do that when you're already happy with the level of car that's$5 ,000 or less or something like that? That was definitely a huge motivator. Yeah. And I would say for me, I mean, I come from like a much more frugal background to begin with.

30:09I mean, I paid my own way through college. I had a partial scholarship and then, you know, worked weighted tables and worked in my field to cover the rest. And so I think I was just kind of used to kind of taking care of myself in some respects and knowing that, you know, I needed to have the money available for emergencies. I mean, I remember being in college and being like, all right, if I were to break my arm or something, how would I deal with that? And like, I needed to have some savings, you know, and I don't know that a lot of people are thinking like worst case scenarios, but I do think sometimes it helps to visualize like, all right, what would happen if for good and bad things, I think like kind of that visualization exercise is important.

30:47And so, So yeah, I would say that it was kind of just natural. We had been living together and keeping our expenses low. We were like in one bedroom apartments up until we bought our first home. Just again, to kind of save money, it was cheaper that way. We shared one car, it was cheaper that way too. Yeah, Lauren was definitely like frugal by necessity for a little while before we kind of teamed up financially. So I think it was really natural for her. Gotcha. Yeah, and I love Lauren how you said until we bought our first home as if it was this crazy purchase. But if I recollect right, It was a$71 ,000 house in Gainesville, Florida, right?

31:20Yes. But it seemed, I mean, it was crazy. I feel like, you know. That was half our money at the time. It was half of our available funds. Did you buy it in cash? Yes. Really? Yeah. So it was really weird to like have this check that was written, you know, I think the bank wrote it, right? It was like a whole, and I was like, that's the biggest check I've ever seen. And yeah, I mean, that was our home. It was a 3-2 condo in Gainesville, and that was our home for five or six years. And that's also the place we rented out when we went on our national parks trip. And then later when we bought the home that we're in now, we have rented that place out since then.

31:58Yeah, we still have it as our only rental property, which we don't really have any intention of getting any deeper into real estate investing. It's just like a little too much effort, too high effort for us. But we got that one property. It's done really well for us. Nice. Yeah, I'm in the same boat. It sounds good in theory, but it's just a little too many touch points for my liking. But yeah, that's$71 ,000 purchase price. I can imagine your, I don't know what your rental income is per month, but I would imagine it's somewhere in the vicinity of that 1 % or thereabouts, right? Yeah. So the place right now rents for$17.80 a month.

32:31We have an awesome tenant who's never missed a payment and has been with us for three or four, three years now, I think. This is like the fourth year, I think. I think we're in the fourth year. and on top of that, the place is worth probably$150 ,000 to$160 ,000 now and our maintenance costs have been really low on it. Seriously, we've done really well with that investment. But even still, I know that a lot of that's good luck and so we don't want to go deeper and deeper into the real estate thing. I think it just accumulates little burdens on you as you go. We're happy with the one rental property.

33:04Yeah. Our approach with that was also just like, We bought that place with the intention of if we ever needed to get rid of it, it probably would be easy to offload because whether it's rented out or selling it, it wasn't like our specific dream home. It was like a good rate, good number, good size in a good area. I mean, it's two miles from the University of Florida campus and like three miles from downtown. So it was pretty well positioned to become a rental property if we wanted it to. And we figured if we needed to, we would dip our toes into that. But yeah, after having our toes in there for the last few years, I'm good.

33:44We'll keep the toes in, not get any deeper. I like it. So Steven, you said a couple of minutes ago, there's a point to all the money we're accumulating. And I think this really is one of those aha moments for people when they find FI is it's not just, even for people like us, the three of us, it sounds like our natural savers. You know, we're pretty fortunate, but similar to you guys at the beginning, before I found FI, it was just, all right, I'm saving this money just for the sheer hell of it. In essence, like I did, there was no North star. And I think having that 4 % rule or 4 % rule of thumb, as we call it, because, you know, we're not going to get into the arguments of, is it 3.25 %?

34:23Is it, because it doesn't matter, right? Like it gives you that North star for something to shoot for. And there's a point, like you said, to that money you're accumulating. And I think that's critical. But in order for that money to grow and compound, there has to be some type of investment strategy, right? So you clearly weren't just sitting with this under your mattress somewhere, though, I guess you did eventually plunk down half your money on this incredible investment in the real estate in Gainesville. But kind of jokes aside, what is your investment strategy? Is it the typical kind of FI index fund?

34:57Is that the overarching principle? Or talk me through what you guys do with your money. Yeah, I mean, just to bounce off what you were saying there with the 4 % as like a North Star, but not necessarily like it doesn't really matter. Is it three or four or 5 % or whatever? So true. I mean, I will just mention right now, we've never drawn down our portfolio, even after being like, quote, unquote, retired for the last four years or so and doing all these vacations and stuff. you kind of find that like you lose sight of a specific money goal over time because you learn that if you're frugal and if you're good at making money in creative ways that are fun and don't take a lot of work input, you know, the 4 % rule starts to not matter pretty soon for most people, I think.

35:39But regarding our investment portfolio, I mean, we have our primary residence we're sitting in right now. We live next to the beach now just because that's where we want to live, not tied down to any specific place for a job anymore, anything like that. We paid cash for this place as well. We have that rental property that we talked about. And then, yeah, really the rest of our net worth is pretty much invested in just broad stock and bond market index funds. So VTI, VXUS, and BND are the big ones in the portfolio. Gotcha. Yeah, those are certainly ticker symbols that a lot of people will recognize here clearly.

36:15And I think it's cool that you mentioned VTI, because I think in the FI community, VTSAX almost became like a meme on some levels, like it was VTSAX or nothing. And I think what we're trying to get across, and obviously we talked about VTSAX hundreds of times on Choose A Vi, so we're partially culpable here, but is that VTI is just the ETF version of VTSAX. And I think a lot of people, so because again, VTSAX is this meme. So people open up an account at Fidelity or Schwab and they're like, oh, I have to get VTSAX. And then they wind up getting hit with this crazy fee to buy it there, which is like the exact opposite of what I want people to do.

36:58And the cool thing is VTI is essentially the exact same thing. And you can purchase it at Vanguard, obviously, Fidelity, Schwab, et cetera. and you should pay at least at those three brokerage houses a zero dollar commission. So this is kind of a PSA to everybody listening, obviously not to you guys because you know this already, but it's so important. And I'm trying to get VTI to kind of take over here instead of VTSAX just because there's so much more flexibility. Yeah, honestly, I think that's great advice. ETFs in general are a little more flexible and trade freely at more brokerages than mutual funds do.

37:34But really, I mean, I would go even a step further than what you said. There's probably 20 mutual funds and ETFs that are virtually identical in every way to VTSAX. So just buy one that doesn't have a commission at your brokerage and that has ultra low fees and the same holdings and you're buying the same thing. Wholeheartedly agree. And yeah, so everyone should look when they make a purchase. Are there commissions or just some unexplained fee that you just have never seen before? I had somebody write me an email that said they got hit with a$75 fee every single time they invested, again, in VTSAX at another brokerage house.

38:11And they were only investing like$150 weekly. So it was literally 50 % of the money they were putting in. So luckily, they were able to rectify that pretty quickly. But yeah, look for that. And like you said, the other fee is that expense ratio. So you will not see that when you check out to purchase, but that's more on the the detail page for that particular fund or ETF in that case. Yeah. And I mean, not to get us too deep in the weeds here, but I think this is a useful tip for people who may be listening and kind of like not knowing what we're talking about or just picking one of these out of the hat.

38:44Another thing to look out for is if you are investing small dollar amounts, like you said, you know, someone's investing 50 or a hundred dollars a week or something like that, and they're doing it in smaller amounts, you might look at the share price of these funds and be a little scared. I think VTI is trading around like$250 a share right now. Some brokerages will let you split that into partial shares. Some won't. And so if you do feel the need to invest in smaller dollar amounts, there's multiple ways to do that. You can go to a brokerage that offers partial shares of ETFs, or you can buy the mutual fund version that's free to buy, commission free to buy at your brokerage.

39:22And you can denominate that in dollars instead of shares and they will split it up for you. So there's a lot of options. And it's like you said, really, the bottom line here is make sure you're not paying a commission. There's a way to do it without it, no matter what your situation is. Yeah, love that. Absolutely love it. And right. The kind of last word on that is just try to stay away from buying another brokerage firm's mutual fund at this other brokerage house. I think that's kind of like one of those just like, if you remember nothing else, just remember that because almost invariably, there's going to be a significant fee from that.

39:54So yeah, I know that was kind of like a little sidebar, but that was so important because I think people really crave this like precise information. So you guys do that you said BND and what was the third one? VXUS, which is a total international stock market index fund. So it's like the international version sort of VTI. Gotcha. So total international total bond market. Do you have like a general split? Like how do you think about it in terms of like a holistic portfolio, maybe new money that goes in? Is it to like kind of rebalance to get to a certain amount? Does it just go in in certain X percentage?

40:32How do you think about that? Yeah, to be honest with you, best practice is to decide on an asset allocation that is based on your risk tolerance. So decide on a stock and bond split and a certain amount of cash that you want to hold maybe in a savings account based on your personal risk tolerance. And no one can tell you what's right for that except for you. It needs to be based on the amount of risk you want to take. Stocks are going to be riskier than bonds when we're talking about whole market funds like this, right? So you got to decide on that split for yourself and then keep consistent with that no matter what the market is doing because you chose it for a reason and it's because it's the amount of risk that you are comfortable with.

41:10Now, as for us, are we really careful about keeping our asset allocation, the exact percentage that we decided on? No, not really. You know, we like to keep, I don't know, somewhere between like 60 to 80 % of our funds in risky assets, like stock market index funds and real estate, and then the rest in like bonds and cash and a high yield savings account. That's what makes us feel safe. You know, we should probably nail down exact numbers that we're sticking to. But the rebalancing that we do isn't like a careful once per year thing. It's like, it's exactly what you said. We sweep just extra money from, you know, side hustles and part-time freelance work and our rent that comes in from our condo, all those sources.

41:56We sweep all that extra money into whichever asset bucket seems like it's kind of getting out of balance, out of whack with the rest. And we let them be approximately what we've set out. Also, I wanted to note that like in terms of deciding how much money to invest, because I think for a lot of people who are in the accumulation phase who are still like pre-fi, that's a big question, right? Like how much money should I be investing? We had kind of a unique strategy, I think, for that along the way too. So we called it the sweep away method. And also we've called it pay yourself last, which is kind of the opposite of pay yourself first.

42:30So a lot of people say you should decide on an amount you want to invest to meet your goals and then make sure you invest that amount each month or each week or however often it is. And then, you know, you can do what you want with the rest. And this is supposed to make you feel like freer in some way. As we mentioned before, we kind of came from like a naturally frugal place where we really had no desire to like spend more money. That just like wasn't a goal of ours that's on the list. Right. So we were always spending automatically way less than we needed to live during our accumulation phase.

43:04So our strategy was spend as little as we need to, to be happy, and then sweep 100 % of the excess, whatever number that may be, be happy with that, into, you know, first high yield savings account for an emergency fund, then pay off all your debt, which we didn't have any, and then the rest into those investments. So letting your spending dictate how much you save rather than the other way around, which is more often recommended, right? But that really only works if you have a good handle on your spending in the first place. Yeah, I was going to add that the mindset is really key there. For us, we really bought into the idea that the saving was important and that the dollars that we weren't buying a new car with was going somewhere else more valuable to us, which was investing for our future, that that meant something.

43:58I think that that's really important and you do have to buy into that idea that it's worth it because otherwise, yeah, you're going to be tempted to like spend more money. But I think if you find out that you don't need to spend more money to be happy, it's easier and it might be a harder process to start with. But I feel like it's really necessary to get your mindset right for doing so much saving. There also turned out to be a huge mathematical benefit in the long run for us because of our mindset, because we realized that we didn't need to spend more money to be happy. Pay yourself last actually made us way richer than pay yourself first would have.

44:36And the reason why is because if we had decided early on, let's say we had been really aggressive in the eyes of like most people and said, we're going to save 50 % of our income, right? And we're going to make sure we save 50 % before we spend a dollar and then we'll spend the rest carefree. We would have retired or reach financial independence dramatically later than we actually did. Because by doing pay yourself last, we actually realized, oh, we really only need to spend like 20 % of our income to be happy, especially when we reach those higher paying jobs. At one point, we were saving as much as 90 % for a brief period.

45:10And we never would have done that if we were paying ourselves first, we would have just saved our 50%, patted ourselves on the back, moved on with our day, and we would have less money today as a result. Yeah, that's remarkable. It is amazing. how the psychology works on all of this. Right. And I think like Lauren said, it's going somewhere more valuable and it's worth it. And I think that was your guiding light here. And it's funny because I think very similarly to you guys, my whole MO when it comes to money is I have a hundred percent savings rate and then there's some necessary spending and then all the rest of it just gets swept into investments.

45:47So it's, it's working. I guess you guys call it these other ways, the sweep away method, pay yourself last. That is exactly how I've always worked. I just think about it as for some weird reason, it's always been, I have a hundred percent savings rate. I spent some money, whatever's left, that's my savings rate. But to your point, I think again, with the psychology being so important, right? So I think for a lot of people who maybe don't have the natural inclination to save, like I talked to somebody who was in college actually at the economy conference that I just went to. And I basically said, you're guaranteed essentially to succeed in life.

46:23Like barring a zombie apocalypse, you're guaranteed if when you get out of college, you save 50 % of your income, put it in low cost ETFs, and then you can spend every other dollar and gleefully do it. And I think for most people, that's going to be the right advice. But in your case, like you said, that would have actually lowered your savings rate had you done it the right because you would have felt, oh, I have all this money I'm supposed to spend it. And in your case, you had the 80, 90 % savings rate at some point. Yeah, everything you said is true. And also, you can do better if you want to.

46:56If you want to, exactly. It's important to note too that for us, it was also encouraging because our spending was low and we knew that we were likely to keep it fairly low over time. That also lowered that goal that we had to reach. A lot of people set this really huge way beyond their 4 % rule of thumb spending just because they want to, or they think that they need that, or that they want to spend that much. But if you do have low spending, it lowers that goal and you can start making these drastic choices sooner. I mean, it's kind of a double-edged sword in a way, having that lower spending as you get to save more.

47:32And that goal that you're saving toward doesn't have to be so high and you can start feeling freer sooner. And that's really what happened to us those early years when we had seven years of our expenses saved up in just two years. And that's what led us to be able to feel comfortable piecing off to Hawaii for six months. That was really part of it for us. And I would say another huge part of the mindset was tracking our net worth. We tracked our net worth every single month and it felt like a game. We were like, oh, how much did we save this month? How much closer are we to our goal this month?

48:04When Steven was setting up the spreadsheet for us. I was like, I kind of want it to be like those fundraiser thermometers where we're like filling it in over time and we see it growing. And he was like, all right, I can do a bar graph. And I was like, okay, fine. But seeing that progress and knowing we're working on this together, it's you and me both accomplishing, chipping away at this goal and then going and doing something fun to celebrate when we need to was really important, I think, to the mindset. That Hawaii trip was like total proof of concept that retirement, like early retirement would work, I feel like.

48:41And that you don't have to wait until you are fully retired and financially independent to have fun. It should be fun the whole time or else you're doing it wrong, right? You should be spending an amount of money that you need to spend to be happy and live a fun life. It just turns out that that number is a lot lower than most people think it is. Man, that's a quote for the ages. it should be fun the whole time or you're doing it wrong. And that's like emblazoned that on t-shirts or something, right? For the fight community. Because really so many people sadly think this is a life of deprivation or, oh, I'm saving, I'm putting off for another day.

49:16And like, you guys are arguing the exact opposite, which is you can build this remarkable life that doesn't cost that much. And that affords you the flexibility to do all these incredible things. And I mean, again, going back to this, this graph of the early retirement era, it looks like you guys hit a remarkable milestone in 2023 at some point in terms of net worth. And I guess the cool thing is this is not just a one way journey, right? Like you can, like we're talking about, it's about flexibility. It's about enjoying your life. It's about experimenting. It's about travel and whatever it may be.

49:53And sometimes that also means, hey, I have the flexibility to un-retire, if you will. And that's maybe the season of life you're in right now. But it's also, it can be for a short time. It doesn't have to be forever. You can succeed wildly with your net worth, with lowering your expenses, with buying two houses in cash and still go back to work because you want to on your terms. And Stephen, it sounds like that's where you guys are now. Yeah. So to be clear, we've been effectively on vacation for like four straight years now in our quote unquote early retirement era. But recently, last summer, a friend and former co-worker of mine and actually now current co-worker of mine kind of on a beach walk at our house here, he convinced us, he hyped us up that this business idea that we had been talking about for a long time was a really good idea and we should give it a shot.

50:48and so we just pulled the trigger and we did it and so you know we've both been working on it Lauren has maintained a little bit more of her retirement than I have I've been like pretty full-time working for myself for the last I don't know seven or eight months now but like you said it has been on my own terms and it's been a project that I wanted to do and I feel like wow like this is a dream I get to pursue now and I get to start this business and say to myself if the business is a complete failure, which let's be real, a lot of new businesses end up failing. I mean, that's just facts of life.

51:23That's okay. It doesn't matter. I don't need the money to live at this point in my life. And so you get to do things in early retirement, in financial independence that other people have to do just clenching their teeth with stress about, right? Like starting a business. And it's given us a lot of flexibility in setting up the business in exactly the way that we want it to. So I like to say that in this business, we are only swinging at pitches that we want to hit. Whereas a lot of times when you're starting to do a business, it's like you're chasing every dollar that you can possibly chase because you have to become profitable.

52:00You have to pay your bills. And so it's been really cool un-retiring for a period of time now with this new lease on like what is work? What is business? and again, that background, that cushion of money that we built up just kind of the old fashioned way, that's what made this all possible. Yeah, I don't think we would have been as comfortable taking the risk of entrepreneurship so fully if we were still like dependent on that income. I mean, we just worked our regular jobs to save the money that we've saved so far. And I do think that that has given us a much calmer approach to entrepreneurship.

52:37It feels a lot less risky. And as Stephen put it, yeah, we can pick and choose the things that we want to do. It's also allowed us to approach the business from this perspective of how do we make it not be a job for us in the future? How do we set this up to become a passive income stream so that when we are tired of doing this or we do want to take a break, we can do it. Because a lot of times when you're a small business owner, you don't get the luxury of taking a month off or two months off or six months off. Yeah, that's exactly what I was talking about when I was talking about swinging at the pitches we want to hit.

53:09We're going after marketing strategies that can become automated over time. And if they don't work, you know, that's fine. It is what it is. But if they do work, they set us up for like a turnkey type of business that just runs itself. And so there's basically like an end in sight for the period of extreme work. This is also a business where we have to build up a huge content library. So I'm like recording a ton of videos and making a bunch of study guides as a college tutoring platform. And so all of that work can be front loaded. And once it's done, it's done. So we're setting ourselves up for like a fully automated business and we're not paying any attention to what we can do in the meantime to like ring the cash register.

53:56We don't really care. We don't really need the money in the meantime. Yeah, I love the concept of fat pitches. It reminds me of Mr. Buffett and Munger. right? Where essentially they sit and read all day and people come to them with pitches all the time. And I think most of it just ends up in the quote too hard pile, right? And okay, we don't have to swing at every pitch. Like you're saying most small business owners, especially at the beginning, they're working themselves ragged, right? They're working 80 hours a week, trying to scrimp and save every penny, but also earn, just eke out every single penny.

54:29And you're starting from a completely different, really starting point of, as I say, like if money wasn't a factor, what would I do? And that enabled you to make this choice to even go into the business in the first place. Yeah. I highly recommend retire first, then start a business. It's a totally different ballgame. That's great. That's really great. Any, uh, like high level overview of like, what is the business? I, um, yeah, obviously we're not, uh, you've got out of your way not to talk about it. So you're not hawking it in any way, but like what's it all about? Hey, I'll take any opportunity I can to talk about it, but the business is called CramBetter.

55:02It's CramBetter.com. It's a college tutoring platform. So basically we give study guides that you fill in as you watch videos about topics like physics, chemistry, calculus, all those like hard math and science classes. And so we're helping students at different colleges and universities just prepare for their exams and get better grades in less time. We're young and hip tutors that crack jokes and stuff and make these subjects not completely miserable to learn. Yeah. At larger universities, these classes are typically huge lecture halls, 200, 500 students in a single classroom. And it's really hard to learn that way.

55:43I mean, that was my experience. When I was in college, I had to drop calculus and I think I got a pretty low grade in chemistry and then I switched majors. But it's hard. I mean, even when you're a good student and even when you want to do well, sometimes it's really hard because those big auditoriums just aren't conducive to the kind of learning that sometimes you need for those subjects. That's very cool. Steven, we're going to test my memory here. I know you were a tutor in the past and I think you were going for like a PhD in particle physics or some such. So you obviously have like a pretty significant math background.

56:17So this seems like a natural for you. Yeah, my background's all in physics. I was doing a PhD in particle physics, and then I ended up becoming a high school teacher in physics and then a private tutor for university level physics for many years. That's very cool. Yeah, so I like this. So it's crammed better essentially for very specific college courses. So this is not like every college course that exists. It sounds very math and science oriented and very specific, right? Yeah, it's like Lauren pointed out, We're targeting those classes that are traditionally a the hardest for students. Weed out classes for like pre-med.

56:52Like organic chemistry or something like that. I'm thinking. Yeah, exactly. So pre-med students and engineering students mainly. And we're targeting those ones that are traditionally taught in like a mega auditorium setting where you have the hardest time learning or getting any kind of individual attention. So using Cranbetter feels a little bit more like having a private tutor, but at a level that's way more affordable. It's only$40 per month. Whereas private tutors, I mean, an entry level private tutor would cost you$40 for an hour of time. And some of them are$200 an hour. Yeah. And don't ask Stephen what his rate was when he was.

57:28That's awesome. Not super affordable. Yeah. And I love how there's an end to this, right? Like it is really a season and it's this mini on retirement. It's not, Hey, I'm doing this forever. I'm going to work 40 hour weeks for the next 10 years when I'm already fi though that's fine frankly if you went in with eyes wide open right and and this is not the anti-work show or community by any means no uh my perspective on this business has been that it's an opportunity to take a lifetime of learning that I've done about how to be a good physics tutor and do my very best work that I've ever done for one like really hard year while I'm building up the content library for this business.

58:14Once that part is over, it's mostly just marketing and like curation of those materials for people. And so the business is like, it's this one year of unretirement, this mini unretirement. And then from then on out, theoretically, it should be a pretty passive income stream and just like a fun little side project to do during our retirement. Yeah, guys, this is really great. What a wonderful episode. It's a great to catch up with both of you. It's so neat to see, to see this entire journey and to see how really the five principles have been a through line throughout your entire, I mean, fairly abbreviated.

58:50We're talking 10 or 11 years at this point, maybe 12 at the absolute most. And here you are. And yeah, your story just has a little bit of everything. So super cool. Lauren, where, so we mentioned Crambetter. Is it so fill in the blanks, the exact URL and then where else can people reach it? Yeah. So the new business is crambetter.com. And then to check out all of our financial details, all of our travel hacks, travel tips, our asset portfolio, all that good stuff is on our blog, tripofalifestyle.com. And you can also follow us at tripofalifestyle on TikTok, Instagram, Facebook, YouTube. I mean, we're on all the platforms.

59:29very cool all right thank you again for being here i really appreciate it thank you thanks for having us thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the choose if i 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 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.

1:00:03And 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 crowdsource 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.

1:00:41Chooseify 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. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.

1:01:19Thank you.