511 | Take the Next Step | Ginger Roundup

25:03And are you at five right now? For all the people listening says, what percentage of them are at five? It's probably a very, very small. But does that mean you should only focus on the negative between here and that exact five number? No. Think about all those dozens or hundreds of positive changes you've made in your life that have compounded to get you to the point where you are today. Because frankly, all of your neighbors and friends who have essentially made none of these changes, most likely, are still in the same spot they were X number of years ago. And they're still gonna be in the same spot Y number of years in the future.

25:39Whereas you are essentially guaranteed on this path to FI. And that's what's so cool about FI is it's this little win after little win and they just compound into something spectacular. 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 chooseify.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. Okay. I love that. I think this is a nice bridge to a more logistical question about early retirement.

26:20So I was really interested in, you were talking to Rachel a couple weeks back, and she said something that sounded so hopeful to me, where she said people really overestimate the amount of taxes that they're going to be paying in retirement, right? You know, and she was talking about how the stakes are so high here, because that means that you're actually working longer than you really need to be working. So I'm getting all excited. yes, I'm in this like group of normal people who does the things that normal people do. I am also overestimating because I was doing exactly what she said, where she said, they think about, okay, here's going to be my income.

27:00And here's kind of my tax bracket, the end, right? That's what I do. So then I started thinking about, okay, well, why, why would it be so much less? And I feel like I am missing something. So I wanted you to fill in the gap. So here's all I've come up with. Okay. I know that there is something about, you might be in a lower tax bracket because you might be spending less. And even some of the stuff around like Vicki Robinson's thing about how you're actually paying to work, I can really get behind understanding that my expenses are going to be less in retirement for a couple of really good reasons.

27:37So, okay, maybe that tax bracket will be lower or slightly lower. Okay. I also get that long-term capital gains, if we're talking about like a brokerage account, the taxes on those are way better than I understood even a year ago. That in fact, you can pull quite a bit as a married couple before you're going to get taxed on those gains. So I get that depending how big that bucket is, that that is something to think about. And then of course, I also get that depending on how much you have in a Roth account, that that can also be a factor. So I have some other questions, but when I think about those things, like those are all real, but I don't see that information as leading to like, gosh, I'm really overestimating what my taxes are going to be.

28:27Do you think I'm missing something here? Yeah, it's a good question. So you just ticked off at least three major things that I was all just nodding along with, and those are some of the main items. But at its essence, I think it's more like a holistic thing where we're all, well, first off, let's even take another step back and say, I think most people think and believe that they pay significantly more in federal tax than they actually do. I think most people are frankly kidding themselves when they think they're taxed high heavens and blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. I think that's just objectively false.

29:08It's an emotion that is rooted in a lot of things and it's not generally rooted in reality, especially for people making, I don't know, under$150 ,000 as a, let's say, married couple. Just objectively, if you actually look at your numbers, they're shockingly small for what you suspect. And I'm just talking in generalities here, but I think just like anything in FI, it's actually understanding what am I actually paying today, right? So to have a starting point, which I think is essential. And I'll just jump in here and say, to clarify for people who are listening, I think what you're talking about is your effective tax rate versus what you're seeing as the marginal tax rate.

29:54Yes. Yes. Yes. Oh, you rock. That's exactly. So yeah, the marginal tax rate is basically in our graduated income tax system for federal taxes, the marginal bracket is like, as we say, it's like marginal is the next dollar or the last dollar as however you want to look at it. We talk about tax brackets and people say like, oh, I'm in the 24 % tax bracket. But I think most people immediately say, oh, that means every dollar of my income gets taxed at 24%. As if once you get$1 over the 22 % rate, then every prior dollar gets taxed at 24%. It does not work that way. There are tax brackets that you work your way through as you get more and more income.

30:40So for instance, let's say married filing joint for 2024, and this is on taxable income. So this is after all of your deductions of which the standard deduction is a massive one. That's almost right around$30 ,000 actually. And that's where we're going to eventually land here, Ginger. But the first$23 ,200 of taxable income is taxed at 10%. So even like I said, with that standard deduction of about, let's just say for ease that it's 30 ,000. So you would add 23 ,200 and add 30 ,000 to that, right? So you're talking, you could have gross income of$53 ,200 in that case. And you would only pay$2 ,320 of federal tax on that.

31:28Because again, you get that standard deduction, and then it's only 10 % tax on that first$23 ,200. So in that case, your effective tax rate, which is basically the tax liability divided by your gross income. So again, we said it's$2 ,320 of tax divided by about$53 ,200 of gross income. That's a 4.36 % effective tax rate. So you're paying 4.36 % tax on$53 ,000 worth of income. And I will just quickly, since I went into that about the tax bracket. So for married filing joint, the next income. So from 23 ,201 all the way up to$94 ,300, the tax rate is only 12 % on that, 12%. So, I mean, anybody who thinks that in FI that they're going to be paying some crazy, crazy tax rate, it just, the numbers don't prove that out because realistically, if we're saying it's roughly a$30 ,000 standard deduction and that, and just to be clear, that's not the exact number, but just for ease of that, you could have$124 ,000 plus of gross income and you're still in the 12 % tax bracket.

32:50So you're talking a little bit more than$11 ,000. It's still under a 10 % effective tax rate on income up to$124 ,000. I mean, Ginger, that's incredible. So where this lands for your question, I think you have all the tactics, right? And I love that. And I think all the tactics are really important, but the holistic picture is, Hey, look, I'm at five. My expenses are going to be some reasonable number, right? Because the other part that people miss is to get your actual, I think most people think they spend way more than they actually do. Let's even say you make a lot of money. Like as a married couple, you make$200 ,000.

33:33So in this case, you're talking about, all right, your starting point is the highest income essentially you've ever earned. So in this case, let's say$200 ,000. So I guess after deductions, you'd be in the 22 % bracket, you'd pay 22 % on that last little more than$106 ,000 of income. So what ultimately you need to think about is you are paying your highest, both marginal tax bracket at that point and effective tax rate. Plus, because it's earned income, you are paying social security tax on that as well. So there's an actual reasonable case to be made for somebody making 200 ,000 that they're paying probably 20 to 25 % somewhere around that.

34:19Well, actually with social security, it could be closer to 30%, but let's say 20 to 30 % in total federal taxes. And you have to take that out of there. Like when you think about, Hey, my income is my taxes at the highest amount, and then all the savings, right? Think about it in terms of three different pieces of a pie. So 200 ,000 is split amongst savings, which have to be significant to reach in any reasonable period of time. If it's 40%, it's going to take you 17 or 18 years to reach FI. So our table stakes for this conversation is you have a lot of savings. That's obviously not spending. You have this tax liability that is spending now, but won't be in the future.

35:03So when you get down to it, I suspect for most people, their expenses are actually a lot lower than what they think. And where this lands, Ginger, is when you're at FI, you just have to cover those expenses. And like we proved, there's a reasonable case that your effective tax rate is going to be minimal. You're not going to be paying social security tax on money that you pull out of your brokerage account or your IRA is a 401k. So that portion is gone. So your tax goes down even further. So you're literally just covering like, Hey, what does my life cost? And for most people, even somebody, like I said, making 200 ,000, like once it gets down to it and you've taken out that tax expense, you've taken out that massive savings.

35:47Like there's just not that much money left for expenses. Even if we said 80 or a hundred thousand, right? It's like, okay, then you just have to cover$80 ,000, let's say. So even if worst case scenario, you took all 80 ,000 of that out of your 401k, that's all a taxable event. So your gross income on your tax return is 80 ,000. Will you still get that$30 ,000 standard deduction? So that takes your taxable income down to 50 ,000. And like we proved that before, about half of that is going to be in the 10 % bracket. Half of that's going to be in the 12 % bracket. So you're talking about paying somewhere in the vicinity of$5 ,000 in federal tax on$80 ,000.

36:30So in this case, that's a pretty fat five for a lot of people, because again, this was predicated on making like a$200 ,000 income to have somewhere in the vicinity of 80 to a hundred thousand dollars in expenses. So that person, even in the worst case scenario is probably paying about$5 ,000 in federal taxes on 80 ,000. So you're talking about what's that about 6 % or thereabouts of effective tax rate. This is making me feel great. Can you talk me through, is there a scenario in which you wouldn't be pulling from your Roth last? And I guess what I'm thinking, and mostly this is just sort of interesting, I think to think about, right?

37:12But I get that you have your standard deduction. And then what you could do is you could pull from your 401k, you know, assuming you're of that age, up to, say, the 10%, right? And then after that, you could say, oh, it would make the most sense then for me to pull from my Roth, because I don't want to get taxed more than 10%. Or you could play with those in any way, right? One thing that I hear in the fight community all the time is like, oh, you get to choose sort of how you're taxed. And so be thinking about how much you would pull from here and how much you would pull from there. But the way I'm thinking about it is there's no scenario in which you wouldn't be better off having your Roth grow as long as possible.

37:52And so it seems to me like even if you were going to pull more than the 90, whatever thousand, that it would still make the most sense to completely deplete your 401k before you ever move to Roth. Is that how you think about it? Or is that just really unsophisticated? No, well, I don't think it's unsophisticated. I think there are multiple factors that come in where you would want flexibility. I've talked about this on past episodes with Sean Mullaney and Cody Garrett. So I know with Sean, it was episode 475. We talked about how to access your retirement accounts before 59 and a half. And yeah, I don't have the exact episode links for, because we've talked about this in passing in a couple episodes recently, but But there's some interplay between having enough income for really the ACA.

38:45So health insurance is a massive thing for people in early retirement. And because we have the ACA exchanges now, and more importantly for us, is the subsidies. You don't want to have your income too low. There's like this needle to thread, right? You don't want it too low because I think that in some states you're on Medicaid, I want to say. I always get a little bit confused with state by state and the exact terminology. But your income, you need to massage it basically to be high enough to be over some threshold, but then under the ACA subsidy, an amount where you get a significant amount of subsidy.

39:24So some people will massage this to kind of fit right into that sweet spot. And then, you know, that brings up another question that a lot of people ask, like, oh, how do I get health insurance in early retirement? It's like, I feel like some people miss the memo that we've had, you know, this, what the horrible term Obamacare, but we've had the ACA for, I think it's like 10 years now. And like, this is the way to get personal health insurance when you're not going through a company. Like this should be seared into our heads now. Like this exists, it's real. and I've never seen, and we've searched for health insurance for years now through, I guess, Choose a Vibe because it technically is a company, right?

40:06For me and Jonathan, and then also the ACA. Like the ACA is very competitive even without the subsidies. So it's essentially the same as I've seen in the private market, if you will. And then yeah, for early retirees who their income is low, they can get these subsidies and then pay virtually zero for their health insurance. So, yeah, I mean, that's like just another kind of ancillary benefit, but not insignificant one. Yeah. So you are clarifying something for me. And just to be clear, when you're saying income, you mean taxable income, right? Yes, yes, yes, yes. That's what those numbers are based on.

40:41Right. What a brilliant point. And thank you. I'm so glad you clarified that because I think a lot of us think income is the amount of expenses that I need to cover each year at FI. But yeah, I'm talking the very technical taxable income. And I think that's what's kind of fun about having a lot of these different levers to pull. Like having Roth enables you to pull that out then tax free at that point, right? Because you've already paid the tax when the money went in. That's the whole concept behind Roth accounts. But you talked about in your lead up to this, because you were talking about the long-term capital gains tax.

41:17and this is something I'm going to go into on an AdvanceFi episode very soon with Cody Garrett. So stay tuned for that. We're going to talk very specifically on how you can pay$0 in long-term capital gains tax on, I think in 2024, it's on up to$94 ,050 of total taxable income, which is really, really interesting. That's outside the scope, Ginger, of what we're doing here. But I think it's important just so people understand, you have your money in your retirement accounts, right? Your 401k, your traditional IRAs, your Roth IRA. But a lot of us have money in just regular brokerage accounts after tax, having nothing to do with any special retirement account.

41:58It's just our savings account that happens to be at a brokerage and we're invested in mutual funds or ETFs or individual stocks. Well, let's say you bought, I don't know, VTI over the years for$50 ,000. You bought shares that have basis, your actual purchase of$50 ,000, but it's worth$100 ,000 today. Okay. Now, when you sell that and you get what's known as proceeds, so you got proceeds of $100 ,000, that's what's deposited into your bank account. But that$100 ,000 is not taxable as income. It's what's the capital gain on that. Okay. So in that case, it's, and I'm making this very simplistic, not including dividends reinvested.

42:42So for any sticklers out there, but in very simplistic terms, it's just, what were my sale proceeds, the a hundred thousand minus what's my basis, the 50 ,000, and that gets your capital gain. So that's a$50 ,000 capital gain in this case. And if you've held them for more than one year, then it's a long-term capital gain. And that's actually taxed at a preferential rate. Okay. So for most people who are not very high income, it's either 15 % long-term cap gains rate, which is fantastic. Even if you're in the, like we talked about before, the 24 % bracket or 22%, because capital gains, the government has basically said, for whatever reason, we want to make this a preferential item, you get a benefit.

43:29So I think most people hear like, oh, capital gains. Like I know my parents were guilty of this, like growing up, like, because it has a terminology ginger, I feel like people somehow think it's like a negative thing. And I just want to like shake them and just say like, no, this is a good thing. The government is showering benefits on us. Like they're giving it to this long-term capital gains tax rate at 15 % or 0%. And that's what I talked about in passing there of like, if your taxable income, including those capital gains is under$94 ,050, you pay a big fat$0 in tax. So in this case, like I said, you got proceeds of$100 ,000.

44:09So$100 ,000 was deposited into your bank account. But if that was the only taxable event you had that year, let's say you had no income, you took no money out of your 401k, your long-term capital gain in this case would be$50 ,000 because again, proceeds minus basis. And then that goes on your tax return. But because the government has said, not only are long-term capital gains preferential normally at 15%, we're just going to give it to you for free. So this is 0%. So in that case, you got$100 ,000 deposited into your bank account and you pay$0 in tax on it. So that's yet another reason why I suspect your effective tax rate is going to be a lot lower than you expect it to be.

44:51That is magic. I will say, One thing I think that this can help with is to not hesitate about opening a brokerage account. Because I do think, you know, we don't actually max out our retirement accounts. And so to open a brokerage account, I did hesitate because I thought, oh, well, you know, from what I understood at the time, I'm like, why would I do this thing that has, you know, I'm going to have to pay so much higher taxes on and understanding that helps you to go, okay, I ultimately made that decision because I wanted more flexibility. I wanted to retire early. But now I understand that not only does it give me that flexibility, but it's not this big tax hit that I assumed that I was going to take for making this decision.

45:38Yeah. I think that's exactly right. So that was a bit of a longer explanation than I anticipated, but I think that's going to be really helpful for people because the essence of your question gets back to my age-old complaint about retirement calculators where I think they start from the fundamentally wrong position of like, hey, what's your current income? But again, in your current income, and I'm not sure I was 100 % clear on this before, in your current income is by definition to reach any point where you could retire, FI or whatever you want to call it, there has to be a massive savings in there.

46:14And there's by definition, a significantly higher tax amount than will ever be later when you reach FI. So starting at your current income makes no sense. It's your current expenses. And I think that's why the massive number that we care about when we talk about any FI calculation is what does my life cost? What do I have to cover with whatever amount of income or passive income or side hustles or taking money out of brokerage or taking money out of 401ks, et cetera. Like the only thing that matters is what does my life cost? That's the starting point. I love these questions about sort of the basics of how some of this stuff works, because most of us aren't CPAs.

46:59And so it's really helpful to kind of go step by step at like, okay, here's how this works. So let's transition now to looking at a real life example, maybe. And maybe this doesn't get into the taxes. But sort of ultimately, what so many of us are doing as we're listening is saying, okay, well, how is this going to play out in my life? So let's see how this is playing out in someone's life. Okay. So this is an email we got from Patty and I'm going to read part of it here. She says, hi, I'm 60 years old and have just discovered Fi. I love your podcast. I'm hoping you can point me to some episodes that are better for me who only has another 10 years to make a big impact.

47:38I make about 100K and I'm proud to say I already have low expenses and have sent my son to college with his college funds. I only have half of my fire goal saved. And so I'm willing to play with at least half of my income. So she's sort of looking for some guidance at this stage, right? So Brad, what do you think about where she's at and what she needs to be thinking about, about how to meet her goal in 10 years? Yeah, this was a really fascinating one from Patty because yeah, she had a lot of like very technical questions. and at the end of her email, she basically said, I'm so excited to start the process.

48:16Any tips you can give her would be great. It would save me some research time since I don't have much time left. And I actually wrote back to her saying, Patty, you are rocking this. You're so far ahead of where you think you are and it's essentially a guarantee. And this kind of ties into a couple of things, Ginger. So it's the concept of coastify. it's also understanding compounding and let's say like the rule of 72 which is something that sounds complicated but isn't and yeah i mean just essentially like how quickly your money will double so yeah let's start from there so first off 10 years is an extraordinary amount of time right especially when you're talking a 50 savings rate i think when we've talked before a little take off of Mr.

49:05Money Mustache's The Shockingly Simple Math Behind Early Retirement, which I think is one of the absolute most important articles basically ever written, certainly in the personal finance world. It should take you about 15 years to get to FI, basically starting at$0 of money saved up if you have a 50 % savings rate. So Patty is saying that she has roughly a 50 % savings rate and she has 10 years. So even if she was starting from zero, she would be well, well, well on her way. But she's actually saying, I have half of my five goals saved up. So to me, that suggests, okay, I spend roughly$50 ,000 a year and I have to figure out my five number, right?

49:51So you roughly multiply by 25 and that comes out to 1.25 million. So 1 ,250 ,000 and she has half of that. So we're going to assume that in her investable net worth, all of her investment accounts, she has about$625 ,000 saved up. So Ginger, the way that Coastify works is basically when you reached a point where you can just kind of coast on in. You don't actually have to save any more money. But if your investable net worth can do its thing, its compounding thing in the background, while you're just coasting along essentially at a 0 % savings rate, and it can, like I said, do its thing or double really every roughly nine years.

50:38And this is where that rule of 72 comes in, which you don't really need to understand this. It's just a simple mathematical equation. You take the number 72 and you divide by your expected annual return. So we say it's roughly 8%. So obviously nobody can guarantee anything, but that's the rough number we go with. So you take 72, you divide by eight, and that comes out to a nice even nine, which is the number of years it will take your money to double. So Patty, if she's starting from $625 ,000 today, nine years from today, she will have 1.25 million and she will be at five. So she literally, just by definition, the money doubles in nine years, assuming obviously that 8 % annual return.

51:27And that's on average, of course, nobody can guarantee specific numbers every year. But Ginger, she's there. So she's worried, do I have enough time? I'm saving 50 % of my income. Can I do this? Am I running out of time? You could save$0, Patty, and you'd be at FI in nine years, not even 10. And I just did a simple compound interest calculator. I basically said, all right, we have$625 ,000. We're putting in$4 ,000 a month because she said she saves roughly 50 % of her$100 ,000 income. So that would be about$48 ,000 a year. Then I assume the 8 % annual return. And then I just played with the number of years of growth to get us to roughly that 1.25 million.

52:12And Ginger, she actually gets there in five years. Oh, wow. So yeah, Patty was certainly worried about reaching it in 10 years. I think saving that amount of money, starting with the amount of money she's starting with, she gets to FI in roughly five years. So yeah, she can either co-son in a nine or she could basically stop working in five and be there. So I think that's kind of an illustration of just like, okay, money compounds. That's what we always talk about. You get to the point where your money is growing more than any income you've ever brought in. And it seems hard to believe at the beginning of your five journey, but all of us have had this epiphany of like, oh my God, I can't believe how much my net worth went up in the last year, right?

52:56Where the stock market's been up, whatever, 20 odd percent. When you're starting on a significant net worth, you can't fathom how much it has gone up. It's crazy. And that's what's one of the coolest parts of compounding and investing in the market is it really can be extraordinary. So yeah, I mean, again, Patty had a lot of technical and very specific questions, but I think they're all unnecessary. I think she can get there really easily. Yeah. Now, since we were just talking about taxes, taxes are at the top of my brain here. And I'm thinking, well, is this something we need to be figuring in even in our basic calculations?

53:33She has$50 ,000 that she can play with, but that$50 ,000 is going to be taxed? Or are we assuming she's going to put it in a tax advantaged account? Or is this something that's because of our previous conversation where it's like, okay, maybe we don't need to be thinking about this so much? Yeah, that's a good question. I think the latter point is probably certainly true. But I think so we're talking about during her earning years now, right? So I have to assume that if she's saying I make$100 ,000 a year, and I'm able to save like I took her at face value, basically, and said, like, I'm able to save about 50 ,000.

54:13So I'm assuming that amongst the 50 ,000 remaining, right, which is spending, that that's all her life spending plus her taxes. Because I think by definition, if she's able to save 50, there's only 50 left for everything else, which is the tax expense and all her life expenses. So we could get more granular, obviously, if she wanted to send us line by line. But yeah, I mean, assuming that's the case, I think what a lot of people, and I think really your question is brilliant in that, I think a lot of people don't factor in taxes at all when they're doing these calculations and savings rates. Sometimes it's just easy to overlook.

54:52And frankly, it might actually just wash out in a weird way in the sense that most people think of their income as their after-tax income, after all their withholding and stuff. And then, yeah, that actually works because, all right, here's the income that I take home. Here's what I can save. Because at the end of the day, it's like, all right, what are my true expenses? What is my true savings? Those numbers are fine. And like we talked about over this whole episode, your tax expense very likely is going to be dramatically lower than you expected in FI. So you don't want to count it as zero, obviously, Ginger, because it's not going to be zero for most people.

55:30But you also don't want to have an unrealistically high tax line item in your FI budget, but you clearly need one. I think anybody who's sticking their head in the sand and saying like, I'm just not going to pay any taxes, like the likelihood of that for most people is pretty slim. Okay. It's time for us to transition to that part of the show that I really like where we talk about community wins. So I wanted to read this email from David. He says, I would like to thank you for the impact you've had on my personal situation. Since finding FI around five years ago via ChooseFI and putting the principles to work, I have increased my total invested assets sevenfold and started to enjoy the real powers of compounding and now consider myself 50 %FI.

56:15After episodes on FU Money and from reading The Simple Path to Wealth after finding it via ChooseFI, I understood the concept but truly got to understand it these last 12 months. Around a year after suffering some mental health issues related to stress, I was let go from a six-figure salary job, and from a role in my younger days was always my ambition to reach. In the past, this would have been a devastating event. However, having found FI, it happened when I already had around three years of expenses accessible in a Vanguard account and a clear vision of where I want to go in my FI plan rather than linking my identity solely to my role or title.

56:52It gave me the space to refocus on what was important to me. I took some time to set up a side hustle on eBay, building that up before taking a new job on half the money and a third of the stress. It also gave me time to focus on my investments. And as a result, remarkably, in my timeline to FI is now looking faster than it was a year ago. Thanks again for all you do. Oh, that's a great one. That's really great. Yeah. I mean, there are so many wins in that one paragraph. Some of them are financial, But the bigger one is just about, hey, I had a chance to think about what I wanted from my life.

57:28And, you know, that's sort of the power of learning some of these things, I think. Yeah, that's a really great one. I want to read just a couple quick ones. So Kevin wrote in with something very tactical. And he said, from the advice on Choose a Vi, I shopped around my homeowner's insurance for the first time in my life. I got more coverage for$1 ,100 per year less. What? This was a great investment for a little time. Ginger, that's crazy, right? That's awesome. And we got this one from DeSalle who wrote it and said, I just wanted to share that other than through your newsletter, I didn't even know the stock market was down for a bit.

58:06For better or for worse, I don't follow the news and I'm also not on social media. Though even if I did, I don't think I would have changed anything. And what's funny is in my newsletter, it wasn't talking about how bad it was. It was quite the opposite. It was just, this is but a blip. And I think that's what's so cool about our long-term mentality is you don't have to worry about it. So many people are stressing about that day-to-day, what's going to happen. And this was like maybe a month ago where it looked like the market dropped a couple of percent. And then within three or four trading days, it literally was back up where it was.

58:39And had you fallen asleep for those five days, or in this case, just literally not looked at the news or social media, you would have had zero idea And you would have been perfectly content versus Ginger. Think about all the people who stressed every second of those days that the market was going down. And it's, this is a marathon. This is not some bizarro little sprints where we're worried about every trading day. You're worried about 30 to 50 plus years. Yeah. I love it because it doesn't seem like a traditional win, but when you think about it, it's like the JL Collins whole thing is like, if you understand this a little bit, then you can calm down.

59:18Yeah, you can calm down. And JL Collins says that guided meditation for when the stock market's dropping, which I always love linking up. So yeah, that's a good one for people to Google. And yeah, just finally, we always like to talk about travel rewards wins. And Nick wrote in with us, we did it. My partner and I just booked roundtrip airfare to Italy for two weeks around Thanksgiving for free with our rewards points. And we're flying out of our local airport, Richmond. So no need to trek to DC or Charlotte. Plus, since we planned it around the holiday, when we both have paid time off, our 14 day adventure only uses up seven vacation days.

59:54The flights would have cost us$2 ,200 plus each. But thanks to the insights from Choose Advice Travel Rewards podcast and blog, we scored international flights for$0. Basically, just a little bit of taxes and fees is my editorial here. Next up, we're diving into using points for hotel stays. Thanks a million for sharing your expertise. And yeah, I mean, Nick, that is fantastic. A 14 day trip around Thanksgiving, no less. I mean, when a lot of people are traveling, Ginger, but yet they were able to use their points. That's super cool. All right, Ginger. Well, this has been awesome as always. I love, love ending it with these wins.

1:00:31And yeah, we never know where these roundup type episodes are going to take us. And that's, what's fun about it. So yeah, thanks for being here as always. See you next time. Sounds good. Thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the Chooseify community. If you haven't already, the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast. So you're listening to this on a podcast player and just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter. I actually sit down every Monday and write this by hand and I send it out Tuesday morning. So just head over to chooseify.com slash subscribe.

1:01:06And 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 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.

1:01:40and 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 Chooseify created a Financial Independence 101 course that's entirely free.

1:02:15Just head to chooseify.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.