604 | Getting Personal With Personal Finance: Bill Yount

26:29You are going to have a great life. Look at how early you're starting. I talked to the 70 year old and I said, do you have any regrets about being 70 and now exiting the workforce? And he said, not at all. It was all the journey. I enjoyed the journey. And now, You know, I recently had five stents put in my heart and it delayed my goal to climb to base camp at Mount Everest just by a year. And he's going. And I said, are you going to wear a Catching Up to Phi t-shirt at base camp? And he said, absolutely, if you send me one. So I did. And I can't wait to see the picture. You know, the spectrum of Phi or late Phi, because late starting is not an age.

27:09I mean, yes, there is an age to it and there's math to it. But it's really an emotion, a feeling. It's a vulnerability. And as you said, in sharing our vulnerabilities, whatever it is in life, as a late starter, I mean, I came out of the closet as a doctor late starter. And I remember it very well. January of 2023, I published a blog edited by Jonathan Clements and his humble dollar blog, Saving Our Retirement. Shortly thereafter, I started the podcast. because what happened was nobody in this space, in this financial independence space, was speaking to me. Nobody was speaking to late starters.

27:49You feel very alone, and you can't recover from a late start without joining hands with others, finding a community. And there wasn't one because I was watching 30-year-olds, 40-year-olds, 50-year-olds, my peers retire, and I was just getting started. That was hard. What I hear you saying as I'm pushing against this idea of the glide path, everyone is saying that I should quit, but I'm going to do this the way that feels good to me. And that is so valid. Even if you say, oh, I don't have any good reasons. Maybe your good reason is you're doing it at a pace that feels good to you. And you put yourself in a position where that can be the thing that drives your decisions?

28:32Yeah, I mean, I'm talking to people about it regularly. I think about it at work a lot. And if I have a really bad day, then I feel like, you know, I should quit tomorrow. And so it's on my mind all the time. And I have to try and find comfort in this. And, you know, we all walk our own journey. We all do you, so to speak, or do me. I don't think I'm doing it wrong. I'm finding my way. I'm getting guidance too. And I'm becoming the mentor. What's really cool. One of the things I enjoy about work is I have the young people there where I can support them in their journey. I'm the senior physician.

29:10I'm the Yoda now. And I'm learning to be Yoda. I'm not Luke Skywalker anymore. I've done that journey. And I'm looking forward to the next space. You know, Richard Rohr in Falling Upwards talks about this journey in his book as two separate chapters in life. I'm on the bridge between those two chapters. It's a fantastic book. We all need to read books like this to understand the journey, because if life is in two parts, it's also in many seasons, and we need to appreciate that and embrace the season you're in. And that's what I'm trying to do. Yeah, I can tell you appreciate that this transition isn't an easy one.

29:52And, you know, I liked what you said about I'm talking to other people, that you're willing to be influenced still by other people's stories and other people who have kind of gone through this transition. We hear a lot about people who feel depressed after they retire. And so I can appreciate some of your carefulness there to be like, hey, I want to do this in a way that's going to be not the most efficient, but the way that's going to make the most sense for me, that's going to be most satisfying to me. Well, it isn't just my journey either. My wife still works largely full time. And it's something that we need to do together.

30:29And we're dialoguing about this a lot because she needs to slow down. You know, our energy is waning a little bit in some ways with regards to work. I mean, she has a practice with she's a psychiatrist, a lot of patients, and it's hard to wind that down. It's a little different for me than her with doing shifts. So it's a journey we do together. It's not in isolation or in a silo. Phi is not about one person. Well, that gives us a nice way to transition into sort of what you have learned from doing the podcast and from talking to so many people who have been late starters. What are the beliefs that you have noticed that hold back the late starter, right?

31:11Like an obvious one would be, it's too late. It's too late for me, right? What's the point of even starting? Are there other beliefs that you have noticed that people have that sort of get in their way? Yeah, the too late belief is a very common one. And we always say our tagline at the end of the show is, it's always the right time to start. It's better late than never. And, you know, we can catch up to five together. So, yes, we need to overcome those limiting beliefs. And starting a little bit at a time, the 1 % better with small amounts and growing those amounts, build the muscle until you're financially fit and the engine's running well.

31:53You have a lot to overcome, but you have a lot of experience. You have a lot of wisdom. You've made a lot of mistakes. You have a lot of focus. You have your highest income of your life. So there's a lot of advantages you have to this. There's the catch-up contributions. There's a lot of math advantages, and there's a lot of sort of historical past advantages. Let go of the bad parts, but harness the energy of the good parts and the wins in order to, you know, gain momentum. it's a journey where you get control of your money and you know helps you not get control of life because life kind of happens but it helps you kind of flip the switch on living an intentional life and focusing on okay what do i want to be able to say at the end of the day how do i avoid the five regrets of the dying and as we were talking about life is an open book test i don't want to have worked too much i want to have been true to myself and walked my path i want to have connected with friends and reconnected with old friends.

32:53It isn't about money. There's not one of the regrets of the dying that has anything to do with money. And so look forward to that and use money as a tool to have, you know, honestly, a peaceful regret-free death because that's the one thing we all share in common. Yeah. I imagine a lot of late starters maybe struggle with this idea of I've failed at this, right? Like I screwed it up. And yet, like you were saying, there also comes something when you're older where you're like, well, I screwed up other things before. Like we have a little bit more confidence maybe in terms of, yeah, I've made mistakes before and I've been able to get past them, right?

33:35Where that maybe that's harder for a younger person to kind of make that shift? Yeah, I mean, our mistakes are critical to learning. It is in the pain. When we get to the bottom of our late start, it's the pain that generates change. I mean, it is really no pain, no gain. You can't live a life of comfort and YOLO. If you really want to change and evolve and live what I would call a full life, you need to overcome the pain, acknowledge it, embrace it, recognize it for its silver lining, and then use that to energize yourself on a different path, to change your path. You know, there may be a simple path to wealth, but there's no real simple path to wealth preservation and fulfillment.

34:21There are many roads to Rome there. What do you think people in this space don't talk about enough? They don't talk about the difficulty of transition and change and the turmoil of it. I have a sort of a moniker that I live by, which is pause, plan, and pivot. And the pivot's important, but you have to pause, give yourself grace, take a breath, focus inward, and then make a plan. Get it together, get your blueprint, get your map out, because you can't get to a destination without a plan, and then pivot. Now, one of my favorite quotes, which I refer to as kind of a phi quote, is from Viktor Frankel in Man's Search for Meaning.

35:06It's something along the lines of between stimulus and response is a space, and we need to erase that space, because in that space, we need to regulate and choose our response. And that's how he survived the Holocaust. That's how we survive this wonderful journey, this difficult journey of Phi, which is so rewarding. You know, moving out into the light, into the next chapter of life, I am so excited about it. I can't tell you. It's anxiety provoking, but I really look forward to this, the golden age of 60 to 80 or however long it is. You know, I want to be able to die tomorrow and say, I gave it my all.

35:46I left it all on the table, just like I did with my marathon, that I only ran one. I didn't run a second marathon. You only run one life and leave it all on the table in that one precious life. Okay. I want to talk about this pivot idea because in order to pivot, we have to have a new thought. We have to think about things in a different way. I kind of talked about in the intro how I like how you've kind of let your audience in on your thinking process and how some of that has changed for you. And I wonder if you can even pull out what is one thought or belief that you used to have that you don't have anymore around money.

36:31I'll give you an example from my own life. I used to think, and I guess here's why I think this is valuable, because so many of those thoughts or beliefs that we have, they are not visible to us. they are helping to drive our decisions, but you're not sitting down and thinking, here is my belief about this. It's just like sitting there as part of us, right? So I think I thought I could never make more than$75 ,000. I didn't genuinely sit down and think that. I just lived with this idea of like, I'm a certain kind of person who has a certain kind of job. And this other range of salary is like available to other people.

37:15But it's not available to me, because I don't know, I'm just not that kind of person. And the reasons for that are for another podcast, it doesn't really matter what that is. But it did in some way, limit me because I was just putting that limit on myself. And I don't do that anymore. Or you know I totally do that. But I try to be more intentional about like, oh, what is the belief under this that's influencing my decisions? And I say, oh, I don't do that anymore because now I think, oh, look at those people who make$150 ,000. Oh, well, that could never be me. And maybe it won't. Who cares? But it could be, right?

37:54Like it's possible. And so like living by that belief is not really helpful. It's not really useful. I wonder if you can think of an example from your own life about just a belief that you had about money, whether that's about scarcity or abundance or your abilities that just no longer has traction in your life anymore? Yeah, I mean, what is money is kind of like the elephant in the room question, because it has a lot of negative things attached to it, a lot of positive things attached to it. And for me, one of the things that was attached to it was fear because my dad disappeared for a month to do his taxes and he got audited.

38:35And I've been afraid of taxes ever since. And so it was fear. But money in many ways is infinite. It is flow. It is potential energy that you store. It's not something you own and you don't want it to own you. There are so many ways to think about it. It's math. It's fiat currency. It's a store of value, a way of exchange. In some ways, money is trust. It's an exchange of trust. It leaves you vulnerable. You know, it's the root of all evil. Not really. I mean, it's the root of all potential, I think. And we need to look at it and what it really can do for us. You don't think you can earn more?

39:19Well, you absolutely can. But it comes back to the marshmallow test of needs and wants. Do you really need that much? Or do you just want that much? And you have to ask yourself these fundamental questions. You know, the three things that lead to being a late starter are lack of goals, lack of values, and lack of financial literacy and skills. And those are the three areas that we need to work on as late starters. You know, you've got to set smart goals that are time limited and achievable and all those things about smart goals. And you've got to have good values. I mean, what do we value in our family?

39:55Well, love, okay? Friendship. And are we going to use money to increase love in our life if that's a value and a goal? I mean, it isn't to buy a Maserati. That dopamine hit is gone. Hedonic adaptation, we call it. But how do we spend it to sort of feel full. If we create the vessel in the first half of our life, according to Richard Rohr, how do we fill it up in the second half of our life? What do we fill it up with? Say it breaks and then the Japanese put it together and they embrace imperfection because there is none. Perfection is the enemy of the good. You've got to satisfy, be good enough.

40:37Just like with the markets, you know, 80 % of the return is enough. You don't have to beat it. You know, I don't know that you need$150 ,000 to live. I don't.

40:50All right. You said something about 80-year-old Bill. I want to know what you're doing now to take care of 80-year-old Bill. Well, that's a really good question. And of all the forms of capital, financial being only one, I'm doing really well with spiritual community and financial health. being a doctor, heal thyself, I'm not doing as well. I am probably at my unfittest in life. Yeah, I go for walks and the season of running marathons is over and I am heavier than I definitely want to be. And I may be financially lean and fit, but physically I'm not necessarily lean and fit. It's harder. As you get older, the energy may fail you.

41:35But as other authors have written, you know, and outlive and whatnot. We don't have health, we don't really have wealth, and our money really has no purpose. I am inspired by people like Paul Merriman, who's in his 80s. He hangs out with us in the FI community, having beers and talking money and educating. I mean, he's inspirational. And having relationships across generations is, I think, one of the keys to life. Mentor the young, learn from the older and the wiser. We don't do enough of that, I think, in our sort of self-focused society sometimes. I want Paul Merriman to be my grandpa.

42:17He has that energy about him. I want Paul to be proud of me. Yeah, he sure does. And I want the gap, as I say, between my healthspan and lifespan to be as short as possible.

42:30Jonathan Mendonsa:Push your health span all the way up to your lifespan and then fall up the cliff then. Give me the heart attack at the peak of my life. That's fine. Now, isn't this another doctor thing? I feel like I've heard before where you're like, oh, they're not as good with their money as you think. Isn't there also kind of a stereotype around doctors not necessarily prioritizing their health? That's absolutely true. I did for a while and I focused on it. I need to refocus on it. I mean, life fluctuates. I mean, it's like the stock market. There's ups and there's downs. If it's really important to me, I'll do it.

43:02And it's become really important to me. I have a bit of an imposter syndrome and I have excuses. You've got to overcome that friction in life to get to where you want to go. So yeah, I'm not perfect there, but I'm happy and I'm healthy mentally far from where I was 10 years ago. I mean, FI is really good for your mental health, I'll tell you. Very empowering. Yeah. We talk a lot about health on this show. So just indulge our audience a little bit. So you say, yeah, I want to kind of get back into some kind of routine or I want to kind of take this more seriously. What is that actually going to look like for you?

43:43Or have you kind of gotten that far? It is, I think getting out of the ER will help because I'm a stress eater. And, you know, losing weight is just like money. You know, it's easy, but not simple. Losing weight is easy, but not simple. It's what are you putting in and what are you putting out? It's a mindset, you know, who do I believe myself to be? Am I a reasonably fit 60 year old that is planning to live well beyond 80 and a full and healthy life? Yeah, That's a dream, but take action towards that to make it a reality. And it's very important. I thought you were going to say getting out of the ER would help because maybe you're putting your body in like stress positions.

44:24I imagine there's lots of like hunching. Is that right? Like, are you putting your body in awkward positions? Well, you know, I'm not sleeping as much as I should. And I'm eating at night during the day. There's no regularity to the schedule. You know, night shifts shorten your life. That's a good reason to get out of the ER. Not eating right and not having a routine is going to shorten your life. There are very simple things that I've got to do. Now that the money's taken care of, I need to refocus on the other parts. Yeah. Do you consistently work the night shift or is that a sometimes thing?

44:58No, it's a three to four times a month thing. Oh my gosh, Bill, that's terrible. You should quit.

45:07Oh, I should take your advice. Actually, FI is a powerful lever there because as soon as I became FI, I went to my director and said, I'm going to cut two shifts. I want to work only two night shifts a month and I'll work six day shifts. And I want more money for less time because I'm a senior physician. I'm 60. And, you know, we've got to have some kind of benefit of being that. But we'll see what they come back with. But, you know, unfortunately, I have the same expectations as a 60-year-old as the 35-year-olds do. It's not exactly fair. I mean, this 12-hour shift thing. I have several friends who are nurses.

45:45And I'm like, if I did one 12-hour shift, I would die. Do you feel proud of your stamina, like just your ability to focus for that long or to do kind of physical kind of work for that long? Yeah, the lifestyle is not ideal. It's not structured. I mean, medicine is kind of a suck it up buttercup lifestyle. You know, it starts with residency and it carries forward. Toxic workplace, you know, it's not conducive to taking care of your health, but we own that. And I have more time off now. I have retirement days because I've reduced the shifts and I need to make better use of them, quite honestly. Okay.

46:25So I asked you what you were doing to take care of 80-year-old Bill. I want to ask you what 40-year-old Bill, you wish 40-year-old Bill had done with the idea of, hey, you're talking to a bunch of 40-year-olds right now. And so we know one of those things is you're saying, hey, I probably should have paid attention to my finances sooner. Are there other things that you wish the 40-year-old version of you had done to take better care of 60-year-old Bill? You know, if you get your money right on the front end and you live a balanced life and save earlier, you can buy back your time earlier in life.

47:04If you start at 35 or 40, you can be done early in your 50s for sure. Or you can take that co-spy lifestyle like Andy Hill, where you know what? I've front loaded the sacrifice. The markets will do its thing. While my kids are in middle school and high school, I can have more time with them. You know, it would have been nice to be more intentional like that. That's an alternative, contrarian lifestyle to the, you know, the boomer nine to five till 65. And that's changing. And I was on the cusp of that as a Gen Xer. So that was my model. My dad worked till 80, but that's changed and people are looking at life from a quality standpoint.

47:45So I don't have any regrets about it, But I certainly would focus on how I spend my time and to get off the treadmill. Make your own way. Live your own life. Don't live the life that somebody, you know, my dad was a doctor, so it kind of felt like he wanted me to be one. And carve your own path. Get out of the tracks of the guy in front of you and go down the mountain your own way. And I didn't do as much of that in midlife. What about you? What are your thoughts on that? It's a hard thing to do in midlife. You've read the five regrets of the dying. That is one of them is live the life that you want to and take risks.

48:26And you always hear this idea that people don't regret things they did as much as the things that they didn't do. And so I do try to keep that in mind. But I also kind of push back against that a little bit because it's so easy to imagine if we had done those things, right? Like, oh, I should have taken that risk. We picture it going well. We picture it having worked out. And when you're actually at that point where you're like, oh, I could change my life. I could do this big thing. Often the thing that holds you back is this might go really poorly. So it might feel a little better to be safe.

49:05You know, we lose the curious child from our childhood. And when you want to figure out retirement, you have to reach back to your childhood. And you never really in the end want to lose the curious child and being a creative person, experimenting. You know, I was in a consumption lifestyle, whether it be consuming money to grow it or being consuming things and exiting into retirement as a creator and becoming a creator sort of opens up the world. And that's part of the journey, too. You can get lost in consumption and analysis paralysis, but you can make a change in the world with one person.

49:41You don't have to have this big, hairy, audacious goal. We've heard about little P versus big P purpose from Jordan, but it's true. It's absolutely true. The parable of the starfish is, you know, walk down the beach, the million starfish as a child, he throws one or two back in. The adult, the adult comes down the beach and says, what are you doing? You're not going to make any difference. And the child says, well, it made a difference for that one. And so in this space, it's really fun to see the light in somebody's eyes when you touch them with a powerful tool in the financial independence space.

50:20And they go, oh, yeah. I mean, Jackie and I were in a classroom of 20-somethings. And we did a thing called 20 questions from 20-somethings of all the questions you'd wish you asked yourselves or they were asking prospectively. And let's answer a few of them. And the students came up to us afterwards and said, wow, you opened my eyes. And the things they wanted to talk about weren't really the math things of money. It was the purpose things and the soft sides of money. It was really interesting. A lot of fun, you know, helping out the youth once you've sort of figured it out for yourself. So what was the exercise?

50:56They were to come up with questions for you guys or for future versions of themselves? Or what was that? Yeah, both. They had a midterm test, and we've done this a couple of years in a row. And the professor, she's a professor in the School of Agriculture. I mean, she has a PhD in agronomics, but never had a personal finance class. She takes it upon herself to have one class a year as kind of a kamikaze personal finance firelighter type class. And we asked her on her exam to ask the bonus question on what would you want to know at your age about personal finance? And so we got 30 questions and they were really cool.

51:37And it was anonymous. So there was no shame, no blame that they didn't know. Yeah. Well, that starfish story, I mean, I imagine that that happens over and over again when people listen to your podcast, like when people find your podcast and they have this idea of like, I'm one of these people and there's hope for me and there's people I can talk to about this and people who have had some of the same struggles that I have had. We all do it our own way. People get so orthodox with DIYing things sometimes. And that's kind of, in some ways, lonely. And I exited the DIY. I mean, accumulation is a good DIY sport, but I exited DIY and embraced the financial advisor.

52:19And I found a flat fee, fiduciary, partner, collaborator who does sort of portfolios the way I want to do them. And it's there for my wife because she doesn't want to deal with money. And it's there for cognitive decline. For a lot of reasons I was not as orthodox about DIY. And so maybe I'm a trader. But I think it's really important to seek advice when you need it. Seek mentorship when you need it. We don't have to struggle alone. And our space, we do it together. We have a community of 20 ,000 Facebook members. And it's a place that a lot of people are very vulnerable with vulnerable things and admissions.

52:57And that's very healing and cathartic to get it out there in public and ask for advice. And they get good advice on our Facebook group. We hope we give good advice and inspiration on our podcast. It's a conversation. It's a dialogue. We want to reach the community outside of the financial independence community. 60 % of the nation are probably late starters. 40 % subsist on Social Security. There's a much bigger population out there. And we need this community's help to reach those starfish, reach those people that are on the outside and want to find their way in. Yeah. Well, I think there's so much passion and excitement in the fire community.

53:39And sometimes it can be hard to find that person that's like you. Right. So you see all of these 30 year olds who are going to fire when they're 35. and that's hard for most of us. Like you say, it's hard for most of us to connect with, even though it's very exciting to listen to those stories. It's a different kind of feeling in your podcast to say, I think a lot of people say, oh, that person is like me, right? And if they can do it, I can do it. Yeah, they can be 24 or 70 and still consider themselves a late starter, as we said. And the average American's a late starter, but often we live as a silent generation in shame as a lost generation.

54:22And stepping out of that, shedding the mantle of that, realizing you're not alone is a powerful force. You got a dog back there who's excited? Sorry, that's Lily. The UPS man must be at the front door, I think. All right. Well, let's end on something fun. Let's end on a couple of fun things. So tell me, like what's something you are looking forward to in the next year that could be anything well i'm really looking forward to taking our sons to norway for two weeks okay one of the best things you can do with money quote-unquote in retirement or in the fog of fi is spend time with your kids and your family best money you'll ever spend is on traveling with family or friends so we're taking them to Norway.

55:12And we were invited to go to New Zealand to talk to a fledgling organization, an economy type conference called Kiwi Phi. Bronwyn Kandish is doing this. And this American Phi movement, well, the New Zealanders have embraced it. They found Catching Up the Phi through Alan and Katie Donegan and the Rebel Finance School. And they reached out to us. And so all of a sudden, because of this journey as a creator, because of the podcast, Jackie and I are going to speak to an audience down in New Zealand. And then we're coming back to do the Bogleheads Conference. There's a surprise there that I can't reveal.

55:50But there's so many opportunities that are coming my way. I'm on a mission with a financial advisor to make sure that every resident, before they leave residency in their medical field, gets a financial plan by 2035. I mean, that's a big, hairy, audacious goal. But I think it's irrealizable. And they should. They shouldn't suffer under debt burden and the golden handcuffs. Give them a plan early. So these are some of the things that are on the horizon. There's a lot more. I get to collaborate with other people on how to use AI as an estate planner. There's almost too much to go on. But those are some of the things that I have to look forward to.

56:30Yeah. What are two places that you have traveled that you would recommend to other people that were so cool? Well, as a lot of people know, Frank Vasquez is a really good friend of mine. He's a bestie. One of the best things, he and his wife, actually, that have happened to me. We met at FinCon in 2019 and have grown closer and closer. And I drank the Kool-Aid on his Risk Parity radio show and Risk Parity portfolios. But our friendship goes much further than that. And we reached out to Frank and Mary, my wife and I, when we were going to go to South Africa for my 60th birthday. And we had just a blast on safaris and in Cape Town.

57:16Quite an adventure. I always wanted to stand on the Cape of Good Hope for my 60th birthday because I stood on Cape Horn for my 50th birthday. I mean, these are some of the dreams. These are some of the travels. You said a second place. Where have I been that I would send people? Oh, Patagonia, South Africa, Germany, where I lived for two years. Croatia was really fun. I think Joe Salcihai does a travel podcast on the Stacking Benjamins platform. It's infinite. You can travel to a national park. I mean, I went with my son and his girlfriend to Las Vegas and Bryce and Zion because he dates a K-5 teacher that likes to gamble for some reason.

58:00So we did that. Don't do it alone. Do it with people. Pay for your kids to come with you because they can't afford it, but you want to be with them. I think as Brad says, you spent 90 % of the time you're going to with them before they're 18. Well, make that happen as adults. Don't let that go. Yeah, it doesn't have to be that way. I went to Joshua Tree a couple years ago for the first time, and it blew me away. And it made me think, I've written off national parks because we went to like two when I was a kid. That's what we did for vacations. And so I think I thought, oh, I want to do something more exciting.

58:37But then I got old enough where I was like, wait, this is pretty exciting. Well, it doesn't have to be exotic. You can travel in your backyard. It's a mental thing as much. We have our ChooseFI meetups and Chattanooga isn't far away. Recently, we had a bee in our bonnet to go to Memphis and we saw the Civil Rights Museum and we went to Graceland. But the purpose of the trip was to go see a friend, Sarah Catherine Gutierrez in Little Rock. Never been to Little Rock. What a great road trip. And it snowed and we were locked in the house for three days and she was all upset that we couldn't go there and do this and go get a spa in Hot Springs.

59:14And we stayed at home with their kids and played board games. It was the best thing ever. And now she and her family are coming to Knoxville because that was so much fun. And we're going to go to Dollywood, a place I've never been. It just compounds. Relationships compound better than money, I think. Yeah. What a great note for us to end on. Bill, thank you so much for chatting with me today and for sharing all those bits of advice. And everyone out there, go check out Catching Up to Fi if you haven't already. And we will catch you next time. That's an honor to be on ChooseFI. Thanks for having me back.

59:52And let's continue the conversation in the future. Thanks, Bill.