611 | ChooseFI Classic: Financial Independence on an Ordinary Income (Paige & Sam)

24:57We cut the cable and we've always had just liability insurance during the time that we both have had cars. Why not? They're not new cars. And then I biked to work for, I mean, a solid decade, even before I found FI, I was biking to work. I think that's the big ones. And also, we know where every Goodwill store and Salvation Army is in the entire Los Angeles basin. If you look around this place, I could take you on a tour of our house and tell you every alley we found some piece of furniture in, everything that was left behind by a previous roommate that's now something that we're using. I think the only new things that we buy are our shoes.

25:41I just bought a new pair of shoes, technology like computers and phones and stuff. But other than that, everything is goodwill, salvation army. We have a saying that sooner or later, everything you need shows up in the alley. The alley will provide. The alley will provide. That's fantastic. The alley will provide. That kept getting better with every additional sentence. Yeah, that's really cool. And I didn't want to gloss over here. Sam, you said your yearly spending has averaged somewhere in the vicinity of$12 ,000. And if your monthly living expenses averaged around$600 a month, that leaves about$4 ,800 for the year, which is$400 a month.

26:23So that is the rest of your life spending, according to my kind of back of the envelope calculations here. I mean, does that sound about right? Yeah. Well, that'd be 50 bucks a week for food if you're not eating out. And then that leaves$200. It's hard to spend$200 at Goodwill. And if you feel like you need some retail therapy, if you wander in a shopping mall, you're in trouble. If you wander into the 99 cent store, how much damage could you possibly do? So it's not impossible. And if you're busy, you don't have a lot of time to try to figure out how to spend extra money. I'm so glad that Brad got in front of the line on that one for me and asked you that, because that's what I was fixating on as well.

26:58And I think, I mean, I just want to inspect that a little bit more closely. So the part that you said,$50 a week per food, I mean, what does that, what does that look like? Obviously that's not going out to eat. Uh, Brad has talked many times about he focuses on doing$2 per person per meal. Uh, and so you would more or less be accountable for 90 meals a month. Uh, and I'm just wondering, are, is that kind of in your mind? Is that a metric that you use as well? Or do you find yourself, do you have any sort of life hacks that you could share with our audience on how you game this thing out? Do you use repetition?

27:31Is there any sort of batch cooking process that you use? What are your routines and habits when it comes to food? One of the interesting things about the whole FI community is I feel like I've been doing these things accidentally all along. So now that I found the different websites and the blogs and it's given me a language to talk about it, and it's also given me additional ideas of how to do it even better. But I feel like this is something that I've been doing my whole life that my parents instilled in me and that has just always kind of made sense. And the education and the kind of formalizing of this lifestyle that you guys and other people have been providing has made me better at it and made me more aware of what I'm doing and why I'm doing it.

28:17So things like food and not eating out. Eating out is something that never really made sense to me. If I could cook and eat something at home, I have eaten an embarrassing number of peanut butter and jelly sandwiches at work. I am fortunate that I tend to find things that work for me and stick with them over and over and over again. I don't feel like I'm missing out by not going out to eat. Yeah, and I know I do most of our grocery shopping and I could almost walk into a Trader Joe's, close my eyes and buy our groceries. We are so creepy, consistent, and we buy our food for the week and we eat our cupboards bare.

28:54There is no, I mean, there's times when our refrigerator on Thursday night is like, oh my goodness. Well, I guess there's some pasta somewhere and some something. Okay, I'm sure we can eat. We've just never cared that deeply about food. My parents were foodies and I think a life of waiting for good food to show up and being just starving as a child waiting for this amazing food to show up just made me like, just someone get this ordeal over with. I just, I literally eat to live. I do not live to eat. It just is never. And luckily Sam is the same way. So we buy what we buy, we eat it and that's it.

29:38I know Brad was laughing in the background because he's come over my house when it's like the day before shopping and it's totally empty. I mean, we just decimate the kitchen. There's nothing left in it. We eat everything. In fact, in our house, it's like a badge of honor that right before your next grocery run, you have eaten everything. There is no waste. Yeah, it looks like nobody lives there basically the day before a food shopping event. So, yeah, I think that sounds very similar to your house. And we are also creepy consistent. Yeah. Yeah. But there's a lot to be said for that, right? Like we, Jonathan, you and I have spoken about decision fatigue and just the sheer fact that Paige and Sam here aren't worrying about their food.

30:15They're not stressing over it. But it sounds like you guys could go through a given week and just know precisely what you're eating for those 21 meals. And that's there's a lot to be said for that. It just makes your life so much easier, not stressing over what are we doing for the next meal? And that becomes a daily occurrence where many people are just wasting time running back and forth to the food store to hold on. I say food store. That's like one of my little weird. You got called on it. I know that's one of my favorite things. It's so ridiculous. For some reason, people from Long Island say food store.

30:47And it's like we sound like crazy people. But there's like five million of us saying this. But I realize that I sound like a lunatic. Yeah, you guys were you guys were talking in a different podcast about Aldi, which is a store I don't think we have out here. But it's but we have Trader Joe's, which is the same kind of everything's a store brand. You only have a few choices. So for people who suffer from decision fatigue and just want to get in and get out, that's where we go. Nice. Yeah, that's a good tip. And I actually just went to a place called Lidl. It's another store very similar to Aldi.

31:19So if anybody out there has this store, it's LIDL. It's a German-owned company similar to Aldi and highly, highly recommend it. So definitely a little tip if you have that store opening in your area. So, Brad, I want to come back to this idea of limiting beliefs because we get it over and over and over again. All the reasons that I can't do this. So I'm going to try to just set this up. And, Paige, I would love to hear your approach to how to knock down these sets of limiting beliefs for all the people out there that think it's not possible because they didn't discover this in their teens. And I'm just going to roll through these limiting beliefs and then let's just hear you respond to it.

31:53I got my first real job at 44. At the age of 44, I only had$3 ,000 in my 401k. I had$3 ,000 in credit card debt. I had$60 ,000 left on my student loans. I live in a super high cost of living area. I'm not married and I make an average or below average income. I can't do this for all of these reasons. This only works for the select few that found this early in life. So fine, you do you, but I can't listen to this anymore. What do you have to say to those people and how would you respond to that set of limiting beliefs? Well, I think it's about setting priorities. And I know you guys talk about this too.

32:29and I don't think there's any clearer way to do it. It's if your priority is to live like you look like you have money, Los Angeles is a fantastic place to do that. Go spend every penny and you can live this amazing opulent life here and good for you and that's your priority and I judge not go forth and prosper. That turned out not to be my priority and so then it was a matter of like drilling into those priorities and knowing what I could control and what I couldn't control. So the things I can control are kind of the big three are housing, food, transportation. So housing, like Sam has outlined, is a little less in your control.

33:15But if you're willing to make certain sacrifices to space or comfort levels, being near the airports, arbitrage within your own city or roommates and those kinds of things, you can tackle that first big one with a certain amount of flexibility. The second one's food. If you are a foodie and you need to go to restaurants, then you need to tackle it a different way. Maybe finding a way to find a job that allows you to do that or just find a way, like Paul talks about, find a way to do it for free. Find a way to do that for free. There is a way to do that for free. But if not, then limit what you eat, simplify what you eat, batch cook, eat consistently those same things that work and move on.

34:01And then as far as transportation goes, I mean, if you have to have a car, which I don't have, although I have access to one of Sam's, then buy used and cheap as you can. Cars are not as unreliable as people like to pretend they are. And we've never paid more than$1 ,200 for a car. And now Sam and I are both hardcore DIYers. So he keeps those cars running. And that is its own thing. But it's not like that car's breaking down all the time. It's not. Little things happen, but little things happen to more expensive cars. So once you've got those three big things dialed in, everything else is just nibbling at the margins.

34:39I mean, I still eat out every once in a while. Sam's much better about that, but I still eat out occasionally. And we go places, we do things. And I think that Frugal Woods has touched on this. When you live in a city, which is where most of the high cost of living areas are, there's so much to do that will cost you nothing. You can step out your door and you can bike, you can hike, you can go to museums, you can go to concerts and parks. There's so much free happening that you really don't have to pay for that lifestyle. You just are choosing to pay for it to some degree. And however much you choose, hey, good for you.

35:17Go for it. We just made a slightly different choice, which it might be more intense, but it's getting us where we want to go. I would add that in any positive change you're going to make in your life, the first and most important step is to forgive yourself for not having done it sooner. Because if you get hung up on that, like, oh, why didn't I start this in my 20s? Why didn't I? You're just going to get stuck. And you have to keep reminding yourself, forgive yourself for not having made this change sooner and then just move forward. Yeah, I think that's really powerful. And I try to touch on that pretty often here on the podcast, that people just can't beat themselves up about decisions they've made in the past.

35:53good, bad, or indifferent, that's in the past. You need to take action today. And you just can't look backward and just rue the past. It just makes no sense whatsoever. So I like to say the best time to start investing was 20 years ago. And the second best time is today. And that is an essential, essential point. And Paige, a couple of things that you talked about were flexibility and control. And those are two themes that we talk about here, basically every single episode, that if you can be a little bit flexible, most of the people that are pursuing this path to FI, we're not doing anything that extreme.

36:29We're just being a little bit smarter and a little bit more flexible. And I think those were essential points. So I really, really appreciate that. Another thing that you had mentioned in your email to us is you said, and just FYI, we are not minimalists. We are quite the opposite. I'd love to hear you talk through that. I have a theory that we're at peak crap just in the world. Like our ability as humans to manufacture things, clothing, toasters, all that stuff has gotten so good that there are more cars in California than there are people. Just the amount of stuff that exists is so high that the fact that you're paying for any of it or paying anything significant or buying anything new is completely unnecessary.

37:13And don't feel like you have to prop up the industry with your paying for things, they'll be just fine. The robots have already taken over and they're gonna churn out more crap tomorrow. There's just so much stuff. So I understand the theory behind minimalism and how to simplify your life and a lot of people are more comfortable with that. One of my experiences is being an extreme do-it-yourselfer. I've ended up with a lot of tools. I've ended up collecting not just objects, but skills that I can use, like fixing cars. is the fact that I haven't been to a mechanic since my 20s. I figured out every time something breaks, it's a new opportunity for me to figure out how to fix it.

37:53And these skills add up. And I feel like that has been an important part of independence is not being dependent on others to do things for you. You could argue what the economics of that is, but it's been a relief to me to know that if my car ends up on the side of the freeway, I will probably be able to get it going again before a tow truck shows up, where other people, if their car is not starting, it's a life crisis that has to be solved before anything else can happen. And the side effect of all this is the jobs I now have, the way that I'm making money in the world is I'm fixing things. I'm a facility manager at a building, which is basically a big car without wheels with problems that need fixing.

38:37So all the skills that I've been developing over this process of being a cheapskate, basically, have come in handy and I'm actually making money off of it now. That's powerful. Yeah. And one of the other things about not being a minimalist and being DIY, like we own two really fancy vacuum cleaners, both Dyson's. They are, I hate them. I will own them forever because Sam will keep them running forever. And we found both of those on the street because people moved out of their apartments or some little thing went wrong. They didn't know they could fix this$600 vacuum machine. And they left it on the side of the street and Sam hauled it home, looked it up, found the part, ordered it, put it in.

39:23And now I like the newer one better, but the Dysons, they are not all they're cracked up to be. If you have ever thought about buying one, don't. They're awful. I hate them. And I'm stuck with them for the rest of my life. If you like models or puzzles, like those old snap together models, that's what a Dyson vacuum cleaner is. It's a puzzle. And once you've figured out the puzzle and put it all back together, then you get to do some vacuuming. And that's kind of like, that basically, those vacuums in my mind sum up our lack of minimalism. It's like we find these things that can be rescued and we haul them home and rescue them.

40:01We do this with a lot of the stuff we have. And sometimes they make it back out of our house into other people's homes. We had some friends move here from New York and we furnished their entire apartment out of our apartment. And I'm not making that up. We gave them so much furniture that we basically furnished their first round of living in Los Angeles. Yeah, the alley was very generous that year. Hey, Sam, I'm curious. So you described that you last took your car to a mechanic in your 20s. So that suggests to me that you didn't grow up as like a six year old kid learning how to fix cars and fix vacuum cleaners from your family.

40:44And that would therefore imply that you learned this at some point. How did you educate yourself on being able to fix everything that the alley giveth to you? This is an interesting idea maybe for a future episode is like the dangers of financial independence and how extreme one can get and whether or not that's actually a good idea. My dad was an engineer. So certain household level things we would do ourselves when I was growing up. When I moved to California, the car that I could take was my mother's old car that she had bought in the 60s, which was still running because my parents are cheapskates too.

41:20And then one day that broke and I got on the internet and found the most dangerous book I've ever bought, which was the technical service manual for this car. And I read it and it's got all these detailed drawings and explanations and how to do things. And I was able to fix the thing that was broken and get the car back running for no money. And that kind of sent me off on this path that I was probably genetically programmed to go down anyway of always looking at things that are broken and figuring out how to fix them. And that's like a hobby and other people will put a puzzle together and okay, great.

41:54You've got a pretty picture and it took you a lot of time. For me, that puzzle is the broken oven or the broken car or the bicycle with the chain that fell off. Paige, those Dyson vacuums are never going away. They're never, never. I will never, I will never get a vacuum I want. But that's one of the things about being super frugal too is at some point I go, well, I don't care. They were free. That's the other thing about free things is when you limit your choices and you say, I will accept what the alley provides, it's so simple. And you don't have to agonize over. I know I've listened to the mad scientist in podcasts about researching things to death and making that purchase and how agonizing it is.

42:39We were thinking about getting some shelves or a book case where we moved into the house and I needed the shelf to go in this one spot. And we were thinking about it and thinking about it. And I was thinking about How could I make it? And then one day I'm walking down the street and there's one that I'm like, oh, you know, I think that'll fit in the spot. I think I'll just drag that home from the dog walk and it fit good enough. And had I purchased one, I would have needed it to fit perfectly. It's like it takes the agony out of those kinds of decisions when you say I will accept what becomes available to me.

43:14And I get that that doesn't fit into the minimalist concept of perfect utilization. but it gets the job done. So all the various objects have a meaning and have a story behind them of where they came from and what we had to fix to make them work. So they mean something different than, oh, is this like fashionable or in style? It means something more important. The danger of being an extreme do-it-yourselfer is if you find something that's broken in a way that you know how to fix it, that something becomes very attractive. And it's almost like you'll pay more for something if it's broken and you know how to fix it just so you can have that experience.

43:53And that's where things go a little bit over the edge. I visualize you guys as viewing Los Angeles itself, the entire city as this puzzle. And you're saying, how can I extract as much as possible from the alley that giveth? And then on top of that, specifically for you, Sam, I see that almost every interaction you have with this land of broken toys, this environment we live in where we're just spewing out maximum crap. For you, it's the puzzle that keeps on giving. And it's really cool because it so closely lines up with how we view this personal finance journey as a game. And I'm synced up with you, man.

44:29I'm totally synced up with you. Yeah. And it also allowed us to do the final big hack, which is the house. I mean, yes, it eats a significant amount, percentage of my income, which I know is not very fi or mustachian or whatever ism you want to apply to the math of our house. But we were able to purchase a house that a lot of other people would not have put their hands anywhere near. As a matter of fact, five people tried to buy our house and fell out of escrow before we got our hands on it. And we're thrilled about that because we live in a great neighborhood. And it's not officially the worst house in the neighborhood, because we arbitraged our neighborhood quite a bit.

45:13We did a lot of searching for the safest bad neighborhood in Los Angeles, and I think we found it. But the house needed things. And we were working with a pretty traditional realtor, and we walked into houses that had giant holes in the floor all the way down into the foundation. And our realtor would have this look of just horror on her face, and we'd be like, oh, that's fixable. Okay, well, let's look at where it is and what we need and can we extract everything else we need? A floor is easy. A lot of other people don't think quite like that because of our lifetime of fixing and DIYing. Right.

45:50Buying a house is a crazy experience, especially someplace like Los Angeles, because so little of it is in your control. You figure out how much can you afford to spend and what is available and where is that available. There are so many people trying to get the cheapest house and then the competition drops off as you go up the scale. So you're basically arbitraging your skills against what the average person is willing to do. We bid on a couple houses that we thought were in rough shape and they still went for way more than we would have been willing to pay for it. The one we ended up in, there was an obvious gas leak when you walked in the house.

46:29And I think that probably turned a lot of people off because I imagine, you know, dying in your sleep is going to turn people off. I'm shocked. You can imagine that some people would be intimidated. Yeah. Yeah. Facility manager, Sam walks in and says, Paige, this smells like opportunity. but it's a it's a very narrow band because if there is a house that is reasonable and low priced a flipper is going to get it and these flippers come in they pay all cash and they put in fifty thousand dollars and then they resell the house six months later for a hundred and fifty thousand more than they bought it for so you're competing with those people so you got the house that's been neglected, where sadly to say the last generation has passed on and the kids want to just sell it and get on with their own lives.

47:21And it has to be just bad enough. The flippers don't want it. Exactly. Exactly. And that's the house we found. And luckily we did. Gas leak seems to be on the list of things even flippers don't want that in one car garages. They don't want to deal with that. But it put us in a position along with the fact that Sam has zero credit history from a life of frugality and whatnot. We were in a really tough bind. We could do zero traditional financing between the market and his situation. We had to do, I mean, we basically had to do a cash purchase, which really put him in a tough financial situation.

48:04Not tough in the sense that, but it ate a lot of his fine money and it was not what he wanted to do with his fine money. And then I had to find an independent broker to do my mortgage refi because the banks, even at that point, didn't really, I couldn't find a bank that was willing to touch me alone, even with the asset purchased. So doing things non-traditionally for house buying is its own interesting and freaky world that we just stumbled into based on the math of the fact that market rent in Los Angeles is so ridiculous right now that we were just better off finding the right house. Yeah, the place we were basically evicted from, when we left, we were paying$1 ,850 a month split between three people.

48:55And previously, that had been split between as many as six people in the years before. The woman who bought it, fixed it up, put it back on the market at$5 ,700 a month. Wow. And she got it. So triple essentially. Yeah. So that's how crazy things are rent-wise in Los Angeles. What was the purchase price of the house? $4.75. Yeah. With a gas leak. With a gas leak. With a gas leak. Yeah. No contingencies, no saying, oh, you guys got to fix this first. None of that. Just as is. And you purchased this cash. Yeah. Well, Well, the fortunate thing is even as the housing market recovered in the last three or four years, the stock market has also done some inexplicable inflating.

49:37So it was basically selling every single asset I had to raise the money to buy the house, which I was able to do. So Sam, I'm curious what the intermediate to long-term play is here. You sound like a compulsive fixer, right? So is this a project for you? Is this something where you think that the two of you can come in and fix this up and add a lot of value and then you'll sell it for a profit? Or is this like a long-term just housing play? It's a long-term housing play, but the fact that we can do all the work ourselves is what made it financially possible. And the fact that it has things, again, like what I said about you find something that has problems with it that you know how to fix those become features.

50:27Those are things that are attractive. And this house has plenty of problems that we know how to fix them. And that's what made it possible for us to move in here. And plus the fact that the opportunity cost of the money that is now in this house and the mortgage for pages half of it is still less than we would have been having to pay for any similar place in Los Angeles if we were still renting. The math has recently flipped so that renting is just impossible and buying starts to look like it makes sense. Especially at this price point. Yeah. This price point kind of makes the math work especially well.

51:04But it is the fact that we are long-term people. I know Jill Collins wrote an article about the house and we don't necessarily consider it an investment. It is a living expense. But in that article, he says, are you a person who needs wings or are you a person that needs roots? And I moved around most of my childhood and I need roots. I lived in the apartment I lived in when I moved to Los Angeles for 20 years. I was there through multiple roommates, lots of changes, but I was the consistent 20 year renter. And I like that. I like that idea of putting down the roots. And then just luckily, we just happened to be by an area where we're not currently and did not have to pay for the privilege.

51:47But very soon, within the next year and a half, we'll be less than two miles from a train stop in Los Angeles, which is a big deal and a huge sports development down the road. And we got lucky and we didn't have to pay for those privileges, but they will. by the time we did the refi, the house had appraised at 610. And some of that's the work we put in. And some of it is just this ridiculous housing market. And we fixed the gas leak. Yeah, we fixed the gas. Minor details, right? And Paige, your point about the roots, I think that answers my question. Because I was curious why you wouldn't just in three years, once you've fix everything up and the house went up a couple hundred thousand dollars because I assume once you get rid of gas leaks and holes down to foundations and things like that, that in LA, the house is going to go up a couple hundred thousand that you don't just move to the next house that you find with a gas leak and whatever infestation.

52:48Right. And so to me, that was my curiosity, but I think you answered it with the roots. Does that pretty much summarize your your thoughts? Yeah, I think so. We've also talked about the idea of considering it a slightly longer term live-in flip, but thinking along those lines, depending on what does happen. I mean, the housing market is so crazy that there is a little part of you that says, but that's the other punishment we get for not being minimalists. Moving is a much bigger ordeal when you have so much stuff. But, and that's a priority issue. So for everything that we do quote unquote right, we do a ton of stuff wrong and we're still able to make this journey work.

53:31You just have to choose what you're gonna do wrong. I do housing wrong and I get that. There's no spin that fixes the fact that 60 % of my spending capital goes to housing. There is no fixing that now. That is a mistake in the math. It's not going to affect me reaching five because I opted for that to mean I would make other, I don't want to call them sacrifices because the truth is they don't feel like sacrifices when you have something you want and you're getting something you want. You don't feel like you're sacrificing. And on some level, also, we have enough stuff. What more stuff could I buy?

54:12We have plenty. I'm fine. I'm happy. I'd rather have my home and now build it into a sanctuary for myself to live in. And also we're older. So we do think about it in terms of, you know, it's a single story house with a big backyard for me to putter and garden in. And I'm going to be a little old lady not long from now. It does change certain things as you get older and you still, I know I listened to a radical personal finance, where he talked about the fact that you have to be prepared that your priorities may change. And he was warning against the idea of the ERE lifestyle lifestyles or the Mr.

54:55Money Mustache, which is kind of funny that they were the same thing in his mind, a$9 ,000 a year living lifestyle and a$25 ,000 a year living lifestyle were the same. Those are very different. But, you know, he put them in the same category and called them extreme. And I just think that the nice thing about having started this journey at 45 years old is I already knew so many of the things of who I am. I don't have to worry that, oh, in 10 years, am I going to like living here? In 10 years, am I going to like the things I like now? I liked these things 10 years ago. I have a lot of life behind me to know that, yes, this is a mistake, but it's the right mistake for me.

55:39And to me, you know what that is? It's not early retirement extreme. It's extreme ownership. Brad, I know you're a big fan of Jocko and the Jocko Willink podcast, but it's this idea of you take ownership of the decisions that you've made and you work with what you've been given. And so buy is still possible for you. Your burn rate, your cost of living is$30 ,000 a year. You just said that 60 % of that is going to housing. And I think where I want to land is with everything that we talked about earlier, with all those, I guess you could say, quote unquote, disadvantages that you'd been handed. How do you hit five by the year 2025?

56:14What does that scenario actually look like? Well, there's a couple of benefits to being old in this particular case, one of which is within the next three years, I get to contribute significantly more to my 401k. And as long as I stay on a minimal raise trajectory, which I should, if not make a little baby leap here or there, I can max out even that added benefit. I also get that same added benefit in my IRA. I don't get any benefit to the HSA, but the HSA is sort of my sort of health savings account kind of concept. And then just, I've done the math conservatively. I know you guys like to use 8%.

56:54I personally like to use 6 % because it just makes me feel a little safer. And if I can take what I have and keep it growing, I should, knock on wood, but by the end of the year, I should hit my first$100 ,000 and then keep that growing over the course of this next eight years. Then I turn 55 and the benefit there is the age 55 rule where I can take from my 401k penalty free. and there's a little tiny baby catch to that rule that your work has to be amenable to the idea that you're going to take from your 401k in irregular withdrawals and my work currently where I work is amenable and it would definitely be a question that I would bring to the table if I interviewed for a new job is whether or not their 401k was amenable not that you can't get around it or do all kinds of things, but it means I don't have to do quite as much kabuki on the other end to figure out how to do the ladder and all those kinds of things.

57:57Cause I'm going to be able to draw straight from my 401k at 55 when I walk away from my job. And so there's a lot of things in my favor being older that are helping me. And also the numbers low, like I'm looking at my end of five numbers under$500 ,000. It's about four 80. If everything goes according to plan, which I hope and see no reason it shouldn't. And I can pay off the house for a huge chunk of that and get that debt off my back. My student loan should be dead before that. And then I draw on that. And luckily, I'm already 55. I will make a certain amount of money with being an artist and working on the side.

58:37It will take so little money. It's hardly worth talking about. And then within 10 years at 65, I will have social security, which will cover every penny of my living expenses because I will have a paid off house and yada, yada. So even if I burned through, if I got the worst withdrawal ever, retired in the worst decade possible, I only have to live a decade on what's left in my stash to make it to 65 and social security that will pay more than I need to live. If my stash lasts, I should get a big fat raise at 65. Brad, this is what crushing it at every level looks like. Paige, I just want to stand and give you a standing clap for that.

59:20Well, well played. Thank you. That's very kind, but it's really just math. It's just the math, man. It's just the math. It's just the math. All right, guys. Are you ready for the hot seat? Yes. In a world drowning in debt and rampant consumption, Trapped by the chains of lifestyle inflation, these questions highlight the secrets of those who are broken free. Welcome to the Choose FI Hot Seat.

1:00:00Our first question for each of you is, what is your favorite blog? And this could be financial independence or otherwise? Any side out there? For me, I'm going to go with the mad scientist just because it's not just the things he's laid out. It's the sort of simplicity of trusting the math that as a non-math person, I am not an engineer. I am an artist through and pretty through and through. And so being able to really look at the math and say, the math is solid really had a profound effect on me. So I have to go with that. I mean, that and like someone like Big Earn who just crushes the math, I really appreciate those sites.

1:00:47I would say Mr. Money Mustache and especially the forums, just because there's so much there. I think with advertising spending billions a year to make us stupid with our money, you kind of need to counteract that with a few hours every couple of weeks, hanging out on these forums and just refreshing and resetting your brain to what the priorities should be and why they're important. Yeah. Nothing like a couple of solid face punches to wake you up. Exactly. Yeah. All right. Question number two, Paige, your favorite article of all time. Well, for me, it's kind of hands down the shockingly simple math.

1:01:21I mean, Sam had shown me, had pointed me in the direction of Mr. Money mustache. And when I stumbled on that, I mean, I started reading and never, I mean, I don't think I stopped for a week and a half, but with that article and its simplicity of this percentage gets you this, this percentage gets you this was like a light bulb went off in a room that I didn't even know was dark. It was amazing. It was amazing. I'm going to go old school and say the first chapter of Thoreau's Walden, where he's sitting in this little hut in the woods and talking about what his expenses are and figuring out that he doesn't need to be in the rat race at all if he doesn't want to.

1:02:00I read that in my early 20s, and I think that had a profound effect on how I looked at how I was going to interact with the economic world around me and how I was going to try to find ways to maintain my independence and not just get sucked into a cycle of spending and dependence on earning and not having control. That's solid, man. I have a feeling that even Brad hasn't read that one yet. Oh, yeah. You got to read it. It's you'll you'll recognize it. It'll sound oddly familiar. Nice. Yeah, that'll go on the book list. So go over to the library website as soon as we finish recording here. That's wonderful.

1:02:35All right, guys. Question number three, your favorite life hack. YouTube. Hundred percent. If you're a DIY or you cannot live without it. I mean, I've learned how to plaster walls, how to do woodworking things, how to deal with various types of old and new paint, how to strip paint, how to leave paint and sand it properly. I mean, just it has everything. I mean, I think it's I hate to say it. I would say it's just a tiny bit better than the library, but just barely. Now, I'm with you, though. The YouTube is pretty darn solid. But I'd be very interested in seeing what Sam's YouTube playlist looks like.

1:03:15I have a feeling it's pretty epic. It's all about how to fix your foundation and how to earthquake-proof your house at the moment. I would have to agree with Paige on this. Just the gift that people give by putting on YouTube how to do these things, it should be changing the world. And I bet if you were a good social scientist, you would be able to measure the effect that it's having on the economy, that it's having on the ability of people to be independent, that you can find a video that shows you how to fix the problem you're facing instead of always having to either let it continue to exist or find someone else to fix it for you.

1:03:49It reminds me of that technical service manual I got for my car when I was 22 and the huge difference that made. I wonder what would be different in my life now if YouTube had existed back then. Like how many things could the whole world have figured out just by that sharing of information that people are willing to give that just didn't get fixed or didn't get done. So I would say that's a way to add to your superpowers that we didn't have 10 or 20 years ago. Yeah. I love that. Don't collect stuff, collect skills. Yeah. All right. Paige, question number four, your biggest financial mistake. Oh, well, for me, it's definitely the starting late.

1:04:27Luckily, I mean, in the end, it's not going to affect me. And I found a couple of really positive things about starting late that are going to work in my favor. So case or all. I've been surprised at even with the mistakes I've made, just being on the right path has almost taken care of itself. I didn't find the whole put everything into an ETF and just leave it alone until later on. But what I had been doing had been close enough to that, that it still worked. I mean, I would have done better if I had just done put everything into an S &P 500 ETF at the beginning all along if I put money in sooner at the beginning of years instead of at the end of the year.

1:05:06But even with those mistakes, just the fact that I had gotten on this path, even unintentionally, as early as I did, has made enough of a difference. So you rescue yourself from your own mistakes just by being in the game. All right. Question number five, advice you would give to your younger self? I think it's definitely the same. I mean, the mistake is the advice I would give my younger self, I would have done it backwards. I would have, I'd have gotten out when Sam could have gotten out. I would not have done it the way he's done it and used a little bit, you know, use that money to buy his intermittent freedom.

1:05:45I would have just saved, gotten out and then just wrote it out to the end. But that's, you can't go back. So there's not really much sense in getting too nostalgic about the mistakes of your younger self. I would say my advice to my younger self is make it automatic. Like for me, the fact that it was kind of automated for me early on made a huge difference because I would not have done it by myself as disorganized as I was in my 20s. It was really helpful to just just that minor little head start and the gift of having that set up for me, even though it was just a small amount, made a huge difference.

1:06:23And I would recommend that for second generation financial independent people, use force. Parents, use force. Make the kid have the right kind of account. Put something in it. Show them how to put something in it. If at all possible, that will make a huge difference. Keep your burn rate low. This is stuff that I did, that I was successful in doing. And also, figure out how to enjoy your life as it's unfolding and not worry too much about sacrificing for the future. Yeah, I love that. That is profound wisdom and advice. And yeah, we all can certainly take something from that. So I greatly appreciate that.

1:06:59And we have a fun little bonus question. So I'm not sure if the answer is going to be anything for you guys, since it's not from the alley. But have you made a favorite purchase on Amazon.com in the last year? And if you have, we won't tell the alley. We can keep it a secret. The alley gets so mad. Yeah. Yeah, so we did a lot of research when we refinished our wood floors here in the house. And there was a very particular product that the state of California does not like, but we wanted badly to do our floors with because it's a little more old school. And it's also a little better wearing when you have pets.

1:07:41And we're kind of hard livers. We drag project in and out of our house and having the newer wood finishes was going to be a little bit tougher for us. And so we wanted this little bit older school wood finish and Amazon was willing to send it to us. And so that is my favorite purchase I've made on Amazon in the last year was getting our this particular wood finish for the house. I got a really good soldering iron that I got for my birthday a couple of months ago. It was a used weller with the adjustable thermostat. thermostat. And if you ever do any work on electronics or, or soldering, it is a life changing difference to get a really good high quality professional level soldering iron, instead of just the little cheap RadioShack thing you plug into the wall.

1:08:27And I think, uh, if I ever do want to treat myself, it's to get the really good version of a tool instead of continuing to suffer with, uh, lesser versions. Awesome. Yeah. I'm with you on that a hundred 100%. So Paige and Sam, I know people are going to want to connect with you guys. And there's a segment of our audience, probably a large segment that has been underrepresented on the show to this point that identifies with much of what you've said, the high cost of living limitations, the maybe potentially lower income limitations, the finding five later in life limitations. They're looking for someone that they can relate to, someone that has a similar set of struggles or obstacles that they face.

1:09:08Someone that has done it, has been on this path and found a way to succeed and even thrive. And so there's gonna be a lot of people in our community that are gonna wanna connect with you. What's the best way for them to reach you? Well, for me, and I think this will include Sam too, you can just, I'm in the Facebook group. So you can just reach out to me to the best of my knowledge. I'm the only page in there. So I'm at the Paige Hargrave and the Facebook group. Thanks so much for coming on the show today. Well, thank you for having us. I really appreciate it. I know that probably trying to connect with people who are not professional bloggers and podcasters was probably a little scary for you guys.

1:09:43So I appreciate you taking that risk. Yeah, we were not worried in any way, shape or form. We, you know, like we always say, and we don't say this to be like self-deprecating. We're just regular people. Believe me, you know, six months ago, we were we had no idea what we were doing with this. So, yeah, this was not a risk. This was we really appreciate you sending us that email and continuing to send us all your emails. So thank you for being a part of the community. It's wonderful. Thank you for being a part of the ChooseFI community. If you want to support us, here are four easy ways. One, leave us an iTunes review.

1:10:13If you want to do that, just go to choosefi.com slash iTunes. Two, use our page to sign up for travel credit cards. If you want to travel the world with miles and points instead of your hard-earned dollars, then just go to choosefi.com slash cards and get started today. Three, if you're working on the Milestones of Fi, set up a personal capital account to track your progress and use our affiliate link. It's completely free. And just go to choosefi.com slash PC. P as in Paul, C as in cat. And four, and most importantly, find your friends, co-workers, and family members who might be open to this message and tell them about the podcast.

1:10:42Have them start with episode 38, The Why of Fi. And right behind that, have them go listen to episode 21, The Pillars of Fi. It is a fantastic starting place. The fire is spreading. And we'll see you next time as we continue to go down the road less traveled.