Getting Personal with Personal Finance: Brad & Ginger | Ep 533

26:03I'm still using Hyatt points when Anna and I go, like we have our own routine in our Hyatt places or Hyatt houses. And we use rewards points to try like, but still it costs money. Let's be perfectly clear. But those are life experiences. We're never going to never regret. There is no world where I'm going to look back 50 years from now on my deathbed and say, Oh, I shouldn't have taken Anna to Texas for four days to go to three different amusement parks because it costs us a couple hundred bucks. Like there was no world. The only world will be, wow, I wish I did five times that number, you know?

26:36But again, that's like, it's not to say the frugality doesn't have its place because I think if that's the message that comes across or has come across for me the last couple of years, like that's a deep regret of mine because frugality is really important. And just being a valuist, which is what I've always termed myself is like, I don't just spend freely. I spend on what I value. And I think that reframe kind of helped me a lot. So yeah, I don't know if I necessarily answered your question fully, but yeah, I'm definitely, I guess that's kind of where I am. But if you have any follow-ups, let me know.

27:07Well, I like how you talked about it there. It's a shift that I've had in my thinking around, you know, we think a lot about, hey, if I don't save enough, there's a real risk that I could run out of money, right? Or that I could have some real problems as I get older. But there's also a real risk of wasting your life. And that part we don't talk about or we don't think about in the same way. There's some way where we don't think about how not making those memories, like there is a risk, right? Because we are going to run out of time. And so it is an important kind of work. I know what you're saying.

27:48You don't want the frugal piece to get pushed out because it's so, hey, you know what? We really need to not run out of money. But we all know that already. That's all over our culture and we know that part. But this other part about I'm not going to get my 40s back. I'm not going to get this time of my child's life back. And I am at risk of wasting it if I am focusing too much on making sure some number reaches some magic goalpost. Yeah. And, uh, you know, I think the one non-renewable resource is our time and our lives and yeah, you just can't waste it. You can't wish it away for another day.

28:34Yeah. And I think a lot of us who maybe are predisposed to delayed gratification might do that a little bit too much where we push it off, we push it off, we push it off. But if you combine delayed gratification with a little bit too conservative with a little bit of one more year syndrome, you wake up and you're 60 and you didn't do all those things. You can't get back your thirties, forties, and fifties. And it's not to say, obviously, by no means is life over at 60. I'm not arguing that at all. You still have plenty of good years, but pick any, any age and then take the prior 20 years. If you just wished it away just to get some number in a spreadsheet, like that's not a recipe for a happy life.

29:17It's not a recipe for a successful life. It just isn't regardless of what your net worth is. Your net worth will never make you happy. It'll make your life better, but it will never, ever, ever make your life happy. It's just not the way we're wired. It really isn't. So is it fair, you know, having gotten that background now from you to say, like, do you feel like you have been early retired for a decade? I know you've been busy And I know you've been working on things, but is that how you think about your life? Yeah, I do. I do. But again, with the caveat of like, I overthink things and I don't want to like ever portray myself in the wrong light.

29:55So Ginger, I know that I overthink. That's like, again, this is something I've been dealing with for a very, very long time. So I think, yeah, if I'm completely frank, I do consider myself early retired, even though by any definition I do work. But this is a passion project. Like this is if choose, if I made$0 tomorrow, I would still do this podcast. There's no world where I would stop this podcast. There's no world. I just love it. So I think we're all going to have passion projects once we reach five or once we leave our corporate job or whatever, however you want to term it. And I think as Pete, Mr.

30:32Money Mustache used to like to joke, it's like the internet retirement police, you know, these jerks who come around and are like, Oh, but you're making money. So you're not actually FI or you're not actually early retired. And it's like, why these people feel the need to disparage anybody that they don't know for no particular reason. It's just, yeah, it's so beyond me. Like people are going to earn money. They are. People are going to do projects. They are. That's just that we're the most, like, if you go to any FI event, you're going to find the most interesting, creative people, driven people that you've ever met in your entire life.

31:07Like this is what's fun about meeting five people. Like we're super interesting and it's awesome. So to imagine that somebody is going to sit around doing nothing as your definition of early retired, sitting around watching sports for 12 hours a day on TV, like nobody's aspiring to that. That's, that's ridiculous. So yeah, I mean, Ginger, I think by any definition, I control my time and I think that's the only thing that matters. And I'm, I'm taking much more control of that time now. And I think that mini retirement that I went on really, really helped a lot. So we know a lot of the good things that have come from your life because you've reached financial independence, right?

31:50Like you've talked a lot about what it means to be able to do work that you want to do, to be able to travel when you want to travel. A lot of things that seem really appealing, like, yes, I want it. Let's do it. If you think about the last 10 years, what has been harder than you expected it to be? Yeah. So the harder things, I guess, uh, I mean, I, I, I guess a couple of things. So, I mean, first, well, I don't, I never liked working by any means. I think what most people do like about their jobs are their coworkers and having this built-in camaraderie. And, and I really did enjoy my coworkers at my old job and, you know, I didn't do a great job of keeping up with them after I left and, and you, you lose that built in camaraderie that's there.

32:39And yeah, I mean, I think more than that is I didn't do a great job of trying to build a community here in Richmond or trying to build like real friendships. So I think, I think I was probably lonely for a while. I think, uh, yeah, I, I think, I think that clearly happened. Um, you know, I think also you have to figure out what works for you and your life situation. And I think we thought at first, like me being home would be this like amazing thing. Like I get to be home with the girls when they're there and when they're not, you know, before they went to school and I'm there with my wife, Laura, but I think there's a way to fall into bad habits and not that I'm advocating working in a job by any means, but I think I, I didn't establish like a better work-life balance in the sense that like, it felt like any time I was getting with all three of them was like kind of grazing time.

33:39It was always like, I would see Laura 10 times a day and it would just be like these quick hits, like, Hey, how are you doing? What have you been up to? And it just like, it was just these like meaningless conversations, even though by any measure, like we were spending a lot of time together. It wasn't like real quality time. It was all these just like drive by things. And like my daughters saw me because I didn't establish boundaries. And I think boundaries are really important, especially when you have your own business. It's so easy to do more. Like I could work if I wanted to, I could work 24 hours a day every day for the rest of my life on choose a vibe.

34:13I was so inclined. And I think I'm a lot better with it now. But for years there, I would just kind of graze on up, you know, mosey on up to my, my office and quote unquote, check email. Like if you could ask my daughters, like how many times daddy went and checked email and then was just vanished for 30 minutes or an hour or something. And it's like, so yeah, I mean, I don't think I did a great job with that. That has to be so common because the main thing that work gives us is structure. And that influences kind of every part of our day, right? It influences how we direct our psychic energy, but it also like you're getting at something important that people aren't thinking about, which is the coming back together with the family and how leaving the family influences the coming back together as a family and influences that quality of time that you have.

35:07And so without those sort of built in routines, I could see how it could be in fact, kind of distressing for people to figure that part out because we don't usually think about it. No, we don't. We don't. And I think the key takeaway for me was intentionality or should have been or is for everybody else is I think in all aspects of your life, like you said, setting up these boundaries, setting up a structure is really what you were talking about is I think it's all part and parcel of being intentional. And when you aren't intentional, it's easy to fall into bad habits, no matter what they may be.

35:48And it's funny because so many of my friends in the fight community who have reached by and then when and traveled, right? Like quote unquote, like I'm going to go travel the world. They almost invariably come back to some type of structure. However, they define that. So I know like Alan and Katie Donegan and I talked at length on our travels to Asia a couple of months ago, and they've been nomadic now for five years. And they're at the point where they're contemplating like, Hey, what would it look like to have maybe three or four home bases each year where we spend three or four months each year because they want a structure.

36:27They want to have the same, you know, some friends who they knew maybe from last year who are still there, they want a gym to go to and their routine and a kitchen to cook in and be able to buy groceries for months at a time as opposed to just grazing. And I think that intentionality is really important. So I think that's something that I, in all candor, I just, I really screwed up on. And I think, yeah, I just don't think it was, it was ideal. Yeah. I think it's an interesting thing to talk about because freedom, you know, when you're talking about the Donegan's, that is also freedom, like to be able to put that structure.

37:05And so often we think of freedom more like no structure, but chaos isn't exactly the path. Right, right. Okay. So structure was a tricky thing to figure out. I want us to move closer to the present moment. Although it's interesting to hear about what were those struggles early on. And I know we had talked about a big thing that's happening in your life. And that's one of the reasons that we wanted to have this conversation was so that you could share a little bit about something hard that's happening now. Yeah. Yeah. And this is not easy to talk about. But, yeah, my wife and I are separated. and we are in the, really the final stages of finalizing a divorce actually.

38:02So yeah, it's, it is really not easy to talk about gender because I have been chronicling my life for, for eight years. And there's part of me that wants to talk about this. And there's obviously part of me that says, ultimately it's nobody's business. You know, it's a very personal thing. And, you know, unfortunately in life, people drift apart sometimes and things happen. And that's just the reality of life, you know. And there's obviously, so I'm of, it's hard. I think it's hard. And I didn't want to not talk about it, I think is the biggest thing, you know, because I feel like the people who listen to the show are coming here in a large part because they feel like maybe I'm their friend in some weird way.

38:55And, you know, and, and, and I just, I didn't want to hide something, but I also know, frankly, that I have very thin skin and I know how my friend Pete, Mr. Money Mossash just got for no reason whatsoever, got attacked years ago when he announced that he was getting divorced. And, and I think like, to me, the thing that like, I'm, I'm most worried about as weird as it sounds. Like, obviously I'm most worried about the impact on my children. Let's be clear. But, but in terms of, of this podcast is like, again, these, these just ultimately trolls and jerks just coming and like attacking fi because my marriage happened to not work out, right?

39:36Like just because my wife and I grew apart, like nothing terrible happened, nothing bad happened from fi and like, not even remotely, but like somehow people using it as like a cudgel to attack five because, Oh, look at this guy, Brad, who's been talking about what a great life he's had. And, and he's getting a divorce like that. I know it's weird, Ginger, but like I've devoted so much of my life to the five community and I feel so strongly about it. And like, it just, it tears me up to think that people might attack five because my marriage happened to not work out. And, uh, I don't know. Well, this is part of that objectification, right about we have this idea about who you are and it's hard for people to hear that you're a person yeah yeah and we are just people we are just people yeah and of course sort of like money you know like we talk about how retiring early kind of influences every part of your life like so does the structure of your family and so I appreciate that you're saying ah this is like so private and yet it's also so big, right?

40:49That it's changing every part of your life right now. Yeah, it really is. I think the things going on in my life generally over the last eight years are things that I talk about on the podcast because if I'm going through it, undoubtedly there are many tens, hundreds of thousands, millions of people who are going through something similar. And because I am a very private person and I'm not going to go into every last detail but things that I'll be dealing with, splitting up assets, splitting up businesses, which is really complex, dealing with all this stuff. Undoubtedly, it will influence the podcast in some way, but there's no world where I'm going to come on here and just bear my soul about every last little detail.

41:34Nobody needs that. It's not practical. It's nobody's business again. But if I can help people, that's always what I've wanted to do is if I can help people in some way, I want to do that. And if that means bringing on, I met some attorney last year at economy who spoke on the main stage about, about prenuptial agreements and things like that and splitting assets. Like he might be somebody that I get on and would be interesting to talk to. And, and, you know, it's just, this is an aspect of the financial life that is really important to a lot of people. Clearly it's very important. And frankly, in almost 700 episodes of Jews of I, we've never talked about it.

42:09So like that will have to change. I think it should have changed prior to this totally irrelevant of my life, but yeah. So, I mean, I'm going to talk about it in some way, but, uh, but yeah, I just, uh, you know, again, it's, it's like my own fear, ginger, but like, I just, I'm like, I know in my heart of hearts that if there are people who are listening to this or hear this and like want to vilify me or attack me, like it says way more about them and like what, you know, the pathetic state of their soul and brain than, than about me, you know, but nevertheless, like, I don't want to log onto Facebook and see people like attack me in my group or get emails like, oh, you're a fraud because you got divorced.

42:45Like, give me a break. I'm not a fraud. FI is not a fraud. Like it just, life happens sometimes against your best laid plans. And, uh, I think like we talked about before with, you know, time is your one non-renewable resource. And I think it's important to also pick up your life and move forward positively. And I think luckily FI has afforded me and us the ability to do that. And, uh, we're not going to be destitute when this all shakes down. It's, it's, it's not going to be, you know, the perfect financial situation, but, uh, but we're not, I'm not going to be destitute by any stretch. And I think I have the ability to move forward and try to live, you know, the best life that I possibly can.

43:25And I think, I think that's what we're all trying to do. Right. And I think that aspect is, is a good thing. And yeah, it's just, you know, life, life is short and it's, uh, to wish any amount of it away is just kind of silly. So, um, yeah, I'm just trying to pick back up and live the best life I can. Yeah. What have been the parts of this process that have surprised you? Yeah. Well, that's a good question. I mean, it's not surprising that it's stressful. It's obviously stressful. Um, I think there's just so many details to figure out, especially when you are trying to figure out co-parenting and how the exact timeline is going to work.

44:10And also like, we're very cognizant of our kids' mental wellbeing. And while there's, there's something you could put on paper, like, this is how we're going to split custody. But when the rubber hits the road and the kids feel really comfortable in one spot, like it's hard to force them to sleep in somebody, you know, in another place or something like that. Like, I think one of the best parts about us has always been like, we don't get caught up in the normal cultural things of like, you should do this, you have to do this, or like, because it's Thanksgiving, you need to do X with this family and like, or July 4, like the funny example is like July 4, it's like a big party at our summer pool.

44:56And it's like, everybody goes, they line up like hours early to go in. it's just like a madhouse and it's horrible. Like we would go to the pool every other day of the year, other than July 4th, because like in our minds, we're not cheap who like just do what everybody else does. And, you know, I think that is probably going to help us through this process, but it also, it does add some complications obviously. And, uh, and yeah, I mean, I think just finally is, is anytime you have to split up a fairly complex financial life, it's not super simple. So, uh, trying to figure all that kind of stuff out is, is it's just details at the end of the day, it's all just details.

45:33It's all going to work out fine. It's just, uh, and obviously I don't wish that I had zero dollars of net worth, right. And, or didn't have rental properties or didn't have a business or whatever, but like, but it adds complexity to it. So I think that's maybe the, what's slightly harder than I would have expected. Yeah. You mentioned that it's a

45:56Have they been stressful? I mean, yes, yes and no. Ultimately, I think no in the sense that I think, again, we are fi by any definition on paper and money is still coming in from my businesses. So the only, the stress has just been like, okay, look, like I'm having to split up one financial life into two. So it's just been like more details. Like I've been trying to proactively set up new accounts, new checking accounts, new things that aren't joint. Right. And, and just try to, then you move all your auto pays and all your other things. Right. It's like all these little, little, little details.

46:36So it's just been a lot of work, but I wouldn't say that aspect has been stressful, but yeah. I mean, ultimately just, you know, again, the final details of, of how things get sorted out. Like that's never going to be perfectly straightforward unless you just had a checking account with X number of dollars in and you just divide by two. Right. Yeah. I think to kind of pull back and ask a more general question, I think something that people think about when they are developing their fine number is that if they are coupled, they're thinking about what that number is for the couple. and that that might look, I think it necessarily looks really different if it's two single people.

47:20And so, you know, I've heard of people like, how do you factor that in when you're thinking about something that might happen in 20 years? Like, you all want to believe that our lives will be the same, but often many, many times they aren't. So I guess for you, it sounds like you're saying it hasn't stressed you out in terms of like, hey, now we're not going to be able to make it. Now we're not going to be okay. It sounds like you're okay. But how would you advise people to sort of think about this as they're thinking about financial independence? Yeah, Ginger, that is tough. I think I'd need to think more deeply to give a better answer because I haven't thought about that that overtly.

48:04And maybe there isn't really a good answer to that question. No, because I, well, yeah, because I wonder, right. Like, does it just lead to not one more year syndrome, but 10 more year syndrome, right? Like, Hey, are we 50 X five because 50 X our expenses, because what happens if, if things go bad? Yeah. But you can't stick your head in the sand. I'm arguing both sides of this. So bear with me. Like you can't stick your head in the sand, of course, and say, obviously you look at divorce rates and know that this is very realistic for a lot of people. So it's not out of the blue if somebody in our community gets divorced, right?

48:39Like it's invariably going to happen to 20, 30, 50 % of people. It's just, it's going to happen. Yeah. But yeah, I wouldn't necessarily advise like over saving for something that you don't know what the likelihood of it is. So it's kind of a quandary or an impasse. I, I don't know exactly how to think about that. I think at the end of the day, like, I think I can only really give my own thoughts on where I am now, which is it's interesting when I look at my financial life and I've talked long talked about being like a minimalist and, you know, not really spending that much money in the scheme of things.

49:16And I actually look at my own financial life now, which will be going forward separately. And I actually don't spend that much money. I really don't. I spend on rent. I spend a couple hundred bucks a month on food. I have a personal trainer and a gym membership, which is not that much in the scheme of things. And honestly, Ginger, there's not much more, you know, obviously I'll have my own health insurance and of course, you know, all the normal insurances and things like that. But I live a pretty good life, I think, and I don't spend that much money and I have a lot of travel rewards points and I'm going to travel a good bit.

49:51And we know that isn't terribly expensive from friends of ours, like Christine Bryce from millennial revolution. Like they spend$30 ,000 a year on travel. And I I know the Donegan's can spend somewhere in that vicinity. I know they've loosened the purse strings recently also. But yeah, I mean, that's been an interesting realization for me. It's like my life actually costs less than I thought that it would. So I don't know that there's much of a takeaway there. But nevertheless, that has been interesting. Yeah. When you mentioned insurance, it made me think, I wonder if there are other expenses that people don't think about.

50:26Obviously, housing is the big one I think about right away. and insurance is a big one. Are there other things that when you split become more expensive? Oh, that's a good question. I have not seen it to date, but I mean, I think just by, well, just by virtue, right. Of having two locations, right. Then you have double the internet costs. You have double the utility, all that stuff, right. Like you don't think about that. You have double insurance now, especially if you're getting two comparable places, right. So I'm in a, a townhouse. So it's a rented, I'm actually renting now. So I think interestingly, I don't know that I'll ever, and it's way too early to say never, but as of right now, I don't think I'll ever own my primary residence ever again.

51:13What? I love renting. I have always loved the concept of renting. I would never, ever, ever own my primary residence. Yeah. I think ever. that's probably a whole extra hour episode maybe we cannot we can do another time i want you to say a little bit more about that though because you put so many never evers in front of that oh i mean never ever i mean just from the financial aspect i love renting it's incredible it just costs nothing other than this is the money that i send over every month via bank transfer and anything that pops up like you don't realize like and this is not to say that real estate is a bad investment.

51:52I think people conflate the two. There's this cult of home ownership, but that's very different from having rental properties that are an actual business, totally separate issue. I'm not arguing that at all. I think most people, if they're completely honest with themselves, of which almost nobody ever is, owning your own primary residence is not an investment at all. It's a terrible investment at best because you don't think of all the things, the money that... They're the money pits. They're total money pits. I think of just random things that like the sprinkler system that we turn on and off for$200 a year, because you have to keep your lawn nice, you know, so you get fertilizing and, you know, just all these stupid things, not to mention all the things that break.

52:32And you don't think like, oh, I just spent$10 ,000 on an HVAC unit that has a 10 year useful life. I'm just making this up. So that's a thousand dollars a year. That's$80 a month, essentially. Like you don't think of that as a cost in your mortgage, but like every single thing in your house has a useful life from the roof that's going to cost you 20 to$50 ,000 on down, you should really like my accountant speak. You should really amortize that across every single month and realize like, that's how much your house costs. Cause you have to replace every single one of those damn things. And things break all the time.

53:03Refrigerators break, hot water heaters break. Like when you actually add it all up and then the real estate taxes, like it all just adds up to this crazy number, you know, what it means wild. Like it is very, very, very expensive. So yeah, I mean, just the flexibility of being able to rent the lower cost. And then not to mention the biggest thing that most people don't realize is the opportunity costs, right? So let's say you have a house that now is worth, it's just gone up, right? Gone up a ton. Maybe you bought it for$200 ,000 and now it's worth 500 ,000. Like that's not unrealistic for a lot of our listeners.

53:37And maybe you paid down the mortgage. Maybe you only owe a hundred grand on that mortgage. The house is worth 500. Okay. So you have$400 ,000 of equity, which is wonderful, but that's just sitting there, inert, doing nothing, right? As opposed to had you had that$400 and invested in the stock market, well, damn, over the last couple of years, that almost undoubtedly would have doubled, right? But even putting that aside, if you assume that you get 8 % annual return on that, it's not every year, of course, but this past year would have been over 20%. Some years it's negative, but most years it's pretty darn good.

54:128 % of that 400 is$32 ,000 a year. I mean, that's almost$3 ,000 a month that is just sitting there in those walls. Whereas if you had that 400 ,000 and invested it, you could have pulled that 30 and that would have covered a rent payment in my case. So I think a lot of people don't factor that in as a cost when they think about their primary residence is the equity just sitting there inert. So I think almost invariably your primary residence is a terrible investment if we'd even call it that. But nevertheless, I just, I like the flexibility. I like if anything breaks, I just make a phone call and they show up and I don't have to pay a dollar.

54:50It's, it's amazing. It's really amazing. Yeah. You mentioned before that you found yourself becoming more and more of a minimalist and you hear that a lot in this community. And I am certainly also lean that way. And I've wondered if part of that is by the time that you are our age, you have a couple decades to sort of look back and say, what do I regret spending money on? And what am I happy I spent money on? And I think for most of us, it's like you were saying before, I'm not going to regret having taken this trip with my daughters. And I think the same way, right? Like, oh, I had these experiences.

55:27They're over, but they're important to me now, whereas I do regret things, things that I bought that did not have long lasting value to me. And yet, like, even though that is totally me, and more and more is me, oh, my gosh, my house, though, I think I'm so sentimental. When I hear you talk about this freedom that comes from not being connected to the chains of home ownership, that sounds appealing. But oh, my gosh, I have such a attachment to my house. I hear you. Yeah. Oh, I, I totally, I totally, totally hear you. Yeah. There's no right answer. And again, because people sometimes misconstrue things, I'm not saying owning your home is a terrible idea.

56:14Quite the contrary. I've owned a home for the last, since 2005 for 20 years, because psychologically it made sense for our daughters. it made sense for stability. It made sense, but I don't think for one second that it was a financial investment. It was, yeah, I spent money on living there and, and even quote unquote, owning your home is, is like a silly misnomer. Anyway, people always say, Oh, you're throwing money away to rent. Well, take a look at your mortgage statement next time. Look at the amortization and look at how much of your, what percentage of your payment every month is going towards interest.

56:51You will be shocked at how high it is. So let's be entirely clear. That is rent in another name. So yeah, there's that. But going back to minimalism is, yeah, I mean, I think for me, and again, it's not to say that this is the right answer. There's no right answer. Everything is about yourself. But like, I am more minimalist now than I've ever been. I mean, even to the point of like, I've gotten my life down to if I, if I needed to leave this place right now, I could put just about everything I have into one suitcase and I'd be perfectly fine. Awesome. Yeah. It's cool. And like, you know, maybe I'm taking a little too far.

57:27I'm like, you know, I have this bookshelf that I'm looking here. Maybe I'll, I'm thinking about offering this up to the Richmond local group of just like, Hey, I'm going to bring all of my books to the next meetup and anybody can grab any book they want. Like I have this, like this shelf that I don't even know why I have these books. Like I'm not going to reread any of them. They're just like these little trophies in some bizarro sense. Like, do I really need this? So like, I'm not kind of questioning everything now. And it's not to sit here like a miser and just like sit and stare at blank walls.

57:57So I am cognizant of like maybe overdoing it, but there is something kind of cool and liberating about saying like, I'm not tied down to stuff. And that's not to say when I move somewhere, you know, if I move somewhere that I'm not going to need to buy stuff because frankly I will, but there's something in my mind that's like, Oh, it'd be cool if I just had a list of the things that I would need to rebuy. Like if I didn't even want to store this stuff or if like, let's say I went and traveled someday, you know, my kids are off in college and I, I have some freedom and I can do what I want. Like, am I going to store this queen size bed that I have here?

58:30Am I going to store these blankets? Like a cost, you know, my books and my kitchen stuff, or should I just rebuy the darn stuff? You know, like, I know that sounds kind of crazy, but like, this is where my mind is going. It's like, wouldn't it be cool to just be liberated and just say like, Hey, these are the 50 things I would need to buy when I moved to a new place. And maybe I just think about rebuying them. I know this is kind of a weird off the wall brainstorm, but it's been kind of fun just realizing like how little I need to live a really good life. And I think that that's really the takeaway.

59:03It's been, it's been energizing. And then, you know, I look at my closet all the time. I'm like, you could do that thing where like, Hey, I haven't worn this in a year. Am I really ever going to wear it? Or is this time, is it time to donate this to somebody who actually is? And you know what, if I ever needed that sweater or need a sweater, like I could just go buy another sweater sometime. Like I haven't worn a sweater here in Richmond in 15 years. Do I really need these things? Like I really, really don't. So yeah, it's been kind of a fun intellectual exercise in that regard. Yeah. When I hear you saying like, Oh, I could just buy new sheets.

59:36I goodbye new blank. Like it feels, I feel like this openness in my chest of like, oh yes, freedom. Like that is so appealing to me to not be attached to any of your things. I think that is so incredible. And yet when I said I'm really attached to my house, I saw an understanding in your eyes that you get that. And I wondered like to go back to your life, if we just put the difficulty of the changing relationships on hold and put that to the side. Was there something hard about leaving the family home? Like were you attached to that place? Yeah, that's, that's interesting. So, right. Obviously putting aside the relationships, like you said, so, but anybody who's listening, be clear that we're not talking about that at all.

1:00:27So totally putting that aside the actual location. No, like, and I think, I think it kind of ties to what I've said for a long time is like, I don't get psychological satisfaction from owning a home or owning a car or any kind of stuff. Like it's just, it's just not my thing. It really isn't. So, I mean, were there aspects of the house that I love? Yeah, of course, of course there were, right? Like, you know did i really enjoy having the hot tub downstairs that i could go in all the time yeah it was you know it's cool but is is there anything that like realistically i would like desperately miss no and i think it speaks to maybe more like practicality of it like this is maybe that like maximizer versus satisficer thing that i've talked about a couple times it's like the psychological thing of, uh, and satisficer is kind of a weird word.

1:01:24So it's not satisfier, it's satisficer. And it's basically like people who are maximizers look to like get every last little drop out of something. And it has to be the perfect answer. And they're going to always stress about, did I make the right decision? Did I not? And like the satisficer basically find something that's good enough and just makes a decision and then never regrets all those other options of what could have been. And I think, I think I'm very much a satisficer in the sense that I know there, that was one of 10 ,000 homes just in the Richmond area, or probably more than that, that we would have been content with, you know?

1:02:03So it wasn't like, it wasn't like I had some deep seated, like this is the home. I think the home is for me, the memories of my daughters growing up and doing fun things and that kind of stuff. So I think that's kind of agnostic to like the actual building. Like that's just the way my brain works. It's like, I'm just not tied to buildings. I'm not tied to stuff. I'm not tied to cars. I'm not tied to anything, frankly. And I don't know, to me, that feels like kind of liberating. Like I know it could possibly sound callous to somebody's ears who's like, maybe they think the opposite, but that's the beauty of life is we all think differently, right?

1:02:39Like to me, it's not callous at all. It's focusing on the important stuff, not the structure that I happen to reside in. Yeah, no, I think it's helpful because we got to hear how other people think about it. Like it helps us when we need to change how we think about it. And this conversation makes me think of the conversation that I had with Anne from Alaska. And we talked a lot about leaving her family home, right? Where she had raised her children after 30 years. And to me, that was such an emotional thing to explore. I mean, I wanted to talk to her about it because it seemed really hard. And she said something so smart that I think about all the time where she says, okay, I was giving up the house, but I wasn't giving up the memories in the house.

1:03:23And I think about when I think about leaving our house, I think, oh gosh, how could I ever leave this image of my child being three in the raspberry bushes, right? And yet Anna's saying, well, you don't have that now. He's not three anymore. You already don't have that. So the thing that you take forward with you, right, that memory, those you get to keep. And just that framing of it helps me to calm down about like some of my attachment to things and to places. Because when you really look at like, what is it that's so terrible about leaving this? And it's about leaving the memory of the experience, right?

1:04:05And you even hit on that when you were like, okay, well, what's special about this house? It's the memories that I have with my daughter and you get to have those no matter where you are. Yeah. Yeah. Agreed. Totally agree. So as we're kind of wrapping it up, I'm thinking about something that you said before we started recording where I was kind of asking you some details about what was happening and you were so honest about, like, I don't know, right? Like, I don't know everything about this process. I don't know everything that it's going to require, right? And so I think maybe it would be wise of us to end not on a tidied little wrap-up closing, but to say, hey, this is part of the journey.

1:04:50And I really appreciate you being willing to talk about it. And I know it's helpful for other people to hear about that journey as well. So thank you so much and let's talk soon. Yeah. Yeah. That sounds good. And Ginger, thank you. Thank you for interviewing me. This is, I think, a cool idea generally. And thank you for helping me and just, yeah, just being there. This is not an easy one for me by any means, but I think it was important. So yeah. Thank you sincerely thank you for listening to today's show and for being part of the choose if i community if you haven't already the best ways to get involved are first subscribe to the podcast so you're listening to this on a podcast player just hit subscribe and then subscribe to my weekly newsletter i actually sit down every monday and write this by hand and i send it out tuesday morning so just head over to choose if i.com slash subscribe and it's really really easy to get on the newsletter list right there.

1:05:50And 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 choose a by local groups in 300 plus cities all around the world. So head to chooseify.com slash local, and you'll find a list of all of those cities in 20 plus countries all across the world. And if you're just getting started with FI, or you have a family member or a friend who you think would be interested, two easy ways.

1:06:27Chooseify episode 100 is kind of our welcome to the FI community. And even though it's a couple of years old at this point, it still stands up. And it's a really great just starting point to get an understanding of what is financial independence. What are we doing here? Why are we looking to live a more intentional life where we save money and use it as a springboard to live a better life? And then Choose a Vi created a financial independence 101 course that's entirely free. Just head to choosefi.com slash fi101. And again, thanks for listening.

1:07:10you