MI336: The Playbook to Retiring Early w/ Steve Adcock

24:38We got to hitch up. We got to drive. And everybody's passing you on the left and everybody hates you because you're holding up traffic. Those are the things that you just don't care about until you actually get into that situation and you're going through that as a full-time RVer. So, I think it's great for a lot of people. It was great for us for three years. But even for us, we didn't have to stop. There was nothing that made us stop other than the fact of us just kind of being over it and said, okay, we want to spread out a little bit, have our own property. We have seven acres now. We don't want to have to make reservations everywhere we go.

25:12So three years was enough for us. So were you getting into, because of the Mr. Money mustache influence, were you guys getting into minimalism prior to selling everything? So it was an easier move to have these kind of reduced living quarters? Yeah. I mean, we had garage sales like nobody's business. By the end, we were just saying, take it. Free. Everybody's free. Take it. Just please do not leave anything. We just wanted to get rid of as much stuff as we possibly could, especially as we were getting close to making that transition. Yeah. But we did a lot of things to cut back expenses like the cable TV.

25:47That's easy stuff. Basically, never going out to eat, always cooking our own meals, tracking our expenses meticulously. There was a time where my wife can tell you how much we spent on sweet potatoes over the year. Each and everything we bought, you definitely don't have to go to that extreme. Don't think you have to do that. Do not think that. But my wife's a rocket scientist. She loves spreadsheets. She loves numbers. So, guess what? That's what made her feel comfortable. So, I said, go for it, man. It's all good. I mean, the more data, the better. You don't have to have that much. But anyway, tracking your expenses was absolutely critical for us.

26:20So we knew which areas. What'd you use to do that for the budgeting and tracking expenses? Do you have something you recommend or just a simple spreadsheet? We always use personal capital as the high level, like net worth kind of thing, but we just use a spreadsheet. There are applications that make it easy, like a lot of them now. But back then, especially. There was Mint back then. I'm sure that there were others. I mean, personal capital, but that's not really a budgeting application. But yeah, it was basically all Google Sheets. That's it. Back to the Airstream. I mean, they're such iconic vehicles.

26:57I see them on the highway and I'm like, I wonder where they're headed. Someplace cool, I bet. So did you guys just stay in the US and visit all the national parks and all that. What was your travel itinerary? Yep. We stayed 100 % in the US with the Airstream. Everywhere from the Columbia River Gorge, Washington State, Oregon border, down to Arizona, of course, where we are over to Alabama, then up to the Finger Lakes, Michigan. I mean, we didn't hit every single national park. That wasn't really one of our goals. If there was one near, we would obviously go to it. But we just wanted to try new places, try new things, see the site, see what's there.

27:36Didn't really have a big itinerary necessarily. I wanted to be around internet. That was the major sticking point with a lot of these campgrounds and boondocking sites. What does that mean, boondocking? We boondocked a lot, which means it's free. It's government-owned property, BLM. BLM land is government-owned property that you could stay on usually for about 14 days, usually. And then you kind of have to go. If nobody checks up on you, maybe you could stay longer. We never really pushed our luck after 14 days. We were ready to move on anyway, so we moved on. We definitely liked the West Coast more than the East Coast.

28:16I mean, there was like no comparison. West Coast was way fewer people. It's way more beautiful, at least in our opinion. There were way more places to boondock because there were fewer people. There was more open land. So we spent the majority of our time in the western half of the US, like Colorado West. We did take one year and travel the east, like Alabama, Virginia, Tennessee, New York, and then back over through the Upper Peninsula. Lake Superior was amazing. I would love to live on Lake Superior or not live, but have a house there. Yeah. The West was our jam. Absolutely beautiful country out here.

28:57Where were you guys living prior to taking off in the Airstream? In Tucson. That was a low cost of living area. So it worked well for us. So you're three years in the Airstream. At some point you're like, okay, you're ready for the next chapter. Tell me about that. Tell me about what happened next. You decided to buy some land outside of Tucson? Yeah. Originally, I wanted a bigger office because I was doing a lot online, a lot of writing. So, I wanted a more, I don't know, conducive office. I was tired of sharing my office with the kitchen. And that's what I was doing in the Airstream. So, at first, we were like, well, what if we just changed our Vs?

29:34We went with a toy hauler, which means the back folds down, you can drive up an ATV or something back there and haul toys with you. That's why they call them toy haulers. But I can convert that backspace into my own office. So, we looked around at these options and there were some good ones, but most RVs just aren't really well made for full-time living. Even the expensive ones, 100, 120, 150 grand. For some of these, you could push on the walls and the walls bend. It's like, what the hell are we paying for here? So, then we said, okay, well, this probably isn't going to work because the walls in our airstream don't bend.

30:08But we had a friend of ours who lived here in Southern Arizona. We went to visit him in our airstream. We brought the airstream all the way down and we got a feel for what it's like here and the land values, the price of land, how much space you get. And it's like, this might be a good option for us. Let's get some land. Let's park the airstream here. And let's kind of build out from there. Then it morphed into, well, that still doesn't solve my office problem. What if we find a small house or we build a small house on our property so we can build it exactly the way we want it? Travel some of the year, don't travel some of the year.

30:43So, maybe six months here, six months travel. We ended up buying the place here in Southern Arizona and it's like, we really don't want to travel anymore. We kind of like it here. We like being stationary and having our own things and having room to spread out. So, last year we ended up selling the Airstream. So, we no longer have an RV at all and this is our full-time, this is an off-grid place. And our Airstream had solar, so that kind of got our juices flowing in terms of keeping our expenses down, but yet still having that stationary place. So 100 % off-grid, well-onsite, septic system. It is a complete recession-proof house and property we have here in Southern Arizona, which is great.

31:20When you bought the property, was the house already there or did you guys, was it something that you guys built? The house was here. We since converted the garage into part of our indoor living space. In fact, where I'm talking to you right now was originally the garage. It wasn't finished, just concrete on the floor, cinder block walls, but we converted that. So it went from a 640 square foot house, so still pretty small for housing standards, to about 900 square feet or so of living space. So still small, but almost four times the size of our, well, a little more than four times the size, math is hard of our Airstream and it works just perfectly for us.

32:02Luckily, you've got a rocket scientist to help you with the math, right? She does the math and I just nod my head. It's like, yeah, that sounds right. So now you got your working space. It sounds like you got a nice setup and you're totally self-sufficient. Sounds like pretty close to self-sufficient. Yeah, the only thing we buy is propane. I mean, we have a propane fireplace as our heat source. That's it. We have no heat, no air conditioning either, which might surprise some of you knowing we live in Arizona. But you might be surprised at how well EVAP coolers work in the summertime because it's so dry here.

32:35But we are thinking about installing a mini split to provide more of an AC option in the summertime to cool us off. But yeah, other than that, other than the propane we buy, we are 100 % self-sufficient. We need nothing but the sun to sustain us here. That's awesome. I want to hear a little bit about your number, actually, like prior to selling everything and buying the Airstream. What was the number where you were like, once we hit this, boom, we're out and we can go do these adventures? Well, when I quit my job in 2016, we had a little over$800 ,000 in net worth. My wife continued to work for a year because she felt guilty about leaving.

33:17So when she quit, I didn't have a job then. We officially set sail then. We had$870 ,000 in net worth. That's it. $870 ,000. That was our number. I don't know if we had said we need 870 ,000, but at that point, we just felt comfortable that we can do this. I think the key though, in making this a reality for us, is we bought the Airstream and moved into the Airstream a year before I quit. So we kind of did a shakedown kind of year. We were stationary most of the time, but we were like, maybe we should try this. See if we're going to get on each other's nerves or hate each other's guts by the end of the second week.

33:59And if we did, we would go back to our standard lives. But that first year of living small really helped us to, I guess, be comfortable with making this move sooner rather than later. I think my wife wanted about a million bucks before we set sail. I certainly didn't need that much, but I think that first year of living small, living in the Airstream, really convinced both of us that we could probably do this at less than 900K and just live really frugally for a while, make sure this is going to work, make sure we're enjoying the whole travel and spending only 35 to 40K a year. And luckily for us, it worked out just fine.

34:42You got married later in life, and I wanted to hear a little bit about your thoughts on the advantages of that. I did the same, so I wanted to hear your thoughts on that. Yeah. Yeah. The person you marry is going to be one of the most consequential decisions that you will ever make. And that's definitely not something that you should rush. I didn't want to, I mean, I could have gotten married in my 20s, but it just did not feel right. My parents, however, were high school sweethearts. They got married super young. So, sometimes it works. Sometimes you just find the right person in your teens, you stay together, you get married, and that's great.

35:19But for me, and sounds like for you as well, I mean, I was in my late 20s. Actually, no, I was in my early 30s when I got married. Yeah, early 30s. And it was one thing that I was okay with waiting because I knew that finding the right person who could actually deal with this every single day was going to be crucially important. And it's absolutely worth the wait. Yeah. And it can be crippling going through a divorce. And it just really is a horrible thing to go through financially, emotionally, all the way around. It's pretty rough. So I totally agree. You want to make sure you nail that decision.

35:56Absolutely. Absolutely. And nobody thinks they're marrying the wrong person. Nobody gets married knowing that they're going to get divorced. So, everybody thinks, oh yeah, I found the right person now. Everybody thinks that. And it's very natural. But I think still, for most people, there's that little nugget in the back of your head. It's like, is this just a good enough relationship for me? Or is this one that I am completely all in? Let's do this. There's not a chance in the world this is not going to work. I can't imagine living another day away from this person. Those two things are different.

36:30And very few people are going to admit to that. But I think a lot of marriages are just a, oh, I found someone, he or she is cute, handsome, strong, whatever. This can work. We can make this work. And I think that is why, one of the reasons why the divorce rate is so unbelievably high today. It's like, I think it might be over 50 % now, which is really devastating. It'll completely destroy your wealth getting divorced, unfortunately. Yes. My wife is a therapist and similar to living in an Airstream, going through COVID, she said with couples together, it was like people knew real quick being together during COVID, whether it was going to last or not.

37:10And she saw a lot of people that didn't work out being together so closely day after day. I wanted to hear about your COVID experience. You took a bit of a hit with your portfolio. I wanted to hear how you dealt with it. I have a brother who, when COVID hit, he thought it was the end of the world, liquidated everything, never got back in, bad decision. So I wanted to hear how you handled that situation psychologically. In the middle of COVID, we were down about 200 ,000 at part of our net worth. But I didn't panic. I didn't sell. We did nothing different. We may have cut back a little bit on our spending, going out to eat, whatever.

37:48But we certainly didn't sell investments. We didn't get all out of the market. We have a long-term horizon here. And COVID was something that, this wasn't like the Great Depression. It was incredibly devastating for a lot of people. There's no question about that. But it's a temporary blip. Most bear markets, and that was a hell of a bear market, but most bear markets only last about a year on average. So if you can just manage to not lose your, you know what, for a year, you're probably going to be fine. And that's exactly what happened with us. We didn't sell a single share of stock because it was down.

38:28In fact, that's the worst time to sell when you're down. You buy when the market's down, you sell when the market's high. So we certainly did not make that mistake. And we are, as of last week, I think we were up about$400 ,000 since our 200K collapse during the height of COVID until today. So it almost never pays to time the market, to think that everything is going to hell in a handbasket. I'd better sell now. Almost never works out. If you have that long-term time horizon, you're going to be just fine. You're going to have way less stress. And it certainly turned out that way for us. Let's take a quick break and hear from today's sponsors.

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42:25That's theinvestorspodcast.com slash tip-finance. All right, back to the show. Did you go through the 2008 great financial crisis? Was that something that you had gone through? You'd already seen a downturn. You've already seen this pattern, and repeat, did that help at all? Actually, no. I did go through it, but that was, I think, three years after my first job, getting my first job. So I was in the acquisition phase at that point. So I was 401k, Roth IRA. I don't think I had a brokerage account at that point. So maybe those two were my primary investments. But yeah, I just continued to funnel money in.

43:04I didn't really care. I wasn't an expert with all this. And I think that may have helped me to stay in because I didn't think I was an expert. I didn't think that I knew what was going to happen. I think a lot of smart people out there, smart investors think that they know, they convince themselves that, oh, this is going to happen and then this is going to happen and then this is going to happen. So I have to do this. But there was none of that with me. I said, I admitted to myself, I have no idea what's going to happen. So frankly, I don't care. I have a job making good money. I'm just going to keep the ship sailing in the very same direction.

43:42And it worked out so, so well for me that I did not panic sell during either the 2008 recession or the 2020, 2019, 2020 COVID content. Yeah, no, I mean, it just shows the importance of just having a long-term time perspective as you're striving for financial independence. One of the arguments or people that say like one of the challenges, I guess, is like, what do you do about health insurance? That's a common thing that I hear people say, like, once you leave your W-2, you no longer have health insurance. How did you handle that? At first, we did a health share. We did Liberty Health Share. We no longer have Liberty.

44:16But for the first couple of years when we were living in the Airstream, we were traveling around. And we needed the flexibility of going to any hospital at any time. We didn't want to deal with, you know, out of network doc. That wasn't going to work for us. And the cost was exceptionally high for a service that we probably wouldn't be able to use anyway. So it was stupid for us to look at traditional healthcare when our lifestyle was going to have us all over the country. So the Liberty Health Share plan worked fine for us. We never actually used it. We never submitted a bill. It worked because we never used it.

44:47We still paid into it, of course. But since then, especially since the Affordable Care Act came into play, health insurance is still expensive, but it's not exactly this huge thing anymore. We just went on the marketplace, found a high deductible plan that worked for us, has an HSA, and we bought it. It's no big deal. So I think that it used to be a bigger problem than it is now. There's even no longer an individual mandate. So I even spent a couple years without health insurance, which I do not recommend, by the way. I was incredibly stupid. That was while I rode my motorcycle. No health insurance, very stupid.

45:21But for two years, luckily, it worked fine for me. But definitely do not recommend that. A lot of health plans are available on the marketplace. For us, since we don't have kids, high deductible plan works for us. It's obviously not going to work that way for everybody, especially if you have a larger family. But I think we pay$500 a month per person. So that's$1 ,000 a month. Still not cheap by any means. But it's not like it was 10 years ago when you had to pay basically full price with no subsidies, nothing. And if you do qualify for subsidies, and the crazy part about subsidies is it's based on income, not based on net worth.

46:00So you could have$10 million of net worth and no income, and you qualify for lower health insurance because of those subsidies. So that's one for a lot of early retirees, lots of them. That's what they count on. Their low income, making them qualified for healthcare subsidies, which drastically reduces the cost of their healthcare to something that's actually affordable. Speaking of income, if you are living off your investments, what's the number as a married, I guess, single person too, that you can sell off and have capital gains and not be taxed on? Isn't there a certain amount that you can sell off X amount of dollars and you're not going to be taxed on capital gains if your income is below a certain amount?

46:46I don't know those numbers. That's correct. Honestly, I don't know those exact numbers either. But yes, if you do stay below a certain amount, I think it's around, I want to say it's around the 40K mark, but don't quote me on that because I'm not sure. I think as a single person, it's around 40. Yeah, I believe so. And obviously higher if you're married, but yeah, if you can just stay under that so you qualify for those subsidies, that makes a huge difference in your healthcare bill. No question about it. I want to circle back to that book and start talking about some of these millionaire habits that you recommend a young person develop now.

47:20I've got teenage kids that I want them to start. I'm like, the habits you form now are going to stay with you. So you better start thinking about forming good ones. It's questionable whether they are right now, good ones. So I'm kind of on them a little bit. But what are some of those habits that you recommend people start developing early? Well, my very first habit that I discuss in the book is millionaires say yes. There's so many opportunities out there. Millionaires say yes. Millionaires go wide and then they go deep. And by that, I mean, they say yes to a lot of their opportunities, get involved, just getting exposure to new things, new ways of doing business, just switching companies often, which is what I did throughout my career.

48:03And then really going deep into those areas that work well and then saying no to the areas that didn't. Not every opportunity is going to work out. And that's good. That's fine. There's no question about that, that some won't work out, but many will. But the point is, you're not going to know what you're good at. You're not going to know what you like. You're not going to know what you're going to make a lot of money doing unless you just put yourself out there and get involved in everything that you possibly can. Meet as many people as you possibly can. Grow your network. And these opportunities are going to start flooding your way.

48:38You just have to put that first foot forward, which for a lot of people, me included, quite frankly, is really difficult. I'm an introvert by nature. So for me, putting myself out there was kind of tough, kind of difficult at the beginning. Now it's no big deal because I've done it a while and I know what I'm good at. And more importantly, I know what I suck at. And it's really unlikely that your first gig is going to be the thing that you're going to do the rest of your life. I think that advice of like, throw a bunch at the wall, see what sticks, see what you like, and then run with that. Then you can start, like you say no to the things that you're not talented at or they don't produce the income you want or whatever.

49:16What are some other habits too, some of your favorite ones? Millionaires ask for raises. They never rely on their business to just offer a raise or they don't just accept the cost of living raise every year. They always ask for what they're worth. And to do that, you really need to keep your feelers out there about what's available, the other job opportunities that you have and what they're paying. I always even switch companies every three to four years. And with every switch, I got about a 25 % increase in salary, way more than my cost of living raises. And I mean, negotiating a high salary is a part of the hiring process.

49:55So it's very easy to keep your salary going up if you're okay with moving around a little bit more often. Another habit is the pillars of investing. And if you're in the US, those are typically your traditional 401k, which is pre-tax, which means it reduces your taxable income. Your Roth IRA, which grows tax-free. So if you expect taxes to increase in the future, and here's a hint, they will, then Roth IRAs are a great option to start investing in. Then you go to a taxable brokerage account. So after you funnel money into your long-term investments, your 401k and Roth IRAs for your retirement, then you open up a, for example, a Vanguard brokerage account and start funneling money into there.

50:42Again, highly recommend index funds and ETFs. If you're not really sure where to go, give them a call, Fidelity, Schwab. I mean, all these companies have people that you could work with to help you determine what you should be investing in. And just start. Make it automatic. Set up bank transfers every month. That's another millionaire habit. So you don't have to remember to fund your retirement accounts and your investments accounts and your savings. Always make it automatic without exception. You just set it up once and it just works. Anything else that comes to mind in the habits? And I also wanted to hear what books maybe influenced you as you were writing the book or provided some of the source material for the ideas.

51:28The best book that I have ever read on personal finance and becoming a millionaire is called The Millionaire Next Door by the late Dr. Thomas Stanley. That was so influential to me. And that book more or less proves that most millionaires are self-made. They don't necessarily live on the house on the hill and drive the expensive cars. Those are high income earners, not necessarily rich people. There's a very big difference between those two. Read that book. I cannot stress that enough. The numbers are going to be way weird because it was written decades ago. So, the salary numbers and the cost of cars and all, that's going to be just radically different than it is today, but the concepts still apply.

52:12Millionaires don't necessarily spend like millionaires, and they typically don't inherit. It was more true in the past that millionaires or a lot of rich people inherited their wealth, but that is becoming less and less of a reality today. There are more studies than I can count that prove that the vast majority of millionaires are self-made. They don't just luck into their money. And the reason why they're self-made is because they practice exactly what's in Dr. Thomas Stanley's book. They don't spend money on frivolous crap that just makes them look rich. They save and invest their money so they actually are rich.

52:52Yeah. I love Morgan Housel's book, The Psychology of Money. He's got the whole idea of like, forget the Joneses. You don't want to keep up with them. They're drowning in debt. That's another good one. The Joneses are broke. Exactly. I absolutely love that whole concept. In fact, one of the most controversial things I think that I believe about personal finance is that a lot of people think that you need a mortgage on your home as long as it's low interest for cash flow, for leverage. People like to throw around the term leverage. It's always about leverage. And I do understand that there's truth to that.

53:26It's better to own than to rent. Better to own than to rent. But if you read The Psychology of Money and many other books, quite frankly, making the right decision is not just about the math. It's about what makes you sleep better at night. And if it makes you sleep better knowing that you don't have a mortgage, I don't care if you have a 2 % mortgage. Pay that sucker off. Your sleep's important. Your happiness is important. Living a stress-free life is important. So don't make decisions based purely on the math and ignoring the emotional, psychological component of these decisions because you're going to drive yourself crazy.

54:06You might have a little more money, but quite frankly, who cares? If you're stressed out, if you're always worried about something or other, then what good is that money doing for you anyway? You're just going, quite frankly, you're probably going to die young if you lead a high stress life because you think you're going to make more. So, there's always two sides to every single money decision, period. Always two sides, the math and the psychology. We always hear about the math. We almost never hear about the psychology. And that's the thing I love about Morgan's book. He discusses the thing that we never hear about.

54:46And that's at least 50 % of the whole financial independence equation. it's the psychology it's the emotions that go behind that drive our decisions with our cash i'm glad you touched on the mortgage you know the whole topic or idea of the mortgage because i was going to ask you that he goes into my favorite chapter of the book is the last one where it's called confessions and the psychology of money where it's just like what's under the hood you know here's what i do with my own money and he just lays it out like and he has paid off his home and that he said the psychological comfort of that is massive, knowing that for the rest of his life, he and his family are going to have a place to stay, whatever happens.

55:28Yeah, traditional financial advice would probably say, you need to have a mortgage. Yeah, I mean, when we bought our house, we could have taken out a mortgage, but we didn't. We just paid the whole thing off and we haven't had a mortgage in years. Well, if you include our Airstream, probably closer to a decade. But yeah, we could have taken out a mortgage, but you either have more cash now or you have more cash flow over the months, which is opportunity costs. You can do more with that cash as you get opportunities with that higher cash flow. The other side of that, of course, is you have more money to invest.

55:59Those investments build over time. You're going to make way, way more money then or now. But I think the thing to understand, especially in the mortgage versus rent discussion, and if you ever read Ramit Sethi's material or listen to him, he goes into is some depth about renting versus mortgage. The mortgage is the least you will spend, the lowest amount of money you will spend on your house every single month. The least, that is where it begins with fixes, improvements, whatever. It all goes up from there. Rent is the most you will pay every single month. That's the most. That is the very top.

56:39You're not responsible for anything. I mean, within reason, of course, you're not responsible for anything. So that concept or that way of thinking, I think it's a little bit, it makes the decision a little bit less clear cut, I think, than a lot of people think it is because there really are trade-offs. Even if you are hell-bent on having a mortgage, so you have extra money to invest, for a lot of people, it's not going to be quite that simple. I want to hear like once you're done with the Airstream, you're at the house, what's an average day like? A lot of people say like I would get bored, you know, like the boredom thing.

57:15And there's a stat I think that you have actually about that early retirees die younger. Talk to me about that. Like why is that? Yeah, early retirement is associated with an early death. And it's not because you quit your job. It's because you quit your job with nothing else to do. The second part of that statement is the reason why you will die young. If you have no purpose, if you have no reason for getting up in the morning, that is going to kill you. Retiring early is not going to kill you. Having no purpose will kill you. And the purpose is going to look different for everybody, of course.

57:47But if early retirement is your thing, is your goal, if that's what you want to do, I implore you not to pull the plug on your full-time job until you have your purpose after your job figured out exactly what you're going to do. It doesn't matter what it is, but you have to have something there. And for me, I really got involved in writing. I do a lot of writing online. I have a newsletter called Millionaire Habits. I always write for that. I'm very heavily engaged on social media, which I like. I like interacting with people and talking about this stuff. Every single day, I'm excited about that.

58:23I get jazzed about that. And that's what gets me up every single day. We usually get up about six, work out in our home gym here on our property about seven o 'clock or so, have a post-gym meal. I get involved in writing. I write a couple of articles, go out for a walk. I get 10 ,000 to 12 ,000 steps a day, then come back, maybe do a little bit more writing. Then we have happy hour at four, have dinner, watch some TV. I mean, it probably does sound boring to a lot of people out there. If you constantly need the stimulation, there's always something going on. You have to go to concerts and whatever.

58:56And if that's your thing, that's fine. There's nothing necessarily wrong with that. But for us, living a more simple life with less going on, with less on our calendars. In fact, this podcast was the only thing that was on my calendar today. And that's such a great thing to be able to wake up and say, I can do whatever I want. It doesn't matter. I feel like going for a five-mile hike, I'll do it. If I feel like I'm riding for an extra hour, I'll do it. It just doesn't matter because you have full control over your life after you achieve that point of financial independence. I think it's such a good point too about there's so many people I think that have devoted so much time and energy to their career.

59:38And then when that ends, they have no clue who they are, what they like to do, you know, that maybe they've raised a family, but it's like, I think there's like a real loss. It's like, now what? Yeah. If your job is your only hobby, you have no business retiring early. Yeah, Steve, this has been a lot of fun. I really appreciate your time and sharing some of these ideas and the millionaire habits is just good stuff. How can people find out about the book, find out more about you, get in touch with you, things like that? find out about the book you can go to millionaire habits.us not.com.us that is my main website and the book is linked on the main page just scroll down about half the page and you'll see it there i'm also online on twitter at steve on speed the on speed part came because i drove a corvette and rode a motorcycle has nothing to do with drugs i just like to go fast so that was that's the significance of the on speed part those are the two main areas where you can find me online Awesome.

1:00:35Is there anything that we didn't touch on that you wanted to talk about here? The last thing I would say is whenever I talk about the concept of FIRE, financial independence, retire early, I want to make the point where these are two completely separate concepts. The financial independence part should be everybody's goal. Every single person, everybody who's listening to this podcast, without fail, I mean every person, financial independence should be your goal, period. No exceptions, absolutely none. The early retirement part definitely won't be for everybody. So if you love your job, continue working for the rest of your life.

1:01:10Who cares? If you enjoy what you're doing, that's all that matters. But the financial independence part gives you options. You might enjoy your job now, but you get a dick for a boss. And guess what? You might not like your job then. But if you are financially independent, guess what you can do? I'm out. See ya. And I'll take three months or six months or even a couple years off to figure out what you want to do. So always separate those two things. the FI part and the RE part. The FI part is for you. I don't care who you are. The RE part may not be, and that is perfectly okay. Good place to stop here.

1:01:42Steve, thanks so much for your time. I really appreciate it. You got it. I appreciate the opportunity. Okay, folks, that's all I had for today's episode. I hope you enjoyed the show and I'll see you back here real soon. Thank you for listening to TIP. Make sure to follow Millennial investing on your favorite podcast app and never miss out on our episodes. To access our show notes, transcripts or courses, go to theinvestorspodcast.com. This show is for entertainment purposes only. Before making any decision, consult a professional. This show is copyrighted by The Investor's Podcast Network. Written permission must be granted before syndication or rebroadcasting.