He Achieved Financial Independence in 2 Years! (Here's How!) With Justin David Carl

29:10So at a 50 % savings rate, you have about 17 years of work, starting at a net worth of zero. And at a 65 % savings rate, you have about 10 years of paid work before all work becomes optional, aka you can retire early. And then at a 80 % savings rate, it drops down to five and a half years. At 85%, it's four years. And at 90%, it's under three years. So my goal was let's get my savings rate to 80 to 90 % so I can do this in like three to five years. Now, when I first discovered FI, I thought it would be a 12 to 15 year journey. But then when I started working the tenants of FI, you know, dialing in the big three expenses, optimizing my savings rate, growing my income, saving and investing every single month.

30:07I quickly realized like, wait a minute, I can get there way faster than 10 to 12 years. Because I am in what I consider to be a cheat code to financial independence. I'm in a performance-based compensation job, aka I get commissions. So if I can earn like a freaking beast, I can get to FI in like three to five years. Right? And so that's why, to me, your savings rate is the golden metric to track. Because I don't care if you make$50 ,000 a year or$500 ,000 a year. If your savings rate is 20 % and you make$500 ,000 a year, guess what? That means 37 years of work from a net worth of zero. Even if you make$500 ,000, 37 years of work.

31:01And if you're like most Americans who only save 5%, that means 66 years of work. Even if you make a million dollars a year, if you only save 5 % of that. And that's to me, like, that means that's like levels the playing field, right? So if you make 50K a year, if you can live off of 25K, dude, you have less than two decades of work before you're work optional and can retire early. It doesn't matter. And I think that's what I want people to understand is it doesn't matter what you make as much as it matters how much of what you make you keep and invest each month. Exactly. It's learning how to kind of keep as much as you possibly can and put it into those assets that are going to grow over time.

31:52And speaking of those assets, what did you invest in? How did you kind of think about investing? How did you learn about investing? And then did you invest in things like retirement accounts or other accounts? Yeah. So I am like a big fan of JL Collins and Simple Path to Wealth. So I predominantly invested in a total U.S. stock market. But for a time, I had a percentage in international. And then I got rid of that because up until this year, it was totally underperforming. I may add some of it back now just to kind of diversify myself. But yeah, pretty much almost 100 % equities, total US stock market like VT, SAX, VTI.

32:37And then inside my 401k, it would be like an S &P 500 index because my 401k provider did not have a total U.S. stock market, but they did have a S &P 500. Which, you know, tomato, tomato, like S &P 500 and total U.S. stock market, like it's pretty much the same. So, like, don't stress. Like if your 401k provider doesn't have a total U.S. stock market, S &P 500 is fine. Um, and, uh, you know, because I started so late and I earned such a high income, I crunched the math on this before the show is only 10 % of my net worth is in retirement accounts. The rest is in taxable brokerage. And I think that's what a lot of, a big question.

33:25A lot of people have is typically, you know, if they save over time and they want to retire early, we just did an episode on this, like how do you can access those funds in your retirement accounts early? But if they save over that timeframe that, you know, they have to have flexibility. And so So I think, you know, being in the taxable, especially as early as you retired is kind of the way to go, because that's the way you can at least have that flexibility and access those funds. And there's still actual tax benefits that most people don't realize when you keep it in that taxable account, because, you know, especially at the speed that you did it at, there's no way for you to kind of be able to retire early.

33:53Just trying to jam, you know, 50 grand into a 401k and then the rest going into a Roth, you just wouldn't be able to do it. And so that's why I think the taxable is so powerful for people who want to retire early, especially if you want to retire really early. because even accessing those retirement accounts early, there are some specific things that you have to do. But a lot of the rules come into play as you get closer to your 50s, where you can use the rule of 55 or some of these other things. And so I think that's really, really important for most people kind of working through this is, hey, that's the account that's flexible.

34:24You hear so many people talking about retirement accounts, but really that is the one that is the most flexible. Now, here's one I know a lot of people are going to ask, and I want to kind of go through this with you too, is you did this, you know, when you had someone in your life, a significant other, how did you get your wife on board when you started to think about financial independence? Let me tell you what not to do. That's the first thing I always start with too. Yeah. Is of course, you know, you and I talked about this at FinCon, but you know, I started trying to send Mr. Money Mustache articles to my wife.

35:01And this, this totally did not work because my wife, one, is not interested in face punches. And like Mr. Money Mustache is a total like personality, right? Right. Like to me, he's like the Ron Burgundy of like personal finance, you know, from Anchorman. And he's like ridiculous. And he's so funny to the like right type of person and I'm the right type of person. So like his humor and, you know, the way he spoke really worked for me, but it was, it did not work for my wife. And so it was definitely kind of like in the beginning, you know, trying to send her Mr. Money mustache articles, trying to get her to like be as frugal as me.

35:45And then I realized like, wait a minute, like, what am I doing? Like, as long as my wife is supportive of my goal of financial independence, I don't need her to be as wild and frugal and crazy as me. I just need her to support my dream of financial independence. And so I was able to get to a point where I was like, babe, like, this is my number one goal is to get to financial independence. So that all work is optional for us. And I don't need you to be like me. I just want you to support my dream of financial independence, however works best for you. And she was totally on board with that because she knows that growing up, I grew up pretty much poor.

36:38My parents went bankrupt. I was on the free lunch program at school. We were so broke. And I still have memories of being stressed out about asking my parents for new soccer shoes because money was so tight. And, you know, in my opinion, my parents separated because of money. And so like financial independence for me was like something I needed to do in my life journey. And she totally supported that. And then the thing that really changed everything for us as a couple and our finances, honestly, was going to Camp Fi in Joshua Tree in 2018. And the reason that was powerful for us as a couple, and here's what I did.

37:22I said, hey, babe, my wife's name is Carly. I said, I will pay for your ticket to Camp Fi if you will go with me. And she said, okay, cool. And we'll make like a trip out of it. So there she was able to meet other women who were into financial independence and see other couples. And what I think was the most powerful for her, and I think this would be accurate in her own view, is she, Paula Pant of Afford Anything, gave a talk there where she kind of pushed back on the ultra frugality and frugaling yourself into a corner and was like, why don't you just make more money? And that really resonated with my wife for whatever reason, right?

38:14Because my wife likes, she's not a crazy spender, but she likes to go out to a nice meal. You know, she's very like smart in how she shops and spends and, you know, whatever. She's not buying like, you know,$5 ,000 pairs of shoes or$20 ,000 purses. That's not who she is. But she's just like, I don't want to be like a crazy frugal weirdo like my husband. I want to like live a life that is enjoyable to me and I'll just make more money. And so when she heard Paula Pant speak, it was like, OK, there's a way for me to do this, too. That works for my personality, my lifestyle that I want to live, etc.

38:52And so I always encourage people, like if you have a partner who's not on board with FI, like take them to Camp FI. Camp FI is like 40. It's like a money camp for money nerds. it's like 40 to 60 people. It's like over, you know, three nights and you'll just meet a bunch of people, couples that are doing the financial independence journey. And it will give your partner like the opportunity to converse with someone other than you about financial independence. So instead of you like trying to get them on board, they'll hear other people who they can relate to and then be like, wait a minute, there is a version of this that works for me.

39:30And that, I think, is a really powerful way to look at that because I did the same thing overall. I tried to get my wife into it, and she was not the way that I did it. I basically would look at our spending and say, hey, we're spending too much in all these different areas and just started to create stress inside the household. And instead, I realized pretty quickly, no, I want to reverse this and flip this over and look at this in a way where how can we make this work for how we already currently live our lifestyle? And so it's increasing your income, number one, but also looking at it from a lens of what is your dream life?

39:58How do you actually want to live your life and looking at keeping the end in mind when you start to have these conversations? And that changed everything. We want to travel more. We want to spend more time with our kids. We want to do all these different things. And so once you look at it from keeping the end in mind, I think that's really, really powerful. And what I love what you did was that you went to Camp Fi and you could see, hey, this is just a bunch of regular people just like us where it's not like a bunch of really weirdos. It's not a cult. It's just a different thing where a lot of people are just living their lives differently from what society kind of tells us.

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44:08Ready to make anything online make sense? There's no place like Chrome. Check responses set up required, compatibility and availability varies 18+. The thing I love about you, and for those of you who are watching on YouTube or Spotify, you know, this is something where when you see Justin, Justin is a really fit guy. And what Justin does is he kind of integrates financial independence with fitness. And I think there's a lot of correlations between the two of these areas. And for me, fitness has been a big focus over the course of the last couple of years where I'm working out twice a day for six days a week, pretty much taking one rest day per week.

44:43I changed the entire way that I have been eating. It is a huge, huge thing for me. And I think there's just a lot of correlations between that I see between finance and fitness. But what do you see with the correlations between finance or financial independence and fitness? And kind of talk about your fitness journey a little bit. Yeah. So my fitness journey was the preface to my financial independence journey. And what I mean by that is I was what I like to call kind of fit, kind of fat most of my life. So I was never like obese or overweight, but I always had enough kind of like pudge that I never had a six pack.

45:18And I wanted a six pack like my whole life. Like I literally worked at it for like 15 plus years. You know, I remember like, you know, even in high school, like I would I go like run in the morning before I caught the bus to school. uh you know i get those as seen on tv uh ab machines off the tv trying to get abs and and you know i basically you know i tried every diet i tried every workout program i tried every supplement and i thought like oh it must be my jeans like you know i just can't you know i can be you know fit but like never excited to take my shirt off at the pool or the beach um And then as a last ditch effort, I decided to work with an online fitness coach.

46:07And in six months working with this fitness coach, I lost 30 pounds of body fat and I went from 18 % body fat down to 8 % body fat. And I was ripped and I had abs and I to the point where I was like posting shirtless photos on Instagram because I finally had what I wanted. And I was just like, what the heck? Like, why did I wait so long to work with a coach if I had known it would have been this fast? Because I dead serious 15 years trying to figure out myself. And then in six months, got my dream body working with a coach. And it's that's the whole thing. You know, we kind of opened or talked about this earlier is like you just don't know what you don't know.

46:56And a good coach is going to teach you those things. And you might be able to figure those things out, but it's going to take you 10 to 100 times longer, right? In 15 years, I didn't figure it out. But then I worked with a coach. And in six months, like a coach will collapse time for you, right? And it's so worth the investment. So once I got fit, the key things my coach taught me was tracking my macros, tracking my body fat percentage and following a well-structured workout program and tracking every set and every rep. So to me, the crossover between fitness and finances is the whole tracking aspect.

47:40So what gets measured gets optimized, right? So just like I optimized my savings rate, what I realized is the key to getting the body that I wanted was a certain body fat percentage. Because you can be super muscular, have tons of muscles, but if you have a layer of fat covering it, you can't see the muscles. And this is most people, I think, because there's a lot of people that work out three to six times a week. And they have decent musculature, but they have a layer of fat covering it so they don't look jacked or ripped, right? And when you start tracking your body fat percentage, then, you know, for most men, you have to be around 10 % to see abs.

48:31Now, some men, they keep more of their body fat in their, like, butt and lower in their legs. So they could be 12 % and have a six pack. Other men keep more of their fat in their stomachs, so they would have to be like 8 % or 9 % to see like really chiseled abs. So me, I pretty much have to be around like 8 % to 10 % to see my abs. I wish I was one of those people who could see them at 12%, but I'm not. So that piece and the other piece is everyone thinks they eat healthy. this is just like everyone thinks they don't spend too much money and they've done science they've done scientific studies on this people spend about 50 percent more than they think they do and people eat 50 percent more calories than they think they do so my coach had me track my food and prior to working with him i literally would eat chicken and broccoli six days a week I'm no joke.

49:33And then I'd have on Sunday, I'd have my cheat day and I would go bananas. I would eat pizza, burgers, drink beer, freaking eat a whole thing of nut butter. I'm not even joking, like a whole thing of nut butter. And I would. And then when I started tracking because my coach had me in the first two weeks, he's like, I just want you to track everything. I don't need you to hit any calorie numbers or hit any macros. Just track it. And what we found out is on my cheat day, I ate 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 calories. So 5 ,000 to 10 ,000 calories, it doesn't matter what I do the other six days a week. I'm completely destroying everything I did the previous six days on that one day.

50:15And so the key to reducing body fat is being in a calorie deficit. And the problem is, and most of you listening to this, You'll notice that like most people around you every year are getting a, including yourself, are getting a little bit fatter each year. And this is because you might not be eating way over your calorie, you know, calories, but you're eating in a surplus. Therefore, that surplus is stored as body fat. So as long as you're eating in a surplus, you are going to keep putting on weight. Now, depending on how big that surplus is, like determines how fast you're putting on that weight.

51:01Right. So once I started tracking my macros and my coach would set, you know, calorie targets and macro targets for me, it was just like a mathematical equation. I was like, cool. Like this is just math. If I eat in a deficit of three to five hundred calories per week, I'm going to lose about one to three pounds of body fat per week. And then you scale that over six months, right? It's like, holy shit, that's 30 pounds. Exactly. So that to me is like the savings rate is the inverse of the body fat percentage, right? So your savings rate is like how fast you are getting wealthier. And your body fat percentage is like the lower it is, the more jacked you look.

51:50And the higher your savings rate, the more rich you're getting at a faster speed. And then the last thing I'll say about this before I let you ask me follow-up questions is what I said earlier, mindset is everything. And when I think about mindset, it's psychology and habits, right? So everyone knows how to get rich and get fit. Literally save more than you spend and invest and eat less calories than you burn and work out. It's so simple, right? Yet most people don't have a six pack and most people are not millionaires. But if you have the right habits and the right psychology, becoming wealthy and fit is actually pretty simple.

52:44doesn't mean it's easy, but it's if you have the right habits and the right psychology, it's only a matter of time before you're fit and rich. Exactly. It's simple, not easy. And I think overall, for most people, it's shifting that mindset and figuring out consistency. Those two things will absolutely change what you're looking at when it comes to health and fitness. But in addition to finance, they just correlate so much. And it's just so cool to see how you... This is what I love about your content is you integrate both together. And it's just such a powerful way to look at life and the way that these are both integrated together.

53:16So what does your fitness regimen look like now? And what are some of the things that you do throughout the week? Yeah. So you hit a point that I think is so important, whether it's fitness or finances, consistency compounds, right? So I literally tracked my macros for 10 years. And I've been eight to 10 % body fat for 10 years. Now, the last two years, I intuitively eat, I'm still eight to 10%. I don't think everyone needs to track their macros for 10 years. But like, if you've never tracked your food intake, like that's where you need to start. Just like if you're on your the beginning of your five journey, if you've never tracked your finances, that's where you need to start.

53:59But my fitness regimen right now, it's evolved over time, but number one is sleep and nutrition need to be dialed in. So I sleep on average seven and a half to eight and a half hours every single night. And I eat approximately about one gram of protein per pound of body weight. And I love carbs and I do have some fat. So carbs are not bad. Fat is not bad. They're all necessary. So if you do as much physical output as I do, you need a fair amount of carbs. So I eat plenty of carbs. Now, can you train your body to be on a low carb diet and operate? Absolutely. The body is an amazing machine that can do almost anything.

54:46But I like carbs. I eat carbs. I do about 15 ,000 steps a day. So I was telling Andrew before we hit record, I'm actually pedaling on a bike chair right now while we're doing this podcast. So you can't see it. Yeah. So I have my Garmin on my ankle tracking my steps. Now, some of you may say, oh, that doesn't really count as steps. But here's the thing. Every super fit person I know, their NEAT, non-exercise activity thermogenesis, N-E-A-T, is just significantly higher than the average human. So that's the reason I'm so much more fit than most people is because consistency compounds, and I've been getting 15 ,000 plus steps a day for like over a decade.

55:34So just, I'm just my peer group, anyone else who's 43, like I'm just significantly more fit than most 43 year olds, right? I also track the key metrics daily. So I stop, step on a body scale every single day. and I've been tracking my body fat percentage literally for over a decade. And this morning, I'm like 10.3%. And I float between eight and 10%. I also track like key metrics, like resting heart rate, HRV, VO2 max, and other things. But that's through my Whoop. And I'm obsessed with this like new feature that Whoop released called Whoop Age. And like, I'm literally 11, over 11 years younger than my chronological age.

56:23I'm 43, but biological age, I'm 32.2 years old. We can go into that another episode or offline. I strength train four to six times a week. It's a mix of traditional bodybuilding, gymnastics rings, calisthenics, kettlebells, weighted batons, mace, sled, push-pull, sandbags, and functional movement. Now, I am like, for me, whether it's finances or fitness, like it's all about following the fun. Right. So because the reason I say that is because fun taps into spirit and spirit is infinite renewable energy. Right. So that's why I like do all these crazy different like workouts, not because I'm trying to be cool or because they make me more fit than some other type of workout.

57:09it's because it's fun for me. So over the last couple of years, I've gotten really into gymnastics rings and, uh, like weighted batons and maces. And then more recently got into pushing heavy sleds and pulling heavy sleds and sandbags. Um, I do two to three times, uh, times a week. I do a high intensity interval training, um, usually running or on my Peloton because I'm, I'm over the last two and a half months, I've taken my VO two max from 47 to 56. Incredible. And 50, 56 is, it's the elite athlete, uh, level for my age group, 40 to 49, anything above 55 is elite, like your top 5%. Now, of course, like, uh, you know, So ultra marathon person or like someone who does triathlons, their VO2 max, if they're professional, will be way higher than that.

58:10But I'm in the top 5 % of like humans overall for my age group. And then, you know this, Andrew, I play two to five plus hours of pickleball six to seven days a week. And then I also hike and rollerblade a few times a week. Justin, just he started playing pickleball. What was it like a couple months ago? April 12th. So, you know, the exact date, the obsessive personality kicked in right away because Pickleball, everyone I know who really gets into Pickleball is obsessed with it. And I think that's just so amazing. This is this is a great layout of kind of like, you know, being active and kind of staying active is one of the most important things when it comes to keeping that body fat percentage down.

58:50And so you got to find it kind of what works for you. And really, Justin's show has some some great tips on that, too, of just kind of finding some of those things that can help you when it comes to, you know, tracking all these different really important metrics. And I think we need to do a whole separate episode on fitness because I think you and I could probably go back and forth forever on this. I got really into like Peter Atiyah's book and all the stuff that he does for longevity, the VO2 Max. You and I kind of talked about that, too. So maybe we need to do this for a separate episode because I love, love, love this stuff.

59:16And I know our audience does, too. We have in our community Master Money Academy, we do our goals every month. And in fact, we were doing our goals today for November. And a lot of people will put their money goals. And then all of a sudden, people just started to integrate their fitness goals as well. And I loved that because that was just part of they wanted to state it publicly so that everybody could see it. And they're talking through all this stuff. And I think they just intertwine so much. And that was without us even prompting them. So I think it's just so cool how much those two things kind of coincide and cross over.

59:46So I want to ask you just a couple quick questions and shift here with a couple of our rapid fire questions. We have a couple minutes left. And so let's dive into just a couple of these quick questions. So if you could tell your younger self one thing, what would it be? with whatever you want to achieve figure out what the golden metric to track is then track and optimize that golden metric relentlessly so whether that's your finances or your fitness or even your marriage or your relationship you can find a metric that will literally if you work to improve it it will improve the whole area of your life that you're focusing on.

1:00:27And I just think like it's so such a simple concept, but most people don't track the key metric in the key areas of their life. So they get very inconsistent results and progress. What is the best money advice you've ever received? Track your savings rate. I love it. I think that's one of the most important things that most people don't track. How do you plan to level up your finances this year? Yeah, so this year is all about using my wealth to maximize my net life. But this year is really about like living my best fit rich life. And, you know, right now that's like pretty much playing pickleball full time.

1:01:10Like, you know, if if the work gets in the way of my pickleball, I'm like, nope. So that's really what I'm doing with my finances this year is utilizing the wealth that I've built to live my best life. And I think so many people who've achieved FI, they're still chasing the net worth thing and they need to switch over to let's maximize my net life. I love it. And the last one is my favorite one, which is what does wealth mean to you? I would say at a macro level, it's freedom. At a more nuanced level for me at this point, it's my ability to live my best fit, rich life. I think that is what we all have with financial dependence and everything else.

1:01:52It's getting your time back so that you can do those types of things that you actually want, which I think is absolutely amazing. Well, Justin, this has been incredible. We're going to have to do a part two on fitness because I know everyone's going to love that for sure. So let everybody know, where can they find out more about you, your podcast, your website, everything else that you have going on? Yeah. So I, in preparation for this interview, I wanted to put together some leave behinds, some actionable things for the audience. So one of the things that really transformed my fitness was actually following a structured workout program.

1:02:23And, you know, you see this a lot of times people, they go to the gym maybe several times a week, but they don't, they just show up and do whatever. So like one of the things my fitness coach taught me is to follow a well-structured workout program that utilizes progressive overload. So I have a free four day workout program that anyone can get by going to fitrichlifecoaching.com slash workout and you can download it. I also such a strong believer in tracking your savings rate that I have a free savings rate tracker that pairs with a free financial tracking software. And you can get that at fitrichlifecoaching.com slash tracker.

1:03:10And Andrew will put those shows in the link. My podcast is Fit Rich Life. It's available everywhere. My main website that hosts my newsletter and my podcast is at fitrichlife.com. And I am Justin David Carl everywhere online. I'm most active on Instagram and threads, but I'm on Twitter slash X and pretty much all the social medias. But I love connecting with my audience. And if you're interested in leveling up your fitness, your money, and your life, I promise you all, I create lots of valuable, empowering, inspiring, and entertaining content. Awesome. Well, we will link all those up in the show notes.

1:03:52Justin, thank you so much again for being on.

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