How to RETIRE BY 30! (With Cody Berman)

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22:49Would it be kind of automating your bills? I think that's a simple one that a lot of people do. Or is there anything else that you would do there? Yeah. I mean, automating your bills is a gimme. Like if you don't have that stuff on auto pay, please do that. It's just like mental bandwidth you don't have to deal with. I, oh, it's yeah. Once I put everything on auto pay, it's just like, it's such a relief and you just know exactly how much is kind of coming out every single month. The other one I would say, and this isn't exactly an automation, but it does become an automation over time is building passive income in some way, shape or form.

23:15It doesn't like some something outside of investing. So whether that's, you know, starting some kind of a little mini business or maybe it's real estate, just something we're going back to the beginning of this conversation where your time is not linearly related to that money. Right. So like I'm such a huge proponent of starting a side hustle, even if you're someone who like has a really high powered corporate job, just because like you gain so many skills and making five bucks, like your first five dollars. I don't know if you remember the first money you made online. Remember the first five dollars I made online.

23:43It just feels different. It feels so good to make money yourself without a boss, without having to check in. You just make the money. You created the website. Maybe you recorded the podcast. You did whatever. You created the digital product. It's a different feeling. That's probably one, it's not exactly a system, but that's something I would encourage a lot of people to do. Even if you're someone with a really high-powered job, even if you're making hundreds of thousands of dollars a year, just flex that muscle. Doing something different is, growth is good. So trying something different, getting that new skill, it might benefit you later on in ways you'd never realize.

24:14I want to talk about this because income is a big thing that you did on your financial independence journey. And I want to kind of spend some time here because I think this is something where you are really an expert in is increasing your income over time. And you've done it kind of over and over and over again, a bunch of different ways. And for a lot of people out there and a lot of people that we talk to all the time in our community and everything else, they are looking for ways to increase their income. and they're looking for ways to kind of find side hustles and or ways. We have this series that we talk about all the time called Side Businesses That Could Turn Into a Full-Time Income.

24:45And what I'm trying to achieve in those episodes is to show you, hey, these are businesses that you could start on the side, nights and weekends, whatever else, that can turn into a full-time income. So I kind of want to think of this early on as income is overall an accelerator to get to financial independence. So first, let's talk about this. When it comes to income, why is that the ultimate lever that you can pull when it comes to trying to achieve financial independence? And do you believe that? 100 % believe it. And because income is infinitely scalable, whereas expenses can only drop to the floor.

25:17Like you can only get to zero expenses. You can't unfortunately get to negative expenses and all of a sudden that becomes income. Income, if you're making$40 ,000, like yes, it would be difficult, but there's no reason you couldn't go from$40 ,000 to like$4 million. That's a crazy example, but like that's 100x. I think that's 100x. Don't math check me here. that's like 100x increase in your income it's very hard to 100x decrease your expenses that's just it's way more difficult so i think most people should tackle expenses first but then income is that lever that you should just hammer like get the big you know the big three out of the way like if you can kind of get your housing your transportation and food and check especially those who are like living paycheck to paycheck it's going to be much easier especially if you're working a corporate job to get those expenses in check and then turn back toward income once you get the expenses to a level where you're like, if I cut anymore, I'm going to feel super deprived.

26:06Then it's time to like really hit the income accelerator. And whether that's at your day job, maybe you're in sales and you just want to like really put the pedal to the metal and make way more money in sales. Or maybe that's jumping to a different industry and doing a similar role in the industry, or it's starting a side hustle or it's investing in real estate. Like there's so many ways to do this. But if you are, if you don't pull that income lever, if your income isn't already super high, it's going to be really hard to hit financial independence on a super early timeline. Like for me, the reason I was able to, quote unquote, retire, hit financial freedom in three years was because I just went ballistic on the income front.

26:38And that is where I think if anybody is kind of listening right now, you're going to see this all coming together. Because what we're talking about here is we want you to cut back as far as you can and before you feel deprived. And so once you cut back, that's only going to take you a little bit of time. Like once you start to cut back, you have that set up. Then we want you automating obviously your finances as well. So automating your money into your investments. Now you have this kind of system set up where you are optimized in terms of getting started to focus on your income. Then you can spend all of your time and your energy focusing on the thing that's going to give you the ultimate leverage towards financial independence.

27:11So talk about your income journey for a second. Let's talk through kind of how people can think about this because I'll tell you for me specifically, my first job, I was making$30 ,000 a year as an entry-level person as a financial analyst. And back then, I realized very quickly, I'm going to be living paycheck to paycheck for a long time if I don't increase my income. So I did a bunch of things. I went into Amazon arbitrage. I started a blog. I had a side of the road Christmas tree stand. Like I did all these different things to try to increase my income over time. So kind of talk about your income journey.

27:41And then I wanna kind of talk through some of the ways that people can think about income or increase in their income. Yeah, so I have all of my numbers, like income and expenses I tracked meticulously. That's a benefit of being a personal finance podcaster and blogger over all these years. But so back in 2019, when this journey kind of first started for me. I had worked half the year. I was in commercial real estate lending. I think I made$44 ,000. Actually, I'm gonna pull up my phone here just so I can have the exact numbers. I think I made$44 ,000. And at the time I was living on, it's like$1 ,500 a month.

28:11Wow. It was super frugal. I was sharing an apartment in Boston. I was like sharing a room. My room was so small. I could literally touch my buddy Lou's hand while we're like sleeping. Our beds are that close. But I was spending$450 a month on rent in Boston. a big, usually expensive city. I was driving a paid off car. I was like eating out very rarely, you know, going out pretty rarely. And so, yeah, my expenses were super low. I had made like$44 ,000 that year, but I was able, I was still able to save like 60 or 70 % of my income making$44 ,000. So as my income started to increase and I'm pulling up the exact numbers here so people can fact check me.

28:50Here we go. Okay. So yeah, that was 2019. My income was 44 ,000 and I was spending like 18 ,000 total that year. The next year I went full into entrepreneurship and I ended up quitting that corporate job. I was just like, I feel like I just had a calling to like try to just build businesses and kind of go out at my own. So that next year, 2019, my income jumped from 44 ,000, it doubled to 96 ,000. My expenses went up a little bit, but it was like about$2 ,000 a month, I call it like$24 ,000 a year. The year after that, 2020, my income doubled again to$198 ,000. I was still spending$24 ,000 a year.

29:23And the year after that, 2021, my income more than doubled again to$403 ,000. I was still spending$24 ,000 a year. So like, that's what I'm saying. Like I cut my expenses to the bone and then I just wailed on the income lever. So when I was making$403 ,000 in 2021, spending$24 ,000, I had$300 and whatever that is,$1 ,000 to invest for my future. And so the compound interest that that has paid me to this day is just like that money has more than doubled. It's insane. So just getting it right for those couple of years is what just kind of catapulted this whole financial independence journey and allowed me to hit financial freedom in such a short timeline.

30:03And that's where I think most people need to understand is look at Cody. Cody kept his expenses at the level where he was comfortable, but it was kind of like he was still making sacrifices, but it was at the level that you were comfortable. kind of keeping it there and then took the extra and started to put it towards financial independence. So first I want to talk through kind of what did you do to increase your income over that timeframe? What were some of the businesses that you were creating or what was your thought process there? Did you try other things that failed or did you just kind of keep going, going on from there?

30:29Good question. Yeah. This is when I tried like 30 different businesses and at one point, so I had tried 30 over the span of this couple of year timeframe, but at one point I had 19 different income streams and I used to brag about it, but now I'm like, that was so dumb. Like some of these things I would make$50 a month and I would be making like, you know,$2 an hour doing it. Like I was doing like online surveys for money. Like some of these income changes were just so silly, but, but honestly, looking back, like I learned so many skills. I learned what I liked. I learned what I didn't like. I became, you know, I had like, I was doing copywriting.

30:59I was like doing email marketing campaigns. I was editing podcasts. I was editing video, all these skills I now use today, or if I don't use them today, at least when I hire people, I like kind of know what to look for and I can kind of guide them. So like I gained so many skills during that time frame. That's one thing I don't want people to be like, well, I don't want to try 30 side hustles. It's like even if you don't do the side hustle in the future, you're going to gain a valuable skill. That's why, like I was saying before, even if you're in a high powered corporate job and you don't want to do a side hustle because it doesn't make financial sense, it might make sense just to better you, like to give you a new skill that you don't have.

31:30And you never know when that skill might come in handy down the road. So yeah, back to answer your question about all my side hustles and how it's increased my income. The ones I eventually kind of paired my side hustling down to was digital products. So I was creating a whole bunch of digital products to sell on Etsy, to sell on Shopify. That then became a whole community and course and template shop and this whole thing called Gold City Ventures. That's like my main business today. Real estate was another one that has stuck and I've done pretty much everything under the sun in real estate. I dabbled in flips, wholesaling, syndications, long-term rentals, short-term rentals.

32:03Is that it? Yeah, I might have missed one or two, but I dabbled in that. And then podcasting, I'll still do to this day. And a little bit of like, kind of just a personal finance influencer, for lack of a better term, creating content online. And that's kind of what, over the last couple of years, I've really pared it down to. And those are the things that really catapulted my income over those couple of years. And every single person that I know who has a business, especially online, that has an online business that's big, they've tried so many different things. The same thing, I would try everything from, you know, I had a blog originally, and then I had a second blog that was about like fitness.

32:35And then I would just try all these different things. I did retail arbitrage, I would sell things on eBay. And it was just like, I would fail over and over and over again. And then finally, you find the things that work. And it's really just trying a bunch of and testing out a bunch of these different things before you find something that works. So if someone was looking at maybe they have a nine to five right now, and they're listening, and they're like, I want to try something on the side. If you were starting over right now in 2026, what would you start to look for? What would you start on the side?

33:02Would you do an online business? Would you do some sort of, you know, physical business? Or how would you kind of think about that for a side hustle? The way I like to think about it, I definitely don't like to be prescriptive. I hate when people are like, real estate's the only way, or like, digital products is the only way. Not the case. What I like to think about, though, is kind of back to the first thing I was talking about, that passive income. If you can do something where you can either put in a bunch of time or a bunch of money or a bunch of effort at the beginning, and then that thing is going to pay you in perpetuity, that is the type of side hustle that I look for.

33:31So like with digital products, with real estate, even with something like podcasting or YouTube, like you're spending a lot of time creating this really valuable asset that then lives on forever. I know some podcasters who like discontinued their podcast and they're still making money. They're still making affiliate income. Maybe they still have people join their membership like from this asset that they created that still lives on. So like something that has longevity versus just trading your dollars for hours. Like I've done all the dollars for hours stuff. I delivered Uber Eats on a bicycle in Australia.

33:59I lived there for six months. I was in this hilly region. I got a bicycle. Again, this is when Frugati goes too far. I got a bicycle for$25 off of the Australian equivalent to eBay called Gumtree. I had one gear. And I'm going up like these 45 degree, you know, steep hills. This is like the most brutal trade time for money's hot hustle ever. Like I got a couple of one-star reviews because I sweat on people's food. It was brutal. Those are the types of hot hustles I would stay away from. Now there are a time and a place for those. Like if you just want to go straight, trade your hours for dollars, that's totally cool.

34:30If you want to drive for Uber, if you want to deliver Instacart, like that's, if you really got to bridge the gap and like, that's all you can do right now, you don't have the mental bandwidth to wait for a podcast or YouTube or a course or a digital product. So you don't have the time to kind of wait for those to bring you enough money to make a difference. That's fine. You can trade your dollars for hours. I'm really not like trying to hate too hard on those. But if you do have, if you're in a pretty comfortable position right now, if you're like, my financial life is pretty good. I'm making all right money.

34:55I would definitely lean more towards something that is more scalable and more passive in the future. And when you look at a lot of the online landscape now, so a big question that we get for a lot of folks out there is they'll say, well, what should I do online? Because I don't want to do something, you know, that is like what you're saying, like Uber Eats or whatever else. Maybe they're in that good position. Are there any online businesses that you like or that you've seen in the past that have worked really well for people that maybe someone who's working a nine to five could start as creating some of those little assets that can, you know, earn income in perpetuity.

35:27It really depends on your skill set. Again, I don't like being prescriptive. I think people have to lean into their strengths. Like if you're, if you're just in a regular corporate job, but you really like fitness, like maybe leaning into fitness is the way to go. Maybe you should create like some kind of, you know, PDFs with like some nutrition, like some keto diet or some like special workouts that you do, or I don't know, or build a community, or maybe you're really into nature and then you lean into nature and like you're doing maybe you're doing guided tours the weekend like there's no like right or wrong answer i don't think when it comes to building a side hustle you know on online i guess the guided tours wasn't a good example there but honestly just this i think friction is the enemy here so like just lean into what you're interested in because if you're just going after the thing that's gonna make you the most money that's when people start to give up and like that's what i learned really fast early on i'm like i hate doing x y or z side hustle i just picked this up because like johnny over there said i was gonna make a bunch of money from doing it But like, I'm not really excited about it.

36:20So like, if it's something that you're moderately excited about, like, maybe you're really interested in AI, maybe you're really interested in video, maybe you're really interested in digital products, like, follow that passion a little bit. I don't like to follow your passion advice. But like, I am a big believer that friction is the enemy when it comes to side hustles. Because, you know, the best side hustle isn't the one that's going to make you the most money the fastest, the best side hustle is the one you're going to keep up with over years and decades. Exactly. Because really, it does take a ton of time.

36:46And that was the big thing for me too, is I've tried to find those side hustles that you could focus on the actual skillset that you have. For example, if you're someone out there, let's say you're a teacher. And if you're a teacher, maybe your biggest skill is like you could do tutoring on the side online, or you could do, you know, just all these different things is look, focusing on your skillset, because that's going to allow you to make the most money, A, but also it's going to allow you to just, like, like Cody said, you're not going to quit. Like it's going to be one of those things where you're going to enjoy it a little bit more because you're good at it.

37:11And it's not going to be as hard. There's not going to be as much friction. So you focus a lot on the income lever. And so you went and doubled your income multiple years in a row. What did you do with that income? Did you take it and kind of put it towards, obviously, we've talked about investments and index funds, and we talked about real estate. How did you kind of split that up? And did you invest it anywhere else? Most of it was in index funds and real estate. Good question. I had a little bit in crypto, nothing to write home about, like, 3 % of my net worth, maybe. But honestly, the lion's share was, yeah, just regular old plain index funds, like total stock market index fund, and then real estate.

37:44So when I hit financial independence in 2020, again, the year right here, early 2022. It was, like, right before my 26th birthday. So I say I hit it when I was 25. That's awesome. I had about$500 ,000 invested in the stock market. Okay. And mostly just like the total stock market next fund. And I had 11 real estate units that I had bought using a total of$200 ,000 in down payments. So we were kind of like house hacking. We had like two other triplexes and a duplex. And we were making like between$3 ,000 and$3 ,500 a month in cash flow after everything was said and done, after all the mortgages were paid, after we set aside money for reserves.

38:20So at that point, like we were spending probably$2 ,500 to$3 ,000. We're like, hey, we don't have to work anymore. Like we were making just from the real estate, we didn't have to work. And then we also had this$500 ,000 chunk of money sitting in the market that was just compounding year over year over year. So that was kind of the split. Like at this point, I think I'm slightly more index fund heavy than real estate heavy in terms of my total net worth. But it's been a pretty even split the whole way. I don't like being too into one thing. I like having my assets diversified a little bit just for protection.

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43:21Talk about the journey with real estate. So you have these 11 units that you utilize, 200 ,000 of your own money. How did you do that? What were kind of the steps that you took in order to do that? Because I know a lot of our audience here is really interested in real estate. We get a lot of questions on that. So what was your journey with that? How did you kind of think about that? Was it house hacking? Did you start there? And then how did that kind of expand? So we hit the ground running with real estate. And this is in that year where I'd made$403 ,000 and spent 24. We had a lot of gunpowder to work with.

43:49So like we had so much money to just like invest. I know it sounds like cocky, but we just like, honestly, the amount, the delta between the income and the expenses was getting so big that I'm like, what do we do with this? So we started looking at real estate and we bought 11 units in one year. So in that calendar year. So that's when all the 11 units happened in like 11 months. So the first one was a house hack. We lived in the basement unit. There was a split level duplex above us. So it's a three unit total and we lived in the basement unit. And so we went from paying, well, I went from paying as I was living in Boston, that$450 a month.

44:21I went from paying$450 a month in rent to now making$800 a month from this house hack. Because the amount we were bringing in from those two units was like$800 and minus all expenses, minus mortgage, everything was about$800 more than the cost. So like we were actually, instead of most, you know, 99 % of people are spending money on housing. We were making money on housing. So that was a huge shift. And then after that, we bought a duplex, like a mile down the road. It was an off-market deal, same seller. And then after that, we bought a three-family two months after that. And then we bought another three-family four months after that.

44:56So yeah, and it's playing of 11 months, we had 11 units. That is incredible. That's like a, overall is just so amazing what you can do. And again, I want to remind everybody, think about this as this is the reason why you increase your income, because you can take these extra dollars and you can absolutely change your life in a single year if you can increase your income enough, which is why this is so powerful overall. And I'm with you, Cody, because real estate is a big part of my strategy too. It's having, you know, investing in the market and real estate, having that diversification, I think is a really important thing for most people.

45:26And overall, I think that just diversifying in these other areas is just, it just helps tremendously for me. So you talk a lot about financial independence as a spectrum. And I'm going to tell you right now, my biggest overall struggle and everybody, all my listeners know this because I talk about it a lot, is figuring out how much is enough. And I still struggle with that to this day. It is one of those things where my, every time something changes in my life, I feel like I just keep increasing the amount that I want to have to become financially independent. So my first initial goal was to become lean fi.

45:59and so when I did that because I was really into Mr. Money Mustache as I'm sure you probably were too I told my wife I'm gonna bike around town and she's like we're by an interstate you're not gonna go bike around town and so this was this whole ordeal where uh where that's how I was in my 20s and so once we got to that point in time where we could hit that then I was like all right I just want to have a little bit more and I want to have a little bit more now my goal honestly is fat fire and for a lot of different reasons and it's because I had kids and there's a lot of causes I want to give to and those types of things but um I just feel like the goal post is always moving for me.

46:29So can you kind of talk about why you think financial independence is a spectrum and the danger? We'll talk about what enough is at some point in time here, but the danger of people not understanding what their enough number is. Yeah, I'll talk about the spectrum part first. I think you kind of laid the groundwork perfectly. There are different levels to financial freedom. There's like lean five where it's like, I'm going to live extremely frugally. Let's say, you know, use that example from earlier where you have to save up$1.5 million to live on 60k be like actually i think i could live on 40k a year all i need is a million dollars invested using the nest egg approach that's cool that's like lean fi if that's like a little less comfortable than you'd like to be but like you can make it work in five the traditional fi is like the 60 thousand dollars a year like i like spending 60 thousand dollars it feels pretty good 1.5 million done fat fi is when you're like okay i kind of want to increase my lifestyle like i'm i'm actually leaning into lifestyle inflation because i know that you know this x y or z thing is going to make me happier.

47:21Maybe in that case, you need, again, public math sucks. Let's say you need$80 ,000 a year to spend. So then it's like$2 million is your FI number. So it's just understanding that. And that's why FI is a spectrum. There's different levels to FI. There's different types of FI. Some people like Coast FI, where they'll try to get, call it$500 ,000 invested by age 35, and then through compound interest. There's this math thing called the rule of 72. It's basically like divide 72 by your expected rate of return, and that's how long it takes for your money to double. So I'm just using this as a preface for this public math.

47:52I'm probably going to embarrass myself doing, but like, let's say you have 500 K invested and you expect a 10 % return. It's going to double about every seven years. So like at 35, you have 500 K at 42, you're going to have a million. And then at 49, you're going to have like 2 million. And then at 50, God, 56, you're going to have a 4 million. So like a lot of people will just kind of get that initial number and then they'll just let it ride. Like you don't have to add any more to your investment pile. once you hit this Coast Fi number. You can essentially live paycheck to paycheck. I mean, it's a little bit better because you have this like silent$500 ,000 nest egg working for you in the background, but a lot of people do the Coast Fi strategy.

48:28So like there's just so many different ways to do it or Barista Fi is another one where people will, they'll get pretty close to Coast Fi, but then they'll like work at Starbucks or like some other place with healthcare. So they're like making a little bit of money still to live, but they have, again, this like silent giant working in the background, compounding slowly year over year, decade over decade. So like, there's just so many flavors to FI. There's so many different ways to hit FI. That's why I like to say financial independence is a spectrum. It's not just like this one number. It really depends on you and your preferences.

48:55And that's why personal finance is personal. Right. I know Morgan Housley, you mentioned earlier, he says that he's like personal finance is more personal than it is finance. Right. I love that quote. So that's the thing I think is most people need to know, because for me specifically, like if you look at the spectrum of what kind of happened, my mind turned into a spectrum just as I went on in life where like I got married and all of a sudden I started to spend a little bit more. And then after I got married, then we had our first kid and we started to spend more. There's daycare costs. There's all these extra costs you have.

49:22Then I spent a little bit more at the second and the third. And then now I just there's more things I want to do. Like, for example, this summer, we're going to travel a lot in Europe. And that's like one of our big goals to spend time with kids so we can we can do that. And there's like I'm going to see if that works. If I like that a lot in my increase, you know, I want to spend more as I get, you know, later on down the line. So this is just something where I'm trying to get that goalpost to stop moving. I don't know if, you know, I ever will. But I also don't think I'm ever going to stop working.

49:50That's just one of those areas that I'm that I'm kind of sitting at right now. So if someone's listening to this right now and they're thinking through, well, how do I figure out what my enough number is? A lot of our audience knows like the four percent rule and what that is. but how can they kind of work backwards, especially when it comes to thinking about the future? We talked about a little bit about inflation and we talked about the future in terms of thinking about what your financial independence number is. How can they kind of think about or start to work towards that number? Is it just utilizing the 4 % rule and working backwards or how do you actually think about that?

50:20I think one of the biggest misconceptions is how much your dream lifestyle costs. And going back to the four hour work week, the book that really changed my life. I remember tim ferris telling the story about one of his buddies who was a founder and i think he had like a 50 million dollar exit you know he grinded for 20 years building some software company had a 50 million dollar exit and tim was like why are you working so hard the guy's like so i can do whatever i want he's like he's like like what he's like travel around thailand for a year tim's like you can travel around thailand for a year for twenty thousand dollars like you don't need a 20 million dollar software exit and to grind at the expense of your health and your family and your friends.

50:54I know this guy was like pushing himself to the limit. So I think a lot of people have this dream life that they idealize, but they don't actually understand how much it costs. And so when I ask people, like, like, what's your financial freedom number? How much you need for financial independence? So like$10 million. I'm like, okay, why? And then they go through the things they want. And they're like, well, I really want, I want a private chef. I'm like, okay, like a private chef sounds fancy. You can get a private chef in some places for a thousand dollars a month. We'll make all your meals. Like they'll come to your house, cook your stuff twice a week, put it in your fridge like that's a private chef and some of them i've seen them as cheap as a thousand dollars a month using the four percent rule that's what twelve thousand dollars a year times 25 that's like an extra 180k or whatever that you need for your five numbers so like not that expensive some people like i want to fly private there is like semi-private companies now like jsx that are operating on the west coast you can get a private you can literally get in a private jet with 20 other people from like vegas to la for like 300 bucks you don't need 50 million dollars or some people there's just like all these circumstances or traveling is another big one like i want to be able to travel the world it's like i personally have traveled for six months and while super frugal this time this is back before i hit fi i spent nine thousand five hundred dollars in six months of traveling and i was like i mean i was yeah i was incredible i was slumming it a little bit but like i did it and i had a lot of fun and we were going out every weekend like it wasn't like i just went there and just sat in my room the whole time i had a great time it was in australia um so there's just like i think there's a lot of misconceptions about what a dream life actually costs.

52:19So like something me and my wife did was we just sat down like, you know, backs facing each other. So like, you can't see what the other person's writing. We just wrote down like our top 10 list of the things we value. And we actually redid that pretty recently. And just to make sure that we're still aligned. And you know, it was at the top, it was like travel, it was like fitness, it was like spending time with each other, it was family. And so like, if fancy house, if fancy car isn't on there, like, then you shouldn't be spending money on it. Like do this with your spouse. If you're a single, do this by yourself.

52:45And if what you write down on that list is not aligned with what your credit card statement or what your bank statement shows, then you're going to make some changes. You're going to really figure out what the things are that you value and spend in accordance with those values. So I just did all my like tax work for 2025. And what do you know? It was all like travel and experience stuff at the top of the list. That's what we spend the most money on. Like, okay, good. We are very aligned. We, we say, we like these things. We say that these are priorities and our money is matching that. But I see so many people that are like, you know, this is, these are the things I prioritize.

53:13But if you look at their calendar, if you look at their bank account, it's very different. How often do you look at that priority list? Do you kind of reevaluate on a yearly basis? And, you know, doing it with your partner, is that something like you guys kind of sit down once a year and do it? Or is it something where you kind of done it once and you're just sticking to it now? So doing that exercise, we hadn't done it in a decade, that one specifically. But what we do do every month, we have these like monthly money meetings. It's kind of nerdy. But we'll sit down and basically we have this.

53:39It's not just money meeting, actually. It's like everything meeting. I'll pull up the prompts for people who want to copy exactly what we do. We do this every single month. And then we have a big one at the end of the year. We actually just recorded like last week or two weeks ago, our annual video to kind of recap all of 2025. But at the end of every single month, we kind of just go over a quick little laundry list. So our monthly review meeting, we go over money, real estate, health and fitness, travel, relationships, random, and then goals for the next month. So we do that every single month at the end of the month.

54:08And it's just so eyeopening. Like if there's something that we're not aligned on, or maybe there's like a money or real estate thing that I forgot to tell Lauren. And like, this is a time where I can fill in that gap. Or if there's something that the other person is doing that's bothering us, whether that's in our relationship or with money or whatever. It's just it kind of opens the door to conversation. And that has been incredibly helpful. We've been doing that for a couple of years now. And that just kind of helps us stay on track with everything. And it's so important. My wife and I do the same thing where we kind of have these conversations in a big kind of goal meeting at the end of the year.

54:36But I do like some of your prompts. Some of those I'm going to steal because I think some of those are really cool, especially the goals the next month and kind of going in there because that's I really like that. I think that's awesome. If you are trying to get someone on board with financial independence, maybe it's your spouse. It's my wife and I had a lot of conversations to even kind of think through this process. Do you have any tips for getting somebody on board or is it kind of showing, hey, we can have whatever we want in this life and we have this kind of set up? How do you kind of think about that and having that conversation with someone?

55:03If you're the type of person who's listening to this podcast or watching this interview, you're probably the money nerd in your relationship. And that's exactly who I was. It sounds like that's who you were, Andrew. And so I went spreadsheet first at my wife and I'm like, look, we can retire by the time we're 30. And she's like, I don't even understand what I'm looking at. So that was the wrong approach. So I think the approach is kind of how luxury vacation companies do it. Like sell the destination, not the journey. Don't be like, yeah, we're going to cut down our expenses. We're going to start these hot hustles.

55:31like be like, imagine if we could just on a random Tuesday, go to the beach. How awesome would that be? Like sell the destination. That's how you got the other person on board. And then you can kind of, you know, build the plane as you start to sell them on the experience on the destination. I wouldn't lead with the journey because that's usually boring and people don't want to hear spreadsheets and numbers and compound interest if they're not interested in this stuff. But they might be interested in, hey, what if we, you know, didn't have to have a boss? Hey, what if we could spend more time with the kids?

56:00Hey, And oftentimes that's what gets the person on board. That's exactly what worked with Lauren. And yeah, the spreadsheet first approach, unfortunately, didn't cut it. It's sales 101. It's just sell the outcome, not what the actual features are, because that's overall what the big thing is. And I think you have to do that. That's what I did too. I did the same exact mistake where I kind of just threw it all at my wife. And I was like, why are we spending on these random things? That's not the way to do it. So make sure you are selling out the outcome overall. So after financial independence, what kind of surprised you most about that life?

56:27Like I know you have your businesses now and you're able to do what you want. but what kind of surprised you most after you reached financial independence? Were there any surprises that you had in place or were you just kind of loving life after that? I think a scary realization. So up until I hit FI, all of my decisions, most of my decisions were guided by money. Like I'm going to choose this accommodation because it's the most economical. I'm going to choose these sneakers because they're the most economical. I'm going to choose this profession. Like I literally went into finance because I Googled how to make a lot of money out of college.

56:56That was like everything was just driven by money and guided by money. But now that I have enough money, to spend and live comfortably. It's kind of a scary thing where now you can like do anything. Like if you don't do the thing that you say you're going to do, that is on you. It has nothing to do with money. Like, so if, you know, if I'm not in the shape I want to be in, if I don't speak the language I want to speak, if I don't play the instrument that I want to play, that's on me. It's not because I don't have time because I don't, because of this job. It's not because I don't have the money.

57:21Like it's kind of scary, but like everything just becomes a you problem. No longer a money problem. It's no longer a tie problem. It's a Cody problems. Like if I'm not where I want to be in any fasted up my life, I have to really look at myself in the mirror and be like, is this actually a priority? Like if I'm saying it's a priority, I need to build the system to like make that happen. I think that was a huge change. And just like it was kind of a crazy, crazy realization, kind of like when you kind of first launch into adulthood, like you, you know, you leave your house, you maybe go to college.

57:46You're like, wait, I can eat whatever I want. I can do whatever I want with my day. I don't have my parents breathing down my neck. It's kind of like the next level of that. I remember that was such a crazy feeling like that first day going to UMass Amherst and I was like I can just basically do whatever I want like I know I want to get good grades and I want to you know stay focused on my health and relationships and stuff but like I could just go and do whatever I wanted it's kind of the same thing when you hit five like there's there's just no guardrails anymore so it's kind of all on you that's a great comparison because that feeling I think most people remember that feeling you know the first day of college when you just you're there and all of a sudden it feels like, wow, I could, I could kind of just, I'm free.

58:21I could do it. Yeah, exactly. Exactly. That's what it feels like. So that's all. That's a great comparison. So before we wrap this up, I want to kind of just ask a bunch of rapid fire questions. We ask a lot of guests to these, um, and these are just kind of fun to kind of think through. So first one is what is the best money advice you've ever received? Hmm. Let's see if I can just pick one piece of money advice. I'm gonna not call it advice because I didn't get it was an advice but it was in a book I think I'm gonna go back to the your time and your money don't have to be linearly related like that just one foundational principle completely changed my life I like owe everything to that book and just that whole ideology if not I might still be working in corporate finance making 75 an hour but like I'm still trading all of my hours for dollars and I was able to escape that because it's one mantra it'll change your life once you realize that the second one is what is the best book you've read over the last year?

59:15Over the last year. Can I count a reread? Sure. Okay. Cause I am the type of person, I know you do a book a week. Yep. I am more the type of person who will kind of, I'll love a book and then I'll reread it a couple of years later to see if it like changed me or see if I receive it differently, you know, cause you're like, I'm in different points in my life. Like I reread the four hour work week. That's not my answer. But like I, there was so many things that I picked up on 10 years later that I didn't pick up on the first time I read it. So it was just like super eyeopening. But the one for me, actually, you mentioned earlier was Psychology of Money.

59:46Another really good one was Sahil Bloom's Five Types of Wealth. Both of those are kind of similar-ish. And like the things that you learn about money and just like psychology and ideology and all that stuff. And yeah, those two books were really good. I'm less inclined to read like a tactics-driven finance book nowadays and more like a psychology-driven finance book. Because like I said, personal finance is more the personal than the finance. So that type of stuff, especially as the numbers start to get bigger and like these things start to compound and the goalposts keep moving sometimes farther than I want them to.

1:00:15I'm the same boat as you. I'm like, okay, I got to ground myself and be like, okay, you know, life's pretty good. Like I got to, I got to work on the psychology piece, not the money piece. A hundred percent. And I think that's the big thing too, is for those out there, if there are books that have, cause I do this too. If there are books out there that have had a huge impact on you, I go back and read them. Like one of my favorites originally was The Millionaire Next Door. And I went back and read it like later on down the line. And I just keep like finding stuff that I like in there. And the same thing for business books and everything else too.

1:00:41You'll be in a different place in your business, for example, and you can kind of go back and read those books. And there's a lot more things that maybe apply now than they didn't, you know, they maybe they didn't apply back in the day. So it's a really cool way to kind of think about that. So if you could change one thing or one financial decision that you ever made throughout your entire timeline, would there be one that you would change? Or would you kind of just have your journey exactly the same as it was? I was very fortunate. My journey was pretty smooth because I learned these things so early on.

1:01:08The one thing I probably wouldn't do when I was in my junior year of high school, I spent all of my money to buy this like Volvo S40 with the sports package. I like a spoiler on my car. I literally spent every dollar I had. I probably wouldn't, I didn't need that car and I would go back and just get like some crappy car that gets me from point A to point B. It was only$12 ,000, but like$12 ,000 to a 17 year old. Like that was all my money. I had spent years working to get that. So that's probably the one, again, it's not like a huge financial mistake because I was so fortunate to learn this stuff when I was like 19 years old.

1:01:40But yeah, I'd probably choose something a little more economical. Absolutely. That's one I think a lot of us probably have some stuff when we were younger. I remember like one of the things that I did is when I was 19, I read this like investment newsletter and it was talking about this penny stock was going to go to the moon. And this is before I understood index funds. And I went and bought this penny stock and lost all my money in one day. And it was a whole ordeal. So awesome. And then the last question I have, and this is my favorite question, is what does wealth mean to you? Wealth to me is spending my days doing what I want, when I want, with who I want.

1:02:15Like that's the ultimate form of wealth. It absolutely is. Well, Cody, thank you so much for coming here today. And I truly, truly appreciate you being here. Tell us all about, so Cody has a new book coming out, which we'll talk about in the intro too. But Cody has a new book coming out. So talk about your book and talk about where people can listen to your podcast and everything else you have going on. Yeah. So book is called Retire by 30, fitting title. And so I want, even if you're not, if you're 50 years old watching this, like this doesn't exclude you from, it's basically, if I had to name it something less flashy, it'd be hit financial independence as soon as humanly possible and then do whatever you want.

1:02:45But that doesn't have quite the same ring to it. So Retire by 30 is the name of the book. You can get it at retireby30book.com or wherever you buy your books. financial independence show is the name of my podcast been running that since 2018 we have hundreds of episodes with different guests covering a whole sorts of different topics all about how you can reach financial independence in a whole bunch of different ways and yeah cody d berman everywhere on social media is where you can find me and follow me and give me a shout out let me know if you enjoyed this episode if you met me through andrew that'd be really cool and yeah thank you for having me man this is awesome absolutely thank you so much for being here and cody's going to come back in town next year so we're going to have him back again So we'll definitely do that and really, really excited for that.

1:03:24So thank you again for being here. We really appreciate it.