The 3-Day Workweek Blueprint: How to Buy Back 104 Days a Year | Andy Hill

0:00I remember speaking with a hospice doctor about regrets that people had at the end of their lives. And a lot of the regrets that kept coming back were, I wish I wouldn't have spent so much time working at my job or working in general. What else is out there besides worker? Like, let's find it and have some fun while doing it. Hello, friends. This is Tyler Gardner welcoming you to another episode of Your Money Guide on the Side, where it is my job to simplify what seems complex, add nuance to what seems simple, and learn from and alongside some of the brightest minds in money, finance, and investing.

0:38So let's get started and get you one step closer to where you need to be. Today's guest is someone I owe a serious debt of gratitude to, and I don't mean the 22 % APR kind. Andy Hill hosts the podcast Marriage, Kids, and Money. And, thankfully for me, for people who just are obsessed with reading and love everything about personal finance, he's got a book coming out January 21st with Wiley called Own Your Time, which I have read and I think is a must-read for everyone. But here's why this conversation matters to me. Andy was one of the very first people to take me seriously when I was just starting out in this space.

1:20Back when I was creating content in my basement, zero followers, wondering if anyone would ever care about index funds and compound interest. Andy was willing to completely nerd out with me about personal finance for hours and invited me on his show to share as much as I could about the finance industry. He didn't have to do that, but he did. And honestly, I wouldn't be here without conversations like those. So in this conversation, we talk about finding the middle path between retiring at 30 after saving 90 % of your income and grinding it out in the corporate world until you're 70. We explore why it's so important to spend a few minutes each day dreaming about what you actually want to do with your life and why it's equally important to identify as early and as often as possible what you don't want to do with your time and your money.

2:10For a highly practical, engaging, and action-oriented money playbook from one of my single favorite voices in this space, I give you my conversation with Andy Hill. I'm going to start with just the punchline because you currently are basically living what at least I would dub a dream life of working 20 to 25 hours a week. your wife's working part-time as an esthetician and you're both financially secure enough that you're not losing sleep over money. So I'm even going to pause there and just let that one sink in with the audience for a minute. But tell me this, how old are you and how the heck did you pull this off without winning the lottery or selling a tech company?

2:56I love that. Yeah. Both of us are 43 and yes, it took about 10, 15 years for us to figure it out. But really at the end of the day, we went from working two full corporate jobs, as well as being married and having two kids, and just kind of looking at each other and being like, is this how life is supposed to be? This feels like a trap, and it feels like we can't breathe. So how do we move to something that just feels a little bit more natural and allowing us to breathe? So we wanted to create a life that felt like that. And to us, working part-time, working a few days a week, still allow us to make money and do work that we enjoy and also be able to breathe, take care of our health, take care of our marriage.

3:46It's a wild concept, but we wanted to put that out there as our North Star. And so in between year zero and year 15, we had to do a lot of steps that helped us to continue to move in that direction. It wasn't overnight, but as you know, taking 1 % improvements over time can move mountains. What were some of those improvements? So yeah, tell me a little bit about from the moment that you decided I'm kind of done with this, or at least I want to challenge this corporate world to when you have lived into the description that I just read before, What were some of the steps you took annually to get to this place where you feel, again, you're able to sleep, you're financially secure, and you work less than all of us and have four-day weekends?

4:32Yeah, yeah. In the beginning, it was the dreaming part. It was kind of saying, what is that big goal? And how will this help us to have a better life? So spending time with my spouse, with my wife on that moment, sitting down together, making time for that, because that was very difficult in the beginning of our relationship. We'd just move, we'd be working, we'd be taking care of the kids, and then we'd, you know, then crash at the end of the day. So it was really carving out time and just sitting with each other and asking those big questions like, where do we see ourselves in five to 10 years?

5:04How do we feel like our life could be better? And for her at the time when we started, it was, I'm working a 60-hour week job. I am currently pregnant and I hate my job and my clients. Like, how do I get out of this mess? And so I grabbed onto that early on to support her and say, hey, here's some financial moves that we can make to help us get in that direction where you could start off going part-time and then eventually full-time stay-at-home mom. And that was her goal, her dream. She wanted to be able to spend a lot more time with our daughter as she came into the world. So for us, the first step was finding that why, finding that dream, and then saying, okay, this is worth pursuing.

5:52So we started looking at those numbers in and out and saying, okay, what do we need to change in order for us to move in that direction? And going forward from that moment, we started saving a lot more of our money and moving it towards helping us to achieve those things. So in the beginning, it was my 30K of student loans. It was her 20K of a car loan. These were status symbols that we wanted in our lives. I wanted to feel really, really smart and have an MBA and say, I have an MBA. Pay me more money, potentially, in the corporate world. We both wanted to have a fancy luxury car because we're in our 20s.

6:27And of course, that's what you need. You need a fancy luxury car. But we were faking, right? We were faking that because we didn't actually have the money to do those things. So first thing first was get that dream out there, create the budget, create the plan. And then for us after that, it was start to attack our debt to eliminate that as fast as possible. And when we got laser focused doing that, we were able to eliminate those two debts within a year. We'll get right back into it after a quick word from those who support the show. Every January, we prioritize our physical health like it's a New Year's resolution Olympics.

7:01new gym memberships, meal prep containers, apps tracking our sleep and hydration, or even dry January. We do it because we know physical health affects everything else. So let me ask you something. Why don't people give their financial health that same energy? I'm not talking about vague intentions like, this year I should probably save more. I'm talking about actually sitting down and asking, am I on track to retire when I want to? Am I leaving money on the table with my tax strategy? Do I even have a coherent plan, or am I just throwing money in random accounts and hoping for the best? And I know this matters to all of you because I get hundreds of messages every week from readers and listeners asking me for advice.

7:44And I genuinely want to help. That's the entire reason I do this. But I can't give personalized advice. Your situation, your income, your goals, your tax bracket, your timeline. It's too specific for me to address responsibly in a podcast or newsletter. That's why I partner with Facet. With a Facet membership, you'll get a dedicated team of CFP professionals who build actual financial plans tailored to your life, not generic templates or product pitches. They charge a flat annual membership fee, not a percentage of your assets, which means their advice isn't tied to how much money they can get you to invest with them.

8:27You're already taking the time to optimize your body this month. Why not your finances? FACET is offering my listeners$250 into your brokerage account if you invest$5 ,000 within your first 90 days. Plus, the$250 enrollment fee will be waived for new annual members. So connect with Facet today at facet.com slash Tyler and start 2026 with both your health and your wealth dialed in. That's facet.com slash Tyler. Facet is an SEC registered investment advisor. This is not advice. All opinions are my own and not a guarantee of a similar outcome. I'm not a member of Facet. I have an incentive to endorse Facet as I have an ongoing fee-based contract for cash compensation, as well as a percentage of equity in FACET based on this endorsement.

9:22I spent my late 20s renting in Vermont while maxing out my retirement accounts and building a taxable brokerage. And the whole time, there was this nagging feeling every month, I'm spending thousands on rent and getting absolutely nothing back for it. Turns out that's not true anymore. Built is a loyalty program that turns your rent payments into actual rewards. Flights, hotels, fitness classes, Amazon purchases, or my personal favorite, SoulCycle classes. I know that sounds absurdly specific, but starting my day with a hard workout in a room full of strangers who are also suffering, that's happiness.

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10:43Join the loyalty program at joinbilt.com slash Tyler. That's J-O-I-N-B-I-L-T dot com slash Tyler. And make sure you use that link so they know who sent you. So you talk a little bit about kind of the order of operations that you prescribed for yourself and for your wife and your family, obviously one defining what it is you want to move towards, the second tackling some of that high interest debt that we know obviously can be an emergency for many. But beyond the debt, were there ever moments where you and your wife disagreed on kind of what is the next step of cost cutting? Was there something that you said actually like, well, like this I do kind of like spending money on and she's like, we could cut that and be just fine.

11:35Yeah, Tyler, I mean, that's actually how I started. I said, hey, babe, I've been researching and I think we can build our net worth and eliminate our debt and grow our savings rate if we just like, you know, get rid of your car and start spending less on dinners and stuff. Does that sound great? And I swear, Tyler, she came home from work one of those days and I start spilling this stuff on her right when she walks through the door and she just looks at me and then completely walks away. And I'm like, what? Is this a perfect idea? What's going on? And it wasn't until I started realizing, I'm not speaking from her perspective, man.

12:12I'm just talking numbers and I'm talking deprivation. What am I going to take away as opposed to what we're actually going to be gaining? So I think that was a big mistake in my beginning because I got all numbers focused and I got very mathy about it. So it wasn't until I flipped the script on how we were talking about what she was going to gain by doing these things. But a lot of it too wasn't just like, what can we take away from our lives? It became like, how can we grow our income so that we can make this easier? Because you can only take away so much until it starts to feel so painful that you're like, what am I doing this for again?

12:48So for me at work, it was like, okay, what can I do to bust my butt while my wife is creating a life in our home and grow my income. So that became, what can I do to get a raise? What can I do to get bonuses? So I became very focused over the next five years to grow my income as much as possible. And I think I boosted my income, our household income during that time, to an average of around$180 ,000 between my wife and I between year zero and year 10. You know, she was in and out of the workforce for that full time in the beginning, you know, no time as stay at home mom with regard to her income, but obviously plenty of time working because being a stay at home mom is a lot more work than my corporate job.

13:33And then back into part time near the end of that 10 year streak. But yeah, we were around$180 ,000. That helped a lot. But with that, we said, OK, what can we do to save, invest, you know, a good chunk of that. So for a period of time, it was like 40, 50 % of our income. And that was a big driver in helping us move towards this life that we do have now. That being said, I got a little too fiery about the whole thing, a little financial independence, retire early movement about it, because this was in like the mid 2015s, 2017s, 2018s. And I think I took it a little too far because it became not only what can I do to increase my income, but also let's see other areas that I can do in the budget to decrease our expenses even more as we now have two kids.

14:21And that's when things started to get a little hairy in our relationship, so much so that the marital fight started to happen a lot more. not only was I pressing our dollars, but we were also pressed for time, another very important resource that we don't pay attention to enough. So we weren't communicating, we weren't spending enough time together. And that forced her to say, hey, Andy, I really think we need to go to marriage counseling. This is something that is not working for me, and we need to figure this out. So that was a tough moment, but it ended up being a very important moment in our relationship.

14:55And just to go back for a moment, and then I want to pick up on exactly what you just said, But to go back, can you just describe, because I know what you're talking about as far as getting too fiery, right? Like I can picture, I'm like, oh gosh, you were one of those guys. Oh yeah. But can you describe for the people listening who aren't as familiar with the A, the fire movement to begin with, B, what it might mean in a relationship to get too fiery and where it can go as an extreme on that end? Yeah. So for me at that time, I was so uninspired by my corporate career. And then at home, I had probably a two-year-old, the four-year-old at the time.

15:37So I had a lot of demands when I got home. So for me, I just felt completely crushed for my time. I didn't have any time. So my mental state was, well, I don't want to get rid of my kids and my wife, right? I love them, but maybe I'll get rid of that corporate job. So the solution out there that I kept hearing about through podcasts or books or anything like that was the financial independence movement. And that was, hey, save and invest extremely aggressively for a short period of time. And then for the next, whatever, 40, 50 years, you don't have to work at all. You know, you can live off your investments.

16:13And so, you know, that calculation of, hey, save a million dollars, and then you can use that 4 % rule and live off of$40 ,000 per year. So there's two problems there. Getting the million dollars really fast is hard. And then the second problem is, I don't know about your life, but I can't live on$40 ,000, and I'm sure my wife wouldn't want to live on$40 ,000 per year. Okay, so then$2 million, and you can live at$80 ,000. You know how hard it is for the average person to make$2 million in a short period of time? So the math just wasn't mathing, but I went for it anyway, which caused some problems in our marriage, so much so that we did go to marriage counseling.

16:52and it felt like a failure for me in the beginning, but the nine months that we spent dedicated time together and really essentially block off an hour a month to have a conversation was the best thing for our relationship. And through that, we really found some good middle ground. She understood my situation. I felt trapped. I really did. And then I understood her situation. Hey man, I love you, but I don't want to live in this deprivation kind of world when we're doing so well financially. why do we have to feel so pinched? We found a great middle ground after those conversations. And that's kind of where we headed over the next five, 10 years in our relationship.

17:30Well, and let's pick up there and talk more about the middle ground, because I think one of the main objections I personally have to the FIRE movement is kind of exactly what you just said, right? A, good luck for the average person getting$2 million by the time they're 30 or 40. I mean, that is, for so many people, it is just impossible. And your head's in the sand if you think it can happen. But then secondly, even with$2 million,$80 ,000 is lower than the national median income salary right now. And with two kids, best of luck. These days, best of luck looking at home prices and now our 50-year mortgages that are coming out.

18:07But I'm wondering, when did you decide that there was kind of this, and we could call it the way or the middle path or this kind of distinct path between let me do everything I can to get$2 million, live off of ADK, ruin my marriage, et cetera, versus being in this corporate grind until 65 and resenting life in general and this whole process of never having our time. I think it was adjusting my mindset to say, well, I don't mind working. I like working. I like working on work that I enjoy, though. And so I started to realize that I don't have to cease working. And that was kind of a relieving moment, Tyler.

18:52I was like, oh, you don't have to just stop working in order to hit this goal. You could just work less. And so I started to actually connect with people who had been working part time, either through their employer or through creating their own small business, solopreneur business, where they were managing their time, call it 20 hours a week, 30 hours a week. I even met with people who were consultants or freelancers that said, hey, I work seasonally. And I'm like, wow, that's an inspiring middle ground between working this traditional path where you're working in the corporate world for 40, 50 years, and then you retire and maybe enjoy 10 of it, or hard-charging fire path where you feel good for about 10, 15 years, but then you have the opportunity to do nothing for 40, 50 years.

19:38I wanted to find that middle ground. And these people that I talked to, that I connected with, were so inspiring. And I said, oh, okay, well, maybe there's a middle path where, yes, it's important to save and invest until you get to a point. And then since you front-loaded those investments, they can really grow on their own through time and compound interest and still get you to that path of retirement in your 60s. And I learned about this term called Coast Fire. And it's sort of this middle ground of the fire movement. It's sort of born from the FIRE movement, but probably from people who are like, well, that was too intense.

20:14Let me try something that's a little softer and more, honestly, more realistic, really, for being honest with ourselves. So this path essentially says save and invest until you get to a point where your investments can grow by themselves through time and compound interest and still get you to that point. So for us, this was around$500 ,000 by age 40. and then we started to do some calculations in just a simple compound interest calculator to say, what if we just stopped contributing to this IRA, 401k, HSA, depending on which tax-advantaged account you're looking at, and what would happen if we just let it cook for the next 20 years until we're 60?

20:54And we found out, man, we're going to have probably 2 million plus at age 60, and that actually gets us to that, you know, original FIRE goal when we're older. And by that time, because we had already moved towards eliminating our debt and eventually eliminating our mortgage, our expenses were so low that it said, wow, actually$2 million at age 60 or 65, that's going to be plenty for us to live on in the future. And of course, you want to use this calculation using like a real rate of return. So you're factoring in inflation and everything that goes into it. So you're being realistic about what money looks like in 20 to 25 years.

21:30But that was kind of a relieving middle ground to say, ah, this could be an opportunity for us. And then the next question that pops up is like, well, if we're not saving and investing in our retirement investments anymore, what can we do with this money? And that was like, whoa, okay, could we have more fun? Could we go on more vacations? Could we pay off our mortgage? So those were exciting things that helped us move to the sort of middle ground of family financial independence, maybe you could call it, that helped us to move in that way. And it's working really well for us. So we essentially started this plan in January of 2020.

22:11And now we're five years later. And life has been really good for us. Do you worry at all? Because you call this plan more realistic. And I agree with you that there's definitely that this middle path seems obviously to you get to continue to have some potential security from a job. You also get to continue to prioritize figuring out how to save for the future. But do you worry at all that you are either? And I'm by no means calling you out per se on this, but I'm just really intrigued by this. Are you limiting your potential career options or earning power if the market decides to say, hey, man, remember that 7 % annual real return since 1957?

22:59We're done with that. And I don't want to fear monger, and I never will, and I know it's all the data we have. But do you or your family ever worry about what if the script doesn't play out the way that we think mathematically at will here? Sure. I think that's a very valid concern. And yes, it's not guaranteed. All we have is past market results. We don't have future market results. Things would be a lot easier if we had future market results. But what makes me feel good even doing this, Tyler, is that the mental trick that I've done to my brain is that I've now found work that I enjoy doing.

23:38And I feel like I'm going to continue to do this work well past 60 years old. So I guess my three-legged stool would be essentially the investments we've built up. And yes, God willing, we get to 6 % or 7 % real rate of return. That'd be fantastic, right? And we can live on that. I don't want to ignore the fact that there will be some sort of Social Security in our system in 20 years. It may not be what I'm seeing currently on ssa.gov. Maybe it's 70%, you know, 77%. So there's a little bit there. And then that third stool is the fact that I now do work that I enjoy. Will that work change over the next 20 years?

24:20Absolutely. But I look forward to being flexible with it and finding out ways that I can continue supporting people with my platform and making money along the way. So I really feel like I'm not only relying just on that one income stream for my retirement income. I've got these other two as well. And I guess my fourth would be also that my wife has part-time work that she enjoys, too, on our journey. So I guess we have a lot of things to land on there, even if that convenient math problem for Coast Fire doesn't work out. And I'll bet you get this question slash comment or slash complaint slash challenge about as much as I do, which is you also just summed up what at least to me seems obvious, which is why we're all not trying to find a way to get paid to do something we love is beyond me.

25:15I sit here and I go, why would that not be the number one goal of life? Forget about getting out of work. Let me just try to find the thing I love doing, get paid enough that I can do it and do it as long as I want to do it. Yet, so many people challenge that idea of, well, it's not so easy, right? I might not have the skill set to do what I want to do. I might not have found my passion yet or my passion. I haven't found a way to make money with that passion yet. How do you address that audience member who's sitting there going, Andy, I would love to go make enough money part time nonetheless to do what I want to be with my family or 20 hours a week.

25:58How do I do it concretely? Can you share any stories or resources of people that could get them started down that path? Yeah, for the folks that say that's not possible or it's going to be too hard. isn't that a reason to do it? You know what I mean? Like if it's going to be a big change in your life and you feel like you will be happier, don't we all need some sort of goal or dream to pursue? And yeah, things like this take time. This took us 15 years to really make, to come to light. Growing the gap between your income and your expenses is hard. That means you have to make more money or spend less money.

26:43And how hard is that? It's so hard. But you need that dream. You need that goal to keep moving towards that gives you purpose and meaning in life. And that actually makes you happier too. You are saying, wow, with this one extra hour this week or these five extra hours this week that I'm going to find, I am going to move towards building a business or a small side hustle that I like. So I would say, yes, have that dream built out there. Make sure you know what you're moving towards. Grow that gap between your income and your expenses. And that gap becomes the power move that you can use to move towards this.

27:27Now, I never want to say becoming a business owner has no trouble and everybody should quit their jobs today. I really don't think that. I think that you should do those things with protection and with planning. And so one of those is to save up a whole bunch of money into a savings account. I really do like six months or 12, really 12 months of expenses to help you feel good, especially if you have a family to do these types of things. Also, proof that your business idea actually makes money, not just like, hey, I've made some business cards and a fancy website and ready to go. No, you have to make sure people are paying you money to do something.