Financial Independence Through Frugality | The Frugal FIRE Movement

Hot off the fire. Hot. We are talking about financial independence, retire early movement, and frugality integral role in it, and also some of our love hate relationship with it. So you're gonna want to listen to the whole episode because some of you are loving fire, some of you have no clue what it is they are You're wondering why we're talking about natural disasters. But by the end you're going to be able to figure out whether this is the financial move for you. Good word, Jim, But first

our sponsors. Yes, today's episode is not brought to you by food. It's brought to you by presents, not the kind you get for your birthday, but the kind that allows you to fully embrace the right now experience it by taking a deep breath and thinking about one good thing that's happened to you today. Stressed out about tomorrow, try being present. Worried about the unknown? Being present can help with that too, for all the things in life you can't control. Forget about the what ifs and try

being present. Whoa jan you took a hard turn from humorous fake sponsor into remarkable life tips. Um. I mean presence, like just really wanted to sponsor the show, So sure, that's true. It has nothing to do with us just coming up with things on the fly. Just whoever is giving us money at the time. We vet and then we decide who gets to be on the show, and presence, I mean, how can you say no to being present?

You can't. I do like the people who like our fake sponsors, and I'm concerned for them for when we get real sponsors. But so far, so good. We're over a year in and we're not getting real sponsors, so I don't think we have much to worry about. Glad you all are still with us. Let's do this thing. Let's start fire, Yes, Jill, what do you know or feel about fire? Okay, it's pretty limited, although I don't so.

I am not an expert in this, I will say that, but I am I have become more acquainted with this over the last year and a half, and what I know about it is it's stay on for something. We're not just talking about a blazing fire that you can roast your smores over. We're talking about financial independence retire early. And I know that some people will identify with different parts of it. There's a big movement for financial independence.

The FI part of the fire, and then the r E part is the retire early that some people may or may not get on board with. And there's a lot of different ways of looking at it of what that means to retire early in what you do with your time. And so that's that's what it is. I know there's a lot of different opinions on it, and I'm really excited about talking with you on this, Jen, Yes,

about the different perspectives and our perspectives. Yes, Um, I have been following the fire movement for about two years, so since we paid off our debt. And at first I was like, very gung ho, I would say on fire, but I'm not that corny. But you did that. You guys were waiting for it. I'm sure that you were, so I want to point it out. Uh, and over the course of two years, I've kind of come to embrace more of a frugal lifestyle that is not as how how do I put it gently? It's not as crazy.

Was that putting it gently or was that giving up? I can't that was giving up? That was giving up. Uh, that's not as crazy as some people in the fire community can be. And I've seen people do it well that are very balanced and have a really great sense of self in this journey, and then I've seen people

that are crazy. So I'm really excited to talk about these articles that we have that kind of got me introduced to fire and then help you figure out if it's a movement that you want to use your frugality to attain, because frugality is one of the essential pillars in becoming financially independent, and some would say it's more important than making money. Talking about my qualms with that later,

I love that you described it as a pillar. How frugality is so necessary for this to even be possible, whether or not you graduate in the FIRE system or you just take components of it. But and I also think I agree with part of the reason that I am not an expert and haven't explored this to its fullest potential is because I am still in the paying off debt stage. I think most people who are steeped in fire I have already paid down debt. This is

what comes next. So it can paying off debt can be a goal within the financial independence retiring early movement, but you're not gonna go full force with it until you've taken care of that initial step. So that's a big component here too. Yes, side note, I'm writing my next book. It's out next month, and it's about paying off debt and how to sustain the journey. And it's also super relevant to sustaining a journey to financial independence. So I'll talk about that later. But I am so

so so excited about it, super stoked. I love your books. They're so easy to digest, have great tips in them. Looking forward about Okay, well let's get started with our first article. So this is the article that literally started the fire movement. Um it coined the term early retirement, and it's Mr money Mustache dot com his article The

shockingly simple Math behind early Retirement. If you ask any like O G Fire person what their favorite blog post is or what their favorite article is, like nine times out of ten it's this article because it's really what started the movement. So Jill, after reading this, what are

your thoughts? Yeah, it's neat to hear background. I always like personal stories that go along with something, reasons behind why someone makes certain decisions, and we talk about that to the why being so important, So I do like I never want to downplay what Mr money Mustache did for himself in the ways that it has worked for him.

And I also like how he just explains what it is and how this could be feasible and pushing back on some of the naysayers, which I think we see in our own frugality movement, Jen, for you and I have people pushing back on well I need to buy that new thing, or I can't because I'm single, or I can't because I have kids, or these diferent things, and part of that's true, but maybe it just looks different and how can we get at this goal and yet have it be nuanced so that part I appreciate

and just him explaining it and so really talking about what it is. And the second article talks about this too, but we can say it for for now, even for those who are new to this concept, it's all about

your savings rate. Ultimately, being able to become financially independent with the potential of retiring early is dependent upon how much you take home each year, the money that you bring home, and how much you can live on, and and then beyond that, the amount of money that you're saving being able to invest that is key to be able to grow this lump sum that could theoretically sustain you with what it earns in investments for the next thirty plus years of life, depending on when you retire.

So I appreciated that breakdown and some of the simple tenants of what this is and how to do it. Yeah, he gives a lot of numbers, obviously in shockingly simple math that can tell you if you were to increase your income by this much, decrease your living expenses by this much, and then invested the rest when you can retire. So he goes to net worth of fi dot com is the website he uses to figure this out, and

so he's got a graph. If this person has his savings rate of sixty four percent, then this person can retire in ten point nine years. So it really it does have everything to do with how much you save and invest. Financial independence is defined as like, once your annual investment growth is enough for you to live on, you are then financially independent. So I think a lot of people use, like a million dollars is a cut

and dry, easy number a lot of people use. And so once you hit a million dollars, then theoretically your million dollars should be growing by forty thousand dollars every year. So you can either let that compound or you can plan on withdrawing forty dollars every year. Therefore, your nest egg never moves. It's always a million. But if you can get your living expenses down to forty dollars a year,

you are by definition, financially independent. So that is why frugality is such an integral part of financial independence, because even if you had a million dollars and it was growing at forty thou you can't live off of. You know, if you're spending sixty dollars a year like you're, you're not financially independing it. Then you'd have to save so much more. And I like that, Mr money Mustache says

in the article. So the most important thing to note is that cutting your spending rate is much more powerful than increasing your income. The reason is that every permanent drop in your spending has a double effect. It increases the amount of money you have left over to save each month, and it permanently decreases the amount you'll need

every month for the rest of your life. Which is our mantra infrugality, that it is better to cut your spending than to earn more money, because there's always the potential of rising to meet that in your spending, and so better to practice the discipline of identifying what don't I need? Where can I cut expenses? But then it's for what purpose? And this is where I differ a little bit from the fire community in what my savings or decreased spending is for. And another whole. And this

has been said, this is nothing new. I'm not bringing new perspective to to this field. But it's worth noting here that there are holes to be poked in this not that it can't be done. And I'm going to be a naysayer that nobody should ever go after this goal. But our lifestyle is not static. We can see that just by looking at our own lives over the last two to five years. It has not stayed the same. Expenses change, lifestyles change, uh, number of people in your

household change, the economy changes. It's it's dynamic. We're constantly changing. And so to say that, Okay, if I have a million dollars saved and theoretically it's making forty dollars a year, and I'm able right now to live off of forty dollars a year, well, to me, yeah, theoretically you're financially independent, but should you should you stop working and plan to do that? Assuming that now because you're able to live at forty thou forever and always you'll be able to

live at forty thousand. That's not even talking about rate of inflation, which is talked about in this realm. But to me, there there's a whole lot to look at here than just the basic tenants. Yeah, the math is a little off for me because you can you can work in percentages, but everyone has a different percentage of

or a different income. So he's working off a fifty k take home pay, which is about seventy five thousand dollars of gross income, So not everybody is at that, And yes, that is the average for Americans, but it is really discouraging to see math like this. If your gross pay is fifty dollars, then you're taking home only that and that's so much less to invest and cutting expenses can only do so much. We've said that over

and over. It's wise to do and we support doing it, but there is only a certain limit, in which case a lot of people in the Fire movement will compensate that by with entrepreneurship. But in that case, you have to look at a lot of Fire bloggers, including Mr money Mustache, who are now making so much money off of their blogs and their side ventures. They are not

really retired, which I think they talk about. There are so many loopholes in this Fire movement in that yeah, you're you're saying you're retired, but you're actually doing other things, which in some ways is providing you freedom to do what you want and you're enjoying it, but you're not fully actually not earning more money. Right. There are very few people that actually reach financial independence the traditional way and maintain it. There's when I said, when I was saying,

like having that million dollar investment. Mr money Mustache calls it the stash and then living off a forty thousand. That's called the four percent rule. So theoretically, whatever your investment nest egg is, you can live off a four percent of it, and the nest egg should be safe. If you want to not save a million dollars, if you want to save only eight hundred thousand, then you need to be able to live on four percent of

that every year. Yeah, and I love what you were saying, Jill about everything is so flux, like every year, every decade changes and so you can't predict. You have to like factor in that maybe when year you can't spend four percent because the market is only allowing you to spend two without touching your nest eggs. So a lot of holes to poke, But I'm on board with how

can we cut expense? Is how can we save? How can we be wise with our money and be able to create freedom in our lives to do the work that we want to do, to not have to be living paycheck to paycheck. Like there are certain principles interwoven here that I am fully on board with and nuances that I would say no. And that's that's the beautiful

thing about this. We can pick and choose that it doesn't have to be just like our initial when we put our toes into the water with Dave Ramsey's course, you can think, oh, I've got to follow this to the tea, and then you can start to realize there's freedom here. I can kind of pick and choose and see what works for me and what doesn't. So similar

thing with this. Yeah, that's why I loved our episode on frontloading your life with Robert Farrington and being able to invest a lot upfront and then not reaching financial independence officially, but once you have that next egg that you create in your twenties and thirties, and that money can grow over time, then you can take a job you love, or stay home with your kids, or do something that doesn't pay as well and you're not investing as much, but you've already set a foundation that will

just build over times. You're not work, work, working until you hit that number and then you just you know, drop off and retire. But you set yourself up early in life so that you can take it easy in the middle and then maybe transition to something different at the end, and you can have these different parts of your life like it doesn't have to be I'm working and then I'm retired, it's I'm working and then I'm like monetizing a hobby and then I'm doing this or that.

It's a creating more freedom there. And before before we get into the next article to really outline the ways that you can attain components of fire, I want to just make sure that we cover what is the extreme has the pendulum does swing, and we're always going to want to point towards the radical middle where that we're where we're not living in either extreme of something because

that can be detrimental. But the extreme of fire. The reason that I'm a little hesitant to dive all in is because at the most, at the furthest end of this, it would be people who are heads down trying to make as much money as they can for as short

amount of time as they can. So it is a sacrifice in the immediate for you know, long term being able to live off of that, but it's a training self for always living very minimally even though you are earning a lot of money, because the goal is to live off of a low amount of money so that you don't have to continue working in you know, quote unquota debt end job or something you don't want to

be doing for the rest of your life. And to me, the extreme of that is it doesn't create a lifestyle that is able to be generous, to have wiggle room, and to be able to engage really in larger community than than that very extreme community. So that that's the one end of it. Certainly not everybody is there, but

people are not. Yes, right, but even just this idea of a real and genuine retirement, like what you would imagine at sixty seventy, where you are not putting your hands to any plow and you are able to just veg out on a beach in Hawaii. Honestly, I have

talked with people who this is the goal. So that's why I'm saying, this is the extreme of I'm going to make a little amount of money so that i can genuinely retire at thirty five and I'm going to live in Hawaii and live my dream, only to find out, I mean, mind you, they get two years into that, it's like, oh, now I'm still only thirty seven. What

do I do? Like We're not built for that. We're not built to not put our hands to something, which is why you see Mr money Mustache continuing to put his hands to something and other people in the fire community, because it's not a real genuine retirement when we're still so young and we want to be purposeful with our lives. So I think that, yeah, some of the luster of what this might look like, I'm just going to veg

out in Hawaii. Yeah, that only lasts for two weeks and then you're like, now what, Yeah, which is why most people focus on the financial independence aspect of it. But we will talk later in our lightning round about the extremity side. So I'm excited. But some people can also rationalize not pursuing these pillars, which we will get to in our next next article. They rationalize not following these ideas because of the end of the spectrum idea, like I'm not going to retire when I'm thirty five.

I can't do it. I don't want to do it, so why would I even try and do these things, which is also the wrong idea. These are all amazing ideas and you should do all of them, but not to the extent where you are living in the future and you forget about the present presents. It's all coming together,

I see, I see. So our next article is actually from a blog related to another podcast, are podcasting brothers Choose f I, who don't know that there are brothers that I just called them that we're their friends and there are brothers, yes, even though they you can't choose your family. I don't know how that fits in, but it's um the beginner's guide to reaching financial independence. And I chose this one because I really learned about financial

independence from the Choose FI podcast. We don't consider ourselves in the Fire movement. We're not Fire podcasters or bloggers like, we're not in that sphere by choice. And so if you want an introduction to financial independence, this is your episode. If you want to dive deep, then choose f I as your podcast. And it's an amazing, amazing show. So we just wanted to go through their summary of how

to achieve financial independence. So first of all, as we mentioned in the last article, this is heavily dependent on your savings rate, and the Fire community recommends saving fifty percent of your take home pay rather than the traditional cent that financial planners have recommended. This severely expedites your ability to live financially independent. Didn't and it's assuming I mean in the article, it says we don't want to

work a job we don't love for forty years. Like, so it's assuming you don't have a job that you love, where the alternative is to just have a job that you love or or enjoy. And so the next one is lower your living expenses. And so we talked about in our housing episode a few weeks back about whether it's more frugal to buy or rent, and you can do either on the path to fight like, they don't lean one way or the other. You can do whatever's

most frugal for you. But you're living expenses are the most are the highest expense you have every month, and so if you're going to lower something, choose the thing with the highest impact. We we say that all the time too. So there's this a living expenses and a few of the ways they recommend doing that, or one of the ways is by house hacking. This would be purchasing a duplex or tri plaque or for unit. Those

are establishments you don't need commercial loans for. You can still get a traditional mortgage for anything for units or less and living in one of the units and renting out the others. And in that case the people renting from you pay your mortgage and you live for free, and that eliminates that expense for you. Theoretically, there's also you know, costs associated with the mortgage and the tenants

and keeping up the property and all that stuff. But so that is the number one way to essentially eliminate the housing costs. And we've got episodes on house hacking, So if you're interested in more even non traditional housing and how that can help cut expenses, check that one out. Will link it in our show notes. This article also says that you can work towards achieving a fire lifestyle

by utilizing travel rewards. We also have an episode on this, but I would one agree with this that where you can take advantage of travel rewards, have a travel rewards credit card. This can help you in cutting your expenses. Where you would traditionally be spending a large sum of money on travel, whether that's just by vacation or visiting friends and family in different parts of the world or

the states, having travel rewards can cut that expense. But an even greater part could be that it could help you travel more at no extra cost or even less cost, depending on how much you are travel hacking so one, we are hardly spending money on our three vacations this year just because of travel rewards. So I can say it works, and it's it's happening, and I'm loving it. I'm smiling. So that's another great way of cutting expenses

and and saving money. And if you're not into traveling, if you're not in that season of life where you can do that, putting your expenses on a cash back card and they have you know, bonuses of two to five dollars if you meet a minimum spend requirement, and then you can put you know, that bonus towards more investing. So it's all about optimizing the way that you're spending. But obviously, if credit cards are your downfall, then don't use them at all. They're not worth it. The next

one is to eliminate debt. So that is a big way that most people find financial independence. That's how I found the concept. We were on this rapid momentum paying off our debt, rapid momentum saving our emergency fund, and then we were just supposed to kind of take a pause almost it seemed, to invest and just pay off our mortgage. We could have done it rapidly but we

just didn't want to do that. We looked at the numbers and we knew that the market was growing faster than our like mortgage, our mortgage interest, and so that's we decided to go for the investing portion. And unfortunately, as soon as we started investing, the market took a year long plateau. So you cannot predict stuff like that. You you can't. We were on the longest bull market in history, which is the longest trend up, and then as soon as we started investing, we just started plateauing.

So you've gotta be okay with that if you go down that route. So, but in like eliminating debt, even if it's like lower interest in the loan debt, it's still takes a weight off of your shoulders and freeze you to live like a less stressful life. And so to me, eliminating debt leads is financial independence, like you've practically achieved it even just that that point, certainly you can go deeper and deeper down this rapid trail. But

eliminating debt, I would say, is step number one. Yeah, like when I lost my job, if I'd still had a five a month student payment at thirty weeks pregnant. Yeah, I but we're debt free besides our mortgage, and I didn't worry about it at all. Like I felt bad for my coworkers that still had student loan payments and and I didn't have to worry about it, and everyone felt bad for me because I was so pregnant, and

I was like, you're literally enslaved to it. I mean it sounds extreme, but to me, that's what debt is. And as long as you are no longer enslaved to owing somebody money, that's freedom. Yeah. They say a few ways to cut expenses like cutting cable, learning to cook, checking your insurance costs and your other bills, buying used cars, all things that we have said before throughout the other what seventy episodes that we've had, So just go back into the archives if you want to find ways to

save money to pay off debt. And investment philosophy, this is the next one that brings a big role in fire. And so people in this community recommend specific types of investment, which is a broad based, low cost index fund. And we are speaking to you as friends. We're not financial advisors. We can't like legally give you investment advice. So this is all for fun and entertainment, yes, and reviewing what this article says, not what we are saying. So they

compare Vanguard and Fidelity. You can check out We are linking this article in our show notes. So if you want more information on these types of index funds and what the Fire community is saying about the best types of investment, feel free to check that out. Yeah, we personally use They recommend van It's total stock market index fund, the v T S A X. They love it. That is the one I personally have UM across all my investments I have. I have that one. And then they

compare Vanguard Fidelity. I also love Fidelity if you don't have a lot of money to start investing. Fidelity doesn't require a minimum um for some of its index funds, and it even has funds with the zero fees. So Fidelity is great, Vanguard is great. You can't go wrong with either. But yeah, so low cost index fund investing is kind of like the gold standard when you're investing

for financial independence, according to the Fire movement. So, and it's specifically that v T S A X because it's total stock market so it's total equity, which means it's going to have higher highs and lower lows, but over time it's going to theoretically grow more than a more conservative index fund that has all stocks and then maybe some bonds or other things. So, but you also can't

go wrong with a target date fund. I know a lot of four oh one ks have that one that put you automatically into one of those, Like, don't feel like that is dumb just because fire people are all about this one index fund. It's fine, You're okay, yeah, You're okay, yeah, and then it says kind of where

to put that fund. So I said, I had b T S A X in across all my accounts, so that was across my in my four oh one K from my former employer, and so that I was easily able to just roll that over to a Vanguard traditional IRA, so that's super easy. I also have it in my raw IRA, so you may not be able to choose that for your four oh one K. I was lucky enough to have a four oh one K that had all Vanguard index funds, and you may not have that. So that's why raw f rays are so important, because

you choose whatever you want to put in it. You can put the best of the best in it, and the best of the the best is whatever you decide his best. So those and then they also recommend real estate. So if you're if you are at a financial place where you can max out your I R and your four own K, that's kind of the time you could start thinking about real estate. Like, you have to have a lot of liquid cash, I think to start thinking about real estate. Um, and you really have to love it.

You really have to like real estate to get into it. You can't just get into it because you think it's quick and easy money, because it is absolutely not. And side hustles we've talked about this one too, So this is another way to be able to increase what if you've maxed out how much you can save and live off of to also consider side hustles for extra income and how much that can expedite the process for reaching savings goals. The side hustles are also fantastic when trying

to pay down debt. They're just an awesome way to not feel capped at your earning level and be able to bring in some side cash each month. Yeah, it can also lower that amount. Coming back to the four percent role. It can lower that amount that you need to save to live off four percent of your assets. They go through the four percent roule a little bit more. But I want to cap this one off with the end.

It was saying, just get one percent better, And I love this idea, and just focus on what you can do this week to get one percent closer to your end goal. And and that's really it like trying to do everything at once. That is me to a t. I try to do everything once. I jump head first into things, and it's exhausting and it can really burn you out. And so I have to constantly remind myself

just to get one sent better. Yeah, which can mean making your coffee at home rather than going through the drive through line, packing your lunch, just one percent, car pooling, making these small frugal adjustments. Because as you are good with a little, you will be good with much. Yes, the bill of the week, that's right, it's time for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is William. Maybe you paid off your mortgage, Maybe your car died and you're happy

did not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bill Buffalo bills, Bill Clint, this is the bills of the week. Hi, this is Maren calling from Maryland. And my favorite bill of the week is my mortgage because that's our only debt left after paying off just over seventy eight thousand dollars in student loans and a car payment. So they're excited to only have that mortgage payment now as our

only debt. And I love you guys and have them listening to you for a while now, and thank your guys is great and you're hilarious, So keep the awesome sponsors coming and keep us a good work. Thanks. Yes, Maren, that's so awesome. That's like exactly our story too, So it's like hearing myself call from Maryland. From Maryland, I love also think we're awesome, So it's I resonate with your bill. So what I'm saying, thanks for your kind words. It really struck me when you said you love us.

I mean, I know that that's not like a h an intense love like my husband loves me, but I still feel it and I appreciate that. Does my husband love me intensely? I don't know. I don't know what that means he does, but yeah, so I appreciate your encouraging words along with your your bill of only having your mortgage left, because I'm celebrating with you, but you also want above and beyond an encouragement. You didn't have to,

but I appreciate it. But you did. And the transcription when you said awesome sponsors transcribed as awesome monsters, and I was looking forward to seeing what you really said, and I hoped it was awesome monsters. Um, but sponsors is good too. So if you have a bill of the week out there and you want to see what fun ways Google transcribes your bill, submit it to Frugal Friends podcast dot com slack bill and you don't have to butter us up. But we'll take it. You sit

here and take it. Yeah, we'll sit here and take it. Well, you know what that leads to the lightning round. I think I'm getting better at that. My voice is training for intensity. Yes, you are growing. I could probably be a spinning instructor next. I believe it. Spinning is rough on the butt, Spinning is rough on the emotions. So I hear, yeah, it's that too. So for our lightning run, we actually got this inspiration from another article and it

is from Financial Samurai dot com. So Sam who writes this blog, was one of the UM first early retirees along with Mr money Mustache, and he did it the extreme way. So he retired at thirty four. He made six figures in his working career UM and he retired in two thousand twelve at thirty four and had this fully fully funded nest egg, lived off the four percent rule and didn't monetize his blog munch, so he wasn't using that as as income. So he did it the

way people say it's supposed to be done. So he wrote this article of reflection and really had some things that he would have done differently. And so and he had five questions to ask yourself whether you should pursue FI or how aggressively you should pursue FI, Like, ask yourself these questions to really get in touch with it.

I so appreciated this perspective and I think vulnerable and count her what the fire community might say sometimes you might be able to attain by having this as your goal. So really interesting to see his perspective. He definitely would not do it all the same. There's quite a bit that he would change about the way that he approached this, So feel free to check out that article. I think

it's really insightful. But one of the questions that he lists to be asking yourself on whether to fire or not to fire is why am I rushing to retire early? Am I running away from something? And so to me, this speaks a lot to this concept that I don't want to work a dead end job, something that I'm miserable with constantly going to the nine to five grind. Well, that's assuming that everybody is in that position, and we wouldn't encourage anybody to stay in that place, regardless of

whether or not you're trying to reach fire or not. Like, there is definitely freedom, particularly if you've already attained debt, freedom to be able to explore new fields and to change field. It doesn't mean that because you don't like your job now you've got to retire. Why not switch jobs? So and not being afraid of work, I mean for those who retire later in life, there's a lot of boredom that comes with that, and what am I going

to do now? And so much of my identity is all of our identities are wrapped up in what we spend The majority of our time doing. So consider that, and what what's the alternative? What's the opportunity cost here of no longer working? And and are you running away from something? You know? Sam retired at thirty four and now he's forty two, and he even states he regrets not working for one more year. I mean, certainly it

could be how many one more years are there? But yeah, that it's not It's not a bad thing to put our hands to something, to be fruitful and productive. So consider what is the rush? What am I trying to attain? His next question is how will retiring early change my life for better or worse? Um? And I I would add, like, am I sacrificing too much to retire early? I think that's his fifth question that I kind of combined with that, but just coming back to don't live in the future,

like live in the present. Don't sacrifice the things that could be making your life full now for you know, a quote unquote full life later. Like he gives the example like he waited to have kids with his wife until after they were fully fire and she was thirty four. It took them three years to have their son because biology doesn't improve as you get older, so that was his example. But that doesn't necessarily have to be yours.

Like sometimes I think, like I would rather have one latte now and enjoy my time now, then be able to quit a few days early from the job and have to lattes later just sit around and drink lattees all day. You know, I'd rather work the job and

have the latte. And what are you sacrificing. You know, you're pinching pennies now, but to be to be able to pinch pennies the rest of your life, that's what the ultimate If you are following this to the tea of always and forever needing to live off of forty dollars, how much freedom is that to have to live very, very inexpensively for the rest of life, and what that trains you for that, in my perspective, that trains you that you don't have money to spare. Your generosity is

definitely going to decrease because you can't. You can't be giving money away when your goal is to be living off of all the money that you've stacked away for the first, you know, fifteen years being in a career. So there are a lot of other things to be considering just regarding morality and personal life goals as a part of this. The other question that this article puts forward is what will I do after I retire early?

Am I running towards something? And this is the why question two of what is it that I'm hoping to be doing in retirement? Is it just sit on a beach in Hawaii? Or is it so that I can choose to put my hands to the things that I really want to be doing? And could you be doing those things now, even while you are working a traditional nine to five job, could you be starting your side hustles or the things that are interesting to you that

could potentially grow into something bigger. The last question, which I think goes highly overlooked, is have I gained enough perspective from those who have already retired? And I think a lot of people in the fire movement get their perspective from two to four people that have retired, and they don't examine the experiences of a broad range of retired early retirees, um and so. And that's getting better now,

especially with the choose Ify podcast. They interview a lot of people who have retired early, but a lot of their interviews are people still pursuing FI. So I think it's always wise to survey a broader audience to get a lot of different stories and perspectives. I love that because we can imagine and fantasize and glamorize something all we want until we are in it and realizing the reality of it. So that's not to say don't try it, but recognize that what you have as idealistic may not

be reality. Yeah, and I wanted to just leave off with just one quote from this article that I thought was was really really good, and he says, why is it that when we're younger, we always seem to feel like we're in a rush to get things done. We've got two retire as early as possible, or else maybe it's because we lack patients and feel that we might all die in early death. I certainly feel like retiring

early was a hedge against an untimely demise. And so I think one of the things that has driven of the fire movement is fear of wasting your life and fear of an early death, or fear of missing time with loved ones. You know, people retire at six year seventy and they've they've missed their healthiest years the wife, they retire in their unhealthiest years. So there's this fear, but I would just challenge that with there's a fear of of missing this season and fully living in it,

even with a job, even with working. So early retirement isn't the solution to living a full life in fear of death, like balance is, Making decisions out of fear is never a good idea. Fear clouds perspective, so we will not see rightly if that is the motive behind some of this fantastic quote. Yes, yeah, and also just even considering opportunity costs in here of even if you have saved a ton of money, you are turning down whatever you were making. You know, let's say you were

making eighty thousand dollars a year. To suddenly step away from that and retire early, you are now turning essentially that down for consecutive years too, and what that could have meant for lifestyle, for community, for fill in the blank. So that's another thing to consider here too, is the opportunity cost of the earnings you could have had if you hadn't have pursued early retirement. In conclusion, we love the tenants of fire but we modify it, modify it

for our lives. Everybody's going to identify their own y and and get there. Some people aren't as concerned with generosity or being present in the moment now as I may be. That's my goal and purpose is to be able to live frugally too, Yes, save some money, but also be able to give where there's a need in time, energy, resources, all of that. So then I recognize that's not everybody's thing, so have at it. If Hawaii literally will be your

best life, now do it. I heard it's great. Well, if you want more more engagement on this topic and others like minimalism, we are having our book club this month like all the other months, and we are reading The Minimalist Home by Joshua Becker. So we've read other books of his, this is his newest one and super excited to look at what he has to say on this topic. So check it out and we are giving

away free copies of The Minimalist Home. You can enter to win one by leaving us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, screenshotting the review and sending it to Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com, and we will select one winner for every five reviews at the end of the month. Oh and look at this, We just happened to find a helpful review some fantastic literary work over here by Kentucky Twin Mama who says great tips accompanied by five stars. I enjoy this podcast more and more

as time goes on. I especially enjoyed the episodes about college savings plans and raising kids frugally with Mrs Frugal Woods. I look forward to listening to this podcast every week. Keep up the good work, Thanks Kentucky Twin Mama. Yes, and be on the lookout because we will have an episode coming up about how to teach kids about living frugally and how to make that exciting for them and we have a really great guest for that. So that

is coming up by the end of the year. And you'll want to stay subscribed to stick with us every Friday, and we will be in your stereo, in your earbuds everywhere you take us. We will see you next week. By Frugal Friends. Is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Seria. Because we do keep getting better. Like a fine wine, you keep you keep giving us time, we keep getting sweeter. Yeah, maybe maybe not sweeter, but more complex, more complex for sure,

better at talking, maybe better at talking. I talk better for sure now than I did when we started. Episode seventy three has got to be better than episode one, even though episode one is apparently what everybody wants to listen to, that is our number one most listened to episode. We should we should redo that, like not not replace it, but kind of like revisit for and see if anything is that what comes after one oh one two oh one? I don't know school. It depends on if we're doing

real counting or if we're doing college counting. What that would be one oh two? Yeah, right, they do still do one o two, but then generally then they'll just skip to thinking college, so it would be two o one. Okay, Yeah, we should definitely do that because that scene, I don't know why that is the most downloaded episode, but by far I mean I would probably listen to it is like where did they get started? And what do they have to say about? For like what is frugality one

oh one? What are the what are the main things I need to know? I don't think we did a terrible job, but I haven't it in a while, so I don't know. But we recorded, didn't We record a few episodes. Yeah, we recorded before that episode. I think we never used it. We had to re record that episode, didn't we So we got the kinks out so that it was good. And that's probably the secreting podcasting is record your first episode twice and that way it doesn't

suck so much. Yeah, I know that everyone's gonna constantly revisit your first episode. Yeah, there you go. There's the secret to podcasting. Okay, bye bye,