Front Loading Your Life w/ Robert Farrington of The College Investor | A Frugal Alternative to FI/RE

about frontloading your life. And you've probably heard a lot about the financial independence retire early movement, and it sounds very overwhelming and all of this saving just so you can, for what to sit on your couch for like forty years in early retirement now. So we are talking to Robert Barrington and he is giving us a more accessible approach to the same type of concept but referring to it as frontloading your life. And it just seems a

lot less restrictive to me. Yeah, it kind of seems like what we're already doing in the frugal lifestyle, but with some intentionality to it. So yes, yes, and we love intentionality. So you know what I also love is the fact that you are back from maternity leave. My first episode back from attorney to leave. It's the second so excited. Never mind, she is back, but she doesn't want to talk about it. We'll talk about it in the next episode. We'll be excited the next time we record. Okay, okay,

hold up my excitement. All right, So we're going to get into that interview. But first, our love, lovely sponsors and partners. Yes, also brought to you by burning the candle at both ends. While the candle won't last nearly as long with this method, our sponsor wants you to know that you will be sure to have double the amount of light and heat to the traditional methods of candle burning. Furthermore, you will be sure to use up the entire candle with zero wasted wax burning the candle

at both ends. Try it today for intense and short lived satisfaction. Wow, that's a good one. That's a good one. Yeah, it's a new look on the burning the candle at both ends. Well, speaking of that, um, we don't want you, we don't want you to burn any candles on too many ends. So we're gonna be talking about sustainable way to position your life to be better later on by doing more work up front, but not so much work that you maybe get sick and get shingles like I

did once. That would not be good. Yeah, or that's a story for another time. I think we talked about it, but maybe early early early on, maybe like our first episode. Probably I can talk more about my shingles later. So we've got UH Robert Farrington from the College Investor UM.

He's been writing The College Investor for over ten years now and he has a wealth of information about UM student loan refinancing, student loan forgiveness, paying off student loans, increasing your income, all to benefit you so that you can start investing to really reach your dream life earlier. That's his passion. He loves investing, UH, and he realized that not a lot of people could invest because of

their student loan burden. He is such a nice I and we're so so excited that he joined us for a little interview today. So without further ado, here is our interview with Robert Fairington from The College Investor. Thank you so much for joining us today, Robert. We're so excited to have you. Thank you guys so much for having me. I'm excited to be here, welcome. When I

first heard you wanted to be on the show. I was really excited because there's so many things that you could speak to, like on investing in student loans, Like we could spend several episodes with you, because you have so much to offer people. But I really love the concept that you've coined about, like frontloading your life. I think that that is so cool and so that's really

what we want to focus on today. That's good. Yeah, I mean, yeah, I talked about front loading your life I want to say, like four years ago now, and with everyone talking about fire late, it's kind of becoming more mainstream. But I think it's a great concept, and yeah, we can dive in and really talk about what frontloading

is and how it can apply in your life. For sure. Yeah, I feel like fire is super like it's not very accessible to a lot of people, Like it's very very extreme, But I feel like frontloading is a little more accessible and easy to grasp. So, like what do you define it as and like why is it so awesome? Sure?

I mean the goal of frontloading is to stash as much money away as early as you can, and like I my challenge would be like eighteen nineteen twenty, like in your early twenties, you know, but if you're not listening to this still later it's just you know, as early as you can put as much away because one of the biggest rules of money, and I want to say, like Warren Buffett said this is that compound interest is like the most magical thing that's ever existed, because it's

a it's a math, it's math, and it's time. Right, So the more time you have, the more time your money has to grow. So if you start stashing anything in your twenties, like you are such a leg up over in your thirties or your forties or your fifties. So you know, that's why I really want to see

what we can do to save early. Because I also talked to a lot of people in their mid thirties now because I'm in my mid thirties and no one ever thinks back on their twenties and says, man, I wish I saved less, Like it's never the thing that I mean. I don't know, maybe you guys have heard,

but like I had saved less. No, And you know, when you're also in your early twenties and thirties, you have like the most ability to do things that you don't think you can, Like, you can live on a little less sleep, and you can eat you know, a little bit less stuff, and you don't you can live in a trailer even if the internet sucks. I don't you know what, You could live in a trailer. You

could live at home with your parents. Like, there's a lot of ways that you can hack your savings to put more away early, and simply by doing that, you set yourself up for financial success so much faster than somebody else. But you know, there's a lot of barriers to it too. I mean there's a lot of you gotta know how to do it. There's a lot of psychology involved. It's like, are your friends gonna judge you?

Is your family going to judge you? Like that's almost harder to deal with than the map, right, Like, but yes, in your thirties and forties, all of a sudden, the rules are going to be reversed, Like you're gonna be living much more financially savvier, and your friends will be looking at you like, how did he do that? What the heck happened? Like you know, and they don't ever remember the fact that you refused to go out with them.

Maybe in their twenties, but now here they are ten years later and they're like, Wow, you already at a house and no debt and all this stuff, and you know, things like that. So that's why I'm all very bullish on frontloading. What is the goal of front loading if you could summarize it like that, Yeah, so you can save the most before you have kids and houses and large expenses and all these other things in your life

that add up. So if you can just put the money away early, then you can just let it grow over time, and as you encounter different seasons of life, everything becomes a lot easier in those seasons because you already have a little nest egg built up from when you were more flexible and able to do it. So for those of us listening who are like, this sounds amazing, more money, I want that. What what are some things

that we should be doing to front load? Yeah, so you have the biggest expenses in your life, the number one biggest expense for everybody's housing. So how can you save on housing expenses? I'm bullish on living at home. You know what, Like, if you're eighteen to twenty five, if you are not like making good money, you should be living home with your parents and saving a bunch of money, right or living with five six seven roommates.

I don't care, like fill it up like two persons per room, but like you know, you can get your housing expenses down, you know, down to a hundred twos per month, you suddenly have a lot of extra income that you can put towards other things, getting out of debt, saving for retirement, saving for future things that you want to get, like maybe a house or things like that. So housing is the biggest and that's what I think a lot of people also feel the least ability to

hack and save on. Yeah, it sounds like it's not just about though, living at home or cutting expenses because I can see all of our older parents listening to this, like what, I don't want my kids still living with me. But the difference in what you're saying is to then

do something with that saved money. I think where a lot of times we can get caught in this or a pitfall with that is I I'm saving on expenses, so I'm just playing video games all day, or I don't have a lot of bills so I don't have to have a good paying job, or I don't need to be saving. So you're kind of not just saying

cut call, but you're also saying stack up totally. And you're right because like sadly, I know the people that have also you know, at twenty two, they live at home, but then they're driving like a brand new BMW like this she doesn't work out, Like, no, don't do that.

You should definitely be saving that difference. Um. And then also you know your parents might not like it, but you know you're not going to have this failure to launch potential where you know, if you save for like three or four years post college and they gave you that benefit and you know you can still pay rent to your parents and support with groceries and do other things.

I'm not saying like you have to be scott free, but versus renting a one bedroom or a studio apartment, you could be saving of the difference right there, right um. And so you can definitely be adding that to your front load pile, which is like I said, could be saving for retirement. It could be getting on a student loan debt or any other debt you might have and setting yourself up for financial success. And then there's other

things too. You know, the next big expense for most people is transportation, right, So what does your car situation look like? Are you, you know, buying a new car at least in a car that you shouldn't be or can you go out and get I don't know, I love the term the Dave car from you know, the Dave Ramsey community, but like, you know what, go get like a Honda Civic two thousand bucks and just go with it, like, you know, that's cool, Like I'm sorry,

you know, Or do you even need a car? Like could you live in an area maybe in a more metropolitan area, taking public transportation, biking, walking, um, you know, potentially ride sharing depending on your area, that could significantly save in your expenses. Um, depending on how much and how far you need to go. You kind of need to assess that. But that's another huge potential for savings, particularly when we're growing within our society and culture of

working more remotely, more remote jobs becoming available. I think we need to also then look at, well, then how necessary is my car now? Some of these other pieces aren't quite catching up. We still think we need a car,

but it might not be the case. So even looking at do you even look for remote jobs just so you don't have to own a car anymore, I know, right, And like, here's a scary stat that I just saw the other day and it's from experience, and they said that the average new car payment in two thousand nineteen

is five four dollars a month. Not crazy, And I said, the average new car loan is thirty two th dollars with a sixty eight month term, so over five years that you're paying off these loans at five and fifty bucks a month, Like that's just ridiculous to me, because like you can go buy such you know, more frugal

things out there, and you're just screwing yourself. Like I'm not here to tell you yes or no. Like at the end of the day, you do you, but at the same time, like, are you gonna be happy with your life ten years from now because you bought a

nicer car today? I don't know, like you know, And that's the thing I hear so many times games from younger people who are living at home or cutting expenses in other ways, and they're like, yeah, because I'm not paying rent so I can afford a six hundred dollar car payments, Like Oh no, that's not what you want

to be doing. I did the same thing, yeah, when I was living at home, and it wasn't like a six hundred dollar car payment, but it was definitely like I had fifty thou dollars of student loans, but I was still able to justify getting a I did it. So that's the thing is I did this. I thought

I deserved myself a new car after college. I bought myself a brand new, accurate t L and my car payment was seven thirty dollars a month, right, and like, granted it was like one nine percent, and like it was only a three year loan, and I felt like I was getting a good deal on it, but like it was just so dumb, like no one cares. And luckily, I mean I drove that car for ten years until

I got rid of it, um, you know. But at the same time, like there was no point in that that was really just throwing money away for silly reasons. And like you and it's hard because when you're young and you feel like you to deserve it, and you have this money and you can afford it, maybe you know, you feel like you can justify it. But I also think it's okay to tell yourself and be justified by

others that it's okay not to do that too. Well, this is tough because we're also talking to a crowd primarily whose prefrontal cortex is not fully developed, so that future thinking and logical reasoning is not even all there yet.

So it's biology. But it's funny, you see that, because on the same token we're saying this, we're also seeing this trend of like people on Instagram and like these Instagram influencers that are showing off their fancy things and YouTubers that are driving ferraris and yet like people are aspiring to that and they want that, and that's clearly a thing, right, But at the same time, they don't want you to work potentially to get there right right right,

or how can I have it now totally? And that's the that's the like you said, it's hard to explain this to people, but because they just it's it's just not an easy concept. So one of those things that you don't necessarily grasp, you know, naturally. But like I broke this down to another article, and let's just say you have this goal of having one million dollars at

age sixty two, right, So nothing crazy. But if you started at twenty two years old, you would just have to save thirty six hundred dollars a year, three a month starting at age twenty two, and you can have

a million dollars at age sixty two. Okay, But if you wait until you're twenty nine years old, just at the end of your twenties, you know you're starting, You're like, I'm starting before thirty that amount doubles almost a year, right, And that's the difference that those eight years make and over the forty years that you're going to invest that money. And that's what it's hard to grasp because, like you know, we our brains aren't wired to think that way. Um,

but that's how the pathworks to care. When you're younger, you know, you don't think that age is going to have into right, and then it just it gets worse if you wait until your thirties. So like, if you want to do the same math, you know in your thirties here, let's just say you wait until thirty nine, So a decade later, it's fifteen thousand, three hundred dollars

a year to save a million dollars by age sixty two. Right, So now you're talking twelve hundred bucks a month instead of that original three a month, and that's not gaining any interest or anything on that invest like you know, eight nine percent return on your money over that same period of time. Yeah, that's why start young. How do you find the balance between working hard now and living in this season that you'll never get back? Yeah, and that's a hard one, and you know, there's no right

or wrong answer for anyone. I think it comes back to striking that balance, like you do have to always take care of yourself and your priorities first, which I think for most people is you know, take care of yourself, to care your family, kids, all that, and then see how you can take care of both of those things for the future. So I think we also lose sight of like why why are we even bothering talking about

saving money? Like who cares? Right? And the real goal is, well, I'm trying to take care of myself and my family a decade from now, and I don't want to be in a better place than I am today. So that's where I think it's changing that mindset of why you're saving, what's the purpose of saving? And then I also think it's about finding the balance. So you know, we talk a lot about you know, saving money, which is important, but you know there's also the earning money as well.

So if you have a choice of how you're going to spend an hour of free time you have because you know, let's say we have young kids. I know, you have a young kid, Like finding an hour is challenging, and finding that hour it could also be at like nine pm at night because the kid went to bed and you finally have a little bit of time and that's the only time when your brain is functioning well because when you have a new born, that all doesn't work all the time. Like challenging, Like, yes, it all

doesn't work all the time, so so real. So it's really deciding on how to get the most bang for your bucks. So you know, spending an hour, you know you could potentially save. You could you know, cut some costs, you can coup on, you can try to find a deal, you could do that kind of thing. Or maybe it's about earning money. You know, maybe you have some time that you could uh go out inside, hustle, resell something

you have online. Uh, maybe you've got you know, some baby stuff you no longer use because your your son's grown up a little bit, you can resell some of that stuff. So like it's not just about you know, trying to say, but it's also about just figuring out the best use of that short bit of time you have. And that changes with every season. Like when you don't have kids, like you have a lot more time you can go outside, hustle and earn more money, work more

work over time. When you have kids, you have to think more critically how you're gonna spend your time, and you know where, maybe that's gonna be more of a saving season of life, more of a cutting cost season of life. Things like up. Yeah, I think that's so important to note is that one doesn't trump the other. In every season of life. You have to figure out what's right for you in what season. So sometimes making money is more accessible and other times you have to

think more about saving. I think that's so important saving in family, right, like you're never going to get back those years with your children. But at the same time, like you know, when you're single and you don't have anything, it's like do I watch Netflix or go out to the bar on Friday night? Or should I go drive rideshare and make a couple of hundred bucks tonight, Like you know, when you have a kid, that's not Neither of those are options. Netflix isn't even an option at

that point. So like changes with the season, yeah, and being able to recognize what season you're in, my goodness, Like what kind of idiot would walk outside and not know what season it is? So being able to even see what season you are currently in and plan accordingly and know that that season isn't going to be for forever.

So if you do have opportunity to side hustle, like you mentioned, Robert, you have that energy to do it when you're young, you're not most likely going to be doing as many side hustles when you're sixty five, totally. And that comes back to that whole front loading thing, right, It's you have this ability when you're younger that you know, you just have less of the ability when you're younger.

Of course, there's always gonna be some exceptions to the rule, but like you know, it is just frankly a lot easier to front load inside hustle and earn more and save more in your twenties and early thirties than it is later in your life. What would you say, Robert, to the person who's on a tight income and yet doesn't have a lot of time, what would be the most important thing for them to prioritize. Well, Number one is organization. Even have a conversation if you're not organized

with your money, So what's you're spending? What's your expenses? And the reason I even bring this up is when I have this conversation with people, I would say nine of people couldn't tell you how much they're able to save each month. They couldn't tell you what their income and expenses are each month, and it's frankly shocking if they're trying to get out a debt. Specifically, I see this a lot when I talk to people with student loans.

They don't even know what their loan balances are. They don't know what their monthly payments on their loans are, and they don't know like when they'd be done paying off their loans. So you can't even start that conversation of you know where to go until you get organized.

So I'd say, if you're struggling, spend that first hour of free time you have because you're busy and you're doing stuff to just lay it all out there, whatever that looks like for you, Maybe spend the first hour of research in different ways to lay it out there, and then the next day do it right, like whether that's a spreadsheet or using a tool like Mint or Quicken or personal capital or you know, some people like planners still with like you know, real paper, Like that's cool,

Like whatever works for you, do it, and then once you know where you stand, you can make rational decisions of what am I gonna do with my next free hour? Is my ex three hour going to be about maybe looking for a cheaper apartment, or is my next three hour going to be like how what like type of side hustle might make sense for me? You know, it really depends on where you're at your season of life and what your budget looks like. But you can't even

think about that until you're organized. Such a good point. And and I didn't even realize that there would be that number of people who wouldn't even know what their expenses look like, what their income looks like. We take it for granted, Jill, because we're nerds, I know. You know, it's like it's one of those things like as long as my bank accounts not overdrafting and I'm not getting an alert, like things must be working out. My direct deposit must have come in and my expenses must have

all worked out, and I'm good for another month. But there's no clear picture of like what I could say,

what I could earn, what that looks like? Yeah, yeah, And to think about it, and like what you said, once you have that grasp, then you can think about, like what your next hour is going to be, Like am I going to look for a side hustle or or taking these like small chunks, like doing it in small steps instead of just thinking about the big picture and getting overwhelmed by it, which I think is something else's front loading allows you to do, is to have

it in a smaller time frame totally. And I know the podcast listeners here that they're they're a little different right there, and they're enjoying this journey that they're on and trying to improve their personal finances. But for a lot of people, it's kind of like I have no inspiration and I don't want to deal with it, and

then something happens. There's an event, or they read something, or they hear something, or friend talks about it and they get like a burst of inspiration and they have you have, like I always joke, we have like a window as like personal finance influencers of that short time

to get them to do the next step. But if that first step of inspiration fails, like they're not going to take any action again until they hit that next burst, right, and so like if you can break it down into small chunks and do things manageably and then they see a small win and then that gives them a little more motivation to get to the next small win. Because the hard part with money is that none of it's overnight. All this is like years long processes, whether you're saving, investing,

paying off debt, whatever. Like there's no magic one that tomorrow is going to all be different with this, this isn't on our list of questions. So if we're throwing your curve ball, we can. But with with that, where do you see room for enjoyment? Because at the same time, where we say now is the time that you have the energy to do the side hustle, save, go hard at your finances, the same is true about now is the time that you have to enjoy to be able

to get away, travel hike, be active. How how could somebody know we touched on this a little bit? But where is their room to say, I'm going to statue away money, but I'm also going to be able to give myself permission to go on vacation. Yeah, like it's and have to be mutually exclusive, but it does need to be thought about how you're gonna do it. So what do you get enjoyment in? And like how can

you hack those? I don't know. Personally, I'm a big fan of side hustles because I get enjoyment and entrepreneurship and earning money. And like I used to love to go to garage sales and estate sales buy things and resell things because one I like, I don't know, I like antiques and I'm like an old soul and I like going and seeing that kind of stuff and then I like reselling it. So I found enjoyment in that.

Um But you know, like there's a lot of free things to do that we dismiss and take for granted. So go out, go to the library. Go you know, if you like movies, you don't need to pay for a movie. You can go to the library and rent pretty much any DVD that's like out right, like if you like an old Blockbuster, go to um. You know, outdoor activities are all free. But even travel, you know, there's a lot of ways to hack your travel now, Like you know, depending on what you do and how

you spend it's like find it where words card. You know, you can use those miles and points to potentially hack your travel so that it's free. And is it fast and easy and quick? No, it might take you a

couple of years to get there. But you know, if that's where you're also atting your season of life, you probably shouldn't be taking big trips more than every once or every other year, right, Like you know, it all it all lines up to where you are, and I think it's just thinking critically about it and being organized and mindful about how you divort your time money. Right, good word, Robert On that note, I don't know what could top it, but I've got an idea. It's another

good word that we like to use. It's the bill of the week, that's right. It's toime for the best minute of your entire week. Maybe a baby was born and his name is Williams. Maybe you paid off your mortgage. Maybe your car died and you're happy to not have to pay that bill anymore. That's bills, Buffalo bills, Bill Clinton. This is the bill of the week, Robert. Every week we asked somebody to submit their favorite bill, and we select the person who is next in line to play theirs.

And when we have guests, we invite them they get to skip the line. So what is your bill for us? So you know, one of my pet peeves slash like most interesting to hack bills is my electric bill. So in San Diego here we get our gas and electric is one bill and for the last like a couple of years, it's like how low can we get our electric bill? And you might think that's crazy, but like doing a lot of little things in our house have

made a big difference. So, like we switched every light bulb in our house from you know, these old lights to l a ed light bulbs. And that was like an investment. I mean it was like two said, I don't know if you guys know those bulbs are like eight nine bucks of light bulb. It's kind of crazy, but it reduced our electric bill, no joke, by fifty dollars a month. Wow. Right, And so now like here we go, like everyone's like, oh, are you gonna get solar and do all this stuff? Like solar makes no

point for us. So our average gas and electric bill combined is fifty dollars a month. Thirty of those dollars are like all the mandatory fees and taxes and like distribution charges that like you can't do anything about. So our actual like electric bills down about ten bucks a month for the usage portion. And you know, we keeven a pretty steady around there um. And it's just by

being very mindful about what you use. And I don't even think I'm going to get below that because like you know, the internet is always on, right, Like you have these things that are plugged, Like we just aren't gonna be turning off anytime soon, the refrigerators going. But like just being very mindful about what you can control and what you can't control, and understanding how you're build because now when I challenge my friends and neighbors on this,

a lot of people are getting solar. And like, you know, if you do these simple things and invest in your two hundred three hundred dollars and like some energy saving things, there's no way that any kind of solar panel you

buy for any size house makes sense today. As much as we want to say that solar is the thing, the cost of it is fifteen to twenty years on your r O I assuming that everything is staying the same, and I don't think it's going to So, you know, do you really want to spend fifteen thousand bucks on a fifteen year project or you want to spend two hundred dollars today and enjoy the same reward that you would get. Preach that was an educational bill. Knowing how

you get bill? Yes, yes, so profound and also also sounds like a hashtag. And then you know, I have to say it. So I'm in southern California, It's like put the asterisks there because I know every state is different. I want to say, like Mr money Mustache shared his power bill the other day and it was like the weirdest thing I've ever seen, and he was in Colorado,

So like, your utility may be different. Sure, yeah, I know how you hashtag get bill for sure, but I it does make me want to replace the rest of our bulbs with LEDs, Like I think we're at like half and half right now. And it's summer, so our our energy bill is extremely high right now, so I might, I mean, it seems worth it. It was. It was

surprising how much it was. And we have, you know, all this recess lighting in our kitchen and stuff, and so like, you know, the kitchen is probably the room where we leave the lights on the most because you're in there, and so like just by switching them out, Like, it was surprising how much of a difference it made. Yeah,

good bill. If you want to submit your bill of the week or maybe teach us a lesson about what we can do to get our bills lowered, visit Frugal Friends podcast dot com, slash bill and you can leave us a message on our speedpipe or Google voicemail. Your pick perfect. And now it's time for the lightning. I said that I was going to start doing it in that voice when I came back from Eternity leaf. Oh,

I love the goals that you've said, Mary yourself. Upon return, I'm like slowly getting into it is a lot for me. So many hormones. So you talk a lot about passive income on the College Investor, and I think that that is a perfect example of front loading your life. It's actually I was reading one of your articles about passive income and that's where I saw it on your website.

So today's Lightning Round is all about passive income and it's just real quick and we could do I mean, we will do an entire episode about the passive income one day, but not today today because it's the lightning because it's the Lightning Round, all right. So, Robert, what is passive income? It is income that you get to make and enjoy for doing nothing in the future. Not to say you don't to do anything up front, but

you enjoy the fruits of your labor all the way out. Yes, it's all the equivalent of hoeing the land, planting the seed, watering it, and then letting the rein to the rest. You got it, exactly. Oh yeah, I've spent some time gardening, rode a tiller. Robert, what are your favorite ways of making some passive income? So the easiest way is a bank account, right, so you can get like two and a half percent on your savings account right now for nothing.

You just literally go to your bank, put some money in it. Boom, you get two and a half percent. Right. That is like the idealist form of passive income, and then you can do things like investing. I like investing in the stock market for the long term. You average like eight nine per year all the way into the future. And then you know, you have things like real estate, which you're like, I don't know, I call him semi passive because you don't really get to like totally be

hands off. You could. There's different ways to structure it, but you know, you get you buy the house, you spend the money. You might spend some time, right, but then you get your rent check every month. Great way of pet get passive income. Yes, my favorite is the book that I wrote a few years ago. I published it in twousand and seventeen, and I did all the work then and now I just watched for the deposits from Amazon every month, and that is so nice. That's

why I'm publishing another one. Robert. Any pitfalls that we should look out to avoid with passive income, The big thing is is there's no such things like get rich quick kind of things. There's no overnight successes here. So when we're talking about it, like risk and reward is always perfectly correlated, right, So two point five percent it is what you get safely. You put your money into bank account, it's insured all safe. The more you earn above and beyond that, the higher the risk is that

you could potentially lose your money. So going back to my rental, you could theoretically have tenants that like trash your property or your house burns down. Like that risk really does happen. It's very rare, but like you know, you could lose money. And that's what you always have to remember when it comes to these things. And that's why the goal is, you know, you invest for the long term because ideally, over thirty forty years, you know, all these little risks and road bumps you have over

time will even themselves out. And it sounds like even diversity in that that it's not only within having tenants, but tons of other opportunities for some passive incore and active income. Yeah exactly. So, Robert, what do you have going on over at College Investor And where can people

go if they want to hear more from you? Since there's so much more that they can hear from you totally, So you can come to the college investor dot com and we talk a lot about student loan debt, investing, passive income side hustles talking a lot about paying for college right now because it's that time of the year, and you can listen to us on the College Investor Audio Show as well if you are not a reader and you prefer to listen, which if you're listening to

this is probably you. So that's perfect transition. You've got stuff for tactile learners, auditory visual that's the goal. That is the goal. Yes, So if you want to learn more about paying off your student loans, making passive income so that you can invest in front load your life, definitely check out the College Investor dot com or the audio show. And thanks so much for coming on Robert. This has been great. Thanks for having me, guys, it's been fun. Well, that was great. I'm so glad we

did that. Yeah, we do one of our better decisions really, of all the things we've done together. Glad we did that, for sure. I think Robert is so great. I have so much respect for him, So I'm honored that we could have him on and talk about something as cool as front loading your life because I think and you don't hear that phrase a lot, and so I think that we should use it because fire and financial independence

retire early. It's it's overused at this point, and it's just a better term that can redeem how laundry might feel for people. When I think of front loading, I think it's like a front loading washing machine. So this is a better association. Yeah, don't don't think of your laundry, think of the financial opportunities you have in your life. Done, done, figured that one out. And since we're talking about investing, the month's book for book club is The Simple Path

to Wealth by Jail Collins. This is a book that taught me how to set up my investments. It taught me almost everything I know about investing is the foundation for everything. So I think it's a really great time to read it, whether you are at the beginning of your journey or whenever you're ready to start investing. The Simple Path to Wealth by Jail Collins is a killer, killer reading. I'm excited about that one. I'm gonna yeah,

I'm going to do that. And if you want a free copy of this book, you have an opportunity to get one by here's what you gotta do. You gotta leave us a review on iTunes or Stitcher, then screenshot that review and email it on over to us at

Frugal Friends Podcasts at gmail dot com. And for every five reviews we get emailed to us, we select one winner out of that, so your chances are pretty good, and we select that at the end of the month, and then we send it to you and it may or may not be a used copy, but all the content will be there. It is a used copy, I know because I buy them so and everybody else should know at this point too, if you've been listening and so.

The Simple Past Wealth is available in most libraries, but since it's a self published book, it may not be available in everyone. So this is definitely the month you want to email us a review. Just like Angel zero six one zero, who sent us this five star review. You can do it just like this one. She says, love this podcast. I'm so glad I found this podcast. Jen and Jill provide awesome and practical tips you can actually use. Thank you for sharing nice Yes us reviews

like so much Angel, so helpful, so uplifting, so encouraging. Yeah, or you can do like the next one that says frivolous stupidity and it's one star review. Yeah, either one of you could do that. Um left to us to enter for a chance to win either one, you know, so we can know who you are. No exactly exact address to show up to with your book, Yes, right, exactly. So that's it and that's all. Thank you again for listening to the Frugal Friends podcast. See you next week.

Frugal Friends is produced, edited and mixed by Eric Syria. Frivolous stupidity. I hadn't seen that one. Oh my gosh. Yes, they use the word vapid. Oh WHOA good for them? Yeah, And they say that we're a four star podcast, but we're not. We're four point five stars, so sorry. In their review they say that we're four star, but they give us one star. Yeah mm hmmm, I don't know. They love their words, so they do have a and

they have a lot of them. Again, they use the term valley girl, which I'm fine with because I can't change the way my voice sounds. Yeah. I can't change the way my voice sounds either. Yeah. But anyways, back

to my shingles. I if you don't know the story, my husband I paid off our debt two years, three years ago at this point, but at the very beginning I tried to side hustle my way out of debt and not change my spending at all because I thought I could do that, And two months into doing all these side hustles, I contracted shingles from how stressed I was. That's um, yeah, I know that's real, right, Yeah, that's

a real story. Yeah, and that's um, that's a very overwhelming response to have, very clearly acute stress, Like I can't say that. I know many people who have experienced stress induced shingles, particularly in their twenties, so it is something to be aware of. With these side hustles and front loading and fire goals that had We do have capacity, I know, and uh, I mean even in my healthiest state,

some would refer to me as a workaholic. So that was a very unhealthy state for me, and I it made me kind of give up the pursuit of quote unquote fire like specifically. We're still investing and doing all that, but I just can't go as hard as all of these other people. I just I will get too wrapped up into it. And I guess shingles again. Yeah. I don't want you to get singles again, especially now I have a baby, and the baby doesn't care when I'm in pain, only when he's hungry for that free food.

Oh yeah, Oh my gosh, you said a zinger before we start recording, as that Kai is just like his dad, will do anything for free food, and he does agree the words zinger. Yeah on that note, yes, bye bye