The Simple Steps to Achieve Fire #224

that doesn't necessarily mean that they're easy, right. This is a big goal to try to get to the point to where you don't have to work, where you could retire early if you wanted to to where you are financially independent. That's what we're gonna talk about this episode. We're gonna talk through the specific steps that we all need to take regardless of what our financial independence retire

early journeys look like. We're gonna get really practical with this episode, Buddy, Yeah, Man, Fire obviously an incredible goal. You know, we talked about the pros and cons of it last week, but yeah, there are some specific things that you need to do in order to achieve that goal. And it's not a goal necessarily for everybody. But I think one of the key tenants of fire that we're gonna talk about two is that you really do have

to be intentional about every single dollar. And Matt, before we get to talking about fire, I wanted to tell you some way I was trying to be really intentional about my money. Uh just here. It just this past week. So, Man, I drove our family downtown recently for a protest against racial injustice, and I'm trying to figure out where we

were going to park. And normally I would like to ride my bike downtown with the kids, but with all of us going with like a nap time for the baby, we just had to drive for and it made sense. And I was trying to figure out where the cheapest place to park was near the place we were going. And so, like a super money nerd that I am, I was googling for websites that would help me find

the cheapest parking. I found this website called parko Pedia and legit, yeah it's like I think, yeah, it's like Wikipedia, but for parking or something like that. And I don't know, but no, they did a really good job kind of kind of laying out the map and telling me how much it costs to park at different places. And so I ended up finding a place it looked like it was nine dollars if I parked before ten am early bird special. I was like, cool, I'm gonna hit that.

I want to be there, and you know, a lot of other places were and I think park O PD did a good job. But it turns out I didn't do a good job. I didn't really fine print. So the early bird special only applies if you leave after two pm. We weren't staying that long, so I had to pay a full twenty bucks man, And that's the kind of thing that a guy like me absolutely hates.

Like it was, it was really tough leaving that parking lot and being like, man, I just gotta stuck with the twenty dollar bill for parking when I tried to plan ahead. Frugal fail. Man. So did you use the website or did you download the app onto your phone? I used the website website, so I've never heard of the site, but I saw that they do have an app, and I was gonna say that if you had the apps, and you should leave a review, because you can leave

reviews for individual decks or parking lots. I was looking. It didn't seem like there are a ton of reviews or you know, feedback within Atlanta. So I don't know if that means it's just maybe a newer service for Atlanta. But this is the kind of thing though that I love seeing anything that's crowdsourced, where folks are participating in it. And so hopefully next time you'll have the app, you can leave your feedback and that can let the next guy know that they got to stay there until, you know,

way after nap time for the baby. Yeah, it felt like a little bait and switch. Maybe I don't know. Also, probably I just didn't read the fine print, So I'm gonna blame that one on myself. But for other people who do park in areas that are kind of expensive, maybe that app or that website can be helpful to people to find a parking garage that is going to be cheaper. And yeah, read the reviews because people will chime in and and tell you what they found wrong

with that parking deck. But for those of us who are money nerds into saving every dollar, I sight like that can be helpful for sure. I mean, that could be a great resource if you're looking for free or cheap parking. Uh, let's introduce our beer for this episode. We are gonna drink uh Speedway stout and this is an Imperial stout with coffee brewed by Ale Smith. These guys are out of San Diego. We actually mentioned them

on a recent episode. It's one of the many wonderful brewers they're out of that great ay there in California. Looking forward to sharing listen with you, Man, me too. Man. All right, let's get onto to the subject at hand. Today we're discussing the simple steps to achieve fire. And last week on the show, Matt, You and I we

shared how we feel about the Fire movement. We talked through the pros and cons, the things that we really like about the movement and the things that we kind of feel are lacking, and we really came down on the side of the fact that we think that the movement has been more helpful than harmful by by a long shot. But at the same time, we're not all in on it, and we discussed kind of the specifics on why. So if you didn't get a chance to listen to that one, we would say give it a shot,

go check that one out. This episode, we're going to discuss exactly how you can achieve fire. If that's something that you are interested in. By the way, to Matt, I wanted to to make a note that Fire is not only for hyper young people. It's not only for millennials and younger. People in their forties and fifties are finding out about this movement and it's changing how they handle their finances, and it's causing them to rethink the traditional notions of retiring at six later. So this show

today is deaf only for all of our listeners. Yeah, we don't only have twenty five year old listeners. Sometimes I think maybe we have forty five or fifty five year old listeners to uh. You know, it's also important to note that, depending on your specific situation, Fire could of course be much harder to achieve. You know, if you're miired in the student loan debts, or you're working a low paying job for a nonprofit because maybe you love the work, Fire will most definitely be a more

difficult accomplishment. If this is you, then there's a good chance that the retire early part of Fire, that that won't even be a goal of years at all, you know, if you do love the work that you do. However, the financial independence portion of Fire, you know, I think that's something that we should all be striving towards. And also, the biggest question we're gonna answer in this episode is

how to actually achieve fire. And granted that journey is gonna look different for for everyone, but there are certain principles that are the same regardless of what your journey looks like. Yeah, and we wanted to discuss specifically how to achieve fire for two reasons. Two major reasons, Matt. One I think is is seeing bigger potend possibilities. It

can be motivating and eye opening. I know that in my financial journey before I heard about fire, I had some basic assumptions about personal finance, and then hearing the depths of what other people were able to accomplish was inspirational and motivational to me. It kind of opened up a world of possibilities in personal finance that just didn't

even know we're there. And because of that, it helped me number two reframe my own goals like and and that can be the same for many of our listeners as they kind of hear about this subject and here

the details on how to achieve fire. Many of our listeners are ambitious when it comes to their money, dreams and so laying out the framework of what it will take to attain fire, it can be so helpful, right, And even if fire isn't on their radar, I think anybody who just wants to pursue financial independence or just like curious about how they can save more and do better with their money, they're going to find this episode

helpful too. Yeah, man, And I like what you said there about just the possibilities that are just out there for us. When we are aware of fire, and when we know that it's something that we can pursue, it opens up our mind, you know, it opens our eyes to the different possibilities and just all the different options out there. We don't have to follow the script of, you know, retiring at age sixty five, Like there's a chance you could retire at forty five or maybe even

thirty five, you know, if you really get after it. Well, I'm already past that point, so you definitely can't go back in time. But fire does not offer that possibility for others out there. So let's go ahead and simplify achieving fire down to the essential roots. Basically, you just need to massively increase your savings rate, and then you need to invest the difference. That sounds pretty simple, right, but the nuts and bolts can actually be pretty revealing.

So we're gonna discuss the actual specifics of how to achieve fire, and we're gonna get to that right after the break. All right, we're back from the break, and Matt, we're gonna get to the math and we're gonna get to the investment accounts and all that stuff in just a little bit. But the first thing you need to do in the first step I think you need to take when you decide that pursuing fire is for you, is that you have to change your current relationship with money.

And there are a few things that we have to discuss on this front before we can kind of move on to those other things. Last week, when we talked about the impact that the larger goal of fire can have on your mindset, it can be powerful. And then, well, if you really want to reach fire in a reasonable time frame, you're going to need to have a real change and how you relate to money. Right, You'll need to begin to enjoy the gamification aspects of personal finance.

We've talked about that before, Matt, And then you'll want to let that overarching goal influence the money choices that you make every single day. Bringing your lunch to work every day and biking through the rain can be kind of actually instead of a bumer, it can be part of the excitement with your goal in hand, giving you the fuel to make those choices that are going to save you lots of extra money in order to help

you reach that goal more quickly. Yeah, that intentional hardship can actually sometimes boost our happiness, right, And part of this is just rethinking happiness and what happiness is for us. We all know deep down that the most satisfying things in life are oftentimes free, and that also are Spending can dig us into a hole that creates stress and just more anxiety. So part of what fire, you know, gets really right is actually prioritizing what brings us meaning

and then just ditching the rest. You know, This is how achieving fire can look different for everyone. It depends on what it is that you're prioritizing. Achieving fire doesn't necessarily have to be this cookie cutter thing that's gonna look the exact same from one person to the next. We control our futures, We control what we spend our

money on. And additionally, on the note of happiness, I think it's worth pointing out how I think we've all seen in our lives when consumer spending, when you know, spending money that we didn't need to spend, how oftentimes that leads to us being less happy. And so that's even more reason why it's important for us to rethink what it is that moves the needle for us that actually makes us happy, because it'll be easier to identify the fact that earning lots of money and having tons

of money isn't necessarily the end goal. Yeah, that reminds me of an episode we did quite a while back. We talked about buying happiness and can we do it? And we talked about the hedonic treadmill in that podcast episode, and we talked about how quickly we get used to the new normal once we've kind of upped our spending, and that spending increase might produce some sort of incredibly short lived burst of happiness, but in the long run, we then have to maintain that level of happiness and

continue to spend. And so we're better off from a happiness perspective reining in our spending and saving more of what we make feeling less anxiety overall, and just practicing gratitude more frequently for for the things that we do have. Right, and as folks start to consider whether or not they think fire is something that they could live with, right, whether they think that that's something that would fit well

with their lifestyle. I mean, that's exactly what we would encourage folks to do, is to think through the type of lifestyle that they want to have, because there are, you know, there can be a couple of different types of fire that you can achieve. You know, sacrifices will of course be required in order to go hard after fire, but how much sacrifice and the level of journey difficulty well, in large part be determined by the specific route that you opt for. In recent years is more people have

found out about fire and joined the community. Terminology has developed to better reflect the choices that people are making, and that's where the different types of fire come in. Yeah, I think those are helpful because they've kind of distinguished uh different ways of approaching fire in your life. And the big two matt that that fire people talk about

the most are lean fire and fat fire. So let's kind of talk about that too, because I think knowing these options out there too can help you in your approach to fire because some people want an incredibly simple lifestyle. They might, let's say, want to live in an RV um or build a tiny house on on a relatives land. And that kind of person might be somebody who would

be a perfect fit for lean fire. This is a group of people in the movement that feel comfortable saving up twenty five times or expenses in investments and calling it done or maybe even less sometimes, and this group often receives the most criticism to because as most financial experts don't think they're saving enough to cover a long term retirement, lean fire often means only biking, no car

at all. It also could mean moving to an extremely low cost of living area to reduce costs even more like living in an RV and this of course will allow you to reach that fire goal sooner because you have fewer expenses that you need to cover in those retirement years, in the years that you decide not to work. But no, that lean fire means a long term lifestyle

of extreme simplicity. And I know for some people that sounds perfect and for other people we feel like we need a few more creature comforts and that lean fire lifestyle just isn't for us. Yeah, And on the other end of the spectrum is fat fire And I can identify maybe a little more with the fat firefolks, uh, for multiple reasons, namely because there's certain luxuries I'm gonna want to have in my life, like beer. That's true.

You know, this approach is going to be a little more conservative when it comes to their investments and what you expect to receive and returns. And you know, while it major ly does prioritize frugality, also doesn't advise cutting

back to the bare bones during retirement. You know, there's a realization that cutting back too harshly can lead to burnout and so where retirement may not even be all that fun, right, And so you've kind of worked really hard to save up, you know, just enough to to get by to consider that twenty five times your annual expenses, but in reality you're having to cut back maybe way more than you realize, or maybe there are certain expenses

that you didn't take into account. And it's like, man, this retirement lifestyle isn't really all that is cracked up to be. Yes, So I would say you and I both probably lean a little more towards the fat fire camp, although a lot of those people want to buy like a Tesla and travel first class too, And I'm not really I don't really care too much about those things, or one of those things. You still want to tesla, I'm sure someday, someday, but but that's a long way off, man,

I just can't see that happening anytime soon. Maybe in ten years I'll get an extremely used Tesla. We'll see. But now, Matt, as we're following the simple steps to achieve fire. We've we've changed our relationship with money, and we've kind of determined what fire approach is going to work best for kind of our long term approach to money. Then let's get too kind of a few specifics on how you proceed from there. One is that you have to pay off debt if you want to achieve fire,

if you want to be able to retire. It is about saving and investing, but it's also about making sure that any sort of debts that you have, especially high

interest rate debts, are taken care of. And so if you have gotten yourself into a place where you have more debt in your life, you've got student loan debt or credit cards hanging out, you're gonna want to prioritize those at the same time you're you're prioritizing investing and saving more because if you're going to try to retire early, the only debt you should typically even consider having in your life is debt on a home. Yeah, it's hard to save up your money and have interest working for

you when you have interest working against you. When it comes to the debts that you still have. Another sort of you know, key principle joal when it comes to achieving fire is that you need to find ways to pair back your budget. Cutting your spending is so incredibly powerful. You know, we're all about earning more money, but getting

intentional about spending less can be even more helpful. That's because less outgoing money will allow you to save more now, but it will also allow you to permanently decrease the amount of money that you'll someday need to fund your lifestyle. It's kind of like a double weym right. It helps out on the front end while you're saving up that money now, but it also helps on the back end to make sure that you spend that money judiciously as well.

That being said, as you do earn more, it's crucial to bank your additional income, and we would encourage you as well to try to keep your lifestyle creep at bay. In order to achieve fire faster. You want to make sure that you minimize that lifestyle inflation. Yeah, lifestyle creep. It's one of my favorite terms in personal finance that doesn't get talked about enough. And when it comes to our money, I think all of us kind of identify.

It's almost never that enormous purchase or that really stupid thing that we shouldn't have done buy in like a lake house when we didn't have the money for it. Oftentimes it's so small things that add up over time, hiring along service. Maybe for most of us, it's the small things that tend to ruin our budget, that lifestyle inflation. As we make more, instead of banking it, we tend

to consume it, we tend to spend it. And so while that's one major thing we need to avoid if we're attempting to achieve fire, I think another thing, Matt, is that we have to massively lower our costs on the three biggest areas of our budget. And those are housing, transportation, and food. Firefolks tend to to house hack or live in much smaller accommodations than most people who earn similar salaries.

Living close to where they work and not having a car is a route that many take right and eating out minimally while cooking almost exclusively at home is another way to save big. Almost anybody who has been pursuing fire for any period of time realizes that those are the major levels that they can pull right now in order to to massively increase their savings. Right if you go from a three bedroom house that you're renting to a one bedroom apartment, well, you can save a good

bit of money every month. And likewise, if you're like leasing a car, let's say, or your cars worth dollars and you can downsize into a car that costs you five or six thousand dollars. Those are the kind of things that anybody pursuing fire would say those three areas. You can easily extract more savings out of all three, And if you do that, it's going to make a big difference in your budget and a big difference on

your timeline to being able to reach that early retirement point. Yeah, focusing on those huge expenses can really make a big impact right there. There's so many little things that we can do in our lives to kind of optimize, uh, these small little winds, but you've got to start with

the big things. There's only so much money that you're gonna be able to save by tweaking your thermostat a little bit or searching online for like promo codes when you're getting ready to buy something, or for a parking lot. You can save ten bucks, you know, for a one time parking fee. And granted that's not something that you should avoid, but it's also not gonna be the big difference maker exactly. And so so something else too. We certainly want to make sure that folks are saving their money,

but we want them to be investing even more. Uh. You know, we've talked about the pittance that most savings accounts, even the ones that you know are our favorite online banks, that they're paying these days. It is not very high. Uh. And if you want your money to grow quickly, it's going to need to. If you want to achieve fire, then you're gonna need to invest a substantial portion of

what you make. So let's do a little math, including some of the specifics on how to invest to achieve fire, you know, including you know, the pesky question of of how to even draw on funds in your retirement accounts before you hit retirement age. And we're gonna get to all those topics right after the break. All right, Matt, we're back from the break. We're talking about how to

achieve fire. We're offering some simple steps and hopefully some practical takeaways already in the show, but now we're gonna get a little more math oriented, a little more nitty gritty when it comes to how we invest, how we take money out. That kind of stuff is really crucial in the fire conversation. It changes the dynamics of how you save and where you save if you're planning on working a much shorter amount of time and your retirement

time horizon is longer, So let's talk about where to invest. Basically, if you're trying to to attain fire, it's really important. It's the most important thing is maxing out tax advantaged retirement accounts like a four one k I r A or h s A. Now we've talked about all those vehicles at different points in time on the show, so We're not going to go into a whole lot of detail now, but those are the accounts they're gonna help

you for multiple reasons. If you're self employed, you can invest a whole lot every year inside of a set bi RA or a solo four oh one K, and in the set bier A specifically, you can save up to fifty seven thousand dollars this year, a lot of money. Right, So if you're banking it and you really really want to achieve fire, you know that you can invest a whole lot in a small period of time with those

kind of limits in a tax advantaged account. Right, If you want to achieve fire, it's crucial that you take advantage of whichever of these accounts you have access to and put as much money as you possibly can in them. Right, we said h s A. Not everybody has access to an hs A MATT, but if they do, that's an important one that they should be putting money aside in any of these accounts that you have access to make

sure you're using them. Yeah, and these are accounts, right, These are the different vehicles that we invest our retirement in. But what actual investments do we purchase. We're gonna mostly recommend stocks. A well diversified stock portfolio could be hard to stomach during downturns, you know, like the recent one that we had in March and April. But if we

want to achieve fire, we're going for growth. That's why most fire proponents invest in the total stock market or the smp FI fundered index fund, you know, with incredibly low fees. Their money is actually invested in stocks in securities that are a little less conservative than the bonds, for instance, or other accounts like a money market account. Yeah, man.

And by investing in those accounts in particular, as opposed to having more of your money in cash on the sidelines in a savings account or something like that, you'll also be avoiding taxes. This is another huge benefit in your attempt to reach fire right by lowering your adjusted gross income specifically through investing lots of your money in those tax advantage accounts. Specifically, it appears to the government right that you're earning less money than you actually are,

which lesons your tax burden. So understandably, this is another huge level that people focused on early retirement look to legally pull in as many ways as possible. So, for instance, if you do put fifty seven thousand dollars into a set bi RA or undred into your four O n K, which is the limit for this year. For that your A g I goes down dollar for dollar with those contributions,

lowering your tax liability in a major way. And that is why those tax advantage retirement accounts are so dang powerful. And so Joe, we know we're talking about putting money in retirement accounts, and personal finance nerds out there listeners to the show, they know that you can't touch that money until a certain age, right, and so how can you actually achieve fire? How can you retire early if you can't touch this money until you're much much older

fifty and a half in most cases with those retirement accounts. Yeah, it stinks to be putting that money in and say I want to fire, but how do I touch it? Exactly? Yes, Yeah, that's a major question for those of us who want to retire early. But there are ways for us to avoid those penalties of withdrawing money from those retirement accounts that we just mentioned. One of them is the Rath

conversion ladder. That's one that you should consider, but just know that it takes years of planning to pull this off. But if you are smart enough and you've worked hard enough to to be able to set aside that kind of money, you can figure it out, right. I just want to encourage folks to know that it is certainly possible. And not only is it possible, but you want to make sure that you take these steps in order to

avoid those additional fees and penalties. Yeah. Man, if you attempt to withdraw funds from one of those retirement accounts we mentioned earlier, then you are going to pay a ten percent penalty on the money that that you're withdrawing from that account. That's obviously a major hit and it's not something that that you want to just freely give the government. And there are ways around it. You mentioned

the Rath conversion ladder. That's one way around it. And there's also an arcane tax code provision called the seventy two T rule. It's a way of distributing some of the money from that retirement account that allows you to take a set amount each year for a recurring number of years. You want to make sure you work with

a acts pro to ensure that it's done properly. You don't want to screw that up, right, And everybody will post a link in the show notes to to an article that's incredibly helpful thinking about withdrawing money from those accounts before you hit retirement age from our friend Brandon, who runs a website called the Mad Scientist. Because there's so much nuance involved, it would be really hard to describe in full how you take advantage of these rules

on the show. It's so much easier to read his long form article that he wrote in order to get a good sense of how you actually pull that money out early. But suffice it to say, there are multiple strategies that can help you pull that money out without paying the penalty that would typically be imposed. That's right, Joel, Okay. One big question that we want to make sure we get to as well is a lot of folks might be wondering when have I saved up enough money? Like

when can I actually retire? And for a lot of folks, having saved up twenty five times your annual expenses in an investment portfolio, that is a great mile marker, and so hopefully you're already tracking your expenses and so literally you just add up your expenses for the year, multiply that I and that number that result is your fire number. Typically, for most folks, that's going to be the number that

they're gonna want to see in their retirement account. Having that much money saved up that allows you to withdraw four percent of that portfolio every single year without eating away at your principal amounts. Again, this is a rule of thumb. There's some folks who are probably willing to to say that they've achieved fire when they have maybe a little bit less than twenty five times there a new expenses. But then there's others Joel, like you and I,

and we're looking to have a little bit more than that. Yeah, I don't just want to tesla. I want someone driving me around in it. You have a very high standard of what you're looking for. I can see, and I'm gonna I'm gonna say a whole lot more because of those ridiculous things I want. So in addition to that, though, I think folks who are are looking to achieve fire, they have a few other things they need to consider when they're trying to determine how much that they should

take out of those accounts every year as well. Yeah, if you're an idiot like me and you want a Tesla chauffeur, it's gonna cost you and you're gonna have to save up more money. I'm totally joking, by the way, but yeah, in particular for fire folks, Matt, they do have more to consider. And I think you know, when you look at the numbers, saving up twenty five times your annual expenses leading to a four percent withdraw rate

makes sense for so many people. But when you run the numbers for people looking to retire early, it does change the math just a little bit, right, because your money has to last a whole lot longer if you retire at age forty then if you retired at age sixty five. So a little bit more conservative math, I would say, is in order here. And again that's kind of part of the reason that Lean fire. That's not

really on my radar. And I think at withdraw rate somewhere, maybe a little bit closer to three and a half percent, somewhere between three and a half and four percent is a better rate to plan on when you're considering early retirement. Maybe it's just me, Matt, but I'd rather plan ahead a little bit more on the front end and and work another year if I had to in in my fire plan in order to make sure I saved up ample funds as opposed to kind of chanting it and

hoping that the four percent withdrawal rate works out. And it does in an overwhelming number of circumstances. But also think, yeah, when we're talking about retiring super early, there's some potential costs for a concern there with a four percent withdra all rate. Well, the other thing to mention two is that, I mean there's a spectrum in between fat fire and lan fire. Right. Uh, you don't have to only go

bare bones where you're just barely scraping by in retirement. Uh, and you're only living on the road in a really really cheap used RV you know, ri, Yeah, exactly. Uh, there's a lot of ground in between that and having a tesla plus a tesla chauffeur. Right, And so I just wanted to mention that that there's a wide spectrum that you don't have to commit to one or the other.

You can still continue to work, but maybe you don't have to, you know, stay in a position that that drives you crazy, or maybe it's an industry that you just don't really like. Once you're within that spectrum, you then have options. Right, So maybe you are working a terrible job and you've achieved lean fire, Well, you don't

have to straight up and quit completely. You could then maybe take a different job that pays a little bit less, but mayne maybe you find way more fulfillments and happiness within that position that happens to pay less, and then you can continue to work in that position for for as long as you want. And that's what's great about pursuing financial independence overall, right, is that it does give

you that freedom netflix ability, those choices. So if you save well over a good period of time, it gives you the ability, like you said, to choose lower paying work that's more fulfilling. That to me is one of the most gratifying and beneficial parts of the movement towards financial independence overall. And that's something else our listeners should be aware of. There is a great calculator called when I can retire on net worth of five and that

will help you kind of plan for your future. It's easy to visualize what your numbers are and where you need to get to in order to achieve financial independence. It kind of lays out for you. Okay, I plugged

in the numbers. I am seventeen point three years away at this savings rate from retirement, and so it can really plant a seed, I think in your mind to help you realize kind of how far along the path you are, how much further you have to go, and kind of put into perspective where you're at in regards to pursuing fire altogether. And we'll make sure to link

to that in the show notes. Yeah, totally. What what I love about that calculator is literally all you need are two numbers like your income and your expenses, but then it crunches the numbers four unit. Yeah, like you said, it tells you the you know, the number of years it is until you can potentially retire. I love that and and like you said, it can at the very

least kind of plan a seed. Uh. And Joel, one other thing too that we wanted to mention is that, you know, like we're talking about this from the standpoint of investing in the market, but we want folks to know that there are alternatives to investing in the market as well. Right, This is why that you know, you and I both love real estate investing, there are tax benefits, uh, and there is regular cash flow when it comes to

real estate as well. You know, sometimes I think there's gonna be too much focus on the big nest egg amount, right when really you're just looking to replace your income, right You just want to have cash flow to be able to comfortably cover your expenses. If it's helpful for you to think on a more monthly time frame versus like this giant number that you have to achieve. If instead you can think, okay, cool, I know it costs six thousand dollars for me to live every single month.

I need to find a way to replace that. Thinking about it in that manner might allow you to uh think through some of the different ways that you can generate monthly cash flow, right, Like whether that be like real estate. You know, some folks have written books, and when you write a book and you continue to sell copies, well, you continue to generate income from that, and that income

can support your financial independence lifestyle well into retirement. That the the example you gave about somebody who needs six thousand dollars a month, it made me think, what if they had the goal of buying one rental property that would cash flow five a month every single year, and that's not easy to do in every single market, But there are some people that could set up their challenge in that way where they could achieve financial independence in

twelve years based on real estate investing alone. I think thinking about it in kind of a more monthly income granular level like that can kind of help people come up with a more ingenuity approach to their goal achieving FIRE. Because I don't know, like you, Matt, I get tired of seeing the commercials for investment houses saying my retirement numbers four point two million or my retirement numbers two

point nine million. It all feels so unachievable. It feels so far off, and it feels like it's going to take forever to get to that point. Granted, fire people who are let's say, investing fifty seven thousand dollars a year into a set by r A, they're going to get there a whole lot quicker. But it is important to note that there are other ways to do it. It's not like the only way you can approach it is to accrue just a massive nest egg of that

size in those tax of mantage retirement accounts. People are getting creative with their approaches to fire, and there are some cool people just completely changing the script with their

approach to how they're pursuing fire. Yeah, there are a lot of different avenues and approaches towards achieving fire, and it's worth thinking through the different ways that you find the most fulfilling, you know, the path to fire, like if you decide it's for you, it's not a competition, but you know, it can be a healthy challenge like

it was for me. For many of our listeners who are stoked to save more money for retirement and to have more control over their future, uh, including where and how and when they work, and all of our money journeys are going to look different. So give yourself some grace if you do decide to pursue fire, and a word of warning as well, realize that it can become an unhealthy obsession when you have, you know, a certain

number that you're striving after. I think sometimes folks can get a little too preoccupied with it and they forget to live life here now along the way, Yeah, for sure, uh, And Matt, of course, again, we totally resonate with the fire movement. There's there's so much of this community offers is a countercultural message really that can, when done well, reflect a healthy view of spending and saving and and that's kind of what's at the core of our message

on this show. So we would say to everybody out there, don't attempt to live like everyone else. Right, most of the people out there, most of your neighbors are in debt, or at least half of them are, at least when we're looking at the stats, right that bear out of the financial problems that most of America is in. And realize too that small changes over time can lead to

incredible results. If that giant retirement number I was just talking about, if that overwhelms you like it does me, know that small steps, uh, starting now, starting today, can when continued over a long period of time, really make a major impact on your life. And so fire isn't gonna be a goal for every single one of us. For those of you who are pursuing it, hopefully the

episode was helpful. And then for those of you who hadn't really thought about it before, hopefully maybe some of the tenants and some of the ways that people approach their finances in the Fire movement, Hopefully that was helpful, and you can take some of those tenants, some of those practices kind of back into your financial life and how you are attempting to save and invest in cut

costs as well. And one last little bit of encouragement too, is that I feel like the media has made fire look like something that's only for really high wage earners, right like for the engineers, for the software engineers only, and that it's not really attainable for a lot of other folks. But that's certainly not the case. It's attainable for school teachers, for photographers, for for podcasters. We even have a chance, Joel, and find attendants. I mean, really,

anybody out there. We we know people in the movement who have all sorts of different careers and jobs, and you're right, I think sometimes that's how it gets pegged. But those certainly aren't the only people participating in the movement. It just depends on what you want your life to look like. It's about the goals that you set for for you and your family completely agree. Man. All right, let's get back to the beer that we had on

this episode. Today. On the show, we had speedwayte out by Alee Smith, brewing out of San Diego, Matt, what were your thoughts on this beer? Man? Man? You know, when I saw this can, I thought that this is a beer I've had before. Um speedwayte Out sounds really familiar, But I feel like I would have remembered it because it's really really delicious, rich and robust. It's got a little bit of sweetness going on, but then the aftertaste

it's a little dry. You know, it kind of has those coffee notes going on with a little bit of cocoa nibs. Has that sweetness upfront that I typically find myself drawn to, but then it didn't end really heavy where it felt like, you you know, ate like a big piece of cake. Yeah. I really thought this is gonna be a super huge beer that weighed me down, and it definitely wasn't the case. I agree this is this beer is a true classic in the craft brewing world. Right.

It's from a brewery that's been around for quite a while, and it's got, like you said, the coco nibs, the dark chocolate notes, but it's still retains a pleasant sweetness I think. And and then I really appreciated to a little bit of toffee going along with the coffee and yeah, overall, just a just a delicious stout. I'm a big fan, don't under this beer has like kind of like a cult following for who knows how many years, like twenty

years or something like that. Plus it's nice to switch it up and have an Imperial Coffee stout right in the middle of the summer. So, Joel, that's gonna be it for our episode today. Man, Listeners, you can find our show notes up on our website at how to money dot com. Yeah, and if you haven't left or a view yet for the show, we would appreciate if you would hop on over to Apple Podcasts and leave

a nice note for other potential listeners to see. It helps spread the word about the show and helps increase the possibility of financial independence for everyone, and that's something Matt and I feel passionate about. So all right, buddy, that's gonna do it for this episode. Until next time, Best Friends Out, Best Friends Out.