In this episode, Cody and Justin walk listeners through six unique and relatable paths to financial independence. We cover the assumptions and profile and then determine exactly how long it will take that person to retire. This was a fun episode that involved a lot of research going into the backgrounds of these scenarios. At a high level, the six paths include: Dual Income, no kids, high W2 earners, high cost of living area Single Income, two kids, lower W2 earner, low cost of living area Dual ...
Oct 05, 2022
Today's episode features Sam Dogen aka Financial Samurai and author of Buy This Not That. Sam is one of the original voices of financial independence. He started his blog way back in 2009 and actually let Mr. Money Mustache write an early guest post before he hit it big. Sam is known for his analytical approach and he comes with a stacked set of credentials. He spent 13 years working at Goldman Sachs and Credit Suisse, studied economics at William & Mary, and got his MBA from UC Berkeley. Now, h...
Sep 28, 2022•52 min
Today's episode features Justin David Carl aka Dragon, creator of Alchemize Life and Fit Rich Vegan. If you look at Justin today you'll see Life Alchemist, Entrepreneur, Holistic Wellbeing Thought-Leader, Podcaster, Fitness & Money Coach, Fashionista, Spiritual Hipster, and the list goes on. That wasn't always true though... Justin had spent most of his younger years with the singular goal of getting into Stanford, which he eventually did. However, he found himself leaving Stanford for a career ...
Sep 21, 2022•55 min
Today's episode features Vitaliy Katsenelson, author of Soul in the Game and creator of Contrarian Edge. Vitaliy spent the first eighteen years of his life in Murmansk, Russia, a city located above the Arctic Circle in the northwestern corner of Russia. He and his family then emigrated to the U.S. in 1991 where he would study to become a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA). Vitaliy entered this country with a very strong scarcity mindset, even being blown away by the idea that you could have soda ...
Sep 14, 2022•46 min
Today's episode features Heather Blankenship, an RV park investor expert, who also runs Wealthy Woman. Heather had no RV park industry experience and really no capital to get involved either. A great financing option and a big leap of faith left her as the new owner of a struggling park near Dollywood. Originally a money pit, Heather finally turned the park around and became profitable after three years. Since then, she's far surpassed breaking even. Today, Heather owns over $30M worth of real e...
Sep 07, 2022•51 min
In this episode, Cody and Justin walk listeners through the step-by-step flow of what to do with your money at each stage of your financial journey. Using an excellent flowchart from Reddit as a starting point, we break down the full decision tree and give you our own opinions as well (even the controversial ones). This flowchart is broken down into the following main stages: Budgeting Emergency Fund Employee-Sponsored Matching funds High-interest debt IRAs 401k/403b/HSA Financial Independence /...
Aug 31, 2022•46 min
Today's episode features Ryan Chaw from Newbie Real-Estate Investing, who has created over $10k in monthly rental income. Ryan did all this over a 5-year period of investing in California. His strategy is to buy large single-family homes and rent them by the room to college students. He even sometimes adds walls to these homes to increase the number of rooms. Ryan doesn't just randomly pick tenants either, he uses his P.R.I.M.E method. P.R.I.M.E - Placement of ad, Review social media, Identify t...
Aug 24, 2022•44 min
Today's episode features Jordan Grumet aka Doc G, author of Taking Stock. Doc G brings the best angles, analogies, and unique perspectives when talking about life and money. He himself found himself chasing what he thought was his dream and chasing money before slowing down and really critically thinking about what was important. In his book, Jordan takes us through his perspectives on living a purpose-driven life without regret. He challenges us to refocus our view of money as not the end goal ...
Aug 17, 2022
Today's episode features Steve Rozenberg, author of Building an Empire: Failing Our Way to Millions. He was an international commercial airline pilot who, after the tragedies of 9/11, was forced to realize that his “Safe and Secure career” was nowhere near as safe and secure as he had thought. Steve chose real estate investing to be able to control his own destiny and create his own generational wealth. With that decision, Steve would go on to create the fastest-growing property management compa...
Aug 10, 2022
Today's episode features Joseph Hogue, creator of Let's Talk Money! YouTube channel. Joseph served in the marines but upon getting out he went to college to chase the world of finance. He would become an investment analyst for some of the largest personal investors. Joseph is extremely qualified to talk about a huge variety of finance topics but we brought him on this episode for one reason. That reason was Series I Savings Bonds. I Bonds have been a hot topic in the community as we're seeing hi...
Aug 03, 2022•43 min
Today's episode features Brittnay Sharman, creator of The Travelling House Sitters. After hearing about housesitting from a friend Brittnay decided to give it a go while still living in London. She didn’t mind that it was just down the road from her flat, or that it was only for 1 week, she just wanted to test the waters and gain some experience before diving deep into it. It was a success -- she loved it! She had a few months before her visa expired in the UK so she decided to head over to Irel...
Jul 27, 2022•42 min
Today's episode features Jillian Johnsrud, author of Fire The Haters. We actually featured Jillian once prior on our show in Episode 68. In that episode, we cover Jillian's background (quick recap below): Jillian got married at age 19 She saw from an early age that money gave you options They started off their marriage with $55k worth of debt From the start, they always stuck to a goal to save 50% They made some difficult choices like living in a camper or roommates They would end up investing a...
Jul 20, 2022•46 min
In this episode, Cody and Justin talk about something many listening to the show have never had to navigate until now. We're talking Recessions and Bear Markets. Should your investment strategy change? Is there anything you can do to lessen the blow? How do inflation and rising mortgage rates factor in? Could this actually be a positive opportunity? We're going to cover all this and more. We hope you found value in the episode, if you did, subscribe, leave a review, and share with a friend! Link...
Jul 13, 2022
Today's episode features Ryan Pineda, a serial entrepreneur who runs six 7-8 figure businesses. For most of Ryan's life, he was sure that he'd be a professional baseball player. And for a while, Ryan was right. But after years in AAA and professional baseball, Ryan finally gave up on that dream. Along the way, he had unknowingly been building skills to create his dream life. His first business was flipping couches -- to the tune of $8k+ per month. All that time in different parts of the neighbor...
Jul 06, 2022•49 min
Today's episode features Aleric Heck, the creator of Ad Outreach. It all began when 12-year-old Aleric started making YouTube videos in 2009 with a camcorder. At that time, he was just reviewing mobile apps but even that would go on to make $120k per year in 2015. Aleric didn't stop with just an app review channel though. He decided to go into the ads space on YouTube and turned that into a 6-figure business in 2017. That business, Ads Outreach, took off like a rocket and crossed the million-dol...
Jun 29, 2022•56 min
Today's episode features Riggs Eckelberry, the CEO of Origin Clear. Riggs grew up the son of an international businessman. He also had a natural draw towards making the world a better place and joined a Non-profit right out of high school. Then in the early 80s, he followed his passion for technology and started his very own tech company in New York. Riggs eventually sold that to one of his sales reps but didn't let that stop his business journey. After some high-level executive positions, he ev...
Jun 21, 2022•50 min
Today's episode features Daniel Alonzo who is a coach, entrepreneur, podcaster, speaker, and author of Wealth on the Beach. He brings his messaging of creating a better life and financial independence to a massive social media following and speaks in front of hundreds and thousands of people a year. Daniel Alonzo knew he wanted to be somebody from a very early age. When an injury in college ended his dreams of playing high-level baseball and his dreams began to fade, one of his friends introduce...
Jun 14, 2022•43 min
Today's episode features Sharon Tseung and Sean Pan. Sharon Tseung runs Digtial Nomad Quest. She went from $30k/year to millionaire by 30, and owns 32 rental units and several passive income businesses. Sharon quit her job, has been traveling the world for 2 years, and all this while building passive income as a digital nomad. Sean Pan runs Everything REI. He has done flips, buy and holds, hard money lending, etc. Not only have they created multiple passive income businesses, but they've also cr...
Jun 08, 2022•47 min
Today's episode features Emily Williams from I Heart My Life. Emily was going down a path that so many others do -- following a typical career path and heading to graduate school. She was on her way but never made it. Literally. Emily just turned the car around with no real plan. It took a few years working low-paying jobs but she finally decided to bet on herself. In 2014, Emily started a business even though she was $120k in debt after moving to London. What happened next though was improbable...
May 31, 2022•54 min
Today's episode features Kat Norton aka Miss Excel. Kat is taking the world by storm with her 800k+ Tik Tok followers, 600k+ Instagram followers, and LinkedIn learning viewers. It doesn't just stop with the freebies though, Kat has earned over $100k in a single day (not a typo!) She does this all by educating the world on Microsoft Excel. But not just any form of education, Kat makes it fun and approachable. And all of that is just what the audience sees. Behind the scenes, Kat spends a lot of t...
May 28, 2022•49 min
Today's episode features Eric Barker, author of "Barking Up the Wrong Tree" and "Plays Well with Others" In Eric's first book, he scientifically stress-tests the maxims we’ve all been told about success to uncover the surprising answers we need to live a meaningful life. Now in the follow-up to this bestseller, he's doing it again but this time for relationships. That's right, he is again scientifically challenging the advice we’ve been given are whole lives about relationships. In doing so, Eri...
May 10, 2022•51 min
Today's episode features Brennan Schlagbaum from Budgetdog. Brennan found himself married at 24 with a combined debt of $300k. He had a great career as a CPA but felt smothered by the weight of their debt. In just a few short years Brennan had paid off all that debt, paid off his house, and even had a kid along the way. This all happened before the age of 30! Now his passion is helping others tackle their financial stressors under the Budget Dog brand. If you enjoyed Brennan's episode as much as...
May 04, 2022•46 min
In this episode, Cody interviews Justin on how he has navigated corporate moves both internally and externally. We'll talk about how you can find those better opportunities from an inbound and outbound method. These can be within your current company or swapping companies altogether. A big piece of this is filtering and comparing opportunities. In many jobs, the compensation isn't just one simple number. You need to think about base pay, variable, equity, 401k, health insurance, etc, etc. No nee...
Apr 27, 2022•33 min
Today's episode features Eric Rosenberg from Personal Profitability (again!). Eric is a prolific writer and speaker across all finance topics, but today our main focus is solely on cryptocurrency. We already covered the intro to crypto with Eric back in episode 163, so now it's time to go deeper! In this episode, we discuss mining, NFTs (art & utility), staking, Smart Contracts, DAOs, taxes & estate planning. Many don't realize how many areas cryptocurrency could impact and/or disrupt. We know l...
Apr 19, 2022•47 min
Today's episode features Brian Feroldi, author of Why Does the Stock Market Go Up? In this episode, we get a chance to dig into the basics of stocks and investing. Why do companies split their shares? What are shares really? What happens when a company buys back stock? And the most important question: Why does the stock market go up? Brian delivers all of this financial knowledge in a super consumable way. We think this episode is great for both seasoned investors and those just starting out. If...
Apr 12, 2022•49 min
Today's episode features Logan Leckie, creator of Topia, The Financial Independence App. Logan saw a void in the app marketplace when it came to an all-encompassing app that could guide you through your entire journey to FI. The app also comes with a built-in community to encourage and guide you through the various stages of financial independence. Logan isn't just stopping with an app, he's also putting together a low-cost index fund that users can invest in straight from the app. You can budge...
Apr 05, 2022•50 min
Today's episode features Vincent Pugliese, author of The Wealth of Connection. But really when I think of Vincent, I think of a master networker and amazing storyteller. Vincent walks us through how he went from a guy with a camera standing outside of a stadium to taking some of the most iconic pictures of some of the biggest names in professional sports. The whole time Vincent was building a photography business, he was really seeing the success of his true passion -- making connections. Today,...
Mar 29, 2022•52 min
Today's episode features Barbara Sloan, Author of Tipped. Tipped focuses on personal finance for anyone in the "tipped" industry. The tipped industry includes waitresses, bartenders, hairdressers, cosmetologists, dancers, etc. Barbara spent a lengthy career in the tipped industry. After she became passionate about personal finance, she realized there was a huge information gap for tipped workers like herself. How do you save for retirement? Deal with pay variability? Handle benefits? These are a...
Mar 22, 2022•48 min
In this episode, Justin & Cody take a look back on what all has changed in their lives since the show started back in October 2018. It's hard to believe that the show has been going for so long but there's no sign of slowing down. In 2018: Justin was still in the Air Force Cody was working a corporate finance gig Justin planned to work until age 43 Cody thought he'd keep climbing the ladder Obviously, Justin and Cody are no fortune-tellers... Fast-forward to today and Cody has built an insanely ...
Mar 15, 2022•51 min
Today's episode features Marcus Garrett, Author of D.E.B.T. Free or Die Trying. Marcus found himself under a mound of debt and living paycheck to paycheck for years. After hitting rock bottom, he embraced budgeting and rebuilt his credit score on the way to financial freedom. Now, Marcus is both building a personal brand and holding down a high-paying W-2 career. Curious about rebuilding your credit score or managing a successful career while building your entrepreneurial exit strategy? Well, th...
Mar 09, 2022•48 min
