Following US Election Day results, it's important to remember the alligators and kittens, a concept to approach overall mental wellbeing. The negative influences in life are alligators and all of the things that make life better are kittens. Focus on getting rid of the alligators. It's a human bias to focus on the negative. How do you focus time and attention on the things that make life better? For Brad, he cut watching the news out of his life which has helped him to achieve a better mental fr...
Nov 06, 2020•47 min•Ep 267•Transcript available on Metacast Yanely grew up in a low-income household in Brooklyn and then attended Brown University. But by the time she graduated, she had accumulated a bunch of credit card debt that she was hiding from her family. She tried to figure out dealing with her debt on her own by reading books, listening to podcasts, and watching YouTube videos. After paying it off, she thought it was ridiculous she had never learned it in school and started her own YouTube channel to share her story. That eventually led to her...
Nov 02, 2020•53 min•Ep 266•Transcript available on Metacast What's in your talent stack? Inspired by content discovered over the last four years while producing ChooseFI, Jonathan has spent the last couple of months hard at work on the side on a new passion project. As said many times here on the show, financial independence isn't about doing less, like sitting on a beach sipping cocktails. It's about aligning your what you value with your life and having the freedom to pursue what you are passionate about. ChooseFI has given Jonathan the opportunity to ...
Oct 30, 2020•51 min•Ep 265•Transcript available on Metacast Your money story informs so much of your life even if you're not aware of it. For 30 years, Leisa Peterson has been researching and studying how trauma in early life contributes to the money challenges faced later in life. Growing up with a scarcity mindset, money became an escape that gave her motivation. Leisa decided in her mid-twenties that she was going to have money in her life and not have any stresses about it as her parents did. Earning money became an all-consuming response to the trau...
Oct 26, 2020•39 min•Ep 261•Transcript available on Metacast Jonathan draws a parallel between the episode on Monday with professional poker player Annie Duke and hitting his weight loss goals. Finding himself well over his desired weight, Jonathan took a health challenge and has kept the weight off for six months making him a weightloss statistical abnormality. Where most people diet and get to a goal weight, because the effort was a diet, they end up regaining the weight. What Jonathan did was make a lifestyle change. Tying to the discussion with Annie ...
Oct 23, 2020•47 min•Ep 263•Transcript available on Metacast Annie Duke is a world champion poker player and author of Thinking in Bets , a book which makes the case for embracing uncertainty in our decision-making framework. In Annie's latest book, How to Decide: Simple Tools for Making Better Choices , she answers the question, what does a good decision-making process look like and how to incorporate that into your own life. The only way we can become better at making decisions is from our own experience, and our experience is going to be the outcomes o...
Oct 19, 2020•1 hr 7 min•Ep 262•Transcript available on Metacast After 18 years of ownership, Brad says goodbye to his beloved Honda Civic, Golden Boy. When it comes to car ownership, ChooseFI often talks about only buying a new car every 15 years. Over a 45 year adult lifetime, the savings, when invested, can amount to almost $750,000 when compared to someone who leases or just manages a constant car payment. Although Brad wanted to keep the car, it had been having some mechanical issues and his family was no longer comfortable riding in it anymore. The impa...
Oct 16, 2020•49 min•Ep 261•Transcript available on Metacast Immigrating to the United States as a child, by early adulthood, Jully found herself caught up in our consumer culture and had acquired five figures worth of debt. After working to dig her way out and starting on her path to finical independence, she's become an advocate. Drawing from her experience, she now help Latinas become financial powerful through investing. At the age of four, Jully moved from the Dominican Republic to New York. Her extended family all began making the move as well, but ...
Oct 12, 2020•44 min•Ep 260•Transcript available on Metacast In our eighth Households of FI touchpoint episodes, Kristi was successfully following the standard path with a six-figure job and keeping up with the Joneses but waiting to take a breath and enjoy life. After finding FI, she realized the money was no longer the goal but simply a tool. Kristi has been connected with Big ERN, from Early Retirement Now, and over several conversations, they discuss Employee Stock Purchase Plans, 401K contribution strategies, the phase of retirement, and more. While ...
Oct 09, 2020•1 hr 8 min•Ep 259•Transcript available on Metacast Brad has been taking part in a mastermind group and teaching its members about financial independence. While they understood the “Why of FI”, how to get started wasn't as clear. The Back to Basics series of episodes covers just that, how to get started on the path to FI. The journey to financial independence is not about deprivation. It is about a life of personal choice and abundance. Its starts with understanding your “why” and then setting goals for the next 5, 10, or 15 years. There's a diff...
Oct 05, 2020•40 min•Ep 258•Transcript available on Metacast In this ChooseFI Back to Basics episode, we review Health Savings Accounts (HSA). What happens when you need to finally pull money out after funding it year after year? ChooseFI Chief Content Officer, MK, is just weeks away from having her baby. For years, she and her husband, Jason, have been funding separate HSA accounts without making any withdrawals. They now contribute to a family plan HSA and decided it was a good time to test out how complicated the process was to withdraw HSA funds. They...
Oct 02, 2020•53 min•Ep 257•Transcript available on Metacast How can you recognize the value in the secondhand market, begin optimizing a strategy, and turn it into income? Today's guests, Rob and Melissa Stephenson, the Flea Market Flippers, have built a six-figure business flipping the bargains they find. Rob spent weekends as a child with his parents visiting yard sales. They bought items and then listed them for sale to a bigger market using the newspaper classified section. Rob followed in their footsteps, flipping items as another side job without r...
Sep 28, 2020•38 min•Ep 256•Transcript available on Metacast Picking back up with the Household of FI series, Vivian is a single mom who found FI in the last year, but initially, it seemed impossible. It wasn't until she was introduced to the ChooseFI podcast and saw real people reaching financial independence that she believed she could do it too. Vivian has been dealing with a number of challenges: a cancer diagnosis, a child custody battle, and caring for parents who have no savings of their own. As a pharmacist, she earns a significant income. She's a...
Sep 25, 2020•58 min•Ep 255•Transcript available on Metacast Building a business online has never been easier than right now, but Corbett Barr was forging his path in the early 2000s when it was hard. We're diving into his origin story to learn what gave him motivation and why he believed entrepreneurship was for him. Working as a consultant in Fortune 500 companies, Corbett had the kind of job a lot of people really wanted and could build a career around. Though he wasn't aware of financial independence at the time, he didn't want to climb the ladder onl...
Sep 21, 2020•43 min•Ep 254•Transcript available on Metacast Going back to the basics of ChooseFI being a crowdsourced show, Brad and Jonathan address what's going on in the FI community with a wild card Friday episode. Why revisit content that's already been discussed? After several years of introducing new ideas, the ChooseFI audience may be in a different place financially and ready for a refresher on some of the more advanced concepts presented earlier in the show's history. And newer listeners may not have combed through the archives and missed out o...
Sep 18, 2020•56 min•Ep 253•Transcript available on Metacast Everyone's path to FI is going to look a little bit different and there is so much we can learn from each other. Hoping to inspire and share lessons learned through conversations with community members, Brad and Jonathan speak with Julia Harder, an active duty member of the Coast Guard, is already well on her path to FI. Always a natural saver, Julia was influenced by her dad, who stressed the importance of investing, and Dave Ramsey's teachings that debt is bad. She was on a good financial path...
Sep 14, 2020•54 min•Ep 252•Transcript available on Metacast Martin and Ayesha are both natural savers who have been great about living below their means but lacked a real plan. Their goals are to maximize investments for retirement and finding ways to utilize dividend funds. After stumbling across the ChooseFI podcast, they felt like their financial independence number and retirement seemed obtainable which has helped push them to commit and make even bigger changes. While Martin and Ayesha had a 20-25% savings rate before finding FI, Brad commended them...
Sep 11, 2020•59 min•Ep 251•Transcript available on Metacast Once you realize financial independence is possible for you, how do you ensure the money lessons you've learned are consistently passed down to future generations? Anne Zonca's family is well ahead of their time when it comes to financial independence. When many are focused on second-generation FI, Anne herself is third generation FI working to pass along her family's lessons to her own children. Children of the Great Depression, Anne's grandparents were deeply effected by having lived through i...
Sep 07, 2020•41 min•Ep 250•Transcript available on Metacast Brad is back after taking August off of work as his Red X month. Though his original vacation plans were changed because of COVID, he made the best of it. They spent three weeks in Long Island visiting family, enjoying the pool, board games, and a digital detox. While Brad was away relaxing, Jonathan used that time to work on a couple of big passion projects. During the month of August, Jonathan created a podcast course and membership group. He also started a new podcast as a way to demonstrate ...
Sep 04, 2020•1 hr 6 min•Ep 249•Transcript available on Metacast What does it look like when you are invested in building wealth, environmentalism, and sustainability? How do you combine raising your net worth while optimizing these other areas of your life? You build a holistic approach to the different types of capital. Laura learned about the different forms of capital through her experiences with permaculture, which is a design science that looks to nature as an example of a closed-loop, no waste system. Her introduction to permaculture through her garden...
Aug 31, 2020•48 min•Ep 248•Transcript available on Metacast Continuing the financial independence case study series, Households of FI family, Zach and Marilyn are a married couple with young kids. Using Dave Ramsey's baby steps, they no longer have any debt but have wondered what to do next. Looking to explore investing in real estate, ChooseFI connected them with real estate expert, Paula Pant. Though Zach and Marilyn once lived below the poverty line, they managed to pay off their debt, including student loans, a car loan, credit cards, and medical deb...
Aug 28, 2020•57 min•Ep 247•Transcript available on Metacast What happens when someone is using your finances to prevent you from making decisions that are in your own best interest? What does financial abuse look like and can you reclaim your financial life? Rachael shares her story and how she's become passionate about economic empowerment. Although she had a successful career and what appeared to be a healthy relationship from the outside, Rachael found herself in a relationship with someone who walked all over her. Slowly over time, Rachael's boyfrien...
Aug 24, 2020•50 min•Ep 246•Transcript available on Metacast To watch the video highlights, click on ChooseFI.com/245 Matt and Megan are a dual military family on the path to FI. Matt is serving in the UK Royal Navy and Megan is serving in the US Navy, making their tax situation unique. Currently, they plan on having Matt get a green card, allowing him to work in the US, while Megan finishes out her Navy career to earn a pension and then move abroad in about seven years. Once Matt gets his green card, he will be taxed like any other US citizen. He owns an...
Aug 21, 2020•1 hr 3 min•Ep 245•Transcript available on Metacast Who do young people look up to today? The lifestyles marketed on MTV and social media not exactly something to aspire to, but where can the next generation go to find something different? Inspired by the work of her father, Don Wettrick, and feeling like she needed to take charge of the issue, Ava Wettrick created MentorZ , a platform designed to introduce great people to Generation Z. As a young child, Ava thought her dad was the smartest guy in the world. It wasn't until she got older that she...
Aug 17, 2020•52 min•Ep 244•Transcript available on Metacast Progress Coach, Jillian Johnsrud, meets with Households of FI member, Corinne, to review the two exercises designed to help her understand how she can prioritize her life to focus on the things that matter the most. After taking a quiz to reveal which of the Four Tendencies she is, Corinne discovered that she is an Upholder. She has many things that she would like to do but struggles with feeling guilty about doing non-work related things that are important too. Corinne would like to find more t...
Aug 14, 2020•58 min•Ep 243•Transcript available on Metacast For those on the path to financial independence, finance, fitness, and life optimization all intersect. During her career in the banking industry, Shannon McLay found it didn't work for the people she wanted to help. She set out to use her skill set and training to change the coaching industry and founded Financial Gym. Even for those who not physically fit, they know what it looks like and there are many resources available for achieving it. The path the financial independence is similar in tha...
Aug 10, 2020•44 min•Ep 242•Transcript available on Metacast The Troy and Lindsay are new on their journey, finding FI several months ago after making a budget and realizing they had no money left over at the end of the month. Compared to other systematic approaches to becoming debt-free, they felt FI was creative and adaptable to a variety of lifestyles. The first step Troy and Lindsay took was to determine where all their money was going using a budget tracker, which enabled them to cut monthly expenses and continue to do the things they enjoyed doing, ...
Aug 07, 2020•1 hr•Ep 241•Transcript available on Metacast For video highlights from the episode, check out choosefi.com/240 . Tiffany Alice was raised by a financially savvy father who taught her how to save and handle her money, but a few poor choices in her 20s destroyed her finances. Since overcoming her mistakes, she's made it her mission to help others fix their finances. After falling victim to a con man, Tiffany found herself more than $35,000 in credit card debt. Though her pre-school teacher salary wasn't a high income, she was saving aggressi...
Aug 03, 2020•1 hr 11 min•Ep 240•Transcript available on Metacast Don't believe that you need anyone's permission for access anymore. The gatekeepers are gone and the ability to access knowledge on-demand and create a business model around it has never been easier. The realization that you have autonomy gives you control over your life is transformational. You can control your expenses and reach FI. You can choose to pursue interest-led learning and follow a passion. There is no more "they" you need to seek permission from. MK didn't need the permission of tra...
Jul 31, 2020•46 min•Ep 239•Transcript available on Metacast Gerry Born, the Millionaire Educator, joins the show to talk about strategizing college via online classes, dual enrollment, and CLEP Testing. For more information, visit the show notes at https://ChooseFI.com/238
Jul 27, 2020•59 min•Ep 238•Transcript available on Metacast 
