Afford Anything - How I Save Half of My Income as a Firefighter, While Living in an Expensive City -- with Kim E.

Episode Date: July 9, 2018

#139: Five years ago, at age 29, Kim E. started her first professional, salaried full-time job, working as a firefighter for the City of Austin, Texas. She received a starting salary of $42,000. Today, five years later, she has saved: - one year's salary ($40,000) in an emergency fund - one year's salary ($42,000) in a workplace retirement fund - more than half a year's salary ($27,500) in a Roth IRA She also paid off her student loans ($10,000), paid off her car loan (roughly around $16,000-ish), and contributed to an H.S.A. account ($6,000, half of which came from an employer match.) Oh yeah, and she also bought and renovated a rental property. Translation? Kim has saved (or repaid debt of) $141,500 within five years, as a firefighter with a starting salary of $42,000, excluding the additional money she's invested into her rental. **She's saved more than 3x her starting salary, within her first five years on the job.** And she's done this while earning a middle-class public service salary in an expensive city. Wowza. How is Kim saving half of her firefighter salary? And before she became a firefighter, what other frugal tactics did she develop? How did she put herself through four years of college with less than $10,000 in debt? How did she travel before college, when she used to earn $10 per hour? Where does her resourcefulness and motivation come from? And what wisdom can she share with others? Find out in today's episode. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else. And that's true, not just of your money, but also your time, your focus, your energy, your attention, anything in your life that's a limited resource. And so the questions become twofold. Number one, what's most important to you? What do you value more than you value anything else? And number two, how do you align your day-to-day behaviors to reflect that? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice.

And that is what this podcast is here to explore. We explore that gap between intention and action and also the gap between action and priorities or values. My name is Paula Pan. I am the host of the Afford Anything podcast and the founder of Afford Anything.com. And today I wanted to bring onto the show a woman who has saved about half of her income, perhaps little more than half of her income, as a firefighter with a $42,000 per year starting. salary. Now here's her story. Her name is Kim E. Hart. As a child, she did not grow up with much money. She does not come from money. And as a result, she's very resourceful. When she was in her late teens and early 20s, she traveled around the country, living the gig life, right? Traveling around,

doing odd jobs here and there, making $10 an hour. She did this for a few years and then she decided that she wanted to do some type of community service to give back. So she joined AmeriCorps. And as an AmeriCorps, she earned $950 per month plus food stamps. That's what the government pays to AmeriCorps, full-time AmeriCorps volunteers. Or at least that's what it did at the time in the place where she was located. After a year of serving in AmeriCorps, she enrolled in college and put herself through a four-year college with less than $10,000 in debt. So she paid her own way through college and got out with four-figure debt instead of five-figure. Now, she was 27 years old when she graduated from college, and she was 29 years old when she officially started working as a firefighter, which is the profession that she has today. She is now 34. So for the last five years, she has been a firefighter and still is a firefighter with the City of Austin Fire Department. Her starting salary was $42,000. That was five years ago. And in this short period of time, she has saved two full years of salary.

So she has one year's salary saved in an emergency fund, and she also has one year's salary saved for retirement. But that's not where it ends, because in addition to that, she also paid off her student loans, paid off her car loan, and bought a rental property. She says that she doesn't know exactly what her savings rate is. She's never actually calculated it as a percentage. But based on everything that she has accumulated, it has to be more than half of her income. Because I haven't even mentioned, also she has an HSA. And also, in addition to her, like, primary retirement account, she also has a Roth IRA. She has all of these savings vehicles everywhere.

And she does it largely by, as she will tell you in this upcoming interview, she keeps her cost of living no less than a thousand a month. Even now, even making a full-time firefighter salary, she's still keeping her rent plus utilities plus basic food costs to less than a grand a month. So Kim is flexible, she's resourceful, and because of that, she's been able to put herself into an incredible financial position. Despite the fact that she has only been in the workforce for five years, she got a quote-unquote late start in the workforce. And she makes a firefighter's income. So I think she's a perfect example of somebody who's just, she's really doing it right. Now, I should say Kim is also one of my best friends we've known each other for almost half of our lives at this point. both of us are 34 and we were both 19 when we met. So we met 15 years ago. She and I traveled to Europe together in 2008 when I quit my job. She and I spent about two and a half months in Europe. And during that entire time, we never once paid for accommodation. We slept on people's couches. We volunteered on farms in exchange for room and board. We used couch surfing.org. We occasionally slept in abandoned buildings. That happened, yeah. So,

I've seen firsthand. I've experienced firsthand just how frugal and how resourceful Kim can be. She's one of my favorite adventure buddies, and I am so thrilled to introduce her to this community. So without any further delay, here's Kim Ehart on how she saved two years of income, more than two years of income, plus paid off all her debt, plus bought a rental property, on a firefighter salary. Here we go. So Kim, what I find fascinating about your story is that you have done such a good job of hustling and making money in sometimes very unusual ways and supporting yourself. And you've done a fantastic job of it and you've not taken a traditional route. So I'd like to walk through your story. And let's start with when you grew up in Michigan, correct?

Correct. And then you left Michigan and you initially worked a bunch of odd jobs while traveling around the country. Tell us about that. So it started with moving to Colorado. and I had no connections there. And I also was really comfortable with being poor. And I think that that's a big part of how I've made it work is that my standard for living accommodates really well things that don't cost very much

or not a high-octane lifestyle. So I moved out to Colorado with $300 to my name and $2,000 in savings that I didn't touch the entire time that I was kind of roaming out west. But it made me feel like I was secure. I had the small pocket of cash, which for me was a very large sum, $2,000. And that was always my safety net. So that's what made me feel like I could take risks because I had that to fall back on.

But I went out to Colorado. I didn't know anyone. I ended up kind of meeting up with some friends of friends out there. And I found a job hauling trees. And it paid $10 an hour. So much money. It was manual labor. It was grunt work.

But I enjoyed it. And I enjoyed being up in the mountains. And it was cash under the table. And so I got to take home money every day, which felt great. What is tree hauling? Oh, tree hauling. So think of thinning the forest up in the mountains. People go through with chainsaws and they cut down all the trees that are tall but too skinny.

So they're probably 30 feet long. And then my job was to go through with two other guys. We had a chipper and we would pick up a pine tree off the forest floor and we would drag it and haul it into the chipper. And then go get another pine tree, haul it across the ground and load it into the chipper. So that sounds like tough manual work. Yeah, it was. What made you decide to do that? And you're five foot two.

I'm five foot two. Yeah. So what made you decide to do that? And how did you stick with it? I mean, well, stick with it for me at that point in my life was a very relative term. If I was somewhere for a month, it was pretty long. And three months was like an unthinkably long duration. I probably did that job for maybe a month.

But I loved it. I loved being outside. And it just met my basic needs of being somewhere new. And that's really what I wanted was to try new things and get new experiences. and that's exactly what it was. What year was this, by the way, that we're talking about? This was 2003. And so you were working this tree hauling job out in Colorado, making $10 an hour.

How did you support yourself at that time? Oh, well, I was living on the couch of a house that some friends had. So my expenses were really low. Again, like I was not living a lifestyle that most people would want to live, but I loved it. It was exactly what I wanted. So the way that tree hauling ended, is I ended up heading out to San Francisco for the summer. I had another friend who lived there, and he let me stay with him rent-free, so again,

low-cost. And he was living a pretty high-octane lifestyle, and it was fun because I basically got to tag along and live the life that he lived and not pay a ton of money. And he was making money doing gigs and Craigslist, which had just come on scene. Like, I had never heard of Craigslist before I got out there to visit him. So I ended up meeting up with photographers. I did art modeling and got paid, I don't know, know, like $100, $150 a session, but that was enough for me. So I'd do these gigs, make some

money, and then live pretty cheaply and, you know, go out dancing. What were some of your expenses at the time? So I had $300 still, actually, I had $200 when I went out to San Francisco. I sent, no, I had $300 when I went out to San Francisco and I sent $100 of that back with a friend who had help me travel out there. So then I had $200 to my name. I wasn't paying anything for, where I was staying. I would pitch in for food, but food was like a carton of eggs and some ramen noodles. Yeah. Did you have health insurance at the time? Oh, no. Absolutely not. And did you have a car? No. No. I ended up getting a bike for free because back when I was, so I returned to Colorado after San Francisco. My bike was free, RTD, which is a local bus service, would collect bikes that

people left behind, like after a month of being chained up. And you could just go into the basement and get a bike and then fix it up yourself. And so, yeah, that's how I got around. I also got a free bus pass through some connection. So I would bike and bus everywhere. The house that I was staying in was they actually did communal food. And so I'd pitch in like $100 a month and get an unlimited food through them. This is back in Colorado again. And then a friend of mine read the book, Zen and the art of how to make a living. And she was kind of a master of doing odd jobs. And so I went from Colorado, San Francisco, back to Colorado, and started the odd job realm. And so I did some professional hula hooping at parties. I did bartending. I did waitressing.

I also just started doing a little bit of fake it till you make it. So a friend of mine worked at a local hardware store and I told her that I wanted to do landscaping. And I didn't realize it. She started passing my phone number out. So one day I was at home and I get a phone call that I don't recognize from a number I don't know. And it's an older woman. And she said, hello. Is Kim there? And I was like, yeah. And she's like, I heard that you do landscaping. And I was like, uh, yeah, having no idea what she was talking about. And she said, I was just at the hardware store and the nicest girl gave me your phone number. And she said that you charge $12 an hour, which remember is a two whole dollars an hour more than I'd been making before. And I was like, yeah, absolutely, $12 an hour. She's like, good. I'd like, to get started on Saturday.

So just odd jobs kind of came to me and I was open to it. And my boundary for what to let in was really low. So my goal was to have new experiences and to try new things. And when that's your filter is to go do new stuff, the world is full of potential and opportunity. Has your boundary for what you let in increased over the year? Oh, yeah.

I still try and do odd jobs. And it's just so much less rewarding when one, you don't need the money and do you feel fulfilled? Like, I find myself doing stuff that I would have loved before. Like, a lot of promo work. I did some brand ambassador stuff. Like, catering is really fun. I've tried to do that stuff now. Also, leading fitness classes. And I mean, the pay isn't bad. It's like, you know, $30 an hour. But I'm like, I don't need your money. Like, I have better things to do with my time. So you lived for a number of years on this earning about $10 an hour supporting yourself. Like you lived this lifestyle for quite a while, yes?

Well, it started at 10. And then, like, as you get better at doing gigs, the pay starts to rise. And it's not that my resume got better. It's just that you start to get more opportunities coming to you. So then you can be pickier. So the first ones were $10 an hour. And then it started to be $15 an hour, which again, at that time was like, wow, 15. And then it started to be $20 an hour.

And I think just the more that you're open to letting opportunity happen, the more comes in. and then the more your standard of what you can expect raises. And you said that in Colorado, you were staying on a couch. When you moved to Colorado, you didn't know anybody. Correct. You didn't have any friends there. And eventually you got to a point where you made friends who were willing to let you sleep on their couch for free. How do you do that without your friends getting tired of you sleeping on their couch?

I think that's an excellent question. I don't know how to answer that. I feel like we should feel one of the people who let me stay on their couch for too long. Oh, so you're one of them. So you were moving around. You're couch hopping? No. Well, so there's the house that I was living in had 12 people living there. So the Kim presence was a little dispersed. So I would say that the two ways that it was dealt with one, I looked for opportunity. So the house that I lived in with 12 people, people would want to go away for a little while. And so I stayed on the couch for the first month. And then someone wanted to go away for a month. So I stayed in his bedroom and paid his rent. And then he came back. And then another girl had. an extra large bed and we just shared her bedroom so that the rent was more affordable for her and we both didn't mind. So again, very low boundaries. And then part of it too is just addressing the fact that it was kind of funny and I was an opportunist. And so people lovingly referred to me as

the house squatter, which I was. And it was great. Like so long as we were all open and clear and upfront about what was happening and people could voice concerns if they had it, then it was fine. So yeah, I helped pitch in for utilities. I made sure that I was also contributing positively to the space. And if people had concerns, I would talk to them about it. Did people have concerns? So the guy who went away for a month came back early. He was supposed to be gone all summer. He came back after a month. And he wanted to share the bedroom and not pay rent. And that created a place of tension. So we talked about it and had house meetings and ended up resolving a situation. So yeah, I mean, I think that there were normal life tensions that just in

general, you have to be willing to face things and talk about it when it comes up. So how many years were you kind of odd jobbing and gigging before you decided that you were going to go to college up in Washington? So I moved to Colorado in 2003. I joined AmeriCorps in Washington State in 2006-7 school year, and then I started college in 2007. That was Colorado. I also worked in Utah. I traveled Mexico, kind of hopped around, did odds and ends. one of the important things to note during this time, the reason why I was able to live cheaply is I didn't really commit to stuff. So I was never on a lease. I never had even my phone was like a pay per month phone, not under a contract because I didn't know that I'd be around and in one place for that long. So the way that I moved on that I transitioned from Colorado is I decided that I wanted to go to college, which of course was a smart choice. But I knew that being thrifty was important to me. I knew that graduating with a ton of student debt wasn't going to work. So I found a school that I really liked that offered an alternative education but was also publicly funded. And so the school that I found and settled on was the Evergreen State College.

And it's very into experiential learning. It offers a lot of travel and study abroad, hands-on experiences, self-guided, which I wanted. But because it was state-funded, tuition was like $12,000 a year as opposed to $36,000 and up at other. similar schools. So it was a fraction of the cost to begin with. And I also knew that if I became a state resident, I would have more affordable tuition than if I was an out-of-state resident. So the way that I worked it is I got a job with AmeriCorps before going back to school. And this did two things. Actually, it kind of did three things. One, it put me into the non-traditional student status so that my financial aid package was based on my income and not my parents' income.

And that was because of your age? Yeah, because I was, I think it's 22 or older, is for non-traditional student status. So my finances based on my income. Two, it gave me a really low income. While I was in AmeriCorps, I was earning $950 a month, which for the rest of the world is not much. But for me, going from earning, you know, sporadic hourly work to $950 was like, whoa, live in large. And it also gave me in-state residency. So those three combined were really powerful.

Okay. Okay, so those were the three benefits to volunteering for AmeriCorps financially. One was that your financial aid package when you applied for college was based on your own income rather than your parents' income. And that was due to your age because how old were you when you started college? 23. Okay, so you were 23 when you started college. So, yeah, they're only going to look at your own income. So that was benefit number one.

Benefit number two is that your own income is very low. Very low. And then benefit number three is that it gave you in state residency. Correct. And you mentioned while you were talking about AmeriCorps that that also could trigger a conversation about living on, what did you say, $975 a month? 950 a month. Before we go into your college experience, how did you live on $950 a month during that one year that you were in AmeriCorps? Yeah, that was really interesting.

So there were 12 of us as part of my AmeriCorps team, and that really was a saving grace. So we were located rural, rural mountain community in Washington State. And there wasn't a lot to do. And there weren't a lot of other people to do things with. And so the 12 of us were kind of each other's everything. We were each other's friends. We were each other's family. In some cases, we were each other's romantic partners.

And we just learned to do stuff together. And just being together was enough. And so we would hang out on the weekends and we would just gather in someone's house. You know, when you pitch in the cost of making a dinner, we were on food stamps. So we did a lot of themed meals, and that was really fun. Maybe throw in for some cheap beer. And that's the cost of a great evening with friends. And so we would do outings together and we would plan it and we would always carpool whenever possible.

We'd go outtown, as it was called, to one of the bigger cities with, say, 20,000 people, enormous. And, you know, have a meal or walk around or. We did a lot of thrifting. So much thrifting. It was a whole different mindset of learning to experience life, having fun with togetherness, rather than having fun with things. Did you have a car at the time? I did. We all had to have cars because it was a mountain town, but I bought a car for $500 on Craigslist.

It was awful. It broke down halfway through the year. And so then one of the community members that I was volunteering with gifted me a van. It was not a minivan. was a huge, full-size purple van. And at the time, I was kind of like, what am I supposed to do with this? I don't want this car. So my friends, being wonderful, they helped me retrofit it. We put a mattress in the back and we got some battery powered LED lights, some fuzzy steering wheel cover and fuzzy dice, and we would take it to go camping in the mountains. And I feel like that for me

really represents how we did things. We worked with what we had, and even if it didn't seem optimal, we turned it into a good situation and we found a way to enjoy it. How did you, I'm just trying to do the math in my head. You must have been paying something for rent and then you would have had to have paid car insurance and gas. Seems like that would eat up most of the $9.50 per month. Well, so this is 2006, I think at this point, 2007.

And so my car was paid in full, the $500. The insurance was the cheapest basic insurance that I could find online. So it wasn't a lot. You know, it was probably 50 a month, if that. Rent, we had three people sharing one apartment. We all had our own bedroom, but we shared. There were two girls that lived in yurts in the woods. I mean, it was like basic living, and it was in a rural town.

So the cost of living was just so much lower. I think maybe rent was $250 a month, $300 a month. So, yeah, there's still wiggle room in the budget. And then we had food stamps to cover the cost of food, which is the biggest expense. All right. So that was how you all. supported yourself while you were AmeriCorps volunteers. Yeah.

That's... Was that from all of the odd jobs and gigging that you had done for the previous four years? Was that an upgrade or was it kind of a lateral move? I can't think of it in either of those terms. It was the most stability I had ever had. So we had to commit to the term for 10 and a half months, which if you remember from earlier, one month for me was a long time. Three months was like unthinkably long.

10 and a half months was impossible. I remember wintertime. hit and I thought that I like that I could not stay there and I went and talked to the woman who had hired me on and I tried to convince her I was like Lynn I need a sanity break I just need to go away for a month I'll come back recharge refreshed just do without me for a month and she was like Kim that's not how it works and I was like it's gotta it's that's how I live my life and she was like not here you can quit I cannot force you to stay but I also cannot let you leave for a month and come back that was actually really good for me holding this expect

of being one place, following through on a commitment, being settled and stable even if I wanted to keep roaming. It was really good. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. Do you want to start a side hustle? If so, you're going to need a website, and that's true regardless of whatever type of side business you're starting. Whether you want to blog or offer some type of local service, whatever it is that you're doing, you're going to need a website. Sign up for hosting with a company called Bluehost, and they are always. offering a special deal to afford anything listeners, less than $3 a month for excellent caliber hosting.

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You don't have to input a credit card, freshbooks.com slash Paula. So then after AmeriCorps, you were 23 years old, and that's when you started to four years of college at Evergreen. Correct. Yeah. So I went into Evergreen thinking that I'd been really strategic about financial aid. I decided to live in a fancy downtown apartment, which, again, was a connection from a friend, he had this great pad and he had just gotten laid off and he wanted to go travel for

the school year. He wasn't in school. He was older. But he wanted to go travel for a little while. I needed somewhere to live. And he was like, well, why don't you just stay in my place? But it was more expensive than I was used to, you know? What was the rent? I don't remember exactly, but we'll say probably around 600 a month, which for me at that point in my life was a lot of money. So I wanted to live there and I decided, let's just try it and make it work. And within the first month, I realized like, oh, crap, I don't have enough to make this possible. I no longer had my food stamps because I lost that when I went back to school. I only had food stamps during AmeriCorps. As a side note, it's an expected part of the

stipend that you get your food stamps. But so now I'm trying to make ends meet, and now that I have some real expenses, it's harder. So what I did is I went to the financial aid office, and I have to give Evergreen credit. They have fantastic, fantastic people working and all of their student facilities offices. And I just went in and I said, hey, listen, I'm wondering if you can give me advice for what to do next year. I thought that I was strategic and I thought that I planned well. And I'm really having a hard time making ends meet. Like I'm not able to afford the cost of living.

And the woman talked to me and she said, hold on a second. And she went to the computer and she typed some stuff in and she said, well, I see that we have some funds left for this school year for this quarter that haven't yet been allocated. If I were to give you an extra $1,000 a quarter, which works out to like $330 a month, would that help? And absolutely it would. And so she just pressed the enter button. And suddenly I had an extra $330 a month, which, again, when you're used to living on less than a thousand a month, that's huge. That's a 25% increase in your cost of living. So that helped a bunch.

And then she also recommended that I start looking at scholarships. And Evergreen has a really fantastic scholarship program where at the end of each school year, you're given a list of different privately funded scholarships and all of them you apply for by writing an essay. And so because I was a non-traditional student and from a background of poverty, and that's referring to my parents, not just my AmeriCorps year, I qualified for key student services is what it's called. And it's a government program to help students who are traditionally disadvantaged. And so I had a mentor who still is my mentor to this day. We still talk on the phone. And she was

kind of my go-to person whenever stuff would happen that I didn't know how to deal with. Or not even didn't know how to deal with, but just wanted, you know, someone who is an adult with more perspective. So I went to station, said I want to apply for some of these scholarships. And I started writing essays. And I think every year I got awarded a scholarship of some sort. One year I got a full ride for, yeah, that was great. All of my tuition and books and cost of living was covered. Also, the other thing that I did that helped that the financial aid woman had pointed out is STEM science and technology fields offer scholarships specific to them so long as you take a certain number of science and technology credits. So I basically made my major

a science field so that I would get enough science credits each year. And then the cool thing about Evergreen, being the hands-on experiential learning, is a science classes allowed me to travel and go do field research. So every year that I was in school, I got to travel. The first year, I spent spring semester in Spain. The second year, I spent winter and spring semester, I guess quarter, in Panama. And the third year, I spent winter quarter in Ecuador. And the fourth year, I spent almost the entire year in Austin, Texas, which is where I now live. So you studied abroad or studied elsewhere. Basically studied abroad three out of four years, you know?

I studied elsewhere four out of four years and three of those were in other countries. Wow. And you had a full ride for your senior year and scholarships throughout. I think what's fascinating is that you chose a major based partially, at least, based on what would give you the most scholarships. Yeah. I mean, I guess most people wouldn't choose that. But it was a school that was very flexible and easy to tailor to the students need, and it just seemed like a no-brainer. I think that I was receiving $4,500.

It must have been a year. It might have been per quarter, but $4,500 was a lot of money just for choosing science. And so I was like, okay, I choose science. I can do that. And so then when you graduated from Evergreen, you had less than $10,000 in debt. Less than $10,000 in debt. And that includes all the cost of traveling, all the cost of living expenses. is everything. That's incredible. So what I hear is your tuition was 12,000 per year, plus books,

plus you had to cover your cost of living. You did all of that on your own for four years, including three study abroad programs. And you did all of that graduating after four years with less than 10K in debt. That's, wow. But what I hear when you tell that story is it wasn't one thing that did it. It was many small choices. It was many small choices. It was many small choices. and I think it comes from the fame work. So I mentioned earlier, I did grow up in a household that didn't have access to nice things. And so I think that that shaped my understanding of what it means to have a good time. And so for me, I don't need to buy stuff and I don't need to have like a prefabricated event for me to enjoy it.

And really I have more fun creating events with friends and maybe doing nothing together and seeing what comes of that. So I don't feel like I need to pay the world to provide me something. I'm kind of open to whatever the moment and the opportunity brings. And I find that delightful. But still basic costs like rent and groceries and utilities. You know, you did all of that on, it sounds like, what, less than a thousand a month? Yeah, I'm sure. Do you remember what your rent was while you were in college?

I mean, you mentioned the 600 per month initially. Yeah, I really don't remember. And that was something where we changed houses every year. And because I would leave during winter quarter or spring quarter, I'd come back to something different so there wasn't a constant amount. I think like 400 a month was normal for a shared room. And you always lived with the roommates, yes? Yeah. And when I say shared room, like I would have my own private bedroom, but sharing a house with other people. And that's always been the constant, both because it's more affordable, but mostly because I like it that way. Right. You're an extrovert.

Yeah. So another thing that I find fascinating about your story, and I guess I'm jumping ahead a little bit because I know right now you live in Austin, you lived in up in the Pacific Northwest before that, you lived in Boulder, Colorado. Like a lot of these are areas of the high cost of living. You lived in San Francisco for a while. And I get emails oftentimes, emails or online comments from people who say, oh, I live in such and such place. I live in the Pacific Northwest or I live in Austin. And over here, you can't you can't pay rent for less than 2000 a month. You can't pay rent in the quality accommodations that people want to live in. It's about the standard of life that you're comfortable with. And so if you're expecting to live a high standard of life, then yeah, you're going to be paying

$2,000 a month for rent in your private apartment. But I lived a very different standard of life that I was really happy with. And so the quality of the things that I had access to were low, but the quality of my life and how much I enjoyed it was really high. How did you maintain that happiness? I mean, I guess it's a lot. lifetime of being formed. And what feels good and rewarding to me is connecting with people. And so that's my number one priority. And things just, to me, aren't fulfilling. And so it's not something that I chase after because when I do, I just don't get the same satisfaction out of it. I know you don't have any children. Some of your roommates had kids, though, yes?

Yeah. Tell me about that. So the only time that I lived with someone who was technically a child was A woman Casey who worked in the tech industry had her own home, and she had a spare bedroom. So Casey had her own room. Her daughter, Ezra, who was 14 years old, had her own bedroom. I had my own bedroom. And there was actually also a tent in the backyard. She rented out yard space to a girl who lived in an all-year-round tent outside. And yeah, we all just pitched in for rent.

And as far as it being like living with a child, it was just like living with another roommate who went to high school instead of going to college. So she was your roommate slash landlord. You know, the mom was. Yeah. And she was great. She actually came to me after I'd been living there for a month and she said, Kim, I don't think that I need as much rent money as you're paying me. Do you want to just pay $100 less a month? And I was like, are you for real? She was like, yeah, I'm fine. Huh. Why did she say that? I think that her priorities were just, she felt like she was getting enough. And she felt like She didn't need to be taking money that she didn't need from someone who was a student and didn't have a ton keeping in, which I respected a ton. It actually, it affected me pretty profoundly.

I was like, oh, that's the kind of person that I want to be. Like, I want to be someone who looks for an optimal situation for all people rather than trying to get away with whatever I can. After you graduated from Evergreen, you moved to Austin, Texas, and you decided to become a firefighter. Yes. So tell me about how that came about. We'll do a quick side story. The coolest job that I worked when I was out west was wilderness therapy. Wilderness therapy was living outdoors, helping lead at-risk teenagers on excursions through the wilderness in middle of nowhere, Utah.

And while I was there, one of the other staff members that I worked with, she was like, have you ever considered wildland firefighting? And I was like, no, tell me about it. She was like, well, my boyfriend is a wildland firefighter. And he's a smoke jumper. And he gets to jump out of helicopter. into the action of a forest fire. And I was like, that is maybe the coolest thing I have ever heard. So it planted the seed that I really, really wanted to be a wildland firefighter.

And just for whatever reason, it never happened. I can't explain why it never happened. Just the opportunity didn't present itself. And that's really how I found my jobs was kind of opening myself up to whatever opportunity was present. And whenever I would try and chase down a wildland firefighting gig, it just didn't pan out. And I didn't want to force something. I figured that when it was time, it would be time.

So I moved to Austin, Texas, because that's where I wanted to live. And I was like, you know what, I should look into wildland firefighting. So I started asking around. People were like, why would you want to do that? I was like, because it's cool. And you get to be outside. And I want to jump out of a helicopter. And they were like, yeah, it's Texas.

You don't want to be a wildland firefighter. It's hot and it's miserable. They were like, but the city of Austin is hiring. And that is a great job. And I was like, really? So I went to a fire station. and they showed me the ropes. So they pulled out all the stops. They're like, have you ever flowed water through a fire hose before? And it's like, no, of course I haven't. They're like, well, do you want to dry? And I was like, yeah, of course I do because that's just kind of how I greet life. Like, okay, let's do that. And I was like, this is cool. And the real part to being a firefighter is not necessarily in the pay that you get right now, but it's one of the few jobs that still has retirement and pension. And it's a good pension. And so, So kind of as you've noticed, I open myself up to most opportunities.

And then I kind of choose based on life factors, like what will work out well in the long run. And at 10 years, you're able to be vested in retire. And at 20 years, it's considered a full retirement. At 30 years, you retire at 100% pay. So you are making just as much in retirement, actually more because you're no longer paying into the pension than you were when you were working a full work week. And so I was like, you know what, this is a cool job. I like it. And I think that it meets my needs.

So I jumped on that bandwagon. And how long ago was that? That was five years ago. So tell me about how you became a firefighter. Because, again, you're five foot two and you are probably smaller than me. Like you're a tiny girl. But these muscles are huge. So tell me about the training for that.

and all of that. Part of it is timing. They say that timing is a big part of what makes something work or something not work. And so at the time that I was looking into becoming a firefighter, there was no preferential treatment giving to hiring women, which I really appreciate, and it makes me feel much more legitimate knowing that there was no quota or anything like that to be met.

But what they did offer was a training program open to anyone who was in the hiring process that wanted to get better at meeting the physical requirement. So the process of becoming a firefighter standardized in Austin, and I think most departments across the country, is to take the CPAT. And the CPAT is a 10-minute obstacle course from hell. And it basically simulates everything that you would do at a working fire. So the entire time you're wearing a 50-pound weight vest, and that simulates the weight of your turnout gear. It's not quite the same. So turnout gear is really hot and oppressive.

The vest is not hot and oppressive, but it is a lot of weight concentrated right on your shoulders and upper body. So it restricts movement in a different way. And then for the first three minutes, you put an additional 20 pounds on your shoulders and you climb a stair mill at a painfully slow pace. It's one step per second. So it's 60 steps a minute. You can't control the speed. And you also can't touch the handrail. So for that first three minutes, you're just zapping your energy, climbing slowly trudging up the stairman.

mill. You get off, you shed the 20 additional pounds, but you keep the 50 pound weight vest on, and you proceed to do things like climbing through a tunnel, which simulates doing a search, raising a ladder, dragging a dummy, using a sledge hammer to sledge through a door. I mean, it's not literally a door, but it simulates a door, pulling ceiling, dragging hose, carrying heavy tools, and there's just no time to rest. You have to be going the whole time. And for dudes that are huge, it's not that hard. A lot of them don't have to train to complete this obstacle core. in the 10 and a half minutes that you're allotted. But for me, I did.

So they give you some practice sessions where you can walk through and try things. And the first time that I went, I was like, this isn't possible. This isn't possible. But there was this group that helped people train and get in shape. And it was led by another woman who is probably smaller than I am, probably about the same height, but like even more willowy. But just muscle and sinew is how I would describe her body. Like she's super fit. and she led this group and we would go every morning at 6 a.m. and some afternoons at 6 p.m.

And she would kick our little butts. We had our asses handed to us and it was the most intense physical training I have ever done. But all of it was very specifically tailored toward being successful in the CPAT. Everything that we did was with a purpose of strengthening the muscles and the cardio needed to absolutely plow through this test. And so by the time I, I went to take the test, the actual can you do it, can you not do it? My goal was to complete it in nine minutes, and I got it in eight minutes, 59 seconds. Whoa. Yeah.

Wow. Congratulations. I can't am at 70, wearing 70 pounds and doing that. Yeah, that's over half my body weight. Wow. Wow. We'll return to the show in just a moment. Would you like to not eat at restaurants quite so often?

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You became a firefighter five years ago. The thing that I've watched you do that I find very impressive is on a firefighter salary living in Austin, Texas, which is a very expensive city. And without any help from family or, you know, like completely on your own, you have not only established yourself in your own life very well, but you also then became a lot. a rental property investor. How? Tell us the story. Okay. So for like someone in the tech industry or another field, firefighting doesn't pay a lot. But for someone who's used to living on a thousand dollars a month, I make plenty of money. And so this is a big secret to the success secret in quotes. It's not really a secret, whatever, is my cost of living is still low. It's still affordable. And I still enjoy the things that I enjoyed before, which revolve around spending time with people and having quality interactions more than chasing things and events.

And so I don't mind paying money. So this is something that's different from before. When I was really poor and like in AmeriCorps or those points in my life, if I had to spend money for something, I couldn't enjoy the experience. Like I would spend the whole time feeling bad that I had to pay something. That's not the case anymore. I know that I have enough. And so I can spend money and enjoy it. but I don't feel like I need to spend money to enjoy something.

And so my cost of living is still pretty low. Most of my activities are based around interaction with other people and quality time, as opposed to expensive experiences. I do still travel a lot. So one of the big perks of firefighting is we get a lot of time off. It's just built into the schedule, and we get ample vacation time that's paid. And so I travel out of Texas really once a month, and I take at least one, if not more, international trips a year. So that's probably where my biggest expense goes and then probably food

as well. Honestly, I think I pay more for food than I do for travel because again, travel for me is budget just by default, not necessarily because of trying. But so my cost of living is low. My salary is high enough that I'm able to save and I pay myself first so I make sure that I'm putting a certain amount into savings each month. And then I just try to manage that wisely. and the firefighting community is very conservative as far as values and traditional lifestyle. And so buying a house is something that's really prized in the firefighting community. And I'd known for a long time that I wanted to start buying real estate as an investment. I knew that I wanted to start developing passive streams of income.

And buying a house was important. And it's also just kind of in the collective consciousness of the firefighter world. And so immediately, when I was in academy, So in Academy, we made $30,000 a year, which, again, for everyone else is nothing. And for me, I was like, I can't believe I'm making $30,000 a year. Woo! This is adult pay. And so I started saving an academy.

And I think I just called it my acorn fund. And the idea is that I had acorns hidden away that if for whatever reason I didn't make it through academy or decided that firefighting wasn't for me, I had money that I could run away on and start fresh. And time out, what is firefighting Academy? Oh, firefighting. Like the gateway to getting in is not the long drawn-out application process, which quick side-note, well, since we like talking about numbers here. So the firefighting hiring process took almost a year.

Yeah, it was actually over a year from when you submit the application to when you start Fire Academy. So it was a year of jumping through hoops and taking tests. Literally. Literally jumping through hoops. With the weighted best on. Good point. So it's a year of that, but that's not the real test. The real test of firefighting is the training portion.

And it's a six-month training academy that is basically a fire version of boot camp. And the guys who are in my training academy who had also been in the military, I asked them which was worse, fire academy or boot camp? And they said fire academy is worse. But the benefit is that you get to go home at the end of the day. At boot camp, you're always subject to what they do to you. But what they do to you physically and mentally is more rigorous in fire academy than it is in the military. which blew me away. So it's six months of hell.

It's absolute hell. They very, very intentionally make sure that you are sleep deprived and physically stress and mentally stressed and drained and just have no resources to deal with life. Because I want to see how do you act under pressure? How do you act when you have nothing left to give and you're being expected to do what seems impossible? Six months with no breaks. And so during this time that you were in Fire Academy, you said you earned the equivalent of $30,000 a year. But it was a six-month program. So you earned $15,000 during these six months? Yeah, correct. And financially, tell me about what your financial life was like at that time.

You don't have any free time during Fire Academy. There was no financial life because there was no life. The way that my day was structured is we had to be there at 6 a.m. and then we had to be on the lines like sharp and ready to go at 7. And you went all day and I got home around the time that the sun was setting, so probably around 6 p.m. At which point I would get a huge rush of energy because I was back home. I still had roommates at that point who were not firefighter friends and I was so excited to see them. Like coming home to spend time with my roommates was the highlight of every single day. And so we'd hang out, we'd have dinner together. And then as they were getting ready to like go out for the night, I would get ready to go to bed.

I would take an Ambien and fall to sleep around 8 or 9 p.m. as they would go out and have fun. And then I'd wake up the next morning and do it all over again. So you went to bed at like 8 or 9 and you woke up at, what, 5? Yeah. Yeah. And so it sounds like your expenses were basically one room and a shared home and food. Yeah. And so living on, what, 15,000 and 6 months, that's about $2,000 a month. Sounds pretty doable for only paying rent with roommates and food.

Yeah, exactly. Exactly. And then what? So after Fire Academy, you became a full-time firefighter. Yeah. So we started to talk earlier about during Fire Academy, I started saving money in what I called my Acorns Fund. And so the six months of Fire Academy was so rigorous and it was so hard. And there's definitely the question of, am I going to make it through this? And do I want to make it through this? Am I sure that this is something that I'm gung-ho for? So that's when the Acorns Fund started. And it was really the first time in my life that I felt like I was. making enough that I could put aside a significant chunk. And I think that I started saving $750 a month during that time. Don't quit me on that, but I think it was $750 a month is what I was putting away into savings. And so by the time that I graduated from Fire Academy, I had a couple thousand saved. And I was like, you know what? I'm in Austin. I'm living here. The cost of rent is going up, the cost of houses is going up, now is my time to get a rental property. And so I continued

saving for a down payment. So tell me more about that. So at this point, during Fire Academy, you're making about $2,500 per month and saving $750 per month. And then after Fire Academy, do you remember what your income? Yeah. So immediately after Fire Academy, we went to earning $42,000 a year, which was an enormous jump. And pretty much all of that difference I put into savings. Wow. Okay, so you're making $42,000 per year, which is $3,500 per month. That's before taxes, though. So after taxes, your take home would be probably around $2,800 per month. Yeah. And then also something that started, it wasn't during the academy, but after getting out of the academy, you start paying money into the pension. And so a pretty sizable chunk automatically goes into the pension each paycheck. So it sounds like your take home pay. You don't know exactly what it was, but it sounds like it might have been around. We'll guess. somewhere between 2,500 to 2,800 per month-ish? Would that be right?

I'm really not sure. Okay. Yeah, I have a lot of automatic deductions come out, so I have them automatically deduct to go to charity. I have them automatically deduct to go into an HSA health care program. I don't really know. But at any rate, the long and short of it is that your gross income was $42,000 per year. And do you remember how much money you were saving for a rental property?

I don't. So it starts to get blurry at this point. I know that I was paying about 600 a month for my rent, which again was in a shared house with other people. And my primary focus was on saving up for the down payment. But I do remember the details of the house if you're interested in hearing about that. Sure. So the house that I bought, the sticker price on it was $210,000. I bought during the wintertime because there's less competition and you're able to get better deals.

I worked with a lone woman who was incredible and very crafty. and I really appreciated it. And she could tell that I cared about the finance aspect of things. I had a limited amount to put into my down payment. And I also wanted affordable rent because the goal was to not be, I did not want to have to charge too much as I'm running this out to other people. I wanted low monthly payments. So I found a loan woman who helped me get a 3.5% down program on a house that was $210,000.

And she knew about this great thing where you can pay your PMI up front. And so even though I didn't have 20% to put into my PMI, I paid it up front and I think it was like $2,500 in one lump chunk as opposed to the $8,000 that I would have paid with monthly installment payments. So I just paid the PMI up front, three and a half down. The sticker price on the house was $210,000, but I asked for $10,000 in seller concessions. And since that was more than technically could happen, the owner actually wrote me a private check. check upon closing for the seller concessions and then that became a renovation budget. And so then I spent two months remodeling the house and now it's a nicer home and I'm able to ask higher end prices for the rental. So is it a, it's a single family home? Yes, in a residential neighborhood.

And how many bedrooms does it have? Three, two and a half bath. And what do you charge for rent? Oh, it's, the numbers aren't working out super great at this point. I think that I'm collecting 1650 a month and the monthly cost of it is 1750. And so when I first started, I had more of wiggle room margin, but because the cost of taxes and insurance have gone up with time, it's really cutting it close. And then did you buy this as an investment property or did you buy it as a primary residence and then later move out? Yeah, I bought it as a primary residence. So my plan was that I was going to live in it and then just rent out the bedrooms. And I really wanted to create a place that kind of drew in artistic community member types and really

started to have its own core group of people who live there. And it just didn't work. It was too far on the outskirts. The people who wanted to live in that part of town really wanted to have more privacy and were more into just hanging out in their bedroom, having some alone time. And that wasn't my vision at all. So I ended up renting out the house to people who are more on board with a suburb lifestyle and then I rent elsewhere and I live in central Austin. So you lived there. How long did you live there? I lived in the house for one year. Okay. Perfect. So yeah, you bought a house as a primary residence, lived in it for a year with roommates and then moved out and turned it exclusively into a rental property. Yeah. Are you glad that

you did it? Do you want to buy more rental properties? Like, what's your take on this? Honestly, it was a giant pain in the ass. I'm glad that I did it because it was such annoying desire to get a rental property and have that experience. And I also learned a lot going through the remodel. It was a friend kind of led the remodeling project. It was never planned that we were just going to do it together, but he really likes projects. He saw that I was taking this on. And he said, do you want me to come by one afternoon and help you demo the bathroom? I was like, yeah, that'd be fun. And then he just kept coming back every day. And he taught me how to install my own windows. We put a new flooring. We completely redid the kitchen, completely readed the upstairs bathroom. We did quite a bit to the

house. And it just kind of happened. But so I gained a lot of experience through it, but it wasn't pleasant. And I learned that I actually don't love that kind of work at all. And so if I do it in the future, I'm going to contract out pretty much everything. I had exactly that same experience with my first rental property. We thought that we were going to do. going to do all the work ourselves. And we did for initially. And it was not worth it. So then, then we started hiring everything out, contracting everything out. Yeah, Josh, the guy who helped me with it. It was really interesting. So this is what was most like, illuminating for me. Josh asked if he could go work on the house while I was still at the fire station. Like,

while I was still working, I was like, yeah, sure. And I would feel so bad that he was there working alone. And I would walk in and he's like, whistling and so happy. And so happy. and got a big grin and he's just like spackling away. And I was like, wow, he loves this. And then if I ever had to work on the house when he wasn't there, it was just like a gray cloud over my head. I was like, oh, I hate this. I'm so alone. Oh, I need people. Oh, this sucks.

And so I really learned like, oh, yeah, there are people who love this. And I am not them. Good life lesson. Yeah, I think that is a good lesson. Play to your strengths and do the thing that you enjoy doing. Yep. So let's talk about your financial picture now because what we've established is that you came from nothing. We haven't gone into your childhood, but as you kind of alluded to, you did not have money as a child.

Correct. And you worked odd jobs in your early adulthood. Then you put yourself through college four years with less than $10,000 in student loan debt. And then you became a firefighter. And on a firefighter salary, bought a rental property. And then the thing we haven't talked about yet is in addition to the rental property, you also have a huge, very well-funded retirement account plus an HSA account, plus a really solid emergency fund. We talk a little bit about that.

I know I'm giving away the ending here. But how have you maintained that for all these years? Because how old are you now? You're 33. 34. 34. So how is it that lifestyle inflation has not caught up with you? How have you consistently done this?

I mean, saving feels good to me. Being secure feels good to me. And that's just such a primal difference. Like to other people, going out and spending money is fun. And to me, it's okay. So I think one of the things that helps me save is, I don't call it this, but the idea that I hear referred to is pay yourself first. So I determine a budget at the beginning of each fiscal.

year, the beginning of each year. I don't know why I said fiscal. It's not like I'm going October to October. Each calendar year. There we go. Thanks. Basically, what I decide is how much I'm going to save and how much I'm going to spend. And then I don't micromanage my spending on top of that. So I allow a certain amount to come into my actual checking and savings account through my credit union and everything else just goes directly into savings. And aside from occasionally managing those funds and moving them around, I don't look at it. I don't think about it. And so in my mind, I'm still living really on 30,000 a year. And most of my friends are making around 30,000 a year. And the activities that I do are around 30,000 a year. And so I don't see

myself as making more than that and saving. I see myself as living on that budget. And then my lifestyle follows suit. So in many ways, my mindset has shifted in that I know that I don't have to save and I don't have to be as guarded around money that I have the funds to cover me if I need it, but I still live and make choices as if I was on a $30,000 a year income. And that really, really affects my outlook. So right now, let me give you some insight onto where I am living at this moment. In January, January 1st, I made the choice to go back to living in an adult housing co-op. And for those of you guys who don't know, it's basically a very large house with a lot bedrooms and everyone who lives there cooperates as far as the cleaning duties and we also

buy food together in bulk and we cook meals together seven days a week and so i share a house with 20 other individuals i have a very large room it's very nice the house is gorgeous we have three common areas a commercial kitchen the yard is beautiful it has a sky hammock built into one of the live oak trees bonfires we have community gatherings like it's a great place to live but i pay $850 a month to live in Zilker neighborhood, which is a very desirable neighborhood in Austin, very close to downtown and the cool outdoor trails. And that includes my utilities and unlimited food access. And so for less than $1,000 a month, I get all of my basic needs met. And I just want to reemphasize, I'm happy here. I tried living on my own last year, and I hated it. It cost me a ton of

money, and I didn't enjoy being at the house by myself. And so, yeah, my interest, just have stayed aligned with living a very affordable lifestyle. So your basic cost of living, rent utilities and groceries, is less than a thousand a month. Correct. And because of that, you've saved quite a bit. Tell me about your emergency fund. Yeah, so I have about $40,000 saved up right now, maybe a little less due to the stock market decline of recent days. Oh, so your emergency fund is in a stock market?

Is in market investments? I keep about $5,000 of it in market investments just because the market was doing so well. to capitalize a little bit. But the rest of it, the 35, I keep in an online savings. And in addition to your emergency fund, you also have a very well-funded retirement account. You have a pension through the firehouse, but you also have a retirement account, yes? Yeah. So the pension takes automatic deductions, and I in no way control this. And so the way that the pension functions is once I'm in for 10 years, I'm vested. And what that means is at age 55, it will start making automatic payments to me, which I can withdraw or I can leave in their account to gain whatever the interest rate is. It's pretty high.

So if I take out before I'm vested, then I just get back all the money that I've paid in. And at this point, I think I have $42,000 saved up with the city in my retirement fund. So if I decided today to quit firefighting, I would get that $42,000 back. If I stay in for at least 10 years, then that starts coming in automatic payments when I turn $25,000. or 55 years old. Wow. So at the age of 34, you have one year's salary, one year's starting salary, saved in your retirement accounts, in addition to owning a rental property. Yeah. And in addition to having 40,000. So that's also one year's salary saved as an emergency fund. Yeah. And then I have a Roth IRA. So when I started firefighting when I was 29, I started maxing out the Roth IRA every year. So I've put in 5,500 for the last five years. Wow. And you have an HSA. Oh, yeah. And you max that out every year as well? No, no, no. I put in, I think the city contributes 600 a year and I contribute 600 a year.

But I'm pretty healthy, so I don't draw much from that. Wow. And do you still have your student loan debt and your car debt, or are those paid off? Oh, hell no. Those are long paid off. Wow. So you have done some, you've really set yourself on, like this is what I find so impressive about your story is you have set yourself onto a really, really strong financial

course and you've done so in a very short. short period of time. You started college at 23. So you graduated from college at 27. You're now 34. So you've only been in the workforce for seven years. During the seven years that you've been in the workforce, you have one year salary in an emergency fund, one year salary in your retirement accounts, and you own a rental property. Thanks, Paula. And you have no debt other than your mortgage. It feels so good to hear you say it like that. So what would you say to anybody, there are so many people online who say it's impossible to save, especially if you're only making $40,000 a year living in an expensive place like Austin. It's impossible to save. What would you say to the people who say that? Hmm. I think it really depends

at what you're looking at, what options you're seeing available, and how you feel about those options. So the reason why I'm able to do this is because my lifestyle also lines up with my value. And so if your values are to have nice things and to live a lifestyle that is going to make other people envious or is comfortable in a traditional way, you're not going to find what I found because what I found doesn't line up with that value system. But if your value system is to prioritize quality experiences that don't cost a lot, then yeah. Part of what's allowed me to do this is I'm really open to whatever potential life brings. And my system of judgment is not a very traditional one. And so someone else might look at my life and say that that doesn't seem like a high quality of living. But to me, it's great.

I enjoy it a lot. And I wouldn't do anything differently. Thank you so much, Kim. What are some of the key takeaways from this episode? Well, here are four. Number one, be resourceful. Kim tells a story about how she received a van as a gift, but not a fun van, like a pretty ugly, one. And she at first was like, what am I going to do with this? But then she found a way to really

make it something special. At the time, I was kind of like, what am I supposed to do with this? I don't want this car. So my friends, being wonderful, they helped me retrofit it. We put a mattress in the back and we got some battery powered LED lights, some fuzzy steering wheel cover and fuzzy dice, and we would take it to go camping in the mountains. And I feel like that for me really represents how we did things. We worked with what we had. We worked with what we had. And we would and even if it didn't seem optimal, we turned it into a good situation. Resourcefulness is using what you have to, as she says, turn it into a good situation. You take a look at what you've got and say, all right, how can we make the best of this?

Did you listen to the podcast episode with Vicky Robin? Vicki Robin's the author of Your Money or Your Life, which is one of the premier books on financial independence. In that episode, Vicki Robin mentions she says, you know what, I am not an expert in finances. I'm an expert in resources. And when I look at the story of Kim's life, I feel very much the same way. Kim is excellent at managing resources. And the fact that she's so good at managing her money is simply an extension of the fact that she's so good at managing resources in general. Whether those resources are an ugly car that she doesn't like or a house full of 12 people who constantly have somebody travel.

that she finds an opportunity to room sit for the vacant room while somebody's off traveling. She's very, very good at maximizing resources generally. And that's why she's good at managing money specifically. So that is key takeaway number one. Be resourceful. Key takeaway number two. Be flexible. One of the things that Kim has done an excellent job of is figuring out how to adapt to the situation.

The other thing that helped that the financial aid woman had pointed out is STEM, science and technology fields offer scholarships specific to them so long as you take a certain number of science and technology credits. So I basically made my major a science field so that I would get enough science credits each year. So I thought this was really interesting. Kim specifically chose her college major based on where she could get scholarships. Now, I know this is going to be controversial, and I know several of you are going to write to me and say, yes, but what about following your passion? But I'm sure that if Kim had a strong desire to do X or Y or Z, you know, if it was the thing that haunted her, the regret that she'll have on her deathbed that she didn't pursue that calling, I'm sure she would have made a different choice. But given that that was not the case, and given that she saw that she could get more scholarship money, By choosing a science-related major, she chose a science major.

And by virtue of doing so, as she shared with us, she one year got a full ride for the entire year. As an undergrad, that's rare. But she was able to do it because she was flexible about where she went to school, when she went to school, such as what age she was, and what she majored in. And by being flexible about those three things, she was able to put herself through school with less than $10,000 in student loan debt. And that goes back to the author J.L. Collins, who wrote the book A Simple Path to Wealth. He was also a previous guest on this show. One of the things that he said that has always stuck with me is that flexibility is the only true security. As long as you are flexible, you'll probably be all right. And I think Kim's life is an excellent example of this. So that's key takeaway number two. Key takeaway number three, save first and spend the rest.

One of the things that helps me save is, I don't call it this, but the idea that I hear referred to is pay yourself first. So I determine a budget at the beginning of each fiscal year, the beginning of each year. I don't know why I said fiscal. It's not like I'm going October to October. Each calendar year. There we go, thanks. Basically, what I decide is how much I'm going to save and how much I'm going to spend. And then I don't micromanage my spending on top of that.

So this is the practice of the anti-budget. The anti-budget, which is something that I write about on my blog, afford anything.com, is the practice of first deciding how much money you want to save. And when I say save, I mean anything that improves your net worth, whether it's making extra payments towards a debt or making contributions to a retirement or investment account or literal savings in a savings account. Any net worth improvement is what I mean by the word savings. In the practice of the anti-budget, you decide how much you want to save, you pull that off the top, and then whatever is left over is what you can spend. And that's pretty much exactly what Kim outlines. She pays herself first. She saves first. And then she doesn't micromanage every line item. She doesn't sweat about how much she's spending on toothpaste versus socks. She's okay with the fact that she can spend this chunk of money because, for her, you know,

First and foremost, she saved this other chunk of money. And that, I believe, is the key to sustainable money management. So that is the third key takeaway. Finally, key takeaway number four, frugality is not a tactic. It's a value. The reason why I'm able to do this is because my lifestyle also lines up with my values. And so if your values are to have nice things and to live a lifestyle, that is going to make other people envious or is comfortable in a traditional way, you're not going to find what I found because what I found doesn't line up with that value system.

But if your value system is to prioritize quality experiences that don't cost a lot, then yeah. The reason that Kim has been so good at managing her money and at saving a significant chunk of her money is because she values frugality. She values resourcefulness. She values flexibility. This is not just a means to an end. This is an expression of her core values and her core inner being. And that is what makes it work. So those are the takeaways that we got from today's episode.

I would love to know what you think. Please go to Instagram and follow me. I'm at Paula P-A-U-L-A-P-A-N-T. We will have a post on Instagram that has a picture of Kim and a little snippet from today's show. Please go to that and in the comment stream there, please let me know what you thought of the interview. Questions, comments, thoughts, anything that struck you.

I would love to hear that. That's Instagram at Paula Pant. Thank you for sticking with us to the end of the show. Coming up on future episodes of the Afford Anything podcast, we have an interview with behavioral economist Stephen Wendell. He is the head of behavioral science at Morningstar, which is an investment research firm. And he's going to come on this show to talk further about that gap between intention and action. Make sure that you don't miss that episode by subscribing to this show in

your favorite podcast player. So whatever it is that you're using to listen to podcasts, whether that's Apple, Stitcher, Spotify, however it is that you like to listen to podcast, please go into that podcast player and hit the subscribe button. That way you won't miss any of the upcoming episodes. Also, while you're there, please leave a review. As of the time that I'm recording this, we have 591 ratings on iTunes. We're so close to crossing the 600 mark, so please help us cross that 600 mark. Leave a review of this show in whatever app you use to listen to podcasts. And if you're on a computer, you can also go to afford anything.com slash iTunes.

That will take you to the iTunes page where you can leave a review there. Thanks so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast. I'll catch you next week.