Afford Anything - How We Slashed Our Costs 70 Percent and Gained Happiness -- with Scott Rieckens

Episode Date: May 28, 2018

#131: Scott Rieckens and his wife Taylor enjoyed a classic Southern California lifestyle. They lived near a gorgeous beach in sunny San Diego. They frequently dined at sushi restaurants. They drove a BMW. But after the birth of their daughter, everything changed. Taylor, an intelligent, career-driven, independent woman, suddenly didn't want to spend any time away from her new baby girl. And Scott had no idea what to do. Their luxury lifestyle depended on dual incomes. At first, he tried to come up with a million-dollar idea. If he could just create a wildly successful business, he thought, he could fix this problem. He started binge-listening to podcasts, trying to figure out how to pull in seven figures, fast. Then he discovered the financial independence movement. And suddenly everything made a lot more sense. Scott realized that if they gave up their consumption habits -- if they moved to an area with a lower cost-of-living, drove less expensive vehicles, or maybe even lived in an RV for awhile -- they could enjoy the life they wanted. They could trade luxury labels for time-freedom. He crunched a few numbers and realized that they could reduce their spending by 70 percent. But it would require HUGE changes, including an out-of-state move. He wondered how to suggest this idea to his wife. ______ What did Scott say? How did Taylor come on-board? And (spoiler alert!) ... how did they get so enthusiastic about financial independence that they decided to create a documentary about their journey into this lifestyle? 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 comes with a cost. Everything has a trade-off. And so the question is, what's most important to you? And that question applies to every arena of your life, your money, your time, your energy, anything that you have that's a scarce or a limited resource. Now, figuring out how to answer this question in a way that's wise

is really a lifetime practice. and often there's a lot of screw-ups along the way. This podcast is here to help you figure that out. My name is Paula Pant. I'm the host of the Afford Anything podcast, and today I'd like to tell you a little story about a couple named Scott and Taylor. Once upon a time, a few years ago,

Scott and Taylor lived a charmed, beautiful, very enviable Southern California lifestyle. They lived on a gorgeous beach in San Diego. They dined at sushi restaurants. They owned a BMW. They had that perfect life. and that might have gone on indefinitely, were it not for one major change. They had a baby.

And when that happened, Taylor suddenly, her priorities shifted. She didn't want to spend any time away from that baby. And that, for the first time ever, introduced the idea that perhaps they might become a one-income family. That wasn't something that they had ever planned on. And the lifestyle that they were living, the lifestyle that they had developed depended on dual incomes. So what next? What were they supposed to do? I won't give away any of the ending.

I'll let Scott tell it in his own words. But here's a quick spoiler alert. Their journey led them into the path of financial independence. And they are now filming a documentary about that journey. Here to tell you all about this story is Scott Rickens. Hey, Scott. Hi, Paula. It's good to hear your voice again.

Okay, so behind the scenes, the reason. The reason that's funny is because Scott and I've been talking for like 45 minutes and I finally just pressed record. We should be recording this call. There's some gold happening here. Well, when you're catching up with old friends, right? I mean, it just comes natural. So you and I, a little backstory. So the reason that we're old friends is because we hung out together in Ecuador at the Chautauqua for a week. Which was an amazing experience. Yeah. That came about because you happened to listen to a podcast while you were driving to work one day. And like five months later, you were in Ecuador.

What happened that day that you were driving to work listening to a podcast and how did that eventually start a chain reaction that caused you to go to Ecuador, move to Oregon, and then be on the Skype call with me? Oh, my gosh. Well, I actually owe it all to my wife. My wife, her name's Taylor, and you also met her in Ecuador. And she was very, very unhappy. And she was unhappy because she had to go back to work. We had just had our first daughter, our only daughter, and she was going through, I don't know if it's postpartum or anything like that, but she was going through this thing that I'm sure most mothers go

through where she did not want to spend any time away from that baby. And so that was the first time I ever realized or thought about the idea of Taylor not working because she's always been fairly career-driven. She's, you know, incredibly intelligent and good at what she does. brings a lot of value to the project she's on. And so what does she do? She's in recruitment. Actually, her mom started a recruiting company up here in Seattle like 25 years ago.

And her sister took over the company, I think about 10 years ago. And then Taylor joined five or six years ago. So it's a family-run company and very proud of all of them. They're fantastic. But I never considered the possibility of her not doing that. Not that it wouldn't ever happen, but we were just beginning our careers, you know, we were kind of just in the upswing in our early 30s. All of a sudden, there was this stark realization that Taylor was staring at me and being like, I don't want to,

I don't want to work anymore. Like, I hate this idea of going back. And, you know, this was attributed to early motherhood and figuring all that out. But at the time, I was like freaking out. Oh my gosh. Okay. Well, my personality is like, okay, well, I'll do everything I can. Try to to help. And so I was walking our baby every night because that was the only way we could get her to go sleep and I would have to walk sometimes for three or four or five hours just to make sure that she slept long enough. And I started enjoying it because I started like finding podcasts and I would like learn as I walked and I was also getting exercise and it was actually kind of nice, you know, other than you having like a really heavy backpack on the front of you started to mess

with my back a little bit. But yeah, I was doing a lot of research on podcasts to try to figure out how to crack this case to try to solve this problem for Taylor. And my initial instinct was to go to, well, how do I come up with a million dollar idea? You know, how do I come up with something that completely changes the wealth game for us so that we literally could retire early? Because we lived in a very high cost of living area. So whatever we did to have Taylor stop working had to be drastic. And so I kind of went down that rabbit hole because I'm an entrepreneur. That was the thing that made sense to me. So I was listening to Pat Flynn. I was listening to Tim Ferriss. I was listen to these people that talk about growth hacking and, you know, entrepreneurship and trying

to raise money. I listened to the entire like Y Combinator podcast, you know, trying to figure out how startup culture works and how do you raise capital. And anyway, yeah, one day was driving to work and just popped in another Tim Ferriss podcast. And what struck me about this one was he introduced the guest who was Mr. Money Mustache as like one of the most requested interviews he's ever had. and he was surprised that it took this long to get him on the podcast. And I just thought, like, wow, you know, I've been listening to this podcast for a long time. And some of the most amazing minds of our time have already been on this podcast, I've already listened to those episodes. Who is this guy who is the most requested, you know, and how have I not heard of him before?

Especially with a name like that, I would have remembered, right, Mr. Money Mustache. So that kind of caught my attention. And then within about 15 minutes into that interview, I think they had done a fairly good job of kind of briefly explaining why Mr. Money Mustache was a highly requested guest. And basically he was hacking life to live as free as anyone I had ever heard of. I pulled over to the side of the road and made an excuse to be late to work and listened to the whole thing. I mean, it was, it was like, holy cow. And it opened up the opportunities and possibilities, not only for this in front of my face problem of Taylor not wanting to work, but on a broader scale for our entire life, I felt like I was suddenly doing everything wrong and here was a way to do it right.

That was like my initial feeling. And it was just, it was profound. And I later found out it's called like a Harajuku moment. At least that was coined by Malcolm Gladwell. And it's like a moment in time when you realize like something needs to change immediately. And that was it for me. It was like, okay, wait a minute. my savings rate is more powerful than my earning rate in my case, you know, that seems more

actionable. I don't have to start a million dollar company. I don't have to come up with this brilliant idea that was, I found out later was stressing me the hell out, making me unhappy. I enjoy coming up with ideas. I enjoy the process of thinking how something could be better. That's kind of my world to some extent. But having the pressure to come up with that is not fun. You know, it's more when it's natural when it comes to you. To be able to let that go and then start focusing on learning the habits and tactics and strategies behind this idea of fire was fun. It was immediate. There was instant gratification involved for us because we were spending at a high rate and frivolously on things we didn't need.

But at the time, we probably thought we did need them, you know? So, yeah, that instant gratification was there and it was like, oh, my gosh. And so that's why it hit me like such a hurricane. It was just a storm of positivity and this gratification happening left and right, for me anyway. So that's my induction story to fire to some extent, I guess. Tell me about some of those first cuts. So you said that there were a lot of things that you thought you needed, but then upon further reflection, it turns out that you didn't need them. So essentially you kind of redefined what's a need and what's a want.

What were some of those things and how did you redefine those items, those purchases? You know, if I think back to those early stages, I probably went for the easy stuff, the low-hanging fruit. And as I think about that now, I would inverse this tree. But at the time, the low-hanging fruit was like the daily Starbucks runs, you know, the constant Amazon like, oh, you know what, I need that. Oh, and Amazon can get that for me in a day. So I'm just going to click that button quick.

You know, I just don't feel like cooking tonight. And so because I don't feel like cooking tonight, I'm going to see if I can convince my wife that sushi is a good idea tonight and we'll make it a fun game. It's funny because we always tried, we always had the intent of being good budgeters, right? We never got into debt, but we'd always be like, oh, you know, we don't need to be going to sushi twice. We don't need to be going out to restaurants. But then, like, Thursday night would hit and you've cooked in the house three nights in a row and you're kind of tired of what you have. You don't feel like going to the grocery store because you worked all day. your baby needs to eat in the next 30 minutes and you're just like screw it you know

I'm gonna go to sushi because I can afford it was the idea I think and and it'll bring us some level of happiness and sometimes we kind of argue about it it's never like serious but it's like yeah we really don't you know Taylor was way better about that than I was I was usually instigator so those were the initial things that we would start to cut back on I was more conscious of it I was definitely doing Starbucks run every morning I could talk myself into anything Paula I mean you know, I could afford anything, you know. You could afford everything. But not everything.

Yeah. I, you know, I remember going to Starbucks in the morning and justifying it as, yes, I have a coffee machine here and yes, I have breakfast food in the pantry. But by going to Starbucks, it takes me, you know, seven minutes to get in and out with a mobile order. Whereas if I cook myself breakfast and get myself a cup of coffee, it's going to take 15 to 20. And I need that sleep because I have a small baby and she doesn't sleep much. and, you know, I can justify anything. And so I'm actually gaining time sleeping, which is making me better at work. And then when I get to work, I'm already fired up and ready to go, as opposed to if I

use their coffee, you know? And that was the other side of it was that my work also offered like amazing coffee for us every day. And yet I was going to Starbucks. Like, what the hell? I was surrounded by free coffee and I still found a reason to buy it, you know? It's unbelievable. Now that I think about that.

But at the time, I was so justified. and everything was fine. So those were the initial low-hanging fruit things that I started to work on on myself. And Taylor was fairly good at it already, to be honest. I mean, she was kind of naturally frugal that way. And I was the one that kind of lost my way, I think, on that front. But it's not to say that she didn't have her own vices. We started looking around once the Starbucks habit was well taken care of, and the restaurant thing was starting to die down a bit, we started looking at the bigger stuff. I started looking at the bigger stuff. Taylor didn't actually come around to this right away, but started looking at the cars, you know, and Taylor was leasing a BMW at the time. And I had a brand

new Mazda 3 hatchback that I was leasing. We were leasing two vehicles. And we lived, specifically lived on an island, Colornado, where you could walk and bike right everywhere. And Taylor worked remote. I had an office, but, you know, do we really need two cars? And do they both need to be brand new? And so, yeah, we started just kind of scrutinizing everything. And that led to, we live in California. This is a very expensive state. We live in Coronado. It's one of the most expensive zip codes in the freaking world, I think. That's when it kind of dawned on me that we could probably reconstruct our entire life, and we didn't have a lot of excuses not to. And I started doing some numbers on that and started running some math. I think, uh, who said, is it Christy that says,

math that shit up? I don't know, but that's a really good saying. I love that saying. It stuck with me. I think it's millennial revolution, but don't quote me on that. And I'm sorry if it isn't. Whoever came up with that, it's awesome. Keep going with it. But I'll look it up and I'll throw that in the outro or the show notes or something. I'll find out who said that. Yeah. But I started around the numbers and I made a very strong case for blowing up our life to Taylor. But before I did that, I have to tell you, I knew that just coming to her and saying like, hey, I think you should move off of this island that you love and get rid of your BMW wouldn't probably land with her. And luckily, I had read enough on all the blogs that I was consuming. It was yours. It was

Pete's. It was Brandons. It was Jim's Liz's. I really went down the rabbit hole. I listened to a lot of podcasts. So the Mad Finesis podcast was like a daily until I ran out of them. And then I was searching for other things. I think that's how I found you. And, you know, it just snowballs. And I had heard enough about the mad scientist's experience with his wife and the whole, you know, them not being on the same page or she was not quite on board, but he was still pursuing this stuff. And I just, I recognized early on that I needed to pay close attention to how I brought Taylor into this fold, into this new lifestyle that I was strongly considering. And that I needed her support to effectively do it the way, at least I had envisioned for us.

Luckily, I just had this idea that seemed to work, and upon further reflection, it was probably like one of the smarter things that I did early on, but I asked her to write down a list of the top 10 things that make her happy on a weekly basis. And I chose weekly because I felt like daily was too, you know, instant gratification sort of like it was too close to like very detailed things. Yeah. And a month or a year, anything longer than a week was, it was too kind of peripheral, It was kind of too out there is like, well, what makes you happy? Oh, my BMW makes me happy. You could say that after, you know, on like the bigger picture stuff.

Whereas a week is just kind of like, what's going on this week? I don't know. I've got this and this and this to do. And so it's a nice framework to say, like, what's bringing me happiness within this week where you don't get two in the weeds? And she came up with this list pretty quickly and it was great because it was filled with time with family. It was filled with experiences. It was outdoors.

It was things that I knew that my wife loved and that I loved about her and that we loved together. And all the things I was hoping she would write down. And it was spent time with my baby and have my husband cook me a meal and good wine, but it doesn't have to be expensive and chocolate. And I went down the list and I realized a couple of things that I could sort of use to prod her in the direction that I was hoping to take her in, which was, there's only three things on this list that cost me. money making dinner wine and chocolate and dinner is an expense that's not going to go away and i won't

take wine and chocolate away from you buy as much wine and chocolate as you want if you come along with me on this crazy idea that i have and the other thing was the beach wasn't on the list and it's not to say that she didn't love the beach or that it didn't bring her happiness but it didn't make the top 10 we were spending so much money living that close to the beach that it needs to be in the top 10 to justify. Right. That was sort of the launching point, the foundational conversation that allowed us to have honest discussions where it didn't get into blame or shame or any of the negative emotions that we've now had to go through either with ourselves or with others. We've learned a lot about this now. But at the time, you know, we got to kind of skip over a lot of that and just focus on, oh, okay,

if we start scrutinizing the decisions that we're making, the choices that we're making, especially around money, in a smarter way, in a more sophisticated way, we can drastically change our lives for the better and really like gain control back. What we hadn't realized and what I think I was ultimately showing Tay was that we had let, and I say we with a strong we, we had let lifestyle creep creep in and we didn't even notice. And I think that was the biggest benefit. That was the biggest, like, thank you that I wanted to give to Pete and to the entire fire community, like, right away was that, oh, my God, you opened my eyes to the fact that I was, I had succumbed to lifestyle creep without knowing it. And that was the most powerful thing.

That was the most powerful gift that fire gave us was that hard punch in the face that we were definitely in desperate need of. But that took work to get out of that situation. and that's a whole story that we're currently documenting me in front of a camera. Did you ever make a list like that for yourself, a 10 things that make you happy on a weekly basis? I did. I did. And it was eerily similar, or maybe not so, right? She's my wife. And we have similar interests and loves and wants and needs. I think honestly, one of the only differences, it's not very interesting. We're kind of like the boring married couple in that sense, right? The list was very similar.

It was just spending time together. It didn't matter what it was. I think the major differences was Taylor enjoys running and she enjoys being outside, walking and biking. And those standard things just bring her happiness and calmness. And I need a little more, I don't know, stimulation, you know, so I had a little more like mountain biking and skiing and fishing and things like that. But that was about it. I mean, it was. And that was a lesson in and of itself, right?

We are aligned in the things that make us happy. So let's align our lifestyle around things that make us happy. And that should be pretty easy because we both like the same things. But we hadn't even had discussions like this before. And why wouldn't we? Happiness is so important. Why aren't we focused on that more often? You know, it's not something you have to think about every single day.

It should hopefully come fairly natural. But, you know, we'd been together for nine years and married for probably seven or six or seven. we'd probably never had that discussion on purpose. The happiness list was a really good idea, and it set the framework and the foundation for, let's get on the same page about being happy. And it's funny because we're not talking about money. We're talking about happiness. Yeah, so that was kind of the beginning.

And so that was where you saw the disconnect between we're paying all of this money for leasing a brand new BMW when in fact the thing that really makes us happy is going for a run. Yeah. And so there's two things on that front, right? If you get to the car, it's really, really fascinating. I think one, you have to have your lifestyle built, two, not need a vehicle, right? Which is difficult for a lot of people. It's not necessarily obvious or easy.

You know, there's a lot of lessons to be learned. I think Pete does a great job of that in a few blogs where he talks about a lot of people make the decision to go move to the suburbs, move quite a distance away from their workplace because it's cheaper to buy a home or, you know, something like that. And he makes the case that it's not because by the time you factor in the amount of time and money you're spending on the vehicle and on the road to get to that job from this cheaper home, if you put that money towards the more expensive home in the city center, you'd be surprised how close you can get to it. And you don't even need to necessarily buy something you could rent. That could potentially even decrease that cost further on a short term basis. And so make some great cases for that.

And I think that's a whole other discussion on utility of the vehicle. and how you can design your life around how many vehicles you need if you need one at all and things like that. And I'm very excited and optimistic about the future of that with autonomous vehicles and just, you know, the ride sharing in general, how easy it is to get around now. Public transportation, there's a lot of options. But we're very blessed and we're very spoiled, right? I love ride sharing. It's opened up so much. Oh my gosh, right? And getting out of a car ride and saying, okay, I just spent $15 on a car ride, you might think like, geez, I can't do this all the time.

I'm going to need to buy a car, right? But if you start designing your life around not needing to take that $15 ride all the time, right, or finding alternative modes of transportation, it can be far cheaper than owning a vehicle over the lifetime of that vehicle, right? Exactly. It can absolutely be much cheaper to rarely need to be in a car and Uber or Lyft whenever it is that you do need it. And if you use things like Instacart to get groceries delivered, all right, great, that's an Uber ride that you don't have to take,

Because for a $6 delivery fee, you don't have to go to the grocery store and come back. I mean, there's a lot of ways to avoid needing to own a car. That's a great point. Even over the last five or ten years, especially in major cities, the proliferation of things being delivered to you is continuing to get cheaper, more economical. It's far easier. You get more time to yourself to do whatever you need to do with it. So, yeah, so on that front, I think there's a lot of great cases to be made. around decreasing your fleet transportation and being very aware of that.

But back to Taylor's BMW, this was a fascinating viewpoint from my wife that I had never considered. She had never talked about before. And I don't think she even knew it until a little bit later on in our journey and our fire journey. And I wish she was here to tell you this story because she tells it better than I do. But ultimately, she was working very hard. She works long hours, you know. and when she's at work, it can be stressful and just like anybody else's job, you know. And she felt like she was working really, really hard.

And so she started to feel like she deserved to enjoy the benefits of that work. Right. Also, she was tormented by the idea that she had to be away from her baby, be away from her family, me, in order to work. And that didn't sit right with her. She didn't like that. And so she thought, well, if I buy it. at BMW, if I buy a luxury vehicle, then it's kind of like treat yourself, right? It's like,

okay, I am treating myself with this car to reward myself and to feel better about having to work really hard. And basically, it's like, I'm buying this vehicle so that I can justify continuing to go to work. It's a mask or a band-aid over the unhappiness. Yes. She didn't know that at the time. It was really more like, no, you know, when I, because I remember when she brought this idea to me, I've never been a big fan of luxury vehicles, my entire life. I did have a solid background in that. My parents were fairly frugal and smart with those types of decisions. And I always kind of also felt that like a luxury vehicle, it's like, why do you feel the need to own that? You know, like, is there, are you compensating for something? Like, you know, that kind of thing,

which is a little outrageous. I mean, some people just enjoy solid engineering and craftsmanship and comfortable seats and that's fine, but it made me uncomfortable to think that we owned a BMW. And so I kind of pushed against it. And I remember, you know how you're supposed to pick and choose your battles? That was one I instantly recognized as I'm not going to put up a fight anymore. Taylor was adamant about this. And, you know, so I helped her set a budget, which I secretly didn't think she'd be able to hit because they're very expensive, but she somehow found out that BMWs actually lease used BMWs. And it's like one of the only car companies that does that.

So she was able to find a lease in the sort of monthly price range that we had set. Since then, we've learned so many things, right? Like you don't set budgets based on per month. Again, you math that shit up and then you figure out what's going to cost you over like 10 years, you know, with interest, like with compounding interests where if that money was otherwise spent in the stock market or invested in the stock market, what's that kind of? car really costing you. And so we know that now, but we didn't know that then. And Taylor did not know that it was a Band-Aid or a mask, but she has since had those revelations. And yeah, we eventually pried that car out of her, you know, death grip. And she let it go. And kudos to her. I mean, she has come so far, so fast. It's been incredible. And on some levels, I feel like we have

rediscovered ourselves. And it's been really enjoyable to, like, meet each other again on some fronts, you know. We've gotten so much more aligned because of all of this. And yet, I'm not trying to paint a perfectly rosy picture. There's been a lot of lessons learned, hard lessons learned. There's been pain. There's been moments where we've gone too far with things. We're still trying to find balance in some of these things, these decisions that we have to make. There's, there's the whole society around you scrutinizing and looking at you weird. And there's all these things that you hear about or you read and just doesn't really hit home until you experience them. It hasn't been all roses, but there's definitely been some fantastic lessons

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Tell me about some of those hard lessons, those pain points. What were they? And were they ones that you had expected or heard about? This is something I guess I had peripherally sort of heard about, which was the idea that the fire community kind of sees itself as a bit of a cult. And by definition, sort of like us against you, like us against society. society doesn't quite get this or this is just a little different this is you know off of center so i i got that concept but i didn't feel changed on that front you know i still feel like me i didn't really grasp um or respect like how far removed we were from i guess day-to-day society

once we really started understanding all of this framework that fire had provided us i don't know if that's too opulent of a way to describe that, you know, but I did not fully realize how alienating it can be. Or, to put it another way, I wasn't prepared. Taylor was not prepared for the reactions that we've gotten from our friends and family at times, not everyone, but plenty of people who we love, who we've known forever, who when we're excited about something, we feel like we could share it with them regardless of what it is, and they're probably going to share in our passionate excitement or at least like be excited to hear about our passion or excitement even if it doesn't fit them. And we didn't recognize what I think we've figured out

to be that fire and a lot of the things that we're talking about actually open up a lot of, I don't know, it opens up a lot of wounds. It can make people feel judged. It can make people feel defensive and unintentionally, right? I mean, Taylor and I wouldn't dream of judging people on purpose. I think that's kind of like a baseline for us. And yet we were in our excitement just describing these lessons and these tactics and strategies that we've now been implementing and all these amazing people that we've been meeting and learning from and reading about and so on and so forth. We never thought that just by expressing that experience that we could actually elicit that type of emotion out of our friends and family of all people. You know, people that were

fairly good at talking to and have a lot of experience in it. is by far, I think, one of the hardest things that's happened to us is just dealing with that. Like, when you're excited about something just in general, and then, you know, somebody's kind of staring at you blankly back, that alone isn't very comfortable, right? It's not very fun. But when it's your family and they're feeling judged and you can tell that the mood has changed in the room, I mean, that's a palatable thing. That's a, that was something we did not expect. That was something that was very uncomfortable. It was not fun to do. It was not fun to experience. and we left a few of those experiences feeling really bad, you know, feeling really like worried.

Like, what did we do? What just happened? Why did that happen? And through trial and error and time and reflection, I think we've come to the realization that we needed to get better at talking about this, that this is sort of something that you have to practice. I'd love to hear your perspective on that. You've been doing this a long time. I mean, have you run into that type of issue? Oh, absolutely. The judgment comes from, and particularly on the blog, was where I really saw it, because, I mean, of course, Internet comments are Internet comments, and there will always be trolls. But the way that trolls get to you is when they hit upon what feels like a kernel of truth or when they poke at your insecurities. Sometimes the reaction that I would get would be just pure misunderstanding, right? Like people who would say, are you just sitting around drinking martinis all day every day? Are you sitting on the beach drinking Pini Caladas all day every day? And that was not very difficult to handle because there's no kernel of truth that they're hitting. It would be as if they said like, oh, well, do you just have pink hair?

I mean, no. And that idea is so detached from reality that I'm not even going to have an emotional reaction to it because that idea is just that detached from reality. There's no defense necessary on that front, yeah. Exactly. But then the internet comments that would poke at some type of insecurity, like your parents immigrated here so that you could have a better life and you're not even doing what it was that they imagined you would do. You're not even going to grad school, having a career advancing into some prestigious position at some prestigious company. That was tough. That was really tough because it hit that chord.

It struck that cord. That strikes me as something that I would never expect. Was that the case for you? I mean, I would never expect somebody to see it that way. So that would, like, throw me off. Like, what? Like, I feel like we're really off topic here, right? No, it struck a chord for me because it was a lingering doubt in my own mind.

Okay. So you had thought about that. Yeah, exactly, because the way that I was raised, you know, my parents had very prescriptive expectations for me that I would go to college and then immediately upon graduation, have an arranged marriage, and then go to grad school, and then get a job, and then either work for 40 years or become a stay-at-home mom. So they had outlined a very linear path for me that they had talked to me about since I was a little girl for as long as I can remember. And so deviating from that by saying, hey, I'm going to quit my job, I'm going to go travel around the world. Now I'm going to, instead of buying a first home for myself, I'm going to buy a tri-plice. I'm going to buy a triplex and live in one of the units and I'm going to house hack into my first home.

And now I'm going to buy even more properties. And I'm never going to have an employer again. I'm done. That sounds like an amazing life. But when you're deviating from that indoctrination that you had all your life, I could see why I'd be uncomfortable or at least a lingering doubt. Sure. My question to you is like, how do you deal with that? I mean, so you have your own personal insecurity about that and that's what it's triggering.

but how does that conversation proceed? Like, how does it move forward? Hmm. I think in part what I have tried to tell myself is that despite the fact that people, including family, especially family, can be prescriptive about the details of what they want. They can be prescriptive about the path that they think that I should follow. Ultimately, what they actually want when you zoom out and you look at it at the 30,000 foot level, is they want me to be safe, happy, independent. They want a set of values rather than a particular formula.

You know, they're prescribing this formula because they believe that the formula will lead to these ideals. But what they really want are those ideals. And as long as I'm meeting those ideals, then I know that I'm getting to the heart of what they want, even if the path there was different. Yeah, yeah, that's great. kind of reframing the conversation around what you're really talking about. Yeah, and I think, you know, that in some cases that's probably fairly easy. And in other cases, it's more difficult depending on who you're talking to and what you're talking about.

But I'll tell you what, this is the one thing that has really surprised me. And honestly, it's encouraged me, too. It's encouraged me to continue working on the project that we're working on to frame this as best we can to try and explain as best we can. as best we can, it's as succinctly as we can, what this is all about, but not just explain it, show it, you know, and that's the opportunity that I think we have that's really, really exciting and special is that we get to show. I mean, that's why Taylor and I actually decided to put ourselves in front of the camera. That was a, that was not an easy choice. It wasn't an obvious choice. It wasn't an immediate choice. My background is filmmaking and I'm

comfortable behind the camera. I'm comfortable producing the set, but not, not being the talent. so to speak. But at the same time, I think we would have squandered an opportunity had we not done that because we, like you said, I mean, we found this whole amazing community and lifestyle framework in February. And we moved August 1st. You know, that's a fairly quick turnaround. And I got this project started in July. So it was, you know, three or four months of pondering, thinking, learning, you know, and then the decision or, you know, I don't know, it just kind of like dawned on me that this would be an amazing documentary. And I started looking for one and didn't find one and thought, oh, okay, there's an opportunity. But that wasn't an immediate like, okay, we're going to film ourselves.

It was just, I'm going to go tell that story of the fire community. But then I realized, like, we're going to start doing all this stuff for real right away. And we can document that and show what it's like, you know, the hardships, the triumphs, the wins, the losses. everything in between and and hopefully also kind of provide a bit of a step-by-step framework for like if somebody hears about this stuff and starts learning about it oftentimes and I know I went through this. It was like, where do I begin? You know, where you start? That's our hope is that we can and by doing that the hope would be that with an end product that's entertaining, informative, and thorough that covers as many bases as we possibly can, then the hope is that the viewer comes

away with an understanding of what the fire community is about, who the people are that are involved in this and have kind of championed this and brought this to the forefront and what that story is all about. And then also, while we're learning about that, you know, you watch a linear story of Scott and Taylor going through this, wide-eyed and bushy-tailed. And, you know, you can see the nervous, fearful Scott walking into, you know, the Mr. Money Mustache World headquarters for the first time meeting Pete, and you can feel that, you know, and you can feel, you know, when we're living with our parents to try to save money, and it's, you know, month two. And we've got this two-year-old and our parents and we don't have our own space or time. And it was not fun, being

30-something-year-old working professionals living with our parents, you know? It's like, with a two-year-old. With a two-year-old. Like, there's some serious sacrifice there that maybe we underestimated. You can feel that. So I think there's an element of entertainment to that, but there's a large element of truth to that that showcases that, you know, this isn't easy. You know, there was a line that I heard when I first got into this. It was something like, it's simple, but that doesn't make it easy. And I love that line because that's what I was so excited about with fire was that I always shied away from investment strategy and investments in general because it felt like such a daunting topic to take on. And I was already sort of like a busy

working professional and the whole like investment lesson that kind of skipped me in high school and college. That I just didn't have the damn time or to be honest, the interest. And to find how simple it was to break down why and how you should invest through the lens of, you know, J.L. Collins, for me, the soap out to wealth, that book was just eye-opening revolutionary. I've gifted that thing like 15 times already. Jim told me when I, when I met with him recently in Portland, he was disappointed that the number wasn't 50, but if you know, if you know him, you know why I said that. I thought I'd be impressing him, hey, Jim, I've gifted your book 15 times. Well, that's not 50, you know. I can completely picture that too. I have that image in my head right now.

I love that guy. By the way, we'll link to that book in the show notes. Oh, please do. Yeah. Oh, maybe I can get to 50. a lot faster doing that. Oh, yeah. Now I've got a new story for him. But, you know, that book really framed such a simple path to wealth. And not just to wealth, but just to a, I don't want to say stress-free, but a much less stressful investment strategy where I don't have to spend a lot of time on it,

but I know it's in good hands. And I really don't have to care about it for a really long time. That was such a gift. It proved to me, or at least it convinced me, that this path was a simple path. Get your savings rate as high as you can. Embrace frugality. Maybe learn a little bit about stoicism.

Focus on happiness. Invest in index funds. Maybe dabble in real estate if you're interested. And set it and forget it. Like, okay, cool, cool. That's pretty simple. You know, wait, I can do that and retire in like 10 years or 15 years or any number of years that's less than what I was heading for.

Fantastic. But that doesn't make it easy. It's simple, but it's not easy. And the hard part is putting in the work and believing in it when you're not seeing it happen quickly and, you know, things like that. And so there's quite a journey to this whole thing. And we're just in the very beginning of it. But, you know, we're going to be able to at least bring the first year of what this is like to the big screen. And hopefully it's something that is relatable to a lot of people.

And there's a lot of lessons in there. And hopefully it's something that, you know, people can take with. them and even if they just utilize a few of the strategies that fire implements to better their lives than it's a win. But the best case scenario would be that the fire community that has to deal with these things that I've now experienced myself that I was getting emails about, you know, when I first launched this project and talked about it, I got a lot of incoming mail about, you know, I really hope that this project helps me talk to my friends and family about this. There's just nothing out there right now that I can really point them to. There's a whole bunch of

blogs and podcasts, but who has the time, you know, that kind of thing. Right. And if people are already in the habit of reading blogs or listening to podcasts, they're not, typically, they're not about to start. That's a great point. You're either a podcast listener or you're not. Isn't that funny? It's like podcasts are such a part of my life when you talk to somebody. You're like, oh, I was listening to this podcast. And I'm like, you know, do you listen to podcasts? No, no, I don't. No. How do you do that? I'm like, what? I have explained to so many people how to download a podcast. I'm like, wow, I'm teaching this person, I'm not just bringing them

onto my podcast. I'm teaching them how to listen to podcasts. And I don't know if they will or not. I mean, there's, I think, at least a decent likelihood that they'll never actually open that app. Yeah. Well, keep fighting the good fight because it's an amazing medium and it's an important one. But I, you know, I do empathize with them. I can understand why it's not totally intuitive to start podcasting all the time. Like I'm fairly unimpressed with Apple. Apple's new podcast app. And, you know, it's a little clunky. And, you know, Stitcher is, you know, an app you have to find on the marketplace. You have to know it exists. You know, that's probably one of the best ones to listen to on Android. And, you know, so I understand that it's not like,

wait, I just can't wait, is it already on here? Like, how do I turn it on? You know, I get it. We're all busy. But yeah, anyway, we digress. We'll return to the show in just a moment. Are you an entrepreneur? Do you sell physical products online, stuff that you have to ship to your customers? If so, then as you probably know, when you're selling online, getting those orders out the door quickly can be tough. So check out Shipstation.com, which is a fast, easy way to manage and ship your orders all from one place. Whether you're using Shopify or Etsy or Big Commerce or Squarespace or over 75 other popular selling channels, ShipStation will bring all of those orders into one interface, which makes it easy for you to manage, and you can do it from any device.

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So you were talking about the difficulties of some of the decisions that you made, right? Like you were living on this beautiful island in Southern California, driving a BMW, living what from the outside looks like a very enviable life, but you were still chained to your jobs. And Taylor still had to go back to work even when she didn't want to. And so then you made the radical decision to leave California to move in at least temporarily with your in-laws while you were raising a two-year-old so that you could save money and kickstart your journey to financial independence. And the day-to-day reality of that is tough, right? Like the day-to-day reality of waking up at your in-laws house when you've got a two-year-old and you've still got a full-time job and you're trying to make this documentary.

And then you've got the stress of moving and of living with new people in a new place. where you don't have your community, that's hard. You're giving me PTSD, just saying it like that. You know, I have to start by just acknowledging that we're not complaining. I mean, we were living this ridiculous, like, saved by the bell, kind of Southern California, BMW lifestyle, and complaining about it right now, right? And I just want to address that paradox and explain myself a bit. Like, we are so fortunate that we were not in debt.

we are so fortunate that we were raised by solid families who allowed us to get an education. We are so privileged to be in this country and to be born into this country. And we acknowledge and recognize that. And I would say more so now than ever. And I'm thankful for that. So that's important to know. And I think that's a baseline that I think most people in this country should reflect on if they haven't.

And in any great country in this world, just to have that empathy for the people in this world who don't have that opportunity. So I just want to set that straight. But that does not preclude us from having angst and stress and negative emotions around that existence. And the scary part is when you don't know where it's coming from. And that's the trap that we were in. We didn't recognize what we were doing to ourselves. And honestly, I think you could make an argument that we had put ourselves in a situation where that would be the least obvious thing. If we're living in Southern California where it's always 70 and sunny and, you know, you've got the beach right there and everybody's fairly happy around you, it seems,

and you have access to like every new potential health fad that's ever come out in existence of the world, you know, it's started there. And so by all intents of purposes, it's paradise. And in a lot of ways it is. I don't mean to disparage some California. There are so many amazing things about it, and I could go on and on about them, and I love that place. And I was born in San Diego. I've lived there many times, and it'll always be a homeway from home, and we have amazing friends and family that still live there, and we go back, and we want to go back to see them as much as possible.

But we were spending so much money ourselves because we had gotten into this lifestyle creep of we needed to have this. Or, you know, that BMW thing, like, it's so sad to say, but it wasn't even that big of a deal. everybody has one down there. You know what I mean? Like it's, it's inoculus. It's like a Toyota Prius. It's like a corolla down there.

And you don't even notice. And so this lifestyle just kind of came, crept up on us. And at least for me, I didn't know what was wrong, but something felt off. Something wasn't right. It wasn't the way it was supposed to be. Or, you know, I'd go to that sushi dinner and I'd just be like, eh, you know what? And I'm like, why am I doing that around this tasty, amazing dinner that should be bringing me so much happiness that somebody had to go out and catch this fish and this fish gave up

its life so that I could eat this delicious thing and, you know, and then this person prepared it for me and it's like the most amazing taste in my mouth. But then when I'm done, I'm just like, eh, and it's because I got desensitized to all of this. We were desensitized to this lifestyle. And what we found out later was just that this stuff is not at the root of happiness. I had actually never heard of Maslow's hierarchy of needs until I found the fire community and I believe it was through Pete and I think it was the post, happiness is the only logical pursuit. It's one of my favorite posts.

I believe he breaks down the Mazel's hierarchy of needs in that post and just explains it through the context of financial independence. That was an eye-opener for me, understanding that if you believe in that sort of framework of, you know, there's like a ladder to what humans need to be happy, that was an eye-opening lesson to learn about, you know, food and shelter and water, the baseline, and self-actualization is at the very top. And there's all this messy, interesting stuff in between that you really need to work out. And so we were so fortunate to be in the position we were, and yet we were, I was fairly miserable, and I didn't know why. So imagine finding this framework that lifts that fog. It starts giving me the answers. The gratitude that I have for that is just, it's beyond description. I can get emotional talking about it. I mean, it's completely changed our lives. And so that's the other fun thing is I just, I feel so fortunate that we have the opportunity to tell that story because how great would it be

to sort of pay it forward, you know, to give that gift to so many others who may be experiencing what I was. That's what gets me so fired up and passionate. But if we don't share the parts that are difficult, then we're doing ourselves a disservice, you know, as a community. And I don't think we progress. I really love the idea that the fire community's hook is, hey, we can help you get rich and retire early. That's a pretty good sales pitch, right? And I love that. That's great. Most people, if they have never heard of this stuff and don't pay attention to these things, would hear that and go, uh, go on. But at the same time, that's not really what's going on, right?

We're not just getting rich and retiring early. Like some of the most productive people I know are in this community. And, you know, they're not retired. It's just you're retiring from this paradox of wage slavery and community. muting drudgery and consumeristic tendencies that we're not even paying attention to. And I get it. I mean, I was a part of that. I am a part of that.

I still see it. It's just like my eyes are open. When X company comes out with new X product, I now know what they're doing to me to get me to want that. And I come from a marketing and advertising background. I was aware of these things. And yet I still succumb to them. So I can't even imagine someone who doesn't think about that stuff every day or that's

not their job. how hard that must be. And that's the beauty of the spire thing that we found is it's given us the framework to tackle so much more than just investment strategy. You know, it's tackling happiness. It's tackling fulfillment and self-actualization. And I've learned a lot about myself and my own ego and so many things. But you don't get to those lessons without going through hardships. You know, you don't get to those points without getting to the bottom. You know, you've got to hit rock bottom before you decide to make that change. So, so this is a very polarizing framework. It's a very polarizing topic to talk about, you know, to address these things like, why are you working at

that particular job? Is that what you want to be doing? You know, people don't want to address the fact that they always wanted to be an astronaut and now they're a car salesman, you know, and people don't want to talk about that. And I get it, you know, and I empathize and I've been through that myself. So I don't know. Am I going off track? No, no, not at all. You know, one thing that's coming up for me as I hear you talk about this is that we often forget that some of the people who are doing the coolest things are people who are financially independent and they're not necessarily part of the fire community. They may not have even heard the phrase financial independence, but Elon Musk is a perfect example. He's not working because he needs to buy groceries and pay for his utility

bill and covers mortgage. That's not the reason that he goes to work every day. He's past that. He is financially independent, I'm sure. He could live on the money that he already has for the rest of his life and leave plenty to his kids. And that's all taken care of. And the freedom that he has from that allows him to colonize Mars and have a dream of putting a million humans on Mars. And I think that sometimes gets lost. Like a lot of the people, the wealthy people out there are also people who are financially independent and they're doing amazing things. It's so funny that you bring up Elon. There's like reports going on right now as we record this that Tesla's going to have to file for bankruptcy.

They're not kicking out enough cars like they said they would. And so, you know, their publicly traded company is those investors are going to get really riled up and angry. And I love if you follow Elon on Twitter. I do. I follow him on Twitter, Instagram, on all the platforms. Yeah, yeah. Then you know, like, I love that he addresses it, but he does it in such a humorous way. Because I understand where he's coming from and it's exactly that point you're making is that I don't think they seem to get it. Like, he's not doing this for the profit. He's doing this to change the damn world. Exactly. Yeah. And it's like, it reminds me of an episode of The Office for the Michael Scott Paper Company where Steve Correll branches off, you know, Michael, he branches off from Thunder Mifflin, starts his own company. And he's sitting down and they're saying, you can't sustain. You know, you can't survive with this model.

You're losing money. And he's like, it doesn't matter. I'll start another company and another one and another one. Elon just launched like a rocket every 13 days or something like that. This last year into space, everybody told him, including the astronauts that went to space for the first time, that this could not be done, shouldn't be done, won't be done. And people are doubting that they're going to figure out the model. production line. And because he is so mission driven, you know what, if they can't figure out the Model 3 production line, every single person who is an Elon fan will kick over 100 or 500 or

1,000 bucks to keep him floating until he does. He has so many raving fans because we know that there's mission behind this. Yes. And so we can learn a lot from Elon, right? As a fire community, where we have enough passionate people following this that I think they'll do the same. They'll prop this thing up to continue the mission of trying to provide a rich, happy, and fulfilling life to as many people as we can. Right. I mean, that's our mission. And, you know, J.D. Roth set the course of my life on fire through his blog, telling me

that I should write a personal mission statement. And I thought, as an entrepreneur, how the hell did I miss doing a personal omission statement when I've done, you know, 10 of them for my own companies. Like, what the hell? And I, and I wrote one and then that transcended into this project that we're working on now. And as long as we keep that mission in mind, I think we'll be okay. You know, I think ultimately our mission is a good mission. It's, you know, trying to help other people achieve their best life. And it's hopefully a happy and fulfilling one. I mean, that's it. And what's on your personal mission statement? Oh, my gosh, my personal mission statement. Let's see if I can do it. I want to be.

present for those around me and those who love me, I want to live a life bigger than myself, and I want those around me to, no, no, that's not how it goes. It ends with, and I want to live a rich, happy, and meaningful life and help others achieve the same. It's something like that. And, you know, I probably always kind of knew that's what I wanted, but I'd never put it into that context. And the strength of that, the power of that is that you get to turn around, anytime you have a difficult decision, anytime you feel weird about a decision, even probably appropriately when you're, when you're making decisions that feel right is just do your best to remember to throw it through that quick filter. Is this helping me achieve that mission? Am I going to be more present by making

this decision? Am I going to help affect others' lives? Am I going to help my own life and my own happiness? And that's pretty simple stuff. But when you're not thinking that way, It's very easy to forget it and to miss it and to, you know, just skip over it or not even, not even know to do that, right? And it's like, what you don't know, you don't know. And once Taylor and I came to the realization that the lifestyle creep that we had let come in to our lives had such a profound effect negatively on our lives and we didn't even notice, I don't really trust myself anymore. So it's good to have parameters that are nice and solid. So I love JD for giving us that exercise and allowing me to, you know, start living my life with that framework and that transcended into the project we're doing now.

And yeah, do you have one? I don't have a personal mission statement. No. I've never written one. Paula. I know, right? Get on it. I'll tell you what.

The next time I talk to you, I want to know that you worked on it. You don't have to come to one. I mean, he even says, like, this took me years. And I'm sure I'll go back to mine at least once a year and make sure it's still in line. with what I want and what my life's about, but I cannot recommend doing that enough. It's fantastic. I will work on that. Okay. Awesome. Thank you, Scott, and congratulations to both Scott and Taylor and their baby for journeying into this really amazing new lifestyle, this lifestyle of having time freedom, having the freedom

to do whatever it is that you want to do without having to worry. I'm really glad that you guys are on this path and I'm very excited to see this documentary that unfolds as a result. In a minute, I'm going to cover the core takeaways. But first, since Scott and I ended this conversation by discussing personal mission statements, my goal was that in the outro, I would share what I've created. What actually ended up happening is that I went to J.D. Roth's blog post on how to write a personal mission statement. We'll link to that article in the show notes. And there was one line in this post that stood out. It said, quote, have a plan. so amazing, so glowing, that you're willing to walk blurry-eyed to work every day to make the money

necessary to achieve it. And I looked at that and I thought, geez, I don't know if I, if there's anything that is motivating enough for me now that I'm willing to walk blurry-eyed to work every day to do it. Certainly in my 20s, you know, buying all those rental properties and building financial independence, that's what that was. So at that point, I guess my, that plan, that was so amazing and so glowing, at that time in my life was to not ever go back to the traditional nine to five workforce and to figure out how to make multiple streams of income outside of traditional employment so that I wouldn't have to do that. That was the plan that guided me through my 20s. Now, in my 30s, geez, I don't know what that plan is. I don't know what next would apply to

that sentiment. So I still don't have a personal mission statement. I wanted to write one and share it with you in the outro, but I can't rush it. And I guess if there's any takeaway from that, it's that your mission and values and priorities do shift over time. And especially once you've reached financial independence, it reframes everything into a very new light. And your quest for meaning becomes, I don't know if deeper is necessarily, right word for it, but it becomes different. I don't know if that's a takeaway or not. Maybe it's just a reflection, but take that for what you will. Let's talk about the actual takeaways from Scott's interview. All right, core takeaway number one, if you are a low to middle income earner, boosting your income is the single most important thing you can do. But if, like Scott and Taylor, you are already high income earners, your immediate payoff

and the biggest 80-20 that you can make to your life comes from saving. I later found out it's called like a Harajuku moment. At least that was coined by Malcolm Gladwell. And it's like a moment in time when you realize like something needs to change immediately. And that was it for me. It was like, okay, wait a minute. My savings rate is more powerful than my earning rate in my case. Ah, the Haru Juku moment.

The savings rate for many people, especially if you're already earning a good income, your savings rate is more powerful than your earnings rate. And if you're not earning a good income, it's the opposite. If you are currently making $40,000 or $50,000 a year, you know what? Your earnings rate is probably the thing that you should focus on. Because if you double that, well, you know what, here, let's just frame it in purely mathematical terms.

Let's say that you currently make $60,000 a year, and you know that if you started a side business or a side hustle or something, you could make an extra $30,000. so you could go from making 60 a year to 90 a year, right? Compare that to cutting your car out of your life completely. Let's say that doing that allows you to save $300 a month, which is $3,600 a year. $3,600 a year is absolutely an important amount of money, but it is an order of magnitude less than the impact of making an extra $30,000 a year.

And so particularly if you're on that lower end of the income spend, spectrum, that's where your power is. But on the other hand, in Scott and Taylor's case, they were already making really good incomes. They were already holding this magical power in their hand, and they just weren't wielding it properly. So if you've got a high income already, you've already done the hard part. You're like almost all the way there. You've got that power in your hands. You've got those resources right there in your hands. Now all you have to do is manage those. So anyway, that's core takeaway number one. For those of you who are listening, who are already high income earners, your biggest power comes from knowing how to harness that

income that you are already making. Okay, core takeaway number two, create a happiness list. And ask yourself, what are the top 10 things that make you happy on a weekly basis? You know, we hadn't even had discussions like this before. And why wouldn't we? Happiness is so important. Why aren't we focused on that more often? I'm guessing that when you make a list of things that make you happy, expensive luxury items probably won't be on there. Just a hunch. All right, core takeaway number three, do you actually want to buy an item or are you masking your unhappiness through the purchase? Remember Scott's story about how Taylor drove this BMW because, not because she loved BMWs, but

because there was some aspect of her life that she wasn't quite happy about? She felt like she was working really, really hard, and so she started to feel like she deserved to enjoy the benefits of that work. Also, she was tormented by the idea that she had to be away from her baby, be away from her family, me, in order to work. And that didn't sit right with her. She didn't like that. And so she thought, well, if I buy a BMW, if I buy a luxury vehicle,

then it's kind of like treat yourself. So reflect on your purchases and ask yourself why you want this item. And if the item is, in fact, a Band-Aid or a mask over some other deeper dissatisfaction, then that's illuminating because, you know, it's not going to actually solve the problem. Solve the correct problem. Core takeaway number four. Join a supportive community because financial independence is a multi-year, unconventional, weird goal and lifestyle. And you're going to need that social support. And you don't

have to take part in Reddit forums unless you want to. Even just developing a community of one or two people, like you don't need a billion. Just one or two people who really understand can make a huge difference. And we didn't recognize what I think we've figured out to be that fire and a lot of the things that we're talking about actually open up a lot of wounds. It can make people feel judged. It can make people feel defensive. And then core takeaway number five needs no introduction. It is one sentence and it is beautiful and I will let Scott state this himself. There was a line that I heard when I first got into this it was something like, it's simple, but that doesn't make it easy. Those are the core takeaways from

our show today. Thank you. you so much for tuning in. Coming up on future episodes, we have an interview with Shane Snow, a brilliant thinker and writer who talks about how to make lateral hacks throughout life and work. We also, oh, major announcement. I can't believe I almost forgot to say this. All right. So, big announcement, big change. For the rest of the year 2018, we are adding one additional bonus episode per month to this podcast. This is normally a weekly show. show, we have a new episode every Monday morning. That will continue. The show will go on as it always has. And in addition to that, once a month, on the first Friday of the month, we're also going to

release a bonus episode. And so that'll be starting next month, starting June 2018, on the first Friday, we're going to release a bonus episode. Now, to make sure that you don't miss this and to make sure you don't miss any of the other episodes, please do me a huge favor. Go into your favorite podcast player, whether it's Apple, Stitcher, Overcast, hit the subscribe button. That way you'll be subscribed to the show and you will get informed of new episodes as they appear. If you want to read the show notes for today's episode, they're available at Affordanithing.com slash episode 131. Please, if you enjoy today's episode, leave us a review and most importantly, share this with a friend. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast.

I'll catch you next week.