Afford Anything - MadFientist: Life is Too Short to Wait for Someday

Episode Date: May 17, 2024

#506: "Today's guest, Brandon Ganch, also known as the MadFientist, reached Financial Independence (FI) and quit his job as a software developer at 34. But then he faced a vexing question: what should he do with the rest of his life? In this episode, Brandon shares his journey with FI, revealing the gap between the ideal life you envision on spreadsheets and the reality that unfolds. He talks about reaching FI sooner than planned, having more money than anticipated, and the adjustments he had to make to his lifestyle. It's a refreshingly honest look at FI that goes beyond the numbers. We also dive into the changing landscape of work and the impact of automation, artificial intelligence and machine learning. Brandon talks about what he would do differently if he were in his 20's, and shares valuable insights on tools you can use to stay relevant and future-proof your career. You'll enjoy this if: -- You're on the FI path and want to ensure your plans are flexible enough for life's surprises -- You're curious about the unexpected realities of achieving FI -- You're concerned about automation impacting your job security For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode506 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Brandon Gantz, also known as the mad scientist, reached financial independence and quit his job as a software developer at the age of 34. That was in 2016. Since then, he's faced a vexing question. What should he do with the rest of his life? As a scientist, he takes a scientist's approach to FI, or financial independence. And so he has had seven or eight years to experiment, iterate test hypotheses, And in today's episode, he shares his findings with us. Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that understands you can afford anything,

but not everything. Every choice carries a trade-off. That's true for your money, your time, your focus, your energy for every limited resource. This is a show about how to optimize your limited resources so you can live your best and richest life. I'm your host, Paula Pant. I trained in economic reporting at Columbia, and I help you focus on what matters. In today's conversation, I talked to the fiantist himself, a good friend, Brandon Gantz, who now lives in Scotland with his wife and son. We've been great friends for many years. He was one of my first

guests in the early days of this podcast, and it's an honor and a privilege to have him back on the show. Here he is, Brandon, the mad fientist. Hi, Brandon. Hey, how's it going? Good to see you again. It's good to see you, too. It's been so long. I know.

I know it was a fun day. I was glad we were able to get together. It's not often people come all the way to Scotland. We had a good day, and I apologize again for racing you around the city, but I'm so used to walking so fast, and my legs are probably twice as long as yours. Oh, it was fantastic. I'm such a Harry Potter nerd. I'm even wearing my Harry Potter ring right now.

And you showed me all of the Harry Potter nerddom spots of Edinburgh, which was amazing, just absolutely amazing. That was a fun day. I'm glad we got to do it. So yeah, thanks for stopping by and reaching out. You and I had some great discussions about financial independence while we were there. And I want to continue with that and share that with the world. As we go into this new year and not just this new year, but this new era, how do we, as people, need to change in our pursuit of FI, given the current economic conditions of this moment? I am an optimist at heart. I had like a one-month Kindle unlimited free trial or something like years ago.

And I read this book, I think it was called the Second Machine Age, and it was talking about how, you know, like obviously the Industrial Revolution was huge because machine took over from what our bodies could do as humans. So we got way more productive because we could have machines take over from what a single human body could do. And this book was all about the fact that the future is going to be machines taking over what the human brain can do, which is even more exciting because not only can we, yeah, use machines for manual labor, but we could also use it for lots of other intellectual things.

So when I read that book, and again, it was just a free book that sounded interesting to me. So I read it and it completely changed my outlook on investing and the future because it's so easy to get sucked into the doom and gloom of the current crisis and things that we don't even remember a month from now, but we're panicking about now. And it was sort of like a longer picture thing. Like, wow, as an investor, it's going to be incredible to own these businesses that are going to get so much more efficient. And yeah, as a worker, it may be bad news because jobs are going to be replaced or jobs are going to have to be. to change. But it's so exciting that as an investor, I get to own these businesses that are going to get so much more efficient because it's going to take not only the manual labor is dealt with with machines, but now machines are going to be making sort of the brain side of things even more

efficient. So that was before Chat GPT and any of this crazy stuff that's happened over the last year. If anything, in 2024, I'm so much more optimistic and I'm so thankful that I'm invested in all these companies through index funds. And I'm so glad that my capital is already deployed because I can't even imagine what the next five years is going to bring. But I really think it's going to be beneficial for investors. And they're going to get the dividends and benefits from all this technological revolutions that are happening around us right now. So what I'm hearing is participate in the upside through index fund investing. Oh, big time. Yeah, because you can't pick the winners. Funny story, I'm a software developer. And way back in the day,

when it video was just coming around as a GPU maker. I was like, yeah, graphics are going to be a bigger thing in the future once. Technology improves and like, yeah, graphics are going to be a big part of that. So I bought Nvidia, it couldn't have been that much. It was like maybe $1,800 worth of Nvidia, I think, because I went back in my email stuff to try to find out what I paid for it. And man, I paid something like pennies for it, which is now would be worth a ton of money, multiple hundreds X of what I paid for it.

but I sold it. So I think I made a profit on it like a good maybe 15, 20% at the time. And I was probably really happy with that. But then, yeah, it's funny to look back on that. So I'm glad I'm out of the stock picking game because, yeah, who knows what the company is going to be in the future. And the way computer scientists work, I'm sure they're trying to look at other chips that may be useful. So GPUs may not be the AI chip going forward. Who knows?

So, yeah, I'm happy to buy the index and the winners will just bubble up themselves. and I'll earn a piece of them. Right. And with the advent on the subject of Nvidia, I found this interesting chart. This was a few months ago back when everyone and their dog was talking about Nvidia, like back when it was such a hot stock that it was getting memed. And there was this chart that was showing the companies that really started to spike

during the advent of the internet and how there were several different kind of layers of types of companies that spiked as the internet was becoming more and more of a thing. But essentially what it points to is that even as AI develops, a company like NVIDIA that handles one very specific part of that technological processing, they may be the early beneficiaries, but they do not represent the companies that will be just skyrocketing five years from now or 10 years from now. Absolutely. Even if you know the trend and you know the industry is going to pop, it's hard to pick the winners out of those.

So I'm happy just owning a small percentage of all of them and see what bubbles up. What would you say then to the people who are listening to this who are 22, 24, and they don't yet have a heavy index fund allocation because they're young. They're worried about their careers because they are also software engineers or programmers. they're worried about what's going to happen next. Or maybe the writers or graphic designers or, you know, they're worried about what's going to happen next. They're worried about a career that they can't feel like they can reliably plan for. They also don't yet have a heavy index fund allocation.

And they feel as though stocks are getting more expensive. Index funds are getting more expensive. Assets generally, houses are getting more expensive. What would you say to them? I would say, don't fight it. I have a buddy who's a graphic designer. And I'm like, man, that must be tough because, like, I'm just using like mid-jurney for things that I would have hired him for and he's still working full-time.

And he's embraced it. He's using the same tools that I'm using and it's making him more efficient and better. And his design aesthetic is always the last thing that he puts all of his work through. And that's still really valuable. So like me thinking about hiring him in the future, I still plan to because even if I put something together with these tools, I know that I want his final. like polish on it and his final approval and say like actually this doesn't really work. This will be way better. And there's still value in that. So I think if I was a younger person in my 20s, I would be trying to learn as much as I can about these tools and integrating them into my work. So I don't work for anyone anymore because my last job was in 2016, but I still write code for myself. And I'm using chat GPT to pretty much 10x my productivity.

So for web apps that I was going to actually go pay for, that didn't really do exactly what I wanted it to. Instead, I'm just using chat GPT to write them myself. And then I have just all these custom-built apps that are perfect and are so quick to write because I have that experience. So I think that experience is still going to be really important. And becoming a really good coder is going to let you become a really good coder that's 10 times as fast. And that's still valuable. So it's not like someone who has no coding experience couldn't just go to chat GPT and write a really interesting app that people are going to pay for. Maybe you would get lucky, but it would be a really difficult task.

And it probably wouldn't be very well written for future expandability. But for someone like me who does have that experience, I can go in and I can see what is good to use, what's not. And I can ask the right questions. If you're in that career, I would still just keep going forward with it and developing. your skills because those skills are still going to be valuable even in the AI age. You know, both you and I have grown audiences over the last, I don't, 10, 15 years. And I think that's going to be even more valuable as time goes on because people know your voice, people know my voice. So getting in there and being a human while it's still possible to be a human online is very

important, I think, because in five years maybe everything's going to be AI generated and it's going to be very hard to pick out, like, that's a real voice and that's a real person. And I think building that sort of thing up before that happens is important. I feel lucky that I've done that over the last decade and a half without knowing that this future was coming. Right. The media can be a force multiplier, certainly. As can code. Oh, what do you code for yourself? What code do you write for yourself. So I have a really bad memory, but I wanted to be a way better friend. So like when I see somebody in that six months later, I see them again, I have friends that have really good memories and they ask me all these questions about certain things that I forgot. I even did six months ago. And it's

always really impressive to me and I really like that. But my brain just not good at it. So I just wanted to have like a CRM but for personal relationships. And it didn't need to be fancy. I don't need to like email and keep up with them and have I just wanted to like make little notes and it's been really effective. So I built I built that. I was going to buy something called Monica, which is exactly what that is. It's like a personal relationship manager. But it was just bloated and had so much stuff I didn't need. And I was like, whatever. I'll just build what I want. I also built like a macro counter. So I just wanted to type in all my recipes that I usually make, fill out the macro information for that once and then just click a plus sign when I make that for dinner. And then that whatever I make

for breakfast, I just click a plus next to it. And then it would calculate all the macros so that I'm getting enough protein and stuff because I was wanting to actually focus on that when I was going to the gym more regularly. So I built that. And it all just lives in the same app. So it's just like this weird app with these weird tabs that's like contacts and then recipes and then. Yeah. So it's weird. but it's, I don't care. It's like, it's only for me. I'm not selling it or anything, but it was just way easier than trying to find and then buy or pay like a monthly subscription to all these apps that really don't do what I want them to do. Hmm, that's interesting. So extrapolating from that, could you see a future in which people are customizing their lives a bit more or custom building exactly what they want for themselves? Oh, big time. It's already happening with chat GPT, just released custom GPTs. So I've uploaded all my Google Analytics. data on my website content. So that just lives in that brain. And now I can just ask questions about my

website. And it just gives it back to me because it knows everything about my site now. So that's just a completely custom GPT that just comes with chat GPT 4 or chat GPT plus. So yeah, I see, I definitely see that because although I said you probably couldn't build like a really complicated web app with no coding experience, you could easily spin up like a simple, like JavaScript's based web app, JavaScript and HTML, and that could have be a calculator. Like, I have a lot of calculators on the Matt Scientist that I've written over the years, but now a non-coder could easily write those because the technology is there to do it already. On the topic of calculators, so you have a lot of calculators on MadFcientist.

I know that you also, you're aware of Projection Lab is a big thing. You've talked about them. There are all of these calculators. There are all of these ways to sort of try. to compute what a future will look like, especially with it with FI goggles on. Now that you have been out of the W2 workforce for eight years, how has reality been similar to or different from your projections? Yeah. So it's actually been wildly different than expected. I started earning a little bit of money with some of the web apps that I'd written prior to quitting my job.

but nothing that I could actually live off of or plan to live off of. But after leaving my job, those same web apps that I created started bringing in more than we've spent. So I haven't touched the FI portfolio for anything. And in fact, I've been adding it to it at a higher rate than I was even during my working career. So all the projections, everything that I had planned to do and planned for was wrong. but thankfully it was wrong on the on the upside rather than the downside so it's made it a lot less stressful and a lot more fun but only more fun recently because it's only been within the last maybe two years no maybe probably just actually the last year that I've started to spend and

enjoy it rather than still just saving like a ridiculous percentage of any income I've I appreciate compound interest enough to know that I need to focus more on the spending now than any sort of saving. So it's been an interesting transition as a super naturally frugal guy my entire life, but it's been really fun and I've enjoyed it way more than I thought I would. And it's not to say I'm like this crazy spender now, but I've just relaxed and it's allowed me to relax. And that's been, that's been nice. So I can meet you in Edinburgh and we can go have a fancy whiskey and and don't even think twice about it, whereas maybe even four years ago, even though I didn't need to think about it or worry about it, I would have been like, should we really go to the Balmoral

and have a whiskey at 4 p.m. on whatever day that was, Wednesday, I don't know. Whereas now, it's just like, of course, that's a no-brainer. And a lot of things in life are now, a no-brainer, which takes off a lot of mental processing that doesn't need to happen these days, which has been really, really nice and a relief after a lifetime of, like, obsessive frugality. Yeah. It It frees a lot of cognitive load. Big time. What advice would you give to people who are using online calculators to project into retirement, whether it's early retirement or traditional retirement?

What advice would you give to people who are trying to make projections, given the fact that reality often does tend to look nothing like the best laid plans? Yeah. First and foremost, I would not put off life until you cross that line. on whatever software you're using. That's what I did when I was pursuing FI. I was like, yeah, whatever, I'll do this after FI. I'll do this after FI. For brand new listeners, FI is, financial independence, sorry. Yeah, so the ultimate goal line that I was saving for. And I was like, yeah, well, it won't be that many more years. So I'll just keep saving. And yeah, I'll skip that

bachelor party or I'll skip this and that. Or I'll wait to start this new hobby or this new passion project once I have no job. And it's like, you definitely don't need to wait for that. And it's a mistake to wait for that. Because if you think your life's going to be drastically different just after this number crosses an arbitrary number on the screen, it's going to be very difficult to start a brand new life from scratch. So I would say, yes, plan for these goals. The projections hopefully will be the worst case scenario potentially, start to live the life that you want to live once you reach those goals. And yeah, just have confidence in yourself to know that even if things don't turn out as you expect them to, you're going to figure out a way to

make it work. And hopefully it'll be on the upside, which more than likely, based on all the research of retirees and how much money they end up dying with is the majority of the cases. But yeah, I know that you can handle any sort of scares immediately off the bat and make adjustments if you need to. but more than likely, you're going to earn more income than you expect to. Your investments are going to do better than you expect, and you're going to hopefully be in a position where you need to figure out what to do with it, learn how to spend it like I am or learn how to give it away if you're a bit older. I would use them as a guide, but don't hyper-focus on them like I did.

Tell me more about how you hyper-focused on it. Oh, man. I lived in the spreadsheet, as Rameet likes to say. Remit Sethi has been on my show a couple times and has offered some great advice for spending. He says don't live in the spreadsheet, which is exactly what I did my entire working career. Everything was based on that spreadsheet. And that's something I've since done since reaching FI is I've stopped tracking everything so granularly. So I have no spending categories because I don't want the spreadsheet to affect whether I go out to eat one month.

If you know what I mean, if I know I'm reaching my restaurant budget, then I don't want to exceed it, and that'll change my behavior. And at this stage, I don't want to change my behavior. If I want to go out to eat with a friend or go out to eat with my family, then that's what I'm going to do. The anti-budget sounds like you're practicing. Yeah, exactly. Yeah, exactly, because just having that line item in that spreadsheet would affect my behavior. So I've scrapped that. I tried to scrap tracking altogether, but I didn't like that so much. So I still track, but it's super simple. It's just a change in net worth over the month just to see in how much spending there was total, but it's really simple compared what I used to. But yeah, I used to live in

the spreadsheet before and everything was decided off of that spreadsheet. And, you know, I tried to maximize every penny that I earned and invest it so that it would grow and compound and do all those fun things. But yeah, I didn't live in the moment enough. Luckily, not too much. We did it. We did a lot of traveling. We did a lot of fun stuff. And I'm glad we did all that stuff. But yeah, yeah, I was a bit too obsessed with the numbers in the spreadsheet. To the people who are listening, who are trying to run those projections and figure out when they can retire, that's such a big daunting question, when can I retire. Let's say there's someone who's listening who just isn't sure what kind of lifestyle they will want to have or may need to have in retirement. So their goal is to retire at 50 or 55. So early but not aggressively early. But if you retire at 50, that could, potentially be a 50-year retirement. Yeah, definitely. And they know that over the span of 50 years, a lot is going to change. Maybe they might have grandkids, they might not. They might have to take care

of elderly parents. They might not. They may have a love for scuba diving or for traveling around the world listening to classical music or for, I don't know, crochet. But they know whatever those hobbies are, those hobbies, maybe they'll pursue them aggressively. Maybe they won't. Maybe those hobbies, maybe those hobbies will change. Like, so much can happen in a 50-year time span. Let's say this person who wants to retire at 50, and they're now 35, how do they begin to think through all of those projections? Yeah.

So I wouldn't worry about it too much because I would just take what your lifestyle is now and sort of feel like it's going to be similar. Because when you get to that stage, you're going to know what you can afford and what you can't. So, yeah, you may be wanting to do the classical. traveling to see all the things. And you maybe do that, do that once or twice a year, but then you fill in the other time with the crocheting because, you know, that's a cheap hobby that you can do at home. So yeah, so I wouldn't worry about it too much because, one, even though I'm drastically

trying to increase our spending, it's hard because you get, you get used to stuff and you get stuck in the same habits. And a lot of those habits I love. So it's like, I'm not in a rapid race to change everything about my spending, but it's hard to change it quickly. So somebody who's a natural spender, you need to talk to a natural spender because I think your brains are wired completely differently than mine. But I know that my audience and the people that are pursuing early financial independence are pretty much wired like I am. So it's very difficult to drastically increase your lifestyle or change it either way. So I would just project based on what your current lifestyle is. Obviously, keep tabs on that and then update your projections based on your future current lifestyles

and things like that. But yeah, I wouldn't worry about trying to get it perfectly right because you'll just adapt. It's like, okay, yes, we could travel every month to somewhere fancy if we wanted to, but a lot of times you're not limited by money. You're limited by like energy or desire. So it's like I like being home and doing my routine and, you know, eating home-cooked food and going to the gym and being healthy. But I also love going to Italy and just like eating as much as I can shove in my face. but I know that I can't do that every week for other reasons that aren't money related. So you're limited by other things. And not limited is the bad word.

It's like because I don't feel limited. I feel like you do as much as you want to do. And so yeah, it's very hard to completely course adjust. And that's going back to what I said before. That's why I think like don't put off all these things till five. Start living that lifestyle now as much as you can because your job's not really hindering you that much. you can test stuff. Yeah, if you want to travel and see classical music for your entire retirement

and you think you're going to do that full time, that's great. But when you're working, you could do that for a week and go to Vienna and you could do another week, you know, somewhere else in the States if you don't have the money to go to Vienna twice in the year or whatever. So that's what I mean by like trying it out, integrate as much of that lifestyle into your life as you can. One, that's going to show you if you really do want to do it full time or whatever you think you want to do. Or you may be happy with twice a year for two big, two week trips or something. And it will show you how much it costs.

And then you can improve your projections from there. But yeah, just have faith in yourself that you know you can course correct as you go. So I wouldn't obsess about getting the perfect projection. I would just keep taps on it as you live your life and adjust accordingly. Do you think that kind of an inevitable folly of all of these calculators is that the outcomes can be, precise but not accurate and that precision can be conflated with accuracy? Yes, potentially. But there's also comfort in precision. If they were wildly imprecise and every time you ran it, it was something different than you would have no confidence in your choice. So I think people need that

precision even if it isn't perfectly accurate because I wouldn't have pulled the plug when I did potentially. If I felt like, well, this is just a shot in the dark here where I had some confidence that we're going to be okay, I think you need that precision. So I think it's a good thing. Just to keep in the back of your mind, this is maybe not completely accurate, but it's impossible to get accurate when there's so many variables in a human life, especially when you throw the markets in the mix. I'm making a note right now, the comfort of precision, or conversely, the discomfort of imprecision. Yeah, big time.

Yeah, if you have no precision, then you might as well just be going to a random number calculator and just saying, give me a random number generator. Yeah, exactly. I should do that. You should, yeah. How much do I need? A random number generator. Go. It's probably similar accuracy maybe for some of the tools out there.

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Oh, man, human life, which then factors into the markets because that's why they're so crazy. It's, if it was a bunch of computers, trading stocks would probably be more orderly. but you throw in some humans and then you get NFTs that go for $25 million or what I don't even know what they were going for in 2021 but yeah you get some crazy stuff when you throw humans in the mix if you told me 15 years ago if you told me what my postify lifestyle would look like I'd say you're absolutely nuts there's no way I have all the freedom in the world and you know I'm sitting in the same house for most of the year and going to the gym and just cooking for myself and when I could afford to eat out every day and go to Spain and

France every weekend if I wanted to. Yeah, I would have said you were crazy. But we grow up, we changed, priorities change. So it's impossible to predict what you're going to be like when you retire. So yeah, you can't fault the online calculators for not being super accurate when you don't even know what you want in your life. Having been out of the paid workforce for eight years now, other than the fact that your portfolio has continued to grow, what's been the biggest surprise. So the biggest surprise of reaching FI, this doesn't really have to do with the workforce, but the biggest surprise of reaching FI is not being prepared for money, not being a motivating factor in my life anymore. Money has motivated pretty much most of my adult decisions

up until reaching FI. And then when you don't need to earn any more money, it's not as motivating to do things that I would have maybe done in the past, not only done in the past, but enjoyed. So I'm a naturally very lazy person and money motivated me to not be as lazy. And it's a good laziness. Like it's a productive laziness. That's why I went into computer science because I was like, well, I could just write an app and then that'll earn the money for me and that'll be fine. And that's effectively what ended up happening after whatever, a 20 year career. It's a productive laziness. But it is, it's still like I do need more external motivation than maybe some somebody that's just a natural go-getter. And although I don't need to earn the money anymore, there's a lot of benefits

from doing stuff that then earns the money. The mad scientist, for example, I haven't been very productive on the mad scientist. And yes, that has maybe caused some revenue to decrease from mad scientist, but it's also maybe not let me meet people that I would have interviewed on the podcast five, 10 years ago. So now I don't have those relationships either. So that's been the biggest, the biggest thing is like not having that as a motivating factor in my life. But over the last year of spending more, now that's sort of creeping back in, it's like, oh, spending money is fun.

So maybe earning more money to just spend or to give away would be something that would be exciting. So it's sort of creeping back in as a motivation in my life, which is maybe gonna make me more productive from a, I don't know, software sense or a metfinding sense or a music sense or any of the hobbies that I like that could potentially earn some money. So that's it from that standpoint.

From an actual workforce standpoint, standpoint, there's not too much that surprised me because I definitely don't miss meetings. I definitely don't miss bosses. I must have been a terrible person to manage because I always feel like I know best and I argue my point and don't just accept do it this way. So I feel bad for all my old managers and stuff. So now I'm the boss and I'm just a very lenient boss that lets me not too much work. But yeah, there's really nothing that surprised me from that standpoint. That's all been pretty good. Like, I still meet up with old colleagues from actually my first job. But, yeah, no, I don't think I miss, like, the office environment or the office camaraderie

because I didn't really have that in later jobs. So it was my first job. I had a lot of good friends that I still keep in touch with. But I don't think there was anything too surprising from that. It's pretty good not having to go into an office and sit through pointless meetings. So I'm happy with that. What does motivate you now? Yeah.

So the whole reason I wanted to reach financial independence was I was, I wanted to achieve my lifelong childhood dream. Music has been the biggest thing in my life since I was a early preteen. I went to my first concert when I was, I think 12 with my buddies, which just happened to be Jeff Buckley opening up for Julia in Hatfield. So I can't believe I saw Jeff Buckley, which is wild. And then the second concert was all Oasis in a small club in Pittsburgh before right when What's the Story Morning Glory came out. So anyway, music has been a huge, huge thing for my life ever since I was probably 10. So I always wanted to make my own music, but I always blamed my job on the fact that I wasn't able to. So the first four or five years of Hostify life were soul destroying in the sense that

everything I had blamed my job about wasn't actually my job's fault. It was my self-doubt and my lack of confidence. And the fact that writing an album is incredibly hard, especially at the standard that I wanted to write it at. And it was only once the pandemic came around that we were trapped inside because Scotland was really locked down that actually had no other excuses. So up until that point, I still found excuses, even though I left my job and didn't have my job as the primary excuse, I still had loads of other excuses. That was the biggest thing that I still wanted to check off my list. And I did it.

And I'm still so happy that I did it. And it just brings a smile to my face every time I think how much I had overcome to do it. Most people won't like it. And it's not like going to be on the radio anytime soon. but it was, yeah, I just know what I went through to accomplish that. That was just like such a crazy experience and I want to see if I can do it again. So that motivates me and that still just comes from like childhood ambitions, I guess. And actually just played a live show a couple weeks ago.

So that definitely motivated me because it was fun to play my songs live in front of an audience that had no idea what they were meant to sound like for the first time. So that was definitely motivating in the fact that I want to write more songs to play live. So I think that's going to be a big motivating factor in my life. still, which is good because it's a hobby that I enjoy and it's fun. And then from a personal standpoint, I've had my son, he's motivated me to keep super fit and healthy. And I'm an older dad, but I don't want to act like one when I'm around all the other dads in the playground and stuff. So that's a huge motivation to get fit and healthy and remain fit and healthy. And then, yeah, as far as like it all is intrinsic motivation. At this stage, like I feel like I ticked off all the

things like that I really wanted to do like reach five and I wanted to get a grad degree and I did that when I was when I was still working and stuff like that. So yeah, it's just more, I don't know, I'm just motivated to be like a good friend and a good family member and try to have like really super fun experiences with my little immediate family here, but then also my further abroad family and I guess pursue hobbies for the love of them. So like maybe getting into coffee roasting because I'm super into coffee these days. Just seeing where my interest leads. But yeah, it's all internal these days. And yeah, trying to add money as a driving force because I realize that that's a good motivating factor as well. What's interesting to me about your answer is that

you've switched from an external motivation to internal motivation. So it sounds as though prior to reaching phi, money was the motivator. That's external. Oh, big time. And then when I've just now, when I asked you what your current motivations are, everything that you described was internal, wanting to prove to yourself or demonstrate to yourself that you could write an album, internal, wanting to be a fit dad for your son, internal. Everything that you've just said was internal or intrinsic motivation. Yeah, I think it feels good to do it that way because then, yeah, like I said, if I was motivated to, I don't know, reach some sort of download goals on the album,

them or something. Like that's obviously I can't control it, but I just made it as good as I could and I knew if I released it, it was going to be good enough that I thought it could release it. And that was really the goal. And yeah, I look back on that as one of my most proud accomplishments. Is it on Spotify? Can we link to it? Oh, yeah. Yeah, please link to it. That's the only thing that I care about. Yeah. Afford Anything.com slash show notes. That's where we'll put the link. Oh, big time. Yeah, it's up there. And actually, I got to show you this because it's the most wild thing. I've been the mad fiendtist since 2012 and never really asked my audience for anything or I didn't have much to sell or anything like that.

And when the album was coming out, I was like, all right, if you've ever wanted to say thanks to the met finders for all this free content over these last decade, then just buy this album for me because like I don't care about vanity metrics for mad findex. But for music, that could be the difference between like getting booked to play a show or not getting booked to play a show. So anyway, the audience was super kind. And then I got to show, I just got to show you this because it's not yet up on the wall because we're about to paint this studio. But let me show you. The coolest thing in my life. Whoa. What? Oh, my. So thanks to the Madfinders readers and listeners. Wow. It made it to 39 on the top current album sales

chart, which was wild. Okay. I was not expecting you to. Okay. Wow. It's so crazy. That is the most ridiculous thing that's ever happened in my life, but it was one of the most exciting things. And yeah, like I said, I wasn't motivated by any external motivation, but that was a super cool external thing to have happened once I actually completed it. For the people who are listening via audio and tell us what we just saw. Yeah, so it was a billboard plaque. And thanks to all the Matt Fintest readers and listeners, it got to number 39 on the top current album sales chart. and it got to number 85 on the top album sales chart. So top current album sales are obviously just recently released things. Top album sales are all albums.

So my album and my album cover was right next to Nirvana. Nevermind. It was on the same chart as Prince Purple Rain. It was the same chart as the white album from the Beatles. I was on the same chart as all of these unbelievable iconic albums. and I was number 85 on that chart, which is just mind-blowing. Growing up in the 90s, I was a huge Nirvana fan growing up. Nirvana, Nevermind, was probably like the most important album in my preteen and teenage years, and to be right next to it on the same chart is just unbelievable.

I have a PDF that I printed out when it was up there, and it's wild. Thank you to all the Medfcientist readers and listeners. That was a wild week of excitement. Wow. Describe the moment when you log on and saw that. So I was actually chatting with a Matt Feintest reader at the time, and he recorded it. So I got to watch my, I got to watch my reaction. I looked a mess. I had been getting up to that point to release the album. I probably wasn't sleeping. I was getting everything ready to hit my release date and everything. So yeah, I looked at an absolute state, but he recorded the whole thing. So it was just like shock. And yeah, the most shock was when I saw the album cover

right next to Nirvana's album, which was mind-blowing to me. So yeah, no, it was wild. Wow. So you never know what life in Philand, life after retirement could hold. It's so ridiculous because, yeah, you're like we're talking about intrinsic motivation. You're doing these things because you want to do them. So you're in this whole other league from what other people are doing. So if you have a ridiculous life or a ridiculous goals, it can get as ridiculous looking as you want it to be because yeah, you don't really care about what happens externally because you've you've made the money you need to make. You don't have a boss. You don't have to answer anybody. Nobody's really in control of you. So yeah, when I was playing the show a couple weeks ago,

I'm a 41 year old man and I was going up there with like these light up neon glasses on and I was like at first I felt absolutely ridiculous. But then I was like, I am doing exactly what I want to do with my life right now. And yeah, people may look at it and be like, What is this guy doing? But who cares? I don't have to care anymore. It's what I guess our buddy, J.L. Collins, he likes to term it a few money. I know he didn't come up with that.

And he says so himself, but he's popularized it within the Phi community. And that's what it is. It is a few money. Like, I don't have to answer to anyone. So yeah, Post-Fi life can look as ridiculous as you wanted to look. And it's more fun that way. Yeah, as I was about to go on stage for the show that I was telling you about, I was sort of like second-guessing some of the wardrobe that I had brought because all the other acts that had gone on before me were really like serious and like a lot less crazy as that I was planning to be.

And my wife was like, yeah, you're right. I'm just going to go for it. And it was like, yeah, you're right. I'm just going to go for it. And it was so much fun. So that's the joy of Postify life. You don't have a boss. You don't have anybody telling you what to do or what you can't do. And so yeah, live as ridiculous of a life as you want to. We started this conversation talking about index funds because all of this, your ability to retire from your job in 2016 and everything that has happened since was really built on the fact that you, first and foremost, built a really solid index fund portfolio. How do you resist the temptation to veer away from index funds? Because I think we all feel that temptation from time to time. That's where that 5%, I call it the fund portfolio, comes into play. The 5% anything goes? Yeah, less than 5%, anything goes. And I keep track of how much that is. And if I pick a winner and it goes up and I get over 5%, then I just sell some of that winner and bring it back down under 5%.

So that gives me enough to play with and feel like I'm doing something. Thankfully, I didn't get into any of the crypto stuff. I would be sad if I had any of that at this stage. But I followed it, like I read about it, but nothing seemed good enough to put any money towards at the time. So I'm thankful for that. But yeah, like I said, I just bought some long-term bonds because I think interest rates will potentially have already peaked. So they may be going down. So that may be a good bet. But again, it's all under 5% of my total portfolio. So nothing's really going to move the needle. But it's fun to play with. And it keeps that side of my brain that could potentially sabotage my long-term investing.

It keeps it happy enough that I don't do anything with the bulk of my money that's going to affect anything majorly over the next 20 years that I wanted to be in. invested in all those same things. And, well, actually, potentially, hopefully longer than that 60, 60 plus years, maybe we'll see what medical advancements we have over the next few decades as well, which is exciting to think about too. But that little 5% is enough to keep me from doing anything stupid, but also keep me interested in researching things that I maybe wouldn't have researched. And so that's what I do. It's my fun portfolio. You're 41 and you just had your first child. How has that changed your outlook on both money and time? Oh, man. I've never been so happy with my past decisions than I have been over the last 16 months. I can't

imagine how normal working couples do it, let alone single parents that are working. It just blows my mind. So I've never been more grateful for my past financial decisions than I have been over the last 16 months. obviously time is more precious now so I find myself wasting less of it which is great I'm really bad Twitter's my vice so I would I would read loads of Twitter stuff all day and I don't want to do that anyway so now I don't because I don't have the time to do that because any Twitter reading I'm doing is time away from my son or time away from sleeping which is just as important so it's drastically changed that but it's also changed my outlook on the future as well it was maybe two years ago and after the album had been released after I'd ticked all these things off that

I wanted to do. And I was like, I've seen the world. My wife and I, we've been to 50 plus countries and did that in our 20s and 30s and had a lot of fun. And I've done pretty much all the things I wanted to do. And this sounds morbid, but had I like had a bad diagnosis at that stage or something, I would have been like, okay with it. Like, I've done this. And I wasn't depressed or anything. I was just like, content. I was like, I've done all these things. But ever since my son came around, I'm like, no, I want to see him do all these things now. So it's like a refreshed desire to like live until I'm 100 so that I can see him make the mistakes I made and visit the places I've visited and all that sort of stuff, which I think is a lot

healthier. So I'm happy with that. But I didn't think it was like an unhealthy outlook back then. I just felt pretty content. It's just drastically changed all of that. Like I said before, it makes me want to be healthier so that I'm not only around. for a long time, but I'm also active and able to do things for a long time. And then financially, it hasn't made me much more conservative because I'm still, I still really don't know how I feel

about leaving behind a bunch of money and a bunch of assets because I don't want to rob him of the hustle of doing it himself and the joy of struggling, not struggling, but like being challenged in making your own way. So that's a whole other world that. But if you've interviewed anyone that knows about that world, you can send me links to those episodes because I haven't even started thinking about that yet. But yeah, it hasn't really changed anything money-wise. Life outlook, time prioritization, all those sorts of things. Yeah, my life is completely different than it was 16 months ago. Warren Buffett, who's 93 years old, he many decades ago, when he pledged to give away the bulk of his wealth, people asked him, wait a second, what about your

kids? Don't you want to leave anything to them? And he had the, I thought, best response. He said, I want to give them enough that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. Yes, that is the only quotes that I have in my head when I think about this stuff, and that is my favorite quote about this whole idea. I completely agree that is the best quote and strategy. Implementing it, it's going to be more of a struggle to get that balance right. But yeah, that exactly my thoughts as well. And that's the problem with FI.

That is a big problem with FI. I could do nothing. Right. Yeah, exactly. So all these people chasing FI just like me who were just racing to get there. And then I can do nothing and that is not great. And that's why as I've been interviewed post FI more so, it's like realize the power you're getting along the way to FI because halfway to FI, you have the power to do anything pretty much. And that's maybe the sweet spot.

So rather than race to the finish line, maybe just a lot. maybe just enjoy life in that sweet spot because you have the power to do anything, but you don't have the power to do nothing. Right. Exactly. And the power to do nothing comes with its own set of challenges, because then you have to grapple with the side of you that kind of wants to do nothing, but doing nothing is really unhealthy. And now you have to fight that. Yeah, the freedom to do nothing is what I was talking about earlier, where money is no longer a motivating factor in your life. So it goes back to that.

If you're halfway there and you got this investment portfolio that's going to just keep growing and you're still working at a job that you don't hate. And man, you maybe are in the sweet spot where you can do anything, but yeah, you can't do nothing, which is. Yeah, in some ways, it is a little bit of a burden. Or it's an added responsibility to, you know, when you have the option to do nothing, then it's an additional responsibility to fight that urge. Yes, absolutely. So yeah, you have to have lots of other internal motivations, which, again, if you've just been focusing on that number in the spreadsheets, you're not going to have that stuff. That's why you need to sort of build that stuff along the way. Right, exactly. I've heard, and I'm curious what you think about this, I have heard people make the case, I haven't heard

this inside of the five community. I've heard this in the general public. I've heard people make the case that a person ought to intentionally give themselves higher bills, higher fixed bills, like intentionally go out and get a big expensive car payment so that they have the drive to go out, there in work. No pun intended with the car in the drive. Yeah, yeah. I would not suggest that because I think all of the joy and the fun that I'm having now is the fact that I know my fixed costs are so low and reasonable compared to my net worth that I can go crazy with discretionary, one-off things. And that's really where the fun is. You get adapted to fix things. Whereas if you have some novelty in your life and you just get all these fun little things or fun.

It could be like one-off big things. And I think that's where all the fun is. So yeah, so like saddling yourself with a huge car payment that's going to stress you out because it is fixed and they want their money, that sounds like it removes some of the fun of that car because it adds the stress. But if you have, if you bought an old crappy car, well, if you're a car person, this doesn't apply. But I'm not a car person. And so I bought a 2012 Honda Jazz, which is like the UK equivalent of a Honda Fit. I think we bought it in 2020.

It costs like 3,000 pounds. And it's a car. It like gives me just as much of joy as any other car because they're all the same to me, which I know this because I've rented nice cars in the States for like a week or a month. And by the end of the week or the month, I'm like, yeah, this feels like the jazz. Yeah. So having that as a low fixed cost means that we have all this money every month. for these fun discretionary things.

And now that we've bought a house, I've been spending that on like fun things like surround sound systems and TVs and things that are, I'm having a lot of fun with. But on other months when we aren't spending on things for the house, it's like we can go somewhere. We went to Rome for a week and just I ate like crazy and didn't care about anything. Just was shoving so much good food in my face. And that's way more fun because it was a one-off. And now I have these great one-off memories.

So yeah, so I would definitely push back. against that advice because yeah you don't want to have something you have to pay but these things are just as motivating to me as having a high fixed cost that I have to pay because I realized how much fun it's been and I want to keep doing those so it is still giving me some of that money motivation back without the stress of having a bank breathing down my neck right okay so if you do want money motivation don't burden yourself with necessary fixed costs but maybe increase that bucket list of discretionary one-offs. That's right. Yeah, I have a discretionary budget that's way too high for your liking, but it'll be super fun to fill up those expenses. We're coming to the end of our time.

Is there anything that I haven't asked about? No, it's always changing. So it's a huge adventure still, which I wasn't expecting. Like I said, maybe 40, maybe a few years ago, I was into this, like, I don't know, this glide path that was maybe a bit of a funk, but didn't feel like it. But now, yeah, everything's changed again, obviously with my son, but then also with this newfound appreciation for actually using money rather than just stockpiling it and looking at it, which is what my entire life up to that point has been. So, no, it's fun. There's so many unexpected things, but it's a wild adventure and I'm more grateful now than ever to be on it. Nice. Well, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they want

to learn more? Yeah. So madfindist.com is. where all the financial stuff is. And then you're going to have that amazing link in your show notes to find all the music stuff, which is what I really care about. You can come to MetFcientist if you want. But yeah, go follow me on Spotify because that's what really matters in my life these days. But yeah, Metfcientist all on the internet, Twitter and Facebook and all that stuff, which I'm not on as much, but occasionally.

And then, yeah, you can find links to the podcast and stuff from the website and all that thing. So it's all there. But yeah, go to that show notes and get that juicy music link and follow me on Spotify. instead. Awesome. Well, it's always, always fun chatting. And it was great hanging out with you in person in Edinburgh a couple weeks ago. Oh, so good. Yeah, no. Great to see you again. And yeah, yeah, always a pleasure. Edinburgh, by the way, I have to give a shout out. It's such an amazing city. Just I want to like promote Scotland for a moment. Scotland overall is such a gorgeous, gorgeous

country. And Edinburgh in particular is like the perfect size of city. Oh, it is. Absolutely. Absolutely. Yeah. We were lucky enough to live there for six years, and it feels like a village. It's beautiful like a postcard, but then it has everything you want of a city. So I agree. It's like it's probably one of my favorite cities in the world and definitely one of the most livable, in my opinion. Yeah, absolutely. And the Scottish Highlands for taking long drives and being out in the countryside, the Scottish Highlands is just amazing. Yeah, that's where we are now. So we moved from the city to raid on the edge of the highlands. So I'm looking at some nice, mountains and beautiful trees now. So yeah, priorities change when you have, when I have a little one. So no more going out and having beers and whiskeys and fancy dinners in Edinburgh. Now it's more just hanging out and having a nice place to look out the window while you're inside hanging out with the kids. So yeah, that's why we moved. But yeah, I agree. It's Scotland's a magical place

and everything except the weather. It's amazing. Thank you, mad scientist. What are three key takeaways that we got from this conversation? The first key takeaway evokes the law of accelerating returns. This was originally proposed by Ray Kurzweil in a 1999 book called The Age of Spiritual Machines, in which Kurzweil proposed that the rate of change of various evolutionary and iterative systems, including technology, is relatively stable until it hits an inflection point, at which point it becomes exponential.

And we're seeing that now with machine learning and with the ubiquity of AI in everyday life. We'll talk more about this in greater depth in a future episode, but for today's key takeaways, Brandon, Matt Fientist, shares how he would go about integrating technology and approaching his work to optimize his success if he were starting today. If I was a younger person in my 20s, I would be trying to learn as much as I can about these tools and integrating them into my work. but I still write code for myself, and I'm using chat GPT to pretty much 10x my productivity. I think that experience is still going to be really important, and becoming a really good coder

is going to let you become a really good coder that's 10 times as fast, and that's still valuable. So it's not like someone who has no coding experience couldn't just go to chat GPT and write a really interesting app that people are going to pay for. And so that is the first key takeaway. Key takeaway number two, we often make these projections about retirement, but the reality is that reality does not conform to even the best laid plans. While it is imperative to plan for the future, we must be cognizant of the distinction between planning for the future and living in it.

And too often, people, particularly people who are on fire for fire, people who are really charged up about FI, run the risk of deferring life rather than merely deferring the spending of money. Now, that is not to say that spending money and enjoying your life are in any way synonymous, but it does mean that we need to be wary about times that we let the tail wag the dog. Don't let the money tail wag the life dog. First and foremost, I would not put off life until you cross that line that's on whatever software you're using. That's what I did when I was pursuing FI. I was like, yeah, whatever, I'll do this after FI. I'll do this after FI. It's a mistake to wait for that because if you

think your life's going to be drastically different, just after this number crosses an arbitrary number on the screen, it's going to be very difficult to start a brand new life from scratch. So I would say, yes, plan for these goals. The projections hopefully will be the worst case scenario potentially, start to live the life that you want to live once you reach those goals and just have confidence in yourself to know that even if things don't turn out as you expect them to, you're going to figure out a way to make it work. And hopefully it'll be on the upside, which more than likely, based on all the research of retirees and how much money they end up dying with is the majority of the cases. Finally, key takeaway number three, the dark side of

FI. So hitting financial independence is presented as the answer to many of life's problems. If you have a hectic life, if you have a job or a boss that is not ideal, financial independence is often painted as the great escape from many of those common but pervasive challenges. And so a lot of people are like, all right, I just want to hit FI as soon as possible, without necessarily thinking about how life will look after. And also without enjoying the present, which is all we are guaranteed. Not to sound cliche, but it's true. In this takeaway, in this third and final key takeaway, Brandon, the mad fiantist,

discusses one of the pitfalls to undertaking the FI journey with this very common mindset, and he talks about how to adapt your FI journey in order to avoid that pitfall. And that's the problem with FI. That is a big problem with FI. I could do nothing. That is not great. And that's why, as I've been interviewed post-Fi more so, it's like, realize the power you're getting along the way to FI because halfway to FI, you have the power to do anything pretty much. And that's maybe the sweet spot.

So rather than race to the finish line, maybe just enjoy life in that sweet spot because you have the power to do anything, but you don't have the power to do nothing. So enjoy life in the sweet spot. Once you have built some wealth, you may not have reached financial independence. yet, but once you have a good deal of financial stability, you're in a good spot, you're financially healthy, enjoy it. Now, again, I want to emphasize spending money and enjoying life are not necessarily synonymous. If you genuinely do not care about fancy cars or expensive restaurants, you're under no obligation to go burn a few Benjamins just because that's what other people with disposable income do. What it does mean is that as you are made, you're under no obligation,

making decisions about where to work, where to live, whether or not to visit your grandma, even though that's going to be an expensive plane ticket, when you're making those choices. Embrace the reality that you have money. You're in a healthy spot and it's okay to relax. You don't have to race to the finish line. I love what Brandon said about the beauty of that sweet spot being that you have the power to do anything, but you don't have the power to do nothing. And that's a nod to what Warren Buffett said about leaving a legacy, a financial legacy for his children. Many years ago, Warren Buffett announced

that he was going to donate the bulk of his then $44 billion fortune to the Bill and Melinda Gates foundation. In fact, that announcement in 2006 precipitated Bill Gates, announcing that he would transition out of his role at Microsoft so that he could focus full time on philanthropy and on running that foundation so that he could better allocate those funds. The Foundation, the Gates Foundation today has a budget of $63 billion, and it's actually timely that we're talking about it because just four days ago on Monday, Melinda Gates announced that she is stepping down as co-chair. In any event, the reason all of this came up is because at the time that Warren Buffett pledged away the bulk of his fortune, one of the frequent questions that he received from the public

was, well, don't you want your kids to have that money? And what he said was, I want my kids to have enough that they could do anything, but not so much that they could do nothing. And that is precisely what Brandon is talking about when he's talking about being in that sweet spot, which is the midpoint of a person's journey to financial independence. It's that point where you've paid off all high interest debt. You don't have credit card debt. You don't have any of the kinds of debt that's stressing you out. You have a solid emergency fund. You're maxing out your retirement accounts. Maybe you've grown some home equity. There's a very comfortable gap between what you earn and what you spend. And so you're in a really financially healthy place.

Your net worth minus any market-based hiccups, your net worth is just chugging along. It's growing every month. Your cash flow is good. Your net worth is growing. Life is good. That's the sweet spot. That's the spot where you have enough that you could do anything because you're not hampered or hamstrung by money stresses, right?

You have enough that you could do anything. But not so much that you can. could do nothing. Oh, and not enough that you could do everything. Those are three key takeaways from this conversation with The Mad Scientist. Thank you for tuning in. If you enjoyed today's episode, please do three things. Number one, follow us on both Apple Podcasts and Spotify.

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literacy. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pan. This is the Afford Anything podcast. I appreciate you being part of the community. And I will meet you in the next episode.