Afford Anything - Pain, Grief, and the Pursuit of Financial Independence, with Jillian Johnsrud

Episode Date: March 9, 2020

#246: At 19 years old, after completing her first year of college, Jillian married her husband.  During their first year of marriage, they lived in a camper and earned a combined salary of $12,000. One year later, Jillian's husband graduated college and joined the military. They relocated to Washington D.C., where they earned a combined $60,000 per year. They saved half of their income and used that savings to chip away at $55,000 of debt. At 22 years old, Jillian and her husband adopted a son. Not long after that, they had a biological newborn. At 24 years old, they accumulated their first $100,000. Jillian and her husband remained committed to saving half of their income. This allowed them to buy a house in cash, invest in two rental properties, and invest in index funds. At 32 years old, Jillian and her husband achieved financial independence. All on a modest five-figure income.  How did Jillian and her husband live on $12,000 per year? How did they save $100,000 after three years on a $60,000 per year salary? What sacrifices did they make? And how did they transition from saving to spending? Find out in this raw, emotional interview. ____________ You'll enjoy this episode if: You earn less than six-figures and question your ability to reach financial independence Guilt prevents you from spending the money you’ve saved (“I can’t spend on X if I want to achieve FIRE!”) You want a relatable, realistic take on the journey to financial independence For more information, visit the show notes at https://affordanything.com/episode246  Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

You can afford anything but not everything. Every decision that you make is a trade-off against something else, and that doesn't just apply to your money. That applies to your energy, your focus, your attention, your time, to every limited resource that you have to manage, and that leads to two questions. Number one, what's actually important? Like, not what does society say should be, but what really matters in your life? And number two, how are you going to make decisions on a day-to-day basis that reflect that?

you going to make the trade-offs that you need to make in order to live your best life? Answering these two questions is a lifetime practice, and that is what this podcast is here to explore. My name is Paula Pan. I'm the host of the Afford- Anything podcast, and today Jillian Jonsra joins us to talk about how she and her family reached financial independence, despite the fact that they started in an extremely modest situation, and despite the fact that They didn't make very much for the majority of their careers. Jillian was 19 years old when she got married. She had just completed her freshman year of college,

and her husband had just finished his junior year of college. During their first year of marriage, they were both still college students. They lived in a camper, and they earned a combined $12,000. After a year, he graduated, she left school. He joined the military, and she started taking odd jobs. together they were earning a combined $60,000 per year and saving half of it.

When Gillian was 21, the couple started the process of adopting their first child. That adoption was granted when Jillian was 22. And not long after that, they had a biological newborn. And so this young family, not making a huge amount of money, making five figures, committed to the process of saving half of their income. and they used their savings to pay off debt and later to buy a house in cash and invest in both index funds and rental properties. There's quite a bit to this story, so I won't spoil all of the details. I will let it unfold over the next hour.

So here she is, Jillian Johnsrud describing how she reached financial independence. Hey, Jillian. Hey, thanks so much for having me. So, spoiler alert, today, you're financially independent, your FI. You've gone through quite a bit to get to where you are. So I'd like to talk about your journey. Let's start with Baby Jillian and take it from there. Tell me about your childhood.

We moved around quite a bit. I lived with my great-grandparents for a while because my parents were going through kind of a difficult spot. but I was a really anxious kid. I had a lot of anxiety. I was, I am incredibly introverted. So it was, it was, it was, there were some challenges there. I'm also dyslexic, especially like letters and numbers. I have a really hard time keeping those organized. So in grade school, it was difficult because I didn't appear to be a bright kid. and I had this internal struggle of like, I don't feel like a stupid kid. I feel like I'm smart, but no one around me seems to agree with that assessment. Wow.

Where, if anywhere, did a sense of confidence or internal fortitude come from? If you weren't the smart kid and you weren't the social or popular kid, then who were you? How did you form an identity as a child? It was Oprah. I would come home every day after school, and I would grab a Pop-Tart, and I would sit down in front of the TV, and I would watch Oprah. And that was how I got the sense of, like, her message was, like, there is hope. And things can be better. And it doesn't matter where you've come from.

And it doesn't matter what you've been through. And it doesn't matter what family you were born into. you have agency to make choices, to make your life different. And it was her encouragement. It was all of the experts that she brought on the show and all of the people sharing their story that started to convince me, like maybe, maybe there's something here. Maybe this is true.

And it only took like 10 years of me watching Oprah every day after school before I was like, Maybe she has a point. Maybe something else is possible for me. Tell me about externally the situation that you are in. There were some challenges. My parents had divorced when I was younger and my mom had remarried a person who wasn't kind. And it made home life a little stressful for all of us to kind to kind of be pushed together. And we kind of lived right at the poverty line. Some years were a little bit better. Some years, it was a little bit below that line. But there wasn't a lot of resources to go around. Did you live with your mom and your stepfather full time?

Yeah. Starting in second grade, I moved in with them until I graduated high school. My mom was mostly a stay-at-home mom. We lived in this really small town of 700 people, so there weren't a lot. of economic options because she had gotten pregnant with me when she was in high school. She never finished high school. She never went to college. So, you know, she would work at the grocery store sometimes or the gas station or, you know, just these little odd jobs, whatever was currently available. And my stepfather, he was a really hardworking guy, but they're in there just weren't that many options. He worked for like a fertilizer company delivering fertilizer or propane or things like that. It was very much a farming and ranching community.

What about your biological father? Did you see him often? Occasionally, occasionally, but not a lot. Did you ultimately have siblings or did you grow up as an only child? Yeah, my little brother came a year and a half after me. So my very brain, mom ended up with two babies by the time she was 19. And then I have a younger sister who's 10 years younger than me that she had with my stepfather. What were your dreams as a kid? I used to go to bed and there were three things that I would pray for. I prayed that I would be tall because in our town high school basketball was a big thing. And I used to desperately wanted to be part of that team. And this sounds a little silly, but I prayed that I would

be pretty because I really wanted to have friends. And as a little kid, I thought, that's all it took. You just, if I could just be pretty, maybe I could have friends. And I prayed that we would win the lottery. Because I really thought, if we just have more money, all of these, other problems would go away. All of this other struggle would go away. And it wasn't until I was much older that it wasn't until I got to high school that I realized takes a lot more than being pretty to have friends. And that money doesn't actually fix all your problems. It doesn't help you have a great marriage. It doesn't resolve family conflict. It doesn't take away racism. it doesn't teach people how to communicate or how to apologize or all these other struggles

that we were dealing with doesn't fix addiction or mental illness. That's all work that we have to just put in the work to make those things better. Money helps. Money can be a great tool, but it doesn't actually do the work for us. Let's talk about your journey with money. Tell me about your first job. I think my first, like, consistent-paying job I did as a construction helper, kind of cleaning up a job site. I was probably in the eighth grade, seventh grade, and I did that for a summer.

And then soon as I was legally old enough to work like a regular W-2 job, my first job was at a gas station. I worked at a pizza place, and I waited tables in high school. What happened after you finished high school? I guess to kind of rewind the story to make sense of that transition out of high school, when I was about 12, 11, my mom's relationship with her husband, it had gotten more and more difficult and things at home had gotten more and more hostile. And I had this moment where I asked her if we could move out. I more like begged her to leave. You know, I was just like, this isn't healthy, this isn't safe. We really need to, we need to live on our own.

And my mom was a really prudent, very responsible person. And she just said, Jillian, I can't afford to raise three kids on my own. Like, it's not a possibility. So, like, you kind of need to forget that. And we need to move on. I went upstairs and I just, bald. I just cried hot tears in my bed. But I had this moment. I had this kind of flashpoint that, oh, money gives you choices. Money gives you options. And money was the only thing that was

holding us back from this option. And I committed to, I want more options. I want to have more choices. is I don't feel like I have a ton of choices at this point, but I desperately want more. So I took all of those part-time jobs, all those after-school jobs, and I just started saving money, $5 at a time, $20 at a time. I was hatching my escape plan. It was like trying to build a rocket in the basement. It kind of flipped a switch for me of, you know what, this is on me. And like nobody's going to look out.

for me. Nobody's going to take care of me. I better figure this stuff out because I'm my best shot here. And so I ended up moving out for my senior year of high school. And by the time I graduated high school, I had $8,000, which felt life-changing. And I moved to Idaho to start college. Where did you move to when he moved out? I moved to a town over from me. I was about 30 miles away. I had gotten employment there that paid a lot better. And so I lived there and commuted back and forth because I didn't need that many courses. And I was an honor student. And for honor students, you didn't have to go to study hall. You were allowed to just do whatever you wanted. So I kind of batched all of my courses to where I could show up at like 10 a.m.

And be done by noon and then go and work my after school job. Did you rent an apartment? Like how did a lot? landlord approve you when you were under, you must have been 16 or 17 at this point. So how do you get landlord approval to rent a place at that age? I initially, my biological father was off, he had served in the military for a long time, so he was off doing something military related. And he had a house in that town. So I lived in that house until he returned, at which point I no longer lived in that house and didn't really know. where to live. But once I had to move out of my dad's house, it was like December in Montana,

northern Montana, which is very, very cold. And I was like, I'll just live in my car. It's cool. I'll be fine. And a coworker that worked at a restaurant with me was like, you're going to freeze to death. Like, this is a really horrible plan. And I was like, I don't care. It'll be fine. And he let me live on his couch for a few months. And then I moved in with some friends that were old enough to sign a lease. What were your dreams and aspirations at that time? I always really wanted to travel. You know, not having a lot of money growing up, we just, we never went on vacation. Like, we would go camping once year was kind of our big outing as a family. And I was obsessed with this idea of traveling. So when I was about 12 or 13, I bought a travel guide, like a clearance book of

visiting Europe. I think it was one of the like Frommers like Europe from $30 a day. And for years, I had mapped out these itineraries and these plans of how to how to do this big grand trip. So I honestly had no idea what I wanted to do with my life. I still didn't have like a lot of hope of doing anything spectacular by any means. So I decided that I wanted to take this trip. was kind of my big, my big plan after high school. And then I was kind of in a, I'll figure it out after that's done mentality. But over my senior year, after I graduated, I went to, I don't know, like a church camp thing. And I wouldn't say that I was very religious in high school, but like it seemed kind of familiar and comfortable, the idea of faith. But it was over that summer that I was like,

huh, maybe there's something more to this for me. So I scratched my plan to go to Europe and I went to college instead. What did you study and how did you pay for college? I didn't really have a direction, but I knew a couple of other kids that were attending this Bible college and I was like, I'll show up for six months, we'll see. And I used all of that money that I was going to go to Europe with at $8,000. And I bought myself a camper, like a 1980s 30-foot camper. And I moved into it. And it was amazing for me. Granted, it was ugly. And like nobody lived in campers. So it definitely was not cool. This is like way before tiny houses or like van life. But it was amazing to have my own space, like something that was mine and it felt safe and cozy and secure and it was something that I felt

like I had never had before. What about tuition? Thankfully, one of the reasons I went here, the tuition wasn't that expensive. Like it was maybe $2,000 a semester. My grandpa had kind of, we'll say that he had saved some money for me for college, but he helped me out a little bit with the tuition too. And so what did you study? I don't know I mostly just showed up but I think technically it was like I don't know it was some

some like theology classes and it was some relationship classes and marriage and counseling and yeah just kind of it was a time for me to step out of that old environment and that old life and to reinvent

who am I Like, who do I want to be? And what am I going to do with my life? At the end of my freshman year, I met my husband. And I had a very difficult, but amazing, transformative first year of college. Like, I really did kind of get what I set out to get, which was just to grow as a person to get emotionally, mentally healthier. So it gave me a great opportunity to like hang out by myself and figure out who am I outside of, outside of my biological family, outside of this community that I'd grown up in. And then I met my husband the end of my freshman year. And we had a very long dating relationship of two weeks. And two weeks and I was like, yep, this is my guy.

you and me every day until we die. And we got married a couple months later. So you got married right out of freshman year of college. The ripe old age of 19. He had another year to finish. He was going to another university. So he had a senior year to finish. And I studied a little bit more the second year and worked a lot.

I was really keen on the idea of becoming debt-free, of building up some financial freedom and some options. And then I fell in love with a guy who had $10,000 of credit card debt and about $35,000 of student loan debt. Unbeknownst to me at the time, I had about $10,000 of medical debt from when I was in high school that I was responsible for. So despite being all gone whole about saving money and having options, we started off marriage with $55,000 of debt. And my husband also had, he had a social services degree, and I had no degree, and no degree in randomness.

So we didn't have fantastic career options. It wasn't like, oh, yeah, we'll totally make six figures by year three. Yeah, we had not picked high earning career paths. Were you conscious at that time of the level of debt that you had relative to your income? Yeah, we definitely talked about debt, like, by date three, because it was such a priority to me. It was such a deep, intrinsic need and motivator to have more financial freedom and to have more options. And in my mind, being good with money was the clearest path to creating more options in my life. So thankfully, he was already like making progress and more on top of it and

budgeting or else, to be honest, I don't know, I don't know if I would have gotten married just because money tapped into so much of my fear and insecurity that I don't know if I could have lived like that. And so how did the two of you start tackling that 55 thousand dollars in debt. And how long did it take? Either just before we got married or right when we got married, someone had mentioned to me kind of offhandedly, hey, you should really think about saving half your income. And for some reason, that just clicked with me. Like, that made good sense. We'll just save half of our income. So that was our goal, like right from the start to save half of our income. That first year, we made a whopping $12,000.

Combined? Yeah, combined. Because we were in college, you know. Our camper rent spot was 150. We had no health care, partly because I think that was the time. Like now health care is like a big conversation. But growing up, I almost never had health care. I wasn't super concerned about it because health care just seemed like something that rich people got and I had never had it. So we probably spent, you know, about 70, $500 a week, $100 a week on food maybe. And that was about it. We lived in southern Idaho and there was a WINCO there. And if you guys don't have WINCO, they're kind of like a big bulk food discount food store. But because we had so little income, the only time it ever felt like we could like spend money on something was to buy groceries. And so we would go to WINCO and everything's so affordable there. And it was like our big shopping trip, our one chance. to actually spend money and it was just like so happy. And now we don't have a winco where we live, but whenever we travel and we go into WinCo, we're like, oh my gosh, this is amazing. I love this so much. Like, it still sparks so much joy for us because that was our date night that first year

was being able to like go and spend money on groceries. I think that first year it was hard for my husband, which is why he had gotten himself into credit card debt. He had grown up in this really nice middle class family where they, you know, ate out and they bought things and they lived like normal people do. And so that first year, everything felt like deprivation for him. You know, he was used to eating out twice a week at like Applebee's. One of the, I guess, advantages for me was that growing up, we never had money. So it wasn't, it wasn't abnormal. You know, my mom for our family of five, I remember she would have $100 a week. for groceries. And that was it. And that had to be all of our household products, all of the

cleaning stuff, all of the food. We had a hundred bucks for all five of us. And we just had to make it work. We'll come back to this episode after this word from our sponsors. The holidays are right around the corner. And if you're hosting, you're going to need to get prepared. Maybe you need bedding, sheets, linens. Maybe you need servware and cookware. And of course, holiday decor, all the stuff to make your home a great place to host during the holidays. you can get up to 70% off during Wayfair's Black Friday sale. Wayfair has Can't Miss Black Friday deals all month long. I use Wayfair to get lots of storage type of items for my home, so I got tons of shelving

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But they also have the FinTech Hustle that got them named one of America's most innovative companies by Fortune magazine. That's what being a fifth third better is all about. It's about not being just one thing, but many things for our customers. Big Bank Muscle, FinTech Hustle. That's your commercial payments of fifth. Third better. You got introduced to the idea of saving half of your income so that you could pay off this debt. How did you do that? Paying off the debt was our biggest priority. So by the end of, you know, my husband's senior year of college, we started looking at options and the military

was one of those options. They had a debt repayment program for student loans and they had a signing bonus. And those two things, you know, I had been raised in a, family with lots of military members, so I felt really comfortable with the idea. His dad had been in the Air Force for the U.S. and had been in the Navy for Australia, so he was pretty comfortable with the idea of military service. Yeah, right after he graduated, he signed up, which over the next three years would pay off all of his student loans. And the bonus was enough to help pay off the remaining part of that credit card debt. And then for the first six months where he was gone at basic training and AIT, I went and lived with family and I worked, and we just saved all of that

income so that we started with kind of a nice little nest egg when we got to our first duty station. Where was the first duty station and how much did you have at that time? We got stationed in the Washington, D.C. area. Unfortunately, not at a low cost of living area. But But by that point, the student loans were kind of guaranteed to be paid off. So we kind of mentally took that off of our list. And we had paid off the credit card debt. And we probably had about maybe about $8,000 at that point that we had saved during his time going through basic training. One of the things I always encourage people on the path to financial independence is there's benefits all along the way.

and there's things to celebrate all along the way. It's not like you can only be happy once you cross this specific number. But I remember the first time we hit $10,000. And it was back in the days we banked at like a real in-person location bank. And I deposited a check. And it was the kind of the process that the bank teller would circle your balance in red and slide it back over to you. And I remember she circled her number and her eyes just lit up and she mouthed the words to me. Oh my gosh, you have $10,000. I just was ecstatic. I couldn't.

It felt magical. Like it was so amazing to have $10,000. That's the amount of money that if we had had growing up, we could have transformed our life. How old were you at this time? And how much were you making? 21 maybe-ish. He was only, you know, an E2, so he wasn't making a ton of money. He got housing, plus I think he brought home initially like $1,200 a month or $1,400 a month somewhere in there.

And I got a job at Starbucks, you know, initially making $8 an hour. And then I got promoted and I got promoted again and promoted again to where I would say both of us were kind of in that. $30,000 a year stride and saving half. What do you decide to do from there? We were able to save our first $100,000 by the time I was 24, which there again, it felt insane. Like it felt like more money than I ever would have imagined one human being just having in an account. Sometimes people ask me, you know, did you plan to retire at 32 when you were 19? And I'm like, no.

No, that's insane. Like I never would have thought that was even in the realm of possibility. I remember those first couple years having these conversations with Adam and being like, maybe when we're 60. Like, what if? And this was like my biggest craziest dream. What if by the time we're 60 were financially independent? Like that felt kind of like an audacious goal. But as we made more and more progress and as things started to kind of snowball, we were able to expand just what we thought was possible, what we thought could happen.

And hitting that first 100,000 was shocking, but it did allow us to think a little bit bigger. In what ways did you think bigger once you saw that first 100,000? You know, we had had a couple goals, like first day goals. one I wanted to adopt. Like I was just really, really passionate about that. When I was 17, I had a coworker who had adopted and who was a foster parent. And it was, I think, the first time that I realized, oh, sometimes when families are really difficult and sometimes when families aren't safe, kids get a second chance at a healthy family. And man, that just like hit me square in the heart that like you could get a do-over and you could get to people that are like loving and supportive and would care for you.

Just felt like I don't know what I might do with my life. But if I could give someone else that gift, then that's everything. Like that's all all I need to do and my work as a human. So that was a first day question between me and Adam and he loved the idea. He really loved the idea. So we knew that that was going to be part of our plan. And it was extra motivation to pay off our debt and to start saving because we wanted to have the resources to provide that kind of home for kids. So we knew we wanted to do that.

And we knew I still was obsessed with traveling. I knew that I still wanted to do that. I had given up that dream once, and I knew that it was still there. But once we hit $100,000, I decided, what if we could pay cash for a house? And just like how much I loved our camper, like I loved owning something that was mine and it was safe. And like, nobody could take it from me and nobody could enter without my permission. All of those things felt so wonderful. I wanted to own a home.

And it took us 10 years of renting. We rented for 10 years before we bought the house I'm living in now for cash. But you were living in D.C. at the time, right, when you hit 100,000? Yeah. So I also knew that D.C. would probably not be the area that we bought a house for cash. That would have to happen somewhere else. Which is why we rented the whole time we were there. We got a housemate just that.

that one choice helped to save an extra $25,000. I feel like so many times I would tell my friends, hey, we made this choice and it's going to be a great financial choice. And they were always like, no thanks. And here's the thing. And I really want to encourage the people listening and the audience in that right now where we're at, people are amazed and love. and are impressed with our journey.

And not a single person was in the moment. Nobody was impressed. So it's like if nobody gets it, it's okay. I get a lot of comments because my husband was medically retired. So he has a medical pension from the military. He has a military retirement, which is $1,450. And I get a lot of comments of people being like, oh, well, it would be easy to retire. if we had a military pension.

Well, it would be easy to do this. And I'm like, really? It would be easy if you had $1,450 a month. Like, can you live on $1,400 and $50 a month? Or if that's such an amazing prize, like go out and buy two rentals. It's not impossible to create $1,400 a month in passive income. And it's one of the things that I love about sharing our numbers, none of these numbers are insane. They're not unachievable. It's not like I'm saying, well, we earned $300,000 a year. That's how we

saved for this much. Or that we have this massive amount of money now, you know, our pensions 1450. Our rental income is about 1,300. And our investments are only like $8,000, 900 a month. none of these are astronomical, irreplaceable, uncopyable amounts of money. So there's that side. But then there was also living through it. And oftentimes people ask me like, what was the hardest part? What was the biggest struggle of becoming financially independent? Honestly, for me, it was not having anyone who understood any community who was supportive or encouraging.

And having to deal with a lot of criticism and having grown up poor, having grown up being very sensitive to that criticism, it was tough for me. I am even as our net worth grew, it got easier. Like when we actually had money, I didn't feel as much shame or as triggered when people would make fun of us. But pretty far into our journey, I had a situation where I didn't. a coworker who legitimately, I was not her cup of tea. And she had gotten a new car to get another car loan and she was really proud of this car. And I was driving this old Honda Civic. And this thing was

a hoopty. A beater through and through. All of the paint was popped. Not the most beautiful looking car. She didn't think that I should be able to be allowed to park with the other employees. she felt like my car was so ugly and so disgraceful and so shameful that I should have to park in the back of the building to where customers wouldn't be able to seat my car. And so she kind of created this campaign to have me banned from parking with everyone else. There comes a point where you have to know who you are and where you're going and live a life that's true. true to that. And it was like, you know what, this car is where I'm going. This car is the perfect representation of who I'm becoming, which is rich. Our investment accounts are about 300,000. It's not like, we have three and a half million in investment accounts, like to where, if you're just starting,

you're like, oh God, I'm never going to get there. It is possible. And because we pay cash, cash for our house and we don't have student loans. And for people, if you think about, what if you took out all of your debt repayment from your monthly budget? What if you didn't have to save up for a lot of big purchases? Because we already did it. We already bought furniture. We already have vehicles. No, it was just kind of maintaining or replacing. If we'd learn to live on kind of that low amount, this doesn't feel restrictive. It feels like, plus our lifestyle, like part of the thing that makes life stressful is having no time being overwhelmed with work and having so much stress and so little bandwidth that a lot of the richness of our life is just be able to go outside and be able to go

camping the summer and go hiking. You know, we live right outside of Glacier National Park in Montana. And it's just beautiful. And we have time to go to the farmer's market and to enjoy all of these things and to travel with our kiddos, we travel 10 or 12 weeks a year. And so if you were to just look at our lifestyle, it probably looks similar to people who are making $200,000 a year. It just costs us a lot less. We'll come back to the show in just a second. But first, where we left off in the story of your life, you're 24 years old, you're living in Washington, D.C., you've just saved your first $100,000. and you're debt-free.

You decide that you want to spend that $100,000 buying a house in cash. You know that you can't do it in D.C. You need to be there for as long as the military keeps you there. What happens next? So by 24, we had already adopted our very first kiddo. We adopted a teenager from foster care. He was the kid that made me a mom. And by 25, I had my first biological child.

So we now had a teenager and a baby. How old was the teenager? It was, let's see, 11 when we started the process and 12, I think when he moved in. We started that process just after my 21st birthday. We had been in D.C. for like six months. And it definitely wasn't the plan. He had been my husband's foster brother for a couple years and he was up for adoption. And the caseworker called and said, so I've asked him.

everyone else and nobody will take him. So either you can adopt him or I'll put him in a group home until he ages out of the system. I didn't feel ready to be a mom, especially to a teenager. I didn't feel prepared because I wasn't. But I thought, God, that can't happen. I guess we're better than nothing. Okay, let's do it. Let's try. And it was incredibly difficult. no doubt an enormous learning curve for both of us, for all three of us. But it was also kind of incredible. I decided this like a month after my 21st birthday and he came to live with us right as I was turning 22. We went to pick him up kind of over my birthday. And we actually, we'd had a rough six months of it. It was not easy being a foster parent. It's not easy being an adoptive parent, especially with like we didn't have

support our community and and our caseworker had kind of fallen off the map and one day maybe six or eight months into the process she calls and she goes how's it going and I'm like not very well she was like oh okay but I mean you still want to adopt him right I'm like oh yeah I'm no we're we're committed like we'll make this thing happen she goes okay good actually your adoption paper already got signed by the judge we forgot to tell you what she was like yeah and I guess it had a court date and you guys didn't show up, but he signed it anyway. It's like, sorry about that. We'll mail it to you. Wow. I was like, okay. He came home from school and I was like, so I guess congrats. You're adopted. Let's go out to dinner or something.

It was an interesting process. Kind of looping back in that story. My husband was thinking about getting out of the military. And he was very well likeness job, very well respected. And he knew the person who was in charge of assigning orders globally. And they said, oh, please don't leave. Please don't leave. We'll give you any duty station in the world that's open if you'll re-enlist, which is an offer that we couldn't pass up. And so we selected Heidelberg, Germany, and got to live, smack dab in the center of Europe for four and a half years. I felt like that dream that I had of traveling and I took my book with all of my old travel itineraries with me. But it was a hundred times better because I got to do it with my husband and with my kids and with my friends. And

it was amazing. We traveled every month for four years. So that was between the ages of 20. 25 to 29. 25 to 29. And your two kids, one was a teenager and the other was a newborn. Yeah, my mom was not happy about that. Oh, my gosh. You have birth to a baby. And like four months later, I'm like, so long, we're moving to Europe.

It was great. And then we came back to the U.S. Thankfully, market timing-wise, you know, we had this at that point, $150,000. that it kind of mostly been in cash because we were planning on buying a house. And this is like 2007, right almost at the bottom, we invested it. So it got all of that growth, that whole time that we were in Germany. And we came back to the States. And by that point, we had about 250,000 between just growth and continuing to save.

And houses at that point, this is like 2012. It was at the tail end of a long housing crash. Right. And there were a lot of foreclosure houses that, like, the investors were tapped out. Like, there were no more investors. There were no more people who wanted to do a gut job on a house. And so we could have bought, you know, a nice house. We could have bought a very reasonable $150,000 house.

But we decided to buy the ugliest house on the market for $50,000. And we didn't really have any construction experience at all because we'd rented for 10 years. But we watched YouTube videos and we gutted the whole thing and renovated it, which gave us the capital to start buying rentals. But it was a hard year. Yeah, on a lot of fronts. That year we came back. And at that point, you know, our oldest adopted son was 20 and he was living in the U.S. and actually living in like an apartment off of our in-laws house, getting working full-time,

getting ready to go to college. And so we get back to Montana and we buy this fixer-wrapper and I start this job. And after we closed on it, we had kind of gutted everything. I went into work this day and my husband showed up like an hour early to pick me up. We only had one car at the time. And he showed up and I could see he was very agitated. He was like, we have to leave now. And I went upstairs to clock out and the next day was my day off. And I felt a little like embarrassed or uncomfortable because he was very abrupt, which is not his nature. And I remember saying to my boss, yeah, I'll see you guys Monday. And my boss just had this look on his face that I couldn't quite read. It was like he was sad or I couldn't quite make it out. And we got in the car and

Adam turned to me and said our son passed away. They just found his body. And I couldn't, it was, it was entirely unexpected. You know, he, he had been diabetic when we adopted him, which was one of the reasons he had a really hard time finding an adoptive family because he was type one diabetic. And I guess he had gotten flu poisoning or the flu or something. And he called out of work one day and the next day he had passed away in his apartment. And we went and we did the funeral and we came back home. And I remember coming in to a house that we've got it. We have no floors. We have no kitchen. We have no bathroom. We've got planks on the ground and an air mattress. It was just a hard year. You know, it was a hard year of being away from, because we had just moved back to Montana. So all of my friends, all of my community, all of my support was in Germany, like on another continent. And I didn't know anyone. I didn't have any friends here. And it was just a very challenging year. How did you get through it? I didn't very well.

I didn't grieve well. I didn't process it well. I didn't have the time or the bandwidth. I didn't have any support. I was in a new job, which wasn't going amazing. And we were in the middle of a renovation. And I kind of leaned on the coping skills that I had learned as a kid, where you just shut down. You don't feel your feelings. You don't process your experience. Like you just have to disconnect from that because if you felt it, if you grieved, it would be like a dam has broken and the water would wash you away and you would never get back up. And I just lived like that for probably a year, a year and a half. And I remember talking to one of my best friends on the phone and being like, I'm stuck. Like, I don't know if I'm going to get over this. I don't know if I'm

to get through this. I just feel incredibly stuck. It took a lot of work, a lot of internal work to move through that grief and to learn how to process it and to learn how to deal with it. And I had done a ton of therapy in my 20s and I thought I had made progress. But it turns out, I still had a good deal of work to do to just be willing to feel my feelings and to experience things. Yeah, it was a slow learning curve, and it was not pretty. It was not a gracious journey through that grief. Could your other child see that you were grieving? Unfortunately, yes. I think sometimes some other women, especially if you've gone through infertility, might relate to this. After we'd given birth to a biological child, I couldn't get pregnant again. And it had been years. And I had gone through to surgery.

and I was having fertility treatments. And there's something extremely difficult about, I mean, infertility in itself is very, very challenging. But after you've lost a child and the pain and the weight of that, I went from being a very kind of fun and carefree mom and a very relaxed mom to being terrified that my only child, like something would happen to him too. And I would never be a mom again. And I became anxious and overwhelmed. And I went from like so carefree and relaxed to like slightly neurotic. And it, it affected him. You know, my, my, my, now my oldest, I was like four at the time, five. And he's still, he's 12 now. He's such a safety-minded kid. None of my other kids are. But that took a lot of work for me to do adventurous things with them and to step out. And, and honestly,

it's something I still have to fight against. Like whenever we are going to go do a big trip, I can start to feel that anxiety of what if something happens or what if they get hurt or what if we get a car accident? And it's so easy to make your life smaller and smaller and smaller to give you that illusion of safety. And it's having to push through that anxiety and be like, you know, we're going to live anyways. We're going to live even though there's risk. We're going to live even though things don't always work out right and there's grief. and there's loss, we're not going to let that cripple our life. We're going to go fully into it, expecting that, yeah, it's probably going to be a little bit of both. One of my favorite quotes is, the bravest are surely those with the clearest vision of what is before them,

and glory and danger alike, yet notwithstanding, go out to meet it. I think I really hope that, like, I could construct a life that there would be no more pain. There would be no more heartache. There would be no more suffering. Just good things ahead. And I think now, especially this year, like this is kind of my motto for this year that I've been growing into and that I'm ready for both. I've done the work. I can handle both. Glory and danger alike, that's part of the deal. If you're going to grow, if you're going to live outside your comfort zone, if you're going to do bigger and more amazing things, it can't just be glory. Like, there's going to be some danger and there's going to be some risk.

And now I have, I've done the work. I have the tools and I have the skill to navigate through that pain. How do you think about money in the context of, of things like that, you know, therapy, which is important and yet doesn't, deliver a tangible or quantifiable outcome or fertility treatment, which is so uncertain. It's something I've kind of a mindset that I've adopted, and I do a lot of coaching with people, and it's one that I encourage them to try to adopt, and that what was the reason you saved that money? What was the motivation behind it? What was the purpose? You know, was it for security? Was it for options? Was it for freedom? Was it to, like, have choices or live your

best life. That was your intention for that money. It's a good thing if that money lives out. It's intention. I was saving half of our income for these things, for our goals, for our dreams, for freedom, for options. Then it's a good thing to use it for my goals and for my dreams and for my freedom and my options. If you've created all these options for yourself, why not use them? Like, that's why you created them was so that you had them to you. But sometimes it can be easy to get into like just striving for the metrics. I want to save money for the sake of the number looking bigger. But for most people, that wasn't actually the intention they started off with.

It's the game that they started to play somewhere along the path. And so kind of reconnecting with that, that intention. And even now I look at, you know, our savings or spending or things like that, it should all go to support this vision I have of our life. It should go to further our goals and our values and our dreams. Is it doing that or is it not doing that? And for me, one of the exercises I do, I call it future journaling. I write a journal entry at a specific date in the future. And I could just kind of talking through like goals that maybe have happened or progress that I've made. And I think about who is the person that's doing those things? And how are they different from me right now?

And oftentimes it comes down to, you know what, they have more relationships. They have deeper relationships. They have more skills. She has more education. She's more grounded. She's more mentally, emotionally stable. She has more empathy. All of those things, I can feel that gap. between future me and where I am now. And it gives me clarity of if I want to go and do those things and accomplish those things, I need to be that person. And I can think about how to craft the mat from where I am now and what I need to be to be that person who could do those things in the future. And then that's like if there's any good reason to spend money, like that's it.

That was my intention for saving money. My personal definition of success is getting everything you want out of life. It doesn't matter what other people's rules are or what other people's criteria are. If you got everything you wanted out of this very finite time on earth, then that's success. It can be so easy to start to play a game of math. I had a client, someone email me like a year or two ago because I always. for, you know, one-on-one coaching to a small number of people. It's kind of expensive. But something about her email just shook me to my core. She was going through her story, like, you know, I'm not

very happy and I'm not very fulfilled and I want to do something different with my life, but I don't have a lot of direction. And, you know, our net worth is, I think it was like four or five million dollars. And I'm just not, I'm not happy. And I said, yeah, we can totally work on that. And then she emailed me back and said, I just can't justify the cost. And I thought, what are we teaching people that a tenth of a percent of your net worth isn't worth you actually being happy or fulfilled or having purpose? Why did you save all this money? Why did you build all of this net worth to be unhappy and confused and floating through life. So I created this analogy that if you're going to build a boat and you have a hundred pieces of wood, one of them should be directional. Like that seems reasonable

that one percent of your of your boat building material should make sure that you're going in the right direction because we can just build a bigger boat and a bigger boat and a bigger boat and float aimlessly through the ocean, not going any place that we want to go. And so I try to keep myself grounded in that like, where do I want to go? And is my money moving me in that direction? Because if it's not, it's not serving me. I'm serving it. Right. And so it's okay to escalate your spending if that's going to lead to a better life. Yeah. And I really encourage people to like grow your happiness, grow your fulfillment, grow your sense of purpose on the path to that number. because once you cross over, nothing changes.

You don't wake up the next day a different person who now has like interesting hobbies and dynamic relationships and great friendships and meaningful work. No one drops that in your lap. It's like a custom built house. If I will provide the building materials, but you still got to build the house. But you've got to plan it out and you got to do the work to build it. Like, your perfect, meaningful life does not come pre-built in a subdivision. You can't just buy it.

Well, Jillian, thank you for spending this time with us. Where can people find you if they would like to know more about you? Yeah, I talk about all these kinds of ideas on my podcast, which is Everyday Courage with Jillian John's Roode or on Instagram. I'm Jillian John's Root there. And those are probably the two platforms that I connect with people the most. Thank you, Jillian. what are the key takeaways that we got from this story? Well, there are many, but let's focus on three.

Key takeaway number one, do not let your anxieties hold you back. As Gillian describes, it's easy for our fears to become bigger than they deserve to be. It's easy for our worries and anxieties and our desire for a pain-free life to become so old. overwhelming that we shrink our worlds and we live smaller than we should be. But that only holds us back. Whenever we are going to go do a big trip, I can start to feel that anxiety of what if something happens or what if they get hurt or what if we get a car accident? And it's so easy to make your life smaller and smaller and smaller to give you that illusion

of safety. While, of course, it's important to not be reckless. clinging to an illusion of safety ultimately only holds us back. So don't let your fears take over. That's key takeaway number one. Key takeaway number two. If you have gone through the trouble of saving up money and now you have a good amount in a savings account or in investment accounts, remember that the purpose of that money

is not simply to sit in your accounts continually compounding. The purpose of your money is not to continually grow and compound. That's a mechanism. That's a tool that you can use to grow your wealth. But that money is there in order to facilitate the type of life that you want. So don't get so hung up on the numbers that you forget to actually use your money on products or services that can genuinely lead to a better, happier life. if you're thinking about getting therapy or if you're thinking about getting IVF treatments. And if you have the money for that, then don't get so hung up on this narrative or this identity that says, oh, wow, that's so expensive. I just don't know if I could justify spending that money. What else is that money for? What was the reason you saved that money? What was the motivation behind it? What was the purpose? You know, was it for security? Was it for options? Was it for freedom? Was it to like, like have choices or live your best life, that was your intention for that money.

It's a good thing if that money lives out its intention. The paradox of pursuing financial independence is that we have to be simultaneously imbued with a mindset of frugality and searching for value and cutting costs and getting deals. People who are normalized to ideas that mainstream society would find radical. such as saving 50% of your income, people who read compounding growth charts for fun on a Friday night, and people who meticulously track their net worth. Like, that is all part of the journey to and maintenance of financial independence. And yet, it is also equally critical that at the end of the day, we realize that money is nothing more than a means to an end.

And if we are not willing to spend our money on things that can make our lives better, then we're missing the point. But sometimes it can be easy to get into like just striving for the metrics. I want to save money for the sake of the number looking bigger. But for most people, that wasn't actually the intention they started off with. It's the game that they started to play somewhere along the path. And so that is key takeaway number two. Let your money live out its intention. Finally, key takeaway number three.

In order to be more intentional with money, have a vision of what you want your money to facilitate. For example, do you want your money to facilitate deep emotional inner work? Do you want your money to facilitate elective medical procedures that you may need but haven't gotten yet? ones that would improve your quality of life. Do you want your money to facilitate flying to another country where members of your family live so that you can visit them more often and deepen those relationships despite the fact that that will come at a monetary price? Before you start spending your money, sit down and think about what would you like that purpose to be?

What intention are you going to ascribe to your money? Just as every dollar has a job, beyond having a job, every dollar has a mission. Every dollar has an intention, a purpose. So what purpose or mission do you want your money to serve? Because we can just build a bigger boat and a bigger boat and a bigger boat and float aimlessly through the ocean, not going any place that we want to go. So get clarity around the direct. that you want your money to take you in.

Because remember, money is ultimately a means to an end. It is not the end itself. And never let that escape your reality. Because when we do get too caught up in the numbers, that can be easy to forget. So those are three of many takeaways from this conversation with Jillian John Strud. If you enjoyed today's episode, please share it with a friend or a family member. You can send them the link to this episode at Affordanything.com slash episode 246.

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people in the community at afford anything.com slash community. That's afford anything.com slash community. I'd like to say thanks to the sponsors that made today's episode possible, Grove Collaborative, Blinkist, SaneBox, and Everly Well. For a complete list of all of the deals, discounts, coupon codes, promo codes that our sponsors offer, you can find a total list of all of that at affordanything.com slash sponsors. Thank you so much for tuning in. My name is Paula Pant. This is the Afford Anything podcast, and I'll catch you next week.