BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 109: Attacking Debt and Tenaciously Pursuing Financial Freedom with Airman Mildollar from Military Dollar

Episode Date: January 27, 2020

This week, we sit down and talk with Airman Mildollar, from Military Dollar. (Spoiler Alert: Despite the name, Airman Mildollar is a woman!) Airman Mildollar shares her story of college debt, car loans and rapid payoff to start building her wealth to become financially free, despite not being married, having kids or working in tech. In fact, she’s an officer in the Air Force. She shares her systematic goal setting and goal reaching strategy that allowed her to pay off her debt ahead of schedule - including stretching her military benefits to cover more than just food or housing. She started reading finance blogs and books and starting putting money away. Moving in with a friend reduced her rent payment, and she began investing in a Roth IRA, opened up a TSP (Military version of a 401k) and also invested in individual stocks in after-tax accounts, saving about 20% of her pay. Every time she received a raise, she committed to put at least 50% of that raise into her investments. In 2011, she bought a rental house as she was deploying, put tenants in place and then went overseas for one year, returned home and bought another property for herself to live in. Originally intending to live there for a year then rent it out, she ended up staying for two years then selling to realize HUGE tax-free gains. 2013 is when her Financial Independence journey really hit its stride as she read Your Money or Your Life, and she took a much closer look at her budget, finding another thousand dollars to put into her investing. MilDollar shows that you CAN become financially independent on your own, without working in an ultra-high-paying job, when you diligently pursue your goal. In This Episode We Cover: What an airman is Airman Mildollar's money journey Where she got her scholarships How she creates financial freedom Things she did on managing her finances The reason why she didn't do househacking On her housing and food allowance How she discover FIRE community What Thrift Savings Plan is How she finance her properties On her rental properties Her plans in the future And SO much more! Links from the Show Early-Retirement.org Early Retirement Forum Saving-Sherpa Get Rich Slowly Mr. Money Mustache Airbnb BiggerPockets Podcast 364: Snowballing 6-Figure Short-Term Rental Profits Into Passive Investments with Avery Carl BiggerPockets Money Podcast 98: Change Your Money Mindset, Change Your Life with Vicki Robin FinCon BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Money Survey Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, show number 109, where we interview Airman Mill Dollar from Military Dollar and hear how she reached financial freedom without a partner or a career in tech. She's a United States Air Force officer, financial independence fan, and passionate about helping you sort out your money questions so you can live your best life. I had always been spending what I thought was a very conservative amount, but I actually started. paying more attention. And I found up I could free another $1,000 a month out of my budget by just not spending money on things that other people cared about that I didn't care about. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my spectacular co-host, Scott Trench. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else and show you that by following the proven steps, you can put yourself on the road to early

financial freedom and get money out of the way so you can lead your best life. Wherever you are in your financial or life journey, you can begin rapidly moving towards a position capable of generating a great income, saving a huge percentage of that income, and setting yourself up to make larger and larger investments on your way to financial freedom. And whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate or start your own business will help you put yourself in a position capable of launching yourself towards this dreams. Yeah, how's it going? I'm extremely excited for today's episode with Airman Mill Dollar. We've met a couple of times. She's big in the personal finance community and has a great story of achieving financial independence during military service. Yeah. What I like about her story is that, like I said before, she does not have a partner currently. She got here all by her big girl self, which is not the narrative that you hear so frequently.

in this community. You know, there's a lot of technology careers. There's a lot of men in this space. And I wanted to introduce her to our listeners because I want them to know that you can, in fact, do this by yourself. If you're a man, if you're a woman, if you're young, if you're older, you can get to financial independence on your own. It's not that hard. And what does she say today? spend every dime you have and always look amazing, buy big cars, houses everywhere you go. No, she said, spend less than you earn. Don't buy things to impress people if you don't like them. Yeah.

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Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Liener Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for parenting perspective and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible

in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at Audible.com slash B-P. money. Airman Mill Dollar from Military Dollar, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to have you here today. I am so excited to be here. Thank you so much. I do have to give a quick disclaimer before I start. The views I express today are my own and may not reflect the views of the United States Air Force, the Department of Defense, or the U.S. government. So now that we have that out of the way, let's talk. Oh, so I'm not interviewing the entire military. I'm just interviewing you.

good because I don't have any questions for them. But I have a lot of questions for you. That's good. I do not think the same way as everybody else. That is for sure. Well, you know what? That brings up a really good point. So let's start there. You don't think the same way that everybody else because you have reached a level of financial independence, correct? I have. So based on my current level of spending and what I've been spending over the last few years, I technically, if we go by the definition that so many in the fire community like to use of 25 times expenses, I have that level of financial independence. Now, that being said, I do want to spend more money in retirement because I have some pretty big plans. So I'm not quite to where I'd like to be. Also,

because I would like to be a little bit safer than just using the 4% rule. So I still have a ways to go, but I could in theory quit right now and continue my lifestyle as is. Okay, so I notice a couple of things about you. I noticed by the disclaimer that you gave about not representing the military in this conversation and the fact that you are Airman Mill Dollar, I noticed that you are in the military and not in tech. Is that correct? That is true. I do have kind of a technical job in the Air Force. I'm not going to get into details about that, obviously on here. But I am not a computer geek by any means. I can barely keep up with my blog. So I'm not an engineer. I am not a tech geek. That's not the background that I'm coming from. Okay, good. Another thing I notice is that you're not a man.

I'm not, which is really surprising to a lot of people. So anybody who's listening this right now, just in case you're confused, I am a female. Yes, yes. So you are an anonymous female, so we don't have your picture up, but I'm looking at her right now, and I can guarantee she is, in fact, a woman. I think what those people off is, it's Airman Mill Dollar. And I have to say, I was just as guilty of that. You know, you don't really think about it. You're like, oh, Airman Mill Dollar, that's a guy, whatever. And then when I met you in real life, I'm like, wait, what? I thought you were a man. I thought Airman Mill Dollar was a man, not you personally was a man. Wow. Yeah, so this is a great time to explain that to anybody who's confused.

So an airman or an airman is a person in the Air Force, just like a soldier's in the Army and a Marines in the Marines and a sailor is in the Navy. Airman is just people in the Air Force, and that's me. And that's really good to bring up. So I apologize for my, almost for my sexistness in thinking that you were a man. But I did read that as airman. So, okay, so you are a woman. Are you married? I am not married.

Do you have any children? I have no children. I do have a great dog. Okay. So you are a single woman who doesn't have a tech job. And you have reached financial independence. I can't believe it's true myself. It's amazing.

I was going to say, this is only for white tech bros. It's actually not. Please don't email Scott at biggerpockets.com to complain about me. saying that this is just for white tech bros. But when you read the financial independence blogs, you see a lot of men in tech who have made it. And I don't want to diminish their accomplishments because becoming financially independent is something to celebrate no matter how you got there. But it's even more exciting when you do it by yourself. I am financially independent, but I did not get there by myself. I married one of those tech guys. So it's a lot of those tech guys.

So is it wrong that he had a great salary? No, we're cheap anyway. I mean, frugal. So we don't spend a lot of money, but we were able to save it because he had a tech job. You don't have a tech job. Correct. I have a career that traditionally people think is underpaid as a matter of fact. I do not think that I'm an officer in the Air Force and I think we're actually very well paid. I'm going to say that you all go to war and I don't, so you are not paid enough. Well, let's hear this story. I want to know how you did it and how you guys started there. Where does kind of the journey begin for you? Okay, sure. So probably the beginning of my financial independence story starts in college. So I grew up middle class, sometimes at the higher end of middle class, sometimes at the lower end of middle class, but definitely very middle class in our family. And my mother had gone to college, but my father had not. My family didn't.

really encourage college. So the fact that I wanted to be in the Air Force is really the only reason I went to college because I wanted to be an officer in the Air Force and you have to have a college degree to do that. I originally had planned to apply to the Air Force Academy. But then when I was in high school, I started talking to some people who had been in the Air Force and I decided I didn't want to do that because it actually sounded like not the best college experience. So I wanted to have a real college experience. So I decided to go to a very expensive private university. And in order to afford that in a family that didn't force you to go to college and therefore had not saved any money for me to go to college, I had to start getting scholarships or take

out loans and I ended up doing both. So I got scholarships luckily for most of my college expenses and then I took out about $27,000 in loans. So I graduated college with $27,000 in student loan debt And then between a new car when I graduated and also some credit card debt that I had racked up, I had about $40,000 total in loans right as I started my career. And was this an Air Force ROTC program? Sorry if I missed that. Yeah, I was in Air Force ROTC. That was where I got the majority of my scholarships from.

And then I got some smaller scholarships as well. Got it. And then do they do the, I know that when you go to a military academy, there's a career starter load of, I think right now it's like $35-ish,000 that you get access to, that an option for you in college, or is that only for the academies? That is an option for anybody starting out their career, at least for officers. I'm not positive whether or not it's an option for enlisted members. I don't see why it wouldn't be. But it was an option that I had at the time I didn't want to take out any more loans, so I did not do that. Looking back, it probably would have been a better idea

because it was a lower rate than my student loans, but I didn't know all that much about personal finance at the time. I started learning when I was in college, but I still wasn't smart enough to realize that paying off some loans with other loans can sometimes be a good deal. Got it. So then in college, I graduated college with all this debt, and I entered the Air Force, and I absolutely loved it.

It has been a fabulous career since the very beginning. And I didn't want to do anything else. So I decided that's the only thing I was going to do. do. And I decided back when I first got in the military, when I was young and naive, that I was going to stay in for 30 years, and that was totally up to me, which is not up to you. And so I decided that I needed to be financially independent between the pension when I got out at 30 years and myself that I would never have to work again. So I was thinking at the age of 51. I would do that. As time has gone on, and I've learned more about,

what it takes to stay in for 30 years and whether or not I actually want to stay in for 30 years and what it means to be financially independent. That has shifted somewhat. So I'm not 51 now, but I am already financially independent. So my plans have changed a little bit over time, but I knew from the very beginning that I wanted to do that. So I paid off all my debt as soon as I could and started investing a couple of years before the Great Recession started. So I did have money in the market during that time and got to experience all the fun there. But hey, it's worked out so far. After graduation, it sounds like you had $27,000 in student loan debt plus a car loan,

plus maybe a little bit of other personal debt. Is that right? Yes. Yep. What was the kind of the timeline to getting rid of that? Or maybe like, how did you kind of handle the first couple of years until you got more serious about creating financial freedom earlier? I set a deadline for myself that I wanted to paid off before I pinned on the rank of captain.

So in the Air Force, the rank of captain is the third officer rank, and it comes at your four-year point. So I set a goal for four years to pay off $42,000 in debt. I did it in about three and a half. So this was back in the 2004 to 2007 time frame to give a little idea of how much $42,000 in debt comparatively is. So I paid that off as quick as I could. And I also started investing a little bit in 2005 because luckily, while I, I was in college, I started reading books about Perno's little finance, even though I didn't have any money back then. And so I started learning about how you don't want to not invest entirely while you're paying off debt because usually investing gives you a better return. So I did both during that time. Love it. So you were able to invest and pay off debt in three and a half years. And you were able to do that because you made $250,000 a year more throughout that period, right?

You know, cumulatively, it probably only took me about seven or eight years to make that much money. No, I was making, I think when I first graduated college, I was making right about $40,000. So right about the same amount that I had in debt is how much my total income was. Got it. So what was your lifestyle like? How did you manage your finances to be able to save, to pay off all your debt and still invest? So I did a few things. Number one, while I did, buy a new car. I didn't go crazy. So a lot of people when they first joined the military and start getting money, it's very popular to buy either a big truck or a Ford Mustang. Those are kind of the two main ones that people go for. I bought a Honda Civic. So I bought a new car, but it wasn't a crazy

new car. I lived alone. And so I wasn't house hacking. I know you love house hacking. I decided not to do that because I wanted to live on my own for the first time in my life. But I got a modest one-bedroom apartment a little bit farther out into town than a lot of people lived in because that allowed me to save a little bit of money. So I just was making slightly more conservative choices. Now, as a military member, were you getting a housing stipend? I forget what the term is. Yes, it's called the basic allowance for housing. So you get a stipend for that.

And then you also get an allowance for food to eat for groceries. and I have always made a point of having housing that's no more expensive than my allowances. So you're not limited to how much you can spend. If you can save money, you're allowed to do that. If you want to spend more than the allowance, you can do that too. So a lot of people will spend more than the allowance. I always went less. Fair enough.

And that allowance is tax-free, right? It's after-tax. It is, which is very nice. That has saved me quite a bit over the years. Got it. All right. So you're getting a housing and food stipend and you live within the basic housing allowance. Are you also eating and living within the food allowance? Is that another part of your strategy? Yes. I've always lived within the BAS allowance. It's actually, in my opinion, fairly generous allowance. So like right now, it's only supposed to cover the military member. Unlike the housing allowance, which is supposed to cover your whole family, the subsistence allowance is only supposed to cover your own food. And right now it's $256. I can buy groceries with $256, no problem. And that's per month, obviously.

It is not intended to cover eating out. So, you know, if you want to do more of that, then you might go over, but I'm able to live within it. Do they just give you money? Do they just say, hey, here's your $250? Yeah, basically, it's included in your paycheck. There are some people who don't get it. But if you are not getting the allowance, that means the thing that the allowance is meant to pay for is provided to you. So you can either live in base housing.

Sometimes you're forced to, so it's not necessarily a choice, or you get money for housing. You can either eat all your food on base, which is what I do when I'm deployed, or you get a subsistence allowance. It's one or the other. Okay. But you're not having to provide receipts and show them what you're spending it on. So you could be like saving Sherpa and spend like 12 cents a month on your groceries and just pocket the rest. Yeah, I could in theory. I do not want to spend 12 cents a month on my groceries. He doesn't really spent for anybody who's listening who doesn't know saving sure, but he spends about $60 a month on groceries.

And he seems to have really good meals. I have no idea how he does it. I spend about 125 to 150 a month on groceries. And then the rest just goes into my pocket. The one exception that I'm aware of, other than the, if they actually give you the food, is if you are receiving a housing allowance, while you're overseas, you do have to give them your lease, and they give you up to the amount of your lease. That's fair. How do you contrast your behavior with the spending here with the other single people who are at the same stations that you're at?

It's hard to answer that question. I am an introvert, so I just naturally didn't enjoy going out to the clubs as much as everybody else. I usually would go out, but I also don't drink much. So I didn't have those expenses. I was able to save money that way. I don't get a lot of joy out of a car. So a Honda Civic was just fine for me.

I do spend money on other things. I love to travel and I will happily spend thousands of dollars on travel. But I also really like research. So I'm not going to just hand over $4,000 to a tour company and say, you know, just tell me where to show up. I'm going to plan everything out and I like the challenge of saving money. and figuring out how to do that same thing, but cheaper. Got it. Well, to take a quick little dig at the Navy, I love the Navy, I grew up near the Naval Academy.

The term spending like a sailor is kind of what people associate with the expenses of folks in the military when they come on to base and go out to the club or buy the big pickup truck. Did you find that to be true to a certain extent based on your observation, or is that largely a myth? I would say it's fairly true, especially as people, come back from deployments, which happens a lot in the Navy. So that's probably why they have that association. When you're on a ship for six months at a time or when you're deployed for a year at a time, like I've been, all this money just accumulates in your bank account and you're not spending it because there's no place to spend it. And then you come home

and you just have thousands of dollars and you probably move to somewhere new. And so you probably want to outfit your new house with a, you know, wonderful furniture and whatnot. And brand new TV. So, you know, I maybe after a couple of deployments, definitely went on a Target runner too. I've done it myself. But again, I'm buying things at Target instead of buying new cars. So that's the difference. Got it. Okay. So three and a half years go by and you're largely living within your housing budget and your food budget that's provided by the military. So that means you're able to pocket a large percentage of your income, as I understand it, which helps you pay off your debt and invest. What kind of comes next? At that point, I had my first

deployment not too long after that. And on my first appointment, my job was largely sitting around and waiting for things to happen. And so I started reading blogs. And that's actually, we didn't call it this back then, but that's when I discovered the fire community. And I started finding about like early retirement.org, the forums that have existed there, and a couple of the early blogs. And I found out that I was not the only person who had this goal. And so I started learning about all of the investments that other people did. And I actually lucked out quite a bit because my parents had been urging me very strongly to buy a car right in the 2006-2007 timeframe. Right as I was paying off my debt, they said, you're going to have so much cash flow.

It's going to be great. I'm sorry, I said buy a car. I mean buy a house. They said, go buy a house in 2006, 2007. And I decided not to do that. I was going to wait until I had a little bit more money. And that ended up obviously working out very well for me because all of my friends who did buy houses right at that time frame ended up, obviously, being underwater for quite some time. I bought a house then.

Yeah. So that worked out great. Yeah. So, okay, so 2008 happens. You still have a job because, you know, frankly, I would love it if we could all, if the whole military would go out of business because then we're not having any wars, but that's not going to happen. So you still have a job. And that's, you know, that's very interesting. We haven't talked about that yet is you have job security, right? I do have job security, but it's not quite as secure as some people assume. So like I said, when I was a lieutenant and naive and had just gone in, I thought I could stay as long as I wanted. And I did not realize that we fire people too. So there are reductions in force in the military. I have been through five of them myself. It's usually based on career field and year group. So my career field in my year group has gone through five of these reduction.

and forces. Luckily, during a lot of them, I never ended up having to make it to the board because enough people volunteered to get out that they ended up not actually kicking anybody out. But a couple of them, they ended up kicking people out. So that's something to think about. And then the other thing to think about is if you do not promote on the time schedule that has been established, you also end up reaching a high year tenure and you get kicked out for that too. So you have more job security than I think a lot of other jobs, but it's not, you never have to worry about it. You also have to worry about things like medical concerns that would not be so big of a deal to you would be something that could absolutely get me kicked out of the military. I could be forcing a medical board or facing a medical board.

And I luckily have not had to go through any of that, but plenty of my friends have. and they have left the military earlier than they intended. Oh, I didn't realize that you guys fired people. Yes, we do. I mean, that it makes sense. I mean, not everybody's going to be a good soldier, military. How do you say that? Airmen.

Military member, service member, troop. Any of those. Service member. Okay. Not everybody's going to be a good service member. So, I mean, you know, there's bad people in every company, I guess. Not ours. We have the best.

That's right. So you said something that I thought was very interesting. You said that you started reading and discovering that there were other people just like you. Yes. So I don't remember the first fire blogger that I found. I don't remember the first personal finance blogger that I found. But definitely I started reading, for instance, J.D. Roth very early on. I have been a fan of his for a very long time. I found Mr. Money Mustache. probably in his first year blogging. So I kind of grew up with people. A lot of people don't know the blog punch debt in the face anymore, but that was a really fun blog for me to read. There's also a guy who paid off his Harvard debt very fast in like four years.

So I was reading all these. And even though I had paid off my debt at this time, I was still reading the debt ones because it was really motivating for like, normal everyday people can do this. This wasn't the people on the TV screen. This wasn't people who were rich from the time they were born. This was people just like me. And so I really liked that.

And so you discovered these around the 2008-2007 time period. Is that right? Definitely by 2009, I was into several blogs. I couldn't tell you exactly when I found them. Got it. So let's walk through. You were thinking about buying a house and you decided not to. What kind of comes next to your story?

So actually that was a deal that I made with a friend of mine. As we were both looking at houses, we decided we were kind of tired of living alone. So we made a deal that whoever bought a house first, the other person would live with them. And she bought a house first. And I lucked out. And I did not buy a house. And so I moved in with her and obviously saved quite a bit of money on that. My rent went from $1,000 a month to $600 a month at that point,

living in a three-bedroom house with her. And so I just started putting money away. I focused first on maxing out a Roth IRA. And then as soon as I did that, I started adding money. I had done a very, very small amount of individual stock picking. So I started doing a little bit more in a taxable account. And I also opened up TSP, the Thrift Savings Plan, which is the federal government's version of a for.

401k. So I started doing, at this point I had a Roth IRA, I had a TSP, and I had a taxable account. Love it. How much were you able to accumulate at a given year with this plan? It really depends on which year. So if we go with 2008, at that point, I had pinned on Captain. That was my four-year mark. So I was earning considerably more at that point. I don't have the records in front of me, but I think at that point I was earning about $65,000 a year. So I was maxing out a Roth IRA, I was, which I think might have been around $4,000 at that point. And then I was putting several thousand dollars into TSP. And I was also putting even more into a taxable account. So around 2008, 2009 timeframe, I was probably putting around $12,000

a year away, I would say, something like that. Fantastic. So about a 20, percent savings rate. Yes. When you're making me do math I haven't done. On the fly too. Yeah. That sounds about right. I want to say it was, I did have spreadsheets. So while I never added it all up, I was tracking savings rate and I want to say it was about 23%. Love it. All right. So what kind of comes next? What is this? Does this structure continue for the other couple years? Yes. So I pretty much did all of that just continuing on every time I got a raise, I committed to putting at least 50% into savings and investment. And the next big thing that changed was in 2011. I decided now at this point where the market was pretty much at the bottom, I decided I was going to buy a rental

property. So I bought a rental property in 2011, actually right as I was deploying for a year. So I bought it, put people in, and then left for a year. And then I came back. back and bought another house to live in. So in 2012, I had two houses. Where did you buy? They were both in Las Vegas, Nevada. I currently still own the rental home. I do not have the one that I lived in. I planned to turn that into a rental, but by the time that I left, it had accumulated so much equity because the market had gone way up that it just made sense to take the money and run while I was going to have the tax advantage of not having to pay the long-term capital gains on it.

Awesome. Love it. So, okay, so how did you finance these two properties? Both were just done with normal conventional loans. I didn't use a VA loan. I had 20% down on the first one and I put 10% down on the second one. 10% down on the one that you was your owner-occupant. Correct. Yes. Yep. And was that, sorry, I missed this. Was that rented out while you were deployed? The one that's always been a rental had been rented out the whole time, yeah. And your primary was vacant or was vacant while you were deployed? I bought it when I returned from the deployment. Okay, great. Yeah, sorry. I'm confusing the timeline there. Great. So you return home and when do you sell the property? How many years later? It was about two and a half years, not quite two and a half years later. So I had met the two years out of five years to get the exemption for the taxes on the gains, which was awesome. And I was deploying again. So I didn't need a house. So I saw how high the market had gone. I knew I was going to make a bunch of money. I just sold that sucker and didn't worry about it again.

And it was great. What I love about this is you're saving 23% of your income. Things are going really well. You buy a rental, you're probably approaching the six figures-ish net worth range, maybe modest six-figure net worth range when you buy that first rental. And you do it strategically around this deployment. Come back and buy the house. And now things are starting to pick up and accelerate it.

It seems like with the appreciation you're getting and all that kind of stuff. Yeah. The big change after that, so I had the rental house in 2011. I had the new house that accumulated a lot of equity in 2012. And then in 2013, I had a, man, that was a big year. I had a whole lot going on that year. But one of the things that happened was I read your money or your life. And that book changed everything.

So one of the things that I did was I took a real good look at my budget. So I had always been spending what I thought was a very conservative amount, but I actually started paying more attention. And I found up I could free another $1,000 a month out of my budget by just not spending money on things that other people cared about that I didn't care about. So tiny little things that $20 here to go see a movie that somebody else wanted to see that I didn't want to see or to buy a coach purse that I don't actually care about clothes at all, but my friends convinced me I deserved it. You've stopped doing those things. And now I have even more money. And so now I really bumped it up. And between paying off the mortgages and

paying off the principal specifically in the mortgages that I had and the increase in cash flow that I had by not spending on things that I didn't really care about, now I bumped up my savings rate to about 40%. And then I got a raise in 2014. And it bumped it up to 50%. Okay, I want, because we're bigger pockets, real estate is our thing. I want to just really quickly look at the numbers for your rental because I have in-laws who live in Las Vegas. I have been watching the Las Vegas market for 20 years. And I watched it go way up and then crash spectacularly around the time you bought your house for what a dollar? That would be awesome. They're actually, I'm just going to do a side note. A lot of people don't realize this. Vegas had been building so many houses that they actually

did sell houses for a dollar. So what the companies did, they had built brand new houses and they had entire neighborhoods that were sitting empty. So they did buy one house for regular price, get the second for a dollar. And they were making landlords by doing that. That is not what I did. I bought a house that I think originally sold in 2004 for about $365,000, somewhere right around there. And I bought it for $180,000 in 2011. Wow. So half price. What?

Yeah, half price. I love half price houses when they're, I mean, it was still nice, right? I'm assuming that they just lost it to foreclosure. Did they destroy it on the way out? They actually didn't. could definitely tell that, so both the house that I bought in 2011 and the house that I bought in 2012, the owners, that was their dream homes. So that kind of hurts a little bit when you're taking their dream homes from them, but they weren't going to stay in them anyway. And on the second one,

it was a short sale. So I actually got to help the person get out from under their loan, which was nice. But they were gorgeous, they are gorgeous homes. So both are about 2,700 square feet. The first one, the 2011 home, actually has a four-car garage, gourmet kitchen, marble countertops. The second one didn't have a four-car garage, but also had a gourmet kitchen. These are really nice houses. What is it rent for now, the first $180,000 house? All right. Don't get mad at me, real estate people.

Because I did not know the 1% rule back then. So my concern was covering the mortgage. So my mortgage on the 2011 home was just a teeny bit over $1,000 a month. I actually rented it out to a family member for $1,250 a month. So it covered my mortgage. I didn't have a property manager that I need to pay for. And the family member actually took wonderful care of my house. I have bumped it up now to I'm getting $1,600 a month on that.

and my mortgage with full P-I-T-I is $1,050 a month all these years later. So I'm making a profit on it still. Not as much as all the geniuses in bigger pockets I know, but it's been good to me. Well, and not only are you making a profit monthly, but you're also, it's not still worth $180,000. No, the one that I still have is back to about $350, $360 now. It's back to what it originally sold for in 2004. Wow. That's fantastic. So I do want to point out that if you're renting to family members, sometimes that doesn't work out so well. I'm very glad it worked out well for you. What I want to know

more, though, is is $1,600 a month the going rate for that neighborhood? I could probably get about 17 to 1750 for it. I chose to go a little bit lower because it is a military member. I actually went to college with his commander. So I have a little bit more feeling. that he'll be a reliable renter. Yeah. And you're still making money off of it. And frankly, this is your property. You could rent it for a dollar if you wanted to. I could. That would be weird on taxes. Very weird. I don't recommend it. But, you know, this is, okay, so that's awesome. I love that you, I love that you got this house. I'm so jealous because I don't have numbers like that at all. But that's, that's fantastic. Yeah. What's been really nice about it too is because I do have

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back from that deployment, what did you do housing-wise? I moved to a new state. So I moved to a place that I had no interest in owning and I rented. Okay. And that's valid. And what year is this? 2015. 2015. 2015. You're renting military moves again. I'm assuming. Yes. did you buy another property when you moved again? No. So in 2015, I moved to a place that I didn't want to buy just because I don't want to own there. And then in 2016, I moved to D.C. and D.C. is extremely expensive. And I wanted to be able to get to work easily and not deal with traffic. I actually got rid of my car while I was in D.C. So that meant I was living right in the middle of of everything, which meant, you know, million-dollar homes. So I rented while I was there. And then I moved

again in 2018. And the place that I live right now does not have a really great market for renting out homes. So the houses here are typically selling for about $250,000 to $300,000. And those houses are, they're selling for like if a house that sells for 250 here only rents for about 1,300. So I decided not to buy here. So you live in my neighborhood then. And you know, that's, I think that's really smart to look at. As I was growing up, the American dream, the pinnacle of life was to own a house. So I love real estate.

I want to own more than one house. I would just buy a rental. But you look around and you're like, oh, I'm actually going to have to pay. to own this rental. Not every place makes sense to buy a rental. So that's good that you didn't. Well done you. It's like you know what you're doing with money. I'm trying. All this while from 2015, when you got to about a 40% savings rate, was your savings rate continuing to creep up throughout these moves? Yes. So it's ebbed and flowed as I've moved from low cost of living to high cost of living and back. So it's been consistently over 50% for the last few years. Right now,

it's actually over 60% because I live in a low cost of living area. Got it. And so you recently, we just walked up through 2018, you recently said that you've crossed the finish line to lean fire. This is kind of how I understood what you was talking about earlier. Can you walk us through what that looks like and then what's next? Sure. So in 2019, I spent after tax, so only not talking about taxes at all,

I spend about $30,000 a little less than $30,000. So at this point, a millionaire. So I would be able to support that with a withdrawal rate of 3% if we are looking at it that way. That being said, I don't want to live here forever. This is a very lovely place for a couple of years, but it's not where I want to end up long term. and more importantly, once I retire, I want to have a lot of travel in my life. I want to do a lot more giving because right now I give money, but I also give a lot of my time via service to our country. When I retire, I'm planning to open up a nonprofit and I want to

have money available for that. So I am looking at more expensive lifestyle when I retire, probably more around the $45,000 to $50,000 range. And then I might end up getting married. Somebody can consider me their sugar mama. And we'll see what my expenses go to with that. Love it. So what's the plan to get there? You're just going to kind of continue doing the same thing

with keeping the saving rate strong and piling in money into investments or more real estate or what's going to go on there? Everything is possible. So for sure, I'm going to continue maxing out the Thrift Savings Plan and a Roth IRA as long as I'm working. And then in addition to that, I'm moving again this year because that's what we do. We move a lot. So I'm looking at real estate in my next location, trying to decide if I'm going to rent or buy. I haven't made a decision

yet. I long term would love to have a series of condos all around the country and then be somewhat nomadic and just go between them. And when I'm in town, I'll live in them and when I'm not in town, I'll rent them out on Airbnb is kind of what I'm thinking. So definitely more real estate eventually. I just don't know exactly when. Awesome. You know, our real estate podcast, the Bigger Pockets, Real Estate Investing podcast, just released an episode last week with Avery Carl. It was episode 364. And she talks, she's got some good tips on Airbnb. One of the tips she said is pick a location that already has established Airbnb rules that has been doing this for a really long time.

And she invests in and near the Smoky Mountains where people, like there's not a lot of hotels. There's a lot of houses. So people have always been renting out houses. They're not going to change their Airbnb laws anytime soon. So I don't know if the Smoky Mountains appeals to you. But there's a lot of other places like Orlando is another place. that has a lot of Airbnbable houses because they have such a favorable to owners, Airbnb laws already established for, you know, decades.

So I just want to throw that out there as a bit of advice. That was a great episode. And you can find that at biggerpockets.com slash show 364. So, well, that's exciting. You can absolutely do that. That's totally doable. How long do you think you're going to be in the military? Do you have an idea? You originally said until you were 51.

Yeah, so that would have been 30 years. I am eligible for retirement at the 20-year point, which is still a couple of years away for me when I turned 41. I honestly don't know. Like I said, my career has gone really well. I've really enjoyed it. I've gotten to do some incredible things. So I'm not in a hurry to leave. At the same time, there are other things that I want to do. So we're going to see. I don't know. When you leave the military, do you have to be there until your 20-year mark to, one, receive the pension and two, receive the health care benefits in retirement? For the most part, yes. So there are some ways to get health care or even a reduced pension earlier.

Those occasionally come up. And if you end up leaving for a medical reason, they're more likely to come up. So if I develop a medical issue over the next couple of years, that could happen. But if you wanted to get just a totally normal retirement, that's at the 20-year point or longer. Okay. So is that kind of influencing your decision here a little bit with some of the things about kind of grinding it out until the 20-year mark? It is influencing me staying. I wouldn't say grinding it out. Because like I said, I've gotten to do some really cool things. I very much enjoy my job. Oh, sorry, I didn't mean that. I didn't mean like that. But yes. Okay. So that is that is a factor. in your decision making. Yes. Got it. Definitely. As it should be, that's a really huge benefit. I mean, what's the most asked question that we

get from people that are emailing us is how do you pay for health insurance in retirement? If the military is paying for your health insurance, that's a sweet gig. Yeah. I know in the past couple of years, costs have gone up a little bit for retiree health care, but it's still like 50, or $60 a month for a family to get coverage. Oh, yeah. So on this side of military benefits, it's a little more. Yes. My parents were paying at 1.1400 a month.

So I definitely see, I'm the only military person in my family. So I definitely get to see the other side. And I'm very grateful for my benefits. Yes. Yeah, they're pretty awesome benefits. Okay. It's time for the famous four questions. These are the same four questions that we ask of all of our guests.

Airman Mill Dollar, are you ready? I am. What is your favorite finance book? Definitely your money or your life. I've already discussed how it was life-changing for me. I'm not normally the type that goes for self-helpy kind of books, but that was one of the first books I ever read that actually changed how I saw the world. Yeah, that's awesome.

You know, we had Vicky on, and she said, you know, it's not a finance, book. It's a lifestyle book. Ah, but it focuses on if you fix your finances, you can have whatever lifestyle you want. It is like the fire Bible. Yeah, she's amazing. And I will never not be grateful to her for what she has done for me and so many other people. Yes. I love it. That's an awesome book. And we had we had Vicki Robin on episode. I'm pulling it up right now. number 98, bigger pockets, money, or biggerpockets.com slash money show 98 if you want to listen to that one.

It was a great episode and we had a great chance to talk about her journey with money and discuss the book as well. All right, what was your biggest money mistake? I would say probably not maxing out my retirement accounts earlier and focusing early on on taxable accounts. I, like so many others in the fire community,

didn't understand both the benefits of the tax advantages of retirement accounts and also all the ways to take money out from those accounts early if you want to. If I could do it over again, I would have definitely maxed out TSP many, many years before I ever ended up doing so. One of the things I think is great about your story is you just were very efficient about moving towards financial independence. And so your biggest mistake here is a relatively minor inefficiency in the scope of most people's financial journeys that we've heard on their show. There was no crushing debt load or major loss or whatever. It was just, hey, I could have been more thoughtful about this earlier. And I think it's a good lesson. I attribute that to finding

the community online so early and being able to learn from other people's mistakes and not struggling through it on my own like so many people have to do. Because I did not grow up in a family that talked about money. Lots of people don't ever know this stuff and they're not exposed to it. So that's why I'm here and that's why I write the blog specifically so that I can help other people learn about this sooner. Yeah, I feel the same way in my journey. Yes, and same. And I am going to go back and just reiterate, what was your biggest money mistake? Not maxing out my retirement accounts early. I would like to point out to everybody listening and to Scott that maxing out or contributing to your 401k or TSP, does the TSP have any sort of match?

It does now. So I don't have a match, but we went into a new retirement system in 2018 that if you were in the military for less than 12 years at that point, you could enroll in the new blended retirement system. So I was already past 12 years. So I could not enroll. But the blended retirement system does offer a match up to 5%. Okay, so that match is what we in this business call free money, meaning you put your money in and then your employer puts 5% in or up to 5%. That is a 100% return on your investment. And somebody pointed out, well, maybe there's a vesting period.

Yeah, maybe there's a vesting period. But it's still a 100% return. Scott, what are you getting 100% returns on? My match. Anything else? That's about it. Maybe a great house hack. Maybe.

You know, and that takes more work than just putting money into account and setting it and letting it go forever. So I don't want to harp on this, but I absolutely want to harp on this. If you have a 401K as an option, you should be doing everything you can to, at least contribute to the match if your company has a match and not everybody does, but you should know about your company's options. You should be contributing if there's a match and you should be trying to max it out as frequently as possible. Well, here's a good way to not get the match is you go into service. You buy a $35,000 jacked up F350 pickup truck and then you buy an apartment in the swanky part of town, fill it up with big screen TVs, and now you can't afford to

put a little bit of money and take the match, right? Well, don't do that, Scott. But we welcome you to join the military anytime. Yes, yes, not the joint military part. Don't do all that other stuff. But yes, you should join the military. I mean, the military is a really valid option for, I mean, there's a lot of opportunities in the military that I think people don't really understand. Yes, I think everybody thinks about like Marines going in guns ablazing and there's a lot more

to the military than just that. In my job, I have occasionally carried a weapon, but I have never fired a weapon. in my job. I know I said earlier I'm not a computer geek, but I do work on a computer all day. You know, I've had jobs where I spent the majority of my time writing speeches, and I have had jobs where I'm reviewing documents, and I've had teaching jobs, and I've had a variety of different things that I have done. Okay. But you're still getting all of the benefits. All the same benefits. All the same. I mean, there's, you know, hazard pay and all that for people who are doing hazardous things. I would personally rather not be eligible for hazard pay stuff.

Yeah. I just really encourage, I mean, the military desperately needs people right now with cyber skills. So I'm not a techie person, but we need techie people in the military. So if you are a nerd, you might want to consider it. It will occasionally have to do a push-up. I'm sorry. Okay. So if somebody is listening, you know, there's a lot of talk now that.

oh, college isn't for everybody and there's so much college dead and yada, yada, yada. Where does somebody go to get information about being in the military? The answer I should tell you is go talk to a recruiter. I would say before you ever go talk to a recruiter, definitely look online or people can obviously reach out to me. And the reason I say that is the job of a recruiter is to get you into the military and they are going to tell you the good things. If you go online, you can maybe learn a little bit more about both the good and the bad.

Okay, I'll get some links from you and put them into the show notes, which can be found at BiggerPockets.com slash Money Show 109. But we have taken a huge detour out of the famous four. We've only done the famous two so far. So back to this. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I have noticed a lot of people lately in the fire community who are joining the fire community and going whole hog and burning themselves out after only a couple of months. So right now, anybody who's looking at financial independence, please take a breath, do one thing a month, one thing a week. You don't have to go from spending $1,000 a month on food to spending $60 a month on food. If you go from $1,000 a month on food to $800 a month

on food. That's huge. And you need to recognize how well you are doing. So just take it a little bit easier. You don't have to implement all of the hacks at once. It took me 15 years to get to this point. I don't know how long it took you guys to get to where you are now. But you do not go overnight from knowing nothing about financial independence to doing everything. So relax. I love that advice. That's wonderful. Thank you. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? You know, my favorite joke to tell it parties right now, I actually already sent into you guys and you used it. So I had to find a new one.

So I found a money one. It's, did you hear about the guy who invented lifesavers? They say he made a mint. Oh, that's so refreshing. I love that joke. Oh, God. All right, where can people find out more about you? I blog at military dollar.com.

I talk about both military money stuff and just general money stuff there. You can also find me on Twitter at Military underscore Dollar or on Facebook. I am Airman Mill Dollar. All right. Well, Airman Mildar, this has been an amazing story. We really enjoyed it. Learned a lot. I love how repeatable much of your journey really is, basically any service member to kind of

repeat a similar journey here. And I think your advice is outstanding. So thank you very much for coming on the show today. Thank you guys so much for having me. Yes, this was awesome. And Scott, I'm going to correct you and say, not just any service member, any woman, any man, anyone who is listening can do this because it is so repeatable. Don't spend every dime you have to impress people you don't even care about. Don't buy things

that you don't want. Don't see that movie. I mean, movies are $10 a pop now. If you don't want to see it, don't see it. Put that $10 in your piggy bank. There's a lot of things that you can do that you have shared today, and that was great. I really appreciate your time. Thanks. And your service. Oh, well, thank you so much. And I appreciate everything you guys are doing. I do. Mindy, I don't know if you remember us talking about this, but I did want to end with something that you reminded me of at FinCon.

So in honor of all the military members who reached out to you and complained, over and out.