BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 227: ‘Rocketing' To FI at Age 35: What’s Life Like Post-Retirement?

Episode Date: August 30, 2021

What do you think of when you think about retirement? Are you on a tropical island drinking fruity cocktails out of a coconut? If you dream about that sort of retirement, Steve Adcock may have some revealing words for you. Retirement isn’t just about doing nothing all day, it’s about exploring your passions, and sometimes working more than you did before, to accomplish things that truly matter to you. Steve decided to leave his high-stress IT job after 11 years of work. It was eating away at him every day, and it got to the point where just going into work became a grueling weight on his shoulders. He knew from a few years before potential retirement that he had a choice: lavishly live his life now or live frugally and have financial freedom forever. He chose the latter and doesn't regret it for one second. Now, Steve and his rocket scientist wife spend their time taking care of their completely self-reliant housing compound in Arizona. He has a lot more to accomplish, but for now, he’s enjoying his off-grid lifestyle, complete with solar panels, his own water well, and a brand new septic tank. In This Episode We Cover Why it’s important to have a financial plan (even if you won’t retire early)  Working (lightly) in retirement so you can enjoy more freedom  Tracking your spending meticulously so you know where every cent goes Taking care of your health and wealth when given free time  Spending in post-retirement, and how it differs from regular spending  Why early retirement WON’T make you happy And So Much More! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 227, where we interview Steve Adcock and talk about life after retirement. I didn't exactly know what I wanted. I just knew what I didn't want. And I think a lot of people out there really wrap their heads around that. In fact, at one point, I honestly considered quitting my $120,000 job to get my CDL and become a truck driver. That was something that was on my plate for something that I might want to do because I I just really wasn't happy with what I was doing. Hello, hello, hello.

My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my can bench press 225 pounds co-host, Scott Trench. You're always raising the bar with these new interests, Mindy. Thank you. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story, because we truly believe that financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right.

Whether you want to retire early, and travel to remote Arizona, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or travel the world. We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards those dreams. That was a good one, Scott. I didn't properly laugh long enough. That was very funny. I really am excited to talk to Steve Adcock today because we don't talk to so many people who have reached financial independence and what their life looks like afterwards. And Steve has been retired for almost five years. So he has a pretty good taste of what it's like to be retired and can,

I think can speak from a position of authority what it is what he expected and what actually happened. Yeah. I think, you know, if, you know, we spend very little time today on the actual journey to retirement. And I don't think, I don't think we're going to learn quite as much from his journey to retirement. What I think the value of this episode is, is in learning about what the finish line looks like and what retirement looks like for someone that has achieved this early in life. And I hope that you can learn a lot from that and take a lot of inspiration and see the magic that this can have on your happiness, day-to-day life and impact on society as well. I think he's having a positive impact on society, even as he's an early retiree.

So I love the episode. It was a different take than we usually do. I hope that you find it inspiring and motivating. Yeah. You know, like you said, Scott, his story to get to financial independence. He did the same things that everybody else does. He spent less than he earned. He invested wisely.

He made a lot of money. And I hope that people listen to this and don't take so much away that he and his wife made a lot of money. He's in IT. She's a rocket scientist, like a real scientist with rockets. You don't make $1.50 an hour doing that. So their timeline to get to financial independence was very quick. And like you said, that's not what we're here learning.

We're learning about what happens afterwards. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going. And more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress.

Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place.

every decision actually moves in Edle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun?

Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing, get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money.

It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting. You can set aside money for business goals, control spending with virtual cards, and find tax write-offs you didn't even know existed. It saves time, money, and probably a few years of life expectancy. Found has over 30,000 five-star reviews from owners who say, Sound makes everything easier, expenses, income, profits, taxes, invoices even.

So reclaim your time and your sanity. Open a found account for free at found.com. That's fowund.com. Found is a financial technology company, not a bank. Bank. Banking services are provided by lead bank, member FDIC. Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with found. 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 Leen or 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 BP money. Steve Adcock, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Thanks very much.

I've been looking forward to it for really as long as I've been FI. And how long have you been FIs? Well, it's almost five years. So I would say we really reached the beginning of our FI life, I guess, in 2016. And it's been an interesting journey since then. But that was really our first taste of what all this, well, what all this is really like and what it means to us. Okay. Steve is actually retired, which is awesome. We haven't talked to a lot of people who have been retired.

But Steve, I want to know how you got there. Where does your journey with money begin? Yeah. I worked in information technology for my entire career. It started in 2005 when I graduated from college with a degree in information technology. So from the onset, I've always made good money. I've never tried to make my story out to be some rags to riches kind of thing. It just wasn't that.

I had a great upbringing. I had loving parents. I really have no complaints about my childhood. And right from the first day I set foot in an office, I did make pretty good money, but I wasn't always smart with my money. I budgeted a little bit. I saved the 4% in my company-sponsored traditional 401K just to get the company match. But I basically spent the rest.

So I did the bare minimum for the large majority of my career, except for maybe the last five or six years where I really started to get my button gear and invest as much as I can. We would max out our 401Ks and Roth IRAs and things like that. But for the majority of it, it was earn and spend, earn and spend. I had the supercharged Corvette. I had the Yamaha R1 race bike. I had the house in the suburbs. I had all of these things that I thought made me happy.

How long was your career? It was, well, it was, it started in 2005 and it ended in 2006, the end of 2016. So about 11 years working in IT. Okay. And how can we get an idea of like income at the beginning and end? Yeah. My very first salary was $55,000. And especially back in 2005, that's pretty darn good.

And by the end of my career, it was about $135,000, I think, a year. So not bad. A lot of people have been able to increase their salary way more than I have. But, I mean, I was happy with with raises every few years and just just worked out fine for me. So always made good money, but nothing, nothing exceptional. Yeah. So that's not, that's not, you know, something that's unrepeatable, I think, for a lot of listeners, is to have a career with, with that kind of income trajectory on that.

And it sounds like you were spending like a sailor on some of these, some of these, these fun things for a little bit of it. Yeah. Yeah. Well, so I'm really interested. How did you, how did you retire in 11 years on this? Well, yeah. And so I met my wife in, well, my soon-to-be wife in 2013, and things progressed from there.

And then we got married. And that was really, that was really the point where we started to put the pieces in the place. Because she was, she also worked in IT. She was, she's a rocket scientist, an actual rocket scientist. Um, so I married up, like, there's, I, I, don't know how else to say it. I so married up. But so at that point, we had a decision to make. We had two pretty darn good salaries. And we can make a choice. We could either have the vacation

home, you know, live a large, glamorous life by a, you know, a sports car, a luxury car, or whatever. Or we can put our money together and save as much as we possibly can and do something else with a life, something that we liked to do a little bit better. I never had all that much satisfaction out of my job. IT just drained the life out of me. Even though it paid well, it drained the life out of me. My wife wasn't so hateful or resentful of her job. And maybe resentful is not the right word. But she was okay working, but she was always willing to entertain a better offer. So ultimately, we decided to not live like rock stars and put our money to good use for us for the last five or six years of our working careers, we saved almost 70%. That's 70% of two pretty good

IT salaries. And that adds up really fast. So what was the position that you guys both brought into the marriage? Um, from an income perspective or from a, uh, maybe, you know, net worth or in that, in that, those types of things. Yeah, I was about a hundred and fifth, 110 or so. when we got married and she was at, I would, I want to say about 90. So there's a little bit of differential, but really not much. And our net worths were about, I don't know, maybe I had 250 and I think she was around there, maybe maybe even a little bit higher. So we were, we were relatively equal.

So we didn't really have any of the, you know, income conflicts that some spouses might might grapple with. We didn't really have, you know, that to contend with. So we certainly looked out from that perspective. Okay. And and did you move in conjunction? Like how did you facilitate that, that lifestyle? How did that compare to the peers, your peers? We do. Yeah. Ultimately, we lived in Tucson, Arizona at the time. And that's a relatively low cost of living. I had a house in the suburbs that I moved out of. I moved in with my wife, Courtney, in her house. We rented my house for a year. So we did the, the whole landlord thing for a year. Didn't really like it. So we ended up selling my house. We kept my wife's house that that we lived in. The end of,

well, I guess it was 2017. We sold the house, my wife's house. So now we have no house. All that, that extra money coming in, bought an airstream and decided to more or less travel the country for a living without a house, that was it. Our airstream was it. So we lived in this 200 square foot confining in some ways space, but we loved almost every minute of it. We got to see a lot of the country. But the benefit of an RV or mobile kind of lifestyle is you could almost make it as cheap as you want. You don't have to stay in campgrounds. You could stay out in the middle of nowhere and pay zero for camping fees, which is always nice. And as long as you control your expenses with diesel and the food that you buy. You have a lot of control over your expenses

when you don't have that house to pay for. So for us, that was a big part of reducing our lifestyle enough to be able to rationalize, I guess, or justify retiring early when we did at our net worth. So I'm getting a picture of in 2013, you guys get married. You have a net worth somewhere in ballpark of 250 to 500, maybe somewhere in that ballpark range combined. And you're like, how am I going to crush the end state to retirement, which happens in three years from then? Is that generally right? Yeah. Well, yeah, it was, it was about 250 apiece. So our, our combined net worth was a little over 500k, I want to say. So it was a little bit higher than that. Okay. But yeah, I mean, you're the, the, that delta, like what do we do from here to this?

there to actually, you know, boost our income enough to make this, to make this viable. And that's really where tracking our expenses, which was not fun. But again, I married a rocket scientist who loves spreadsheets. And boy, boy, the spreadsheets. We could have told you exactly how much we spent on sweet potatoes for about two years straight on sweet potatoes, not just grocery source spending, but specifically like each and everything we bought. We tracked it meticulously.

So we knew what we were spending a little bit too much on or what we might actually be able to spend more on. But like I said before, 70% of two incomes, two IT incomes, that adds up so fast, maxing out a 401ks, maxing out a Roth IRAs, opening a brokerage account, funneling every sense that we can possibly muster into these investment accounts. that that is absolutely what set us up to retire when we did. So we sacrificed a little bit in the short term with the hopes of having a long, I guess, long happy life outside of a traditional office. Did you have like an end state in mind that you had been backing into from the very beginning? Or was there, how did that work?

I didn't exactly know what I wanted. I just knew what I didn't want. And I think a lot of people out there can can really wrap their heads. around that. In fact, at one point, I honestly considered quitting my $120,000 job to get my CDL and become a truck driver. That was something that was on my plate for something that I might want to do because I just really wasn't happy with what I was doing. But my story, I think, meshes with a lot of other early retirement stories. I started to read a lot of this financial independent stuff. I stumbled on to Mr. Money Mustache's blog.

And he has a writing style that I really connected with. I mean, he cusses in his blog post. I did too. He's a very informal way of kind of in your face kind of writing style, which really connected with me. He was a software developer too. Our stories really connected. And it's like, well, maybe this is more possible than we think.

I mean, we're going to have to make changes. But if he can do it, you know, I'm married to a spouse who makes almost as much money as I do, too. So it should be even easier for us. So let's see what we can do here. Let's see if we can make this work. So what was your, you know, after the grind is completed, you're approaching some number in net worth or spending or whatever where I imagine to become comfortable with the idea of actually doing it with that. What does that process look like for you? It was, yeah.

So we use the Trinity 4% rule as a guideline as a baseline. And I don't really like to think of it as a rule because it's not a rule. There are so many nuances to that. But that was just our ballpark figure. And we were thinking traveling in an airstream, we could probably spend $30,000, $35,000 a year and be reasonably comfortable. So that's where we started our number journey. Like, what do we have to hit before we actually called it quit? And when I quit my job, our combined net worth was 870,000.

thousand dollars, which is way below most people's comfort zone, but we're also more risk tolerant. We have high in-demand skills. So if everything hits the fan, we can go back to work and make some extra money. So for us, we had that as our fallback. So that's kind of where we we really initially decided, you know, what our number has to be before we, before we do this. So I quit at $870,000. My wife continued. to work for the next six months to not leave her team in a lurch. So we probably added another 50 grand to that. So when we actually set sale, sold the house, set sale, we were at about 930, 9, 920, something like that. And how old were you guys at this point? I was 35 and my wife was 33.

Okay. So you're achieving financial independence in 10, 12 years after starting your career with this kind of stuff at that level. How do you, how mechanically do you go about funding early retirement? Do you have a cash reserve as part of that? Do you begin withdrawing on the funds? Like, how does that work? Yeah, a lot of people have different philosophies on this, but ours is actually relatively simple. We have a larger than normal savings account. We keep almost $60,000, well, $60,000 to $80,000 usually in our savings account. So that's not invested. That's in a savings account, which is more than a lot of people would keep. But for us, that makes us comfortable that we can live off of that money if the stock market really dips. We are heavy index fund investors.

So the last couple of years, we've been doing great money, hand over a fist. We're just swimming in it. But when the other shoe drops, I mean, we're not going to be doing so great. When the market falls, we also don't do very well. We lost $220,000 last year after the dip. when coronavirus really started to make its full impact. Um, so that's just a risk. That's just part of how we, how we do this. Um, so we do sell stock sometimes. Um, I have a little side hustle income.

I have an ebook, but I mean, we don't, don't make a lot of money with that stuff, but a YouTube channel as well. So these little bits of side hustle income coming in really does help us to supplement our, our spending. But from that, the side hustle income, to selling some stocks here and there when we need to keep in our lifestyle as low as possible. Those things add up into how we fund our early retirement lifestyle day to day. You know, you should have listened to Mindy because she called the dip I think the week before

it happened. Is that right, Mindy? It was it was that fall before. But I called it to the day, not accounting for the leap year. It was a total joke. I'm like, oh, stock market's going to crash on the 13th, and it was actually the 14th. But yeah, that, yeah, so follow me for more amazing stock market tips. Buy low, sell high.

In terms of annual spending, what do your side hustles bring in, your side income, your little, I guess it's now it's your main job because you don't have a job. Exactly. At the very beginning, I would say maybe $10,000 to $15,000 a year. So not a lot. But I found that it's really easy. And this is one of the most surprising things to me about early retirement. It's way easier to make money than you think, even after retiring, after achieving financial independence and quitting your job. So these days, I would say that our side hustle income brings in 35 to 40K. a year. And that almost covers our entire expenses. And, you know, a lot of people out there will say, well, he's not really retired. He's doing work, which, I mean, if your definition of retirement is literally sitting in your chair and doing nothing, maybe yelling at the neighbor kids to get off your, your lawn, then yeah, I'm not, I'm not retired. But everyone's early retirement journey looks different and this is just the way hours looks and it works works really well for us.

How many hours a week are you spending working? I'm going to slap down the internet retirement police and say it's none of your business what he does. I would say 10 to 15 hours a week. So two hours a day, maybe three, maybe three hours on like a bad day. I am working, whether it's consulting work or whether it's doing video editing for a YouTube channel. So, Yeah, two to three hours a day, max is what I spend doing quote-unquote work. That actually brings in side hustle income. I want to jump back to a philosophy thing here with this, which is you're in IT, your wife's a rocket scientist with this.

You decided to cut bait at $920,000 in income and begin traveling with that. Do you have kids? We do not. We do not have human kids. We have dog kids, but not. human kids. Okay. So you decide to end the career at that point, which I think is far more aggressive than a lot of other folks are comfortable with. But I also want to highlight that there's another thing here, which is that there's a risk of running out of money with this. And there's the much

more probable event that the market is going to return somewhat close to long-term averages or even above average, right? It's much more likely that either average or above-average returns happen than a cratering of the market, right? Sure. And what happened to you, obviously, I think it was a large market boom with this and supplemental income. So how has your net worth grown since retiring with this? Our net worth as of yesterday was $1.3 million. And that's like a $400,000 increase since calling it quits. I am not going to sit here and tell you that we're genius money people and we just work this selves out or work this out because we're just so smart.

Of course not. We happen to retire at just the right time in the last, I don't know, 10 years or so to boost our net worth that much in that amount of time. The philosophical question, though, is do you recommend other people think through it and approach it with, I think, that aggressive stance, like, hey, I'm going to retire on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, on, and move on that. Or do you think if you were doing it again and repeating the journey that you would have waited a little longer to, to build up a bigger cushion for that?

For us personally, if anything, I would have retired sooner. But, I mean, hindsight, it's always 2020. We know what would have happened. So, yeah, we could have retired earlier, but we didn't know at the time. But I would certainly not recommend this aggressive of a early retirement. journey to everybody. Everybody's risk tolerance is going to look different. Everybody's living expenses are going to look different. Their lifestyles are going to look different. I mean, we sold both of our houses and lived in an airstream. Now we lived in an off-grid house out in the

middle of Arizona desert with almost no expenses. So we keep our cost of living down so much that it helps us to justify the risk that we did take and quite frankly continuing to take with our current net worth and our living expenses. We know we can cut back dramatically if we have to. But a lot of people out there may not be able to do that. They might have kids. They might live in a high cost of living area. They might have health bills.

You know, that it's just going to look so different for everybody. So I absolutely would not recommend this aggressive of a style to everybody. But what I would do is recommend that everybody sit down and determine what their number is, or at least come to, you know, get in the right ballpark. So you at least know what you're aiming for. If you spend $100,000 a year, you're going to need X amount like $4 million, for example, in net worth. But what if you cut that in half? What does that do to your time horizon, to your career in the future?

Those details are going to help you put the pieces in the place now. So you might be able to retire earlier than you expect. but doing that, that legwork, some of that grunt work now is really going to set yourself up to making those decisions to make your future goals happen maybe even sooner than you expected. Yeah. What I hear you saying is in the beginning of your story, my job sucked the life out of me. I think that's an actual quote. It paid well, but it drained the life out of me.

My husband had the same kind of job. He had a lot of stress at his job. And yeah, you can spend all $135,000 that you're making and have a great life with a lot of stress. But you've got two weeks of vacation a year. So, you know, you can unwind. Or you can look at what spending looks like when you reduce, like what does your life look like at $50,000 a year when you're saving 50? Or what does it look like at 75 or even 100 when you're making 135? You don't have to save 70% like Steve did, but what would your life look like if you could?

I mean, how much stress do you have now? A little bit less, right? How much stress do you have? Oh, almost. If I have any stress, that's a bad day. So usually it's basically no stress. Whereas if you had stress, that was a normal day. That is very correct.

Yes. Yeah. So let's look at your health, for example. I've seemed to recall you lost a couple of pounds after you quit working. Yes. I was about 270 pounds at one point in the past. And I took off about 70 of those. So right, I like to hover, you know, 2.10 somewhere around there.

But yeah, it's without that full-time drain without the stress, without having to get up in the morning and go to a job that you don't like. you have the entire day to do what to to shape it into something that really works for you. And for me, fitness is a huge part of my life. I have a home gym here. You might be able to see that behind me because there's no Planet Fitness or LA Fitness or Gold's Gym here out in the middle of nowhere. So it's such a big part of my life that you maintain these healthy lifestyles. And when you have the time to do these things, it's no longer a chore.

It's not, it's no longer something that you just have to fit in before dinner or, or whatever, or before work. You just do it whenever it makes sense to you, whenever you have the time and when you don't have that job, guess what? You always have the time. What is, can you, can you walk us through the, your day-to-day life upon graduating or retiring from work and how that's evolved over the past, I think five years, four years that you've been retired here?

What has that look like for you? What does that journey look like from a happiness and lifestyle perspective? It's looked remarkably the same inside or outside of the airstream. We've always been early morning people. So we get up around 6 a.m. Take the dogs out for a nice long two-mile walk because it helps them wear them out. And of course, getting more steps. There's nothing wrong with that.

I average 15 to 20,000 steps a day. So that's obviously a good habit to get into and stay there. And then I come back, maybe do some. some work on the computer. If I'm going to, you know, if I'm consulting with somebody, it might do something for them or it might, you know, hang out on Twitter and see what's going on there or film some videos for our YouTube channel. Really, the morning is my like ultra-productive, deep work, ultra-focused, however you, you want to say it. That's really where I get the most productive work done during my day. Then after lunch, it's like a clean slate. I could

basically do what, you know, whatever makes sense to me, whether that's more exercising, going for another walk, playing on the computer again. I mean, for me, I'm very internally motivated. So I give myself a lot of projects, whether it's a web-based app or something else I'm building, writing an e-book. I can find things productive to do with my time. And in the afternoon, tends to be when I do those sort of things. When it's about four o'clock, we stop everything, we put down the cell phones, get away from our computers, We have our happy hour, take a drink outside of the patio and watch the clouds go by and maybe play with the dogs a little bit until dinner. So it's really a very free-flowing, very little structure, which for us works.

But for a lot of people, you'll probably need that structure. But for us, more of a free-flowing lifestyle just works great for us. What you kind of said there almost to me sounds like a lot of self-imposed structure. It's the structure you want. You wake up at six. You walk the dogs. You do some work in the morning. around some of those big goals and then you have it four o'clock happy hour and dinner,

all that kind of stuff. But it sounds wonderful with that. But I'm gathering that you're a fairly disciplined person in a general sense and that this has not been, I'm going to play video games and pack on 100 pounds in retirement. No, I'm going to, I'm going to take care of my mind, my body, my life. And each day is better than the last kind of thing. He pecked on the hundred pounds before he left. Before.

Yeah. And I only say that because I know Stephen real life and he's incredibly fit. So when I first read that you had lost a lot of weight, I was like, wow, he used to be fat. I didn't realize that. I'm sorry, he used to be out of shape. Yes. I still have my driver's license from when I first moved out here to Arizona. And that's when I was 270, 27, 275.

I have purposely kept my driver's license around. I haven't updated it as like a reinforcement that I'm on the right track here. I'm making the right decisions. This is worth it. The time I spend in the gym and walking, it's worth it because it's improving my life. It's making my lifestyle better. And that's really why we've done all this to make our lives better. Where did you travel in the airstream?

All over the country. So we've been from New York, the Finger Lakes, all. the way to Washington State down here to Arizona and over to, I think, Alabama is the forest. Longmont, Colorado. Yep, yep, yep, yep. I loved it there. That was so great. But yes, we've been almost all over the place. It was a very free lifestyle, very fun, got to see a lot, but there's some downsides to the RV lifestyle as well. How long did that continue for? We lived full time in the airstream for three years until I just got, I wanted a little bit more space. I was sharing my office, my office with the kitchen.

And long term, I just couldn't see myself continuing to do that. So yeah, we, we had to make a change. So how does an early retiree go about changing from that lifestyle to buying a home? How do you select a place to live from anywhere in the country and all that kind of stuff? What did that process look like? Well, for us, it was super interesting. Believe it or not, we met somebody on YouTube, somebody who wrote in, commented on one of our videos, I think it was about how to use an aeropress to make coffee. It was something completely innocent.

He knew we were in Tucson. He was down here. He commented on one of our videos. We met up. We went down to see his place. And he bought 20 acres of land for $7,000. And it's like, holy mother. That is awesome.

That much land for that cost, that's incredible. And that's really, I guess, the first time that that seed was like planted in our heads. Like, maybe it would be nice to have some land somewhere that we never have to call and make a reservation for. We just show up. It's our place we can do whatever we want. And that was back in 2018, I think. So over the next year, we noodled with that a little bit more.

And then it sort of morphed into, well, what? What if we built a small house there? So maybe we just take a break from the airstream a little bit, live maybe in the winter's there, and then venture out during the summer. And that just slowly started to expand into, what if we just change our lifestyle? We live there full time and occasionally go out in the stream. And that's ultimately what we came around to doing. But finding cheap land in a really beautiful place, that's really what set this whole,

whole settle down plan into motion where we can keep our lifestyle super low and live almost as cheap cheaply as we want so can you can you walk us through that that purchase did you purchase the land and then build a house did you build it yourself or how did that how'd that work and how close is it to other things because i'm thinking of like water and electricity yeah we bought seven acres sight unseen did not set foot on this piece of property when we bought it. There was a 640 square foot house with a garage. And I'm in the garage now that we converted into a, into an office. So essentially a square footage has expanded. But our friend who lives in the area, who we met on YouTube, went over to take a look at the house for us. So at

least somebody saw it before we bought it. But we paid $72,000, $72,000 for seven acres and a house completely off grid. So the second we... moved here. Well, we saw this place for the first time in 2019. We upgraded the solar. So we have 3,700 watts of solar power feeding into some lithium batteries we have inside. So that provides all the power. It's Arizona. So we have sun almost every single day of the year. So we have so much power. We could run instapots. We can run microwaves. I have my computers and external monitors. We don't really have to sacrifice living out here. We just installed a well for water. Previously, we were doing rain catchments.

We were catching our own rainwater off the roof, funneling it into a freshwater tank, filtering it. And then that's what we were using at our sinks and showers and things like that. So that's expanded a little bit with her own well. We have a septic on site. So we are so self-contained. And that's really what allows us to live as cheap as possible. We have zero utility bills. And that helps a lot.

It sounds like an engineer's dream. In many ways it is figuring out all this. How about internet? Do you have just satellite on that? We are waiting. I am waiting anxiously for Starlink, and I'm not a patient person. So I've been cursing Elon Musk under my breath for the last few months. I need Starlight care.

But until that happens, we have a Verizon jetpack with an unlimited, a grandfathered unlimited plan. so we're not throttled. So that's how we get internet. That's how I'm recording this podcast with you. And that's really where our internet comes from at this point. Where is the nearest grocery store? It's we have a small store about 20 minutes away. But like the nearest Safeway or the nearest Walmart, that's like 45 minutes away.

And just a second, just a second. I know that sounds horrifying. It would take you almost an hour each one. way to get to the grocery store. But I found that we actually drive less out here than we do in a city because every time we venture out, we do everything. We do everything that we need to do in that trip. Then we come back and we don't leave the house for literally days. We make lists so we don't forget anything. So if anything, we actually drive less here than we did before. So that's pretty cool. Even though every time we do venture out, it's a longer drive for sure.

What is, what's next for this? Do you have like a next adventure planned or you kind of settle down here for a while? We've given that a lot of thought. Like, do we start traveling again or maybe we don't do that? We really don't miss the RV lifestyle enough to want to go back to it full time. So we don't think that's going to happen. I think the next thing for us is to find a summer home. So we get to escape Arizona during the heat of the summer.

For this summer, we rented an Airbnb. in Oceanside, California, just to test how that would, how that would work, it was beautiful. It was great. We would definitely do that again. So, you know, what do we do? Do we buy a summer place, you know, on the Oregon coast? Or do we continue renting Airbnbs or VRBOs, whatever? Or maybe we travel internationally.

We're not exactly sure how that's going to work out yet. But I think that's going to be our next major initiative, I think, figuring out what we do in the summer to escape the heat because it is hot. We do have an AC here, like one of those portable ACs that we can move around and run, but that's pretty taxing on our solar system. We have some EVAP coolers in place that are way better for power, but uses a lot of water. So there's even that trade-off too. So we're learning as we go here, but we're not exactly sure what the future holds, but we have, we're pretty positive people, so we always have a smile on our face. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture,

including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch

subscription with the code Pockes. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves an needle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. It's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets.

You just realized your business needed to hire someone yesterday. How can you find amazing candidates fast? Easy. Just use Indeed. When it comes to hiring, Indeed is all you need. That means you can stop struggling to get your job notice on other job sites. Indeed's sponsor jobs helps you stand out and hire the right people quickly. Your job post jumps straight to the top of the page where your ideal candidates are looking. And it works.

Sponsored jobs on Indeed get 45% more applications than non-sponsor. posts. The best part? No monthly subscriptions or long-term contracts. You only pay for results. And speaking of results, in the minute I've been talking to you, 23 people just got hired through Indeed worldwide. There's no need to wait any longer. Speed up your hiring right now with Indeed. And listeners of this show will get a $75 sponsored job credit to get your jobs more visibility at Indeed.com slash bigger pockets. Just go to Indeed.com slash bigger pockets right now and support our show by saying you heard about Indeed on this podcast. com slash bigger pockets. Terms and conditions apply. Hiring, indeed, is all you need. When you want more, start your business with Northwest Registered Agent and get access to thousands of free guides, tools, and legal forms to help you launch and protect your business all

in one place. Build your complete business identity with Northwest today. Northwest Registered Agent has been helping small business owners and entrepreneurs launch and grow businesses for nearly 30 years. They're the largest registered agent and LLC service in the U.S. with over 1,500 corporate guides, who are real people who know your local laws and can have help you and your business every step of the way. Northwest makes life easy for business owners. They don't just help you form your business. They give you the free tools you need after you form it, like operating agreements, meeting minutes, and thousands of how-to guides that explain the complicated ins and outs of running a business. And with Northwest, privacy is automatic.

They never sell your data and all services are handled in-house because privacy by default is their pledge to all customers. Visit Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free and start building something amazing. Get more with Northwest Registered. agent at Northwest Registeredagent.com slash money-free. Where are my gloves? Come on, heat. Any day now?

Winter is hard, but your groceries don't have to be. This winter, stay warm. Tap the banner to order your groceries online at voila.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. So let's talk about post-fi life, pre-retirement.

What did you think it was going to be? And how is it the same and how is it different? Because I'm sure all of your plans didn't come true all at once. Yeah, it was certainly a journey. I think that it's, it was, in some cases it was easier, but in some cases it wasn't. It wasn't. So after early retirement, I just kind of, I thought that I would spend all this time basically doing, doing nothing, doing just sitting or finding something to do, basically. And I found that to be harder to do than I thought. And if you don't have hobbies before you early retire, that's going to be a big, big, big, big problem. Because there's a bell curve when you retire. That's a there's a bell curve. So right when you first quit your job that you don't like, you're happy. And skyrockets, right? It just goes up for the next several days or maybe weeks. You're just, you could not be happier. But then it slowly starts to taper off. It crests at the top.

It's like, okay, uh, watching Netflix for 10 hours a day. That was kind of cool, but I'm kind of getting tired of this. What am I going to do with my life? And then your happiness, if you don't find that next thing to do, begins to dip back down to maybe where you were before, before you, you know, before you quit your job and retired early. So you need to avoid the bell curve. It needs to be more of like a linear progression. And finding that, that purpose in your life is going to be so darn critical. And like I said before, I'm a very internally motivated person. So I will write. I'll do a lot of blogging. I wrote an e-book. We did a lot of traveling for the first three years. So that kept us very busy. I had a YouTube channel that we were running. So that again,

kept us pretty busy. But if you think that, if you think that it's going to be easy to find things to do after you retire and you're not currently doing those things now, I think that's going to be a bit of a surprise for you. It's not going to be as easy as you think. And the problems that you're going through might actually get worse, especially if there are relationship problems before you retire all that time with you and your spouse in the same home after you retire, those things might actually get worse and not better. So I think the best advice that I would give people as they're leaning into early retirement or thinking about how that might work for them is don't by any means assume that early retirement is going to make your problems go away. Because unless you

have a firm grasp on what makes you happy, they're probably going to get worse. I think that's an, that's awesome context. I think that there's, it's a process, not if you get, the more you can make it a process rather than event. Sure. Hearing the better off you might be in terms of that, that transition away from work. One question I had for you about this is I think that a number of folks that we've talked to who have been retired for a long period of time have adopted what I would say, are very unusual lifestyles to a certain degree, right? By definition with this, right?

Sure. You've built a house and you have, you electrify it with solar power from this, and you capture rainwater and you're installing a well and doing all this stuff. Custom, I imagine, and have a very unique setup for your needs with that kind of stuff. We've talked to, you know, I know Mr. Money Mustache has done a lot of very custom things with his home and environment and that kind of stuff. We know a couple of folks who are very into hydroponics, for example, that are retired early. We know of folks that do house sitting as a way to facilitate travel while with that.

Have you observed that among maybe your peers and friends who are also financially independent early in life, that there's an unusual, not unusual, but maybe this, the environment of, directs people to really build a very specific day-to-day life and environment that's conducive to that. That may be wildly different from what we're used to as full-time workers with this, renting an apartment or whatever it is. Yeah, I think that earlier that you retire, the more likely you are to find those more unique, I guess, ways of living.

I know somebody who retired and moved to Panama. His name is Jim. He blogs that route to retire. That's a very interesting way to go about this as well. Just move internationally and be an expat for a while. I know others who adopted the RV lifestyle like we did. They happen to still be RVing, but others do the off-grid lifestyle like we are. A lot of international travel, a lot of just seeing things that you didn't ordinarily get to see when you worked a full-time job.

And the majority of your time was spent working that job. Your world, and I know this might sound cliche or something, but your world really does expand once you get to the point of early retirement. Because you no longer have that draw on your brain for at least 10 hours a day. And for many of you, you probably take your work home with you. So just because you leave the office doesn't mean you're not thinking about work. So when that work is gone, when you no longer have that draw, everything just becomes a possibility and you get to try new things and figure out what works best for you. If you were to tell me five years ago that I'd be living in an off-grid house out in the middle of Arizona desert with nobody within miles around, I would have called you bat.

Well, I would have called you crazy. But that's just the way it worked out because we had the time to research it. We really adopted this lifestyle and we fell into it. So yeah, I think the earlier that you retire, the more opportunity. you have to really accept the world around you, do some more exploring, experimenting, just to see what really works for you and your family. So let's go back a few years. Before you're retired, you knew you were going to retire.

How did you approach leaving your job? What did the days and months and, you know, years leading up to the day that you quit look like? A lot of reading I did before, given my notice, I would say. is, you know, now you know that there's an end in sight, so all those petty little things about your job just no longer bother you. No, absolutely no. At least not for me. In fact, they became worse because I did have that light at the end of the tunnel and I wasn't yet there. I still had months to go before I actually reached that point. So I gave my boss, I happened to work for a boss who was very reasonable, very understanding. believe it or not, I gave him six months notice. Not everyone's going to be able to do that, but I gave him six months notice that I was going to leave. It was in June, I think, and I was, I was going to leave in December of that year in 2016. So that worked fine. There was no, like,

hostility or a bad blood between us. It was, it was just, you know, it was normal. But the things that bothered me about my job, the things that really made me want to early retire, strangely enough, they actually got worse after I gave my notice because I wasn't at that finish line, but there was a finish line, but it wasn't yet there. So that delta, that space between, okay, I'm going to do this. Everybody knows I'm going to do this. And when I actually get to set foot, you know, leave the virtual office for that for that last time, it was, it was, I don't know, I hate to say the word grueling, but it might, I might actually use that, that word in this context. It was rough.

It was rough because I really did not like my job that well. So it was, I just keep coming back to that word. It was grueling for me. Yeah, it's, you've got this, like the end is in sight. And I can't wait to get there. But in order to get there, I have to go through all this. And all this was was not fine. It was terrible, which made you want to quit.

But all that was fine when you didn't have the, the end in sight. But now that there's a. hard and fast end, all of this is infinitely worse. Exactly. So I hear what you're saying. Yeah. It's like, okay. Yeah, maybe it's August.

And it's like, yeah, I'm quitting in five months. But that doesn't mean I don't get to go on my next business trip and solve some stupid complex problem for a customer I don't care about it and don't want to solve. I still have to do that. I still have to do that. That really didn't, given that notice, didn't change anything. Yeah, it just made it worse, strangely enough. Well, Steve, we're jumping all over the place.

here just because we were peppered you with questions. No, no one. So thank you for answering everything. Sure. What is your annual spending now? Is it more or less than at the time of retirement or in the RV stages? It is almost double what it was before because the market is good.

We base our spending based on the stock market because we're so heavily invested in the stock market. So the market's been good. So we probably spend $60, $65,000 a year now, which for us is a whole ton of money. So we're doing some things like the Airbnb. We spent like $6,500 for a month or something to rent that house for a month. But we feel justified to do that because the market's doing well. We might as well live large when the market's up because we know that when the market's down, we're not going to be doing those things.

So we might as well enjoy those things while we can. Oh, got it. Okay. So the travel is the big thing then for your spending. But you're, it sounds, how about this? in the event that the market did poorly, what do you think your floor of spending would be to continue your happy lifestyle right now? Sure. Probably 25 to 30. The majority of our spending is discretionary, which might frighten a lot of people. It's like, why are you spending all that much money when you don't have to? Well, there's two reasons. One, the market's up so we can right now. And two, when the market's not so great, we have that buffer. We have all that money that we could stop spending to get back down to our base level. of spending. It's not going to be great. It's not going to be happy. We're going to, you know,

we might hate some things as we cut back when the market does dip and we all know it's going to dip. But living out here, you know, in the Arizona desert with no, with with no utilities, you know, we could probably get by with 25 or 30k of yearly spending and be just fine. Well, and let's say that all of your side income dries up. You spend all your 60 to 80, uh, uh, uh, uh, bank account and the market has tanked so much that you don't want to sell stocks. Could you go back and get a job? I could go back and get a job. I'm not going to get the same job, but you know what, if you have a marketable skill,

I don't care what anybody tells you, you're never going to be able to get your job back. Well, it's true that you may not be able to get your same job back, but that doesn't mean you can't get some job just as a stopgap to you, to allow you to replenish your funds back to a more comfortable level. If you have a marketable skill, you are always going to have a job. That's the way the economy works. Yes. And your wife is a rocket scientist. They don't just make those on trees. Exactly. They don't grow on trees. It was any math, science, technology, kind of, I mean, especially those kinds of disciplines, but even a mechanic, everybody needs car work, a plumber. Half of them don't even return your calls because they have so much work to

do. Electricians. There's so many opportunities out there, so much work that people need done. There's always going to be a way for you to make money if you think that you need to. That's what I wanted you to say. Steve, what else should we be asking you before we kind of wrap up and go to the famous four here? When I tell my story, it comes across to some people as, This guy retired at 35. Look at him. You can do the same thing.

But that's not true at all. When I tell my story, I don't want people to, I don't want it to come across as this guy retired at 35. That's really not the point here. The point, the larger point that I always want to get across is it's not about retiring at 35. It's not about retiring at 45 or some of some set age. It's about understanding what makes you happy. where you are now and where you want to be in the future. Before all of this took place, my wife and I took walks with their dogs and we talked about our future.

This is right after we first got married. And we understood what was going to make us happy in the future. We understood what we were gunning for, what the end goal was. And if you don't have that end goal, it's going to be impossible to put the pieces in a place. You're just going to continue going to work every day, coming home, having dinner, doing the same thing. Repeat, repeat, repeat, repeat. and you never really get anywhere. But if you have that end goal, something that you and your spouse or just you want to do in the future,

that is always going to be the very first step to improving your life. So if you retire at 55, that's still early retirement or 50, 45, 59, whatever, whatever that looks like to you. I want people to take away from my story, the, I guess the beauty, of understanding what makes you happy and putting the pieces in the place to get you there because the government should not be determining the age that you retire. 65 doesn't necessarily need to be the age. I think we're all aligned on that. That's the whole point, right?

Money is a tool that you need to master to some degree to move towards a life vision or a end goal that you want. And everything should be backing in from that vision. And you guys crushed it in two, three years once you set your minds to it because of a lot of great work that you've done leading up to that and great advantages in those types of things. And now you're reaping the rewards for the next 50 years of that by doing exactly what you want and a unique twist. Yeah. As I like to say, money is like my first boss. It's a tool.

And if you use it in the right way, it's going to make you happy. It's just, it's just that simple. Love it. Well, with that, let's, uh, let's move on. On that note, I don't think, I don't think Scott got it. I did get it. Money is like a tool. Did you like your first boss?

His first boss was a tool. Yeah. Oh, boy. Okay. Steve, we are moving on to the famous four, which are the same four questions we ask of all of our guests. What is your favorite finance book? It was The Millionaire Next Door by the late Dr. Thomas Stanley. It really opened my eyes to the way real wealthy, not just high income earners, wealthy people live. I've read that book several times.

I'm in the process right now of reading the next millionaire, next door, which I had not gotten a chance to read. So that book definitely influenced me as well. What was your biggest money mistake? I would say the best money mistake was buying my first home. And that's a mistake only for me. Usually real estate's going to work out well for you. But I happen to buy in February of 2007. And if you look at real estate prices, when they peaked, it was February of 2007. From the day I set foot in that house, it was never. worth what I paid. And to get your money out of real estate, you really got to be there for a while. So yes, I could have recouped that. You know, things would have normalized. But I lost a lot of

money on that house. It's just the just the way it worked out for me at the time. I bought one in September of 06. So not a lot more. Not a lot. Yeah. Before it crashed. Yeah. Good times. Good times. Oh, absolutely. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? My best piece of advice is understand what you want in the future, understand that end goal, that light at the end of the tunnel, give that a lot of serious thought, know what that means to you. Because without that, like I said before, without knowing where you're going, you're never going to get there. And most people, believe it or not, most people don't have an understanding. of where they're going. But if you do, that's going to set you, set yourself up to put these

pieces in the place far more easily than it would otherwise. Mindy, what's the episode where we talk about the money date? Scott, that would be episode 157 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. What Steve is saying here is so important is to put set of vision or understand what you want in the future. And I think that that's a challenge for a lot of people who have never actually sat down and done that. You know, you go through life, you go to college because, you know, Sean from high school says that's a good college and that's where you want to go. You know, and then you get a job because that's the first interview you took and you end up in a state you didn't predict and all this stuff happens to you. But once you put together a plan and where you want to get to and exactly what

you want and iterate on it a hundred times until it stops moving, that's when you take control of your life and begin working towards that. And so episode 157 might be a good one to go back and we listened to if you still don't have a clear vision of where you want to get to in life because it's a process to figure out that vision for most of us it's not a i know it immediately like steve went through a three-year process on the RV uh to figure out that he wanted to be in arizona with that and it may evolve from here to a next phase over the next 10 years with that kind of stuff but having a vision is so important because at least you're choosing that instead of it happening to you so great advice steve um what is your favorite joke to tell a party

Um, my favorite joke to tell at parties. I would say it's probably, it's probably a dad joke. Like, I don't trust stairs. They're always up to something. Oh, I love it. I love it. That's fantastic. I'll pick up with a good pun in my head later, but I missed that. I missed the response retort to that. So, all right, Steve, where could people find out more about you? I am online at stevehack.us. I also have a Twitter account I maintain heavily at Steve on speed. The On Speed part comes from when I owned a Corvette back in a previous life. So that's all that reference means. Steve on Speed on Twitter. And those are the two main carriers to find me. I created that account in 2009.

So I was in a very different headspace at that point. Oh, I don't know why I'm laughing so hard. That's hilarious Steve on Speed. I'm Mindy on crack at Twitter.com. Just kidding. I'm not. I'm Mindy. Okay.

Steve, thank you so much for spending some time with us today. I really appreciate you sharing your story because I think we don't hear enough from people who have reached financial independence and what their life looks like afterwards. And I think your advice to have a plan is in my own experience since my husband's retired. So on point. If you don't know what you're going to do, you're not going to do anything. Well, thanks very much, Mindy. I appreciate you guys having me on. I really enjoyed it. All right. Thank you.

Okay, Steve, we will talk to you soon. Have a great day. Perfect. You too. Scott, that was Steve Adcock. What did you think of his show? I really enjoyed it. I think I learned a lot about what life is like or what is possible following early retirement. I think that they've got complete command of their financial situation. Like we mentioned, the intro, they just rocket towards financial independence in like two or years and then chosen a pretty aggressive early retirement strategy with that at I think a lower level of spending than we maybe heard from other folks on but man what what a great life what a

great day to day they've built for themselves and what they enjoy and what incredible options they have so I thought it was a fascinating glimpse into somebody who's actually been living a retired lifestyle for a number of years here who completed the journey and has abided by many of the the rules, the soft rules at least that we have in the financial independence space. Yeah. And internet retirement police stand down because it's okay that he's making a little bit of money in retirement.

I love his quote near the end without knowing where you're going. You're never going to get there. If you are considering the financial journey, if you're considering the financial journey, everybody's got a financial journey. If you're considering financial independence, sit down either with yourself or if you have a partner, sit down with your partner and look at what you want your life to be. Let's say you won the lottery tomorrow. You don't need money. You don't need to work for money.

What do you want to do with your life? And I don't know is a valid answer, but don't, you know, don't retire until you know. I really think that having a goal to get to is great, but then having a plan once you get to that goal is the most important part of this whole story. Scott, I want to ask our listeners for a favor. One of the ways that you discover new podcasts is from family and friends recommendations. So as you listened to this episode today, did anybody in your life stick out? Did you hear anybody?

did you think of anybody while you were listening to Steve tell his story? And if that's the case, can you please share this episode with them? I'd really like to help more people on their journey to financial independence and help them discover the concept of financial independence. So if you could just take a moment to share this episode or any one of our past episodes, your favorite episode, with your friends who could benefit from it most. That would be lovely. Thank you very much. Yeah, thank you. We love the. We always love it when you share the episodes in this or any other episode that you think is relevant to somebody else in their financial journey.

That would be very helpful and much appreciated. We would love that. Okay, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. From episode 227 of the Bigger Puckets Money podcast, he is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen saying, got to go, friend, this has to end.