BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 36: From Childhood Poverty to Financial Freedom by Age 32 with Jillian Johnsrud

Episode Date: September 3, 2018

Jillian Johnsrud grew up lacking the privileges that many of us take for granted. Jillian Johnsrud grew up poor, with an abusive step father and a mother unable to leave due to lack of funds. She emancipated herself during her junior year of high school, living in a camper in high school, waiting tables after class. Still, she managed to save $8,000 by the time she graduated. She married young, and medical debt and student loan debt put her family in a tough starting position. From there, however, Jillian began building wealth. In adventures that span tons of different states and even a stint in Europe, Jillian was able to eliminate her debt and achieve financial freedom—all while never earning more than a median income. Hear Jillian’s story of investing when everyone thinks you’re crazy, adopting a group of siblings, and “creating a life that is such a perfect fit she never wants to retire from it.” Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Simplify Your Budget with Fun Money Accounts (Blog) Museum Pass Ultimate National Park Road Trip (Blog) Camp FI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 36, where we interview Jillian Johns Rood from Montana Money Adventures. For the most part, we just lived on one salary. And then eventually, as he started making a little bit more money and I started making a little bit more money, we tried to live on about 80% of his salary. And I always say that the happiness is in the margins of our budget. There's so much joy in the money that we don't spend. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for, for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more.

This is the Bigger Pockets Money Podcast. How's it going, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Ms. Mindy Janssen. How you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I'm having a fantastic day. How are you today? I'm doing great.

I'm looking forward to our interview with Jillian. Yes, I love talking to Jillian. She's so smart and she has such a great story. Yeah, and she's very charismatic about how she presents that story too. It's just really kind of, she's just a really good way with words. I love her story because she doesn't start off from a place of extreme wealth or even comfort. She started off. She emancipated herself from her parents at age 18.

she got married at 19. She had a fair amount of debt for a 19 year old, but figured out a way to pay it off and started down this journey without a fancy job or a huge title. She was a waitress. She worked at Starbucks. Her husband was in the military. And they just continued on.

And her story really proves that you don't have to be making six figures. Literally, anybody can do this. Yeah. And what's also great about her story is that each of these steps, you know, seems from my position of, you know, relative privilege in the world with my upbringing, seems really difficult. It seems like she's been through a lot of difficult times and overcome an enormous number of challenges with a still incredibly altruistic view in the world and, you know, an incredible optimism for the future. Yes. And, you know, she doesn't have the perfect

story. She's had some heartache and she's continued on the path. She's continuing to soldier on, she doesn't use that as an excuse to just quit. Yeah, I think it's great. And let's, let's go ahead and bring her in. Yeah, we don't need to tell her story. We'll let her do it. 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.

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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. Jillian, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going? Thank you so much for having me. It is awesome. Awesome. Well, I thought we could just jump right into it. Could you kind of walk us through where you believe that your journey to financial independence began? From the very beginning, let's kind of start walking through your journey. Yeah, it started, I call it like my flashpoint. And I didn't have a fancy acronym or, you know, there wasn't, there wasn't blogs about it yet. But I had a conversation with my mom.

That was probably 12, 11, I think it was in like the fifth grade. And she, the man that she had married over the years, had started drinking a lot. And the mood of the home had become very, just very abusive, I would say. It was very negative, if nothing else. And I just begged her. I just begged her to leave. I said, we just have to, we just have to get out of here. And I don't care.

I don't care if we go and live in the little tiny apartments above the grocery store. Like, I can work. I'll help pay for things. Like, we just have to get out. And she said, Jillian, I just can't. Like, that's just not an option. Like, I have three little kids. I can't take care of.

all of you on my own. And I just went up to my bed and I cried hot tears into my pillow. And it just, it was that moment that I thought, money equals choices and it equals freedom. And I desperately wanted to have more choices. Oh my goodness. Yeah, I'm typing this right now. Money equals choices. Money equals freedom.

That's so, that's so true. That's so perfect. Yeah, it's so powerful. I mean, like, that's the like, that's like the extreme that this can take is when you don't have these resources, you become under the power of or in control of somebody. And now you're at the mercy of chance in some ways where if you're unlucky, you end up in the situation that your mother was found herself in.

While some other luckier people have more of a loving and better situation. But I think that's just a really powerful example of how this can be an extreme result of not making the correct choices with money. Yeah, it definitely, you know, when you're in poverty, you just feel like you don't have a lot of options. You don't have a lot of choices and you don't have a lot of power. All the choices have been made for you. And so I started working. I worked from eighth grade all the way up to my senior year.

And after my junior year, I was able to move out. I'd saved enough money and I moved out on my own. And me and my mom still have an amazing relationship. But it gave me that option. and it gave me an option to move away for college. I took all of the money I had saved waiting tables and I bought a camper like a really cheap, ugly 1980s, burnt orange interior, 28-foot camper and I moved into it. And I said, this is how I'm going to make it happen. Wow. How much was the camper? I think I paid $5,000 for it, which was an enormous amount of money.

But by the time I graduated, I was living on my own and I'd saved $8,000, which was just insane for me. Like that was so much money and it felt like so much opportunity because, you know, growing up, we were the family that like we never filled up the gas tank. Like we always had like five bucks for gas. And I remember like the very first time I had a full tank of gas in our LTD and I was just beside myself with joy. So having $8,000 felt huge. And then be able to own my own place to live felt like I was invincible. Well, so let's walk through this.

So in high school, you start waiting tables and you save up this five grand by the camper. And then as soon as you have the camper, you move out of the household. No, actually, I moved out my junior year. Oh, so how did that work? I just left. I just left and I lived with a coworker and I lived with friends and we rented an apartment. I don't know who the crazy person was that thought, yeah, let's just rent an apartment to like a 17-year-old and a 21-year-old and a 22-year-old. But they did.

And so we had a place to stay. Thank goodness for landlords who don't do background checks. So what happened after this period? So you leave, you move out, you're still. working and going to school, what happens next? So I met my husband when I was 19. We've been married for 16 years now. But I met my husband and, well, I felt like I was kind of on, like things were getting

better and better. When I married him, he had $45,000 worth of debt. And I was just like, oh, let's be baby Jesus now. Like, why we're going so far in the wrong direction? And it turns out we, after we paid off that debt, we had gone to apply for a house to see maybe we should buy a house. Like that's what we do. As soon as we pay off debt, we buy a house. And in that process of applying and then running my credit score, the, I guess, debt collection agency found me.

And I received my very first bill for $10,000. And it just, I think we all have those moments where we've making so much progress and things are going so great. And then all of a sudden we get blindsided. And it was honestly so discouraging because I felt like we were doing everything right. And then this, again, something from my past like came and was going to hold us back again. Taking a quick step back. You say you get married at 19 and your husband has $45,000 in debt. are you saying that between that time and 21 you paid off the debt and then you find out about

this additional $10,000 at 21 is that is that what you're saying here yep so oh wow that would be devastating had joined the army because 35,000 of that was student loans and they said okay join that army will play off for student loans and then he went to basic and we took we saved every penny while he was gone and we had been paying it off that. first year of marriage, but we saved every penny. We took all of his enlistment bonus, and we were able to pay off the credit card debt, probably within the first six months of him finishing his basic training and his AIT. Awesome. That's really good. I mean, that's just very efficient. And all of a sudden, you pay that offer a couple of years. You're rated by a house, $10,000 bill. What do you do once you get hit

with that news that you weren't expecting? So I think in each time when I've experienced a big setback, It's like it's okay to stay stuck in the, holy crap, this is horrible for at least a couple of minutes. Like, feel those feelings, but then we need to come up with a plan. So I called the credit agency. I called the hospital where I'd stayed. I just started saying, listen, I never received a bill for this. I'm so sorry, I went to collections, but I didn't know. And they're like, well, we have.

It's like this medical scholarship you could have applied for. And I'm like, I didn't know. I thought it was taken care of it. like, well, we can't retroactively apply for it now that it's gone to collections. But sometimes you just need to show up and kind of deal with things head on. I know a lot of people who have medical day or credit cards, and the bills come and they just put them in a drawer. And the bills come and they just put them in a drawer because they're tired of seeing them stack on the table. And it's so much better just to call, to like lean in and deal with it head on.

And they eventually, we negotiated that if we could pay it off in six months, they would cut it in half. And I was like, that we can do. We can do $5,000 in six months. I think we had about $2,000 and a half thousand saved. And then we just paid the rest of it off. And what were you doing for work right then? So my husband was in the Army. He was like an E1 or an E2.

So he made like $1,000 a month. And I had started, yeah, we were rolling. in the cash. I had started working for Starbucks. So I worked for Starbucks for a couple of years. Okay. Also making like 12 bucks an hour. Going back to the medical debt thing, this is something that a lot of people I've talked to who are just kind of getting started out on these things. Maybe they have bad credit score or whatever. A lot of it seems to be this medical debt that's stuck around for a couple years that they forgot about, haven't looked at, haven't wanted to look at, didn't know about whatever, whatever it is, there's bad medical debt.

And every time, I mean, I don't have data on this because I'm not, I don't collect data on this subject, but every time I've talked to somebody and they've called to work out medical debt that's old where they have maybe a bad credit score or something, they're able to negotiate a huge discount, often in the ballpark of that 50% reduction in debt. And it's just amazing that that phone call can be worth $5,000 an hour, you know, for for someone to just call, plug up the courage and go and see what you can do because that collection agency is thinking you're never going to pay. They're thinking you're going to put it under your, you know, under your mattress and forget about it. But if when you call, they're like,

hmm, yes, half is way better than nothing for them is what they're thinking. And so I just think it's very good that you got up and did that and a good example for others to follow if they know what people who have medical debt. Even just calling up and negotiating a payment plan, you don't have $10,000 to pay them. Hey, can I negotiate a payment plan? Oh, okay, hey, even if you still have to pay the whole $10,000, now they're not going to continue to go to collections because they know you're paying. And as long as you continue on the payment plan or call them up, you know,

maybe you have a flat tire and, you know, you're trying to get ahead and whatever. And you can't make the payment this month. Let them know because the creditors want your money. But more importantly, they want you to, you know, be able to pay them back long term. So if you can't make it this month, maybe they make a note in your account or they, you know, charge your higher interest rate. But they still want your money and that you don't want to be in collections. When I had my second daughter, I called them up. It was like a really heavy month when the bill finally came.

It was like Christmas time. I'm like, can I just like pay this next month? I don't want it to ding my credit. And so I called them up and I said, is there any sort of payment plan? And she said, well, I can stretch it out for a year. But anything more than that, you have to talk to the credit department. I'm like, I was just looking for a month. But I'll take that instead of paying $500 this month and $500 next month, I'll pay $100 a month for a year.

So I bought my baby on payment plans. I always encourage people two things. One, try to keep it with a hospital if possible. Like mine, because it had happened a few years before, I had already gone to collections. But I called the hospital and I called collections and I kept calling until the hospital eventually re-assumed that debt from collections, which I think is rare. But if you can make sure it doesn't go to collections, you're far, far better off because the hospital just has a lot more resources and flexibility. And then the second thing is just remember people are people. Like you're just talking

to a real person on the other end of the line. And you want to be as much in their good graces is possible because they have a lot of options and you want to have access to all of those options. So be kind and be honest and be thoughtful and be respectful, but just try to really be a good person. Like sometimes me with my medical professionals, like I bring gift baskets because people are people. And they might remember me as a lady who brought a gift basket and hopefully catch my cancer earlier or something. I don't know. I just feel like it's just a safe policy. This is the nice patient. Yeah, let's be nice to her too.

When you go in and you're nasty, all of a sudden there's no openings for you for the next six months. Well, so you got the phone with these folks. You negotiated down to $5,000 in six months. What did you do to pay that off of what happened after that? So we had always loved the idea of living on half of our income. We would live on Adam's salary and save mine. And we did this after the first year. year because he pretty much went to school first time, full time, and I just worked. But for the most

part, we just lived on one salary. And then eventually, as he started making a little bit more money, and I started making a little bit more money, we tried to live on about 80% of his salary. And I always say that the happiness is in the margins of our budget. There's so much joy in the money that we don't spend. And it can be really tempting to just max out our budget and spend all of it, we think, oh, well, that's $300. Instead of just letting it sit in my bank account, I would be much happier if I bought a new car or took on another payment.

But we just, just with the hope, I used to read David Boss, Mark Couples, Finish Rich, and I would literally earmark the pages that showed compound interest, like the little charts. And every time I felt discouraged, I would go back to those compound interest charts and be like, okay, it's going to work out. Okay, it's going to work out.

Like, I just have to keep going. I'm wondering if there was maybe a couple of turning points here. So it seems like the first kind of interaction you had with money is understanding how a lack of money leads to a lack of control and real consequences from that. But somewhere in this, it sounds like you began reading books on wealth building. You know, you just mentioned David Bach's, smart couples, finish rich. When did you begin reading those and when, you know, was there a mind-shed shift at some point in this where you weren't like, hey, I just need enough to get by to, I want to begin building wealth?

in a more serious manner. Yeah, I'm, so I actually have a post about this on my site. It's probably the most popular post, but the worst advice I ever received. And it was when me and Adam had just gotten married and I went to a bookstore with a family member. And we were kind of looking through the bookstore and I saw this book about personal finance. And it was really expensive. It was like $18.

And this was like 20, you know, 16 years ago. And it was an enormous amount of money for me. and I thought maybe this will pay off. And my family member said, oh, Jillian, don't waste your money on that. Like, just ask, just ask your uncle. He'll tell you anything you need to know, which is a joke because my uncle never taught me anything about money. Like it was very much a taboo topic. So I'm thinking, I don't really think that's going to happen.

But I took that risk and I bought that first book. And I remember feeling so scared because that was so much money for us. I mean, we're still trying to pay off debt. But it was all of, it was really, really simple book. It was just all of the basics of personal finances. It was how to start a budget. It was how to start investing, like where to save. It was, but this was information I had never been exposed to.

I had never learned. I had never saw anyone else do this. I was really good at saving during high school. I was the kid that my mom would borrow 20 bucks from to like buy groceries or to make sure our water didn't get turned off. So I was good at like saving money, but not any of these grown-up things. So that was the first book.

And I'd say that books are my highest ROI item I've ever invested in. Like it took a long time to kind of get over that fear. But yeah, now I read about 50 books a year. That's awesome. I love that quote, books of the highest RRI item you've invested in. Yeah, I think that's a, I think that's fantastic. And this book, just to re couple, is, is David Box Smart Couples Finish Rich that you're referring to, right?

This is the 18-dollar book? No, it was, I don't think it's even in print. It was just a little family finance book. I ended up picking up David Box Smart Couples finished Rich a couple years later. And it was a great, kind of well-rounded, comprehensive look at personal finance, stuff that, like, I had never, I had never done that stuff either. So after reading these books, you're, and after getting married, you have all this debt, you have this disadvantage, you know, a tough start basically to begin building a financial

foundation, but you approach it basically from right from the beginning with a mindset of building wealth and kind of putting these habits together with a kind of a long-term financial goals. Is that fair to say? I don't know if I would have even used the word wealth because that seemed outrageous. Like that seemed like crazy talk. I just wanted a little bit more financial freedom. I just wanted a little bit more options, a few more choices. We had just really big dreams.

We really wanted to adopt. We wanted to travel the world. I wanted to be able to pay cash for a house. Like I wanted the things more than wealth, which I mean, we never, growing up, we never, like, earned more than above the poverty line. And I just kind of had this mindset, like, I'm just never going to earn a lot of money. So I just really have to be smart with the money I'm going to earn because I had mentally capped our earning potential and just assumed like we're that's not going to happen.

So I need to be really smart with the choices I do have. Well, wait a second. If you don't make a lot of money, then you can't be financially independent. Isn't that, isn't that what everybody says? You can't. So so everyone would say, yes. So either you're lying about being financially independent or you're lying about not making out of money, right?

Or you somehow figured out a way to do this and buck the trend? there is there is a truth in the middle where sometimes you just have to do the best you can with what you have and I think that creativity actually thrives in constraint and having low income is definitely a hard constraint but it allows you to be more creative and and flexible and think outside the box so we had to do that And I kind of have this like, I don't know, I have a little bit of grit in me. I was like, I'm just willing to do, to work harder and to do things that suck more and to run longer than everyone else. Like, I'm not going to have those advantages. I'm not going to have those privileges.

So I just have to double down on what I can do, which is suffer well and have fun. What does that translate to in terms of your lifestyle during this period of time? How are you living and how are you managing to save? so much money, living off of just 80% of one salary, and these aren't exactly even median incomes, I imagine, on an annual basis. No, and we were living in the D.C. area, so not exactly a low cost of living area by any means, but I think it goes back to saving enough money to buy a camper, and I drove a geometro, called it the pregnant roller skate. It was like a 15-year-old geometro, and I drove that for like five years. But it was,

I'll just do what it takes. I'll just do what it takes because I have to. I think a lot of people, if they would have had $8,000, would not have said, you know, maybe I'll just move into a camper and look like a homeless person

and drive this really crappy car with the hope that maybe one day this is going to get me more choices because it's not guaranteed. It definitely did not feel guaranteed. So you were living in the camper in D.C. And getting around or... No, after we left college,

I sold my camper. And we wanted to, though. Like that was the plan was we'll just, we'll buy a nicer camper though. We were going to upgrade our camper. This was for sure. And we were going to put once we got stationed in D.C., we started looking at the camping options and they were pretty slim. So that plan, which I thought was a great plan, didn't work because they don't have

a tremendous amount of affordable campgrounds there, surprisingly. So my husband got a housing stipend. And so we found something. we lived in a tower apartment, which was my least favorite for the first year, a little tiny tower apartment. But then they said, we're going to raise your rent 10% every year, guaranteed. And the rent was already like $1,000, which our housing said I've been covered, but I was like, oh my God, it's going to raise $100 a year every year. Like, I were going to be outpriced really soon. So we ended up moving a little bit further out, and we found a four-bedroom house that had sat on the market for a long time because there were, there were some issues with the functionality of this house.

Like the washing machine was in the kitchen, and the dryer was in a garage that you had to go outside and pull up with your hand. So it wasn't like, most families aren't like, well, that's ideal. That's exactly how I love to live. No dishwasher, of course, because I put a wash. machine there. But we were able to negotiate it down. They wanted, I think, 16 or 1700 a month. We were able to negotiate it to 1,500 because we were going to stay longer. So they locked in our rate. And they said, well, we only want one couple. Like there's no extra adults allowed. And I said, if by chance we happened to find an amazing roommate and you really liked him,

do you think you might make an exception? And this was, this wasn't even and the owners, this was a property management company. And they said, well, maybe if we really like him. And a week later, I was like, I found someone. I think you really like him. And they were like, oh, yeah, he's perfect. Like an insurance adjuster for Geico. Like, they're like, that's exactly what we want.

But that one choice, and at this point, we had one going on two kids. That one choice was enormously effective strategy for us. one because the money was tax-free because we were renting. So we weren't actually earning that income. He was paying part of the rent, but our housing stipend continued to grow, which was tax-free income. And he paid all sending them probably about $800 a month for seven years. Your renter paid you $800 a month and you're paying $1,500 a month?

Yeah. Oh. So getting a roommate now has turned your rent into, you're down $300. a month from the $1,000 in this little tower apartment that you didn't like anyway. Scott, what do we call that at Bigger Pockets? We call it house hacking. But I thought you're not able to do that and get a roommate if you have children and a family. No, you can't.

It's impossible to share a home with a family, isn't it? You know, there's plus and minuses of every situation. And I always encourage people. There's things that we think are going to be a huge challenge. then it might be a little bit of a challenge, but there's also upsides that you'll never see coming. And there were so many benefits of having another adult in the home was so great. Like there were so many bonuses to that. I'm a person that I mentor started Airbnb being a room in her house.

And she has a little kid. And so she had all these concerns. But she said the thing I never expected that's been so great other than all of this income and all these other benefits are now I'm able to introduce my came to all of these different people that we never would have had contact in. We're able to welcome in all of these different nationalities and races and people, different socioeconomic status that don't live in our neighborhood. She's like it's been such a blessing that I never, I never anticipated that is being an upside. And I think that's true in almost every situation. That's awesome. Okay. So now you're living in D.C. area in a very expensive cost of living.

and you're using 80% of his salary and saving your salary. What are you doing for work in D.C.? So I did a couple things. I worked for Starbucks for a while. And eventually I got promoted to be a manager there, which I was in life. I was a youth pastor for a while, which was kind of fun. And then I did commission sales. And so I finished out that portion of my career doing commission sales.

Oh, what were you selling? So at one place I sold mattresses and office chairs. So for the D.C. folks who wanted a $2,000 office chair, I was their girl. And then when we moved back to Montana, I went into commission sales again, the straight commission, which is a little stressful. But I sold furniture, super glamorous. Like, these were glamorous careers for sure. I used to lay in my bed as a child and think, oh, I hope someday I can sell furniture.

Yeah. I mean, I'm assuming you made good money. No. Oh. No. Okay. But for me, I thought it was amazing. But what most people were probably classified good money was not, probably not the same definition. I probably cleared somewhere in the 30, 35, maybe my best year 40. But you're saving that, right? You're still living off of just his salary. Yeah. So that's a nice chunk of change to save. And this was a few years ago when we're, what were you doing with the money that you were saving? So when we lived in D.C., I really, really wanted to buy a house. And we ended up renting for 10 years. So that didn't exactly work out. But we were saving really aggressively to buy that first house. And then we got the opportunity to move to Europe. And I always wanted to travel in Europe. Like ever since I was 10, 11, I started buying these used travel books and highlighting them and like planning these trips in my head. It just seemed impossible at the time. But,

Yeah, so we moved to Europe and then I was like, shoot, we had saved, by the time I was 24, we'd saved about $125,000. Oh my goodness. Yeah. Holy cow. And you paid off $55,000 in debt. So then you'd saved $125,000 on top of that. Yeah.

Basically, creating $190,000, $180,000 in net worth. Yeah. Okay. Okay. And how many children did you have it this time? Two. Two children. Okay.

And you moved to what? part of Europe? We moved to Germany into Heidelberg. Okay. But we had all this money. Most of it was in cash, and some of it was in Roth IRA. It took me a long time to start investing because I was also terrified of that. But when we decided we're going to move to Europe for four years, I was like, well, shoot, we probably shouldn't keep it in cash in four years. And this was right at the very bottom of the market. I mean, panic, panic everywhere. My boss had just started investing. And then in a few months, like he had lost a third of his money and it sold it all because he's like, this isn't for me. And we put about $180,000 into a Vanguard stock account right in the bottom before we moved to Germany.

Oh, I bet that did well. Did. So four years later, when we got home, it had pretty much doubled. We had about 250. Wow. Yeah. that was what like 2008, 9, 10? So we came back six years ago, so 2012. So we moved there 2008. Okay. Yeah, that was, boy, it hit hard. So I want to talk a little bit about child care

because you've got Washington, D.C. You're both working. So what did you do for child care in D.C.? When you moved to Europe, did you work? Okay, so then you did child care then. How did you take care of your kids in D.C. So our oldest, we had adopted, and he was in the sixth grade when we adopted him. So that actually worked out great. Foster care, there's two kinds of groups of kids that are in foster care, older kids, and sibling groups that are really, really hard to adopt. Nobody wants older kids.

Nobody wants more than one. So we had adopted this kiddo who the social worker was just like, honestly, I'm never going to find a family. So you can either adopt him. I've asked everyone. You can adopt him or I'm just going to put him in a group home until ages out. And I wouldn't say I felt really prepared to be a mom of a teenager. But I thought, it's better than nothing. So we took on, you know, the junior hot kid.

But the great thing, you know, hidden benefit was that he was at school all day. And then after school, he would just go to the library for an hour until we got home and working at Starbucks, I could be kind of flexible with my hours, especially because I was a manager and wrote the schedule. And it worked out great. What about your other child? So we moved to Germany when he was six months old. And I did go back to work.

They promised me a raise if I came back and said, ooh, that's too good to pass up. And I did it for about four or five months. A lady across the street that we'd become friends with was our nanny and would come over every day and take care of them. And it was awesome. I felt like I paid her way too little. She felt like I paid her way too much.

And so it was kind of the perfect arrangement. That is the perfect arrangement. I think she really wanted to do it for free. And I was like, I can't let you watch my kid for free. I paid her a very modest amount and she was she was thrilled so nice okay so fast forwarding a little bit now you're in Germany and you're not working did you work at all while you were in Germany no and did you have any more children while you were in Germany no okay oh so you moved back with just two kids yeah okay for people who are listening and may not be familiar with

Jillian she has six kids right yes I didn't know that was a question or a state Right. Yeah. Kind of bone. Jillian has six kids. So I'm wondering where all these kids came from. So 2012, well, I'm not wondering. I already know, but I want to ask so that you, do you come back in 2012, back to America?

In back. In 2012 was a hard year. And you were living where? So after my husband was retired from the Army, the Army says, okay, just tell us where to drop off your stuff anywhere in the world and we'll ship it there. So we really got to pick wherever we wanted to live. And we had traveled all over the U.S. We had traveled all over Europe.

But growing up, I had spent some time in Glacier National Park. My grandpa had had a cabin there, so I'd always spend like a week in the summer. And I think I just had really high anxiety as a kid. But being in Glacier, I just felt the most like myself. I just felt the most relaxed and the most at peace. And so I was like, I want to live there. If I get to pick anywhere, I want to live there. So we moved back here and I started a job and we bought a house, which was kind of an ordeal.

We'd had, so we'd saved all of that money to be able to pay cash for a house. Like that was my goal. And we had $2.50, which was enough to pay cash for a house in a regular market here. But especially at that time, we could have bought a nice house for. 150 in our area. Instead, instead we bought a $50,000 house that needed to be completely gutted, top and bottom, redone. We had, because we had rented for 10 years, we had zero experience. We had, we had never, I had painted. That was the level of my experience. I had painted walls poorly. So we just watched a bunch of YouTube videos and we're like, we'll figure it out.

Oh, I don't think I great. My husband was not convinced at all. This was not like HGTV. There was no property brothers. There was no Chip and Joanna like holding our hand and saying, well, make it beautiful, I'll trust us. It was just me who had no experience saying, I think we can do it. We'll try.

So about a week into that renovation, my husband came to pick me up from work. And he showed up early, like an hour early. And he seemed very distressing. He's like, we need to leave. I looked at my boss and boss was like, okay, I guess. I went and parked out. And I saw this look on my boss's face. And I couldn't quite peg what it was.

But as soon as we got in my car, Adam said, Mike has passed away, our oldest son. And it just, I don't remember much about that week. We drove to Lincoln, Nebraska, where he was living. He was getting ready to go to college. He was 20 years old. But we buried our son and came home to a house that was half gutted. And I was in a brand new job. And of course, we just had to live through the renovation because we thought that was a good idea.

So we had an air mattress and a fridge in the middle of our living room. And we just figured it out. Kind of. It was a hard year. Yeah, that's a hard year. I live in my flips too. And the beginning is kind of a disaster. Okay.

Well, that was my next question. question was where were you living during the renovation right in the middle of everything. That's just devastating though. I mean, but have that personal loss and then come home and have just this empty workspace almost. I mean, it's unbelievable. I had just moved here like two months before. So I left all of my friends, all of my connections, all of my community in Germany. And I was brand new. And I was like, hey. a mess right now, but I promise I'm awesome normally. So it was like the worst way to meet people because I was just, I was a disaster. And it was, thankfully, there were a couple of really great

people that were like, yeah, you're kind of kind of a mess right now, but we'll, we'll hang out with you anyways. So what happens next then? Do you kind of pick up and keep going with the project and with work and all that? So we finished half of the house and we lived in the top of path, which our house is about 1,700 square feet. So, you're like 750, which for the three of us was fine. And I kept working and my husband didn't find work because we're like at the tail end of the recession at this point. But we had saved all this money to buy cash for a house.

So I said, well, we should just buy another house. Like that makes sense. Except all of my coworkers, you know, it's easy in hindsight to be like, oh, that was such a smart decision. All of my coworkers stuff, that was a horrible decision. They all thought this was a huge mistake. It just seems like an enormous risk. And at the time, and even more true today,

I said, if I could buy 10 of these houses, I would. Like, that's how confident I am that this is a good decision. And so we bought, we refer to it as Yellow House. So we bought Yellow House and renovated that one. And it was also the house that like everyone had passed on because there was just too much wrong. There was 27 breaks in the water lines. The furnace wasn't working. The furnace was broken.

The water heater was broken. It has flat rooms that were leaking all over the house. And it was outdated and ugly and just a disaster. So yeah, a lot of people looked at that house, which is funny because now we're in kind of a small community. And when people find out we own that, we go, they go, oh, yeah, we looked at that house. We passed. Yeah, we're the suckers they bought it. So how long did it take to renovate the first house that you were living in?

Did you just renovate the top half and then move on to Yellow House? Yep. Okay. What did you pay for Yellow House? Yellow House, it had sat on the market at 1.30 for a while. They dropped it to 100. Still couldn't find a sucker. And then in kind of the last ditch attempt.

Because at this point, you have to understand all the investors were tapped out. of the market. They had spent all of their money on the good deals a year ago, two years ago, three years ago. And there just wasn't a lot of people who had the cash left. So we offered, I think they asked 80 and we offered 73 and a half and got it. We kind of had this idea. We did it with all of our houses like make it minimally viable. So we fixed all the things that had to be fixed. We put in a new furnace and a new water heater and that was great. Actually, all of the things in that house. Sometimes people are scared to take on houses that they have issues that they don't know how to fix. But the flip side to that is you don't have to fix it.

You can just hire someone to fix it. Like we did not install a furnace ourselves. We did not fix all the water leaks ourselves. Like we found someone. And they have it done in about two weeks, where is minimally viable. The kitchen was still like straight from the early 60s. none of the flooring matched, but it was good enough for someone to live there. So we got someone in there probably about two or three weeks. How much did it rent for? Initially, it was really cheap because we just wanted to find someone who would be good. So I think we rented it for like $600 or $700 a month, but we paid half cash for that.

So our mortgage on that place is $189. Today it rents for $1, $1,0.20. That's awesome. And have you done anything else to it? it since the flooring match? Yes. Over the years, we have project by project. Like we swapped out the kitchen, we swapped out the flooring, we repainted it all, we put in new trim. Just as we've had the cash, we've slowly improved all of our properties. Okay. So now we're back to, we have two houses now. And one child. Yes. And then when did you get more children?

because you have more than just one. I do. So I had really wanted to adopt again. We just really had a heart for, especially with the kids who are such a hard time being adopted that they might not be adopted. In the US each year, there's about 100,000 kids just waiting for an adult to show up,

just anyone who is brave or crazy enough to take on the challenge. And I just, I really had a heart for those kids. We'd adopted a teenager, said, okay, we'll do a sibling group or a teenager. Either way, we felt pretty good about it. But then our son passed away. And in the rules and regulations, you're not allowed to become foster parents or adoptive parents within a year of losing a child because it's hard losing a child and it's hard being a foster parent.

And they say, you can't do two hard things in one year. So we waited for that first year and then, yeah, our first kiddo got dropped off. They, our boy came first. They had had, they were like one and a half, two and five at the time. We were their fifth to seventh placement. No one else had been able to keep them together. No one else had been able to handle their behaviors. and with that sometimes unqualified confidence, I said, don't worry, we've got this.

We've got this. The next year would prove that a total lie. Like, I did not got this at all. It was so hard. But they were a three-pack. They were all half-siblings. And so we went from one to four. And within two years, I found out that I was pregnant.

Within two years, we went from one to five, which is a critical. crazy transition. I think there's a reason they come one at a time. Like, it's helpful when they come one at a time instead of their big groups of them. You have these two properties. I assume that a big chunk of that cash that you'd invested is still sitting in the market at some point. You were working. Over this period, was your husband able to find work as well? Yep. He started working and we bought another house, kind of glitens for punishment. We found another house. We found another house. that had some serious issues and no one else wanted. And I know, that made for three houses.

So to recap here, you moved back in 2012. And within two years, you have personal tragedy. You go from one to five children and you go from one to three houses. Yeah. It were busy years. And we're both working full time. It was, yeah, there were busy years. They were busy years.

I've lived that year without five children and they're busy. an understatement. Yeah. So you bought your third house. Was this also a fixer-upper? Yes. Of course. We don't buy anything but fixers.

So what did you pay for this house? So this one, I believe, was selling for 110. We ended up taking out about a $100,000 mortgage on that one. Okay. And what was wrong with it? Okay. This one had probably the most. most difficult problem to solve. And anyone who's encountered this knows to run the other way.

But it had a basement that leaked because of a high water table, which is an ongoing and difficult problem. It has three sub-pumps. But what had happened that while it was in foreclosure is they turned off the power. Ergo, they turned off the sum pumps and the whole thing filled with water. Like a lake, a lake in the basement. My neighbor has this house. It's difficult. It's still difficult. Like we have to be a little proactive about funneling the water away from the home.

Yeah. And it was built, this one was built in like 1980 and they had changed nothing. From 1980, nothing had changed. Every door, every piece of trim, every paint, like nothing had the kitchen. Even perhaps the shingles on the roof were they, originals. It needed a lot of love. So how do you solve the water, the water problem? I mean, you just keep the pumps working at all times and make sure it's, it's, you know,

insulated and watertight? It is the whole neighborhood, for the whole neighborhood. It's a difficult problem. What's really helped is making sure we channel the water away from the house as far as possible, like drain, like gutter extenders. And the whole front yard becomes a lake. So we have to use like a front yard water pump to pump it into the, like the storm drain. Between those two things, there's still some water occasionally.

If all the houses floods, theirs is going to flood too, a little bit. So the basement's not finished then? It is finished, but with concrete floors. We've kind of made it to where, you know, there's like one cup of water that comes in, it's okay. But yeah, probably every two years, there's one or two cups of water that trickle in. Okay, well, that's not so bad.

So what's the, what's the like, I mean, it sounds like this is when you begin really accelerating from a financial perspective is this period of time where you bought three properties. And it sounds like we're hitting about 2014-ish right now is the property was coming in, 2014, 2015? More around there, yeah. So what happened in the years since?

And at what point did you kind of think, hey, we're approaching financial independence, financial freedom? So I had set our financial independence goal initially at 60, and then 55. 60, what? 60 years old. Oh, I see.

Yeah. And then like 55. And then I was like, ooh, maybe 50. Like that sounds awesome. I was going to do everything right. I was going to do every single thing in my power, but I didn't have high expectations. I never would have thought like, yeah, by like 32. That's totally reasonable. That seemed ridiculous. So we, but I knew that like we were growing our financial independence. My husband got a military pension, which was like 1450 a month. It's not a huge amount of money, but a good chunk. And we had health insurance. And then we were to pay cash for the house. I'm like, oh, that really helps lower our expenses. And then we had one rental property and then we had another and I'm like, oh, things are looking good. And our investments were growing. But I wouldn't say that we felt ready, which is now kind of on the other side. I think a lot of people feel that way. They feel like we're at a good spot, but we're not ready.

The same, the week that the state officially asked us to adopt our kids, we went away for the weekend and just did like our planning. We kind of have these little married staycation life planning retreats and went through all of this more like, yeah, maybe like in like five or eight years. Like we'll really be set in like five or eight years. And I came home and I thought that I was pregnant. And honestly, I was I was kind of drowning with the four kids. It was there were so many appointments. They had so many needs. It was so difficult.

And I found that I was pregnant and had a little bit of. a mommy meltdown, like, just crying in the doctor's office, like, I can't do this. I can't do this. I don't have room in my house. I don't have room in my van. I don't have room in my schedule. Like, I can't do a baby. And I said, oh, my husband, I'm like, plan B. We need a plan B. It is time for plan B. I'm like, you're quitting. That's the plan. Welcome to early retirement. 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

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Get more with Northwest Registered Agent at Northwest Registered Agent.com slash money free. And so we had initially planned, like I reran the numbers and it's like, maybe we can make it work. I felt really confident we can make it work for a year. So that was like, we'll take a year off. We had done four many retirements up into this point sporadically. And it was like, we'll just do a longer one. We'll do a whole year.

And we'll see how it goes. We'll go from there. He had asked to go part-time, like six months before this happened. And they said, no, no, that's not happening. So this was our new plan. And yeah, in the process of taking a year off, our expenses lowered even more. And I felt more confident in our numbers. I was like, oh, this kind of works, actually. This is pretty good. Now we're two and a half years in. And I'm like, oh, easy, peasy. Lemon squeasy. We got this. You're two and a half years into your one-year retirement? Yes. Okay. Okay.

And do you have any plans to go back? To formal. I'm talking about formal work. Yeah. I can't see. I think my husband might in like 20 years, but I suspect you'll change his mind in 20 years. Honestly, at this point, we both really liked working. We weren't like we hated working so we quit.

But our goal is more to just find the work that we're really good at, the work that we really love, and it kind of fits our lifestyle. So we just got back from a 10-week trip. So it should accommodate 10-week trips. And yeah, we do some stuff, but I can't, it would be pretty tough for me to do 40 hours with an employer. I find at this point in my life, I'm less interested in being a cog and less interested in working with people who are cogs. I like things for people just bring their best talents and their best passions and their best skillsets and we collaborate and we make things that are interesting and fun and helpful. That sounds really interesting, kind of fulfilling a task for another person,

less so. So how are you funding your retirement? You've got income from your rentals? You've got your military pension. You have stocks, I assume, some of that still in the market. Yeah. Okay. So our expenses, if you, I call it like our monthly nuts, if you tally up all of our bills, like our car insurance and our dental insurance, our life insurance, and our property tax and homeowners insurance,

internet, gym, utilities, like all of the things that we have to pay every month. is about $6 to $700. Oh. Yep. So that helps. And that's because you have a paid off house for the most part, right? And then for health insurance, you're getting that through the military. Is that right?

Yes. Yep. So I pay out for my dental insurance, but we don't have like a monthly payment for a health care. This little cost. We pay, it's like 80, 20. So we still fork out so many, but not like a monthly payment. And then for food, we spend about $6 or $700. So that puts us about 12.

We do like fund money. We split. We get 75 bucks each. And that's like for like eating out and coffee and clothes and whatever fun stuff. But after that, we just don't spend that much money. Like I might. I don't know. Well, it seems like the reason for this, the reason why you're able to do all this is because you have very little, very low housing and transportation expense.

You have paid off car, paid off house, no monthly outlays for those. So all this other stuff really isn't what is most Americans are spending money on. It's really those areas that you've totally eliminated from your budget through kind of smart planning and hard, sometimes, you know, really overwhelming work with your house. But you've gotten there. I mean, and now you don't need that much income to support what sounds like a really awesome lifestyle. And then in the Flathead Valley, I've had some other writers and readers come to visit me this summer. It's like, I don't have the time. Even now that we don't work, I don't have the time to do all of the amazing fun, free stuff that's here.

There's so, like the area just offers so much stuff. I don't have the time to do it. So I can't pack any more fun into my life. Like we've already kind of maxed out on the fun at entertainment. So normally our spending comes to under 2,000 a month. And not that we're like particularly careful or fruitful, I would say. We just, we have a really awesome life. And I don't feel the need to spend more to prove that.

That's really good. I mean, after food and the, you know, what expenses of life, housing, health insurance, transportation, I mean, $1,200 a month is a lot of fun. You know, you can have a lot of entertainment expenses. Expenditure. So, I mean, like that lifestyle that you just described for $2,000 a month, $1,500 to $2,000 a month, you know, that's, you know, in Denver, if you have a housing payment and a car payment and you're paying $600 in health insurance, that's a $45,000 a year lifestyle, right? And that's, that's, I guess, the big, the big secret that you've got is that you're able to, you through smart choices, hard work, sacrifice, service to the country, you've gotten these ability to cover these, your expenses. Yeah. So our income is 1450 from the pension and about 1,200 from our rentals. So that puts us at 26, which is a lot of a lot of buffer. We're like a thousand bucks a month over our expenses. We have a little bit over 200,000 investments we could pull from. We just haven't

had to. And we keep 50,000 in cash just to just a buffer, you know, kind of because it feels good. cabinet there. Yeah, that's a nice one. So are you currently investing in anything? Are you looking at more houses? I think

maybe. Like in the next five years, right now our youngest is two and a half. And I just don't feel like I have the bandwidth to do a huge renovation or build something. But in the next five years, we might add

one more property. Maybe. We're kind of, we're kind of enjoying the travel and, and the relaxingness of sitting in our garden in the morning and drinking tea and reading and letting the kids eat raspberries from our raspberry bushes and jump on the trampoline. Like, that's probably two or three hours of our day each day. So that's awesome. So now that you've gotten, you've, you've had a couple of years into this FI lifestyle, you're saying that your day is spent watching it. What is it, what is a typical day in a life and what are these travels that you're going on? I'm really trying to construct kind of in my ideal is to create a life. It's such a perfect fit that I would never want to retire from it. Like, this is what I'll do every day until I die because it's such an amazing fit for me.

So I love it if I have like two or three hours that feel really productive, that I'm either talking to people or I'm helping people or I'm writing or I'm creating or just something that's not like managing the chaos of kids. Two or three hours is about my happy amount. And even my husband's like, if I haven't done anything for a couple days, he's like, maybe you should go in the coffee shop. I think that would probably be a good choice. We try to exercise every day. We try to spend time outside every day and traveling like, so we just did a 10-week trip in our hop-up camper and we did 10 national parks and it was it was amazing does a camper sleep seven it does oh wow i know all seven of us which is a great experience in separating your wants from your needs because

apparently we need that which is like apparently we need at least 150 200 square feet the 1700 square but house we live in. Apparently, 1,500 of that is just want. It's just luxury. Unnecessary. Wow. Wow.

So one week in every national park? But we divided it up a little bit different. Like when we did arches and canyon lands, like we did like four days between both of those. Some places we stayed a little bit longer. We also did Disney for like three days. We went down to San Diego Zoo, did that for four days. Wow.

We saw friends and family, and we have one of the best, I think the two best values in travel are the National Park Pass, and there's a science museum pass. And if you have kids, it is like a killer deal. We pay, I think, $70 or $80 a year, and we get into like 300 different science museums for free. This is something I just heard about. It's so awesome. And nobody knows.

everybody because I'm like when we travel when we do big trips we just say okay what science museums are in that that city in salt lake we did like three or four different ones and for a big family you're taking an experience that would be 80 or 90 dollars like per trip and doing it for free so we hit all the science museums between those two things national parks and science museums that's 90% of our entertainment okay we are going to have a link to this science museum past that you're talking about. You're the second person that I've heard discussed this. First one was a couple that my husband met at Chautauqua a hundred years ago. So here's the trick, though. You can't buy it online by itself. You buy it through a museum. Now, you can buy it online through the museums,

but you have to pick one. And here's the funny thing. All the museums have a different price for the pass. Because you're basically buying an annual pass to their museum. And it just includes all of the others for free. So if you have one in your town, that's kind of ideal because you get to visit that a lot more often. If not, you know, maybe pick one close to you or if there's nothing anywhere near you, pick the cheapest one. Okay. Yeah, that Science Museum Pass is really awesome. So I have two quick questions before we move on to the famous for here. So first, was there a year in this entire period where you or your husband as individuals earned more than $50,000 in from,

from wage income. What do you think the height, like the peak of that would be from a, from an individual earning standpoint? Man, if you look at our social security records, they are embarrassingly low. So, but it's a little hard to figure because he did have health care, which was paid for, which is a great benefit. And housing was paid for. And none of that shows up on, on your social security income.

And then we started having rental income as well. So I think, well, you can look at his pay chart. I mean, that's pretty darn easy. He finishes an E4, like 10 years of service. So I think that monthly payout is like $2,000 a month. I think my highest earning year was probably like $35 maybe. So like pretty normal. Like we just earned normal amounts of money.

Yeah. What I want to point out though is that a lot of people that listen to this have a household where at least one person is earning more than that maybe 50,000, 60,000 mark. And yeah, there were some benefits like health insurance and housing stipend. But these, like, what I want to point out is that if you guys can do this, then a lot of other folks can kind of learn from your story and repeat it as well. Because I think there's a lot of folks that have more resources than what you had during this entire period to play with that maybe didn't,

that can learn some things to deploy them more efficiently, the way that you guys have. Yeah, it's, I really encourage people, once you get a lot of clarity about what you want, once you can get a lot of clarity and really write down, like, this is important to me, this is what my lifestyle look like, and this is what I really value. That's an amazing filter for how you spend your time and your money. And what things make sense and what don't. It enables you to have gratitude and motivation to do hard things or to do things that are just,

hard because they're different because nobody else is doing them. But you can see, actually, this makes sense for me. For where I want to go, this is the right choice. And we really need that confidence to walk forward in those things that none of our friends are doing or other people actively think is crazy. Like when my relative walk through our house, our $50,000 house before we bought it, which was a mistake. I should never have let any of my family see the house. And she was like, oh, sweetheart, you're not going to live here, are you? No, no. I mean, you can't make my grandson live here.

Like, this isn't. This isn't okay. And I was like, no, it'll be fine. I swear, totally not believing it myself, but just like, trying to feel like, it'll be a good choice. I swear. Well, I think that that's a great point, just having clarity on your goals and knowing what matters and being able to block out the noise.

And one way to help that is with the books that you, probably been reading where, hey, all of a sudden, hey, everyone around me can think that this is crazy, but the people I associate with, you know, to people that I'm reading, the voices in my head, the book, author, you know, these podcasts, these types of things, they make it seem more achievable and more normal because it is something a lot of people are doing, even if they're not right there in your neighborhood. Yeah, that's one of the things that I have discovered that I like the most about the finance community, the personal finance community is just everybody is their own, in their own little bubble, they're like a frugal weirdo. And once they reach out and, you know,

there's there's meetup groups and there's, you know, Facebook groups and there's, there's ways to connect with people that aren't even close to you. And you discover, I do have a lot in common with somebody. I'm not so weird. There's a lot of other people that are doing this too. and you just kind of tune out the noise where people are talking about things that don't matter. And it almost makes having regular conversations with like neighbors kind of difficult once you discover. There are other people that are like me. It's kind of cool. I don't really want to talk to these people that are, you know, look at my latest phone or my latest thing or check out my brand new car.

And you're like, you could have saved so much more money if you just drove your crappy old car for another five years. You could have retired five years earlier or, you know, whatever. I still have my Honda Civic that's 18 years old that we bought when we lived in D.C. It was like a few years old then. And I still drive it. And it looks, it looks bad now. Like, I'm not going to lie. It is a hoopty as the day is long.

I went to have the tires change, like snow tires to regular summer tires because I have a Montana. We need snow tires. I think the poor guy, it's like this 24-year-old guy comes out because he has to get in my car to bring it to change the tire. and he has this look on this face. Like, oh, sweetie, I'm so sorry. I'm so sorry you have to drive this car. Like, you look like a nice person who needs a nice car.

I didn't know what to say because it was really awkward. But in my head, I'm thinking, dude, it's okay. I'm rich. It's okay. Like, don't feel bad about this at all. That's the best thing when people pity you because they think you don't have any money. Yes. I remember biking torque when to do.

and I am going down a hill and I'm having a, and this is like one stretch of road where I can't take the trail. And this guy had a big pickup truck pulls up next to me. And apparently he didn't like the fact that I was biking and not impacting his day at all. But he gets shot at how he goes, sucks to be poor. And I was like, whoa. I didn't know what to say or what to think. I was like, I was like, man, like that pickup truck probably has a huge. I don't know.

There's, yes, I get the feeling. That was the hardest, honestly the hardest part about me building wealth was getting over the neurotic

insecurity about looking poor. Because growing up poor, there's so much shame and so much embarrassment about being poor that I hated. Like it was, like it was an easy

like sock spot on me looking poor. But it was like, I just had to make a choice. I can either continue to look poor and try to build more financial freedom, or I can spend all of my money trying to not look poor, but I'm probably not going to be able to do both. Yeah, you're not. Although you can shop at thrift stores, especially if you live near a rich area.

Yeah, but even then, I have to go into a thrift store, which even now, like, it's like the smell of my childhood and kind of it kind of like brings back that oh this is horrible feeling in my gut just a little bit I have to like push through like no I don't have to be here I'm choosing to be here like this is a choice that aligns with my goals but yeah it's such a struggle for people who've grown up in poverty you'll notice oftentimes when I see people spend an exorbitant amount on their kids clothes I'm like oh they grew up poor that's what that is right there because all of their insecurities all of they're bad experiences, they put right on their kids and say, I don't ever want my kids to feel that way. I don't ever want them to feel like they don't fit in or they're being made fun of.

So I'll spend hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of dollars to ensure that they don't. That's a good point. I just shopped thrift stress because I'm cheap. And I grew up, you know, go to garage sales. I thought everybody shopped at garage sales. Apparently that was just me. What do your kids think about your situation? Do they, you know, you acutely were aware of growing up in poverty. What are you, do your kids feel the same way or do they understand what it is that you've done? And like, hey, we're actually pretty well off. We just choose not to, you know, spend lavishly on all these different things.

So our kids, we really try to involve them in the process and explaining how our choices have given us more. options and more freedom that both parents can go to a parent teacher conference and we can take off for 10 weeks and travel a country and make each other they don't they don't assume that that's normal because it's not it's not normal that we have this kind of flexible lifestyle and we really try to involve our kids in the rentals so we kind of have kind of a system zero to five and our house is learning how to work and then five to ten it's learning how to spend and man to money and then 10 up is learning how to invest and grow your skill set. So our oldest just turned 10. So I'm like, okay, now, you know, they've already been helping us the rentals and learning

what that's about. And now we're going to start investing and growing your skill set. So you get to try more more things. You're going to try to make graphics on campus for me and you're going to try to lay flooring in our rental and we'll pay you and you get to invest in a Roth IRA because now you're 10 and that's what 10 year olds get to do. I love it. I love it. It's time for our famous four questions. These are the same four questions that we ask of all of our guests. There's actually five but we still call it the famous four because we're clever like that. The first one, what is your favorite finance book? You can have more than one. You're a big reader. I love a big reader and I have different ones for different people. I love making book recommendations

for people. It's like my favorite. I really for a comprehensive kind of financial education, I kind of still go back to the David Box Markupil spinach rich. I think it's really well-rounded. I just finished Kate Slander's book, The Year of Less, which isn't exactly about personal finance, but it was very refreshing. That was a good read. Awesome. I don't think we've had either of those books recommended in the past. No, I know Tiffany Aliche likes David Bach books,

but I think it was like smart women finish rich. All right. What was your biggest money mistake in this period? Oh, man. All of my mistakes probably stemmed from the same two things. Fear and shame. Like any time I made a choice that was based on fear or shame, it just never ended well. And there were big ones.

Like I can start investing until probably too late later than I could have because I was scared. I didn't understand it. And every time I've spent money because of shame, like, I'm not good enough. I need a new outfit. Like maybe if I just had a different lipstick, like maybe if I had a different couch or or a better yard or just something to feel better about myself and my situation. Like I've always regretted those. Because if you don't feel enough just by yourself or stuff generally does not fix that.

Oh, that's so good. Yeah, that's great advice. And I think that honestly, in the generation coming up, that travel can even qualify that. people see everyone else's vacation photos and their trips and they think my life's not good enough and I'm not good enough and if I just had that then I would be happy and I'd be healthy and whole and so they put vacations on credit cards and then you just come home and you have credit card debt yeah that's that's not going to help anything yeah what is your best piece

of advice for people who are just starting out on their own journey to financial independence I think we'll cover this a little bit, but know your goals. Because once you know your goals, you can filter a lot. And there's something I work with with all the people that I work with their mentor is that there's helpful ideas and there's unhelpful to your goals. So sometimes general advice or things that actually is helpful for one person isn't helpful for you and where you want to go. And the only way you can filter that is knowing where you want to go. It's the only way you can decide how you should work your schedule and your time and your money is knowing where you want to go. And honestly, that's the helpful and unhelpful. It can be tricky to figure out what mindsets are really helpful for me moving forward and which ones are holding me back, especially if it's been a mindset that's been passed down to us by people that we respected. And that mindset worked really well for them. But it doesn't work for where we're trying to go.

Yeah, I think that that's really good advice because I think there's a lot of, I don't want to say, I'll use the word zealotry, sometimes in the personal finance community about the right way to do very specific things. And that does not apply. But if you just kind of listen without having your goals kind of in your head, you might end up working towards someone else's goal instead of your own goal, which it sounds like you have avoided successfully. You're like, I know exactly what I want. I don't need to get to this 25 times my annual expenditures. I need to get to this goal for my lifestyle for these needs now. And I've built a system that is very sustainable for that.

And the rest of the advice in the financial dependence community, all these rules that they have simply don't apply because I'm very clear on that. Yeah, there were a number of people when we jumped off that were like, oh, sweetie, you're not ready. that I wouldn't I would those numbers I wouldn't do those numbers like you should just keep working a few more years and it's been amazing it's been amazing like I would never have traded these last couple years for two more years of salary and and you have two years of expenses in cash you mentioned like ready to go like who's the who's at risk in the situation so I think I'm and I think you have I think that's great advice and I am a big goal setter. I have a sheet of paper with my goals every single day and I'm like, here's things I need to do to work towards the goals in these different, I'm very organized about that. So I love that advice. All right. Last and most difficult question of the famous four,

what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? I am not funny at all. I'm like so not funny. I don't even try jokes. I wish you worked here instead of Scott. Scott just plays jokes. tells jokes all the time. Oh, I am not a joke teller, but I do keep bear spray in my house. And when people want to talk about Montana, I usually talk about bear spray because they find it amusing.

There is pepper spray that stops grizzly bears. Or I pissed off grizzly bears, which is hard. They're hard to deter. So non-montana people find that amusing. And that's like my only amusing tidbit. Well, I'll brag about one that had the other day with Josh Dorkin here. So Josh is on a trip to Alaska,

and he takes a picture of some bears that he sees across a river. He says, oh, look, it's unbearable out here, how beautiful it is or something. And I'm like, that's terrible. I retort back with that looks like a true codiac moment. Oh, my goodness. I'm not punning either. I can't do puns.

I can't do jokes. All right. No, your strengths. That's not mine. Well, fair enough. Okay. Where can people find more about you, Jillian? The best way to get a hold of me or to just keep in touch with what I'm doing is my email list.

And it's kind of like my secret, my secret blog to my readers. Because I feel like those are really my peeps. So I write all of the stuff that I would never publish on the internet. I just email to people because I just pretend that I'm writing an email to a friend. And so I just tell them what I would tell my best friend. Okay. And I love it. You can always hit reply and I answer every single one of those emails.

Other random emails, I'm like 70% other even more random emails I delete. But if you're a subscriber, I feel like we're already friends. So of course I'm going to respond to your email. I emailed you as a friend. You're emailing me back as a friend. Yeah. But all my stuff goes through there. Okay.

And how did somebody get on that list? If you hit my website I try to make it pretty easy Montana Money Adventures Okay and we like I said before We will have links to all of these things on our show notes Jillian thank you so much for your time today

I will talk to you soon Bye Bye All right that was Jillian Johns Root from Montana Money Adventures What'd you think Mindy? Oh my goodness I love talking to Jillian She is such a genuine

genuinely warm person Yeah she really is And you can tell, like, she has embraced a lot of challenges that, you know, some people wouldn't, wouldn't take on, right? I mean, she adopted a whole, a whole group of siblings there that, you know, really made the whole group. What do you mean? No, I'm just, I'm laughing at the way you said that. But yes, adopting one child can be difficult, especially when you're not getting them as a baby. I don't actually know if that's a, the right way to say that getting them.

If you are adopted. I mean, that's what I say. My sister was adopted. And I say we got her when she was eight months old. So I don't know if that's appropriate or not. But I'm not being rude. I'm just saying, you know, when you adopt as an infant, the infant hasn't had a chance to make a lot of connections.

And when you adopt as a young child, they have these experiences that have shaped them already. So adopting one as a child is going to be a challenge, can be a challenge. It doesn't always have to be a challenge. But adopting three, I mean, that's a really amazing thing that she was able to do for these children. Yeah. And going from one to five children in two years is a heck of a lot to handle for a, and moving towards five during the whole time. It's a very impressive emotional and logistical challenge. Challenge is a good word. When I hear logistical, I always think it's a logistical nightmare. And this is this is a

logistical challenge. Yes. And you know what? I love what she said. I'm trying to create a life that is such a perfect fit that I never want to retire from it. I really can't top that. Awesome. Okay. Scott, shall we get out of here? Let's get out of here. Okay. From episode 36 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench over and out.