BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 38: Getting Serious About Paying Off Debt with Phillip Taylor from PT Money

Episode Date: September 17, 2018

Phillip Taylor studied to be a CPA in college, just like his dad. He graduated with some debt and decided to add to it by buying a house. In order to afford his new house, he didn’t max out his 401k—he didn’t even contribute enough to get the... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 38, where we interview Philip Taylor from PT Money and FinCon. Our baby got to be one years old. We're about to kind of have the birthday party there for the one year old. And I was assigned to a trip to India three weeks over that whole time frame. So her birthday was going to be like right in the middle of that. And I begged my boss, like, you got to get me out of this. You know, I can't leave the state so all my kids turn in one. I really couldn't bring them with me on that trip. And so it was just putting this in a situation where I knew for my wife, it was super important for me to be home. And so I said, well, babe, there's only one answer here.

I need to quit. And then I could be home for our daughter's birthday. It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle 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, and I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I'm so fantastic today. How are you today? I am doing great. It's a very big privilege to interview PT, who's one of the, you know, what are the really early guys in this whole financial independence and money blogging sphere? Yes, I didn't realize he had started his blog in 2007.

That's like, he's one of the first. I think maybe there were some people doing it in 2000. It was like two people. Yeah, I mean, he's a very significant part of the reason why this whole community around financial independence exists today in its current state. Yeah, he's certainly given us in the financial independence community, the financial blogosphere, a place to really connect and grow and realize that we're not alone. We're not frugal weirdos. We're not financial freaks. Well, we are, but, you know, we're not alone.

But we can be amongst our own kind. We can be amongst our own kind. And it's really nice to connect with people who are just like you. I have known PT even longer than you. So I am fan girling over here just a little bit more than you. I've been attending FinCon since 2013. And I know that people who have listened to the show in the past will recognize the name FinCon because I think we've mentioned it on every single episode we've ever recorded.

And up to this one and down the road, we're still going to mention it because it's such a huge part of my life. It's such a huge, you know, I got my job because of FinCon. I've grown so much and met so many people because of this one conference. And it's grown into this huge conference. The first time I went, there were 350 people. And this year, there's going to be more than 2,000 attendees. But before PT created that, he was just a regular guy trying to figure out money. So today we're going to hear from PT about his story. 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.

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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 Leeners 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 is 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. All right, P.T., welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going today? It's going great. It's so great to be here with you guys. I am so excited to talk to you because for those of you who have heard the show before, we've mentioned FinCon, I believe on every episode. And PT is the creator of FinCon. So PT has been a part of my life for five years, six years now. But I never really get a chance to talk to you because it's always in the middle of this conference that you're putting on.

And while it is really one of the smoothest conferences I've ever been to, it's still a big deal and you've got things that you have to do. So I'm very excited to talk to you today. Yeah, I'm excited to be on here. I love talking about money. That's kind of what got me into this whole thing and encouraged me to start a conference to begin with. So happy to share my story. Well, boy, do I have a good show for you. Well, let's go ahead and dive in. What do you consider like the foundation of your kind of journey with money? Yeah, I would say I grew it with a CPA as a father. And my mom was a teacher and a writer. And so naturally I found my way eventually to financial blogging. but I just didn't pop out of high school and can start doing that. I followed in my father's footsteps and without really any lack of,

it was kind of a lack of decision on my part, just kind of fell into that. Like I'll go be a CPA like my dad. And so I chased that part of my career in education early on, left college with some personal financial troubles, though. I left college with student loan debt as well as like some credit card debt. And really just didn't have a clue as to how to like properly live with them, my means and manage my money. And I just didn't have many goals around my finances as well. So it was

something I had a lot of, I guess, head knowledge for, high finance, taxes, investing. But in terms of daily money management, I really struggled. And so I had to find new mentors early on. And that was through folks like Dave Ramsey, David Bach, radio personalities hosts who people were really who were teaching personal finance early on that really educated me and helped me to kind of move from, you know, this kind of financial dummy to someone who was kind of understanding it and getting it. And then I found financial blogs and that really turned my life around because here were these normal people sharing their personal lives, personal finance lives with me and it inspired me to then want to take myself to another level. So that's kind of me. I've got this like official financial certified background,

but it really wasn't bringing me financial success in my life. I needed to really take ownership of it and own the personal finance side of it. Okay. So I've got like 27 questions based on just what you just shared with that. First of all, you said you graduated college with some debt, some credit card debt, some, did you say student loan debt? A little bit student loan yet. Okay. So what kind of debt are we talking about? Roughly 25,000 of student loan debt. And then, and I went to, I graduated high school in 94 to get people perspective here. So I had full scholarships, but I still took out money for room and board and things like that. And then I had some credit card debt as well. It was roughly around 3,000.

Okay. So not crippling, but still more than you should have. Yeah. But I was so blind to it. I wasn't paying it off every month. I just thought, oh, well, I'll just pay the minimum. And that's cool. You know, I had no concept of the fact that, you know, here I was carrying this big stupid consumer debt. Okay. So we talked to Jamila Sufrant. And I don't think I made a good point here. She also has a finance background. And she didn't know what she was doing with money. She wasn't conscious about her spending either. And I want to say that I think it's very interesting. So many people will email me or send me a note that says, hey, I don't know what I'm doing with money. I feel really

bad that I don't know what I'm doing with money. Well, here's a guy who's a CPA. You kind of studied money and you made some mistakes. Jamila studied finance and she made some mistakes. Money's not that hard, but it's also not that easy. And if you don't know what you're doing, if you don't know how to manage your own personal finances, it really doesn't matter what your schooling is. And, you know, there's people who are studying how to do this in real life and then don't do it in their own real life. So I just, I want, I guess I'm still kind of making a ham-handed point. But I want to say that, you know, if you're listening to this and you're, you're having problems with money, it's not just you. P.T. messed it up too. I messed it up too. Scott has been

perfect forever, but he's, you know. So, but there you go. So it's never too late to turn your finances around. You can still do it. It's not like, oh, well, I guess I'm bad with money. I'll just ever fix it to start today. Right, right. And yeah, don't use that as an excuse that you weren't born with it or someone didn't hand you the knowledge. Sometimes for me, I just needed an experience to kind of kick me into gear, right? What really catapulted me was when I got married and we wanted to buy a house.

And that was in my late 20s. And that was really when, like, I was starting to build that knowledge, but I was like, oh, I really need to know this now because this is going to affect the future of my life. So to a certain degree, I think that like experience is the best educator. and that's the time when you need to kind of act on it and make sure you you seek out information. But I still think, yeah, our education system isn't necessarily set up to help us leave education with those skills, you know. No, I mean, like your education, I studied finance and corporate strategy in college as my two minors. And nothing in there really was tied to personal finance.

You're just not, you're trained to think, how can I perfectly optimize business finance? But there's no thought given to like, oh, I'm going to, how do I optimize my own? So it's kind of this like very weird mishmash of what your credit of priorities are. I'm going to work all day making money for somebody else, but not to give any thought to my own financial position. Yeah, yeah. And it was some naivity with me leaving college thinking, oh, I'm going to get this accounting degree. I'm going to be a CPA like my dad. I'm going to make money, you know.

And so money's going to cure all my ails, right? And so I left college thinking, or I'll just kill it with income. Whatever problems I have with money management or debt or specifically. spending, I'll just crush it with income one day. You know, sort of this wait. We'll wait until I start making money one day. And that lasted throughout my 20s, unfortunately. So what were your habits like in your 20s?

Were you at least saving, matching what you made with what you spent? Was that debt going anywhere? Yeah, I didn't start. I wish I had started that way. I think my first 401K, I didn't even get the company match. But then my dad found out about that a year or two later. And he's like, what the heck are you doing? You at least got to get that.

So when I started paying taxes, that's really what was a big trigger for me. because I realized my dad was like, you've got to do this traditional IRA because if you do this, your taxes are going to go down by this much. You're going to pay less. And so for me, that was a huge trigger. Okay, if I contribute to my retirement this much, my taxes will go down this much and I'll basically get money back. That's kind of how I felt. Even though I wouldn't be to use it to the future, I felt like I was getting that money back. And so that really started motivating me early on. So I used things like the traditional IRA. I started investing through my company, 401K, and sort of believing in those systems and paying myself first, putting those things forward.

And slowly but surely starting to work myself out of debt. I was a Dave Ramseyite, kind of believe in some of that stuff. I got rid of the credit card debt, of course, first. And then went after our car loans once we got married. So that's kind of way down the line when I was 30. So I kept car loans and student loans in my life until I was 30. Okay. That's not an uncommon theme, unfortunately.

And I graduated just a couple of years before you did. So I'm sorry, did you say you graduated high school in 94 or college? High school. Okay. So I graduated a couple of years before you. And our student loan debt isn't anything like the current student loan load. And it's just amazing. And I didn't even have student loan debt because my parents were so generous.

They paid for my college. But this isn't about me. This about you. Sorry. Lucky you. So when did you finally? pay off all of your debt? We started working on it whenever we got married.

We had the two incomes coming in and we decided to live off of one income. So it wised up. We had read David Box, automatic millionaire, totally gotten on board with Dave Ramsey and decided, okay, this is our time. We've got both incomes coming in. We can crush both of our car loans and crush both of our student loans over the next few years. And that's what we did.

It took us about two and a half, three years. But during that time, I was also starting PT Money, the blog. So I was journaling this process. I was showcasing like what my debts were and and really showing how we were kind of whittling those down over the years there. And I'd say it was about 33 when I was completely debt free other than the mortgage. What, um, would you, did you have kids during this time? We had, uh, kids our second year of marriage. So right in the middle of all that. Yeah. Okay. And did your wife continue to work after the children were born? She stayed home.

But by that, but by that point, PT money was starting to produce a little bit of income. And so my blog, I probably started replacing some of the income we lost and trying to knock out those debts. Okay. So you were working as a CPA and working on your blog and your wife was staying home. That's it. Okay. Are you comfortable talking about your salary? What sort of salary were you making as a CPA? Yeah, bring it on. My first job out of high school or out of college was 33,000. And then by the time I left, I'd worked myself up to about 95,000. So when I left corporate, I was making that. When we first got married, I was probably making somewhere around 80, 85. Okay.

And your wife was making how much? She was making roughly as a teacher, teacher in the school district there. I think she was making around 50. Okay. So that's a nice chunk of change to throw at the debt. And it took you a couple of years and you paid off all the debt? We did.

Except the mortgage. Now, do you still have a mortgage? We do. We have, we've taken our home. were in then, the one we bought, put 20% down, which it was a $200,000 house. We put $40,000 down. And that was something else we were doing during that three-year period. Not only were we paying off the debt, we were saving up for our first home and saving up just, you know, in general, for our retirement and our future. So we still have that first house. It's our rental property now.

So we kept it as a rental property, that kind of an accident, somewhat of an accidental landlord situation there. And we can talk about that since I know you guys like real estate. but then we've since bought another property, which is our home now, and again, try to put 20% down there as well. We are slowly paying down the one we're living in now. We're not now, we're no longer aggressive in trying to pay down the old home because it's our rental property. We're just happy with that. But on our current home we're living in, we're trying to chunk big cash payments to that now. But in general, my philosophy on mortgage debt has been through the years to just kind of let it be something that it's a part of our life.

and use the money. We're not spending to pay that down to invest as much as possible. As you're paying down the debt here, were you at any point, were you aware of like, oh, I'm going to get to zero and then my investment approach is going to change to this? Or what was kind of, what were you kind of planning to do with excess cash as you, as you got past the zero point? Yeah, it was more about because I'd started blogging and I wanted just more freedom and

I wanted this blog thing to maybe work out and be my full-time gig, it was less about, you know, particular finance goal and more about just a life goal of not having any burden in my life, you know, and sort of in knowing that this is probably the only moment we're both going to be working full time and maxing out our income. So let's use this moment in our life to like crush everything that's in our past that is a negative drain on us. So that in our future, we're set up to do whatever we want. That was kind of the mentality. But, but in general, yes. I mean, knowing that, you know, I could do much more in terms of investing and giving myself more of an off ramp for when I did jump to go do the blog full time. So what does an off ramp look like to you in terms of quitting a job making $85, $95,000 a year?

Yeah. So for me, it was, we were living pretty lean. So I would say it was replacing, you know, getting in the income for the blog up to about a third of that is where we're at, third to a half. And then in terms of savings, we had roughly probably six to nine months before that point. And then during those years, we really tried to stretch that out to about a couple of years worth of living expenses. And so when I finally left in 2010, which is three years after starting the blog, we had about 18 to 24 months worth of living expenses saved up, I would say, in cash. Plus, you had a third of your salary coming in from income from your side hustle at this point, the blog. that's it so i think that's like a really good take on the on like what like financial runway like

the amount of time you feel like you have before you can where you're comfortable right sure income and the cash the cash cushion well yeah and not only that but as soon as i left to go blog full time i picked up a a blog editing jobs kind of as a side hustle i started freelance riding a little bit more so i was hedging my i'm super risk averse like so i needed like a big runway and a big of these, a lot of these questions answered. So I needed to make it safe and secure for me to jump, you know, because I was, I was jumping at a time when my wife, we had a nine-month-old baby, another one on the way pretty soon. So it was like, this is the worst time technically to jump, but we had set ourselves up financially to make it and make it safe. What were you doing for health care?

That was a big question and concern back then, because back then there was no Obamacare. So I had to search the individual market. And back then, individual market health insurance plans in Texas would not pay for maternity. And so when we jumped, we were going to be facing, if we had another baby, we were going to be facing about a $35,000 payment for a baby, essentially, from a hospital. So it was like, don't get pregnant, you know. But what we ended up doing is I did some part-time work from my father. the next spring, and I jumped on his group plan for a little while there. And so we had the

baby wire on his group plan as a part-time employee. And then after that, it was kind of off to the races. So, I mean, that's such an obvious little hack. Like, I'm sure that for many folks out there that are considering this leap, you know, hey, if you can, if you can have any ability to time when health care expenses might come along, you know, there's options out there. Go get part-time work. Go get something that has health care. In your case, it's just through your father. But I'm sure that there's other organizations you can join particular skill and now. And now there's Obamacare and then there's also the medical sharing communities, which is what we use now that are totally resourceful for that.

Oh, I want to talk about that. But before we talk about the medical sharing, I want to, I want to make a comment. You said you quit your job in 2010 because you're risk averse. And I just think it's hilarious that you call yourself risk averse yet you quit your very good paying job in 2010 when everything was going kind of into the. toilet in the economy. And you started FinCon, which I kind of think is sort of a big risk. I mean, I guess when you first started it, it wasn't, what was the first attendee list? Like 200 people? 200 people, yeah. Okay. So that's not nearly the juggernaut that it is now.

But still, like, I'm risk averse, but I'm going to quit my job in 2010. So that's why I was laughing. I'm not laughing at you. I'm just laughing at what you said. Sure, sure. So I'm sure I know the answer to this question, but I want to just ask it anyway. How did your wife feel about you quitting? Because she's now a stay-at-home mom and you have this high-paying job that you are leaving. I'm assuming you guys talked about it. Sure, sure. We did. And she knew my desires where I was kind of going with my life. She knew the blog was playing around on the internet, as she used to call it, was starting to pay the bills. And she knew that it was something I was super passionate about. So she was supportive, but she was also practical like I was for the most part.

And she said, you know, let's not quit for another couple of years here. Let's keep going until we're really, really safe. And then I used a situation probably looking back that it was kind of sneaky to allow myself to kind of make the leap earlier. So I did a lot of traveling with this job. And we would go international. And while my wife and I were young, married, didn't have kids yet, it was super fun. Even with our small little one, firstborn, we would take her travel.

traveling. And so we got to go to Singapore, to Ireland, all kinds of cool places. But then once our baby got to be one year's old, we're about to kind of have the birthday party there for the one year old. And I was assigned to a trip to India three weeks over that whole time frame. So her birthday was going to be like right in the middle of that. And I begged my boss, like, you got to get me out of this. You know, I can't leave the state so all my kids turning one. I really couldn't bring them with me on that trip. And so it was just putting us in a situation where I knew my, for my wife, it was super important for me to be home. And so I said, well, babe, there's only one answer here.

I need to quit. And then I can be home for our daughter's birthday. And so I kind of use that situation to kind of push her over the edge there. And she's like, okay, stay home, be here for the birthday. And let's see if we can figure this thing out. And if you can't, you're a CPA, you could probably always go back and find a work. So let's go for it. Yeah, I was going to say, I quote Joel from FI-180, who was on our episode 11, a lot.

He says, when I quit my job, I wasn't totally financially free, but what's the worst that can happen? I'll go back and get a job. My worst case scenario is everybody else's everyday life. So the idea that this is some huge leap, you're a CPA, which is, I would say, kind of recession-proof. I mean, people are still going to need CPAs no matter what. The teacher is a recession-proof job, policemen, firemen, you know, there's a lot of things you can do as a CPA. I know you want me to be home. I guess I got to quit.

And she's loved it too because, you know, I've been obviously being able to be more present with our family and not, you know, have full control of our schedule. There's been some ups and downs, sure, emotionally and financially. But it's been a good run. And we're totally thankful that we've been able to do it. So what happens? So let's, this is something we don't often get a chance to talk to,

talk to people about because a lot of people are on the journey to fire or justify. you, I don't know if you necessarily consider yourself FI at that point, but you consider yourself ready enough to go and pursue your blog full-time and other ventures full-time, right? What happens after that fact? So what are the next couple of years look like for your income and financial situation? That's a good point, because even though I've been blogging for three years, FI wasn't necessarily something I put out there for myself as a goal. It was just basically max out as much as possible so that I'd be prepared if and when retirement came.

And then here I am faced with now a new life situation of being completely free for the most part, being able to kind of call my own shots, wake up every, you know, no more Mondays in my life. Wake up every day and just make the best of it as I can. And the blog was very passive in terms of income. So it really kind of felt, had that feeling of being really financially free and independent my life. And I just discovered Jacob's blog. I forget when he started, but I was just kind of getting into FI. Is it early retirement extreme, right? Yeah, earlier trying to stream during those years.

And I was like, that's kind of, that's really cool. It's really radical. Someone's like really pushing the limits to the height. But I didn't really like own it at that point. So, but yes, whenever I left corporate had my blog going and was financially free there. Financially, I guess, freeze, what you call it. Certainly wasn't independent. But call them own shots.

It kind of absolved me of like a future goal with fire in a way. Because I felt like I'd kind of arrived in a way to with the lifestyle that I wanted. It wasn't complete ultimate independence, but it allowed me to kind of take the pedal off a little bit, right? So I wasn't pursuing my, you know, I no longer, I basically, I guess, wasn't going to be nudged to pursue financial independence as fast as possible because I was totally just happy running my blog and eventually then running FinCon and having kind of both things going on and grow my little family. But I want to say, though, that the fire concept I love and it has come back into my life as it's become blossom more in our community. I love it, like I said,

because it really raises the bar for consumers and for people in general. For so long, we've said, oh, say, 5, 10, maybe 15% of your income and then you'll retire whenever you're 65 or whatever. And this new insurgents of fire has really set the bar much higher. And so I think in general, as consumers see a higher bar, even if they don't hit it, they're going to be sort of pushing toward that higher plane. And even if they just get halfway there, we're all going to be off in a better spot because there's more examples of people

kind of pursuing more radical approaches to it. And so I just think it's all positive. And so it's pushed me to kind of think about am I really independent right now? Am I, do I want that in my life, complete financial independence? And so it's been interesting to kind of kick that idea around in my head when I feel so free already.

Yeah. Yeah. It's the freedom that you get. from not having to work at a job that you hate or just don't, maybe not even hate, just don't like all that much is fantastic. I still, every once in a while, I will talk to my husband who has quit his job and he will say, hey, how's work going? Do you still like? And I'm like, I can't believe I get to work here. It is, I'm excited to go to work every single day. But I've had jobs that that was not the case at all.

And even just like not working for yourself sometimes can really be like, oh, I just don't want to do this anymore. And I don't ever want to be a CPA. So I can imagine not wanting to be there. I don't blame you. It's funny. I used to do tax returns for all these businesses, right, at my CPA firm or at the CPA firm that I worked at. And I would go to after I would do the return, I would bring it in to my partner to get

him to sign off on it. And I said, you know, this is a really awesome business. This would be really cool to run one day. Do you ever feel that way, you know? And he's like, nope. I just like doing their taxes. And it was like right in there. I knew I was not destined.

to be a partner in a CPA firm. I need to go find my own thing. Yeah, that's awesome. That's a fun story. Okay, a few minutes back, you mentioned that you have a medical expense sharing kind of insurance. Without a doubt, hands down, this is absolutely the number one question I get through email or Twitter or on the bigger pockets forums or anywhere people see me.

They're asking, can you do a show about insurance? Can you talk about this? And, you know, right now it's kind of up in the air. They've taken some of the Affordable Care Act mandates away, but they're like still working on fixing it. So I can't really have a show based on all of that. But I'm really glad that you have this sharing. Do you want to name the company that you have the medical sharing with?

And then we can talk a little bit more about that. Yeah, absolutely. It's metashare. And we started with them in 2015, I believe. Okay. And, okay, so that's not the one. I was thinking of budgeting and the fun stuff just had a baby through a different sharing program. And she said it was a great experience. She had no problems with that they didn't like bulk at paying

the bills. So it's not insurance, right? It's like a shared. I don't, I really shouldn't ask these questions. Hey, PT, can you tell us all about this sharing experience? What is it? And how does it work? That's how I wanted to ask that. Yeah. So medical sharing is is the best way to describe it. So essentially you're just sharing a community of people that have opted in to this program who share each other's medical expenses. So think about we all put our premiums. They're not called premiums, but we all put our premiums, monthly premiums, into a pot every month. And then all the sick people raise their hand and say, I've got this bill. I've got this bill.

I had this surgery. I've got this bill. So give me some of the money out of the pot. And that's how it works from month to month, the month. So the sick people are the people who need it at the time of need get to use the money that's in the money. the pot. Now, there's restrictions on who can kind of be involved in that. So MediShare has certain requirements, lifestyle requirements, to get into that pool to participate. And that's kind of how it works. So after Affordable Care Act came out, we jumped on an Affordable Care Act plan. And then a year

two later, a year later, maybe, I discovered the Medishare thing and realized that it was an exemption to the Affordable Care Act. So if you got on MediShare or any of these medical sharing programs, even though it's not insurance, it's exempted out of the requirement to be involved in those Affordable Care Act plans. So I was like, whew, there goes that big massive premium I was paying for maternity, which I no longer needed in my life. So I was able to jump on these high deductible. I got paid it's a $10,000 deductible. They don't call it that. And then we pay about $250 a month for our premium for our family of five.

Yeah. That's a fantastically low premium to pay for, to cover a family of five, right? what are those lifestyle requirements that you were talking about? So with particularly with Medashare, and I believe you mentioned budgeting and the fun stuff. Maybe she uses Liberty, healthcare. I think she does. And so they're a non-religious, more of an open platform, I guess. But MediShare in particular is for Christians.

And so you have to claim to be a Christian and claim to attend our church service regularly. And then also a claim to live by certain lifestyle, which I basically bowl it down to like, don't have sex out of wedlock and don't drink alcohol in excess. I mean, that's kind of the two big things. Basically, if you were to get injured driving drunk on your way home from the bar, Medicare would not pay for that injury. And so they asked that they don't have those risks involved kind of in their community. And so it's one part sort of about living a quote unquote Christian lifestyle.

And then one part sort of protecting the people who are providing money for the pool. Okay. And this is something that they can do because it's a private organization. They're not discriminating against people. They're just saying, hey, this is our requirements. I guess that's not discrimination. I know that there are others that have different, I mean, they're discriminating against people who drive drunk. That's against a lot anyway. So maybe the police are discriminating against people who drive drunk too by not letting them do what they want. It seems like a great program and something that, I don't know, I'm sure, perhaps there are other options. out there for lots of different situations.

I don't see why you would never want to drive drunk. Why would you ever cover that, right? Yeah. Right. But for non-Christian, yeah, for non-Christian, go to liberty. That's the one for folks who don't necessarily need or want to proclaim a religious, you know, aspect to it.

Yeah, absolutely. Right. And I've heard a lot of people are on liberty and they have a lot of success with it. Now, is there anything medically speaking that they won't cover, like regular surgeries, do they cover? Is there anything they don't cover? Yeah, anything major or unexpected, they will cover. As long as it, you know, I have my $10,000 deductible I have set. So anything above that $10,000 for the family that they will cover. Up until that point, I'm totally happy paying for it. We just don't have medical expenses in our life. We just don't have them other than annual checkups.

And so this works out for us. People who have chronic health issues or having a baby in a few months or who have just something sort of they're expecting already, probably need to talk to MediShare first about like how they're going to kind of balance that, that kind of ongoing medical need or the baby situation. Because they're probably in those cases either have to prepay some of those costs, start prepaying some of those costs. And I'm, you know, not officially speaking for MediShare here. So you have to ask them.

Yes, I wanted to make that point too. Yeah, yeah, prepaid some of those costs for the baby. If it's a chronic health thing, you know, odds are they probably just will reject you at that point, like insurance used to do before the Affordable Care Act. Right. Well, this is great. I mean, so if you're considering early retirement or you're considering just even going off and being an entrepreneur or a landlord full-time, whatever it is, that you're moving away

from traditional full-time work where your employer sponsors your health care, this is a great option to look into, meta share and liberty, right, and see if there's a way that can help you. Do you have any other challenges that people are overcoming? when they are leaving work that you've come across over the last couple of years. Yeah. I would say two of them, like managing cash flow for your business, right? So when you got your employer, you've got the regular paycheck coming in. And so as kind of having your own thing, you've got to kind of manage that cash flow coming in.

And I would read a book called Profit First by Mike McCallowicz. I'd highly recommend that to any business owner out there who wants to basically apply the pay yourself first financial automation tactics that they normally, that you think, oh, it's just practical for your personal finances. Everyone follows Remit Settis advice and David Box's advice of automating your finances and paying yourself first. Do the same thing for your business. That's essentially what Mike McAllen talks about. And he sets up a system of bank accounts, transitioning the money to make sure that you're setting yourself up to so that you can pay your taxes when they become due. And so that you're basically guaranteeing profits for yourself in your business and treating it appropriately.

And then I would say making sure you don't neglect saving for retirement. oftentimes. And it took me a year, even as financially savvy as I was, I just sort of sat around for your thinking, oh, I'll get to that solo 401k or set by IRA one day. And then a year goes by and you realize you haven't done it, you know. And so make sure you have a plan for that as well, so how you're going to continue your retirement savings, even if you jump to self-employment. And I chose the solo 401k at first because I was self-employed and I was the only person in the business as well as my wife. She can be on that as a solo. And then now that I have employees through FinCon, we run a simple IRA for that. And so just investigate what plans are out there

that you can jump on, automate it just like you would, your normal 401K, and pay yourself first. These are really good points. And the first point about just cash flow and all that, we had a post on bigger pockets a couple weeks ago. And the guy as a landlord, and he's running a business and he quit his job. And he's reinvesting all the cash flow of his business back into the business. And we're living off the wife's income. And, and, she is getting mad at it. He says this in the post. You can go find this post if you're interested,

looking for it, folks. And he's like, you know, she's not being fair. She says I'm not contributed to the household. And every single person who's a retired landlord of this thread is like, yeah, you need to contribute to the household. You got to take money out of your successful business and use it to live your life to some extent, at some point, right? And I think that would be difficult, I think, for a lot of people who are used to

saving all the money from their job and putting it into this to actually begin living on it. And I think that maybe there's a there's some merit to going through that thought exercise of how you're going to actually withdraw from your investments and your business after you leave. Yes. And what you are forgetting, Scott, is that he had something like a $500 a month truck payment that she was footing the bill for. Oh my goodness. It was like he was taking every penny that he was making and throwing it back into the business and not putting any of it towards the finances and his wife started feeling resentful. And I would like to invite them to have a conversation.

Talk to each other and, you know, talk about your hopes and dreams. And maybe you're about ready to start taking money out and putting it. Or maybe you've got this like really big deal you're working on. Let her know in advance. Oh. It seems that there's a lot of lessons to apply there in general, though, just like, if you're going to leave your job, you know, how are you going to continue your contribution to the household, however that is with, you know, and get along with your spouse, whatever way that means

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Marvel Television's Wonder Man. All eight episodes now streaming, only on Disney Plus. So let's move on to the next stage of your life then. You have quit your CPA job. You're working at PT money full-time. Your blog. Whose blog? Do you want to share whose blog you were editing?

Because I think that's kind of cool that PT used to edit somebody else's blog. Yeah, I used to edit the, it was actually a company blog, a bank, Pierce Street. I don't know if you remember those guys. Oh, yeah, I know Pierce Street. A reward checking account. Okay. So I was their blog editor for a while. That's cool.

Yeah, about six months there. It was a good paying gig. And I got to basically just invite all of my blogging buddies to come get backlinks for their own blog. So everyone was happy. Wow, what a tough job. Okay. So when did you get the idea to start a conference for financial media? Yeah.

The first one was in 2011. And there were like five personal finance blogs at the time. So how did you know that this was going to be a success or why did you think this was going to be the success that it has grown to? Well, I just fell in love with the community. You know, I started my blog in 07 and it was as a result of me just loving those five personal finance blogs that you said out there. Actually, there were a lot more out there. And honestly, when I started in 07, I thought there are too many blogs. I don't have permission to do this.

They don't need another voice out there. That was in 2007. But yeah, it was just a community people that reached out to me. and basically said, you know, you're doing good work at PT money. Let's collaborate. The blogosphere was very collaborative. We would comment on each other's sites. We would guest post all the time without it being very like, you know, financially motivated necessarily. We just like we're totally geeking out about personal finance and sharing ideas with each other and supporting each other because we were the weird people online talking about money, right? So there's a natural bond like, oh, you're,

sharing what you're paying down your, you know, how you're paying down your debts. You're sharing and kind of what your goals are for the future. So it created this natural intimacy with each other. Even though I was just PT back then, I was blogging anonymously. I was building these relationships. And then I started forming, we started forming little forum groups

or basically online groups where we could actually just talk back and forth with each other in real time. And it got really exciting then because we started sharing ideas and helping each other's sort of businesses grow. I started going to Blog World Expo, affiliate summit,

and checking out these other conferences and just saying to myself, man, this would be cool if it was just all the people I really want to talk to all the other personal finance bloggers out there. And it was like, ding, ding, ding, ding, let's do this. I created a map. I don't know if you guys have seen it, but it's the personal finance bloggers world map. So I've plotted all the personal finance bloggers in the world on a map and I allow people to kind of self-submit to that. And I just said, this is cool, you know, we're all over the world here, all of the United States, like seeing where kind of where everyone is.

And I said, what if we just all got together, you know? and it was about a year after I'd left PT money, so I needed another side gig. I'd quit the blog editing thing. I'd stop freelancing as much, and I needed a side hustle. And so I was up late at night with talking to my wife and just said, babe, what do you think about this conference idea, the financial blogger conference? And I think it was probably like the 16th conversation I'd had with her about the idea. And she finally just said, get up out of the bed and go start the darn thing right now.

So back then my office was literally in our bedroom. I went over to my computer and started registering domains. I remember and even like installed a theme that night. But, you know, it just started inviting all these people that had become my good friends online and I'd met at various conferences and just said, hey, let's do this. You know, it's time. Our industry has grown to a place here where we need to have kind of an annual get-together. So let's do this thing.

Yeah. And that has grown from 200 people in 2011 to how many people are registered this year, 2000? Yeah, we'll have over 2,000, which is crazy. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, that is crazy. And it's still the right people. It's people who are concerned about helping folks with their money, guys like you and to have 2,000 people in a room together who all have that kind of same mission. We're all out there finding the same beast of financial illiteracy. It's pretty cool. It's a great group to serve. And the community really existed before I had the event for them. A lot of people give me credit for sort of fostering them or coming up with this idea. But it really just came out of an outpouring of what this community has done for me and my life personally. And it's really special each year to come. kind of served them. This is my favorite conference of the year. This is like the one that I don't, I don't miss. So, all at least, I won't in the future.

I missed it two years ago. But it's just so cool to see all of these folks that are changing the world financially, all in one place, you know, all of my heroes are at this conference. So, yeah, thank you for putting it together. It's one of my favorite times of the year. You're welcome. And I had no, you know, event planning experience. So it was just something I put out into the universe and said,

I'll figure this thing out along the way. And a good thing about a conference, it's like having a baby. Like you can kind of study up on it. You got nine months to figure it out. Now, it all comes down to those four days. You got to do it right during that little time frame. But we had all this time to figure it out. And I enlisted a bunch of help, a bunch of people that I knew from college, you were kind of skilled in event planning and technological stuff. And then I just really reached out the community as much as possible. So I took surveys, did polling, got everyone on an email list and said, you know, submit your speaking ideas. So I tried to make it. open source as possible so that when people got to the event, it was like everyone felt like

they owned it, you know? Everyone there was like, we did this thing. I was like, yeah, we did this thing, you know? And so every since that point, people have, right, have a sense of ownership of the event and then they want to share it as well with the world. So it's a really cool business to run. Yeah, I have not talked to anybody who was like, nah, it's okay. Give us a quick overview of this year's.

Yeah, so this will be our eighth one. will be in Orlando, Florida, and this will be September 26th through 29th. And it'll be a great four days of fun. We'll have great keynote speakers from Rachel Cruz, Gene Chatsky, the Today Show editor, Mr. Money Mustache on Saturday. And then we have tons of breakout session, over 200 speakers, and tons of digital marketing and some personal finance topics there as well. We have a track called Money Conversations. That's entirely dedicated to the personal finance topic. We've got a great Expo Hall, which we call FinCon Central, where all the brands come to do business with the creators, but also to showcase kind of what they're doing new in terms of products and service offerings.

Lots of parties, lots of fun, lots of late nights, lots of meals. So it should be a blast in Orlando. Yes. It's speaking from the last five years, it has been fantastic. I see no reason why number six. Fantastic. Fantastic. I'm not going to say that because I don't talk like that.

And in a way, we're starting to become. the way we're starting to become like the Comic-Con of money because listeners, readers, followers are also coming to the event we've discovered. And so we've created a special pass just for non-blogger types who want to come to the event and just kind of be around all these financial geeks. And so if you go to FinCon Expo.com and look for the community pass application, you can certainly join us there for a reduced rate. Oh, meet all of your favorite bloggers because literally everybody in the money space is there. So a couple of minutes ago, you said you quit the blog.

And when I asked you how you started FinCon, you quit your blog and you were looking for something else to do. What did that look like financially? You only had this one job, right, doing the blog at that time? I don't know what I said, but I didn't quit the blog. I'm still running. Yeah, yeah. So I guess I mean, meaning I needed another side hustle.

So FinCon had, I mean, PT money had become my full-time thing. And I no longer had a thing to do on nights and weekends. So I needed FinCon. So, yes, I still run both businesses. Now, my ability to run PT Money has really waned in the past few years just because FinCon is kind of becoming a beast. I've got employees now. And there's always more to do there.

And it's fun. But PT Money's fun too. And it's my baby. It's what kind of got me into this. So I still enjoy going over there and writing occasionally and trying to grow that business as well. So I run both. Okay.

I'm glad I misunderstood because I wrote down, quit the blog, question mark. In some ways, I have quit it. I mean, because it's just, I haven't been able to dedicate as much time to it. And that's my fault for not scaling it in terms of getting help to work on it and building a team kind of around it. When I could have, I probably could have invested in it. But I think for so long the blog had such a personal nature for me, it was really hard for me to have outsourced it. And that's a beautiful thing about FinCon is from the start. I knew nothing about event planning.

And I immediately enlisted help. And it's been a group project ever since. And so it's funny when you start one business, it's, you're, you're able to kind of scale it and, you know, use other people to kind of help build it. But then another one was so close to me that it's been a challenge to do that. So it's interesting how the type of business you're running, I think, affects your ability to scale it. No, I think this is a really good point that a lot of, I think in the financial independence community, there's a lot of pride almost around just completely doing it yourself, right?

But really, one of the big benefits of becoming fire, at least becoming confident financially, is that you can go on to build a business, which is really the ultimate way to build wealth at long term, right? And it's more fun. You now have a team and a large event that you can run, which is probably somewhat passive, somewhat involves your time at this point,

but you can scale this going forward and kind of do exactly what you want. It's because you hired other people and built a business around it, which is something that's really tough, I think, for folks that are starting to save their first 100 grand still to kind of wrap their heads around. And something that, frankly, the owner of Bigger Pockets, Josh Dorkin also did really well alongside you are along this kind of similar journey.

Yep, absolutely. Josh is a great community builder and so smart to have done it that way. And I don't know, I don't know what it is about those blogs, why we kind of keep them so close. But yeah, it's certainly a blessing to be running a business where you're able to involve so many people. And your ego doesn't get in the way of sorting, releasing some of it to allow others to kind of participate. grow it. So it's been really cool to do. Yeah. Yeah, there is plenty of accolades to go around for everybody. You can, you can involve everybody. And hey, this person did a really great job doing this. And that doesn't diminish you at all. And since we're talking about accolades, we have to give a shout out to Jessica, the best ever, Buffkin, who is fantastic.

You tell me what she has. Yeah, yeah, yeah. She's our official manager of events, I think, so what she called, or director of events. That's what her title is. But she started off the first year. She was my first contract hire for the business, and she's a buddy from college who just has that organizing mind, you know, and kind of put together the party. And so she's been working with the business ever since. And now she's full time with me, and she's just great. She knows everyone is a good relationship builder as well as a details person. So I needed someone like that to help me grow it. And she's someone also that I trusted very well. And so I tend to hire people that I have a lot of trust with first. And so a lot of my hires are people.

that I've known a long time, which I think is different than a lot of people tend to hire. But that's just my comfort zone for whatever. And I can sort of absolve myself, not absolve myself, but sort of feel comfortable knowing that as more folks are kind of have their hands in the business, it's people at least I trust and have known a long time. Feel free to tell me if I'm completely wrong in this assertion here. But when you hired your first couple of folks, though, I assume you had to put it a lot more time and energy into these relationships with over the first year.

year or so, maybe two, to get this up and running, and then you're kind of able to kind of hang back just a little bit more. Is that correct? Is there kind of a reinvestment, like almost like an anti-fi for the first year or so while you're building this business, particularly you're the trust in the first few employees? Absolutely. Yeah, absolutely. I mean, I love doing it. So it's hard to pull me away from it, right? But there comes a point to where there's just too much work to do. And so hopefully during that time, you're, you've got someone there alongside of you that you're kind of talking to about it or quote unquote training on the subject or you're there, at least for questions for them regularly to kind of hold their hand while they're doing it.

But, you know, we're at a stage now. It's great now where they're, you know, I say, let's get this done and then it kind of just gets done, which is really cool. Awesome. Yeah, that's fantastic to have employees that you trust. It doesn't matter their qualifications if you can't trust them. Yeah. I would agree with that.

Yep. Yeah, I just wanted to make that. point though about hey you become fire and then you build a business and then there's a recommitment and re-energy you know you're not free in this while you're training employees and all that kind of stuff in the same way but then it kind of gives you even more options after a couple years of investment which is kind of what I was thinking I like it awesome well is there anything else you want to cover before we move on to the famous for I'm good whatever you guys want to talk about I'm an open book though you know if you want to get into the dirty details of like am I actually

fire, like where we are actually on our retirement savings roadmap, how these businesses have kind of affected that. I mean, maybe, and I'll think back at the conversation, that might be kind of a missing, missing component. Okay. So, PT, what do your finances look like right now? This is kind of, like, I feel like I'm asking the teacher, you know, about things that are none of the student's business.

But let's talk about your finances right now. Are you now at a position where you could quit everything and never. have to work again? Are you financially independent? We're not quite there. Okay. So we're close. In fact, we're, I would, I like to say we're at a place where if I stopped saving altogether now, my money in, let's say, 10 years would be at a spot if the market, you know, continues as it has been the past hundreds of years. If we can expect the same six, seven, eight percent returns that, you know, we've been seeing, I would certainly be at a place

where we would be, I would declare like financial independence at this point. We could literally stop everything and would just withdraw from that amount the rest of our lives and be okay. So yeah, so we've got the rental property coming in. That's about $4,000 a year. We've got blog income from PT money, which is waned up and down. But right now it's probably on the high five figures. And then in terms of FinCon, that has taken off the past couple years. And so income wise, that's doing really well for us. But it's only been a two-year thing. So the previous six years were we're really kind of up and down. But all that to say has allowed us to really fast track some of our mortgage paydowns. We just did a big chunk on that. We've got about a third of that paid off

with the expectation that we'll pay another third in December and then possibly another third next summer. So we expect to be completely debt for you for the house next summer. We're just kind of pacing ourselves there. And then I would say, you know, continue investing for retirement just because I like, you know, reducing my tax burden every year. I really let that drive me. And, And I would have no plans to quit working anytime soon. So I want to continue doing this. But, but yeah, we're at a sweet spot that I would say in if we stopped investing now or start saving now, our money would grow to a point to where we'd be fine.

And so if we put in a couple years of hard work, it's hard to know with a business, but because the business is growing pretty rapidly here. But I would say, you know, within the next couple of years of just if we continue working as we are, the trajectory, we'll definitely be at a plot. a spot where we could live within those, that 4% for the rest of our life. So I got a question here for you. First of all, those third of your mortgage payments. Is that for your primary home or your rental mortgage?

Primary. Okay. And do you plan to pay off the rental mortgage? I don't. If my wife, she's pushing me on the home. And so we're doing that because she'd feel more comfortable with that. So I'm cool. But on the rental property, I really don't have it on desire.

In fact, I was actually looking at like taking my, out of that because the equity's gone up so much in it. If you actually look at the equity compared to the return we're getting, it's pretty terrible. So I've actually entertained like pulling money out of it and doing another real estate deal. And if I wasn't working on two businesses right now, I'd probably have done that already. But yeah, no plans to advance pay that rental property mortgage. The reason I ask is I got an observation here where you said, hey, I've got five figure income from the blog, high five figure income from the blog. We have the conference, the business. And then you have this $4,000 a year from the rental property. And I love to hear your thoughts on this.

But to me, that seems for someone in your position to be more of an annoyance than a real contributor to net worth from a cash flow perspective. So I was wondering if you, are you going to buy many more of them to stack that up? Or what? Yeah, I was just kind of wondering what your thought processes on that. So I have somewhat a desire to do that. But like I said, running both businesses, I feel like I just haven't had time to chase that down. So I have started investing a little bit with pier street kind of as a way to kind of scratch that itch i like having the property it's it's so little in terms of maintenance i feel like we could jump back into it once our kids leave so it could be a place like a pre-retirement house for us to have and so i agree with you if you look at the math

perspective it is an annoyance uh because it's there's there's a maintenance issue once a year and it's inevitably when i'm traveling or overseas or something and it's just not enough return for the money we have kind of tied up in it so i'm on the fence about it but But it was our first home. So I probably there's some like personal emotion. I laid the floors down in it, you know. So there's some of that kind of involved in it too. I mean, it's a great thought process and great problem to have.

Yeah. So I was just interested. I just sometimes see that observation sometimes with folks who bought one rental property, became an accident on landlord. And, you know, what's their plan to use that going forward or how to handle it? Yeah. Good question. And I love being challenged on it.

And I do on my blog, PT money, I do the income report for the rental property every year. So folks can go check out kind of what I make every year, how I have it all set up, how I've managed it. I do it all, too. I don't outsource any of it. I do as much of the process as possible because it's given me a lot of content for the blog. And it's taught me some things. And I really enjoyed it. Oh, is it a business expense?

Because you talk about it on your blog? That's a good question. That's a good question. I haven't gone down that road. Let me ask my tax prepare. Okay, so you're talking about cash flow, which is negligible, like Scott said, when you said $4,000, I'm like $4,000, you're so busy. So I have never put on any sort of party besides a kid's birthday party, and that freaks me out. I'm not a good party planner.

So the concept of putting on something as big as FinCon just gives me the hebie-jeebies. So when you say that you make $4,000 on this, I'm like, oh, well, whatever, FinCon's got to be taken up all this mental space. But that's, it's in Texas, correct? Can I say that you live in Texas? It is, yep, and we are. It's a big state. Good luck finding you. Texas is kind of going crazy.

I know what city you live in, but Texas is kind of going crazy, appreciation-wise. I'm assuming that this has appreciated significantly. Yeah, yeah. We bought it for $205,000. I believe, and it's now worth 370,000, something like that. Okay. So that's, I mean, that's a nice chunk of change in just a few years. Absolutely.

Yeah. Well, it's 10 years, yeah, but still. Still, and it's bringing in money. You know, it pays for itself. Does it cost you anything to own it every year? You know, just the regular expenses of mortgage and insurance and HOA. A little bit of maintenance. You know, the air conditioner freezes up once a year inevitably.

So you're, it sounds like you're funding your lifestyle off the blog and FinCon, right? And then you're paying down the mortgage. What do you plan to invest in or what are you investing in nowadays with any surplus? So we right now I've chosen to max out what we can do retirement-wise each year through our plans. And then we are putting the excess to our down payment on our home. That's the extent of it. I've, I mean, you could call it investing back in the business. I've done a little bit of that with FinCon.

in the past year, which I've taken my three contractors and basically brought them on full time. So that's been a big, that's been a big investment there. Having a payroll is a lot different than having contractors. So that's, that's been interesting. But it's been, it's obviously worth it and been a good, good decision. But I would consider that an investment of sorts. Absolutely. But to answer your question, maybe what you're kind of getting at is one, one area where I feel like I've lacked is because I've chased these taxed, advantage accounts for so long,

I feel like I don't have enough in tax, you know, taxable accounts right now. And so that's probably on my horizon is to start putting more money into taxable accounts so that if and when I decide to start living off of my savings, I'll have some money that I can pull out that's not handcuffed by the IRS. Well, it also sounds like from what you're saying that you could pull more money out of the business, but again, you're choosing to make calculated investments that are going to grow that. And that's a much higher return.

I don't know if you've sat down and modeled it out, maybe you have, but it seems like to me that there's probably a much higher return for investing in a business that you really know and have a unique ability to scale rather than any other type of after-tax investment you can really think of. Yeah. And if you look at my whole picture, I try to think about it in terms of just diversifying myself as much as possible. That's probably another aspect of why I have the rental property. That's why I have, you know, the multiple businesses. So that's kind of my philosophy behind it. But yeah, investing in my businesses has paid off big time. And I would encourage anyone out there who's who's conquered the expenses. They're already living lean. And maybe they've got the five plan going. Man, don't negate the aspect of starting a business for yourself. Just start with that side hustle. Who knows? what that's going to turn into. Who knows when you'll get passionate. People may say, I'm not really the entrepreneur type or I'm too risk averse like PT early on. Man, if you just get going with some kind of income stream and that you can push the levers on, you can push and pull things, man, it's exciting. And who knows, you just might get into it and you can just crank that sucker up to 11 and make a lot of money more so than you can typically in an employer-based situation. So it's been real positive for me. So I challenge folks to to seek that excited.

of the equation. And just to chime in here, you know, I have the privilege of being able to pull some of those levers at bigger pockets. And it's kind of fun. It's kind of fun to look at those things and figure out, oh, where could I kind of apply pressure to this lever, move the business forward and all that kind of stuff, especially when your business is doing good things. And people love it, right? That's right. Yeah. Okay. And I want to tack on to your comment that, oh, maybe I'm not the entrepreneur type. We interviewed Nick Loper from Side Hustle Nation and the Side Hustle podcast on episode 28 of this show. And he has an entire podcast dedicated to side hustles.

Jay Money from Budgets Are Sexy has a whole page of side hustles. What is it, like 75 different things that you can do? And they're not all just you going and starting a business. It's just another way to generate income. But maybe one of those things that you're doing to generate income, income can turn into a business. It doesn't have to be this like all-encompassing two thousand person conference that you move every year. By the way, Denver's a lovely location. I know you've been here once, but you should come back. It doesn't have to be this

huge thing. It can be a small thing that generates a lot of income. So if you're thinking about adding to your income, check out those things I just mentioned. Absolutely. Okay. A personal plug here for my old podcast. the part-time money podcast where I interviewed about 30 part-time entrepreneurs, kind of on the similar subject of side hustling, before it was called side hustling. But that's an old podcast I did back in the day, but some of those stories might be inspirational as well. And can you still find that?

Do you just, is it on like everywhere podcasts are? It's in iTunes, yeah. It's in iTunes. Yeah, and anywhere a podcast is. Yeah, you can find it. Okay. This has been fantastic. And we've read very long again because it's PT and I never get to talk to him.

Okay, now it's time for the famous four questions. These are the same five questions that we ask of all of our guests. The first one is, what is your favorite finance book? Favorite finance book? I got to give credit to Mr. David Bach and the Automatic Millionaire. That really kick-started it. And for whatever reason, switch the, flip the switch in my head to really think about the future and really make some big changes. Yeah, that's a good book.

Awesome. All right. What was your biggest money mistake? Biggest money mistake was pretty early on. I left college, and I had the credit card debt, the student loan debt, and then I went out and bought a brand new car. And I didn't realize, like, I was going to pay insurance through the roof. The payment was going to be, like, killing my budget.

I got back home, total buyer's remorse, called up the dealership. They were like, screw you. You can't come back. What kind of car? It was a Montero sport, one of the first nice Montero SUVs. It was pretty sweet. I called up my dad, and I was like, Dad, you got to help. me in the situation. He calls the dealership up. He's like, I don't know what he said,

but the next thing I know, the dealers calling me and said, bring your car back up here. You'll lose your deposit, but come on back up here. So I got to take the car back and get my old one. So dad totally bailed me out. And I swear, I was like, that was the moment I said, I'm so ashamed of myself for letting my dad, you know, fix my financial life for me. I've got to get my act together here. So I screwed up, but I was able to get out of it a little bit, and then it taught me a lesson that I've carried forward. So I got a little tangent here. for this. So how much did you lose in your deposit? A thousand bucks. Thousand bucks. So I think that's really like a smart decision. Hey, you know, you have a car.

It depreciates immediately off the lot. Can you pay to get rid of your car, even though it's, it has, even like that kind of hurts inside to pay. But that can be a really good financial decision if you've already got a nice car to pay to get rid of that thing and get a better one. That's more economical. Why to put a positive spin on it, Scott? You're right. I mean, I had I tried to sell it right then. I probably would have had to knock five, six grand off of it. So good point. But what I'm saying is that even if you had had to sell that car, five or six grand, you might have still been better off, taking that loss immediately, buy the drive off the lot, selling it and then getting going back to your old car for the long-term

finance, which I think is an interesting takeaway that I just can click in my head when you told that story. Yeah. And that's a big question in the Bigger Pockets forums is people say, well, I have this car and it's a lease and I immediately cringe. Don't lease a car. And I will get people who send me notes after I say, don't lease a car on here. They'll send me a note and say, oh, well, I want to get a new car every year and a lease helps me do it. Why do you need a new car every year?

You don't. Nobody cares what kind of car you drive. Okay. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out besides don't buy a new car and have PT senior call up and fix your problems? You know what's worked for me? What really worked for me because I struggled to save early on was, and I'm going to sound like I'm repeating here, but really to just automate some type of savings, whether you're using your company 401k or an automated withdrawal from your checking account into a savings account

or an automated withdrawal from your checking account into a Roth IRA, just get that going automatically. Go right now and set that up. Like open up the account. I don't care if you just deposit, start depositing like $1 regularly. If you get in the act of automatically savings, that will propel you to do, more of that in the future. You've already got the system set up. And people who report doing automatic savings and then retiring successfully always say, they say the same thing. They always say, we never missed the money. We never thought about the money because it was happening in the background automatically. So get that going. Forget about that money for the rest of your life until you need it. And then move on. Yeah, pay yourself first, automatic. I love it. We often hear

track your spending in this category. This is, this is, you don't have to track your spending. just automate your withdrawal. You can just skip that whole step and you're going to save all this money for retirement at whatever level you set up automatically. That's your pace. And it won't even hit you. It won't even hit your account. You won't be able to spend it. Tracking your spending is no longer an issue. Not saying you should track your spending, but this is a way to get around it if you don't want to. Save first, freely spend the rest. That's a good mantra. Okay. You said a couple of times set up an automatic withdrawal. Excuse me. Is that something that happens? Like you can do With your bank?

Do most banks? Several ways to set it up. So obviously you can go to your employer first and say, hey, can you automatically sweep this part of my check over into a separate savings account? I've got this IRA set up. Can you sweep some of my money over into that? Or you could do it from the checking account.

Once your paycheck gets a checking account, then set up the automation, either from the bank itself to push the money or from the financial institution to pull the money. Vanguard's really good because they know your annual maximums that you can hit from a tax perspective. And so setting it up for on their side, I think is best if you're trying to hit that annual maximum, for instance, with your Roth IRA. And it just pulls out of your checking account, maybe the day right after you get your paycheck or the same day or something. Yeah, I like that tip a lot.

But the further you can push it on the front end of the transactions, if you can get your employer to do it, that's the best because you literally will never see it. But outside of that, use it from the checking account and move it. Okay. All right. What is your favorite joke to help parties. So we got Halloween coming up sort of and I'm a dad. So it's a cheesy dad joke for Halloween. So why couldn't the skeleton go trick or treating? Because he had nobody to go with. Nice. Okay. I will laugh at that one. It's not a pun. That was a good joke. No bones about it. Oh, yes. That's skill right there. I just want to tell everybody, Scott does not know these jokes in advance. I don't ask and I don't put them in the notes.

It took me like three seconds at least to come up with that. So they got to go faster. That's scary good, Scott. God. Okay, I quit you, Bill. Okay. So PT, where can people find out more about you? Hit me up on Twitter at PTMoney or just go to PTMoney.com.

So my website, of course, FinCon is at FinConExpo.com. And that's a fun event we'd love to have you at. Yeah, I can vouch for that. FinCon Expo is the best event. I go to several every year, and that's the one that I make sure is on my list. I don't have family that lives near me, so I have to kind of dole out my requests judiciously, is the right word, when I'm asking my in-laws to come and visit or come watch the girls or my parents to come watch the girls? And it's always, well, I need, when is FinCon in September or October this year? And then when I, when I figured out, That's when that's the first request that I get covered every year. I appreciate that, Mindy. Yeah, it's the best conference. I learned so much every single year. Same for me.

I'm not available that week. Well, I look forward to hanging out with you guys and hopefully you'll do the podcast maybe live from ThinkCon. We sure will. Yeah. Yeah, awesome. We will. We just need to find a really awesome guest.

Okay. So, I can help you there. Yes, out of 2,000 people, I'm pretty sure we can find somebody who would like to talk about money on the show live. All right. Well, Pt, thank you so much for your time today. I know that we do record these a couple of weeks in advance where this is actually happening before FinCon and releases right before FinCon. So this, I'm sure you have a lot of things to do. And I appreciate your time. Absolutely. My pleasure being on. Okay. Thanks so much. We'll talk to you soon. Thank you. Bye, guys. That was PT from PTMoney.com and FinCon, where you can find FinCon at

Fincon Expo.com. What do you think, Minnie? Oh, I love his story. I mean, I don't love that he graduated with debt and bought a car, a brand new car. I love that he was able to get out of it. That's awesome. Called PT Senior when you need to get out of your car debt. It's a great story. And he is really good with money. And he did make a lot of great decisions. And it sounds like him, for so many of our other listeners, there was a book that turned him on. And it was an unusual one. It's not one that we hear all the time on the show, the automatic millionaire. It's not unheard of, but go check that one out. It's a, it's a good book. It's very, it's exactly what he says to do. Automatically save and invest and you will win, right?

Yes. Yep. And I love his, his tip. He didn't say track your spending, which is a great tip. I don't want to like dog that tip. That's a great tip. That's my tip. But, you know, automatically start saving. That's fantastic. I actually don't automatically save in the way that he's suggesting, I do max out my 401k every year and I do, you know, different types of saving, but I don't automatically save. And I never automatically saved. And I think that would have helped propel me even more because, you know, if you can get your company to do it, you never see the money, you don't miss it. If you're having a hard time saving, if you're having a hard time just not buying things when you have cash in your pocket, don't have cash in your pocket. Get it out of

your account, put it right into the savings account automatically. And then don't ever touch that savings account, put it into a pre-tax or post-tax investment, put it into just a savings account for a ready day or whatever you, you know, whatever you need, but automatically pay yourself first is a great tip. Absolutely. And then we, one more time, we'll give a shout out to FinCon, which has been just such a resource for the financial independence community and the bloggers and folks like us, the podcasters that talk about financial independence. It's a place where we share ideas and really kind of challenge concepts. We're constantly learning. the new best practices, you know, sometimes we're wrong about things that we thought were,

you know, really like effective ways towards Vi. And this is where that kind of sharing goes on. So big thanks to PT for putting that together and really helping us share ideas there. Yes, I cannot thank him enough for putting the show together. It was such a big part of my life. And I don't know if you caught it, Scott. There is now a community pass that you can get to go to FinCon and just kind of meet all of your favorite bloggers, favorite podcasters. So if you go, if you're interested in attending, we'll be in Orlando next week. I believe this comes out a week before the actual FinCon. You can go to FinCon Expo.com and get a community pass. And look for me. I'll be there. I look like this. Yeah, me too. This is what I look like. Have fun if you're listening to audio only.

Sorry. All right. Let's close out. Mindy. Okay. All right. from episode 38 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast where we interview Philip Taylor from PT Money and FinCon. This is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench and we're out of here.