BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 40: Taking Command of Your Finances by Understanding (& Controlling) Money with Joe Saul-Sehy

Episode Date: October 1, 2018

Today we chat with Joe Saul-Sehy from Stacking Benjamins. Joe shares his money story, which starts off with him figuring out how to get into debt, then discovering he didn’t like being there. He learned that you can’t diagnose what’s wrong with... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, Show 40, where we interviewed Joe Saul See High from stacking Benjamins. And for anybody listening, starting out, to start out on the right foot, to build those habits early, I mean, some of the biggest things people do when they first start out is they decide very quickly how to get into debt. I used to talk a lot at high schools. And it was funny to have these question and answer sessions. And every single question was a variant on, how the hell do I get myself screwed by the time I'm 21, right? 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 good, everybody? I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Miss Mindy Jensen. How you doing today, Mindy? I'm doing great, Scott. How are you today? I am doing fantastic. I'm very excited to interview Joe, who's got just an incredible charisma and energy about him and a host of the Stacking Benjamin's podcast and over there at stacking benjamins.com, which is one of my favorite podcast and just like a really fun time with a lot of insider jokes that is addicting personality and show.

Yes, I love stacking Benjamins. I listen to this show when I'm working around the house, most typically when we're cleaning up the basement or cleaning out the garage. So we throw on a couple of episodes of stacking Benjamins as we're cleaning up. And it's just, it's kind of interesting to have this guy on my show that I listen to all the time. His voice is always in my head. And then here I get to talk to him. So yes, I am very excited.

He's not usually telling all about his life. So this was a really fun episode to record. Yeah. And he's also got a brilliance about financial management and a story that I actually hadn't heard before. I've listened to some of his podcasts, not all of them, but I really enjoy a show, but I had never heard his personal story before. So I was really, really excited. I'm grateful to hear that. He's got a very awesome set of experiences that are really applicable to a lot of people. Yeah. And I mean, I can't believe that somebody who is a certified financial planner made

money mistakes. They should be perfect, right? And it's kind of refreshing, I would think, for somebody who is in this position of debt or, you know, hasn't reached financial independence, yet. You know, we've done this a couple of times on the show where we hear from somebody who is supposed to be a money expert, but they also made mistakes in the past. So, you know, don't beat yourself up because you have a less than perfect financial situation. Just take the information and apply it to your own self. Love it. Well, should we bring them in? Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full

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Joe Saul C-high. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How you doing today? Am I really here? You're really here. You finally made it. You're finally a big enough deal to be on our show. This is a life's dream.

I'd like to thank all the little people who help me get here. Oh, fantastic. If I start sweating profusely in here in the presence of greatness, just call me down. I will. I will call you out. I will say this before we start. So Scott was nice enough to autograph a couple copies of his awesome book for my kids. And I have to tell you, Scott, on the show here, that that book has already at the beginning of my kid's career changed both of their lives. Just great, absolute stuff. My daughter is, uh, doing very well in Kansas City. But my son, who's in Seattle at Microsoft, is like totally on the, how do I bike to work every day? Let's make sure I have a place next to work. I'm like, is this my son,

Nick, or am I talking to Scott Trench? So you have me in Seattle. I'm sorry, what is that book, Joe? I think it's called Set for Life. It's a fantastic read. You should read it, Mindy. I actually have, I read it before you and before your kids. It didn't change my life just because I already embody like pretty much all of it. But yeah, if I had been starting out, that would have been awesome. That is my go-to book to give everybody for graduations and weddings and all that stuff. That is my go-to present. So yes, Scott, thanks for being awesome. Well, guys, I really appreciate the plugs. I'm just glad your son or your daughter. I like the book and are applying it. That's awesome. Yeah, it is really cool to see them. Because you know how important it is. And for anybody listening,

starting out, to start out on the right foot to build those habits early, I mean, some of the biggest things people do when they first start out is they decide very quickly how to get into debt. I used to talk a lot at high schools. And it was funny to have these question and answer sessions. And every single question was a variant on how the hell do I get myself screwed by the time I'm 21, right? How do I make sure that my life is just climbing out of a pit by the time I'm getting a decent wage? How do I get a car loan? How do I get as big a mortgage as possible? how do I get the best credit card with the highest interest rate that I can get, like all these horrible things.

I'm like, no, guys, let's talk about building wealth. No, no, no. Let's talk about how I get better rims on my truck. That's what I want. You need free wells. Are those even still a thing? No idea. I'm a member's only jacket kind of guy.

And so, yeah, Duran Duran, right? That dates me slightly. But I think it's great. This is like the key leverage point in your life where you can really begin applying these things with a clean slate is right after you graduate college. So in high school, in college, getting access to any information about how to just build wealth appropriately, I think is a big advantage. My advantage was I graduated college debt-free. And then I was able to start from scratch, learning from Mr. Money Mustache, learning from Joe, learning from all these other resources and not have to make any mistakes or any big mistakes really on the path towards accumulating those first assets.

Well, you know, Scott, if you learn anything from me, you're supposed to keep it to yourself. So let's start there. but either ruin my reputation, dude. But I'm a guy who did things exactly the opposite of you, Scott. I mean, I messed up everything. I came from a family where we never talked about money. Every time that my parents were having a money conversation, I'd get sent out of the room.

My brother, my sister, and I would immediately be sent out of the room. When I got to college, I immediately went to that little table that they have where they're giving away credit cards. And I signed up for an American Express card, which is funny because for nine years, I became a spokesperson later for American. Express that they apparently hadn't checking a credit in the fact that my first credit card in

college I had taken away at the three month mark because I didn't realize that you had to actually pay that bill after you took everybody to lunch like I took all my friends to lunch because I had this awesome little green card I bought a sweater I was at a military college the citadel the military college of South Carolina I don't know if you know this but in military college you wear uniforms that's number one number two is you can't have a job so why am I applying for a credit card where I can't pay the bill. And then number two, why do I need a sweater? Like, why am I buying an expensive sweater from a department store? And 90 days later, my credits ruined. I'm in collections and I had to climb out. So I'm a guy that started off my life,

making a ton of bad assumptions about life, about money, about everything. And you know, part of that, by the way, guys, is I also come from a family when my parents did talk about money. We always talked about payments. I grew up like most Americans at a payment lifestyle. How much can we afford to finance? And don't get me wrong, my parents are great people. They just didn't really know money. They knew hard work. They knew how to get along with other people.

But when it came to cash, they're like most people. We went to the car dealer. We bought cars new. The car dealer would talk about what can you afford? And he wasn't talking about how much money, you know, can you afford $20,000 or $10,000. He was talking about, well, I can afford $350 a month. And we lived that lifestyle growing up.

And that's where I came from, like most people, and had to dig my way out. Okay, I thought you were a smart guy who's great with money. Why are we talking to you? I know. Bye, Joe. The thing is I did figure it out. I did figure it out.

And not only did I figure it out, I figured it out the hard way like most people end up having to figure it out. And you guys have had great people on your show who've talked about this before, about making big mistakes in their life and finally getting to the point where I remember I'm on the side of the road because my cars run out of gas. I'm a mile from a gas station. I'm driving a Ford Aerostar that has about 140,000 miles on it because it was all I could afford at the time. And I'm going through the seats, trying to scrounge up money in between the seats so that I could walk down to the gas station and put a dollar of gas in that hopefully would be enough to get me home.

And I remember in that moment saying to myself, I can't do this. Like, how are other people doing things so much better than I am? how are they getting ahead? And I then went home and began looking at finance books, began looking at people on TV. I remember watching the Today Show and watching these people on TV that knew about clipping coupons and all these cool, hey, if you put these two things together and I thought that was just magic. And then I found out that you could become a financial advisor. So here I am a guy who's not good with money, who's had serious money issues. I apply to be a financial advisor. And of course, by the way, I got hired.

I got hired to teach other people about money. But the funny thing was, I'm already at that point pulling myself out. And then I started being around a bunch of people who were good with money. You know, my clients were people that had some great habits. And me having to show them the mirror of how to do their money better, I then had to be better with my own cash as well. And so not only did I pull myself out of that bad one, Mindy, I also learned how to kind of hack your way to wealth. What was your lifestyle like and what was your job prior to that revelation moment in the car when you ran out of gas? So I was working two jobs. I was working in telemarketing, which by the way is a glamorous career.

I was calling up people for a company called Wolverine Water where we're selling water treatment systems. And we're giving them, Scott, I'd call you and I'd say, hey, my name's Joe, and we're in your area doing free water tests. Would you like one of our technicians to stop by and do a free water test? And of course, what they're going to do is do a dog and pony show where they sell you reverse osmosis water system for all you water geeks out there. You know what that is? Maybe a water softener. We'd hook you up, Scott. It was great.

Nice. Does it taste really good? The reverse osmosis stuff did. If you had water softened water, it's horrible. And how much was this amazing system? You know what's funny? I didn't sell it. I just had the test.

So I have no idea. I believe it was $10,000 for this system. Maybe back when you were selling it, it was $2,500. But when I was looking at it, when they accosted me at Home Depot, they're like, hey, how would you like to have great tasting water? I'm like, well, who wouldn't? So I go there. I have them come over and they're like, oh, yeah, that'll be $10,000.

I'm like, American dollars? Because no, I'll do $10,000 lira. Do you remember I'm really dating myself? Joe and I are going to date ourselves this whole show. I'll do. That's going to be like, what's that? Yeah. I'll do 10,000 rubles.

What's that $18? Yes, but $10,000 American dollars, I am not putting a water system in my house. Okay, I'm sorry, we're getting off track. What was your other job? You had two jobs. You had telemarketing and then you had... I did. And at night, I was a bar DJ.

I did bar part. I worked in bars. I worked at parties. I did college fraternity parties on weekends. I did weddings. I was the guy out leading the chicken dance and the hokey pokey doing all that fun stuff. That actually was interesting too because that was my first. The thing that really saved me was learning how to run a business.

And I learned how to run a business the hard way too. When I got to that point where I just couldn't do things the same way I was doing it and I started reading finance books. One of the early books that I turned to was all about PR and all about marketing and all about running a successful business. And that book, Gorilla Marketing. Gila Marketing. All right.

Guerrilla, like G-U-E, guerrilla. Yes. Yes. Yes. Guerrilla marketing was fantastic. And from there, then I started writing just basic business finance books like business for dummies and how to run a successful business. And I was hoping to franchise that business.

I ended up instead selling that business as my financial planning career was starting up and taking off and doing fun things there. What was your spending like leading up to this point? I mean, you're obviously spending. all the money that came in, but what was that going to? Do you have any idea? No. No, absolutely not, because I didn't track anything. I mean, it's funny to know where you're going, you have to know where you've been. I had no idea where I had been. And it was funny, one of the first personal finance books that I read, and I don't even remember what it was, but it talked about that about

actually taking a pad of paper with you when you went, of course, this is the mid-90s. So taking a had a paper with you and just writing down how you spend money. And as you spend it, if you have to write it down and you have to look at it, you might not spend as much. And that was one of the first hacks actually in becoming more successful with money was that I never wanted to write down the crap I was buying because I was buying computer games. I'm buying tons of CDs, you know, and not for my business. I'm buying tons of CDs because I'm a big fan of music. I'm buying And DVDs, it's funny. Then later on, I discovered that the library had a bunch of the DVDs that I wanted

and cut that out of my budget too. But it all started off with going from not knowing anything. Like I seriously, when you ask that question, Scott, I'm like, I have no idea where all that money went. Zero. But it didn't go anywhere good. Let's put it that way. And general rule of thumb is when you're scrounging in the seats of your late model

Ford Arrow Star minivan to find a dollar. You probably haven't spent the money before that in a good way. What a reason I'm asking that is what do you kind of changes did you notice in your lifestyle in terms of how you enjoyed yourself after you kind of had this revelation moment and began learning about financial independence, starting to track your spending a little bit. For the first time in my life, I actually felt like I was in charge. It's funny because I thought that spending more money equaled having more fun, equaled living your life better.

And that didn't end up being true at all. I mean, at the time, I had just got married, and we did our whole honeymoon on credit cards. And I remember coming back from our honeymoon and feeling absolutely horrible. And when we stopped living a debt lifestyle and instead started making sure that we had a fund of money to go on our vacation ahead of time, when we took a trip the next year to Colorado, to Denver. And we went out west to Rocky Mountain National Park. When we took that trip, that was all cash. And I remember for the first time of my life, I felt completely relaxed on a vacation because I wasn't worried about where the money was going to come from to pay for it when I got home. I remember after my honeymoon, just Cheryl and I both just feeling horrible.

Like, man, we thought we were having a good time. But now for the next several months, or in our case, it took a couple of years. We had to pay all that stuff off, all that fun that we had. Wow. And paying it off over a couple of years is kind of soul crushing. I went on this trip. I don't even remember it now. It was so long ago. Right. Yet I'm still writing out that check for $27.32 for the minimum payment on the credit. Financing that hamburger at 21%. Always a good choice. What was like the first time you kind of had a real understanding of your overall financial position?

I think it's when I was scrounging for money there. Like I knew I was completely screwed. And then when I started reading financial books and they talked about writing down everything. And so I spent 16 years as a financial planner after this. And what I learned was that you can't diagnose what's wrong with you, the sickness, until you have it all out in front of you. And it's funny because a lot of people, I think, are living the same life that I was living, which is if I don't look at it, maybe it'll get better, right?

If I just look a different way, this problem will take care of itself. And that never works. So instead, when I wrote down exactly where the debt was, what the interest rate was, not what my minimum payment was, but how much in total I had to pay to every single thing to get out of that debt. And then, by the way, also figure out not just that, but how do I start saving? Because saving ultimately, I kept being told over and over and over that saving was going to be the most powerful piece of this.

Getting out of debt is one thing. But I saw people when I was a financial planner, I saw people that would get completely out of debt. And then because they had no savings, they then get right back into debt. Because if they had no cash reserve and your mufflers dragging behind your car, where do you got to go for money? So you go immediately back to the credit card. And you said, I'd meet people that would do this like I did for a long time. But even longer, people would do this for 20, 25 years.

Just get out of debt back in debt. Out of debt, in debt. Out of debt in debt. So paying the debt off a little more slowly. and putting some money above the line and saving was a big key for me to actually get a foothold and finally be able to not just pay off the debt, but to be able to pay it off for good. Okay, so how did you go from scrounging in there? Like, how did you change your mindset?

Because it's one thing to say, wow, I really hate looking for quarters in the seat of the car to actually not having to look for quarters in the seat of the car. Did you have a conversation with Cheryl? Was she on board immediately? Did you have to convince her? like how did this shift happen? No. Yeah, she was on board immediately,

but I'll tell you, we hit a bunch of walls, Mindy. Like anyone, we didn't get it right at first. And I think the one thing that we did well was when strategy didn't work or something didn't work, we modified it. So I'll give you an example of one thing

that's really worked well for us, but it's because we play tested it for the past 25 years. And that is we now have a weekly money meeting. We use clarity money to track our expectations. now. At our money meeting, it's usually over wine. Sometimes we'll go out for breakfast on a Saturday morning and we'll talk over breakfast. Usually, by the way, because it's weekly, we found it's better if it's short. So a 15-minute meeting for us is fantastic. If it's a 30, 40-minute meeting,

we don't want to do it the next week. So if we keep it short, keep it fun, it's great. We walk through all of our expenses and clarity money. We walk through all of our where money's coming in the next week. We also look at any upcoming expenses we have. And then we look at our investments. And usually with our investments, we make no move. We usually make moves with investments two times per year, unless there's some big time extenuating circumstance or there's some opportunity that's presented itself between those six month marks. We tried not to mess with the investment strategy because I think too many people get emotional and make emotional moves with their investment strategy. That came about because of the fact that, you know, either I'd come home with some stupid

thing or Cheryl would come home with something totally responsible like school clothes for our twins. And the other one would have no idea that we were spending the money. And it's funny because the fight started not because we weren't tracking money. It was because we weren't communicating. And so between clarity money or a spreadsheet or tiller or whatever you use to track your expenses and communication, I'll take communication any day. I'll tell you that our working together as a team is much better because of that meeting, not because of the fact that we know where our pennies go. Okay.

Now, I think this is super important, and I want to reiterate and highlight this money meeting that you have. You have a weekly one. I can't remember if the Frugal Woods have a weekly or a monthly meeting. I know Rosemary Groner has a weekly money meeting with her husband. And just hiding from your debt, ignoring your debt, doesn't pay it off. Oh, spoiler alert. That doesn't work. So having this money meeting, and we're interviewing all of these successful with money people,

and they all say the same thing. I use a spreadsheet. I track my spending. I talk about it with my spouse. What's the number one thing people fight about with their spouse? They fight about money. You know how much fun it is to fight with your spouse? Zero percent.

Scott, should you ever get married fighting with your spouse is the least fun thing you'll do, besides maybe like a root canal with no Novi King. But it's not fun at all. It just hurts your whole day, your whole experience in life for however long you're fighting. So don't fight about money. Talk about money. And yeah, if there's a problem, okay, you know what? There's a problem.

Let's fix it. Let's work on it. Let's talk about our money. Let's have these weekly meetings. Let's review. Oh, look, I made a mistake this week. Okay, well, let's fix it next week. It's like dieting.

Yeah. You didn't get fat overnight. You're not going to lose weight overnight. You didn't get in debt overnight, most likely. You're not going to get out of it. debt overnight. And you're going to make mistakes in your diet because somebody brings in chocolate cake to work that's really, really good. And you're going to make mistakes in your budget because there's really cute shoes that you just can't not have. And then you get back on track again.

And, you know, beating yourself up doesn't matter. But having... Well, I was just going to say, really cute shoes is the thing that always kills my budget. I know. That's why I said it. Generally get killed there. But you know, you make a lot of great points there, Mindy, but one that I'd like to emphasize is that, and I think it was Tony Robbins, I heard say this. He said, when you hear a guru say something, you know, listen to it, it's okay. But when you hear several people and I wouldn't call myself a guru, but I certainly, I've helped maybe, I don't know, 150 to 200 families retire over my career. So I've seen people get to the finish line. I've probably helped another 150 to 200 put kids through college. So I've seen what most people will see once in their life. I've seen it over and over again.

But Tony Robbins says that if you hear one guru say something, it might be neat. But if you hear several people say the same thing, you've happened upon a truth. And finding that truth and embracing it is a big thing. I'll tell you the other thing that really helped me back to that original question you asked, which has been pack honey. It is who you surround yourself with and the voices that are in your head. And I'm going to use a non-finance analogy. When we moved to Texas 10 years ago, I had no desire to run a marathon.

like I had zero plan to run a marathon. So my wife got hooked up. Cheryl got hooked up with this cool running group, and she was running with them, and they were all marathoners. And so one day, she asked me if I want to come run with them. I said, sure.

And they were running, I think, 10 miles. And the most I had run at the time before that, I ran in college, but I had grown lazy and fat. So when I say the most I'd run is 10 miles, this is the adult Joe, not the kid in college that was really fast and a lot thinner. So I hadn't run that far.

And we went out to run the 10. They did this run walk thing where you run for seven minutes, then you walk for a minute, then you run for seven minutes and walk for a minute. And I found that I could run much longer lengths because of the fact that I was running this. And then I could also run longer lengths because I'm running with a pack of 20 people. And we're talking about movies. We're talking about what we're doing that weekend. And guess what?

I went from not caring about running a marathon to running 13, marathons in the last 10 years. And I love it. I'm thinner now. I'm healthier now. But I find that's the way it is with money. If you hang out with people who are successful with money, you have a much, much higher aptitude with money than if you're hanging out with people who spend a ton of money. They're out party and blowing all their cash. It's so much easier to spend a lot of money when everybody else is too. Sure. How do you go about doing that? How do you go about surrounding yourself with people who care about money. Oh, good question.

Yeah, the first thing is, is just examine your current friends and how they work with cash. Are these people building you up or are they knocking you down? I remember we talked to, and I think you guys have talked to Coach Carson before,

to Chad Carson. I love what Chad did, which is that he started hanging out with people in the real estate space for his niche. He's a big real estate guy for people that don't know, Coach Carson.

He started hanging out with people that did what he wanted to do. So if I want to run marathons, I go hang out with people who run marathons. If I want to be better with money, then I join groups of people who are great with money. And I think that you can find those groups online. Of course, there's a bunch of close Facebook groups. I mean, there's groups like Bigger Pockets as an example. We have a Facebook group at stacking Benjamins.

It's always between telling bad dad jokes and talking money. It's a lot of fun there. But there's all kinds of great places to fill your head with that. And then I think, you know, you can't underplay just the surround sound of podcasts and audiobooks. I find that just keeping that in my head is a fantastic place to start. And I end up then seeking out people that seek out that same type of stuff. I love that you mentioned that the audiobooks and podcast concept because I think that that is, it seems like when I was starting out, like house hacking is this very outlandish concept

that friends and family just don't understand. But because it's reinforced all the time, the stuff I'm reading, the stuff I'm listening to, and just all these other general concepts are being constantly reinforced, I'm not the eye guy out anymore. I'm surrounded by people, even though they're not really there, that I'm kind of relating to. On the other side of things,

what I think was really hard for me in my early to mid-20s, I guess I'm now in my late 20s, is the concept of just like finding new friends. That doesn't seem like an approachable subject, I think, to a lot of people that are maybe, like now that I'm a real adult, you know, later, getting a little later on, more, okay, I can make new friends and have new and these new things, but that doesn't seem as approachable, I think, to a lot of maybe younger listeners. Is that something that you would agree with? Is that,

I mean, is that a challenge that maybe diminishes over time? No, it gets harder. I think it gets harder. I was reading a statistic just literally this morning that 50-year-old men have a hell of a time finding friends. And that's a super lonely age for most men because, you know, know, a guy going out and trying to find new buddies at age 50 is, you know, I walked down the street go, hey, you want to be my buddy? It just seems a little strange. I'd be your buddy. You already are my buddy. Oh, yeah.

Would you be his buddy if he walked up to you on this street and said, hey, can we be friends? You don't look like a total creeper at all, Joe. I've made a couple of friends in a similar type way. I don't think you can start out. Yeah, I get you though. The point is taking, yeah. It's a lot easier to make friends when you're doing something in common. You know, and that's pretty much as soon as you're out of college, even at Scott's tender age,

it's more difficult as you get older. I make friends now through these FI meetups that I go to, through real estate meetups that I go to and we bond around a common topic. And I make friends with the moms at school as I'm dropping off the kids because we're bonding around a common topic. But yeah, you can't just walk up to somebody and say, hey, you want to be friends. It's tough. That's where the shared interest.

piece comes in, Mindy. I'm totally with you. You can't go in looking for new friends. I think you have to go in looking for people that share the values and share the interests that you have. And I think you do have to, though, take a long look at your existing friends, because I think you can divorce existing friends. I think going out and searching just for new buddies is tough. Searching for groups, though, that share your values, I think is way easier. And divorcing yourself from old friends is a difficult all thing to do. I've had to do that with people before where they're just toxic. We have these people in our lives. I had a great mentor. And we can talk about mentors too, because that's kind of a great side topic on this same vein we're mining right now. But I had a great mentor who told me to stay

away from clusters of misery. There are groups of people who are just clusters of misery. They just complain about everything. They always talk about how something somebody else's fault. And instead, grab on to people who are living life as if they're the ones grabbing the bull by the horns. Yeah, that's a really, really, really great piece of advice. Because as you're saying that, I'm thinking to myself, yep, that person's out, that person's out. Like, I'm thinking of the people that I no longer talk to. But yeah, the Facebook groups are a really great place to start. In real life, nobody talks about money. So you don't want to go up to somebody and, hey, are you a frugal person? Who's going to say, no way, I'm not frugal. But you might find that they are.

There's a lot of people who think they're frugal and they really aren't. But these Facebook groups, you can find a lot of low. local groups you can find just in general groups. And then you start talking and they're like, oh, I'm the next town over from you. Oh, wow. Would you ever like to get coffee? I mean, I've met a lot of people who just happen to be traveling around my town or near my town that reach out and say, hey, let's connect. It seems like we're pointing to a combination of things to do. One, surround yourself with content, written, audio, whatever, that kind of fills your head in with these concepts. Two, meet groups of people in real life that can help you do this. Three, maybe get

a mentor or somebody who can walk you through it. That's kind of like an moral coaching setting where you are the apprentice. And why not do all of these things? I actually did all of these things and I was kind of getting started down the journey towards financial independence. And it sounds like that's a simpler experience for you, Joe. Yeah, it totally is a similar experience for me, Scott. I figured out early on that I was going to take good coaches because as I mentioned, my parents great people, but they didn't know anything about money. So I had to find people that were great at money, people that were also great at building businesses because I've built and sold three different businesses. But I didn't know any of those tools.

Like I didn't know how to do any of that stuff. And so having somebody who's been through that before is fantastic. And I always get sad when I read in an online forum, somebody that says, and let's just take investing as an example, said, well, you know what? You don't need to talk to anybody else. You should just invest your own money and do your things just by yourself in a silo. the frustration I had with that was I worked with some of the most successful people in the Metro Detroit area when I was a financial planner.

And whenever I met super successful people, they all had great coaches around them. And I'm not saying hire a financial advisor. I'm saying have smart people around you that look at stuff with you and especially people that think differently than you do around you. Usually my smartest and just the most brilliant people that always seemed to be so different than they were that I started modeling that and I found my career grew much quicker. I found that my wealth grew quicker after that. I'll give you an example. I've had the same life coach now for over 15 years. My wife doesn't like her.

Like personally can't stand her because I tend to look at the world very optimistically. I run into walls at 100 miles an hour. Mary Lou, my coach, looks at the world very negatively, looks at things as if I need to be much, much more careful than I am. Like, she is exactly the opposite of me. And that's what the reason I hire her isn't to be my buddy. I don't need a buddy. I need somebody who can cover my blindside.

And Mary Lou's been fantastic for me. Well, and I think that's really important to find somebody that is different from you. I share your boundless enthusiasm for everything. and it's really easy to see only the good. And that's, you know, a little bit extreme, but it's really great advice to get somebody who isn't your complimentary. You don't want a yes man or woman. Yeah, somebody that can see through your baloney, you know?

I mean, I've got a lot of baloney. Like, I've got a bunch of stuff that I tell myself. And I love it when people tell me, no, Joe, you're wrong. And having that, and maybe that's my personality is that I kind of like having Gordon Ramsey type people around me. For people that don't know, Gordon Ramsey is he's this chef guy that has these kitchen shows where at the beginning of the show he yells at people and he's in their face. And then you realize halfway through the show, it's because he loves them and he really wants them to succeed. But he kind of has to knock down this wall that people have of thinking that they're great at everything. You know, I get frustrated when I see people try really hard.

And I do this myself, by the way. I try very hard to convince people that what I think is right. and I think that I do much better personally if I spend more time asking questions trying to instead figure out what's correct. You know what I mean? Instead of pushing my right on somebody else, taking the time to go, well, maybe I should search for the better answer instead. I've become more of a listener, the older I get, even though it seems like I can talk pretty well. Well, going back a few steps here, we talked about how you became a CFP and began to get your your finances back in order. Can you kind of walk us through some of the levers that you think

you might have pulled to move that forward? Like, how did you go about paying off your debt? How did you go about building up those savings? And what was the transition to investing? So first thing was negotiating with creditors. And I learned that the hard way that you had to decide who was worth negotiating with and who wasn't worth negotiating with. And you guys just did Julian on and you covered all that stuff great. So I'm not going to go into that. I think people should just go back and listen to your interview with Jillian to dig more into that. But I went through that same process of learning that. The second thing then was realizing that I needed cash in the bank before I would be completely debt-free. Like I could either make sure no bad things ever happened in my life again

or I needed cash to cover the bad thing so I wouldn't have to go into debt again while I was getting rid of the mountain of debt. So that realization, and actually it wasn't so much a realization is books and people around me telling me that and me finally being less of a hardhead and figuring out that having this fund set aside that was my emergency fund was going to save my bake. And once I got to a point that I knew that the debt was going to be down by a certain day, then I realized that I needed to invest and invest outside of my business. I need to invest in two different ways. Number one was I needed outside investments, but number two was I needed to also start looking at my business as an investment. Instead of a place where I work to earn a paycheck, I needed to build it

to sell. So I needed to fit, even if I wasn't interested in selling right now. And that was an aha. I had reading another great book, which was the E myth. And it seems like every third person I talked to says the E myth is their favorite book. And that's another, Mindy, going back to your truisms, you hear people say stuff over and over and over. If you haven't read the E myth, whether you own a business or not, understanding the concepts in the e-myth, I think, are a great way to get ahead. Because I'll tell you, just from personal finance standpoint, another lever I pulled, Scott, was this. I realized by watching smart people around me and from the e-myth that when I stumbled across something cool that I was getting right, I needed to recognize that I'd accidentally

hit upon something that was good. And then I needed to figure out a way to automate that so that the next time I tripped on that again, I'd have this tripwire already set up and I'd be able to automatically take advantage of it. So as an example, putting money in a cash reserve that was out of sight was one of the early things. Like initially, I set up my emergency fund at my local bank, but I was a guy who was crappy with money. And if you have a debit card and you're putting a hundred bucks into this cash reserve and you got debit card access and you're not good with money, there's always a reason. Like your brain comes up with these reasons

why you got to take the money back out. So I ended up sending my money to a bank account in Minneapolis that I didn't have debit card access to. I lived in Detroit. So I sent it to another city. I could have my money overnighted to me was the quickest I could get it.

I could actually have it wired, but there was going to be a huge wire fee. I could also pay a fee to have it overnighted. And at first I thought, well, I don't want to do that. I don't want to pay all these fees to get at my own money. And I thought, How great is this to have like a $40 hurdle between me and my money? And I know that I'm cheap enough

that if I got to pay $40 to get my money, my brain will come up with other ways to solve this big, quote, problem I'm having now. And you know what? It worked. It absolutely worked. And that money started building. And then once the money built, then it became a game. That was the next thing that I realized was gamifying things. I tripped across, I don't remember what it was at the time. what the first thing was that I tripped on here, but I realized that for me, turning things into a game was fun. And so I started setting up these milestones. And when I set myself a milestone, not for five years out, but for six months out and a year out, and I needed to reach that milestone. And I didn't look at the five year number. Like, I'm not motivated by a five year number.

I'm motivated by the six month number. I'm motivated by the three week number. So if I can take this huge goal and break it down into these little bits, and turn it into a game to reach the bit, and then I give myself a reward each time. Like for me, that would be like a new board game. Then I'm more likely to hit that goal. So I started setting up this, I combined automatic savings with shorter milestones

and gamification. And for me, that was perfect for getting where I wanted to go faster. Yeah, and another key point that I'm observing in this from something you said earlier is your weekly tracking of your progress towards this goal, right? In those weekly meetings.

Like I have a similar type thing. I do six months to 12 month goals, sometimes three months, depending on I chunk them into three, six, nine, 12 months, depending on what goals are. And then I track my progress every day and every week towards those goals. And that's what keeps me going towards them. And then, of course, the reward at the end is always very nice. I don't know if it's fun or a sickness.

Maybe it's both, but I love it. Yeah. It's a healthy obsession. It's a healthy, healthy goal, a healthy habit, right? I totally agree. Yeah. 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,

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slash money free. Getting ready for a game means being ready for anything. Like packing a spare stick. I like to be prepared. That's why I remember 988, Canada's suicide crisis hubline. It's good to know, just in case. Anyone can call or text for free confidential support from a train responder anytime. 988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. Okay, so let's go back and talk about your debt. When you decided after you were done scrounging through for a quarter, you were going to pay it off. How much debt did you have? What was it comprised of and how long did it take you to get rid of it?

I had $81,000 a debt. Oh. Yeah. So not just a little. No. And so it was a combination of personal loans that I'd taken out for a quote for my business, which once again, I had to get my business under control as, well and create separate entities. And I mean, that's a whole different show. But it was a combination

of personal loans, credit card debt, student loans. And on top of all this stuff, I also didn't understand how taxes work. And I ended up owing the IRS a bunch of money that I actually, I know today, I never owed this money. I just didn't know how to track my expenses. I also didn't know how to hire the right people in my corner. I hired an accountant who wasn't really an accountant, was just a dude to put the numbers together, even though he was a CPA. And I went to him and I don't remember what the number was anymore. I think it was about $30, $35,000. He said, hey, Joe, you owe $35,000. And that's due next week. And here I'm a guy that has tons of debt spending every penny plus more that I make. I'm like, I remember being so mad at him and go, what am I supposed to come up with that money? And then I realized later

when I found good help, when I realized from once again, from mentorship and that I need to surround myself with good people. I found a great CPA who understood how taxes work. But by then, the horse had left the barn. And I was beyond being able to go back and figure out where all those expenses were. But there's no way I owed all that money. But not only did I owe that money, I owed that money plus penalties, right? Because the IRS, if you just, once again, look away, the IRS doesn't look at that kindly. And so when I finally looked at it and wrote everything down, we were over 80,000 bucks. Wow.

And how long did it take you to pay that off? Oh, God, it felt like it took forever. I think I didn't get it all paid off for seven years. It took two years to pay down the credit card debt part. Overall, to pay off all the debt, though, it took seven years. At some point, when you're paying this down, you say, hey, I see the date that I'm going to get to zero. I think you said that earlier. Yes.

And I assume at that point, you began building up that emergency fund. and beginning into invest, is that right? So were you investing at any point during this time or is it you waited until you got to zero? Oh, no, no, no. The last few years, the last three years, I had gotten my credit score better and I began transferring things to lower interest debt.

And as I was able to transfer things to lower interest debt and I had an emergency fund in place and I knew that that was taking care of itself, I also knew I had to start investing. So then I started putting money then into first my retirement fund, and then second into brokerage accounts. And then later I became a, became a landlord.

What was your, what was your kind of philosophy as you approached investing? My philosophy at first was just do it. I mean, it's funny because I think that philosophy for me was just, I got to do something. So I didn't, hey, buy a mutual fund. I mean, I bought growth mutual funds,

growth, no load mutual funds through decent places. I mean, I wasn't buying anything super inexpensive. I wasn't paying a lot of attention to having the perfect investment. I was trying to just buy aggressive stuff. And it's funny because my whole philosophy around investing changed later once I had money. And I tell people starting out that too. You know, it's funny because my daughter and I were having this conversation.

She was setting up her 401K last year. And when she was doing that, she and I agreed, why wouldn't you just put everything in your 401K when you're first starting out into the small cap value fund? Like, just put it in the most aggressive thing. because if you've got $100 there and it goes down 10%, you lost $10. So just put in the most aggressive thing you can find and just go. Like, don't overthink it. Just go.

And now it's cool. She saved a ton of money her first year working. And as that money grows, I think diversifying it out is going to make more sense later. But initially, Scott, my whole philosophy was just do it. It was just it was all the Nike thing. And actually, you know what? It wasn't even that. Nike had a phrase before that that I like better.

Like, I like just do it, but Nike's old phrase was feel the fear and do it anyway. And I felt a ton of fear. And I still feel a ton of fear. So I just remember thinking, yeah, I just got to do something. So my philosophy was you're screwed if you don't start saving. So stock some money into a mutual fund, pal. No, I think that's a very appropriate way to kind of rationalize things. When you're starting out investing, right, you know, whatever you're going to accumulate over

that course of that year, you're going to be investing for a long time. hopefully, you know, 50, 60, 70 more years, why don't you go ahead and invest in something that you think is going to have the highest possible long-term results? And then who cares what happened in the very short term, right? It's your savings rate and the amount that you accumulate and put away that is the big driver of growth until you get to maybe six figures in investable liquidity, right? Investments. That's when now, okay, now 10% of that is going to be a meaningful hit to your overall financial position in a given year. I think the closer you get to wanting to start the spending pattern with your money,

the more analytically you have to get. I mean, I think ultimately you should be very analytical, but not when you start out. You know, and we get questions on our show. You guys get questions. People ask us all the time about, you know, I'm 22 and what do I do? And it's feel the fear and do it. Just go do it. But I love the whole idea of the fire movement.

I think it's fantastic. What I worry about, though, is there are some people who are entering the years where they're pulling the trigger on fire, and they're not analytical enough about some of the numbers. I think when it's time to pull the trigger and say, you know what, I'm now going to be financially independent. I think that's the time when you've got to have all those little nitty-gritty numbers that I learned as a financial planner, but not when you're starting out. And I think that there's a conundrum in the fire movement as well in the sense that a lot of the fire folks are talking about, hey, I'm going to stockpile a ton of index funds. And then I'm going to invest that because that's a high probability way of generating long-term wealth. I'm going to live off of that going forward. Well, the reality is I put up a poll in a choose FI Facebook group amongst people who actually were retired or

had a retirement level of wealth. Almost nobody actually retires off an index fund portfolio alone. Almost everybody's got like a couple of other extra tricks up their sleeves, including an index fund portfolio that would actually sustain them. So don't get fooled by, hey, the path to retirement is build up 25 times your net worth in an index fund and then you're done. That's not mentally what people are able to wrap their heads around because everyone's analytical by the time they actually pull the trigger. Everyone's got a rental property, a pension or stays working or works part time that's going on after they retire. not everybody, but a large proportion of the folks in the fire movement. Well, the one thing I learned, Scott, to your point, is as a financial planner, is that while something might not seem to go wrong to you when you're managing your own money, when you're

working with 200 families, something's always going wrong with somebody. Like, I've seen so many things go wrong with people's investments. So having multiple investment strategies, or well, one overall strategy, but different tactics, I guess, three or four different tactics you're pursuing instead of, of just dividend paying stocks or just purely rental real estate. And don't get me wrong, I think you should go strong with the thing that you know the best, right? If rental real estate's your thing and you're great at that, lead with that. Make that the hull of your ship. But your ship still should have a different sale, maybe have a different spinnaker sale,

of a different anchor. You know, I'm just trying to think of pieces of a ship. But just have other things that complement that so that if something does go wrong in the real estate market, you're not sitting just there. You've got other places to turn. Yeah, I love that. I think that's fantastic advice. Yeah, and you don't hear that very often. You hear here's the ideal portfolio allocation, you know, for both.

But what you're saying is makes perfect sense. I'm a little over-invested in real estate compared to what most people would say is reasonable. But I work at bigger pockets. I talk about real estate investing all day long. I'm super comfortable with my portfolio there. And I should be over-excited in real estate investing, right? And I do have stocks and other things and I have other income sources that I'm continuing to work on. But that's the bulk of my portfolio and that makes sense for me.

It might not make sense for somebody else who doesn't feel as comfortable. I'll give you another story that way. I had clients when I was a financial advisor, they came to me and they were very surprised when I came back to, you know, we had a first meeting where I get to know them. They tell me about themselves. I then come back with suggestions and strategies in my second meeting and then we have a whiteboard and we start working through together. how the plan's going to kind of come together.

Because it's not my plan. I'm not delivering it. We're going to figure it out. But I'm going to bring some suggestions. And the one suggestion they were most surprised about, I told them that the lead in their portfolio should be livestock. Because this dude in his family, that's what they knew. And he knew, like clockwork, how to get a 10% rate of return in livestock.

But not just that, not just get a 10% on going rate of return there. He also knew the downsides if it didn't work. and he knew how to protect against those downsides. And I thought that was fascinating. And by the way, they thought it was fascinating of me as a financial advisor because every other advisor they met before me, of course, had said, you know, lead with something that I can help you manage. You should always lead with what you know best.

And then we diversified around cattle and pigs. Holy cow. Holy cow. Oh, God, I quit. No, I mean, that makes perfect sense to me. And I also recently, I don't know where I came across this, but apparently cows are worth a lot of money. Like one cow is worth like three grand or something like that. I couldn't believe when I was looking through their spreadsheets, I remember my client Brian just walking through his spreadsheets.

And I walk through every piece of his spreadsheets because I find that a lot of people, there's flaws in their spreadsheet, right? And I'm thinking, okay, you've got this ongoing 10% rate of return, sometimes much, much higher than that. Show me how this works. I think we might have spent three hours talking about how this works where I was confident enough that I said, why wouldn't we lead with this? Because just like you with real estate, Scott, working in bigger pockets, it's what he does every day. It's what the dude knows.

Like, let's make sure we start with what you know. Because I'll tell you, when something goes wrong, if you know the underpinnings of why it goes wrong, you're much more likely to respond in the appropriate way. What I worried most about when I was a financial planner, what I still worry most about is that when the stock market goes down again, and it's going to go down again, when the stock market goes down, it's hard to predict how people are going to respond. And what I found was people that were more in touch with their portfolio and they kind of knew why their stocks were down, they were much more likely to respond appropriately. But people that just wanted to push it off to me as their

advisor and have me just, quote, handle it, they were the people that went off the deep end when all of a sudden the stock market goes down. And even if we're down 20, percent when the stock market's down 35. So I pretty much saved their ass. Those people were still really, really, really upset with me. Like, why didn't you handle this better? Like, I don't think you understand what we did. Like, our strategy was defensive enough that you didn't lose your ass as much as everybody. And they're like, I don't care about everybody else. Well, yeah, I could go on and on and on about some frustrating things that happen when people would. And frankly, that's part of the reason why I left being a financial planner was I loved it when people wanted to learn more about money.

I didn't like it when somebody wanted to hand it off. You should never hand off your money to somebody else. Have coaches in your corner. But listen, if you've hired somebody to just take it, this is your net worth you're talking about. Nobody cares about that as much as you do. So you should be very careful with your money. I think a good example of this is index fund investing again, right? So I invest in index funds. I've got a lot of money in Vanguard index funds, low fee index funds. However, I have I do that because I've studied both sides of the issue of, hey, what are the advantages here, what are the disadvantages? Why shouldn't I build my own portfolio of accumulated stocks? And I'm comfortable with that. And I think a lot of people are just like, oh, passive index funds is the easy

option. I'm going to do that without understanding all those concepts. And there's going to be certain types of reactions that you have to go through in different market cycles. I think that's going to be an interesting test for me and for a lot of other people that are going to go through maybe their first recession with some savings built up, whenever that comes. Well, well, no, you think about how long it's been, right? It's been nine years since the downturn. You can have it a financial advisor look at you in the eye and say, I've got nine years experience. And that sounds like a long time. You know, somebody's got almost a decade of experience. Holy cow, your experience. They've never seen a freaking downturn. They haven't seen a downturn. I went through two in my career.

That's where all my hair went. It is, it is horrible. You don't know what's going to happen tomorrow. You know, you're watching, I'm in Detroit. I'm watching the auto companies go bankrupt. We're watching crap on Wall Street every day. We're watching people lose their houses, lose their jobs that you never thought were going to. Like, you don't know when it's going to end. It was horrible. Okay, so Joe, I'm assuming that you've paid off all of this debt now. You talk about it in the past tense. Where are you on the path to financial independence? And financial independence I am describing is I don't have to work anymore. Clearly, you do still work. But when you do what you love, it's never a job or whatever. No, my spouse and I still work. And you know what's funny?

is that if you look at some of the people, and I don't want to rip the fire movement because I think it is, it's fantastic. And I think people are doing some amazing things. And I love the stories, and I love the enthusiasm for savings. And we need more of that, right? I mean, we need so much more of that.

Our community needs to be so much bigger. But I'll tell you, I have a lot more money than a lot of people who tell me that they're financially independent. And yet, when I look at my numbers and my assumptions, I'm just going to be more conservative. So to answer your question, Mindy, I work because I like it. My spouse works because she likes it.

We could quit tomorrow and I'm sure that we would be fine. But I'm a pretty conservative guy. But like you said, I love what I do. You know, I feel bad sometimes when I read some people in some of the forums who are so excited about getting rid of their work about not working because of the fact that I think there's nothing wrong with a life well worked. Work is a fun thing. Not to parrot what you just said, Mindy, but really, if you love what I do, I can't imagine

not doing my podcast now. Like, I want to finish an episode and like keel over. Like that would be my ultimate death. Like I just finish interviewing Scott and Mindy on my show and then I keel over and die. Like that, hey, take me. That's fantastic. Please don't die. Please don't die.

So I have a couple of things to say about this. It sounds like you've only had jobs that you loved. And I had a couple where I did not love them so much. So I'm assuming all these people that are in these Facebook groups and that are out there saying, I can't wait to quit, are in jobs that they don't love. I worked for several people because if I quit, I couldn't pay my mortgage. I couldn't eat. I couldn't put gas in my car.

But I certainly did not love those jobs. and I was actively looking all the time to get a different job because I hated what I was doing, who I was working for, you know, whatever, the political atmosphere of that job. And I think that there are a lot of people who are focused solely on, I can't wait until I get out of my job. But you're right, working is fun. I get up and, you know, this sounds kind of disingenuous because I am actually at work when I'm saying this. But I get up in the morning and I'm so excited to go to work. My husband is now a stay-at-home dad, and he's getting the kids ready for school. And they're close in age, so they're fighting all the time or the little one lags forever.

And they're in the middle of a fight. And I'm like, okay, got to go to work. Like, I'm excited to go. I feel guilty that I'm leaving these two fighting kids or, you know, the one that doesn't want to go to school today. And I feel really guilty about that as I'm leaving. But I'm leaving because I love my job and I cannot wait to go. I have bad jobs. I have bad jobs too, but like you, I realized early that that wasn't a way I wanted to spend my life. And, you know, I kind of threw my parents under the bus early in the show. And so I'm going to circle back though and say, you know, from my dad and my mom, they did jobs that they loved and they loved working. And I think I inherited that from them. If I didn't love a job, A, I had to bring enthusiasm to it. But then B, I had to either find a way to love that job or had to find a job that I loved. loved. And so I kept searching for jobs that I loved. And when I didn't love financial planning anymore

at age 40, I sold that business and moved into, you know, the piece of it that I really do like, the financial media piece. Yeah. And I think that one thing I want to point about about both of you guys and a lot of other stories that are kind of like this about how fire but love our jobs is as your financial means increase, as you increase the savings rate, you have other sources of income and you're less dependent on these jobs in order to get by. You're not going to, you're not going to, work that is not satisfying. So you move gradually and, you know, it's different for everybody and their risk tolerance. But I think that you move gradually towards work that you really do love as you get closer and closer to a reasonable approximation of fire. And then it ends up

being a job. And I think there's just a story is just repeated time and again across hundreds of people or maybe thousands of people, at least dozens that I've met. And when you're not working for a paycheck, you can do something that you enjoy, even if it doesn't pay really well. My husband always wanted to be a ranger, like a park ranger. That doesn't pay anything. It's like $10 an hour or something. So to support a family in an expensive cost of living area, being a park ranger isn't the best choice.

But now that he has reached financial independence, I say he, we have reached financial independence, then he can go pursue these jobs that don't pay much or even, you know, go start his own thing that doesn't pay anything at first. You know, you find out what you're doing, but you're optimizing your life for your happiness. And that's the most important thing. Yeah, I think, I think finding a way to push back that hand to mouth as quickly as possible is an important thing for anybody. Like, how long can I hold on to this dollar before I need it to eat, you know? And if I can push that away, then I, I don't need to be chasing the next paycheck.

I can chase instead what really fulfills me. Yeah. And that is the best life lived. Yeah. All right. So one topic that I think we want to cover before we get to the famous floor is some assumptions that maybe are wrong in the fire community or something that I need to be challenged or debated.

So let's go ahead and transition into that with a very awkward transition there. Well, no, actually, it kind of gets back to what I said earlier is that I think some people have some, aren't looking at all the numbers. Maybe we'll nerd out here for a little bit for some numbers, because I'm a guy who lived a early life of wrong assumptions. And so I think some people don't use some of the right stats. I'll tell you a few big ones, number one, the 4% rule. I see the 4% rule quoted a lot, which means if you live on 4% of the money that you have, you can accumulate that, that that's going to be enough. Financial planners have ripped that to shreds, guys. That thing was used one point in time. It wasn't enough.

research. And so living off 4% of your money, not a great place to start. That's interesting. I would like to point out because you said it, and I just want to reiterate this, it is 4% of the amount that you have saved, not 4% of your income. Right. There was several articles recently in local publications. People were commenting, I could never live off of 4% of my income. Yeah, same. Unless I get a 1,200% raise, I'm not living off of 4% of my income either. It is 4% of the money that you have saved. So this is interesting because that's kind of my plan, although I also have a job. And my number was here.

And now with the stock market, it's gone up a little bit. William Bangan did the original study. And then the Trinity Group came in and verified it. I'm curious why you say that this is not kosher. Well, Wade Fow is a certified financial planner who brought it to my attention. And he's a guy who is often quoted. And he may not even be the guy that ripped it first. But the fact that this was only worked in a very specific time frame makes it suspect.

And if you look at many timeframes over the last, well, since the Great Depression, you'll find that 4% wouldn't have, your money wouldn't have lasted forever. So here's what I like. I like that as a place to start. Like if you're just going to do, you know, like the rule of 72, which we won't even, you know, I just opened up another can of worms for people that don't know that. But the 4% rule, if you're just using your fingers, you're like, okay, how much money can I live on? Okay, decent place to start.

But why wouldn't you actually plot out the numbers? Because plotting out the numbers is not as hard as you think it is. It is actually way easier than you think it is. So using a lot of these just rules of thumb versus saying, I'm going to live on X amount of money. And then there's tons of financial planning software online where you can then see if the money that you've accumulated will fill in that need. So start with the need and work backwards. I think if you follow Stephen Covey, seven habits of highly effective people and begin with the end of mind, how much do I need to live? How long do I think I'm going to live?

Add some time to that so you don't run out of money. and then see if the amount of money that you have based on a reasonable interest rate will last that period of time. I think it's a better way to do it. Sure, it might take you a few hours versus three minutes. You know, this might be half your life. If you're going to retire in your 40s, it could be more than half your life. So take some time and do the real math instead of using a 4% rule. Another thing there on that point, by the way, inflation. Inflation is another thing. I think people don't take seriously enough. And by the way, if you're using the government statistic on inflation, it isn't correct.

The government number is not the real number. There have been years where there's been zero inflation and cost on a lot of things went up and up and up. So using a reasonable number like 3 or 4% for inflation, I think is a better way to go. Once again, to be conservative, especially if I'm going to chase early financial independence, I'm going to jack up that inflation number to four. I'm going to use the higher inflation number. Because if it works at four, it'll work at anything below that.

So that's another one. I see the 4% rule as a good milestone. Hey, if you're getting to the 4% rule and you're getting close to that in terms of your net worth and invested assets, this is not your house, maybe, you know, your home liquidity. This is like, hey, this is equity in rental properties and stocks and all that. Okay, you're getting pretty good. All probability, you're going to be better off in most retirement scenarios than the rest of the population by a large amount. And you've got a reasonable odds as to stating that. But the reality, the situation is people aren't satisfied with the 4% rule.

People aren't stopping. I see very few families that are actually stopping once they hit the 4% rule in a portfolio and doing nothing else and having no other side income streams. And I think that that's telling, right? Whatever it is, whatever all the math is and argument, it's just not good enough for your ordinary person that's listening. There's always a backup plan that's going on. as soon as you actually do leave that job.

Yeah, and I think it's a good point. You know, use the 4% rule and then once you get there, Scott, now start running the real numbers. Now at that point, now it's time. The 4% rule is when the beacon goes off that says, now it's time for me to actually dig in. But I will tell you, at the very least from the 4% rule, I bet you'll never have to work a job you don't like ever again.

Agreed. And I think that's the real victory you get to when you get to that 4% rule, right? And by the way, the reason the 4% rule does, doesn't work in some occasions is what they call sequence of return risk. Meaning if you shut off your income stream today and the market goes down immediately and let's say you lose 40% of your portfolio the first couple years of retirement, you're screwed. So sequence of return risk, I think a lot of times people don't compensate enough for that, which means especially once again, if you're going to go early, I want to have a big enough

reserve. I was talking to a financial planner just a few weeks ago who said he likes having eight years of money in very conservative assets to avoid sequence of return risk. I think that's incredibly conservative. Like, I think that's over the top conservative. But I still get his point that I want to avoid making the mistake of retiring and then have all my investments fall apart the first couple of years. And let's all put this in perspective, too. Like you retire and the market immediately tanks and you lose 40% of your portfolio.

The only people that are worse off than you is everybody else. Right. So everybody else is worse off than you. And you could just maybe go back to work and not make quite as much money. So it's kind of like heads you win, tails you still don't lose. And Boston. Yeah. That's all I had to say.

I was going to say we were rocking. That was awesome. Well, I am going to tag on to what Scott was saying just a moment ago, the personality traits that allow you to think ahead and save this much money and be this aggressive in your retirement. planning are the same traits that kind of won't let you sit around and do nothing once you get there. So you're not going to aggressively save and then just be like, ooh, what's on TV today? I'm going to Netflix and chill for 17 hours. That just doesn't happen. So while you're not, you might be making $100,000 in your first job and your next job makes you 10,

you're still doing something. You're still bringing in money. And with this low rate of spending and this low rate of income, you're kind of balancing it out. So I do not want to bash the 4% rule, although I totally hear what you're saying. Yeah, you're already in a better place than everybody else. Yeah, I'm just seeing an over-reliance on it.

And that's fair. I guess great. Okay. What else do you hate about fire people? Oh, my goodness. Send your hate mail to, right? Joe at. Yeah.

No, I think these are just stumbling blocks that I'd like to see more people avoid. And I do see a lot of people avoid them. So I'm glad we're bringing a light to them. I also, we already talked about this next one, which is over-reliance on one asset class. I think there's a big danger on saying that dividend-paying stocks are my strategy, and that's all my money, and I'm going to do it just that way.

Something goes wrong in every asset class, so I don't want that. But you know what the biggest ones are? When I was thinking of issues, the biggest issues that I see that I think we want to be cognizant of is this feeling that I'm going to feel the same about my life 15 years from now that I feel today. And I'll tell you that doesn't happen. As a guy who's 50 years old, I don't feel at all the same about my life as I did at 25. And my goals are different. My desire to spend money is different. So if I lock myself into a lifestyle that's incredibly limiting at a young age, I really would be wary of that.

I really get wary of somebody that says that I like to live in a woods and a tent and I'm 31 years old and I saved $100,000 so I can do that forever. I've done the math and I can live off this money and never do anything differently. By 50, you might not want to live in that tent. Okay. So this is the problem with the audio is that I can't put an asterisk next to what you're saying. And I totally hear what you're saying completely do not disagree with that. But if you are young and you are getting used to this super frugal lifestyle, you're only going to do better as you go on.

Oh, I save too much money. Now I can buy a Porsche. Like that's not a bad thing. I would say the way I view it is as someone is I understand this. I don't spend very much money right now and I don't have a desire to spend a lot of money. But I understand that that's going to change most likely, and I'm going to want to spend more money, if nothing else, to at least have a home in a good school district if I have kids. Right. Yeah.

And like there's going to be expenses that come in. So I'm not sitting here saying, oh, I'm done now. My passive income could cover my lifestyle right now, which is very conservative, where I live in a half a duplex. That is going to change, right? So I'm not going to stop right now, right? But I feel like the way you can kind of do it is you can spend in proportion to your power. passive income that you're generating from your portfolio, right? That's how you can allow that.

If you're going to allow a lifestyle creep, as I am sure will happen in my life, it should come in proportion to the passive income that I'm continuing to build, not from my income that I'm generating from my job. But you just need to give yourself the opportunity to build a portfolio enough that you can allow for changes to happen in the future. That's what I'm talking about. I think there's some plans that are built on not enough flexibility. I think that a lot of things are going to change.

And by the way, on flexibility, let's talk about that too. know, tax laws are going to change. I mean, every time I talk to a tax expert, all that I hear is it's a math problem. The government's going to have to tap into some of these investments where we have tax shelters. And so we don't know where that's going to hit. We don't know if it's going to hit pre-tax money. That's probably where it will hit, right? Where 401Ks might not work the way they work now, or IRAs might not work the way they work. It could hit Ross. But most tax experts are telling us that's probably less likely, but it could hit there. You know, the, the, the, the, HSA loophole that we all love right now,

stocking as much money into HSAs as we possibly can. That loophole might go away. But I think having a plan that's flexible enough to realize that a lot of these rules that we're using might change and to keep checking in to make sure that as changes happen, that I'm abreast of those changes, I think is a super important thing, especially if you're trying to be super aggressive

with your financial independence. If you're going for aggressive financial independence, staying on top of that and being flexible, I think is going to be huge for you. Okay. That is a really great way to say that. I appreciate you explaining a little bit more. What I was trying to and completely did not succeed doing is saying, you know, get in the habit of not spending a lot of money.

If you want to be financially independent, get into this frugality habit. You can always change later and have this lifestyle creep and spend more. that's way easier to change that mindset, I would think, than to change the one of entitlement. And, you know, the story that always comes into my mind is Tori Spelling. Her dad is Aaron Spelling. He was behind every single TV show in the 80s. And she grew up in this like, but trillion dollar house and her dad's like, hey, you want another shopping cart full of money today? Like, it was kind of ridiculous.

And then when her dad died, he didn't leave her anything. And I'm not really sure what happened with all of that. Like her mom got all the money. But she's having a lot of money problems because she's been in this mindset for so long of just I can spend anything. And when you have this mindset of, oh, I can't spend anything, oh, wait, I could buy a new pair of shoes for Joe and Scott, who only has one. I could go out to dinner tonight and it's not going to change my world. So I would definitely recommend to be on the side of caution. But that's a really good point is life is not going to continue.

you the same way forever. Sure. And it's funny to say that because, you know, we kick this off talking about Scott's book. And one thing that my son really took from that book was it's easier for you to begin with these great habits around how you buy your house and about what your transportation costs are than if you're somebody like me, let's say, at 50 years old or like me when I finally got my act together back when I was, what, 35, figuring out exactly, what are we going to do differently? And now I already have the house issue. I already have the car issue. Now I have to solve some of these big problems and reduce my expenses.

But if you start off on the right foot, to your point, Mindy, and build those early, I think it's going to be way easier for you. Because then when you have the extravagance, you're going to appreciate it more. You know, I found that when we start having our money meetings, one of the things that we cut like a lot of people was going out to dinner constantly. And I've found that if we go out to dinner at a restaurant once a week, we really flip and enjoy it. Like we love it. But when we're super busy, Cheryl and I and we love being busy people or if I'm on the road and I go out to dinner four nights in a row, I don't appreciate it all anymore. And it's super fattening food and I feel worse.

But man, that once a week is a great date night. Perfect. Okay. What else do you hate about fire people. I don't hate anything. I love fire people. I'm just kidding, Joe. What, do you have any other? No, I think the big thing, though, is behavior. I think that monitoring your behavior and realizing that you're going to think differently over time and thinking about how you think differently over time and realizing that when the markets change, keeping your emotions in check and having systems with your investing. So as an example, I said earlier, that Cheryl and I will change our investments twice a year. That is a system.

Good financial planners have something that we can all replicate called an investment policy statement. So earlier, Scott asked me what my philosophy was around investing when I started. Didn't have one, didn't really need one. Now that I have a portfolio, I manage my money based on an investment policy statement. I know what my guidelines are

so that when it hits the fan, and we know it's going to hit the fan at some point, when it hits the fan, I'm not going to wonder, how do I react? How do I respond? I'm not reacting or responding. I'm pulling the levers that I already said I was going to pull. I knew this day was going to come. I know how I'm going what I'm going to do because it's already written out. And I love that. I love having an investment policy statement versus just being emotional. You need to keep your emotions in check when you're talking about your money. Yeah. So I want to throw in one thing I don't like about the fire movement. If I get a bonus one. So one thing that I don't like about the fire movement is the

dogma, I think, that comes with a lot of folks, that where other people are making the wrong choice by not following the fire movement. I see that in a lot of things. And I really feel that that's not helpful to our movement. We want everyone to acknowledge and understand the benefits and the possibility of fire. But I think that there's a lot of people out there who take that a little too far. Once you get going on this path, maybe just... judge people who are not making what you consider to be the correct decisions with money. Man, I think you hit it on the head. Our community is so small. It is so small. And it's funny, because when I talk to new podcasters getting into the financial podcasting field, they're like,

wow, there's already so many good podcasts. And I'm like, there's not really, when you look at the population of the United States versus the number of people who listen to financial podcasts, there's room for a lot more podcasters. There's a room for a lot more people. We need a lot more people talking about this. And you're right, Scott, I think being judgey at all is just going to turn people off. Like, we can't afford to be judgy. I think the more people are proactive, that are proactive with their money gets more exciting for all of us. It's funny, you know, I talked about the mentor earlier who talked about avoiding clusters of misery. He also had another thing he told me, which was, you can have what's called a limited pie mentality or an unlimited pie mentality. And I think

we should advocate an unlimited pie mentality. There's room for a lot of great voices. We need more great people talking about this stuff. And when we become judgey of each other, it doesn't help us do that. Yeah. I think, I think, hey, you work towards fire and do the best that you can, build your personal financial position, work towards financial freedom, and then live a good life. And that's how you can invite more people into this movement when they ask and are ready to

come in. But, you know, I am a culprit of this going out into the community. or to other people and saying, you're doing it wrong. I'm doing it right. Here's how to do it. And I fully admit that I've done that in the past. And I'm saying that here and saying, hey, let's not do that. Let's just keep doing what we're doing. And more people will probably see the benefits and continue to learn about it. I love it when somebody says that they discovered us, any of us, you know, in the past six months. I was thinking that's exciting because I remember that journey. I mean, I remember right after digging for those quarters and thinking,

I got to get it together, man. And I remember how empowering that was, but I didn't really know what it was, you know? And just that first step of the journey, I think if we put ourselves in those shoes that everybody's got that first step of the journey and put yourself back there, it's a fun place to be and to help people along. Yeah, absolutely. It's very fun. You discover it and you're like, oh, I have to change everything. And it's exciting. It is exciting in a couple of months I do like, I hate this. I don't want to change everything. I want this added back in.

And we mentioned Liz Frugal Woods at the beginning of the show as somebody who has a money date with her husband every week or every month. She also discovered financial independence, cut out everything. Right. And then after the first month, she's like, well, I miss this. How can I add it back in frugally? I miss this. How can I add that back in frugally? And she had a lot of really great tips for things you can do once you go down the rabbit

hole and discover you don't want to be all the way down at the bottom. I said that all the time as a financial planner. You'd see people that would, they'd cut their budget to the bone and they'd do great for three months and then they'd celebrate by buying a big screen TV. Just at the end of three months, I've been so good about this. I'm just going to, you know, they go off the other sides to this whole boom-bust cycle of getting way too intense and realizing it's going to be a long, you know, it's a marathon, not a sprint. I think it's also a good idea. Yeah. It is a marathon, not a sprint. And, you know,

if we're going to go with cliches, personal finance is personal. And what you spend your money on, Joe is completely wrong. And it's not what I choose to spend my money on, which is, you know, not what Scott chooses to spend his money on. So spend on what really matters so you can save on the things that you don't care about. I think we all just turned into my mom there the last like four minutes. There we go. Hi mom. Financial truisms. Yeah, nice job. Okay, now it's time to make our way over to the famous four questions. These are the same five questions that we ask everybody all the time at the end of the show. What Joe Sal C. High is your favorite finance book? My favorite finance book is Rick Edelman's The Truth About Money.

I think it's the most even-handed book on personal finance I've read. I think it's comprehensive. So I think where I see a lot of people speaking of what Scott was talking about earlier, about people being kind of judgy, you see a lot of books are kind of judgy. It's one of the most non-judgy books I've read. And the better thing for me, because I like a lot of humor with my stuff, is that the book's funny. He's explaining how things changed around. Roth IRAs. And he goes through this whole, this whole explanation. And he says, and by the way,

here's the reason they made this one very technical change. Turn the page for it. You turn the page and he goes, I don't know why, but that's not important. I find myself at the beginning of the next page laughing a lot. And I love that. So Rick Edelman's the truth about money is my number one. That's awesome. That's awesome. All right. So what was your biggest money mistake? hiding from the tax man. Explain that earlier. Do not hide from the tax man. You have to put your mistakes down in writing and you have to attack them, but especially

when it's the IRS. Yeah, he will, he will find you. I'm going to take this time to say hi to my favorite tax man, my friend Evan. Hi, Evan. Okay, back to Joe, because he's the focus of the show today. Oh, thank you. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting? out. Just do it. Well, actually, feel the fear and do it anyway. We all feel afraid. We feel afraid of

what we don't know. But it's okay to be afraid, but don't let that stop you. I love that. My most difficult question here is, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? I know that you, in particular, have a huge arsenal of these things, right? But I don't tell jokes at parties. I mean, I don't. But if you tell me a joke, I'll know four others that are like it, which is bad. But If I were to tell a joke at a party, it would have to be a bad dad joke. Oh, good. You'll fit in. Perfect.

Yes, it has to. So what did the pirate say when he turned 80? I, 80. I'm 80. I like it. That's the same thing he said when he went to the golf course. I may tea. Ah.

But I'm probably. He's here all week. Tip your way to step. Yep. I'll be always. Yeah. So I read. in one of those Facebook groups, somebody said, I thought this was very cute.

Somebody said, Mindy Jensen has a really tough job because she has to listen to Scott's jokes all day long. And then somebody responded, has to or gets to? And I replied, has to. Yeah, I don't know. I think it's more gets to. I think some people hate them. Some people love them.

But everybody is eagerly anticipates them at the end of the show. So you're welcome. Hey, did you hear that there was a murder down at the Akea store? No, I didn't hear. Police are having trouble putting the pieces together. Ah, nice. How do you stop recording? I heard that one today, and it's suitably awful.

Yeah. I like those. I like those man walks into a bar jokes. I like those. You know, the horse walks into a bar. Wide long face. Yes, yes. A skeleton walks into a bar and says, give me a beer and a mop.

A guy walks into a bar, his friend ducked. A termite walks into a bar and says, where's the bar tender? That's so good. Yes. We're horrible, both of you. Joe, should you ever want to hear those all day, every day, BiggerPockets is hiring. Go to BiggerPockets.com slash jobs to see all the open jobs that we have right

now. Pinch me. I know. You could sit between Scott and Craig, who just sit there and back and forth like a thousand times. And I think Connor's getting into it too now, so I'm surrounded. But enough about me, Joe. Let's talk about you. Where can people find out more about you? Well, thanks for having me, guys. And you find me at Stacky Benjamin's different than your show where you dive deep into topics. You guys know that our show is meant to be a conversation starter. It's meant to be a conversation starter. It's meant to be very light. We want to introduce you to seven or eight different concepts. We want to make it really approachable. The goal of the show, I was mowing my lawn when I was listening to Car Talk. And for those people who don't know Car Talk, it's these two guys click and clack. One of them

died just about a year and a half ago, but they still play Car Talk episodes because they were so good. And you don't learn anything about a car. So Stacky Benjamin's is not designed around you learning anything. It's meant to be that conversation starter piece and introduce you to people and concepts. And if you want more than you go from there. So we're three days a week, Monday, Wednesday, Friday, and that's what we do. But, but Mindy, we are bringing the show live to three cities because a lot of the bad jokes we do on our show with my mom's neighbor Doug and my partner OG and I and mom. We can't do a lot of them, you know, there's some visual stuff we want to do. And we've been told that because our show kind of has a late night talk show kind of format, like it would be really

fun to do live. So we spent a lot of time choreographing it in the next six weeks. We're taking the show as long as the minivan makes it there. We're coming to three cities. We're coming to comedy clubs around the U.S., and I'm excited about that. We're actually playing the improv. I never thought that I'd be able to say that I'm playing the improv, but we are going to be playing the improv in a couple different cities. Well, that's awesome. I've listened to your show and I never thought you'd play the improv either. Nice. One thing we never talked about, though, is where you live, right? That's a huge component in you saving a lot of money, right? You living in your mom's basement. The mom's basement, absolutely. But the basement is moving right now because we're moving the

basement to, mom's moving to Detroit in January, because that's when you moved to Detroit, but I don't know if you know this. The best time. Yes, January. What could possibly go wrong? So in January, we're moving there. So right now, we are saving money, Scott, by being in my friend's dad's three-room apartment over his garage. So I'm looking at my friend's dad's house right next door to me. And I'm sorry, what is this suite called? Oh, yeah, we call it the Cato Caelin suite because he lives in this huge house. Well, big enough to have an apartment over the garage. Let's put it that way. But we're saving tons of money. Yeah, rent is fantastic in a three-room. And by the way, realizing that you don't need very much, live in a 400-square-foot.

place and you learn very quickly that you don't need much. I love it. And if you record podcasts there, you've redefined the concept of studio apartment. I know, right? But I'm he is on fire. Sorry, I'm getting going now. I'm going to set up on fire. It is totally on fire. Stacking Benjamins is the name of the podcast. Stackingbenjamins.com is the website. Stacking Benjamins is the Facebook group. Stacking Benjamins are closed Facebook group. Yeah. the basement, Stacking Benjamin's basement. Okay. So come join the basement.

Yes, Stacking Benjamin's The Car Talk of Financial Podcasting. You will find a lot of bad jokes there. And it's funny when we get new people in that don't know the show in our Facebook group, because I remember we were talking about, oh, gee, my co-host was talking about like having his kids sit in random seats on a plane and then going up to the people that he sat them next to and telling them that they were horrible parents and they need to make their kids mind. And it was this really dumb joke. And this guy goes, why is this appropriate in a financial forum?

And I immediately wrote, wow, everybody, the new guy thinks this is a financial forum. High five. It's fantastic. Welcome to the basement where we have a kinder, gentler kind of fun approach to the money topics. I listen to you as I clean out my garage. My husband really, really, really likes to clean out the garage. So that's when we stock up on our stacking, Benjamin's. That's perfect, perfect time.

That's what I save it for too. That's what we hope for. If we can make a show that'll be the best garage cleaning show, that that's what we want. All right, Joe, thank you so much for taking time out of your basement cleaning and garage cleaning days to talk to us. I really appreciate it. Thanks for having me, guys. This has been a blast.

Thanks for coming on. This is awesome. Okay, that was fantastic. I love listening to Joe. I can't believe we went so long, except I can't because he can talk, I can talk, you can talk. You get three talkers together and it's going to be for a really long show. Yeah, about our favorite subject.

So it's all three of us very passionate about. Yeah, so it's not a surprise that it went so long. Scott, what was your favorite part of the show? Well, I really liked the challenges to the fire movement in general. You know, I consider us and our show and our philosophy to be part of that fire movement. But at the same time, we're very open-minded to different approaches that don't fit into that barrel. And Joe has clearly got some reservations and good challenges to that kind of stuff. And I could talk about that all day.

I think there is no one right way to do things. And any time that you get everyone begins coalescing behind these certain philosophies, I think there's trouble brewing. There is. And I do want to do some more research into this 4% rule that he thinks, throughout a name Wade Fow. I have to look into that a little bit more and see what Wade has to say about it. I did a lot of research into the 4% rule. I can see how somebody would have questions about it. I'm assuming that this Wade cat is a smart guy who's studied finance. It's not just some schmuck on the street saying, well, that'll never work. I mean, if Joe is quoting him, I'm assuming that's something worth reading.

Because I have based a large portion of my retirement and my financial independence on the 4% rule. So I am glad that he brought that up. And I did like that part of the show because it's really easy to find people who are super excited about fire. And it's really easy to find people who are negative nancies who want nothing to do with it. But it isn't all that easy to find somebody who is super excited about it and also wants to make sure that everybody's doing it right. You know, hey, wait, let's make sure this all works. What about Joe is he's not even really trying to say everybody used to do it right. It's everybody needs to have a clear understanding and background and the capacity to manage their money for themselves with a high probability of success.

Because there is, hey, literally your portfolio could be best managed through your livestock port. Like that could be the biggest part of your portfolio. And that's a good financial plan for someone in a specific set of circumstances. Yours are going to be something, some distribution that's different than the norm. if you apply yourself to study and are honest with yourself and building your portfolio in a way that maximizes your strengths. Yep. And again, tagging off of that 4% rule, caution is his advice to be flexible.

There's so much rigidity, I feel, in the financial independence community. Oh, you have to do this. You don't. You need to make a plan and have some solid reasoning behind why you're zagging when everybody is zinging. But you be flexible in your plan. plan because life throws a lot of curveballs at you. Yeah. And one more point on that 4% rule, which I hashed out earlier in the show, but I want to

come back to again is that regardless of whether one study says it works, another study might say it doesn't work, there could be all these different flaws in it, whatever. It seems like it's a reasonably high probability way to go about it. But at the end of the day, what I see in the community, and again, this is a limited perspective from a poll and talking with people, though, is that whatever it is, it's not enough for people to mentally rely on as their total hurdle. People just aren't leaving their jobs, retiring and having wealth nowhere else but in index funds and a stock portfolio and living off the 4% rule. I'm just not coming across that at scale. There's a couple of individuals that I've

see that, but just for the majority of people in our community, it does not seem to be enough on its own to keep people happy. Well, not only is it not enough to keep people happy, but people who have gotten to that point aren't going to be happy just sitting back and resting on their laurels or resting on their 4% bank account or whatever, they're going to continue doing work. They're going to continue doing things that generates at least some income has been my experience. So the 4% rule is a really great goal. And I quote Joel from FI-180 all the time. What's the worst thing that could happen? If I go by the 4% rule, I run out of money. What's What's the worst that can happen?

I go back and get a job. My worst case scenario is everybody else's everyday life. I think that a lot of people use the 4% rule as an excuse. Like, oh, that'll never last. I'm just not going to do it. Well, okay, enjoy work until you're 90. You know, it doesn't have to be this, this like, excuse. Try it.

See if it works. If it doesn't work, pivot. Absolutely. Okay, Scott, this ran like, 17 hours. We should get out of here. Do you have anything else you'd like to say before we go? Nope, just that I love our new exit. I love our new exit too. This is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench. And this episode is over. Seriously, turn it off. It's over. We're done. Goodbye.