BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 44: DIY Your Way to FI with Tinian Crawford

Episode Date: October 29, 2018

Tinian Crawford went to college - and took 6 years to complete his Associates Degree in Graphic Design. College just wasn’t for him - he didn’t enjoy it and didn’t get much out of it. He knew he needed a job, but wasn’t sure what he wanted to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money Podcasts show number 44, where we interview Tinian Crawford from DIY to Phi. Yeah, and actually what I've started doing now, because that was always me. If I had money in my pocket, why not spend it? But now I keep a $20 bill in my wallet just because sometimes, you know, if I'm out on a job and I need to buy one little part that's 50 cents and I'm going to the local hardware store, they're not going to want to take a credit card for a 50 cent purchase. But having that money in my wallet, it's kind of turning into a fun game for me. like, how long can I keep this $20 bill in my wallet? It's time for a new American dream, one that doesn't involve working in a cubicle for 40 years,

barely scraping by. Whether you're looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have, or discover new paths for wealth creation, you're in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How's it going, everybody?

I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Ms. Minnie Jensen. How you do today, Mindy? Scott, it is another beautiful day in Paradise, just returned home from FinCon in Orlando. It was another great experience. I actually met a lot of listeners at FinCon this year. They had a community path option for listeners and blog readers to come in and kind of attend the conference as well. And I think it was pretty successful.

I think they're going to be doing that again next year. So that was a lot of fun to meet like the real people that listen. Not that other bloggers aren't real, you know, other podcasters aren't real. But you know what I mean, right? You know what I mean? Yeah. I know exactly what you mean. And I met a lot of folks at FinCon as well that listened to our show and enjoyed it.

And that was very flattering and humbling and wonderful to do that. So just going along that vein, like please reach out to us. If you listen to the show, don't be scared. We are normal people and are really grateful whatever we get feedback from you guys, the people that are listening to the show. And it reminds us just like why we're doing this and why the work that we're doing, you know, we feel as incredibly important is because it really does. help a lot of people change their perspective on money and finance and move their lives forward.

You said we're normal people. 50% of us are normal people. And I'm going to let you, the listener, decide which 50% that is. Ah, yes. How's everything going with you, Scott? Things are going good. My fitness is continuing to improve and working hard on that. And the year has been a pretty big one for me. So I'm feeling good. I'm feeling like life is coming together. I want to tell a little story from FinCon. Scott arrived a little bit later than I did. And we both live in the Denver area where it is something like zero percent humidity. It's very, very dry in the Denver area. And Scott arrived on what Thursday night and then Friday morning.

He went for a run and I didn't see him until Friday afternoon. I'm like, oh, how's it going? He's like, I went for a run this morning and I didn't stop sweating for four hours. I'm like, why would you go running outside? It's hot. It's so humid there. God bless every single one of you that lives in Orlando and or humidity and can, stomach it, but I have become quite the baby when it comes to humidity.

I don't know how many folks listening are runners, but when you're running, there's always a limiting factor. Sometimes it's like your foot hurts or your back hurts or whatever. But, you know, whenever I go to the East Coast or sea level, it's never my wind limiting factors, never my breath, my ability to breathe and all that kind of stuff because there's so much oxygen in the air. We live in Denver, mile high. So I always make a point to go for like a really intense run whenever I make it down out of state. So that's where that's where that came from. It's just like a particularly intense workout for me. Yes. Yeah. I was sweating profusely and I didn't run it all. Okay. Back to the business at hand.

I am super excited for this episode. I have been following Tidion as Captain DIY on Twitter for a while and he's really clever with his tweets, but also as a DIY girl myself, he's just got some really great tips too. And I enjoy following him and just reading what he's saying. I also loved chatting with him today because his story illustrates that the FI journey isn't like a one-size-fits-all. It isn't just for young people. Although he's not that old. He's only 36.

But still, he didn't start when he was 20. It's okay to make mistakes. Life isn't perfect. And you don't have to be perfect either. And your journey doesn't have to be smooth. You can cobble together a little bit of this and try that and see if this works too to make your journey work. for your specific situation.

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At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Liener Stronger for Fitness, the Anxious Generation for Parenting Perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for. mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible Originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Tinney and Crawford, Captain DIY, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

How you doing today? I'm doing wonderful. Thanks so much for having me. Well, thank you for making time for us. So why don't you walk us through where your journey with money begins? You are not FI yet. No. And you're more in the beginning of the journey.

Tell us, like what flipped the switch? How did you grow up? All of it. So my father was kind of a do-it-yourselfer. Yankee hippie. He and my mother bought a dilapidated old house in the middle of the woods and tore it down and built it up from scratch again. So that was kind of where that started. And then my childhood was spent building tree houses and goat barns and just helping out around the house. So I didn't really have much of a choice as a kid. I was, you know, I was on board. Well, here's a hammer. Let's get to

work. So I learned very quickly not to talk about being bored. What I never had was any financial language, experience, anything. I didn't think about money at all, except that it was something that I could get me stuff. You know, when I was in high school, money was a great way to get beer. And yeah, so I didn't really have much of a financial upbringing at all. I was not a natural saver or anything like that. I met my wife in high school, we're high school sweethearts. And she is a natural saver. She was that kid whose parents were asking her to borrow money to help pay the bills, because they came from very poor backgrounds. They didn't have a whole lot,

but she was just able to save everything. So having that influence has really been a major factor in my financial life because when she got pregnant with our son about nine years ago, she said, okay, we need to have $20,000 saved up by the time he's born. I had no concept of $20,000. I'm like, that's an astounding amount of money. That's not possible.

We can't do that. But we did it. And it's all because she had the wear. all and the financial skills to not spend all our money. Now, we didn't know what we were saving for necessarily. We just wanted to have a cushion. And it was all saved as cash. So where did she come up with this number of $20,000? I think it was just a number that she felt comfortable with. I don't think she had any real solid reason behind it. She just wanted a decent amount of money that would cover us in case of any emergencies, really. Okay. Well, let's take a quick step back here. So your

introduction to money is money can be used to purchase beer in high school. And then, you know, what happens after high school? What's your story looking like at that play? So when I graduated high school, I was in a band. I was living the band life. You know, we would go around and play some shows and make about $25 for a night's work to split up between the four of us. And, you know, I had jobs here and there. I worked as an ice cream scooper for a month.

I was a delivery driver for a chicken wing restaurant for a couple of years. years, which that was a lot of fun, but, you know, I went through like four cars in that period of time, so it was not really a viable option long term. I was also at this time going to community college here and there pursuing a graphic design associate's degree, mostly because that's just what you're supposed to do. You know, my mother had saved up in a 529 plan for me, so she had some money set aside for me to use for education. She's big on education. She started from absolutely nothing and worked her way up. I mean, I remember as a kid going to to school with her and playing underneath her desk

while she was taking her master's classes. She has since gone on to be a CFO and a major public health company in New York City. So education was a big thing for her. For me, not so much. So I did it just kind of to fulfill obligations, but I didn't really get anything out of it. I didn't really enjoy it.

Took me six years to get my associate's degree. And like I said, in the meantime, I was just kind of banging around odd jobs and eventually found my way into a job at a sign making shop. And that was kind of my, my first foray into the world of electrical, just because there's signs that are lit. And so I thought, well, hey, if this sign has electricity in it, maybe I could ask for more

than $13 an hour if I have an electrician's license because then I'd be worth more to the sign company. And that kind of started that path. Okay. I was going to say, you're an electrician. Why did you choose graphic design? I used to be a graphic designer too, but I fell into it. I didn't study it. It was like the best fluke ever. But why did you choose graphic design? Well, you know, I never felt like I was good at it either. I've always been told that I'm artistic. You know, I like to draw when I was a kid and I like to play music. And so, you know, people say, well, you know, you're very artistic. You should go into something that's artistic. And this seemed like the most artistic thing that had the potential to make money as well. And it was also offered at my local community college. So that's what I went with. You know, it was an easy choice. Okay. And how long did it take you to become an electrician? So once I kind of came up with the idea of becoming an electrician, I didn't really seriously entertain the idea, but my wife heard me talking about it. And the next thing I know, I start getting emails from these vocational schools.

Hey, do you want to be an electrician? I'm like, wow, where did that come from? So I went and checked out one of these programs. And, you know, I looked kind of neat. And it was a year-long program. And it gave you all the classroom hours that you need. And they would help you get a job in the field afterwards. and I thought, yeah, you know, why not?

I'm kind of in this dead end job right now. I'm not going anywhere. I might as well try something different. So I signed up for this program. It was probably the most expensive way to do it. It cost me $25,000 for the year. But that got me all of my classroom hours that are required for the licensure. And about halfway through it, I was actually able to get a job working for a local contractor.

So I would go to class from 730 to 1230 in the morning and then go to work for this contractor from 1 o'clock to 4.30 in the afternoon. And when you say you were an electrician, you mean like wiring houses and that kind of electrician? Or were you working as a sign installer? No, I quickly realized that that was kind of a fool's errand to try to bring that back into the sign business. Because, I mean, you're only going to make so much as an electrician in the sign

business because that's a pretty close niche. It makes much more sense to just be an electrician and wire houses and stuff like that. I mean, the side job potential is enormous. And there's tons of work out there for people who are looking for it. So it just made sense to stay in that field. So this seems like this is a turning point for you, right? What is your annual income look like in the years prior to making this switch? And what happens after you get become a licensed electrician?

Sure. Before all of this, I mean, I wasn't even looking at annual. My highest hourly wage was $13 an hour. And, you know, it took me three years. at the sign shop to work up to that. Now, when I started as an apprentice, because for an electrician program, you have to be an apprentice working under a licensed contractor for, it was 8,000 hours in the field. It's now 10,000. So it's maximum 2,000 per year. So right now, it would take five years to do your apprenticeship. When I started out, I was getting $750 an hour.

So my pay was cut in half, basically. That didn't last very long. And it was a couple weeks of that. He was kind of just feeling me out and see if I would actually show up to work the next day after they sent me down at these terrible basement holes and crawl spaces. And so once I kind of proved that I was willing to work, then my pay started going up a little bit. And it took me about four years, three and a half years to get back up to the $13 mark. And then once I had all my hours in and I passed the licensure test, I got my journeyman's electrician's license. My pay overnight went up to $20 an hour. And it's been going up fairly steadily since then.

almost six years ago to the day, actually, I started a job at the local university. And from there, now my salary last year was 52,000. Okay. What area of the world do you live in? I'm in Western Massachusetts. Okay. So you said that $25,000 for this course was the most expensive way to do it. Yeah. But it was also like a path. Yep. What are some other ways that you could get an electrician's license that aren't $25,000. Sure. So the best way, if you're young enough, you can go to vocational high school and get all your classroom work and a bunch of your field hours for free because it's public high school. I know a few people that have done that. And a younger brother of a good friend of mine

actually owns a plumbing company. He went to a vocational high school as a plumber. He got out of there and had his license within, I think, two years graduating high school. And he's crushing the game right now. He's making well into the six figures. And every once in a while, He'll, like recently last summer, he went out to Martha's Vineyard and spent the summer out there just doing plumbing work. He had a few connections out there. He was able to charge over twice what he charges in our area. And so he just spent the summer out there making tons of money, came back and is just continuing to crush the game at home. So that's that's a great option for people who are young enough to start at that point.

Now, there's other options for people who are past high school age because obviously most people that are getting into the financial independence world are past high school age. because, you know, that's when you start thinking about money for most people, I think. Yes. So another option that I looked into at the time was going through the local electricians union. They offered a schooling program that would be two nights a week after work. You would go to their classes. And you would do that. You'd work as an apprentice during the day.

So for the five years that you were an apprentice, you would be going to classes every night or two nights a week. And you would come out of that. You would get your license. You'd be done with your classroom hours. and they would charge $10,000 for that. But if you signed a contract saying that you would work for them for five years after you got your license, they would waive that $10,000 fee. So that would, in effect, be a free way to do it.

Now, the problem with that and the reason that I'm glad I didn't do it, now, of course, I didn't know this beforehand, but they do have a tendency to call on people when they need to work and then lay them off when they don't. And apprentices are usually the first to go when there's layoffs. and so I have heard of times where every apprentice electrician in the state was laid off. And of course, if you're laid off, you're not getting your hours, which is delaying the time that it takes you to get your license. There's pros and cons to all these options. And even another option is actually I was just talking to the son of my neighbor who was going to community college.

And he is taking electricians classes at the community college. And again, this is an evening setup. So he's able to work as an apprentice. He's taking these classes at the community college. And it's costing him $1,500 a year, and it takes him four years to do it. So total cost is $6,000. That's great. And he's working the whole time.

And there's a shortage of the trades. Yeah. In the housing market, 10 years ago, there was this huge crash and everybody left. Like the really, really, really great guys and girls stayed. But most of them left. They found other jobs. And they're not coming back to the housing market. So there's a huge shortage.

In the Denver area, there's a building company that will, actually take you from knowing nothing, put you through school, and teach you how to do this just so they have people. You have to work for them when you're done. But they give you free training because they can't find anybody to do the work. Absolutely. I don't want to turn this into, you know, welcome to electric school. But like that's a very valid way to journey down towards financial independence. You could like your plumber friend. I love that story too. He goes to the place where people have a lot of money. It's like, hey, I'll be here. The thing that I find and the thing that so many people find in the flipping world, the rehabbing, fix and flipping world, is that they can't get a contractor to call them back.

So going someplace, starting up a company, actually answering your phone, scheduling the jobs out, however far you're going to schedule them out, you could really start a great business just because you answered your phone. People might be like, oh, well, I can't wait two months. And then they'll call you back tomorrow. Nobody else answered their phone. I guess I'm going to get on your waiting list for the next two months. Absolutely. And that actually does happen to me. So I work as a W-2 job at this university, but I also have a business on the side as a sole proprietor electrician. And calling people back after they leave me a message, even if I'm telling them that I can't do the job, they say,

wow, thank you so much for calling me back. I've called six electricians. You're the first one to call me back. Put me on your list. Whenever you have time, I'd love to work with you. And yeah, like you said earlier, that's because the people in the trades are retiring out, the older, And nobody's going in there to fill the gap. It's been probably 30 or 40 years that there's kind of been this stigma attached to the trades where people say, well, that's okay as a fallback. But that's for people who aren't smart enough to get into college. And so, you know, they tell their kids that you need to go to college.

Don't think about the trades. You need to go to college and get a good job by going to college. So there's this huge shortage. And now companies, like you said, are coming up with these great benefits to bring people back into the trades. Well, one thing I want to ask real quick also is you said your salary was about 52K at the university. you're also getting lots of side gigs though as much as you want i presume right absolutely yeah my phone's been ringing off the hook for the last four months now how much do you estimate that that you could

reasonably bring in in a year with the side gig income on top of the salary so last year i grossed about 20,000 with the side jobs and i'm almost at that point right now this year and i have a bunch more jobs coming up so i'm i'm definitely going to be pushing the 25 to 30 mark now that's gross of course i'm spending a lot of money on materials and stuff like that but you know net is probably two-thirds of that. So it's a pretty good chunk of change. Yeah. So I think that's another big benefit of these types of skills that you can just apply them

in a variety of places as long as your employer is okay with that. If you want extra work or extra money, all that kind of stuff. Because there is such a huge demand for all this. Right. Absolutely. So let's go back to you had your first kit and you saved up 20 grand in nine months, right? What was your situation like at that point? What were you and your wife doing for?

work. So my wife is a social worker. She was working at a hospital. And at the point of my son's birth, I was still an apprentice electrician. So I had been for, let's see, I started the trade school when I was 26, somewhere around there. My son was born. I was 28. So I was still a couple years into my apprenticeship. I had a couple more years to go. So yeah, we weren't making a ton of money. But that whole process of saving up that 20,000 kind of changed our mindset around money. So we were, we didn't actually end up using that money for a very long time. And we kind of just hung on to it because we were so deep into this saving mindset. So what would you estimate your household income was that year?

I would say that our household income was probably around the 65 to 70 mark, maybe a little bit less than that. So this is a big chunk of money, a big percentage of your income that you're saving. Absolutely. In cash? Yeah, just in a bank account. I mean, we didn't know what to do with it. We didn't know anything about investing. So, I mean, you're not even using tax advantage stuff.

This is just cash that you're accumulated. So what was your lifestyle like at this point? Like, what were some of the things you were doing to cut back on this? How are you able to do that, the two of you? So a major part of it was we just stopped going out a lot. I mean, we were as a young couple with no kids, we would go out to dinner frequently. You know, we would just kind of the drop of a hat, go out, go see movies, do other stuff that spending money didn't matter. And I was always under the thought process that when you go to a restaurant, we're going out.

for a special night. Who cares what it costs? I just made $150 today at work so we can totally afford to spend $150 tonight because why wouldn't we? My wife meanwhile was looking at the menu and trying to order the cheapest thing. I'm like, ah, why not get the steak, you know? So yeah, cutting that out definitely changed quite a bit. And then we have cheaper cars. We ride them into the ground and doing this, this DIY stuff and kind of applying skills to my house to try to keep things up and running. And if we wanted to add on somewhere, I can build it, trying to build up a nursery and that kind of thing. And just being able to do all that kind of stuff definitely helps save a lot of money. Okay. So I presume this is the first major, large amount of money that you and your wife

accumulated, right? Absolutely. Yeah. Before that, the largest amount of money I had ever seen was $1,000. So what does your financial journey look like after that? So you're starting, things are start to come together. Your income is steadily growing. Your son is born. What does your financial position look like until you kind of get, it clicks in the last year or two? So we kind of just wrote on that. I mean, like I said, we had that money saved up and we didn't really touch it. But then we grew that a little bit over the next few years, but we didn't really have the same drive. If you have something to train for, you're going to train that much harder for it. And now that we didn't have something to train for, we weren't so focused on it.

working for this contractor, the benefits package were, it was decent, but it wasn't great. And so we weren't really comfortable having another child yet. But then I ended up getting this job at the university where I worked for the state. So I have a great benefits package. So now all of a sudden we could afford to have another child. So we did four years ago. We had a girl. And so now it was, you know, our expenses were a little bit higher. But we weren't really letting lifestyle creep get in the way. I mean, my wife has always been really good about keeping our lifestyle at the point that makes sense. We have always spent less than we make. Nice. So walk us through the transition point when you kind of got that goal back. How did your perspective of a financial change

in the last year or two? So by the time this airs would probably be about two years ago that my wife went out for a walk in February. She was trying out some new sneakers and she made it about 100 yards away from the house and she fell and hit her head really, really hard. I mean, straight from standing to her head on the ice, blacked out for a little while and called me up and was semi-coherent, didn't really know exactly where she was or what happened. And so it turns out that she just had a really severe concussion. So she was told that she had to rest, not go to work and not look at screens or read or think for like a month. So she had to do something. So what she found was podcasts. First one she found being financially minded as she is, she found mad fiantist. And she shared that

with me and I had this like mind-blowing I wouldn't say a moment it was kind of it doesn't see good for not thinking. No, exactly. She's not thinking but listening to one of the most dense podcasts there are, you know. So she introduced this to me and I was like, holy cow, you can you can not work. Like I was I was staring at 34 years at the university before I got a pension and I'm like, wow, I don't have to be here for 34 years is amazing. So I dove head first in the rabbit hole.

I found Choose FI. I found a whole bunch of other people eventually led me to you guys. And since then, we've been heavily focused on cost cutting. You know, we cut out the cable bill. We drive used vehicles. You know, they're reliable, but they're older and they're used. We save money wherever we can. My wife recently opened up a private practice as a therapist.

So she has that side hustle going on. And, you know, we've just been trying to be as conscious about our money usage and income as possible. So can you walk us through some, like maybe some, like what were you spending and earning in the period before this incident? And how did that change, you know, in the six months or year following it? Sure. So I don't actually know exact numbers off the top of my head, but I can say that we were earning as a family. We were probably in the 80 to 90 range, probably lower 80s mostly. That's including all of our side hustles.

And then we were probably spending, oh, I'd say at least 50. 55 to 60. And most of it was me not being conscious about my money usage. You know, it's, well, this thing's cool and I need to have that. So I'm going to buy it. And then once this happened, it kind of changed us around a little bit so that we started looking at where is our money going. You know, we never really had a budget. We never really focused on where our money was going. My wife always had a close eye on the credit cards and stuff. But I made a lot of money in cash, too. So it's easy to spend that without her knowing. I don't do that anymore, by the way.

Hi, honey. But it is, you know, you have 20 bucks in your pocket. What's 20 bucks? Absolutely. And especially, you know, when you're out in the field and it's cold and you want a hot lunch and it's $12 next door to get a hot lunch. Yeah, it's $12. Like, that's nothing. I make that in 45 minutes.

But, yeah, it adds up. Yeah, it does add up. But when it's in cash, so the thing that, the thing that I think of when you think of like the Dave Ramsey method, where you do the envelopes. You just put all your cash into these different envelopes. And oh, for groceries this month, I only have $200 or whatever. So when you're at the grocery store and you spend all this money, then you don't have any more. You have to do something else for groceries. I look at cash as like just kind of, you know, you can just spend it and you don't have to really account for it. That's my personal mindset and it's completely wrong. And I wish I could change it and I'm working really

hard on it. But I try not to have cash on me because it's so easy to spend. It's only a dollar. but only a dollar adds up really quickly. Yeah, and actually what I've started doing now, because that was always me. If I had money in my pocket, why not spend it? But now I keep a $20 bill in my wallet just because sometimes, you know, if I'm out on a job and I need to buy one little part that's 50 cents and I'm going to the local hardware store,

they're not going to want to take a credit card for a 50 cent purchase. But having that money in my wallet, it's kind of turning into a fun game for me. It's like, how long can I keep this $20 bill in my wallet? Do you put dates on it? I don't. I haven't thought of that. But yeah, that's a good idea. I think I'm going to do that.

Oh, I would totally do that. Okay. You said you went down the rabbit hole when you find FI. Did you do the thing where you cut out absolutely every single non-need and then like slowly add them back? I wanted to. My wife was a little bit more reluctant to go that crazy. I'm the type of guy that if I find something cool, I am whole hog into it and nothing

else matters for six months and then I forget about that and I move on to the next thing. So she is she's much more precise about how she does things that she's thinking, well, okay, we don't want to just go cold turkey and cut out every single thing. How about we start with the cable bill? You know, we'll get rid of cable. Then we can move on to really checking out our grocery budget. And so it's kind of been this step by step process of whittling things away. And we definitely still have room to grow, but it's just knowing and being thoughtful and

precise about how we're cutting it out. Yeah, and that's a very valid way to do it, too. For the record, everybody who goes whole hog and cuts out everything, after a month, they're like, well, that sucks. Let's add some of this stuff back in. I miss this and this and this. But you don't add everything back in because you discover that you don't miss the cable. And I'll just chime in that I think that this tendency of extremism, you know, seems to be

a men's thing. Like men tend to be the big spenders and then they go the whole hog on the other side and try to get everything minimum. And the women in the relationships tend, not always, but tend to be a little bit more moderate on both sides of those things. They're never like the big spender. And then they're, we don't want to cut all of this and go this extreme on the side of things. Right. It's an observation I've made over a number of a number of these conversations like Joel from FI180 was another example of this.

Oh, yeah. He bought everything. We just saw him over the weekend. We came back from FinCon. Oh, nice. He quit his job before he was completely totally financially. independent. He's like, well, what's the worst that can happen? I run out of money and I have to go back and get a job. My worst case scenario is everybody else's everyday life. When he said that to me,

the first time he said that in January, I'm like, oh, my God, yes, yes, yes. So many people are like, oh, I could never do that. Sure, you could. What's the worst thing that can happen? You could just go back and get another job. Right. Yeah, and that's kind of the argument I use for my coworkers, too, because I do talk about this with some of my coworkers. And I went to Campi South recently, and I didn't know what I was getting into. I've never been to one of these things. And, of course, they had no idea. And they're, you know, they're telling me, well, watch your wallet because they're going to

try to sell you time shares, you know. So I'm telling them about this whole FI thing. And my argument for them is, yeah, if it doesn't work, I'll go get a job and do what you guys are doing. It's not like it's that big of a gamble, really. Well, especially as an electrician in a field where literally all of your competition doesn't answer their phone. Right.

You could just answer the phone when it rings, and boom, you've got a job. I mean, you could quit your job today and hang out your shingle. I'm an electrician. $5 in Google ads in your area. I'm an electrician. I'm open for business. And you've got jobs for the next month. And tomorrow you'll have jobs for the month after that.

And the next day and the next day and the next day. People cannot find qualified electricians, qualified plumbers. And, you know, my father-in-law is an electrician. I do a lot of flipping. I do a lot of helping him with the, you know, pulling wires through. He puts everything through conduit, even though it's not code. He's like, it's my code. He was so mad when I questioned him.

But it's people are really scared of electric work. People are really scared to do this. What's the worst that can happen? you're probably not going to burn down your house. I mean, you would have to try and really, like, do it wrong. I'm not saying that you can't do it, but step number one, turn off the power. But try it out. If it doesn't work, okay, so now you've already removed the old fixture for the electrician

to come in and put the new fixture in. It's not that hard, but there is this real fear of plumbing and electricity. So you've got a built-in job forever. I mean, you can get to your half-fi mark and then just continue to work part-time. and take all these jobs that nobody else will answer the phone for. It's funny that you should say that today, because just today, my post that was published on my blog today

was all about the pros and cons of self-employment. And it's basically the battle that's going on in my head right now of do I stay with the W-2 job or do I go to self-employment? I mean, as a contractor, I can make more money per hour. Obviously, I don't have any benefits. I would have to pay for those out of pocket. So that cuts into that. And there's also the fact that I wouldn't have any,

paid vacation time or sick time or anything like that. If you're not working, you're not making money. So yeah, it's, it is this built in business that's staring me in the face, but it's also strictly trading time for money. And it's not a particularly easy business to scale, which is something that is kind of a con for me, because I'm looking now, being in the Phi mindset, I'm looking for a business that I can scale to the point where it becomes a little bit more passive. Owning an electrical contractor business is probably the least passive business. you can come up with. Oh, Contraire.

Remember how I said, if you answer your phone? All of your competition is not answering their phone. Find a couple of guys that you think do electricity really, really well. Once you find them, then all you have to do is answer your phone. That's pretty passive. You answer your phone. You schedule those guys. Yeah, yeah, absolutely.

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it? And what are you, what are your goals with, you know, while you're considering maybe moving into more self-employment based, you know, and thinking all through all the pros and cons of that, what are you doing currently with your savings rate and your money? So when we first heard about this, when we first dove into the rabbit hole, it was, okay, VTSAX, let's dump everything into VTSC. So we open up a Vanguard account and we dumped everything into VTSAX. From there, I discovered that I work for the state. So that gives me access to both a 403B and a 457 account. So last year, it was about halfway through last year that I discovered these accounts.

So I've been there for almost six years now, and I'm so kicking myself for this missed time. But last year, I was taking zero paychecks for the last half of the year because I was just putting everything into those accounts. I was maxing those out. We also recently started Roth IRAs, personal IRAs for both of us. and my wife has access to a 403B through our hospital, so we're doing those as well. Recently, we've been thinking more about dipping our toes in the rental real estate market. This is actually a place where Mindy to your point earlier that these skills can really come in handy

because I'm looking for a house that's scaring everybody away. You know, you hear about knob and tube wiring. This is a big scary thing and fuses and insurance companies don't like knob and tube and they don't like fuses. I love them because they scare everybody away and I know how to fix them. So I can buy a house that's really cheap and terrifying to most investors and I can throw a little bit of sweat equity into it and turn it around into something that's profitable. So now we're kind of thinking about trying to build up more of a cash reserve so we can put a decent down payment on something like that. Sorry, this is something that's just interesting to me. Can we dive into this

just for like two to three minutes here? What is knob and tube wiring and what's the problem with? So knob and tube wiring, they call it knob and tube because of the wiring mounting devices. So they're porcelain knobs that hold the wires onto the joists. It's old knob. They put the wire into a little notch and then they hammer it in. So that's the knob. When they drill a hole through a piece of wood, they put a sleeve, a porcelain sleeve in there, and they run the wire through that, and that's the tube.

So the problem with knob and tube wiring, there's two problems with it that the insurance companies don't like. Number one, it's not grounded. So for an electrical device, if there's a problem, is a fault. If it's grounded, it will trip the circuit breaker and it will shut off the power to that device. Problem solved, nobody gets hurt. You know, it might leave a black mark in your outlet or something. The device no longer works, but nobody dies. If it's not grounded and there's a fault, then that electricity, that potential doesn't go anywhere, it just sits there. You know, if your refrigerator has a problem in the motor and it's not in a grounded outlet and you go to touch the handle and you touch the outside of it and it's live, you get shocked. And hopefully not too bad, but it could be bad. And so getting rid of knob and tube and putting in a grounded system is a personal safety issue. And so the other reason insurance companies don't like it is because now people are getting into putting a lot of insulation in their houses and buttoning things up.

You know, these old houses, when they installed knob and tube wiring, they used air as an insulator. So there was no insulation in the walls. Knob and tube wiring is not rated to be in insulation. It's designed to be in ambient temperature because obviously, he's. heats up as the current goes through it. And so it needs that open air around it to cool down. Otherwise, it could overheat the wire. And then the insulation starts melting. And then you have bare wire.

And that could lead to fires. Okay. So in order to repair this, you basically have to tear this all out and replace it with a new sir. I don't know anything about this. So please, maybe you tell us how to repair it. Sure. Yeah.

Well, you got it right. I mean, basically the way to repair it is to just cut it out and rewire the house. there's not really any way around that. And how much would this cost in a typical like 700 square foot, you know, small, single family home? It probably, I mean, if you're wiring a house from scratch, depending on what area of the country you're in, I mean, it's probably a lot cheaper in Florida than it would be in Massachusetts, because Massachusetts is just insanely expensive to do anything. So if you're rewiring a house from scratch, if you are willing to take down all the sheetrock

and open up all the walls so that you have open walls, then you're probably looking at five to, $15,000. A lot of people are really scared of opening up their walls and says, no, no, I want to keep the walls closed. Well, now you're talking about trying to fish wires through the walls and run things where you can't get to them. And all of a sudden, you're looking at $20,000 to $30,000. So this is a $15,000 to $30,000 project that you can do for how much? Yeah, I mean, it's just material cost for me. So I could probably get something like that, like a 700 square foot single family home, I could probably get done for $2,000, maybe three. And this would take you a day or two of work?

Probably more like a week. A week of work. Yeah. So this is an immense advantage in terms of getting started in real estate investing, which is what you're saying. So you're looking for houses that have this problem and maybe very manageable amount of work in other areas that you feel comfortable in, but not really like a master in. Right, right.

Exactly. Basically, I just don't want a house that has foundation issues because I don't know how to do anything about that. And that sounds expensive and scary to me. So carpentry stuff, mild carpentry I can do plumbing. I know a guy. I don't really touch plumbing. So, yeah, basically anything that has electrical problems and mild carpentry issues,

I'm all over it. I was going to say, as a contractor, as somebody who does this stuff on the side, you probably have met a guy or a girl who can do plumbing and who can do framing and read like a good roofer. And as you are interacting with these other people, you're like, oh, this guy's always on time. always gets this stuff done. The electrical and the plumbing are done kind of at the same time because the walls are open.

You can't do the plumbing once you put the dry wall up. And I think it's funny that you said, you called it sheetrock. We call it dry wall out here. Maybe that's a northeastern. Maybe that's just me. It's so regional. Some people call it sheet rock. Some people call it drywall.

Well, so one of the benefits that I've found of working in this field, and it's not just electrical, but any trade, is that then you're working close with these other trade. and you're getting to know people. So if I need a plumber, I don't have to go in the yellow pages or to Angie's List and call up a stranger to come into my house. It might be happening while I'm at work,

so I'm letting this stranger into my house and then I'm leaving for work. And I'm hoping that they're not going to rob me blind or be weirdos. But if I'm working with these people, I know these people, I've worked with them many hours. I trust them fully.

So I'm not having strangers come into my house. I know exactly what a call. They're going to help me out if I'm in a bind because they know that when they need an electrician, they give me a call and I'm going to come help them out and I'm not a stranger. I love it. It seems like this is a huge competitive advantage for you in building wealth and something

you can leverage to great effect. I mean, that's 10 grand in a week at minimum for what you're talking about. If you can refile one of these properties that has exactly the problem that you're most happy and confident in solving, right? Right. So I guess my question then is, it sounds like this is something that's on your mind. Do you have any plans that you're working on right now to get going in this? How are you working towards this goal?

Yeah. So we are actively house hunting at this point. I think that's the term. I mean, I've been binging on Bigger Pockets podcasts recently to try to learn more about the rental aspect of it. And we're reading up everything that we can. We're trying to absorb everything we can. We have our eyes in the market. We're looking at anything on the MLS.

We're looking at foreclosures, pre-foreclosures. auctions, pretty much anything that we can find. It's not a great market where we are. We're in a little bit of a rural area. And the nearest big city that has deals is not a demographic I want to work with. It's just it's not a good city. There's there's too much crime down there that I don't want to own a property in it. So we're just looking around the area and seeing what we can find. And we're willing to wait for it. I mean, it's originally our plan was, let's just work on building a cash reserve so that next year we'll come at this with a real strong financial. position and we'll be able to say, you know, this house is $100,000, we'll offer you

$50,000 cash. See what they say, you know. And then if they say no, then fine, we're willing to walk away. Yeah, that's a good mindset to be and always be willing to walk away. I'm seeing an opportunity for you to go to like local meetups and connect with somebody who maybe has money, but no contractors or no connections like that, you know, just asking them, what's your biggest challenge? Well, I can't get anybody to call me back.

You'll hear that a lot. Just be prepared. Oh, well, what kind of person are you looking for? Oh, a plumber. Bob's a great plumber. Let me connect you. And then you start connecting people and they're like, oh, hey, you said you needed money. Let's go in on a deal together.

Or I see a lot of opportunities for this. Yeah, that's great. What else around your financial journey here? You talked about how you kind of got into your field here, how you saved us money, what you're kind of starting to do now, how you guys started, you know, going a little bit more aggressively. What else we need to cover before we move on to the famous four? So I know that, Mindy, you mentioned in an email a while back that you wanted to talk about child care. Yes. Yeah. So that's something that we've been kind of working on. It's, I wouldn't

say that we have a great solution, but we have a solution that's been working for us that we've kind of worked our way into over the years. And that is so my wife is running this private practice now. She still works at the hospital, but she only does that two days a week now. And so she's working evenings for herself. And so I work during the day and I work seven to three and I get home and then she goes off a couple nights a week to go see her clients. And actually, when the kids are in school, she's able to see some clients during the day as well, which is great. So we're lucky enough that our son is in school at this point. He's in third grade now.

So we don't have to worry about him for the day. Our daughter is in preschool. So we're paying for that. we're paying $5,500 a year or something like that. One of the things that we're using to help that is the dependent care assistance program, which is a fantastic way of getting tax-free dollars to pay for that. So I have money come out of my paycheck before taxes. And as long as I can provide the IRS with receipts that show that it's being used for

dependent care, doesn't have to just be a kid, be any dependent. Actually, I think you guys talked about this with Jamila. So, yeah, and that's a great way to cover the cost of that. but we also, I would call it in-law arbitrage. My in-laws live about 10 minutes away, and they have both recently retired. And so they are available to watch our kids if we need them, which has just been so helpful. And during the summer, they were actually watching the kids on Mondays and Thursdays when my wife was at work at the hospital. So between them and our rotating schedules, a little bit of passing ships in the night kind of a thing,

but we are able to reconnect near the end of the week. weekends and stuff like that. So with all of those different things, the different cogs in the wheel happening, we have managed to eliminate real child care expenses minus preschool. No, that's fantastic. Yeah, it makes perfect sense. Yeah, I like how you haven't just depended on one thing. You're like, oh, well, we can do this a little bit and this a little bit and this a little bit. And then, I mean, you could put them both in nine to five daycare all through the summer or you can have them connect with their grandparents. And it's nice to have this connection. I live so far away from my grandparents, I didn't really get to know them that well before they passed away. But,

I mean, having someone close is really, really nice. And not everybody has that, but the dependent care, is that only available to you because you work for the state? Or is that available for everybody? Do we have that, Scott? I don't know exactly. I think it depends on your employer. I don't think I have it just because I work for the state. It just so happens that my employer supplies it. And I think that there are many employers that do this. I don't know the exact specifics on it. Okay. No, I think that's great. I think that the pattern here when it comes to child care expenses and getting a really low cost for them, it seems always take advantage of whatever is unique to your situation. And there's a combination of flexible work schedules, high incomes can just pay. It makes more sense to just pay for the

child care if you have two high income earners that are working in-laws or family that's nearby and whatever else you can take advantage of. So, I mean, it sounds like, you've done a really good job of maximizing your situation to make sure that that's economical for you. Yeah, thanks. That's a great point, actually. It kind of pops into my head right away when I hear somebody talking about their situation and well, well, yeah, but that's you. That's not going to work for me. And that's a real limiting belief there. And obviously my story is my story. And not everybody is going to have their in-laws that live 10 minutes away and they're retired. And so not everybody's going to have these benefits that I have. But like you said, I have found what works for me personally.

and it just so happens that I was able to make this work, people out there listening that aren't going to have the same situation as me, they probably have something else that's out there that could work and they just haven't found it yet. Or maybe they have a totally different situation that they can find something creative that'll work for them. Yeah, it's all about getting rid of that limiting belief of, well, they can do it only because they have X, Y, Z going for them.

I don't have that, so I can't do it. Like, for example, like I live in Denver, Colorado. This is two and a half thousand miles away from where I grew up, where my parents are, and similar distance from where my girlfriend grew up, right? So we don't have family in Denver, Colorado. That is a choice that we made. And if kids come into the picture, that's where you pay for that choice, right? You live in an area that's nearby where your race parents live, right?

That's a choice. And there are tradeoffs that come along with all these things. And I think a lot of people who complain about high child care costs and can't do some of these things, just sometimes forget, hey, they made a choice for a bunch of reasons, wherever it is, to live in an area where these options are aren't available. And I think that you just have to say, hey, how am I going to make this work in a way that's really good for my kids? And in a way that also allows me to save. Right. I think it's Robert Kiyosaki who says, don't say I can't. Ask, how can I?

And I think he's talking about affording it because he wants you to be able to buy everything. Don't say I can't afford that. Ask how can I afford it. But that applies to everything. Don't say I can't have kids because I can't afford a child care or I can't do this because I can't afford child care. Ask how can I cobble together a system? You know, maybe somebody can watch them one day a week. I probably don't want to watch your kids five days a week.

There's no probably about it. I don't want to watch your kids five days a week. I also have a job. But even when I was a stay-at-home mom, I watched a friend's kid for one day a week on Thursday. I loved Thursday morning because Davis was coming over. And I loved Friday morning because there was no baby in the house. So, you know, it was a big favor for her. It was super fun for me because I didn't want to have another baby.

But I wanted to, you know, sometimes you like to play with babies. Sure, and especially when they're not yours. Exactly. Okay. It's now time for the famous four questions. These are the same four questions and a command that we ask of all of our guests. The first question is, what is your favorite finance book? So I, being fairly new to the finance world, have not really read a whole lot of finance books,

but the book that I'm thinking of in this case, and it actually applies to every aspect of life is the power of habit by Charles Duhigg. Ooh. It's just a fantastic book. I read it fairly recently. And it's all about just ways to change your habits to your benefit. it. So what he's saying is there's three parts that have it. There's the cue, there's the routine, and there's the reward. You know, the cue is about 930 comes along and you're feeling, oh, boy,

I'm a little bit bored and you go and you get a cookie. And that's your routine. And then a reward is, well, now I feel good because I did something different for a little bit. And so he suggests just changing the routine. Use the same cue, use the same reward, just change the routine a little bit. So I think that can really be applied to financial things, especially for people who like to impulse buy, you There's a cue. You see something cool. Oh, I want to buy it. Your routine is to buy it.

The reward is you get this shiny new thing. And so, you know, you can use that cue. Ooh, there's something cool. Change the routine instead of buying something, make something similar or find some other way of fulfilling that and have a reward of, well, now I have this cool new thing except I made it instead of bought it or whatever. That's an awesome, awesome tip. And I love that book.

I'm so glad you said that. Because, yeah, it's not a finance book, but it's a finance book. Absolutely. I love it. What was your biggest money mistake? I have a couple. So I went to community college, even though there was a 529 with my name in it, I didn't end up spending much of that because community college is so cheap. So I had a bunch of money left in that afterwards, and I wanted to buy a truck.

And this was before kids. And so my mother just said, well, you know, it's your money if you want to be stupid. with it, you go for it. So I spent that money on a truck. So of course, I paid the penalty on it because it wasn't education. And it was like $15,000 or something. I ended up spending it all on a $10,000 Toyota Tacoma. And that truck ended up not really working out too well as a two-seater once we had a baby. It also had some engine issues. It was a bit of a lemon. So that was a pretty good mistake. And then also probably four or five years ago, my wife and I decided we were going to go with a financial advisor. So we're members of a local credit union. They have a financial advisor there.

And we thought, boy, we have this money. We need to do something with it. We've heard about investing. Let's do that. And so we talked to the guy and we said, you know, we want to invest our money. And he said, great, do you want to do socially conscious or non-socially conscious? Well, let's do socially conscious because, I mean, I don't want blood diamonds on my hand. Okay, fine, no problem. So he put our money into this account. I'm not even sure what it was. And we watched our money shrink while everybody else's was growing. Because, of course, he's taking out whatever it was every quarter.

It was like $100 a quarter or something ridiculous. And it wasn't going anywhere. I don't know what he put our money into, but it wasn't working out. So finally, about three years later, we ended up taking our money out. We had put $50,000 in. We ended up taking out about $40,000 because we lost money over the course of the three years. And that we haven't looked back since. I mean, if we had just managed it,

the money knowing what we know now, that would have been double what it was. So I'm not saying all financial advisors are bad. Just that one was. It sounds like the mistake was also like just blindly like you're abdicating the money. That's exactly what the mistake was. We did not do any research. We just said here, you're the expert. You handle our money. So the mistake was entirely on us. Yeah. You just didn't understand anything that was going on with the money and trusted somebody to just do it. And I think that's the lesson is like you can't hire a contractor. If you don't, to fix knob and tube wiring, if you don't even have the faintest clue what knob and tube wiring is and why it's bad. Exactly.

Exactly. That leaves you open for trouble. Yep. Oh, I'm sorry that that happened. That's very terrible. It was a very good learning experience. It is. And, you know, you lament the fact that you lost the 10,000.

You don't know for sure that you would have doubled it. Maybe you would have invested in whatever Chinese orange juice companies got invested in and also lost it all. But, yeah, when in debt. out, go with an index fund. This is not financial advice. Please consult your local blogger, whatever. You know what? Go back to episode 41 with Kyle Mast and listen to all of his recommendations, which were all fantastic. Okay. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Yeah. So I think this works for financial things as well as like DIY or career skills or anything like that. Just recognize that skill collections compound and that your confidence and skill level,

we'll take the same hockey stick trajectories of long-term investments. You know, you're not going to learn how to build a house in a day. You know, first you learn how to hammer a nail into a board without hitting your thumb. That's one skill. You know, and then from there, you learn how to make that board stand up straight by hammering it into some other boards. And then from there, you learn how to build a wall. And then from there, you learn how to build a house. So it takes time to learn these things.

You can't expect everything to happen all at once. And recognizing that, I think, is a great way to avoid burnout. That's brilliant. Yeah, I like that advice. I like that advice a lot. Skill compounding. Exactly. All right.

Last and most difficult question. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? My wife told me I was not allowed to say this joke on the air, so I'm going to sell a different joke. And this is one that I actually just saw on a whiteboard outside of students' room in the college. I thought it was great. What did the bra say to the hat? You go on ahead. I'll give these to a lift.

Nice. Yeah, I've got a kick out of that one. I'm going to be telling that one at a few parties, for sure. That is perfect. That's funny. Okay, tell me where people can find more about you, Scott. It's a demand. Or if I was asking, where can people find out more about you?

So I blog at DIY2.5.com. That's DIY the number two, fI.com. And then I'm also fairly active on Twitter. Twitter at DIY Captain. I am also just learning how to use Instagram, also at DIY Captain. All of these links to all of Tinian's website and social media and all of that can be found in the show notes for this show at biggerpockets.com slash money show 44. That's biggerpockets.com slash money show 44. Awesome. Well, Tinian, thank you so much for taking time out of your day to talk to us. This was super fun. I really appreciate

your time. Oh, thank you so much for having me. It's been a great time. This is awesome. Okay, well, we will see you later. Okay, that was a super fun episode. 10,000 apologies for electrically geeking out with Tinian and the whole DIY thing. I just really like talking about that. Scott, what did you think of the show? Well, I also like kicking out about that. I think it's, what it shows is that you shouldn't be scared of any of these things. They're all surmountable problems with the correct trading and expertise. And if you're going to do what he described as like compound in skill stacking. I'm butchering this quote that he just had. But yeah, I love that concept of just like continuing to get like a little better each day. And it's just a rewarding,

compounding experience that leads up to something really powerful. I think that Tinian's also a great example because, you know, a lot of listeners for our show that typically have an upper middle in class job or something similar and have for a long time. I think Tinian is really inspiring because he actually did not come from that background and was able to build that up bit by bit through a trade, which I think just shows like a phenomenal work ethic and how you can do this without having a college degree or like a traditional corporate skill set to kind of get into this self-employment and wealth-building mode. Yes.

And he does have a college degree. He did get his two-year degree in just six short years. But, you know, that was because he wasn't really focused. It wasn't his passion. Don't try to put your square peg into a round hole. If you don't want to go to college, maybe it's not the right choice for you. And that's okay. that doesn't make you a bad person.

It means you can also make 90, 100K plus in a few years without going to college if you do one of these trades. Yeah, and here's a tip. If you're just starting out in the trades, answer your phone. Or if you can't get to your phone, call them back because you will have your jobs set out for as long as you want to do that. Or recognize that being one of these trades means that you're so successful and have so much business that you just can't even pick up the phone. So you're like, oh, we're like, oh, this is bad business because the contractors ever call you back. Well, they probably just have so much other good business that they're just like, I don't even want to deal with the phone. I'll fix that problem when my six-month backlog gets to two weeks.

Yeah, you know what? I have a friend who's a plumber and he said exactly that. I don't even answer the phone. Some of these jobs are just so small for them. It takes time for them to drive out and, you know, change your faucet and then leave and drive to the next job where they could be at a space where they're putting in, they're plumbing the whole house. That's more of a job. That's more money. And, you know, these little jobs, they're not that hard to do. Watch 27 YouTube videos. And you're going to see the exact same thing over and over again. And you'll be able to do it yourself. They have this new thing called a shark bite

fitting where, you know, sharks teeth are like backwards so you can't get out of their mouth when they bite you. And that's the same with the shark bite fitting. And I'm butchering the whole description. But it's super easy. You just go like this and it's stuck. You don't have to like tighten it or sweat the copper, any of that business. So you can do your own plumbing, your little jobs. And again, I'm geeking out and I'm sorry. We should leave. Oh, no. I think it's great. And I love talking about this stuff. And I think that there's a huge case to be made for DIY work, especially in the early parts of your journey to financial independence. You know, if you're making $500,000 a year and have a $5 million portfolio already, maybe you shouldn't be DIYing

or electrical or plumbing or even looking into it. Right. But, But if you're trying to save your first 50K, you know, this can be some really good stuff to look into and really kind of do a accurate assessment of the cost benefit on all this kind of stuff. Like how hard is it to learn? You know, is that time invested going to pay off? And the answer is probably that it's going to pay off. And they're just starting outside of things. And then at certain points, various tasks begin not being appropriate over time for DIY.

Yes. And just even knowing how it's done down the road, you can speak more intelligently about your problem. And you can gauge if the person you're thinking of hiring actually knows what they're talking about. Yes. Huge advantage. Huge advantage to just even knowing how things are done. We did not get to the part. If you want to ask him a question about how to get started on a DIY project, you can email Tinian at Tinian Crawford.

at gmail.com. And that's T-I-N-I-N-Crofford at gmail.com. And we'll have that in the show notes as well. He's very enthusiastic about talking about this kind of stuff, and I'm sure would be happy to chat about it. Yes. And the show notes for this show can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 44. All right, Scott, shall we get out of here? Let's get out of here. Okay. From episode 44 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench saying goodbye, good luck, and for our British friends, Tootel Pipp.