BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 59: Playing with FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) with Scott Rieckens

Episode Date: February 11, 2019

Scott Rieckens was raised in a Navy family. He lived on base and often shopped in the commissary. It gave him a rather skewed sense of what things actually cost. Fast-forward to adulthood. He knew he should be investing, but he wasn’t sure what to... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

This is the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 59, where we interview Scott Rickens from playing with fire. I just thought, let's focus on happiness because I don't think my wife and I are very far off as far as what our real goals are and what our happiness list is. Let's start focusing on that instead of saying, hey, you got to stop spending money because that's not fun. 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 are you doing today, Mindy? Scott, I am doing fantastic. I am super excited to listen to another Scott. It was nice to be one third of the show that isn't Scott on today's episode. I'm really excited to hear Scott's story. And I'm excited to share it with everybody because, as you said, just a moment ago, his story is so great because it isn't exceptional. And that doesn't mean that it's boring. That means that it's relatable. It isn't some random thing that he like won the lottery in order to get to where he's at. He did what everybody else has done. Stop spending so much money. Start saving more money. And look, you can watch your savings grow. You can literally.

literally watch your net worth get better and better and bigger and bigger simply by doing these same things that are relatable and repeatable that Scott shares in this episode today. Yeah, I mean, I love just how DP goes into his mindset and how his living paycheck to paycheck lifestyle on two, you know, median salaries was frustrating for him. And he felt like he wasn't getting ahead or getting along in life. And then just how he nurtures his passion for Fai once he discovers it and how he brings along his family and how they kind of assess all the option. I mean, it's just a fantastic story for anyone looking to make a change that maybe needs to get a spouse on board or needs to kind of weigh and figure out all of the soft and hard costs of

aggressively pursuing this thing we call fire. Yeah, this is an excellent episode for anybody who, like you said, needs to bring their spouse on board. This is a very common question that I get over and over through emails and in the first. forums on Bigger Pockets.com slash forums if you have a question, is how do I get my spouse on board with investing in real estate or how do I get my spouse on board with pursuing the financial independence lifestyle? Scott gives really great ideas and ideas isn't the right word. His story is a perfect way to introduce this to your spouse. And he takes it and instead of framing

this in a confrontational manner, he frames it more as a question. with his spouse, what is it that you went out of life? And if you're having struggles with convincing your spouse to even just look at this idea, this episode is one that you need to listen to and one that you need to listen to with your spouse. Yeah. And what's shaping up to be, we think is going to be an awesome, awesome documentary called Playing With Fire that will be released to think to the preliminary audience a few weeks after this show, our episode of the podcast here is released.

and then look forward sometime in early March. It's playing with fire. Yeah, that's going to be a really awesome show. I would like to, can I point out that my husband's in there? I don't know how much of the actual movie he gets into. But in one of the trailers that I saw, I did see the side of his head. Yeah, he's famous now. He's going to be famous.

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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. Scott Rickens from Playing with Fire Documentary. Welcome to the Bigger Puggets Money podcast. I'm so excited to have you on the show today. Yeah, thank you guys.

I'm so happy to be here. I am an avid listener of this show, and I'm not just saying that. really love your show and all the guests that you have on. It's like hanging out with my friends. So thank you. I love hearing that. Thank you for listening. Okay, we could just sit here and thank each other forever. But let's not do that because that's not exciting for anybody but me. Why don't you walk us through where your journey with money begins? Yeah. So I had an interesting upbringing. I was raised in a Navy family. I'm a Navy brat. And so I grew up on primarily on

military bases. And what's interesting about that is everything's a little bit cheaper. You know, the government subsidizes the Navy Exchange and the commissary, which is our grocery store, and the Navy Exchange is our mall. And so I grew up in kind of exotic areas. I was in Hawaii, I was in Puerto Rico. I was in Washington, D.C., Virginia Beach, San Diego. Those last couple weren't very exotic, but you get the gist. And sometimes, like specifically in Puerto Rico, primarily I was in my teenage years and I was really like the memory was starting to take hold and I was starting to notice things and you know apply things and that's where the lessons were coming in. That was kind of an isolated area. We didn't leave the base very often. And when we did,

because I was young, I didn't, I couldn't drive or anything like that. And so we would just kind of stay on base. And so that was like the beginning of me understanding money and starting to earn money. I used to go off the back deck of our house, which was on the east shore of Puerto Rico, and go spearfishing for lobster because our neighbors would have a lot of people coming in to visit because they were, ooh, they were in Puerto Rico and you have a place to stay. And they would hit up me and say, hey, Scott, I need four lobster tails for tomorrow's dinner. And I would charge 10 bucks a tail. And I'd go out.

I knew all the little spots and I'd go snorkeling and go spearfishing for lobster. So that's like how I first started making money. So I was thinking about this the other day. I realized that no wonder I've always chosen jobs that were fun because I could never go back from that, snorkeling for money. So I set a dangerous precedent early, early on. But I also realized that by living on these military bases, I had sort of a warped view of what things costs.

And then from there, we moved to a small town in Iowa. and again, the cost of living was cheap. And so it just like the cost of living in general has always been a bit warped for me. And then I met my wife, you know, I got into my earning years. I met my wife and we ended up down in San Diego. And I think that whole upbringing and that lack of awareness with cost of living really sort of supported this lifestyle that my wife and I started going down. And I'll get into why hers did the same in a different way. But, in my case, it was, let's go move wherever we want. If we want, you know, we would go on vacation and we'd hang out of this place. We'd go, oh, I just want to live here. And then we'd go,

well, why don't we? And that's actually what brought us to San Diego was we wanted a place that had a healthy economy and a place where we could really earn good money and have opportunities. But we also wanted this sort of vacation lifestyle. And after doing some research, we found that a little island called Coronado off the coasts of downtown skyscape of San Diego was perfect. It's close to this major metropolitan city and it's still an island vacation home. And it happened to be a place that my dad worked way back in the day with the Navy. So it's kind of always been a second home. So we just said, sure, let's do it.

And the reason why Taylor felt that way is because she grew up in a little bubble herself, where she grew up on this little island community outside of Seattle. and, you know, just never really had to pay attention to money. Her family wasn't wealthy beyond belief or anything. They got there really early to this little island community when there weren't a lot of people there and they ate, you know, cans of beans to be able to afford this little lake home. That's what they tell us anyway.

But she never was in want of anything. And I think between the two of us, we both came to this head of, let's just do what we want. It'll work out, you know? And that's what got us the same. Diego. So fast forward six years, we moved here at the very bottom of the market in 2011, 2012, when everything was kind of at its bottom as far as real estate goes. And rent had taken that huge hit. And it was starting to, you know, it was just at the bottom. And so cost of living

when we got here wasn't insane yet. But fast forward six years, and this city has absolutely exploded. You know, we've come out of that recession. And the lifestyle creep had continued. The cost of living was increasing. And I had up until that point, always brushed aside the idea of personal finance or learning about investments as that's a whole master's degree in and of itself. There's a magealian books out there about it. I don't know which one to read. I tried rich dad, poor dad. I didn't seem to get too much out of that. And I felt like I basically was making big excuses on not investing my time into fixing this problem that I was feeling. and seeing, but really feeling, which was, we're never really getting ahead.

And so my money journey up to reaching the point where I learned about FI, I think I've covered that pretty well. And I was driving to work one day, still feeling that stress and anxiety and lack of knowledge, which turned into like guilt and like, you know, self-loathing and all kinds of interesting, terrible things. And I was listening to a Tim Ferriss podcast because I was hooked on podcasts that were talking about startup culture or how to accelerate or optimize because I was trying to come up with a million dollar idea as my way of fixing this issue. Instead of looking at our savings rates, I was looking at how much more I could earn to fix the problem. And I was driving to work and I heard Mr. Money Mustache come on the Tim Ferriss podcast. And I was looking at

And it's about a 15-minute drive to work and about 15 minutes into the podcast. I pulled over, found an excuse to be late to work and listened to the whole thing. And that's where I found Fai. So that's awesome. By the way, that's a great podcast that everyone should go check out. It's Tim Ferriss and Mr. Money Mustache. Can we going back a second? Can you give us a little bit of a picture about the nuts and bolts of your financial situation

over this six-year period? Were you earning a relatively high income, a relatively low income? Were you accumulating? did you accumulate consumer debt? What did that kind of look like? Yeah, so my wife and I never accumulated consumer debt. We were very, very fortunate. Our parents had instilled one very important rule into our brains, which was always be able to pay off your credit card, use them sparingly, and don't get into that kind of trouble. But I did have student loan debt. Taylor had a little bit when I met her, but she paid that off pretty quickly. She had some scholarships and did really well on

paying those down and was, she's very astute at those times. types of things, just generally keeping the house in order. And for me, I had racked up quite a bit more student loans because I didn't have the scholarship. So I had about $36,000 in student loans coming out of college. And up until about two years ago, I was still paying those down because I only paid the minimums, the entire lifespan of that loan until the last payment. And so that was sort of like between that, car loans or lease payments and we never had a mortgage. So it was just car loans, student loans, and then like a perpetual credit card monthly payment. That was our debt story. So we were very fortunate on that front. We never got ourselves into any significant

debt to have to crawl out of. That said, we were always living primarily paycheck to paycheck. We did a couple of set it and forget it things really early on where we knew that 401ks were something you should do. Now is the extent of our knowledge. You should do that. Okay. Did you do that? So we did that and we would set that up. So that was something that we were growing our net worth to some extent early on from the start of our careers. And I think in the last five years or so before finding FI, we had opened Roth IRAs and started to try to max those out when we had the money to, which was rare. I think one year we did.

And so, yes, we were definitely starting to fund our retirement accounts lightly. but other than that, we were living paycheck to paycheck. So we were finding ways to spend the rest of our money in lavish and exciting ways for a good, solid decade together. Well, and it's always easy to find a way to spend that money. I mean, there's always something you could buy. So what was your income? Do you remember what your actual income was?

What was your savings rate? You said that you knew the 401K was something you should do. Were you doing the bare minimum to get the company match or not even that or you were funding it completely? Yeah, so my wife was funding her 401K to the max because there was a company match. And I have never actually had the ability to do a 401K. So it was always tailored doing the 401K because I've been an entrepreneur for about eight years. And when I found five, about six years.

And so I never set up a solo 401K or a IRA or any of those options. And so, yeah, so she would always fund those. And I know the numbers in 2016, we made a company. combined $142,000. And we spent $132,000 of that. And that does include us putting money into that 401k. But that worked out, I believe, to about an 8% savings rate. And that was a good year. You know, that was like a fantastic, 2016 was like our peak earning year at that time. So right out of college, I made $28,000 a year. I think my wife was a little bit higher than that. And then we progressively stepped up over the years.

You know, we would move around and figure something out or get a promotion or whatever. And so we were always growing our earning potential. But yeah, so it accumulated to about 142 in 2016. So you're in this position and you discover this Mr. Money Mustache podcast with Tim Ferriss. What is it about that situation that was so revealing to you or eye-opening? You know, you're saying that this life, you were feeling like you were getting stuck or not going anywhere in your life. And I don't know. I'll let you take it from there. You're going to get what I'm asking.

I think I do. I think I do. And that's going to put a nice bow on this. So, you know, if you hear that story, you hear, well, Scott, you didn't get into incredible consumer debt. And you guys did save 8% in 2016. Like, these aren't terrible situations. But what was happening was it was this constant force of opposition where, you know, kind of the dark side. It was like the death star was always just looming in the background where the cost of living was continuing to rise. around here. And we had talked about never having a mortgage a little earlier. San Diego, the real estate prices here of just completely skyrocketed to astronomical numbers. And there are still areas where there are homes in the five, six hundred thousand range. But typically those areas are, you know, not the nicest neighborhoods. And in 2015, in late 2015, we had our first child.

And so that was becoming increasingly important to myself and my wife that, you know, that we live in a neighborhood that feels safe. And we've got school coming up, you know, on the horizon. We needed a, we like the idea of having a solid public school system. Because if you go private here, that's another salary we'd have to go find. And so this is what I'm saying is that it wasn't so much that we were in these dire straits and then I found this, you know, this thing that just became this huge epiphany. And then I took a hard 180. And yet it was because we were looking out into the distance. And I was saying, this is. isn't sustainable. We're living an unsustainable lifestyle. The only way that this gets better is

if I earn significantly more. And for me, the reason why I pulled over to the side of road is because I didn't feel like I had any more to give. I felt like every day I was getting up. I was going straight to Starbucks and picking up, you know, high-octane grande cold brew and a sandwich so that by the time I got to work, I was already fueled up and ready to go so that I could get a solid eight to 10, 11 hours in, before I headed home. And by the way, work had cold brew on tap, which I continued to sip through the day. And so I was just constantly wired to try to just do the best job that I possibly could and then get home and hopefully have a couple hours max with my new baby, my wife, our friends, all the things that, you know, you try to fit in. And then it's rinse and repeat. And oh, man. And then, you know, by the time he gets to the

weekend, you don't feel like doing anything. And so for me, when I was hearing his depiction of his own life, where he's casually getting up and hanging out, maybe he's, you know, going and doing this or that and like hanging out with friends, a lot of community involved in his conversation. And I thought, man, that is what I'm looking for. I missed the days when somebody just knock on the door to see if you were home. You know, that wasn't happening where we, where we are. It's a big city and everybody's so busy. And we were so busy that we weren't inviting that sort of community. in. And so I think in some ways I had felt like that sort of childish wonder and that childish optimism that I think a lot of us start out with. I felt like that had slowly been shipped away with,

you know, with all these obligations and burdens and this nine to five thing. And it's not that I don't like to work. I love working and I love the creative process. And I actually really liked my job. It was just the earning that I had to do to meet the demands of our our lifestyle that I wasn't even sure I liked, you know, because I just never felt right. And so that's where the epiphanies were happening for me. It was really less about the numbers, more about the emotion of it. Yeah. And it sounds, it sounds also that like when you could talk, use the word unsustainable as one of the key words I kind of picked up on of how you were feeling about your life. And it seems like basically what I'm gathering is you were optimized to the full extent on the

income side. You know, there wasn't really, you were already working 11 hours a day and giving it your complete best efforts. So it's like, how do I actually earn more money? That seems very difficult from where you were sitting originally. You know, you're not a business owner. You know, it sounds like at the time. So how do you earn way more money? I don't know, you know, but that's where maybe Mr. Money Mustache kind of came in and said, hey, here's a part of your piece of the puzzle to the financial equation that is completely under your control that you can kind of go after and fix. Yeah, I suddenly realized that that savings rate was the million dollar idea that by hitting that savings rate as hard as I could. And that was the one thing

I could control. I didn't need to listen to another Tim Ferriss podcast. I could just go and dive into this whole fire lifestyle and see what they have to say about cutting our expenses and how this whole thing worked and how on earth are you retiring at 30? And that was fascinating to me. And so I stayed up till 4 a.m. sometimes. I had to hit the cold brew a little harder, but it was worth it. You know, everything takes effort. You still have to work at it. And so I was working at this new thing. But oh my gosh, I mean, the floodgates opened. It was like, I was so excited. And yeah, so that was the beginning of our personal finance journey, our money story, really was hearing that podcast and then immediately diving in. And then I really respond to Pete's writing. I get his sort of joky,

sort of irony style. And also he's just an incredible writer. And so it was really enjoyable to just really dive in. And I felt like he was sort of spoon-feeding me, all these things I should have been learning my whole life in nice little compact blog posts. And I got so hooked on it that I was looking for other material that he was, you know, participating in. As a video producer and a content producer, you know, I explore all kinds of mediums. So it was podcasts, it was blogs. It was, you know, what's on YouTube? And I was finding these little bits and pieces. And that led me to Brandon over the mad scientist and Paula Pant and all these amazing people within the fire community. And then he's giving suggestions on books. And I don't think I had read a book for five years.

And then all of a sudden I'm reading J.L. Collins's A Simple Path to Wealth and freezing through it because it's such an easy read and thinking, well, that's the only investment book I'm going to need. I'm just going to have to go pay that forward. But when I got to the YouTube and realized that there wasn't a whole lot to check out and going on the financial independence, subreddit and there was actually a thread like what are some good personal finance documentaries and everybody's like there really aren't that many minimalism is kind of close and I was like hmm this is what I do hmm this would be a really cool way to get to know these people because I'm sitting over here listening to all this stuff and consuming this and going I want to be friends with all these people they sound amazing how do you do that you know I remember the first idea I had was at one point in time Pete had mentioned in a blog post that he liked San Diego and I thought I could offer my

place to him. And then I came into Taylor and I was, I was like, I found this guy online and I think it's really cool. And I was thinking maybe like we could invite him down and the week ago get a hotel locally and then, you know, let him stay in our place. And she's looking at me like, this is a terrible idea. You're going to freak him out before you start. And I'm like, yeah, you're probably right. Oh, gosh. Maybe I'll just make a documentary about it. Maybe that'll get it. Careful what you wish for. Well, let's dive into this. So, I mean, it sounds like this sparked the idea and you immediately died, then it consumed lots of content on the subject and completely immersed yourself in it. What actions did that look like when it comes to actually taking control of your personal finances?

Did you start tracking them? Did you start, did you put a spreadsheet together, use mint? Did you make any changes in the expense side? What did that look like? Yeah. So for me, I'm not an Excel spreadsheet guy. I'm not a math guy. That's not how the brain works for me. I'm on the creative side over here. And so hitting the easy button is the best way to get started for me on this front. So I went straight to mint. And I had already been feeling this for years. So I had a mint account set up.

But it did me no good because I never had a long-term goal associated with why we were creating what we considered at the time. Pure and utter deprivation. What do you mean I can't go to sushi dinner? What are you talking about? What do you mean we can't go to this vacation? Now, let's just keep doing that. we'll figure out another way. We had this like lottery mentality, things would work out. And so I, I went back to the easy button on Mint and really just started formalizing Mint a little bit.

I got in there and really made sure that the expenses were being pointed to the right topics or trends. And I remember thinking, you know, this feels like a very overwhelming task. How far back do you go? And there's a lot of data here. And I'm not a data guy. And so I thought, let me just give it a three-month homeover. I just went through and filtered three months worth. And I thought, that'll give us a decent picture. And that's something I recommend to anyone if you're just getting started is get on Mint, hit the easy button, find a good, solid financial tracker like Mint. There's a couple others out there. But I think that's one of the easiest. And just give yourself three months, you know. And I'm actually doing this with my parents right now, kind of holding my mom

accountable and she doesn't like it. And it's been an interesting little ride. But just go back three months. It makes it easy and it makes it something that you'll actually do. And when I got in there, I saw things I didn't like and that happens, you know? And so I was kind of on that journey on my own. I hadn't really brought

Taylor into this fold quite yet. I had started to pass some links to her and I would email her some things and particularly Mr. Money Mustache blog posts and a couple of podcasts. And, you know, I would ask her about it kind of casually afterward.

you know, because I was nervous. I was nervous to bring this stuff up to her. I wasn't the only one spending money in the house. And, you know, and we had had somewhat of a contentious relationship with money up until that point. There was nothing like broken, but we also weren't working on it in any way, shape, or form. And there is definitely plenty of times where I could recall some kind of argument or fight happening, not knowing how to process or deal with those things, not even sure what my stance on the argument was, and then we'd just kind of rush it under the rug because that felt a little bit better, and we didn't want to be fighting with each other. I had no incentivization to bring it up to her yet. I wasn't prepared. And I kind of, I think I was lucky in that I was, air quotes,

I was savvy enough to see that up front, that this was a big idea. And I had a feeling that this was my ticket out of here to move. That was something I'd been feeling like I'd wanted to do it for a long time. So I took it slow. And so that was my first action item was get on Mint, go back three months, check out what's going on there, lick your wounds, get over it. You know, like this is your reality. Did you share this spreadsheet or this spending tracker with your wife? Did you show her what you had been spending and, hey, let's go look at this and see how this works? No, I didn't.

I didn't bring that up right away. I like I said I was you know send her some links I was kind of you know dabbling in that and she wasn't really responding to it and so I was just thinking how on earth am I going to do that and I remember running down the boardwalk and I was listening to podcasts as I love doing and I remember hearing on the math scientist he was talking about how his he was talking about the relationship with his wife and how he and Jill had gone back and forth she knew that he was into this stuff she wasn't really into it he never really like demanded that. that she'd come into the fold, somehow come around, and she had written him a letter on his computer. And it was this beautiful, heartfelt letter about how she, like, suddenly had this emotional connection in an epiphany to why this was so important to him. And she sort of was, like, inviting him to let her come on board

and to start this with him. And I remember just like, oh, man, that was a big one for me. I was, like, really into that episode. And I loved it. And I took a lot from that, which was, okay, this is something that, isn't necessarily immediately apparent to everyone, which was actually something Taylor said to me later on, which was like, well, if this is so amazing like this, like, why isn't everybody doing this?

You know? And so that's, I think that was what was kind of in her head. So, so I got really lucky one night. I just had this idea, you know, let's just write down a list of things to make us happy. And let's start with happiness. I had just gotten done reading happiness is the only logical pursuit, which is, I think, my favorite blog posts by Mr. Money Mustache of all time. And I just thought, let's focus on happiness because I don't think my wife and I are very far off as far as what our real goals are and what our happiness list is. Let's start focusing on that instead of saying, hey, you got to stop spending money because that's not fun.

And here's the other thing. My wife, she works really, really hard. And she's really worked hard to get to where she is. And so to tell her that she can't spend money anymore, it's kind of like, I didn't even feel right about that. I don't think that's how you should go about talking about money is saying like, okay, this is the thing we need to do. Let's rah, rah around this thing that we need to do. And it's like, well, no, you're telling someone how to live. And then you're suggesting that you cut back. And cutting back isn't fun until it is. And that's a journey to get to that point, right?

And so luckily, I was smart enough to say, let's just write a list of the top 10 things that make us happy on a weekly basis. And that's what she did. She, in fact, I suggested that to her, and it just happened to be on an afternoon or an evening when we didn't have a lot going on. I ran up and took a shower and I came back down and she had done the list. She'd already written this thing. I was like, oh, okay. That's great. I don't even have one yet. So I'm a processor. You know, that's a vastly humongous question. So I had to like take a couple days. And then, you know, we went to a park or something and just kind of sat down and just kind of reviewed it. And so my wife's list was very simple. It was, you know, have coffee with my husband and cuddle with my baby and read her

book to go to sleep and have dinner with the family. And I really like coffee and I really like chocolate and I really like wine. And it was like and go for walks, you know, so it was like exercise, family, community, friends, and wine and chocolate, you know, pretty much. And I said, look, you know, the only things that I see that cost money on this list are wine and chocolate. And I think that's really interesting. And the other thing that's not on this list is the beach. And we are spending astronomical amount of money to live next to this beach. So how important is it?

It doesn't even cut the top 10. And that was the first time that I started framing what would inevitably be my pitch to how we would approach this. So I love that you reframe the discussion. And I think this is really important because this is a question that I get a lot in emails from people who are listening to the show. Even on the Bigger Pockets forums, how do I convince my spouse? And sorry, ladies, but it is typically a man asking this question. How do I convince my wife to come on board? And I really like how you reframed this whole discussion from confrontational.

You have to stop spending money. Well, who wants to hear that? Nobody wants to hear that. They want that to be their idea. And if you're telling me to stop spending money, you're not the boss of me. I'm just going to go spend more. So I really like how you changed it from this confrontational demand to more. to more of a questioning, hey, what does your ideal day look like? You said you were working

eight, 10, 11 hours a day. Were you working like 50, 60 hours a week and how much time was your wife spending at work before this whole thing? Yeah, I mean, so we were both probably burning the midnight oil about that much. Yeah, I would say, I would say 50 hours was probably an average, you know, and that would fluctuate quite a bit. Being in video production, you know, you have sort of your normal eight to five or you're kind of getting stuff prepped and you're doing sales and you're meeting clients and your pitching ideas and all this stuff. And then when you get into production itself, that can sometimes be a one or two day blitz or a two week blitz. And you might be in town and it might be kind of an easy day or you might be on the road. And you're actually

putting in, you know, 15, 16 hour days. You're getting the most out of that day going to sleep and getting right back on the train. Not to mention travel, not to mention lugging around, you know, 12 Pelican cases that are 60 pounds a piece. And sometimes we'd be in like rural Alabama or something and it'd be like 110 degrees and humid. And, oh, man, it was, it was, it's a young man's game. And, uh, and I was getting a little older and feeling it a bit. And so Taylor, on the other hand, she's in recruiting and she's a commissioned salesperson. So it never ends, right? You just have to keep picking up the phone. You can't just rest on your laurels with that type of job. And so I think, yeah, we were both feeling pretty tapped on that front.

So we heard it was on Taylor your wife's list. What was on your list? Yeah. So I remember when I heard her list, I just thought like, God, you know, like I knew I loved you, but like this is a beautiful reminder because my list was so similar. There were some man stuff on it, you know, like going fishing and and, you know, playing competitive sports and, you know, stuff like that. But I mean, it was pretty much the same thing, you know, exercise, family, having nice coffee,

having a couple beers, like, you know, just real simple stuff. And outdoors was really a focus for me. And so it was very in line. And that makes sense. We got together in the first place. You know, we had similar interests and similar values and really similar goals, but we hadn't spent a lot of time really focusing on that stuff. You know, it's like you fall in love and then you get together and then kind of day-to-day goes by.

And the next thing you know, it's 10 years later and you have kids and you have jobs and you're trying to make it all work. and it's insanely hard, especially with kids. My goodness, that's a whole other ballgame, you know. And so we were fresh into that, already feeling a bit strapped. Then we had add the kid, and it's a whole other, you know, just animal, literally. You've got an animal in your house. What am I going to do with this animal? Once you kind of compared these lists, did that help you get on the same page with

pursuing the goal? Like, what did that conversation look like once you had it? Yeah. It was the beginning of all. discussions with this stuff. And I remember about a week after that discussion, well, in that discussion, I very candidly, you know, pointed out there at the beach isn't on the list. I want you to strongly consider living around here. And I think up until that point, Taylor's idea was we're staying in Coronado. We're never leaving. This is my forever home. And after that discussion,

she was open to, you know, going on Zillow and checking out various neighborhoods in the San Diego area, which was a huge win for me. Because up to that point, we weren't leaving. We weren't leaving this island. And this island is like getting to the point where a lot with a tear down home that you literally cannot live in, maybe condemned, is $7,800, 900,000, you know. And that was at that time. I think it's even worse now.

And that's, and those prices are in like this one corridor where the traffic is insane. And every single day, military traffic's coming on and off the island. And like, there's no quality of life in that little corridor. So the odds of us being able to. afford a place was low. And if we were to afford it, it would be, you know, it would be the money pit. It would just be like we would be working to live. And so thank God, that was the start of that to say, okay, maybe we can go off the island. Maybe we can go across the bridge and take a look at some other stuff. In the meantime, I was trying to find material media that really I thought

might resonate with Taylor because what I had sent her up to that point hadn't really quite hit her. She didn't really respond to Pete's sort of abrasive, joky kind of style. because she felt a bit judged. You know, she hadn't come through that journey that I had already. And I might have a little more callous on me than, uh, than she did on that front. And so that just didn't resonate with her. And I was like, well, why not? You know, and now it makes sense. And, uh, and a few others just didn't quite hit. And it wasn't until I found, uh, it was the episode, the Pillars of Fye, uh, on Choose FI with Brad and Jonathan. I sent that to her. And she was driving up to LA for work. And like once she got up there, she sent me a whole list of notes. She called me and was like,

I get it. This is amazing. I can't believe. You know, that's when she said, why isn't everyone doing this? And I was like, oh, oh, we got something here. Okay. And from there, I sat back for about a couple weeks, maybe a month and let her kind of go on her own journey. I would continue to share stuff that I found inspirational. She took a deep dive and found her own stuff, her own voices. And we took a little pause. together and I didn't want to push anything because I knew this was going to be this was going to be a full on reset and those those should not be approached lightly. So that's yeah, that's how we kind of got started after that list. So how long after you asked her to make that list did she discover the Choose Fy episode? I would say that was that was within a couple of weeks. It was really

right off the bat. It was like once the list happened, everything started to kind of fall into place. Once she heard that episode, then it was, okay, I felt comfortable sharing mint. Now we can talk about what's really happening here and starting to share those ideas and go, let's talk about this together. Can we make it work here together? And then it's not me saying it doesn't work. It's us coming to the realization together that it's going to be a hard life. It's going to be a long, long working life to stay here.

And then we started looking outside of Coronado in other areas because, you know, we were thinking about buying a home. I had done a lot of research on the real estate side. I was very, very interested in getting into real estate. Had been for many years, never felt like it was possible. Now at least I felt like it was possible because we could explore a place in San Diego. And that was a very painful journey. You know, Taylor was still breastfeeding, which is a whole career in and of itself. She was still working her career. She was stressed. And also in going around and looking at real estate, she doesn't really want to leave the island yet, but she likes the idea of retiring early. And she ended up getting shingles. And you can get that from stress. That can present itself from sheer and utter stress. So we hit a stress point that was really high, really early. For me, that was an indication that, A, we needed to be more careful, pull back, let's stop this whole real estate hunt. That's not important right now. But it's also an indication of, I don't think this is working because we weren't finding things that we were happy with on the other side of the bridge, you know, because the cost of living here is still high.

The price of homes are still high. And the lower the price, the worse the neighborhood is, as is all real estate. So it was getting to the point, I think, where she had to kind of, you know, hit rock bottom to be open to a new way of life. And what we had realized was that the top three right, house, cars, food, they were the problem, you know, and we couldn't just move down the street to fix the house issue. Because we lived over here on this island, we needed two cars, and then food prices, just going to Vons or what would be the equivalent of a Safeway or a Hy-Vee or wherever you are in the country, you know, the big supermarket, was still really expensive. And we were trying to wean off of a pretty expensive restaurant habit.

And so those were the three big things. So we started with food, and that felt pretty easy. And suddenly we had a little bit of a win. Okay, we have stopped eating out. Okay, I'm starting to make breakfast burritos in bulk and taking them to work. That's saving me a ton of money because now I'm not spending six bucks a morning on a sandwich at Starbucks. And that was something I realized suddenly was that we needed some wins. We needed some validation that we could do this and that it would work.

And so that was like the beginning was, okay, we've got this under control. We're actually saving us, you know, six, seven, eight hundred bucks a month just by making these small changes. That's going to make a big difference because now we finally had this calculator we could put it through, which was, what's that going to equate in 10 years? You know, if we take that same amount of money and we invest it and then it grows, what's that really mean to us? We had never put money through that kind of a filter.

It had always been, can we afford that thing? Do you have the money? It's in the bank? Yes, you can. Right on. That was our life. And now it was, can you afford that thing? Well, it's not about what you can afford.

It's do you want to give up that freedom on the back end? You know, how much further away will you be from that goal that really is the carrot. I mean, the thing about fire that I love the absolute most is there's no better pitch. there's no better pitch. It's like, would you like to get rich and gain all of your freedom back and be happier and less stressed? Yeah? Oh, okay. Well, here's a thing. I don't think you can beat that. So yeah, that was our first win and that's when we started looking at. I think my wife started becoming more open to, okay, well, if we move to a place where you don't need the cars and remember walking and exercise and stuff, we're on the happiness list, oh, maybe we could.

can downsize, maybe we can design our life where we only need one car. Or at the very least, let's get cheaper cars. My wife was leasing a brand new BMW. I was leasing a brand new Mazda, which I thought was super frugal and awesome. We were financially illiterate and we had a lot of undoing to do. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I, I like Monarch. It helps you see exactly where your money is going and more importantly where your tax refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually

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How did you resolve the housing and transportation sides of the category? We were we were bike riding to Jovey's first swim lessons. And I had started to dabble in the idea of turning what would eventually be a move away from California altogether into an adventure. And I had started to cede that idea in Taylor's mind. And she wasn't having it. She wasn't interested. But I kept doing it because I knew at the very least the one hook could be adventure because she is adventurous and she likes those types of ideas. And I kept seeding that.

And I just thought, you know, I don't know if that's working. And we're riding our bike. And it's like 10.30 in the morning in Coronado, 72 and sunny. It's the most beautiful day. We're going by the marina over to the public pool. It is like the most epic public pool ever to bring our daughter to her first swim lessons, which is kind of an iconic moment in your life. And I'm on a high.

I mean, I'm on a life high. And I thought, I don't really want to leave here either. This is so wonderful. You know what? Maybe she's right. Maybe we can figure this out a different way. Maybe we can hit our savings rate real high, but just know that housing's going to be tough. And maybe I can still find that million dollar idea for earning.

This is going through my head. And Taylor is in front of me. And she goes, you know what we should do? We should get an RV and we should just drive around the country. And that would be really fun. What? Huh? I couldn't believe it.

It was like, I'm almost to the point where I'm about to give up. And then she comes through. Oh my God. So that afternoon, I am not making this up. There was an RV show at Qualcomm Stadium where the Chargers used to play in the parking lot. And I said, great, let's go have some fun. So we went and we looked at it. We shopped RVs and stuff.

And I'm on this huge high. And well, pretty soon we realized we didn't want to live with a toddler in an RV. And that would be a bad idea. But that opened up. The first spreadsheet I ever created was I created a budget for six months to go around the country and to check out these various cities that I had already done a ton of research on that had lower cost of living and all these different tax structures and all on the West Coast with a sizable airport next to it and a good population.

All these things I wanted. I thought, oh, it's finally time to learn a little spreadsheeting. And I did that. And I got in there. I got my hands dirty and I created a budget with the RV and without the RV. And it actually worked out to be fairly similar. If we could get decent rent prices and just drive ourselves or fly ourselves, it wasn't that much of a cost savings.

In your head, you think, oh, if you get an RV and travel around in it, then you're, you know, you're avoiding rent. But it didn't really shake out to be that. And I think the happiness factor was also something to be very aware of is living in an RV you with a toddler may not, that might be a little too extreme when you're already trying to shift your life around completely. Living in an RV sounds great when you're not living in an RV. My parents live in an RV and it's real small when there's more than zero people inside. And I know that I am going to get a ton of emails from people. I live in an RV and I think it's

awesome. Good for you. I'm not moving in with you. But you know what? If you want to live in an RV and that's what you want to do. That's, that's what makes personal finance so awesome. It's personal. I am not ever going to live in an RV, but, you know, I can see the appeal. You keep saying here on the island, do you still live there? Where do you live now? No. So I had that list and I showed Taylor this budget and I realized with that budget, I actually put it against our current spending. And I had never done that. I hadn't even like set up like, oh, I just knew that if we live, in a different place that we would save money. I hadn't actually done the numbers on what kind of impact it could make. And by her turning around and saying, maybe an RV, and I fell off my bike,

and then going through that, having that budget, I suddenly realized if we go on an adventure for a year and I quit my job, okay, and I can freelance, because I know a lot of people in this industry and I can pick up an odd job here and there, and you can continue to work because Taylor does work remote and we always knew we had that option, if we did this, we would save, I think it was something like $60,000 over the course of a year. And then I started plugging that into the retirement calculator. And that's without it. That's like me freelancing. That was me taking like half time off, you know, like I only have to earn half of what I'm earning now. I think I can do that. And it was such an epiphany of like, we are spending so much money. And if we just recalculate,

this life, we can start enjoying it so much more, work so much less, spend so much more time together, even going on the road, which kind of sounds like an undertaking. It actually ended up being the catalyst. It was a convenient catalyst to say, let's just pull the rip cord. Like really, you know, we're driving 80 miles on the freeway, pull the rip cord, and let the parachute just take you out of that car off that freeway and somewhere else. And that's what we did. And so, um, once we kind of came to that decision together, it was like, I couldn't believe it. And I'm a very impatient person.

When I have a good idea that I want to see come to fruition, I want to see it come to fruition. I already know what it's going to look like. Let's get there. And so, you know, this was, we made this decision in May. And I remember Taylor said, well, when do you think we would move? And I was like, June? I'm ready. Let's go.

She was like, you are on crack. That's not a good. good idea. Come on now. Come back down to reality. And she said, let's do December. And I thought, I can't live with that. I just no way, no how. I'll go nuts. It's like, you know, putting a rat in a cage kind of thing. And so we settled right, you know, kind of right in the middle. It said August. August 1. And that ended up being the right move. Thank you, Taylor. And so we started getting our house in order and figuring out how we were going to do this and putting the plans in place. And then we wanted to go check out these various cities. And we had

boiled it down to Boise, Idaho, Spokane, Washington, Reno, Nevada, Ben to Oregon, and I always forget the last one. I think the last one was sort of rotating. We were just kind of like, ooh, maybe this or maybe that or maybe this. It ended up coming down to those poor places, and we started going around. We'd already lived in Reno, so we kind of knew what that was about, which was just why it was on the list. But our adventurous souls just didn't, we didn't want to go back to a place we'd already been.

We wanted to a fresh start. We went to Spokane, Washington, and it's a great place, and it was definitely contending. Boise, we never ended up making it to Boise because on our journey up up the coast, we stopped in Bend, Oregon. And within an hour of arriving, and on the way in, it's already just, you're going, what is this place? Something magical and weird and awesome about this place. And then you roll in and you see Mount Bachelor and the three sisters and broken top, and they're all like snow covered on the tops, but you're in like high desert, 75 degrees. There's, craft breweries on every corner.

There's people walking around with kids. And it was like, where are we? And we walked through what's called Drake Park next to the Deschutes River, which is this beautiful river that's super fresh water that runs right through the middle of the town. And it was like, I don't really want to go anywhere else. But there's no coffee or wine next. Yeah, I know, right? And so we're like, well, we got to go.

See you later. It's not going to work. Scott, that was the first epiphany that we had when we got there was Taylor realized that there was life outside of Cornell, that there were other places that had walkability and casual lifestyles and a good feeling when you were there. And that was, thank God we hit that first. We didn't have to go through, you know, this pain of,

oh, we don't like this for this reason or that for that. And getting all picky and weird about it. It's just like we fell in love with this place right away. It made that journey that much easier. And Bend is less expensive than San Diego. Absolutely. Yes. unequivocally. Yeah. So I want to stop here and make a point because I have never lived in a house. I've

actually, the house I've been in now, I've lived there for five and a half years. But before this house, I've never lived in a house for more than five years. And I probably have a skewed view of moving because I'm not an army brat or a Navy brat. I'm a corporate brat. We just moved around a lot. And I think a lot of people have this upheaval sense that, you know, oh, I'm leaving everything I learned, everything I know. It's okay. There's. There's airports that will take you back to where you grew up. And there's the internet. It's this new thing where you can do Skype calls.

And you can still stay in touch with people, even though you don't live next door. And frankly, how often are you seeing those people that you live next door to when you're working 80 hours a week trying to afford the house that you can barely afford? Because it's so expensive. I mean, it's what do we say on the real estate podcast, Scott, within a two hour drive of any major metropolitan? metropolitan area in America, there is a more affordable place. I mean, what's a two-hour drive? If you could live within two hours of San Diego and still see all your family, and it doesn't sound like your family actually lives there anyway. It's just a nice place to be. You can still go visit San Diego. They have airports there too. That's right. That's right. We weren't literally

leaving our friends behind. And we didn't see them that often anyway, which sucked. I mean, we would have loved to. But even if we freed up our time, they'd still be running around as busy as they are. And that's the other thing about a place like San Diego, too, is there's actually so much to do. There's so much going on at all times in these major metropolitan areas. Whereas what we did is we designed it where we wanted to find a place between 100 and 250,000 in population. Because oftentimes in that type of setup, you've got enough people where there's a lot going on, or I shouldn't say a lot, but enough going on that you feel like there's a nice variety and you're getting some culture and some arts and some of that fun stuff. But it's small enough

where it still feels like you know your neighbors and there's a sense of community and people look out for each other. And what's really great about it is oftentimes there's one obvious event that's happening in a smaller town that everybody wants to go to instead of a place like a major metropolitan city where there's 15,000 things

that you totally want to go see, which also is a problem because now which thing should I go to? Not to mention, are our friends even interested in coming because they've already got plans to go to this other thing? And it's just like, it's a fundamental shift in the way we live by just, yeah, making a small choice. And by the way, I must caveat this because I've gotten in trouble with this before. We could have found a place outside of San Diego that we could have lived that would have saved

us money. And it is possible to live a fire lifestyle in a high-cost living area or in the surrounding areas of a high-cost living area. I know that. But as you said earlier, the Phi journey is all relative to each individual and it's flexible. And so this is my story, what I'm talking about. This is all relative to what we wanted, what our goals were, what our tastes are, you know, what is important to us, what our happiness list was. And in that context, we made the choice to leave.

So I just want to, I just want to throw that in as a caveat, not getting too much trouble over here. I think it's a great point. I think it's a great story. And this move has resulted in you being able to accumulate more assets and build that net worth and move towards financial independence. Yeah, here's a secret that my director from the film would be upset if I told you. We have effectively doubled our net worth in a little less than two years. There you go. I mean, we're on a fast track.

And it's been hard. You know, it really has. There's been a lot of struggles. There's been some pain. We didn't get it all right every time. But anything worth doing, you know, it's going to have some obstacles. it's going to have some pain, it's going to have some learning, you're going to have failure to succeed. Those things are going to happen.

But I can tell you unequivocally that none of it was scary enough not to start 100%. And we ultimately don't regret a thing. I mean, there's definitely things we would have done differently. There's different choices we would have made. But if we hadn't made those bad choices, then we wouldn't grow from them and we wouldn't be getting better at this. Well, let's, let's, you mentioned it. Let's talk about it. What is this film for people who don't know?

Oh, that thing? This little thing. Yeah, that little thing. It's called Playing with Fire. It is a full-feature-length documentary that we made that covers one family's journey on a path to Phi, which happens to be us. And we also get to go out and meet many of the influencers in the Firespace. I like to call them friends in the firespace.

and meet the community that makes up this wonderful framework, whatever this is, a movement, a framework, an idea. The coolest thing about this and why I think it was important to make something now is that it feels like it's at a tipping point. It feels like it's starting to become part of the zeitgeist. We're still naming it. We're still figuring out what this thing is. And that makes it interesting.

It's fluid. It's volatile. It doesn't always make sense. There's all kinds of stuff going on. And that makes first. a really interesting story. So we tried to get out and meet as many of the folks that we possibly could who would give us access, the kind of access necessary to tell a compelling and entertaining story, so that not only can we try to dispel the myths of the fire movement, you know, you hear

this stuff all the time with, you know, you get the Susie Ormond's of the world and whatnot, and I hate even mentioning her, because that was probably part of her goal in that. But you just see a lot of articles, a lot of naysaying, a lot of, oh, well, if you retire too early, blah, blah. We kind of address all those things. And the idea was if we can share this framework in this world with as many people as possible, then we can at least do our part to sort of pay it forward. One, two, we can really liberate people who are feeling the same struggles that Taylor and I were. And then three, we can have something for this amazing community that hopefully they can use as a calling card, and they can use to point to and say, see, we're not crazy. This is what we're doing. It makes

now, right? Like, it's not about spreadsheets. This is about happiness. This is about time. This is about freedom. So that's what we set out to do. And we are, we are so, so close. I am actually talking to you today from Coronado, believe it or not. And I'm getting in a car and driving up to L.A. tonight to meet up with the editing team and Travis, the director. And we're going to work on the final finishing touches. And we're hoping to picture lock in the next couple days. So we are getting very, very close, very close. Nice. So if I'm listening to the show and I'm anxiously anticipating it, you know, do you have any type of semblance of a time when I might be ready to check my calendar

and mark it off? Yeah. Yeah. We are, we're gunning for some time in March. We are hoping that first and foremost, there was an amazing Kickstarter campaign that we ran and we had an overwhelming amount of people come in and support that. And so I think there's about 800 that backed at the level that gets the movie early. And we're hoping to deliver that by mid to late February. So we are within about a month of, you know, that link going out to those folks. After that, there'll be about a month or so in between. And we're thinking mid-March to late March, we will be of 2019.

We will be getting it out into theaters and putting on some sort of screening tour and kind of rallying the troops and making it a number. event and making it fun. But our hope is to release it theatrically through a, it's a theater crowdsourcing platform called Tug. And essentially, if you want to see the film come to your town, you can become an admin. And we can help support the marketing of that. And they can also maybe hit up all their friends and get some word of mouth marketing going. And if they meet a minimum threshold of tickets, then the theater will open its doors to that group and play the movie. So it's a really cool way for us to not have to, you know, have million dollar Hollywood budgets to open

it up to thousands of theaters and instead let the people who want to see it bring it to their town. And that way, you know, we're being a bit democratic about it. And that's, that's the U.S. distribution plan as it stands today early on. In the meantime, there's some interesting little tidbits there. We submitted it to Hot Docs, which is a crazy name for a film festival. But apparently it's like the world's foremost documentary film festival up in Toronto. So if that happens, the way film festivals work is they have people who are buying stuff and looking for movies to put on their platforms. So that could be an interesting twist to get it on Netflix early or Amazon or, you know,

one of those types of platforms. And then eventually, no doubt about it, we'll have it on iTunes and Vimeo as what they call video on demand. So we can at least get it out to any country around the world that has that ability to get on those platforms. And then, you know, at that point, then we'll start looking at international if we need to. But as you can hear, one thing leads another thing, at least another. And we're not just, we're not quite sure how the dominoes will fall.

So we're sort of ready for any sort of way that it goes. But our ultimate goal is just to get this thing in this front of as many eyeballs as we possibly can after we pay for it. We just need to pay for it heavily. Love it. Just need to pay for the darn thing. Love it. Pay off the movie and then get it and then help change his many. lives as possible and make sure if they're aware of financial freedom and a way to do it.

Exactly. Yep. Awesome. And I'd be remiss if I didn't say that we had the opportunity to write a book about this story as well, which I didn't see coming, but as a journalism major, I was pretty excited about. What do you have there? Is this a copy of the book? No, I didn't.

Well, maybe. Played with fire by Scott Rickens. Wow, that's you. So tell me about the book. So the book is just a little more in-depth. look because when you make a movie, you know, the analogy I like to make is, you know, we'll go and sit down with our favorite human beings, these influencers that have changed our lives. And we'll have these two hour long epic conversations. And like five minutes of that will get in the film. You know, you really have to break it down to try to fit as much of that story as you can. And so with the book, we had a little bit more of an opportunity to get in more depth into Taylor and I's story, into these influencers and how they influenced us. And we tried to write what my editor called like a financial memoir, essentially. It's more of an emotional journey than a how-to of what it feels like to go through this. So for anyone who's nervous to get started or doesn't know how to get started or sort of, you know, has heard of fire or

heard of personal finance, but doesn't really know how to begin. The idea was that we can get them sort of emotionally ready and maybe inspired on that front and give them some framework on who they should be paying attention to and how we did that and like how we put that into sort of an action plan without getting into too much detail. So it's a beginner's guide. The beginner's guide to playing with fire. And where can I get this besides already in my hands? It's on Amazon. It's in Barnes & Noble, Hudson books, a lot of those types of places. The audiobook will be hitting the internet's any minute now. It says it's pending in the back end. So I'm waiting for that to hit. And I had the fortunate ability to work with Pete, Mr. Money Mustache, on the forward of the book.

which is so beautifully written. We almost just scrapped with the whole book and just printed that. And I talk about a humbling moment. And he actually just sent me his audio version of the foreword. So I'll be uploading that to the audiobook. So you can hear it straight from the man himself. Oh, that's awesome. Love it.

Okay. Well, Scott, this was fabulous. I'm so excited to hear your story. And I'm so excited to share with people because, you know, I really love how you got your wife on board. and I love how you just changed your whole mindset and it wasn't like this huge mountain to climb. Like, hey, I was not making massive mistakes,

but I certainly wasn't, you know, furthering myself down the path. And then I changed it up and now I'm here. I've doubled my net worth in two years. That's pretty amazing. Thank you so much for taking the time to share your story with us. And now we're not done yet. It is time for the famous four questions.

These are the same four questions that we ask all of our. our guests plus a demand at the end. Are you ready? I'm ready, I think. What is your favorite finance book? My favorite finance book, because I'm only through two chapters of Set for Life by Scott Trench.

This amazing book. What a great audio book. The narrator just has such a smooth and wonderful intuition. It's a fabulous, fabulous book. He lulls you into inspiration in ways in ways unprecedented or set for life.

you know, excluded the simple path to wealth by J.L. Collins, first of all, if I didn't say that book, he would have me for breakfast. It's like he would really, I would hear about it. For anyone who knows him, I say that lovingly. And also because that really is a book I wish I had found so, so much earlier on in my life's journey. And I think it's one of the easiest reads to quickly understand how the markets work and gives a really good pitch for how to passively invest your money in the stock market. So I highly, highly, highly recommend that book as most people in the fire community do, and is my favorite. And I'll chime in that the narrator of that book, Mr. Collins, actually does have that smooth intonation voice that's very incredible to. So definitely consider checking that book out on

Audible if you are thinking about reading it. Yes, if you're going to consume that information, having Jim read it to you is the best way to consume that. You know his voice. He was on episode 20 of our podcast. And he's like James Earl Jones are very white, just this really deep, smooth, amazing voice. What was your biggest money mistake, do you think? Oh, okay. The person will not be named in this conversation, but we found out while going through this journey that while we had been putting money towards a 401k, we didn't know where that was invested. And we didn't really know what we were doing. I mean, honestly, like I said earlier, it was like, okay, we're putting money towards our 401K, we're good. We found out that it had been invested in a

money market while we had the most unprecedented rise in stock market value in our lifetime. And that hurt to find that out. That was a big mistake not to pay attention to that early. But as I say, that sunk cost fallacy. That's a thing, right? You can't go back and dwell on that. You have to only look forward and make the changes you can make today. So that's what I tell myself as I cry myself to sleep. Well, I just love how you're saying, hey, we made $1,4,000. $42,000 one year and spend $132,000, but my biggest mistake is an opportunity cost for investing. I think that's a really wise and remarkable thing to say. Well, thank you so much. I'm going to take that to heart. I might write that down on my

inspiration wall. I think that's the right way to think about it, though, right? It's all those other decisions were probably dwarfed by failure to invest optimally, which I think a lot of, you know, it all boils down to getting started in that savings rate, but actually completing the journey, I think comes down to that investment approach. I think it's a great point. Yep. What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? Ah, man.

There's a lot of really good tidbits. The one that just comes to mind, I would say, is try to frame your decision-making around happiness. That will get you so much further because it's very easy to get harder in yourself. this process, this fire framework, it's simple. That's what I love about it so much. I think that's why it's catching on so well. But it doesn't make it easy, right? And so I think what makes it easier is continuing to focus on happiness, start diving into that. I hadn't even asked myself really what made me happy. I just kind of thought I instinctually knew. And happiness in and of itself is a lifelong pursuit and a journey that you really need to go down and you need to tend to. And so

I highly recommend, there's another little tip. I highly recommend creating a personal mission statement. J.D. Roth has a excellent post on this where he pulls from a bunch of different sources and kind of gives you a framework. I did that. I even went as far as kind of creating my own, which I'll probably post a blog about as well for those who are interested. Because I had, as an entrepreneur, I had written three or four mission statements for businesses, and they are hard. They take time. And they're very important and they're very valuable when you get them right. And I just couldn't believe I'd never done one for myself. And it's like, come on, take care of yourself first, right? And the rest will follow. So I think having a personal mission statement makes it much easier to understand what guides you,

where your happiness will lie and what your goal should be. And I think putting your decisions, especially about money through that framework will always help. All right. We'll go on to the last question of the day. And the most difficult one, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? Okay, full disclosure. I looked this up on the internet. I found this one. This is my favorite. I don't tell jokes at parties like this. Well, that makes one Scott here. You've almost convinced me otherwise with the ridiculous hilarity that ensues at the end, at the back end of these episodes. Okay. Are you ready? Yes. All right. I'll see if I can do this right. Here comes the delivery of a lifetime. A blind man walks into a bar.

and a table and a chair. All right. I got some laughs. So a deaf band walks into a store and he's trying to buy a pair of scissors, right? So he takes his fingers and he makes the scissors side, right? This little click, click, click, click, click, click. And the clerk sells him, you know, gets it and finally gives him a pair of scissors. You know, and everyone's wondering.

and I wonder if you can guess how the blind man is going to communicate that he would like a pair of scissors to the store clerk. Do you guys know? Nope. He says to the clerk, I'd like a pair of scissors. I like it.

I like it. Wow. You have such a repertoire of these that you even pulled the joke from the exact same topic. You set me up. You set me up. I mean for that.

I even have to pull that one out. you know, you sir are an national treasure. Don't encourage him, Mr. Rickens. Okay. From honestly mom on Twitter, her four-year-old's favorite joke is,

why don't dinosaurs take a bath? Because they're dead. Which I thought was really cute. Excellent. Plus, I want to give her four-year-old a shout-out. I don't know what your name is, little four-year-old,

but honestly, mom, thank you for sharing your four-year-old's favorite joke. My daughters have been giving me a ton of jokes. So in upcoming episodes, if our guest does not have one, my daughters will share them for you. And they're pretty awful. So Scott Trench will probably love them. Perfect. Okay. The last of our famous four is a demand. Tell us where people can find out more about you. Yes. You can find out more about me at playing withfire.co. That's CO. We are on Twitter,

actively, Instagram, most of the time, and Facebook hardly ever. But we are on all three of those platforms. And that's where you can find us. You can always reach out to us via email. Hello at playing withfire.co. And every week or two, I go through that list and I respond personally to everyone. So that's where you can find us. Well, clear out your inbox because you're about to get swamped.

Okay. Scott Rickens from, playing with fire, the movie, the book, the website, the Twitter, the Instagram, everywhere playing with fire. Thank you so much for coming on today and sharing your story. This was hugely helpful. To me, I love being able to direct people places where they can start their journey. And this is an excellent overview of yours. Thank you guys so much for having me.

It was an absolute honor. And I just, I love what you guys are doing. Keep it up. Same. I love what you're doing. Keep it up. Let's make out. All right.

Yeah, we'll hang out. Okay. Let's do it. All right. I'm coming to Denver. We'll be here. All right. All right.

That was Scott Rickens from playing with fire. Mindy, what did you think? Oh, my goodness. I cannot say enough good things about Scott. I love his story. I love his ability to tell it in a really relatable way and a really interesting way. I am in this space. I've been in this space for about five years now.

And it's, you know, like we said in the beginning, what's so remarkable about this story is that it's not remarkable at all. There is no secret sauce to this financial independence dream. You can do it. Save money. Make more money, spend less money, increase your savings rate. It's just over and over again, we hear the same thing. And it's just proof that it works.

Yeah, you know, what I thought was really wonderful about the way he presented that was, you know, he didn't come on here and say, like, this is the right way to do things. We should do it this way. We should do it this way. He came in and said, here's my story. Here's how I felt about something. Here's the options that were presented to me. I blew my mind when this was a possibility.

Here's how I decided to pursue it. And here's all of the emotional reasons why I went ahead and did, made these major changes to the most important things driving my financial position so that I could live this life. And I think that that's like a really powerful way of communicating all this stuff and something that you can really relate to and understand. Sometimes I know I'm guilty of thinking, hmm, this person is not behaving very efficiently. in pursuit of financial independence. You don't get that from Scott at all, right? Yeah. And, you know, something that came up after we stopped recording,

but before we said goodbye to Scott completely, is that this whole entire journey was two years long. Almost two years to the day that this episode releases is when he heard that first Mr. Money Mustass episode of the Tim Ferriss podcast. And this is even more mind-blowing than the fact that he did this is the fact that he did this in two years. Yeah. It's such a repeatable scenario for you.

If you're anywhere close to similar situation, both working full-time jobs in any city, right? And feeling like you're not living, you know, you're not getting ahead. There's no point to what you're doing or there's no, you know, you're not happy or you want to make a change like this. What he did, his thought process, how we brought a spouse along,

all that stuff are, I think, really good nuggets of wisdom to think about how you can apply to your own life. I absolutely agree. So if you are new to this journey, if you know somebody who's new to this journey, if you know anybody who's having a difficult time convincing their spouse to get on board with them, please share this episode with them. You can find it at biggerpockets.com slash money show 59. And it's obviously it's anywhere they have podcasts. Scott, should we get out of here? We should. But before we get out of here, just quick plug, if you enjoyed the show and you want to to always listen to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast whenever we have a new one,

feel free to subscribe to us on iTunes, Google Play, wherever it is that you're enjoying the podcast. Thank you, Scott. It's a little plug there. Thank you, Scott. Yes, please hit subscribe and we come out every Monday. Although every once in a while we have a bonus episode, and you will get notification of that if you are subscribed to us.

All right, from episode 59 of the Bigger Puckets Money podcast, this is Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, and we're wishing you Bigger Pockets. The sign-up is courtesy of Dan who suggested it to me through a private message. You can private message me on BiggerPockets. You can also email me at Mindy at BiggerPockets.com or Scott at BiggerPockets.com. You can send the show a note, money at biggerpockets.com. And there we go.

So on that note, I have one more final thing. One of my buddies recently had his ear reattached in a surgery. It was on New Year's Day, actually, emergency ear. your reattachment. And the, I remember walking out of there and the surgeon had come out and, you know, they were all anxiously awaiting the news to see how this is going to go. And the surgeon says, wishing you a happy new year. Ugh.

I'm like, is this a real story, Scott or is this some dumb joke? It was a real story, of course. All right. Anyways, goodbye. Goodbye, everybody.