BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 65: Getting Your Family on Board with Financial Freedom with Jacqueline Burch

Episode Date: March 25, 2019

Jacqueline Burch got married and did what all newlyweds do, spent time with her husband. They continued down the road of "things you’re supposed to do"—had dinners out with friends, purchased a home, and had a baby! After her first son was born,... Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 65. I mean, nobody wants to have to tell their kid face to face. You know, this has to wait. But I think it's so important that they do see the sacrifice, that work is work. And this is what we do. And this is what mom gets to do to be with you. But this is also what we have to do because we have a larger family. And we're trying to make these steps toward financial independence and retiring early.

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. As a going to everybody, I'm Scott Trench. I'm here with my co-host, Ms. Mindy Jensen.

How are you doing today, Mindy? I am doing fantastic today, Scott. I'm really excited for today's guest, Jacqueline, reached out to me 100 years ago. And to talk about kids, and she is on the path to financial independence. She has four boys. They go to private school because that's something that means a lot to her. And so clearly she's lying. She can't do financial independence, right?

Because she has four kids and they're in private school, so there's no way. But you would be wrong if that's how you thought, because today Jacqueline is going to share exactly how she manages this. She's going to share all sorts of things about her life. And I think managing is a really great theme for this show, don't you think? Because she has managed her life and her circumstances and her choices and managed to direct them into the life that she wants to live. And she's loving her life. Yeah, I mean, she's overcome a lot of obstacles by tackling every area of personal finance and life with kind of a zeal and enthusiasm.

And really just like kind of, that I use this word in a loving way, ruthless efficiency, right? She runs the household very efficiently. They've made a great decision at every step of the way. Housing, transportation, food, their investment approach, their careers have gone really well. They've taken big strides there. Just in a really impressive story and a lot of that. And also, maybe you guys listening may not realize this, but a lot of the guests that we have on the show often are, you know, have a story that they've told on other areas. And you're on the Internet or have their own blog or otherwise have kind of told their story a lot.

Jacqueline doesn't have that. Jacqueline, I think, is telling her story for the first time here today. Her poise and delivery is really, really excellent as a result of that. So really got to commend her on a lot of these doing everything right. Yeah, and you said she made every decision. That is such a key point. Financial independence doesn't just happen. It is the result of a variety of choices that you've made

to optimize your spending, you're saving, you're investing, so that you can arrive at this goal. And she is not there yet, but she is on the path towards it. And she's, her goal is not to quit her job, which I really like about her story. A lot of people come on the show

or send me a note, I want to be on the show. Oh, I can't wait to quit my job. It's so awful. It's not necessarily about that. It's about getting to a point where you can do what you want. It isn't just I want to lay on a beach and do nothing all day.

it's maybe for a week. Or what was yours, play video games for six solid months? In fairness to Jacqueline, she did quit her job. So we will go over that in the show. She quit a job. Yeah, she quit a job that was not giving her the flexibility that she needed in order to pursue her goals. And she made another job for herself.

Yes, which is a decision. It is a choice. It is an action that she took in order to further herself down the path towards financial independence. You know, we should not sit here and tell her story. She has a great story. And like you said, she has a great delivery. So we are going to stop and let her tell her story.

Yep. And just as a heads up, at the very end of the show, we do the Favis 4, we do some jokes. Her joke is very inappropriate. So be warned ahead of time for children listening, all that kind of stuff. Very inappropriate. Still funny, though.

I actually laughed at this joke. So, you know, teaser, spoiler alert. No, not spoiler. Teaser. I think it's just teaser. Okay. It's a crappy joke. It's a crappy joke.

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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. Jacqueline Bert, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Thank you so much for having me. It's an honor and pleasure to be here. I'm super excited to talk to you.

So let's start off with where your money story begins. Sure. So I'm going to start where our money story began for Jeff and I as a couple. So when we first got married, we came into our marriage with about $38,000 in debt. $17,000 of that was an auto loan. Jeff had an auto loan. And then the other was credit card debt just from me shopping, going out to eat, very frivolous debt. So when we got married, we committed, let's get out of debt.

But as we were doing that, I decided to go back to school. So normally that would be a very responsible decision to go for an MBA or something like, that but for me I had a degree I was working in the field of my degree accounting and I decided to go to cosmetology school so that's another story for another day but and during this time we also thought it'd be a good idea to start a family so we were young we were making some money and we thought this is what married people do they start families they go back to school so during this time we had our first son who is now 10 so I was working full time going to school at night from 5 to 10, and then we had our first son.

So during this time, we also made our first big money mistake. This was when the market was down. So we bought a piece of vacant property at a great steal, thinking that we would build a house later. But in the meantime, we're paying HOA fees, taxes, insurance on something that we were seeing no benefit from. So working, school, baby, child care, buying a piece of vacant property. you can see that we were not making any progress on our debt at all. So fast forward, we started to search for a house because we were married, had a baby, and thought this will be the time that we buy our first house. We identified this cute downtown quaint area, tons of cute houses.

Normally they'd be priced way outside of our budget, but because the market had fallen so much, we could now afford to buy a house. What we didn't anticipate was all of the investors were also, on the trail for these cute, small, quaint houses that are now priced $100,000 below market value. So it was a real struggle to even find houses to bid on. So we lost a few houses, and then we put in an offer on a short sale in January. We didn't hear back on that house for months. So we had a conversation and thought, okay, we have to give up on this area. It's just not going to happen for us. we need to get out of this apartment. At that time, we were living in a one-bedroom apartment with a baby, so I'm sure you can imagine how fun that was. And we thought, we really need to brainstorm on where

we're going to start looking next. Went to sleep that night. The next day, our realtor called us and said, you got the house. An investor bought it for cash, decided to flip it quickly, didn't even look at other offers, just took the first one behind his, and basically just luck, we got the house. So we were super, super, super excited. We bought our house for $132,000, and it was a complete dump. As in at our inspection, I saw what I thought was a dust bunny scurry across the floor. It was a mouse. So every single square inch of our house, we have stripped out of the studs and brought it back. Jeff is super, super handy. He has his builder's license. He framed houses in high school and college. He has a degree in construction management. So he has those skills that he put to work on our first house.

Where was this house again? I'm sorry. I'm not sure if we covered that already. Sure. It's southeast Michigan. Southeast Michigan. Okay, great. Yep. So during the time, we were probably living in our house for a month or two. And we, surprise, we're pregnant again with our second child. So we were remodeling a house. By this point, I was done with school. I went down to working three days a week. But we were at a crossroads with child care. With our first son, my sister-in-law watched him one day a week, and then our mom's helped out. They live about two hours away, so they would come over once a month to help out. But with two children, it really priced us out of the daycare that we were using.

And so I remember this was our crossroads, when we really took a look at our budget and saw that it was not working at all. And especially adding a second child, we really needed to fix some things that were going on with how we were spending money. So what we did was we stripped away anything that wasn't necessary. We stripped away cable. We stripped away going out to eat. We transitioned our son to a licensed in-home daycare that had a sibling discount. So we went from paying roughly $77 a day down to $65 for two children. And that was really when our FI journey began. I remember sitting in my office before I even knew what FI was, I would just sit with an Excel spreadsheet on my lunch hour and calculate how much we would have to cut to either make our budget work better or to make it so I didn't have to work outside of the

home to make childcare work. And I just remember I would sit for hours and hours with spreadsheets and kind of rework them, present it to Jeff, him having an idea coming back to me. So yeah, that's where our FI journey started in a big mess. So to kind of get a little bit more of the chronology here, I'm a very like linear thing with some of this stuff. So your first son you had while working full-time after, was it, how long out of school was that? Maybe a year and a half. And then how much longer after that was second child born? 17 months.

17 months. Okay, okay. So you had both these children in Spain of less than two years. And this is right after you bought the house in my middle of all this construction, the whirlwind. And that is what prompted this extreme budgeting, basically. You prompted to sit down with the spreadsheet and cut out everything, right? And how did that look? Like, what was the difference between you're spending before and after with that exercise?

So before we were saving maybe 11% of our income. And when I say saving, we were putting it into a Roth IRA. I'm not remembering dollars and cents so much right now, but I remember that number being 11%. And then afterward, we were saving 35%. And then day to day, what it looked like was really watching our grocery budget. again, child care was a big expense. Housing, our housing, for us at the time, was a bit of a stretch, even $132,000. That's not that much. But again, we were on starting salaries. Yep. And the way you obviously kind of helped the housing salary, or the housing situation was by doing a lot of the work yourself, putting together. Yes. It looks like a beautiful home on your own.

Right. So now, 10 years later, the home, we've had two separate appraisals done. It appraises at approximately 33. $324,000. Wow. That's awesome. Nice. Okay, so walk us through like what was the moment where the, how did you discover the concept of fire? You got to the savings position, but where did it begin? Okay, this is about early retirement or passive income. Sure. So I would say that started not that long ago. I would say it was discovering this podcast. When you guys started this podcast, I listened to the first podcast and thought, oh, this is what we have been working, I understood the financial independence component of it, but I didn't necessarily put with it the retire early. And I took a look at our budget again, what we've been doing and calculated how far are we truly out from not only being financially independent, but being able to retire early? And what does that look like? So not that long ago. Let's walk through that exercise, right? So what does retirement mean to you? What does that finish line look like in your mind? And for us, I think it's a little bit different because I think it's important to mention before we go too much

further, we have two more children. So we have four sons, which was also interesting to me because listening to the podcast, a lot of people, there may have been one or two guests that have had more than three children. But I think for me, looking at fire, I was like, can we feasibly do this with four children, who we want to help through college, who we have in private school, what does that look like? So coming back to your question, I guess I discovered this back when we had those first two children, but put a name to it probably when you guys started the podcast. So what does it look to us like for us now? It looks like we still live in the same house. It's 932 square feet with four kids and a big dog and two grownups and it's tight, but we love it. It looks like looking at

the budget and each month we pick one or two areas where we really home. in and focus on how are we doing in this budget. So for example, January was groceries. We were averaging $1,200 a month on groceries, which for six people, four of whom are growing boys, seems reasonable. Can we tweak that? We got it down to $815 last month, and we're on track to do that again in February. It also looks like I remember the first weekend we set out with our new budget in place. We had two kids under three. It was January. It was cold. We're in a 932 two square foot bungalow. It's raining outside. There's nothing to do. And let me tell you, if you are stuck inside, you're going to do two things. You're going to go insane or you're

going to go out and spend money. So that's what we did. We went to Target after we just had this big budget meeting and we spent 70 bucks on puzzles and something else. I can't remember. So that was important to us. When we did our budget review the next week, what do we do? We have time now because we're not going out to eat. We're not spending money. money and entertainment. What do we do with this time? So we really took a look at the entertainment component, the lifestyle component of fire. Jeff loves to downhill ski. I love to do yoga. I love photography. How can we do these things either for free or as close to free as possible? So we really came up with some ideas for that. So you just said ski. I don't know that that is a very

expensive endeavor because I am a snowboarder, so it's kind of the same thing. How do you cut down on an expense that is, for all intents and purposes, frivolous. You don't need to go skiing and expensive. So how do you find a cheaper way to do that? So for us, what we were able to do is there are seven grandsons on my husband's side. So we share equipment costs. We'll go in, we'll buy used equipment, and then we share the cost amongst he has two other brothers.

And then everybody uses everybody's equipment. So that's one way. But the biggest way, and we were anticipating, putting it into practice this season, but there's only so much time Jeff chose to coach basketball. But next season, we're for sure going to put it into place. The local ski area, well, you can be a ski instructor there. And it is a huge time commitment. It's at least 10 hours a week, but you and your whole family can ski for free.

It's 50% off meals. It's 60 or 70% off equipment. And not only that, but if we chose to go out to Colorado to Vail and some of the other resorts out there, it's free ski. skiing out there as well. So that would essentially get rid of 90% of the cost other than fuel and if we choose to have a meal out there. Okay, that's interesting that you said being a ski instructor, you said 10 hours a week. Right. Okay, so that's actually not that much. I mean, that's what, two, maybe three days? Does your husband, okay, so I guess we haven't talked about this. What does

your husband do for his job? He's a project manager at a commercial construction company. Okay, so he has an actual nine to five. Yep. So for him, it would look like probably two evenings a week and then all day Saturday, possibly all day Sunday. Okay. So that is a time commitment, but I mean, to ski for free, I guess if that's really important. And, you know, there are people I live in the Colorado area where, like Scott can attest,

there are people who are up there every single weekend and they ski all the time. Well, for us with four sons, okay, bring all the kids out. They, you know, two of them are independent. Two could ski with me. It's just kind of a thing we do as a family in the season. And it's getting us out of the house. And then if it's free, you get us out of the house, fresh air, movement. It's just a win-win.

Yeah. So we've jumped in and covered a lot of things. So let's go back now and kind of dive into some of those. So we just talked about skiing. and that is a cheap endeavor, as anybody who has ever been skiing ever knows that I just went a couple of weeks ago. It was $134 for a one-day lift ticket. I believe that. That's just insane to me.

So in the beginning of your story, you said that you started off with $38,000 in debt. Obviously, if you're going skiing, that's now more? Or did you actually pay that off? How did you, I'm assuming you paid it off? I actually know you paid this off. How did you pay that off? So we paid it off little by little month by month. The first thing that we did, though, was we looked at that vacant piece of property and we priced out what would it actually cost to build a house. And is that reasonable for us? It was so far-fetched that it wasn't even like it was a very easy decision. So we put the

vacant lot on the market and it then sat for two years. And it makes me sick to think, think about how much we flush down the drain and HOA fees and taxes and insurance. So we put the property on the market right away. We also looked at what we were spending with entertainment and groceries and that we stopped going grocery shopping. We live in an area where there are five really good grocery stores within five minutes. And we went once a week, made a budget, stuck to it. We also revamped what we were going to be able to buy when we bought our first house. We cut that budget in half, which made it more challenging, but it also made us feel more comfortable. So housing cost was big.

And what year was this? This was 2008. 2008. I mean, if you look at the average American household budget, right? A third of it goes to housing, 17% goes to transportation, and then another 13, 15% goes to food. And it sounds like, you know, hey, we have this debt. We're going to make extremely responsible decisions in two critical areas, right? One is the housing and the other is the food.

What about what for transportation? What were you driving around that time? Gosh, back then, Jeff was driving a two-year-old pickup truck and I was driving a Honda Civic, a two-door Honda Civic. So that wasn't a frivolous area where we had these extravagant cars. And that was a challenge for us because when we looked at our budget, it wasn't necessarily a matter of an expense problem. It was also an income problem because we're starting off on starting salaries

and we just weren't making very much. Yep. Absolutely. So you got this down. Were you able to begin making progress in the debt over the next year? We were. We went from saving maybe $250 a month to saving $2,000 a month. And to look at that and to say, oh my gosh, how much were you spending on groceries? It was big. Groceries, Starbucks, eating out. When you don't have a child yet, you're eating out all the time because to sit in a one-bedroom apartment, we ended up, okay, let's go out, let's go out. Let's do something. So over and over, I hear this. The first thing that people cut out is they cut out they're going out to eat.

Did that change your life? Did you miss it? Did you just feel depressed all the time because you weren't going out to dinner anymore? Or was it pretty easy to get rid of? You know, I'll say the first month was really hard because we had to say no to ourselves over and over. And again, at that point, we were in an area where you drive home from work, you're driving by 50 restaurants. Our friends all were going out to eat and going out to the movies and going out to the bar and doing all these things. So to miss out on that was hard.

But what we started to do was we would make dinners in. That's when we learned how to cook. We didn't join a gym, but we did start working out more regularly. And we would just get outside and go for a run, do something like that. We also traveled back to our hometown often and just spent time with family, which was nice, because then mom was cooking dinner, which was an added savings. And then again, I went back to school pretty quickly. So this period of time was maybe six months.

And then I went back to school and my life was going to work from 7.30 in the morning until 4.30 at night and then going to school from 5 to 10. During this time period, Jeff helped his brother remodel his whole house. So his brother bought a fixer-upper. And he for free helped his brother remodel it. But it was nice because he could use his skills and spend time with his brother doing something that he likes. He loves to build. But he didn't have to spend any money. Was Jeff earning income during that project as well? So that was on top of his job? No, he did it all for free. Oh, wow. So during this period, you were at school, he was working with first brother for free,

and you were able to still save money and accumulate? Yep. That's impressive. Wow. Well, and Jeff was just so supportive of me going back to school. He would make my lunches, so there was no incurred cost of going back to school as far as like, oh, I didn't get to pack my dinner, so I'm going to buy dinner. We were very intentional about making sure we had our meals packed for the week ahead of time. So, so over what period of time did it take you to go from $250 a month in savings to $2,000

in month in savings? Was that almost immediate? Really? Wow. Wait, wait, what are you, how often were you going out to eat? This sounds like the waffles on Wednesday couple when they were what did they say they spent $30,000 one year at a bar? Oh yeah. Bar and grill, not just bar. It was at least four nights a week. And then when we would go out on the weekend, it was probably $100 or $200 in dinner and drinks. Friday and Saturday. Wow. Okay. So this one... $200 a weekend, $800 in a month.

This one fairly big but also small change. It's not like you're not eating at all. You're just not eating out. This one change helped you save so much. So how long did it take you to pay off your $38,000 in debt? Gosh, it's a good question.

I can't remember exactly, but I remember because then we bought a house. So I felt like even though it was a mortgage and typically people don't include that in their total debt figure, I did. So I felt like we never got fully out of debt until we paid our house off. How long did it take you to pay your house off?

We paid that off two years ago. Okay. So a long time. But we added two kids and... It's not 30 years. Right. Your money management approach overall, right? So you're starting on saving this.

You have $38,000 in debt. You're saving $250. a month, what do you apply the increased savings to? Do you build up an emergency fund? Do you pay down the debt, do you use it all to pay it on the debt? Or do you invest and pay it on the debt with a hybrid approach? We started to invest in our Roth IRAs. So we put $800 a month toward our IRAs and then the rest we put toward debt. Got it. Okay. And okay, and that's took you about what, eight years or or so then to pay off everything, including the mortgage? Including the house. Yep. Okay. And And what do you do now with excess savings?

What's your money management strategy? Sure. Now that everything's paid off. Sure. So anything above $10,000, we feel like $10,000 is an adequate amount in cash to make us feel comfortable. And then we also have a home equity line of credit that just sits there for, you know, let's say there's a catastrophic emergency.

We have that money sitting there if we need to access it. But anything above $10,000, we lend out to real estate investors. typically in the form of a short-term note, so less than 24 months, and typically 10 to 15% return, averaging probably 12. Mindy, have you ever heard of this type of strategy? Wow, that sounds like the private lending that some people do. That's interesting. So you are making 10 to 15% definitely around 12% on this money that's just extra that you don't need.

That's so disingenuous, this extra money that you don't need. Everybody needs all the money that they have. Okay. And now, diving into this, so this is a tangent here, but I have heard that a lot of folks prefer to do this type of lending inside of a 401K or other tax-deferred retirement vehicle because that 12 to 15% interest can be taxed as a very high interest rate or a very high tax rate. So do you do that with pre- or post-tax money or both?

We do it with both. So we 100% self-direct our IRA. race. So doing the same thing. We did one fix and flip, but those are a little bit harder to come by now that the market has turned a bit. But we also do it with private money because it was sitting there and I thought, you know what? This money is just sitting there. And I don't necessarily want to put it in a long-term investment like a rental home. We do own two rental homes. But I want this money to be fairly accessible or at least coming back to us within 24 months. Got it. Okay. So we've talked about how you kind of cut your back on your savings and it sounds like you continue to have a consistent

approach with reviewing various aspects of that over time to kind of make progress. I do want to dive into at some point what you tick specifically did to reduce the grocery budget there. But before I get to that, let's talk about the on the income front. So over the course of your career, I imagine you guys, you know, because of your discipline approach and all the other areas of life, have probably had some success in the career front as well. What are you guys doing today and how has that changed in the income front? Sure. So I'll start with Jeff just because he's a little bit more simple to explain. So Jeff started out starting salary maybe $45,000, $50,000 10 years ago. And since that time, he's doubled that just on base salary. And now he does get performance

bonuses, auto allowance. So he loves where he works. He's a hard worker. And what does he do? He's a project manager for commercial construction company. Got it. Yep. So then me, I started out in a CPA firm, worked two tax seasons, figured out pretty quickly, not for me. I went to work at a property management firm, which was awesome because I could work in accounting my specialty, but then it was also this real estate, which just, I just loved working there. Adding two children, child care, I went down to three days a week, which I felt like gave me a great balance of being a mom, but still having my foot in the corporate working world. After I had my second child, though, it became very difficult to manage, even working three days and having some home balance.

I never felt. And I just thought, if I could work from home, life would be awesome. And everything would be perfect, right? So what I did was I approached my employer about working from home and they said, no. And I have to say, I approached them from the standpoint of how it would benefit them, and they still said no. So that's when I took my search outside of the company that I was working for. and I found an entrepreneur who owned several businesses, needed a bookkeeper, and actually needed a bookkeeper plus a personal assistant. And I started working for him, but I kept my job for about three months. I worked my tail off. And finally, working for the client from home grew so much. And I had other people approaching me that I needed to make a decision, which was super scary because I had the security

and the comfort of the paycheck from the other job. But I had this ability. to work from home and grow a business if I chose the other. So I remember the day I quit my job and I remember walking out super, super slow because I wanted to remember what I felt like to take a big risk. And since then, so I've been working from home since 2012, September of 2012, and I started out making maybe $40,000 a year. And now I've grown where net I make about $60,000 a year. Wow, that's great. So you basically tested this concept by just working double, working double two jobs for three months. Once you were confident would work, that's when you took your, you made the transition. How did you, or I guess, what was life like before and after?

Was it, was it the change that you were hoping for? Not at all. Not at all. Yeah. So working from home, I describe as the best of both worlds because you're still working and producing and, you know, my kids see me working. And I think that's so important. It also is the worst of both worlds because clients still need their financial statements and they need their cash consulting that I do each month. They need those things. And the baby's homesick or and there's no daycare to and there's no family support to really call on. So it's all on me. And what I say is, you know what? It's hard, but it's worth it. You know, child care isn't free. Working isn't easy.

Raising kids isn't easy. But it's so worth it. I love what I do and I love raising my family and it's worth it. How many days a week do you pay for daycare and those types of things while working from home? Does that still come up? Sure. So during the school year, all of my children are in school except for the youngest goes three days a week. He was going to an outside daycare two days a week to full days.

So I would hammer it out those two days since November that has closed. So right now I'm in the process of let's see if I can do this on my own. And it actually hasn't been too bad. I wake up super early in work. He still naps. I work during nap time. And I work in the evening. And then sometimes I work Saturdays just to really get some good projects done.

What I'm trying to get at is if you had worked five days a week, how much would you have had to pay for child care during the last two years? Oh, gosh. A lot. A lot. especially for four kids. For three kids, we thought we were done having children after two because it was so expensive. We did the math and we just couldn't add a third child.

Working from home, a lot of that flexibility to grow our family. Okay. But what I'm trying to get it is this is maybe a $100 to $120,000 decision for your family. Oh, yeah. And if you compound that? Yeah. Yeah. Huge.

Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. I mean, yeah, not even kind of the long-term investment aspect of how much that you wouldn't have been able to save an invest. I mean, this was a huge decision that seems like very critical to your overall plan here was being able to do this. And it sounds like it's worked out in a lot of ways for you. It has.

And you know, if I were listening, I'd be wondering, how did you find this person? How have people ask me all the time, how do you find clients? I found that first client on Craigslist. I just typed in the keyword that I searched for on Craigslist was telecommute and work from home. and I did that for probably four months before I found that client. And then from there, when I'm out in the world, I just ask people, what do you do? And I mean, it is a bit of selling because you're convincing people who have had in-house bookkeepers to now have an outside, I'm somewhere in between like a bookkeeper and a CPA.

I like to think of myself as like a mini-controller. You're getting a bookkeeper, but also someone to manage your accounts receivable, accounts payable, all that stuff. But you have to talk to people. You have to sell it a little bit, I guess. I mean, it sounds like something that people would really want. That sounds great. Well, you know what? That's a good point, Scott. I hear people say this all the time. Oh, I would love to be able to work from home. I want to stay home with my kids. I want to do this. I want to do that. Okay. What steps have you taken? Well, I asked my employer once and they said no. Sure. Period. And that's the end of their story. They didn't go out and they didn't. I've heard people

I can't remember who we interviewed. They asked their employer, their employer said no. So they came back and asked their employer again, and the employer said yes, because they framed it in a different way, or they said they were going to quit or whatever. So asking once and then taking no for an answer, you're going to have not the life that you want.

You're going to have the life that is given to you. But you didn't take no for an answer. Boss, can I work from home? Here's all the reasons why this would be great for you. No. Okay. Thank you very much. And I'm going to go and now I'm searching.

And it took you four months. I think that's important to point out. If you go on Craigslist and you find a work from home job the first day that you look, you should also buy a lottery ticket too because that is the luckiest day of your life. It takes work to get the life that you want. And that doesn't mean that it's not worth pursuing, but it took you four months to find a job. And now you get to work from home. You get to see your kids all the time.

that's so powerful. I'm trying to be really careful not to tread on anybody's toes. If you are a working mother, that's great. If you work outside the home, I am not casting any judgment upon you. But when I had kids, I wanted to stay home with them. So I did. But I planned in advance so that I would be able to. And that's how my journey looked.

But your journey is a little bit different. You still, at the end, you got home with your kids. And now you're leading the life that you want. I'm assuming, right? I mean, nobody comes on this show. Oh, my life sucks. Let me tell you all about it. Right. And I mean, it's not easy. You know, my son comes, he'll sit right next to me and he'll tell me about his day and I'm in the middle of a project and I kind of have to say, this has to be finished first. That sucks, right? I mean, nobody wants to have to tell their kid face to face. You know, this has to wait. But I think it's so important that they do see the sacrifice that work is work. And this is what we do and this is what mom gets to do to be with you. But this is also what we have to do. because we have a larger family, and we're trying to make these steps toward financial independence and retiring early. I'm glad you brought up the larger family, because that's another question that I get frequently. How can I do this with kids? Again, you have to make the choice. Did you say you

have four kids in private school? I do. I do. That's also a choice we make that has prolonged our FI journey significantly. We pay $1,500 now. It will be $1,700 next year when the littest is in full-time school. That's a huge expense. Component? No, for all four of them. Okay. So I've done the math, compounded. It's just everybody has deal breakers, right? Everybody has something, and this is our thing. We're willing to live in a smaller home. We're willing to take less vacations. We're willing to work longer, and harder to do this for them. And so what were some of the things that prompted this private school choice? So I went to public school growing up.

My husband went to private school. I would say our faith and wanting that to be a part of their every day was super important. And also when we went on that initial tour for preschool 10 years ago, we just felt so comfortable and felt like it was where our kids belonged. So. Yeah. And I'm going to point this out because I'm sure that there will be people who make comments, oh, well, they're going to private school.

They could have it so much faster or whatever. They're making this choice. You are making this choice. You're saying you're making this choice. But personal finance is personal. Right. You get to make the decisions that affect you personally because it's your choice. If you want to send your kids to private school, then send them to private school.

Right. Or some people, you know, date nights or going on vacation or, you know, making cross-country trips to visit family. is super important. This is just our one deal-breaking thing. And let me point out something else also that most people's housing expense is probably going to average greater than $1,700 a month, maybe $2,000 a month for a family of six, right? Regardless of where you are in the country, right? If you want to live in, you know, a nice place. This, you know, you have completely eliminated that, probably only pay taxes, insurance,

utilities for your place without mortgage payment. So you simply are diverting that expense into your children's education is one way of looking at it, right? Because you've made those choices elsewhere. And we have done the exercise of what does retiring early look like for us? Does it mean that I completely walk away from my business? Does it mean Jeff walks away from a job he loves? And the answer is no. So if we aren't in an uncomfortable situation, we don't feel necessarily this race to get there. So if the journey is prolonged a little bit to send our kids to the school that we love, it's worth it. That is fabulous. Yeah, because financial independence shouldn't be, oh, God, I can't wait to quit my job.

It should be about the journey. It should be about what you're going to do after you get there. And continuing your job, if you love your job, is a valid choice, says the girl who's continuing her job because she loves her job. Okay. So let's transition into some tactics that you're going about because it sounds like you are so strong on all of these different types of All of the different day-to-day details. You have a great approach, a great strategy, a vision of what you want your life to be like, and you've made a bunch of things.

But, I mean, going back to the beginning, how did you cut your grocery bill from $1,200 to $800? Sure. So we average $1,200 a month on groceries. Some months it was $1,400 because, like I said, we live by five amazing grocery stores and stopping by on the way home from work, Jeff picking up, you know, oh, box a cereal because we're out. So I think she's been a guest on your show, Aaron Chase. Absolutely.

So I heard that her program pays for itself. And by and large, it sure did. She had my ear. She has four sons. Her sons are a little bit older than mine. So she had my ear from the get go. Okay, if she can do it, I can do it. So what that looked like was for kids, snacks that are in the house will be eaten.

So I only bought snacks for the coming week. And when they were gone, gone. It also looked like cooking everything at home. So we buy a lot of fresh produce. Typically, we are very routine eaters. We eat the same thing for breakfast, mostly the same things for lunches and then dinners. We cook a huge tray of chicken on Sunday and make it into about four different things throughout the week. So just really having a routine of cooking. And I'll tell you what, it doesn't get boring because roasted veggies, you can put different things together to make it tastes different. Also, my kids are not picky eaters. They will eat anything under the sun.

So I know that's a huge point in our corner, but that's how we did it. So I would go to like a big box store for my chicken and for things like fishy crackers once a month. And when it's gone, it's gone. And then go to the grocery store once a week and completely eliminated any extra trips. If we are out of Rice Krispies, we are out until the following week. That is a brilliant tactic. because I have told this story before. I'm sorry if I'm boring everybody, but I used to go to the grocery store every single day because I needed one thing.

But when you're in there, you don't just buy the one thing. You buy one thing plus two or three others. And if that's your only trip, it's not a big deal. But every single day, every trip, three or four extra things, and all of a sudden you're a food hoarder or you've got, oh, this looks interesting, I'll try that. And then you never try it, and it just sits in your cabinet. and limiting yourself to what's on your list and only going once a week and this,

if you don't have it, you don't have it and you'll just do without is that was key to changing my grocery habit and changing my grocery budget was just leaving it alone. I don't need that one thing. And it sounds almost overly simplistic. But for example, we were out of little sandwich bags. And Jeff said, well, we need the sandwich bags to pack the lunches. I said, well, we do have aluminum foil. Can't we just wrap the sandwiches in that?

Problem solved. So it's just, it's not even really thinking outside the box. It's just using what you have. And our grandmothers and our mothers did it. And I think because we have all these stores around us, we've never had to do it, but I'm just choosing to do it now. And for context, because I'm a nerd here, but $800 a month, over six people, over 30 days times three meals a day,

is less than $1.50 per meal per day, which is pretty amazing for six people, right? That's a pretty, that's a ridiculously tight budget and operation that you're running there. And it sounds like you're doing a fantastic job with that. Can I add one thing too? Because some will say the argument, well, we have food allergies. We have food allergies. Jeff is allergic to dairy. I don't eat gluten.

My kids have some citrus and tomato allergies or whatever. So we do have some food allergies and we're still able to make it work. Awesome. Yeah. And that's, okay, the citrus, you can kind of leave. that out. But the gluten and the dairy, that's a big issue that you have to deal with. It's not just, oh, I don't eat limes. Okay. I don't eat olives because I don't like them. I don't eat mushrooms. It doesn't affect my budget at all. Right. Tax season is one of the only times all year when

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988 suicide crisis helpline is funded by the government in Canada. One more question. We know about the house. It's paid off. We know about your food budget. Anything you're doing special for your transportation? Are you still driving the same cars? So because we have four kids, I was in a Ford Explorer for a while and we have a huge dog.

She's 80 pounds and we travel to visit family over the summer quite a bit. So I drive a 2017 expedition. Typically, I just drive the kids to school and back. I work from home. There's very little fuel costs there. We paid half cash and then used our line of credit to finance the rest and then paid it off over six months. Just diverted savings to that. Jeff drives a 2008 Honda Civic with 190,000 miles.

Was that your two-door Honda Civic? No, but it was my parents. Awesome. Well, let's go on to the investing side. How did you get into, let's start with the note investing. How did you get into that for the first time? First time, so my dad is a dentist by trade, but he lost, I think over half of his retirement when things crashed.

And that's when he started to invest in real estate. And that's a lot of work to invest in real estate. You're signing documents, you're doing this, you're that on top of a full-time job. So he got into no investing. So our first investment was a partnership with him for a real estate investor on the west side of Michigan. Did you know him? My dad had vetted and I trust my dad's process as far as looking into the background, talking to investors, talking to past investors. Okay. Okay. And presumably that went well and you continued doing it from there. Have you, have you started to originate those deals yourself? I have. And how I find investors is one is one of my clients. So what better

investor than I see the cash inflows and outflows day in and day out. So I feel very comfortable in what he has going on. And then others I found on the bigger pockets community. I found at local real estate investors. And we just ask for financials, look through the financials. And we also talk to current investors and then past investors to see how the deals went. Okay. Are there any deal breakers for you when it comes to lending to somebody? Well, I'm sure there are. What are, that's a terrible question. Sure. What are the deal breakers? So first, the term of the note, we want 24 months or less just because we want it to be a little more solvent than, let's say, a 10-year project, something like that. Also, they have to be local because we just don't feel comfortable outside of the state of

Michigan, that could change. But for right now, that's where our comfort level rests. Okay. Okay, let's go. Let's move on to the investment properties that you have. You have two properties. How'd you get into those? So the market was still a little bit low. This was 2015. So I always knew I wanted to buy rental houses. And Jeff didn't feel super comfortable with it. And we had just gone through a period of having kid after kid after kid after kid. And I remember the day after we had our fourth son, I found this property. And I really wanted to be. on to buy it and Jeff just said, you are absolutely out of your mind. You have three children, a business, and a brand new baby. This is just biting off more than we can chew. And my heart just sunk because

I knew it was such a good deal. So fast forward, my youngest son was probably six months old. And I found this property on the MLS and there was a footnote. And it said, seller wants to continue to rent the house. And I knew the property was a good deal. It was listed $20,000 under market value. and okay, they're going to continue to rent the house. The house was in great condition. We went over, viewed the property, and what happened was it was a family that was going to be foreclosing. So they were trying to salvage by doing a short sale. And so this is a little bit unique in the sense that from the get-go, we purchased the property, knowing that the family wants to buy it back when they're able to get a mortgage and kind of recollect their finances.

So again, it was such a great situation in the sense that the home was so well taken care of. And they continue to take great care of it because in their hearts, it's their home. So we purchased the house for $65,000. At the time that we bought it, it appraised for $90. Now it appraises at $110. They're going to buy it back when they can for around $100,000. That's awesome. That's a great deal.

So how about the second one? The second one I found on Craigslist. Again, the search term I used was this particular area and then tenant. And it was just a couple who wanted to liquidate their funds. They had a tenant who had been in the house for seven years. She's still our tenant today. And the home costs $46,000. It's a small two-bedroom house about two miles away from our first rental property.

And they're about 20 minutes from our primary residence. So super convenient if we have to run over there, do a repair. or anything like that. Is this one a long-term hold? It sounds like the first one, you do intend for the occupants to buy that place back. And you think that it's likely. Is this one also? The tenant has expressed interest in buying it, and we would sell it.

Just, you know, the goodness of our hearts, she's been there forever and wants to own it. So it could go either way. We're happy to hold it or we're happy to sell. What I think is really interesting about your overall investment approach and what it sounds like your philosophy is that you really focused. on these short to medium term investments and really kind of have a lot of exits in all of these things. Whereas I think a lot of the investors that, like a lot of the investment philosophy we see on the show in the past has really been more focused on very long term and the, you know,

stackable, reliable, passive income generation. Would you say it's an accurate commentary on your philosophy? Yeah, absolutely would. And I think the key reason is, again, having a larger family and not knowing what's coming health care wise or I work from home. home, what if I lose all my clients in one fell swoop? Just kind of having a little, I don't want to call it a safety net, because that's not what it is. Having a little bit shorter term investment strategy allows that cash to be coming back to us sooner than it would otherwise. Okay. Well, and she's not looking to quit her job. You like your job. Your husband likes his job. So that's a different mindset going into it in the first places. I'm not looking for this to replace my income. Right.

Are you looking for more rental properties? Is it just if something good pops up or are you kind of done with that? I think we would take on one or two more. We are looking at possibly completely renovating our house, adding on a second story and possibly even an attic space that would be usable, like a kid's playroom or something. So because of that, I think we want to keep our finances as liquid as possible

to be able to either pay for it with savings or pay for, it with a combination of savings and using our existing line of credit, where we don't want to do anything to invest in more rental properties would be, again, more of a longer term hold. And we want that money coming back if we choose to remodel our house in the next two to three years. When you talk about the concept of financial independence, what does that mean to you in the context of long-term planning? Sure. So for me, financial independence, I think there is a shift in mindset that happened. So yes, we love our jobs, but at the same time, I think a further mindset would take place if we didn't have to have these jobs. Or I love my job now. Will I feel this way in 10

years? Is there another talent that I have that I want to explore more fully in the area of the marketplace? I love photography. Always have always will. I ran a small photography business in 2011. It basically made enough money to pay for the equipment, and that's all it was. What if I had the opportunity to pursue that again, but without needing the money? And what does not meeting the money mean to you then? Is that a passive income amount? Is that a, okay. So do you have an approach to doing that? Or is your plan to continue to just have a system of lending out money in these real estate notes? Eventually, we'd like to have a combination of long-term rental holds. So our goal would be, if we choose to remodel our house, it'll be in two to three. years. We put this strategy into place. Our comfort zone would be around 10. Again, within 20 minutes of our primary residence, we feel comfortable. Jeff's handy. He can run over, make those repairs. And then

having our IRAs in a position where they're either generating rental income or we have something that's a little bit more stable than notes. Notes are a lot of work. You have to go out and hustle for those notes. So possibly converting our IRAs into strictly long-term rental holds. Okay. So your ultimate plan is to produce a rental portfolio that will generate passive income to employment wage income. Okay. And then, you know, on the same kind of token here, what you have four children, I think we briefly mentioned the word college earlier. How are you kind of thinking about planning around that? Sure. So we've always had this dream. in our minds that we would get them into the business of flipping houses just because Jeff is so handy.

Now with the turning of the market and deals are harder to find and there's a lot of competition, it's kind of changing our approach to that a little bit. Initially, our thought was we do save in an MESP right now, which is a Michigan education savings plan. But that's not going to take us a full way there. So they will have to have a job. They will have to provide for some, you know, maybe they'll pay for books and board and will pay for tuition, something to that effect.

They're going to have to pay something. But other than that, over the summer, we have this idea of the older boys and then when the younger boys come up in the world to flip a house or two on top of, you know, working at Dairy Queen or wherever they choose to work. They're going to see how much money. they make flipping houses and they're going to say no thank you to Dairy Queen. Right. That was my first job.

It does not pay well. I think that was Brandon Turner's first job as well. Oh, really? No, it was Coldstone Creamery. Oh, yes. Sorry. Anyways. More skill over there.

So I think it's very interesting that you are not planning on paying for college for them. I think that that's a good tactic. I think that if your student has skid in the game, then they're going to work harder. They're going to, you know, this is my money too. and I'm going to get more out of it. I don't know. That's how I felt. My parents paid for my college,

and let's just go with I'm not the best student. Well, and even now with them, I mean, there are four of them. So they have to do things that somebody who has a family of two children, their kids may not have to do that. For example, when I'm working, the older boys, they get paid babysitting money to play a game with their younger brother, do a puzzle with their younger brother. Of course, they have chores that they have to do

just for the good of the family, keeping their rooms tidy and whatnot. but they also have tasks around the house like babysitting. And I present it to them in a way that you have this opportunity that other kids don't have because you have younger brothers. You have this opportunity to make five bucks today that other kids don't have. And that five bucks, and then I go into, you can choose to spend this five bucks on Legos,

but if you choose to put this five bucks in the bank or better yet make an investment at 8% return, five bucks in 40 years, I mean, I should know the math off. top of my head. I've done the calculation so many times, but a lot of times I choose to save it. That is fantastic. I'm going to give you supermom points because you are paying your kids to watch the other kids. I did not like that 17 kids and counting or whatever show that was where every, like the older kids were assigned a new kid. They didn't have that kid. They didn't choose to have another brother. I don't think it's fair to make them watch the kid that you had. But if you

you frame it like that. And that's, I mean, that's not at you. That's at the 17 kids people. Sure. But for you, like, you're giving them money to help you out. That's, you know, that teaches them so much more than just, well, you have to do this because I said so. Right. And they do have a choice. They do have the choice to say no. And sometimes they say no. And I have to rework things. But that's what I love about our family is it's not we, we do have a routine. But I'll tell you what, the routine breaks down a lot. And we have to rework it. It's like a puzzle. How is the puzzle fitting together this week? Okay, so-and-so sick. Okay, so-and-so has to go to basketball. Okay, what does that look like? And it's constantly changing month to month. But I think that's what is going to make those kids a little bit more resilient maybe. It's going to, you know, in the workplace, they're going to be able to adapt, is my hope, a little bit better because we have these moving parts. They certainly have a leg up on the competition. So we've covered how you kind of manage this household really incredibly efficiently with a lot.

in a lot of areas on the budget side, how your careers have progressed and how you managed to take a couple of risks that have paid off there and your investment philosophy. Are there any areas we haven't covered that you think are central to how you got to where you are or where you're going? Gosh, we've covered so much. I think, and we've touched on this, is just using whatever talents you have to create opportunities for yourself to save money. So I mentioned how Jeff is super handy. It'd be super, you know, the temptation would be, well, my husband isn't handy or I'm not handy, so I can't do that. Well, what do you have that you can bring to the table? I mentioned I love photography. I ran a business for a while. It was a lot of work, but it paid for some really expensive

equipment. And you know what? My sister-in-law and I now are able to swap family photos. Family photos are crazy expensive. It's at least $500 to $1,000 to get a family of six photo taken. So the fact that we're able to barter with each other and swap family photos is a huge savings. So I would just ask what talents do you have that you can use to further your FI journey? Yeah, I think it's great. I think if you're, if you're struggling to find one of those talents, you know, I think that another thing would be start reading, start learning, uh, and picking up a couple of these because if you're sitting there saying, I'm not handy, I can't do this. I can't do that. I can't do that. All I can do is one specialty for my job. You know, it's, that sounds like an excuse and it's going to hold you

back if you don't. I mean. Right. When you have the desire, you find a way. When it's not that important, you find the excuse. Everything I learned from photography, I learned on YouTube, and I read the manual of my camera from front to back, which was so boring and it took a lot of time, but it was free. Yeah, I mean, it's pretty straightforward with that one. Wow. Okay. I can't think of a more perfect place to end than that. That was great when you have the desire you find a way. When you don't, you find an excuse. Yeah, you can make an excuse for anything. Find the way. Okay, now it's time for our famous four. These are the same four questions and one command that we ask of all of our guests. Are you ready? I'm ready. What is your favorite finance book? So I'm going to mention two,

but only because I would be doing a discredit not to mention rich dad, poor dad, because that was a book my dad gave me and it changed my whole outlook on money and finances. but one that I've read more recently, also given to me by my parents, was the compound effect. And there's just a little blurb in there where it talks about when you spend money to think about the compound effect. What does that $20 look like in 20 years that you're spending on Legos or ice cream or whatever today? And the concept of the book is small changes over time make a huge difference. So choosing to have an ice cream or broccoli every single day over the course of 20 years.

is going to make a big difference. I'm a big fan of the compound effect. I read that probably once a year, Darren Hardy. Just a great, it's such a simple concept. It's just so, and it's so effectively demonstrated in that book. I mean, just do the same thing over and over and over again. It's your habits that define you and lead you to success. And it's that really that philosophy,

just getting half a percent better each day. And it builds up to these huge positive outcomes, just like you've demonstrated over the last 10 years with your journey. All right. What was your biggest money mistake? This was huge. Absolutely huge. So this was two or three years ago. I thought I was savvy enough to invest in stock. You know, we're investing in real estate doing all these things. So I invested, oh, I can't remember. It was at least $50,000 or $60,000 into one stock. It was called Seema Bay. and I got impatient, got nervous. So I bought it for about $2.50 a share,

and I sold at $1.50 a share, taking a $20,000 loss. So the kicker, and I cannot bear to do the math, Seema Bay six months later, ended up skyrocketing to about $12.89 a share. So if I just would have held that stock, six more months, I would have made a killing. Why did you invest in it?

I had read that they were coming out with some new, awesome drug, which they did. And just, I'm not a seasoned stock investor, just took, I rolled the dice and I lost. Got it. I shouldn't call it an investment. I should call it a gamble. A gamble. And you know what? The stock market has been compared to gambling a lot. Do you invest at all in the stock market? No. Okay.

Just here and there, maybe like a few thousand dollars here and there just for. just for fun. On episode 20, we interviewed Jail Collins, where he talks about his book, The Simple Path to Wealth, which covers stock market investing specifically index funds. He is the biggest proponent of index funds ever, probably more than John Bogle. And an index fund is, you invest in the whole market.

So a rising tide lifts all ships. When the market is up, you're up. And when the market is down, you're down. and past performance is not indicative of future gains and please consult your investment professional and yada yada, but it goes up and to the right, almost always. And it'll go down and then it comes back up again. So if you're not comfortable investing in the stock market, then don't invest in the stock market. But if you're also thinking, hey, maybe this is a thing, an index fund could be right for you. Again, discuss with your investment professional. Yeah, and where I think also some of this can probably play out is that it's very difficult to make these kinds of bets like you made on this biotech stock, it sounds like, or biofarmra. Because there's so many different things going at play, there's so many different market forces happening over the short term, which really is your philosophy, is this 12, 18 months, keep my money liquid, be able to get it out when I want it, all that kind of stuff. That really makes it hard to, I think, do really outperform in those types of bets. Now, there are some people who would argue otherwise, but this is, my show and Minty show. So you make my point of view on this one. And I think that it's really an

impractical way to invest and build your wealth long term is to make these, over the course of a lifetime, make lots of little bets like this in the stock market and try to come out ahead. Few people can do it. Really just not a strategy that can be applied consistently amongst anybody, really anybody but the very best without luck being the major driver in it. Exactly. The key factor in your success is luck. But when you invest long-term in like an index fund, those types of things, now you can be on the side of, hey, the market does tend to progress over time in an upward direction with all its dives and going up and down. But that's where the index fund long-term approach where kind of how I look at my finances, hey, I'm going to invest forever. I'm never going to touch it.

I never need the liquidity. I'm going to let a compound forever. And then live off a very small percentage of that total portfolio value. That's where the stock market investing can maybe be a good part of your portfolio if you're listening. And yes, and if you're listening and you've made a billion dollars picking stocks, send a note to Scott. Scott at BiggerPockets.com. Yeah, people do all the time. You were wrong. You said this. It's not saying you can't be done. I'm just saying that I think it's impractical for the average listener to really go after that. It's not repeatable. I can't teach you. I have done very well

with a couple of key stock picks. Did I know they were going to go crazy? No, I guessed. And I say, I, it's actually my husband that's choosing these stocks. He guessed, he thought it was a good thing. You know, did you know Google was going to go crazy? No, not 27 years ago or whenever they went public. Okay, we're getting off track. Jacqueline, what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? I would say, as I said before, you have to find your why so that that is pushing you to really do the hard work. Because if you don't have your why, a solid why, then you're going to find an excuse every time. Well, it's just $5.

Well, it's just $10. Well, it's just $20. Find your why and put it up in your house somewhere where you're looking at it every day. And then you will find when there's a will, there is a way. That would be my best advice. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties?

Well, not that I go to many parties, unless they're birthday parties for youngsters. So I asked all the boys, and none of the jokes that they gave me were appropriate, except for this one. So. I want to hear these inappropriate jokes.

Oh my gosh. Of course, they all have to do with bathroom humor because they're boys. But an appropriate joke. What did the paper plate say to the other paper plate? Lunch is on me. So bad.

That is very cute. Whichever boy said that that's my favorite joke I've heard on this show so far. Can we hear one of the inappropriate jokes? ones? Oh my goodness. Have you seen the movie constipation? No. Hasn't come out yet. That's not that inappropriate. Oh, they're so bad. I thought it was going to have poop or butt in it because that's how it's not just little boys that love toilet humor. It's also little girls. We're going to

build up in the intro how inappropriate these jokes are so that people are very wary and listen all the way to the end. And then they'll get that one. So. Again, you can complain to Scott at Scott at biggerpockets.com. Okay, Jacqueline, where can people find out more about you? So my husband and I were not on social media, but we do have a bigger pockets profile. And it's under my name, Jacqueline Birch. Okay. I will link to that in the show notes.

The show notes for this episode can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 65. Jacqueline, this was great. I get a lot of emails from a lot of people about, oh, how can you pursue financial independence when you have kids? I can't do it because I have kids. I have two kids. I have three kids. Well, guess what? Jacqueline has four and she's doing it.

So it can be done. You just have to make some sacrifices. You have to choose not to go out to dinner four nights a week, plus every night on the weekends. And you have to choose to stay home with your kids if that's what you want to do. And, you know, but everything's a choice. And your choices seem to be leading you down a pretty awesome life. Thank you very much. Thank you so much for sharing your story with us.

Thank you for having me. All right. That was Jacqueline Birch. Mindy, what did you think? I love her story. I love, you know what I love about her story is, A, it's repeatable. It is super, super repeatable. And B, she chose the life that she has right now.

All the decisions that she has made have been to, get to the life that she wants. She is not letting life drag her along, which I think is what happens with a lot of people. What was her quote? When you have the desire, you find a way. When you don't,

you find an excuse. That's so perfect. That is absolutely spot on, like in two sentences, an overview of the psychology of the world. Yeah. And she mentioned a book in there that I think is really telling.

It's called The Compound Effect, Darren Hardy. She mentioned it in a famous four segment, right? And I'm a big fan of that book. I read that probably once a year, right? And it's remarkably simple, but it's exactly this. If you want something and you pursue it with that end of mind and just do a little small action towards that everyday,

a habit that you can form the museum in pursuit of that goal, you can literally get almost anything you want in life over a three, five year period, right? It does not happen overnight. It is life and progression toward financial independence is not one Herkulean feat, after another. It is several years of just making one correct decision after another and grinding it out that way and improving consistently. And a magical transformation, unrecognizable transformation.

And in some cases, unrelatable transformations occur when people just pursue that, right? And I like what you said, it's small changes. It is not this Hercules. It isn't just, oh, if I could just lift this car over my head, then everything. No, it's if I can lift this rock, if I can lift this rock, if I can move this down the road, a pinch. It's just small changes that really don't change your life in the here and now. What did she say? They used to go out to dinner like four nights a week. Then that first month was a big change.

Well, yes, you are changing a fundamental part of your life. But now does she miss it? No. It doesn't change her life in the future. Well, it does change her life in the future. Actually, it changes her life quite a bit in the future financially. but it doesn't change her enjoyment of life. I guess that's the question that I'm trying to get at is,

does this change your enjoyment of life? Absolutely. If you make sacrifices in pursuit of what you really want, you're going to be way happier, but you're going to have to make short-term sacrifices in the meantime and make some uncomfortable changes. Right, but the short-term sacrifices aren't going from, you know, eating steak and having servants to eating rice and beans and living in a three-square-foot house.

That's not the kind of change we're talking about. about these small changes. She was going out to dinner all the time. She's still eating. It's not like she's not eating anymore at all. She's just not eating out at restaurants. She learned how to cook. So now she can make great meals at home for her kids. And I got to tell you, going out to dinner with four kids, not my favorite dinner out. Yeah, I can imagine. That's not fun. Another part of her story I loved was that she asked if she could work from home. And her boss said, though. She's like, okay, I'm not going to take that as my answer. I'm going to go out and find something else. And she went out and found something. She started looking on Craigslist, and it took her

four months. So for four months, she had this, I want to work from home, but I can't, mentality, and she continued to look for another job. She found it. She's like, you know what? I just want to test this out first. I'm not going to jump in with both feet and then have it not work out. So she did the Herculean task of working two jobs to figure out if it worked. It worked. And so then she quit the stable job. But, you know, like Joel from F-I-180 said, what's the worst that can happen? I'll just go back and get another job.

She had a job that worked out and now she's got the life that she wants. She had an uncomfortable life for a little while until she figured out that this other job would work. Yeah. I mean, it's hustle. It's hustle. There you go. That's the title for the show, How to Hustle Your Way to the Life You Love. Okay. Scott, is there anything else you want to add?

Yeah, actually. I have one other thing. Sorry, I'm still on the compound effect. Because again, I'm reading that right now, which you mentioned. I'm going to pick that up because I've been reading Rich Dad, Poor Dad, again. Well, anyways, so in that, in that, and this is, I think this epitomizes a lot of the things we're hearing from a lot of guests, right? But there's like this parable of these three friends who are all about the same, right? One decides, hey, I'm going to get an in-house bar and have one drink per night and eat one or two chicken wings because that's what I like.

Another is it keeps doing what he's doing. And the third says, okay, I'm going to, on the way to work, I'm going to listen to a little bit of audio. And I'm going to walk an extra 3,000 steps per day. And then I'm going to do one or two other things that are healthy. And a couple months go by, no change. A couple years, a year goes by, no change. Everything is still about the same amongst these three friends. But fast forward, three to five years, that's where there's a 60 pound difference

between the friend who's eating the chicken wings and the extra beer and the friend who is. That's where this guy has consumed, the guy who listens to the audio book on the way to work or the podcast or whatever has consumed the equivalent of three more degrees worth of educational content that has pursued his job. He's got several promotions, all that kind of stuff, great relationship with the wife, all that. All of these good things are happening there. And it's like that's the power of the compound effect, right?

You will not see any perceptible difference in your finances. Nothing will change about your life for a year, two years, three years. But rounding out that three to five year period, that's when, oh my gosh, these monumental life changes really kind of occur. And that's what sticks with me. And that's why I think that that's such a great read. And you can see that embodied in how Jacqueline's approached her life. So anyways, that's my last little thing to add.

That's, no, that's great. Life is a choice. Choose wisely. Yep. Okay, Scott, before we get out of here, somebody sent me a note a couple of times saying that saying over and out is improper radio etiquette for the military. And I have spent zero days in the military, so I didn't know that.

I just see it online or see it on like movies and whatever. So I've been changing it up and I got an email from Quentin who said, I miss you saying over and out. I've heard it on other shows. So, you know, whatever. So from episode 65 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast with permission from Quentin, he's got trench. I'm Mindy Jensen. And we're saying over and out.