BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 75: The Most Efficient Path to Financial Freedom With Justin From Saving Sherpa

Episode Date: June 3, 2019

Justin grew up without a lot of money in a small town. His parents divorced when he was eight, and his mother eventually quit her job to attend school. Necessity is the mother of invention, and a year of no income led to some very creative ways to squeeze more value out of every dollar. This "invention" stayed with Justin for his entire life, and he applies it to every facet of his finances. From his very low rent (in a high rent area) to his ridiculously low grocery bills to collecting travel rewards points, Justin gamifies every cent he spends. Today we hear how Justin actually made money from his college scholarships and military stipends, how he negotiated a smoking deal on his rent, and how his five tenets of grocery shopping pay off. Justin calls this "the lazy path to financial independence," but really he’s just being incredibly efficient with his resources. If you’re looking to cut expenses, listen to this show with a notepad handy. In This Episode We Cover: Justin's journey with money The idea of squeezing the amount of a dollar and cutting something out of your life Joining the military through the ROTC program and getting free tuition from the government What a career starter loan is and what his decision-making process was What his position looks like after going to college The moment he got serious about creating wealth The reason he is still very unhappy after achieving his goals The first investment he made On his expenses How he lived on $24,000 a year in Boston What's inside his sacred freezer The importance of getting to know your specific local grocery store His commandments on groceries On saving $69,000 a year Investing in real estate On retirement How he found his apartment And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums BiggerPockets Money Podcast 26: Graduating College on Track for Financial Independence with Cody Berman BiggerPockets Money Podcast 71: 5 Years to Financial Freedom Through Real Estate Investing With Sarah P. Mr. Money Mustache BiggerPockets Money Podcast 03: Cutting Your Grocery Bill in Half with Erin Chase from $5 Dinners BiggerPockets Money Podcast 57: Financial Freedom, House Sitting & Travel Hacking With GoWithLess Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 75 with Justin from Saving Sherpa. I met these little cooking commandments and the first one is your freezer is sacred because that freezer space should be just stock full of every time you can find meat, dirt cheap, unless you're a vegetarian. Obviously, like, that's what I'm using my freezer for. Like, it's not going to be full of all kinds of random boxes of stuff that take up a bunch of room. It's going to be nothing but straight, just dirt cheap meat that I find on sale. 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, Miss Mindy Jindy. How you doing, Cindy? Scott, I'm having a great day. How are you doing? I am doing fantastic. I was very, you know, I really enjoyed talking with Justin here and here in his about just an all-out approach. He calls it a lazy approach.

I guess it is really a lazy approach. But hard work and discipline and just designing a life that we're very efficient. We're all kind of key components in this. Yeah, it's not the laziest path to fight. It's the most efficient path to fie. I love what he says, and he says this right at the very beginning of the show.

He says, I am always looking to squeeze the most out of a dollar. And then during the course of the show, he gives you like 87 examples of how he actually squeezes the most out of every dollar that comes in. And his story is kind of inspiring. I don't think that somebody listening is going to say, oh, well, he's just a kid. No, I'm going to take lessons from this and I'm going to apply them to my life too. I love his, were there five tenants of grocery shopping? I think there were six or seven. Six or seven, even better.

I love those. Every one of those I can put into application in my life. So, you know, it's just, it's a great episode. He talks a lot about saving money on groceries. He tells the story of how he found his dirt cheap apartment in Boston and how he just doesn't spend a lot of money and still lives a really rich and full life. Yeah. I think the key, the key context to keep in mind is he's a late 20-something guy who's really kind of optimized this path toward FI from an income and savings perspective. really since high school and kind of figuring out the college thing from there. And it's just a very efficient mover towards that in, I think, a really repeatable way for folks. You don't have to create a business to follow this approach. You don't have to invest in real estate.

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who have streamlined their finances with Found. Audible has been a core part of my routine for more than a decade. I started listening years ago to make better use of drive time and workouts, and it stuck. At this point, I've logged over 229 audiobook completions on Audible alone, and I still regularly re-listen to the highest impact titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leen or Stronger for Fitness, the anxious generation for parenting perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful is its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more,

all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Justin Taylor from Saving Sherpa. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. How are you today? I'm doing pretty good. Thanks you guys for having me on. I'm so excited you're here. I should say Justin from Saving Sherpa and The FI Show. Thank you. Yeah. We're trying to put in some good work on the podcast too. Yeah. And you host that with Cody Berman, who was a guest on our episode. Oh, goodness. I bring this up and then I don't even have the number handy.

39, I think, was Cody's episode. We'll link to his episode in the show notes. Although you have to be better because it's competition. Everything's competition. I mean, I'm pretty much better than every way. But perfect. What a great start to the show. So, Justin, can you walk us through where your journey with money begins? Because I want to get your mindset going into it. And then I definitely want to touch on your grocery shopping habits because they're pretty impressive. Sure. So I think to kind of understand where I'm coming from in my background, it starts from a very young age.

I grew up in a very small town in Mississippi. be, so, you know, that comes with all those connotations of, you know, the public education system there and the kind of income levels you're talking about. My parents got divorced when I was eight, so then it was just me and my mom on a single income where she was a furniture factory worker. Probably around age 11 or 12, she stops working for a little less than a year ago, back to cosmetology school to kind of change careers. And during that year, I mean, we had zero income and we were living on pretty much no savings. And so, you know, I've got this uncle who's working at a grocery store who's like, hey, here's these like five pound tubes of ground

beef that are going out of date. Like, y'all can have these, mix that with some noodles, like trying to figure out how to scrounge by. And we kind of gamified it, though. You know, that's popular to get people on board with different programs. It's like, we just tried to make it fun and not an actual keeping up a point system, but it was a competition to us. And we kind of took to that. And ever since then, you know, I've just always been really intrigued by how do you squeeze the most out of a dollar? And not so much not cutting something out of your life, but how do you keep that same amount of experience and enjoyment out of something without spending any more money? Are you saying that you were gamifying what the most creative meal you could make out of freebies or stuff that was extremely cheap? Is that what you're, is that, was that the game system you're describing?

So, yeah, I guess I just made like we were kind of taking it with like a badge of butter. We were having fun with it. Like it didn't seem like a, oh, man, this. is like all we have and we're kind of depressed about it. Like we kind of was like, hey, you know, we're ever to get this many meals for this price. Let's try to get more for that price. Or, hey, we need to get closed for school. We got this kind of budget. How much stuff can we get? Like, just trying to maximize everything. We looked at it, trying to look at it through a more positive lens, I would say. And from that point, things pretty standard. Get ready to graduate high school.

I approached my parents. We're like, hey, you know, how much what do you guys saved up for for college, so I know what the Delta is, so I can go try to figure that out. They just kind of gave me blank stairs, and so I knew the answer was zero. So go to my guidance counselor in high school and say, okay, I'd like to go straight to a university, trying to get out of the small town. I was a little scared of stopping at the community college, because I was just a little afraid I'd get stuck in that small town. So I said, hey, I want to go straight to the university. What can I do? Like, help me out. And he looked at me and said, if you're want to put your parents in debt for the rest of their life, I won't be a part of it.

Well, that's not really got it's counsel. But no, you know what? That's really good advice. Although I don't know that it would have been your parents going into the debt. You would be old enough to sign for those papers yourself, so you'd be the one getting all that debt. So I guess, you know, if you said, like, that was the only option, it is either A, you can't leave this small town and you have to go to this community college, or B, you can go to a university and put your, but there is definitely a lot of in between there.

I see what you're saying. He painted a black and white picture. Right with no help. There's no like, here is the pros and cons or here's something you could do. And so that kind of honestly was one of the best experiences I've ever had in my life. Like he told me I couldn't do it, so therefore I was going to do it. And so I went and I took the ACT seven times so I could get my score high enough because I saw there was this one scholarship in particular in the state of Mississippi that really made a big jump once you got a 29 on your ACT, so I took it seven times until I got that

29. And then that was enough to get me all of my tuition paid for. So then I was looking at as kind of pay for them board meals, that sort of stuff. And then one of my buddies talked me in to do in an Air Force RTC interview. And I ended up doing it, getting a high school scholarship, which looking back on only about 10% of people who are in RTC that are actually on a scholarship, at least in the Air Force. And anyways, that ended up giving me enough money to pay for tuition again, plus room board, plus meals. So I was pocketing thousands of dollars every year by going to college. And so that's kind of where I got started.

Oh, oh, oh, oh, we got to stop here because I didn't even know about this part of your story. Okay, so we had a military person on just a couple of weeks ago, Sarah P. And somebody sent me a note, actually a couple of military people and people have sent me notes, oh, you can't do that. You can't do this. When the government is giving you money for tuition, they just give you, here's a pile of cash or a check or whatever. And that's yours to spend as you please. Is that how that works?

Pretty much. There's kind of like a middleman factor with the school. So I was getting like FASPA or whatever, like the income dependent kind of financial aid. I was getting scholarships for my ACT and that sort of stuff. And then I was also getting money from the Air Force. All that money goes to the financial office at the college. And so just like a credit card, right? Like if you had bought someone your credit card and then they returned it, like that money just goes back into that account.

And if you overpay your credit card, then all of a sudden there's a plus up and then they return that to you. So I would just go to the financial aid office at the end of every semester. And they're like, here's a check for, you know, $4,000 or $5,000 or whatever it is. And the government didn't ask for that bad. Like I've never, I'm not in the military and I've never gone through the military schooling system. So that's just yours. They will give you, let's call it $5,000 a semester to go to school. And if you only cost you $4,000, you just get an extra $1,000.

That sounds brilliant. So what they're doing is they're just like, here is what tuition costs. We're paying what tuition costs. They don't know that you also are getting scholarship money from another avenue. You know, that system doesn't talk to each other. It doesn't say, hey, which also honestly wouldn't be fair. Like, right? If I didn't do anything, I never applied for a scholarship in any other manner,

but then the Air Force decides to pay for it, like that doesn't really seem fair. Like, I busted my tail to get those scholarships. I feel like I should get them both. But it is an important delineation because I went to, ROTC, which is where I go to a normal college, and then I'm doing my program at that normal state school. If I would have went to the Air Force Academy, for instance, they're not going to give you an academic scholarship because it's free already. So you can't make money there, whereas I was making money at the state school going to ROTC. So this is an interesting situation.

So I get a scholarship. I go to college and I join the military in an ROTC program, which gives me free tuition. So there's more money going into the company. college education fund that is needing to be spent. So I get that money at the end of every semester. And is this something that's repeatable for many other people, I guess, is the question, right? Is this something that like, could a high schooler today go do that and make money while attending college? Now, of course, the tradeoff here, by the way, let's let's put that in there, throw that out there, is that you are required to do a certain amount of years of service in the Air Force following graduation, right? So here's a, I'll say a couple things I want to clarify what you just

said so I don't want it to sound like black and white that if you join Air Force RTC, you get your college paid for. Like I said in the beginning, I did an interview process. I got what they called a high school scholarship that's paying for your full tuition throughout the four to five years depending on what your major is and all that sort of stuff. Only about 10 percent. So like in my intro class, like my freshman class, there was about six of us got that scholarship. It's not, they don't just hand those out like candy for the Air Force. I've heard it's a little easier in other services. Now, the other part of that is do you owe time afterwards? Yes, if. So with that high school scholarship, you actually have your full freshman year to make up your mind. So as long as you

cut off the scholarship before you start your sophomore year, you don't owe any time. And that was actually my intention. My intention was, I'm going to take their money for a year. And then I'm going to quit. Like, sure, I'm doing some RTC stuff, no big deal. And then I'm going to quit that program. I won't owe them any of that money back. And then, you know, I'm on my own for years, two, three, and four. But I actually ended up, you know, really enjoying the program and stayed with it. Okay. So to answer Scott's question, it sounds like this is repeatable with an asterisk. Like you have to qualify for the scholarship. You have to earn the scholarship. You have to earn the scholarship. You have to earn all this. But then once you earn it, this is a repeatable thing.

I could not ever get a scholarship because I was a terrible student. But Scott was an excellent student. So Scott, you could have gotten 27 scholarships and then I think that with just piling up scholarships, it might not work this way, but with the scholarship and the Air Force part, it would work this way, which is just a really brilliant hack that we haven't talked about before. And I think what's remarkable to point out here is it sounds like, Justin, you've come from a fairly low-income environment growing up and that you got very intentional about having a really low-cost, free, net-negative college experience early in high school, I bet you, I would imagine, and got that together early on in that high school process, maybe those junior, senior year,

or before? Is that accurate? So it was around, you know, my junior year. You normally do the interview process between your junior and senior year. And again, I never had any intentions to join the military. I feel like now that I'm in the military, I can say things like this. But when I was in high school, I thought all the military was was knocking down doors overseas for 18 grand a year. I just, I had this whole thing of what I thought the military was. It turns out that is as far from the truth as humanely possible for a lot of people. And it is true for some people, unfortunately. But yes, I did that between my 11th and 12th grade. And like you said, I did. I came from a pretty low background. Obviously, there's people in this world who are a worse situation.

But that's what instilled that like always looking for something else, always looking for something that's free or always looking for some way to get by because it goes in that whole even being like wasteful right so like wasteful wasn't just inconvenient or it wasn't just wasteful it was dangerous when you don't have a lot of money so you're always looking for another angle another avenue for income there that's a good point I like that a lot wasteful is dangerous when you are low income when you don't have any money not low income just don't have any money it's not just like oh well that's that's wasteful like wasteful it's actually dangerous yeah yeah did you graduate then with any debt at all? Or was your kind of net position very positive when you graduated?

It's actually kind of funny. So I've always been extremely cheap, frugal, whatever. But we pronounce that frugal here. I've always been efficient with my money. But I will say that going to college and getting those thousands of dollars of extra income was the first time I'd ever had money like that. And so I didn't make some bad decisions. But I still graduated college with probably about 10, in my pocket, maybe a little less. But I also had a 2005 sailing Mustang that I loved and a Honda

CBR motorcycle that I bought both of in cash while I was in college. So that was a total of about 18 grand worth of vehicles, plus I probably had like a 10 grand in cash in the bank when I graduated. Now, I'm not an expert in the military, but I do understand that at the

academies, there's a career starter load option. Was that offered to you during your experience? It was. And that's another thing about when you grow up on a lower income side of things, you are so scared of debt. Can you explain this career starter loan and then what your decision-making process is around? Sure. Yeah.

So, sure, yeah. And we can probably get the exact rate. But the career starter loan is, I believe, for the Academy and RTC, I know for us, it was around 25,000. There's something in my head that makes me believe in RTC, it was somewhere around 25,000. for the Air Force Academy, I believe it's higher. And the idea is that you get that loan at, it's 0% interest for a certain amount of time,

and then it's extremely low. Like I want to say 2% or less after that period of time. Now, you know, when I look back on it, now I'm kicking myself, why didn't I take this money? Look, but when I was in that point to actually make that decision, I'm coming from this background, again, very low income, where debt is never a good thing. Like, there was never a good debt story.

There's never, I didn't know anything about investing. I didn't know anything, whether it be stock market or real estate. I don't know what you could do with that money that would be positive other than just saving it. And if I was going to save it, like, why take the loan? So I did not take the loan. You know, obviously this is in probably this is in around 2013 when I could have taken that money out. And if I were invested $25,000, then it would have been a very nice chunk to change in my pocket. I could have made on interest, but I didn't take it.

Well, but would you have invested it? If I would have taken it then would I've invested it? No. No. So then you're looking at it with 2019 eyes. The 2013 eyes not taking the loan was a good choice because maybe you would have gone out and completed your collection of vehicles you don't need in a form of a truck. Or, I mean, you didn't have a truck. You just had a fancy motorcycle and a fancy car. So it's loans that you don't take out aren't necessarily a bad thing. It would have been nice. but, you know, I think it was a smart decision for 2013 you to not take that loan.

Correct. But if there's people out there who are seniors at the Academy are about to graduate at RTC and you're smart and you feel comfortable with it and you believe in investing and you get that opportunity to take that investor loan, like learn from folks like me and take it but use it wise. I agree. So many people took it and wasted it on something. And sure, it was a low interest loan, but they still just wasted it. So there is a lot of people who, who could take advantage of it if they'd get smart on investing. So what did your position look like in the first couple of years out of college? And then what was the turning point where you kind of got serious about creating wealth, investing,

working towards maybe financial freedom? What did that interim period like in when the transition point come? Sure. So in college, I was going to school for computer engineering. So I actually did five years of college. That was an approved five-year major for the Air Force. So they paid for all five years. So that would have had me graduating in 2013 at the age of 23.

There was a big drawdown on the military at that time. So I was kind of in this holding pattern where they didn't have anywhere for me to go. So I was at home not getting paid for seven months after I graduated. I only got the notice that I was actually coming out to Colorado in December of 2013. So just about to turn 24 when I finally start working. And at that point, you know, I'm making probably a really. around high 40s, maybe, I think it was something like $48,000 a year. And to me, that was a lot of money. Like, I never had any money. But I was also on this really weird spot where I was making

money for the first time. I had achieved all the goals that I had. I graduated college. I got my commission. I got the location I wanted. Like, everything should be perfect. But I realized I was unhappy and I mean, honestly, like depressed. Like I didn't have any other goals to go for. And I already had everything I wanted, but that just wasn't doing anything for me. And so I started kind of looking internally and realizing what stuff in my life was actually important and realizing that money wasn't what was making me happy and kind of refocusing my life. And then a year later in 2015 is when I really got serious about it. I kind of, you know, like everybody else, you stumble on the Mr. Money Mustache blog and you start thinking about like, oh man, I got all this extra money. And I just don't think

saving is the answer. There's got to be something else. And you start learning about investing. And so in 2015 is when I really started tracking every single thing I spent. It's when I created my giant spreadsheet. It's when I created the blog. And that's when I just really started getting serious about it and started trying to plan out like what was it that I could do with my money and what would those and be more purposeful with my money. So what was the first thing you invested in? So again, from my background, there was no talk of investing. I was scared of death of investing. to everyone I grew up with, investing was like going to a roulette table. It was all a big gamble, and you just didn't trust that system.

But I finally got myself over the hump to where I believe that investing was safe, but I was still scared to invest it myself, so I wasn't ready to just go straight up, open up a brokerage account of Vanguard and start picking funds. And I just started hearing about the robo advisors, and so I opened up a betterment account, and that was my first foray into investing, was just simply feeding a betterment account.

What about, you know, it seems like you were frugal this whole time, right? Like throughout your whole life, when you kind of stumbled across these sites, started the blog, started your spreadsheet, did that kind of accelerate? Did that become more exaggerated? Did you become even more frugal and less bendy? Or was that just to kind of continue, you just kind of look at it and be like, hey, I'm going to continue what I'm doing here, and it's pretty good? So I think I did get better. And I think that's one of the reasons why some people don't like making a spreadsheet where they're putting down everything they spend, but it really helped

me for no other reason than just seeing all those little tiny things that you were spending money on where you felt like you're being pretty frugal, but they were kind of starting to add up on you. Plus, I mean, I really didn't know. I had no data to look back on. I had no idea how to make projections out forward, but it did make it much more, it made it more of like purposeful. So I kind of, the analogy I think of is, you know, like when you're trying to train a dog and you're hitting it was a newspaper, like when I put numbers in my spreadsheet and I see my savings rate go down or I see like how much money that I have left to hit a goal go down, that is a visual reminder and that is very real. If I just have my stuff hooked up to mint and I look at it once every three

months, like that's not going to change my habits. It might change in what else's habits, but that wasn't going to work for me. Can you walk us through what your expenses are or are an ongoing basis from this? Like, what do you pay for housing, transportation, food, or whatever categories that you've kind of broken out there? Right. So currently I live just, you know, like right next to Cambridge. So if you're familiar with Harvard, like, I'm kind of in that area just outside of Boston. So most of consider this a very high-cost living area. I live on about $24,000 a year. In Boston? Yeah. You can't do that. Well, there's an entire post on there telling you exactly what I spit everything on in Boston.

So you can get that one on the, hopefully in the show notes, it's definitely on the block. But yeah, so my rent now, we found a great deal in place. My half of the rent is $837.50 a month. That includes utilities. It's a two-bedroom,

and it's got, you know, it's been redone completely on the inside. So I actually love our home. I don't have any car notes or loans of any type, really. I probably spend about 60 bucks a month on gas. I spend a good bit on travel, you know, maybe anywhere from 3 to 500 on travel, maybe a couple hundred on random, maybe 100 or so of just something random that comes up that month, maybe 100, 120 on going out, you know,

whether that be like food, drinks or even drinks like going over to someone's house, and then about 60 bucks a month on my grocery expenses. So how many roommates do you have? So over the course of when I've been tracking this, you know, I've had roommates in the past. So I had a roommate in our Springs, one roommate at times two. Then when I first moved to Boston, I had two roommates. And now it's just me and my girlfriend. So it's just the two-os.

Is her part of the red $837.50. Yes. Where do you live? Is it a studio? No, it's a two-bedroom. It's got a little balcony. We have a two-bedroom in Boston for $837. You should kiss your landlord.

It's 1660, right? 1660 is the rent, right? Right. Yeah, but for a two-bedroom in Boston. Yeah, this place is probably one of those if they want to rent quick. It should have been like 2,100 and it's probably worth closer to $2,400. Don't say that. Don't shh.

It's worth $16. Well, and let's dive into that. You know, that's a great deal on the apartment for rent. But let's dive into that grocery budget, right? Because you're talking $60 a month, $15 a week, right? What are you eating on that kind of? budget. Beans and rice and peanut butter and jelly sandwiches.

Yeah, that's always my favorite question. I mean, I get, my other favorite thing is how people say, like, they name things, and I'm like, no, that's way too expensive. But like, are you eating nothing but tuna? And I'm like, oh, it's like a dollar can. I can't afford that. But no, so my staples are boneless, skinless, chicken breast, eggs, milk, obviously, like bread, rice, sweet potatoes, broccoli, green beans, all perishable stuff for

the most part. So I'm not buying a lot of junk food. I'm not buying anything pre-made. I'm not buying sodas. I'm just buying meat and vegetables. And the other thing, and I've tried to put some stuff out there on the blog now where it's showing you kind of some principles I go by and some actual things I buy, but don't get hung up on the specific, this is what he bought, like, because what is on sale in your grocery store, what is on selling my grocery store this week versus next week is going to change. It's kind of more about understanding those principles. and the kind of things you're going to buy and being able to be flexible enough that when you're in the grocery store, you're getting what's on sale.

You're not going in there with a, hey, I've got this list that says, I am buying chicken or I am buying pork. You can make the same thing with either one. Just get whatever's on sale. That's a really good tip. I like that a lot. And I do like shopping the sales. We had Aaron Chase on from $5 dinners, one of our first episodes.

And she said the same thing. up the sales. Amy from Go With Less has, I was actually talking to her. And she's like, oh yeah, I buy the meat and then I build around that based on what's on sale. But you go to the grocery store any given day, there's something that's dirt cheap. Yeah. And so, I mean, there's all kinds of little tips. There's getting to know your specific local grocery stores, right? So they're going to have stuff that's going to be going out of date so they've got to get rid of it. So most grocery stores do that on a similar day. So for instance, I've got one at Sunday morning. So you get there Sunday. Sunday.

early, the manager special area is stocked. And the great thing about meat is it's not going to go bad if you throw it in the freezer. And that's actually one of the, I met these little cooking commandments. And the first one is your freezer is sacred because that freezer space should be just stock full of every time you can find meat, dirt cheap, unless you're a vegetarian. And obviously, like, that's what I'm using my freezer for. Like, it's not going to be full of all kinds of random boxes of stuff that take up a bunch of room. It's going to be nothing but straight, just dirt cheap meat that I find on sale. Let's go through these commandments. Let's just, can you, can you rattle these off for us? I mean, it sounds like they're paying

off for you if you're able to get such a low cost per meal, cost per week on your groceries. The first one is your freezer is, what was the term you just used? The freezer is sacred. The freezer is sacred. So the first one has, yeah, your freezer is sacred again just because you got to have somewhere to store that stuff that's going to go bad when it's on sale because you're never promised to sail tomorrow.

The second one I tried to have a little fun with was I like big batches and I cannot lie. that just goes into when you're doing this, like do large amounts of cooking. So the reason most people don't meal prep and therefore spend so much money on eating is because it's not convenient for them. Because, yeah, you don't want to clean up the kitchen every night, but that's why you, you know, the whole meal prep you think you cook a ton of stuff at once. We kind of touched on it earlier.

The third one is keep grocery list generic. So if you need a grocery list, then you can think of it is, I need a protein, I need a vegetable, and then there's like, I would say like, I call it, you need like a vessel. So the vessel could be the rice or the tortilla or the bread or the thing that you kind of bring in a meal on top of. So you can make the same thing on rice or on tortillas or in a sandwich. So it's kind of the vessel. But yeah, just keep those generic.

I never make a list. I go to a grocery store and I'm like, hmm, I got a ton of meat in a freezer, but I don't have vegetables or I just think about the areas that I need. The fourth one is avoid ingredients creep. So we talk about lifestyle creep or lifestyle inflation. But the same thing can happen on a meal. You pull up these recipes and they've got 30 ingredients and they got these weird garnishes and they've got these things that you honestly can't even taste.

Like start just pulling ingredients out of your recipes until you notice them decline. The same way we do with our financial lives where we're saying, how do you know what deprivation is and you start pulling stuff off until it hurts? And you say, okay, I went too far. Do the same thing with your groceries. She's like, pull all these random little things out of the recipe that you're not going to notice. I love that because I very much love to experiment with recipes. And now I've got 37 different kinds of vinegar in the cabinet above my stove.

It's rice wine vinegar and red wine vinegar and they're different. And then there's, you know, there's this white vinegar and there's that vinegar. And it's vinegar. It all tastes the same. It's gross. And most meals are going to have like a dime. dominant flavor that you can put something else on top of. And some of it's even like, to some people,

some of the greens I'm talking about would be like blasphemy for you cut out. So if you're making a taco, not granted, if I find cheese on sale, I want to buy cheese, I'll throw it on there. Try a taco without cheese. Let me know if you can tell that much difference unless you're loading that bad boy down with cheese. There's a reason why when you go to Mexico, like they don't come with cheese unless you ask for it.

You know, it's a separate thing. It's not just a given. You can freeze cheese, FYI. Yeah, yeah. So if you find some on sale that isn't fuzzy. But Justin's freezer is sacred and only for meat. Put no dairy in there. The other two are, so number five is I just put like not really a grocery shopping thing,

but it's kind of around that feeding yourself is the is hoard, hoard, hoard. So it is kind of grocery shopping too. Like the other day, I went to the store and they had these like the rice side things. they were normally at least a dollar a pack. They have for 30 cents. I don't know how many they had, but I know how many, I know I bought every one that they had. I was like, I don't know when I'm going to eat these, but I will.

They had Reese's puffs for $1.38 a box. I never can afford Reese's puffs because they're like four bucks a box. So when they have them for $1.38 a box, yeah, I grabbed five of them. So just like stock up on the stuff when it's really cheap. You'll eventually eat it. So you might have a month where your crusher bill is $100, but then the next week, the next month it's 20 because you've already just bought. so much stuff cheap for.

And then the last one is just getting to know those staples, those things you can always fall back on. So no matter what I can always find chicken for $2 or less a pound, eggs are always cheap. Like if things hit the fan, I can always just make something with eggs. You always have something you can kind of fall back on. So get to know those staples and make some meals around those. Nice.

That's a great list. And that application of that over the years has allowed you to get to that. Have you always been at a $15 a week average or $60, 70 bucks a month average? Or has that been something you've backed into in recent years after kind of honing this? Yeah, so I've been keeping the spreadsheet for a little over four years. And that's my average, like across four years. And I would say that it's been pretty steady. It took a couple months initially.

But once I figured it out early on, I've been able to maintain that. And I also say that to remember that I've lived in different places. So that works for me in Colorado Springs. It's working for me in Boston. And so I can't guarantee it's going to work everywhere in the U.S. and especially not other countries, but this is not just some random little tiny town that has some weird grocery store. Like these are big chain grocery stores in different cities that I've done this in. In conjunction with this, I can only imagine the other things you're doing to keep your budget, you know,

in line with that $24,000 annual expenditures. What's your savings rate overall as percentage of your income? So the average is right around is 75%, give or take. Sometimes it's higher. Sometimes it's lower. on a year. But it's, so I'm hardcore saving, like just cash, just over $69,000 a year because I'm making right now in Boston just over $90,000 a year.

That's awesome. After taxes. What are you doing with that $69,000 a year? So we have the TSP or the Thrift Savings Plan, which is our form of a 401K. I max that. I max an IRA. And then that leaves me with 40-something. thousand dollars left that I'm just throwing in a like a VTI mostly in a brokerage account.

Okay, so you're investing in index funds? Yeah. Have you ever thought about real estate? So I have and I've actually, I read the book on the investing in real estate out of state because I just do not want to touch Boston. I don't blame you. Because like the house next to my mom's, they were, you know, I could buy that house for $50,000.

and I could probably get pretty close to that 1% rule. I'm not touching, like there's no way that I could get this apartment for $167,000. There's no way I'm touching a 1% rule in this apartment. So I haven't gotten to real estate. I think that if I lived in a city, and I know I'm just making an excuse, but if I live in a city where I could actually buy a local, that would help me get over that hump. I just haven't been able to get over that psychological hump of being remote.

I think that's valid. It's scary to invest in a thing that you can't even see. On the other hand, if you can't drive past it, you won't drive past it. That's very true. So you're not constantly out there and, ooh, they got, the weeds are an inch long. I'm going to call them up. But yeah, if you're not ready yet to invest in real estate, then, you know, now's the time to start learning about investing. Learn how to screen a tenant. learn how to analyze a deal, learn how to do all these things. So when you are in a position to where you feel more comfortable, once you learn about it, it's a lot less scary to take the leap. I got an opinion here also that might be different where if you're saving at 75% of your income

like this, then it almost doesn't matter what you invest in. Right? Because you're going to be so, you're going to be so rapidly advancing towards that 25 times your savings rate that. 4% rule that, I mean, what is the timeline to retirement, you know, at a 5% rate of return when you're saving 75% of your income? You know, it's got to be a matter of like less than 10 years, right? Yeah. So that's kind of what I'm looking at too, is I could realistically, you know, retire. When you think about that, that kind of simple math behind retirement, I think it's a seven, eight years is what it would take saving that rate to, to build retire. And it kind of goes hand in hand with when I first started this,

I started the block for two reasons. One was because I realized, hey, I'm probably going to be retired younger than most of my friends, the way things are going. And I'd like to have some people to hang out with in retirement. So let's get them on board. That was reason number one. Reason number two was, you know, I knew that I came from a poor background. I wasn't given any handouts from, like, my family to go to college.

I was doing a job that anyone could get in the military pretty much. This was not a fluke thing where I got in a startup company. I had the most easy to follow in my eyes, like if you're willing to do it, path that you could have. I mean, like anyone could do this. And I'm thinking, this is going to be a good story because I started it when I had $38,000. And I could look out on the space and I could find people

who had stories that maybe I could recreate, but they didn't start talking about it until they're already successful. And it's kind of one of those hindsight's 2020, sure it worked for them, but I wanted to start something where you could follow along from day one and be extremely transparent. So every month, you know, I'm putting the most detailed numbers I can put on the line without boring someone about my life and my spending. And so if this works, then I said it was going to work four years ago and you get to watch every step of the way. If it does it, then like, I'm like an idiot, but hey, you know, here we are.

You said you had a very important sentence in there. Right in the beginning, you said, if you're willing to do the work. Yeah. You can't just do this. Oh, I want to be retired early. Why am I not retired early? Because you didn't do any work. It's not super hard work, but it is, I mean, you could have had another Shelby Cobra or

Saline Cobra, saline Mustang. Sorry, I'm getting all my cars confused. You could have had three more motorcycles and a truck and, you know, rented a house that cost a lot more than $1,600. You could spend $100 a week on groceries instead of $15. you can make a lot of choices to do dumb things with your money. Or blown that career start alone. Right.

And that's what there's a whole big, like, and I have no problem with it because I get it. There are certain people who are in situations that are just terrible and they maybe don't have a path to financial independence. But I do have a problem anytime I read online where somebody's like, I hate people just saying you can put it by your bootstraps and you can just figure this out. Because I'm like, well, I mean, I don't know what kind of handout I had. What advantage did I have? Like, please show me the advantage. I get it that I'm a, you know, I'm a white male in the United States. I get that.

But I didn't get my job because any of that. I didn't get my school paid for because any of that. The money I have in my pocket has nothing to do with any of that. So, again, coming from a, I graduate with 35 people at a public high school in Mississippi. Like, come on, guys. Like, you can do this. And I got a question. Earlier you said it was seven to eight years to retirement, I think, at a 75% savings rate.

Is that right? How far away are you from retirement? So by the numbers, I could probably, I could be financially independent and probably about the age 32, so like about four years, three, four years. Because I started, that's from the day, you know, I started when I was 25. So that would put me in about 2022, 2023. Yeah. So anyways, about another four years would should get me there because I'm four years in. I got four years to go. Yeah. And let me point out something also that I think is remarkable with this. And, uh, You're doing all this without, I believe, arguably the most, one of the most powerful tools in the arsenal, which is that house hack, right? So think about, like, if you're listening, think about the application of Justin's story.

If you're in a market where house hacking is an option, right? It seems like Boston's not a really good one for you at this point because of the price point in the comfort zone, right? You wipe out that $800 a month in expenses, and now you can spend double what Justin spends on groceries and still come out way ahead, you know, that on that savings track, right, if you're in a similar life position. So what's remarkable is not only are you being extraordinarily efficient, but there's even more that could be done if you're

thinking about this and you want to kind of repeat that journey to FI. Absolutely. And that's the funny thing to me is, and we've talked a lot about the grocery part. And that is a lot of people struggle with that. When I have friends who are like, oh my goodness, how do you do the $60 a month grocery thing? Like, show me how. And I'm like, well, you also are paying $1,700 a month in rent. Like, I think that's probably a bigger problem than your grocery bill. So by me keeping those core expenses, so housing is low for me. I mean, it's low for the area. My car expenses low.

You know, keeping and then my food budget low, I actually spend a ton of money on things that I don't need to spend money on. Like, I am constantly going on trips, like all the time. So I'm always going on trips. There's a ton of stuff I could cut out and I'm still living on $24,000 a year while paying rent in Boston. Like, there's a lot of wiggle room here. Yeah.

I can relate to this as also, you know, being another 20-something, you know, man, and I don't have rent, and my car is paid off, and I'm not spending that much on food. And it's like, yeah, I feel like I have this, like, huge luxury pipeline of money flowing out of me on fun stuff.

And I still just, like, I can't spend that much money, right? Because of the design of those core things. Yeah, like, I literally don't know what spending $50,000 a year would look like. Like, in my life, without having kids or anything like that, I can't imagine what that would look like. Well, first you'd have to double your grocery bill.

Then we still got about 20. They still got like 24,000 left to go. Yeah, yeah. Tax season is one of the only times all year when most people actually look at their full financial picture, including income, spending, savings, investments, the whole thing. And if you're like most folks, it can be a little eye-opening. That's why I like Monarch.

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This winter, stay warm. the banner to order your groceries online at walla.ca. Enjoy in-store prices without leaving your home. You'll find the same regular prices online as in-store. Many promotions are available both in-store and online, though some may vary. So how did you find your apartment? Because we didn't finish this up before we moved on to food. Right. So this is actually a pretty cool story as far as, I guess, the whole story, maybe not exactly how I found it. But I was living in a different apartment, the one where I had two roommates. This is before my girlfriend moved to Boston. I had renters insurance through USAA. Again, shout out USAA. The floor above me catches on fire. Now, my apartment doesn't get much

actual fire damage on my side of the building, it's mostly on the kitchen side, the back side, but everything was like smoke damage and the roof is gone on the whole house, so you can't live there. So I'm like, okay. You know, that's one of those things you walk, you get home, you're like, I don't have anywhere to live. But luckily, I had renters insurance. And I start figuring out what is allowed in renter's insurance and what can you get? And they'll pay for your hotel. Well, they put me into a hotel and the rule was, like they put me into a hotel for up to a year or until the house was fixed. Well, the house was not even beginning to be fixed. And I end up living in this hotel for five months. And now another thing a lot of people don't realize is they get a policy that says it's a $10,000 policy

is what I had, like as cheap as I could get. I was spending over $8,000 a month on the hotel. Now, that $10,000 is for your stuff. It is not for the displacement part. So I racked up over $40,000 worth of hotel bills. Now, the other thing I did was they called me and they're like, hey, we can put this under our name that way we directly pay for and you don't have to worry about it. And I said, no, thank you.

Like, I'm going to get a real nice, hilton credit card. I want to put this on my credit card. and so I ended up with two million Hilton points. Remember Scott at the beginning of the show? He said he looks for ways to squeeze the most out of a dollar. Oh my gosh. This is absurd. And they were also paying for my groceries for a large majority of this.

So anyways, I said there were two million Hilton points. And while I'm living in this hotel, right, they have free breakfast. And I got a home with sweets on purpose because they also have free dinner Monday through Thursday. And I'm just taking Tupper, filling stuff up. I'm spending $0 on groceries for those months. And then Leslie moves here. She actually lives with me in the

hotel for a couple months. And you know, start getting contacted from USA. And they're like, hey, like, you know, you've been in this hotel for so long. Like, the house is getting fixed. We're going to have to probably start looking to move you into like an Airbnb situation. And the only reason I liked living in the hotel was because I was getting

all those points. Because I wasn't making any money off of it because I'm still paying my rent equipment to USAA. So I'm not making any money, but I'm making so many of these points. And so once I started talking about moving into Airbnb, it's like, okay, I need to find somewhere live. And I was at the Grand Canyon, and I get a phone call, and it's this guy that I used to work with, and he's like, hey, I know a guy who's got a house, he's wanting to rent out out a room in, and I know your house had a fire, and maybe you should go look at it. And this is, I want to say July or August, and I said, sure, yeah. I was like, I not really want to move out real soon,

because I'm really loving making these points, but, you know, maybe down the line. And then once they started calling about the Airbnb thing, I called him, and he still had the place for rent. And I come check it out. And they've shown me the second floor. It's a huge apartment. And he wants $2,100 a month for it. But it's straight, like late 1800s, early 1900s, everything is like very old school original. And I was like, well, this is actually still a pretty good value. You know, the utilities were included. But he's like, I got this, I got the third floor, too. You might want to look at it, but it doesn't have. have a real kitchen. And I said, okay, like, I go upstairs. It's brand new. It's a little smaller,

but still two bedroom. It's brand new. And completely redone. Like, you don't see stuff like this in Boston. And he's like, and I talked him down to 1675 a month. And it was just like the greatest deal ever. And that's something I actually, I hate I didn't mention on the cooking thing. It was another one of the kind of excuses I try to expose is I don't even have like a range. I have a countertop oven. I have an instant pot. I have a portable electric stove. And I still do all in my meal prepping with that. But anyways, this apartment is like an accessory apartment. So it doesn't have an actual range, even though it's a big kitchen. It doesn't have a dishwasher or a range. So wait, you do all of this. You cook all of your meals. It sounds like you eat most of your meals

at home. Or make all of your meals. You do this in a kitchen that doesn't even have a stove top. Yeah, so I actually discovered the love of an Instapot while I was in the hotel, because once they stopped paying for my groceries, even though they had the free food in the hotel, like, it's not the healthiest stuff, and it just kind of gets to you after a while. So I started want to cook some meals and didn't really have a good way of doing it. So discover the Instant Pot. That helps a lot. Also, they make some pretty big kind of countertop ovens.

They make some that can fit like a whole-sized pizza that's got two racks. You can't, like, I definitely can't do meal prep. quite as efficient as I used to. Because when I lived in a normal house, man, I had these sheet pans that I would get that were as big as you could possibly fit in an oven on each rack. And I would just do six, seven pounds of chicken, six, seven pounds of sweet potatoes and several pounds of greens,

like green vegetables all at the same time. Throw the oven on 450 and go watch an episode of Game of Thrones. And then you come back and all your food's done for the week. So now it's a little more involved. I'm having to do some stuff in the instant pot while I'm doing some stuff in the oven, but it's still pretty efficient. Yeah, this is, I'm sorry, if you're spending a lot of money on groceries and you want to stop, listen to this episode and ditch your excuses because Justin doesn't even have a stove. Yeah, and I put some, the blog posts out there where it's kind of like, I try to make one, where it's walking you through some of those excuses people come up with and trying to counter those. I also put like a picture of my kitchen setup.

So you can see where I just have my little oven and my little instapot. So there's some photos in there. Some other excuses you'll hear that I kind of want to touch on was time, right? Everyone complains that even if it's on a money thing, like they just don't have time to cook. And my counter is always, well, okay, so if you went out to eat every time, you never cook, that's supposed to save you time. And you're getting it to go. That takes you 15 minutes to go get it.

You do that five days a week. You know, that's two and a half hours a week that you're spending going and getting to go. stuff. I can promise you it does not take me two and a half hours to cook five days worth of meals for myself. I promise you that. It takes maybe my instant pot stuff. I'm spending like 10 minutes worth of work to put in the instant pot and that takes maybe 20, 30 minutes and that's running in parallel with the oven that's maybe going to take me 45 minutes to an hour. So you're talking about an hour of your total time and only maybe 10, 20 minutes of work. And I've got five days worth of food versus spending two and a half hours driving around to different the different restaurants

to get to go stuff. So I would argue that it doesn't save you time. It does not save you time. Yeah, the time saving is immense when you have every meal planned for the whole week and know what you're going to be doing and not have to scramble for it and think about it and all that kind of stuff, not to mention the costs. Right. But for some reason like that is, I would say just, you know, they'll say convenience and then they'll say time are the two biggest reasons why people refuse to cook. It's not convenient to go out to dinner every single time. Let's say it takes you, let's say the thing is right over there. The restaurant is right over there. You still have to drive over there. You have to get in the car, especially if you have kids, got to get in the car. That's like 10

minutes. You drive over there. You walk in the door. You tell them how many people they make up your table, then they sit you down, then your waitress comes over. And it's not an easy transition. It's not an easy or short experience. I mean, even if you're going through the drive-through, that's still like 10 or 15 minutes. It's just, it's not as easy as you think it is. And when you sit down and really think how much time does it take me, you'll be surprised at how much time it takes you. And no matter what you get, it's unhealthy.

Yeah. And there's also things that you can do to keep shrinking that time. It takes you to prep your food. So when I throw something in the oven, I'm always putting tinful down. I'm not washing that thing. I just pop it in the trash. And then now with the instant pot, like I don't have to do rice and this and that and different things, all in the instant pot.

So I'm washing like one bowl, throwing the tinful away, and washing my knife and cutting board, done. Like, it's not a bunch of work. Like, I don't know how people dream up all this work, but it's not much work. Yeah, the instant pot seems expensive. It's like $199-ish. You can find it for maybe like $150, whatever. It seems like it's a really expensive thing for this little, oh, I already have a rice cooker.

I have a slow cooker. No. And if you want to do all of these things, get yourself an instant pot, find it when it's on sale. or just spend the money, you will not believe how fast it. I mean, this stuff cooks like that. It's an instant. And then, oh, look at that. This episode's famous for is brought to you by Instapot.

Insapot. I think I got mine for, I think I got mine for like 60 bucks, 50 something bucks. I got mine for free because my company bought it for me for Christmas. Oh, nice. And I didn't even want it. When they were offering us, they're like, oh, here's three things to choose from for your Christmas gift. And I'm like, oh, I have that. I don't want that.

I guess I'm going to get an Instapot. And then I got it and it was in the box for like a month. And then I finally opened it up for something. And I'm like, this is the best thing ever. And I still kept my cooking, my slow cooker because that works in a different way. Although the Instapot has a slow cooker setting. But yeah, no, I love the Instapot. I can make anything in there in a heartbeat and it's fabulous.

And if you have a full size oven, again, just take, you just get a giant sheet pan, just throw meat, vegetables on it. and you can throw sweet potatoes on a rack, close your oven, go watch Netflix come back, your meal prepping is done. Throw the tinful away. There's no cleanup. Yeah, you don't have to watch it cook. Yeah.

Okay. You have mentioned a ton of articles that we are going to link to on our show notes, which can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 75. That's Money Show 75. Okay, Justin, are you ready? for our famous four questions. I hope so. I hope so too,

because they are difficult to answer. Oh, I'm sorry, four questions and one command. Okay. And you're a military man so you can follow commands. What is your favorite finance book? Right. So my favorite finance book, and it's maybe from a different angle

because it's not for myself, but again, I'm trying to help people and show them a very relatable and easy way to get to person financial finance and introduced them to things. So I love using Aaron Lowry's Broke Millennial book to give to people when they're kind of just getting started. That's a great one. And she's got a second one out on investing that we're going to

interview her about sometime. Nice. Love it. There's a good chapter in that book featuring some topics about house hacking. Oh, wow. I wonder who she interviewed about that. I love that book. Love Broke Millennial and Aaron. So all right, what was your biggest money mistake? So I would say it was as soon as I graduated college, again, making money for the first time, I bought a, even though it was a year used, this sounds terrible. This is like, so it's like the saddest, worst money mistake. So I bought a used hybrid car.

That was my worst mistake. So it was a 2013 Ford Fusion hybrid. And my whole life had always done really great to be able to buy a car and sell it for like almost exactly what I bought it for. and this car is definitely going to, I'm going to lose a lot of appreciation on it. But that was my worst money mistake. Do you still have it?

Yeah. So why are you going to lose? If it still runs, run it into the ground. I know, but still, like, I had always bought like a car, drove it for three years and sold it for almost exactly what I bought it for because I would buy like these really sweet spot, you know, in the car buying lifecycle. And then this one I bought it is only a year old.

You buy a car that's four years old, can do pretty well on it. You buy a cart's one-year-old and not so much. Not so much. Justin, what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out? So my favorite little thought experiment, I always give to people, and this kind of goes in line with the grocery, but it's bigger than that, is you ask somebody, what did you have to eat last Tuesday? Normally, most people cannot answer that question. And then you follow that up with, what was the last, like, memorable vacation or concert that you went to? And you see their eyes light up and they get excited about it. They start telling you about it. And they're like,

what were those two questions all about? You know how you couldn't remember what you ate for lunch last week? Anything in your life that you can't remember a week later, cut or minimize that as much as possible. Those things that make your eyes light up and smile, focus your money on those. That is great advice. That might be the best one I've ever heard. That is awesome. I want to get a shirt that just says, what did you have to eat last Tuesday or something like that? It's like an inside joke. But yeah, I'm trying to think. Well, I guess I do know what I ate last night.

Because my husband cooked it. No, not last night, last Tuesday. Yeah, I can't. I remember what I ate two days ago Tuesday. All right. What is your favorite joke to tell at parties? My favorite joke to tell a party is because much like my co-host, I love a good dad joke, is what do you call it when Batman skips church?

Oh, I don't know. Christian Bale. Oh, no. Okay. From time to time, our listeners will send us in a joke. So Alan Bishop sent in, which American president was the least guilty? Abraham Lincoln. He was in assent.

Oh, man. Fantastic. Fantastic. There it is. And for the carnivorous plant lovers out there, tomorrow I am going to see the carnivorous plant exhibition at the Royal Botanical Gardens. I wonder if I'll be allowed to take a pitcher. Pitcher plants are carnivorous plant. When Carl and I got married, we got married at the Oldbrook Conservatory in Madison, Wisconsin, and we took our pictures on the inside, and they have this huge carnivorous garden section.

And we made sure to take our pictures there because he's a big carnivorous plant fan. unless they're cool looking plants. Yeah, they are cool looking. Okay. Are you ready for the command? What is your rank? What is your military rank? I'm a captain, which is in the Air Force is a 03,

so on the officer side, it's kind of your third rank up on the officer side. Captain Taylor, tell us where can people find out more about you, sir? If you just Google saving Sherpa, I feel like that's much easier than actually typing in a URL. because it does have a hyphen in it, but just Google SavingSherp. I'll be the first link. You can find me there. You can also listen to me and Cody weekly on Tuesdays at the fashore.com. And I'm on all the social medias at saving shirpa, but you can get to that

to the blog. Awesome. Well, we will include a link to all of that in our show notes again, which can be found at biggerpockets.com slash money show 75. Okay, Justin, thank you so much for taking the time out of your day to share with us your recipes and tips. just this was really fun. We have a lot of things here. I appreciate you guys having me on because, you know, I know I don't have the craziest story where I started some business or whatever, but, you know, I think it's cool to have somebody that anyone can follow. Yeah, you know what? That's the thing. We want repeatable stories. It's great that somebody won the lottery for $900 million. How many times does that happen? So far, one. And that would even have to split it up. So, I mean,

it's just, it's not a repeatable thing. Oh, wow, they won the lottery. I better go out and buy all these tickets all the time. Oh, I kept losing. I kept losing. So no, this is great. This is exactly what we want. Somebody who has a story that somebody else can do too. Yeah. And you're so aggressive about it. I mean, it's just, it's just fantastic. You're so aggressively pursuing this thing while making those memories and having the good life. You know, you're just not having the glamorous meal last Tuesday that you don't remember. I always show with people that I am on like the laziest path to FI because I don't have side hustles. I'm not doing real estate. Like I'm not doing anything crazy.

Like I'm not climbing a corporate ladder, but I'm on a pretty fast track. So you don't necessarily have to be the entrepreneur that we get used to in this space. I mean, I wish I was. I wish I could get more into that. I'd love to. But right now, so far I'm on about the laziest path you can beatify. And that's what we'll call this episode, the laziest path to Fye with Justin Taylor. I love that title.

I do too. Do you feel deprived, Justin? I'm in a nice two-bedroom apartment in Boston. Like I said, I'm traveling this weekend. I'm constantly flying somewhere on the road. And I also still have money in my budget to give to good causes. I sponsored a kid down in Mexico. And at a orphanage I go visit every year,

like I feel like I'm getting to both help others and live an awesome life. And I've wrapped that up in a 24,000. dollar bucket and I can't feel deprived one bit. Well, I can't top that. Okay, from episode 75 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Justin and Scott and Mindy, and we are out.