BiggerPockets Money Podcast - 80: Managing Money: How a Saver & a Spender Are Living Happily Ever After with Rich & Regular

Episode Date: July 8, 2019

Kiersten and Julien came from two very different money backgrounds. She’s the naturally spendy one, and he’s the natural saver. Their money views came to a head on their first vacation, when she put everything on a credit card—not to earn reward points—because she didn’t have the money to pay for it. The ensuing argument caused them to have some pretty tough money conversations very early on in their relationship. But it also set them up for early financial freedom. Kiersten decided her old, spendy ways weren’t what she wanted out of life. She started shedding her "things" so that she could pay off her debt and start investing. They researched and discovered a hole in the FI community. There just weren’t many blogs devoted to the African American community that focused on tips about money and early financial freedom. So, they started their blog, Rich & Regular, to bridge this gap. Investing in real estate helped create enough passive income for Julien to leave his corporate job, and for the couple to start living the life they truly want.  Plus, don't miss when Julien casually drops one of the best paying-for-college tips that's ever been shared on this show. If you’re struggling with spending too much money or reconciling your frugal ways with that of your partner, this is a must-listen episode. In This Episode We Cover: Julien's money journey Frugality as part of his everyday life On feeling he needed different ways to earn income On his job right after college How Julien and Kiersten met Kiersten's money journey On her sales and retail experience How Kiersten had a problem with spending Julien’s hack to pay $25 per semester in college Reason Kiersten got into debt Talking about their relationship journey and how they fixed their money problems Went on a saving spree after paying off all his debts Didn’t get into investing together until after marriage Their philosophies on buying properties On their investment properties How their careers have progressed since marriage And SO much more! Links from the Show BiggerPockets Forums Getting Financially “Naked” with Your Significant Other — With Erin Lowry FinCon Financial 180 Mint CampFI Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast show number 80 with Julian and Kirsten from Rich and Regular. In my head, I never imagined this scenario, but then when it happened, it felt so natural. And so it's one of the benefits of the journeys to financial independence is you come across all these things that you think you would never do. You wouldn't quit your job with a one-year-old. But then you realize, like, actually, I can. Like, we've done the work. We have what we need to be able to make those choices, choices that weren't usually available to us or that we didn't think be available to us are now there.

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 Jensen. How are you doing today? Jay, Mindy. Scott, I'm having a great day. How are you doing today? I'm doing fantastic. We just had a great interview with Julian and Kirsten, who have a fantastic story from opposing angles. And they've created a pretty incredible life together and financial situation. You know, what I really like

about their story is that it's so relatable to so many people. I hear from people all the time. I'm one financial mindset and my spouse or partner is a different financial mindset. How can we come together? And, you know, I think Julian and Kierston's story really teaches you how maybe not the best way to have that conversation. But definitely a way to have that conversation and a way to maybe look at the other person's perspective as well and see where they're coming from and just figure out how you can partner on your financial journey so you get to the same. end. Yeah, and I think that a lot of people will be able to relate to both, again, Julian and Kirsten, in the sense that Julian really had, you know, coming into a relationship, this, I like to call it a healthy, healthy obsession with fire and financial independence. You know,

it was really how do I aggressively pursue this? And this is a part of my identity and what I want to see my life develop as. And that was a totally foreign concept to Kirsten and how they were able to overcome that, I think is fantastic. And while it wasn't approached as tactfully as it could have been, it ended up producing a great result downstream. Yes, that was a very interesting part of their story. And I don't want to spoil it. So I'm going to say, hey, you should listen to the first entire bit of this. You should only listen to the first two minutes of this show. No, you should listen to the whole show because it's a great show. But you should also listen to very carefully to how Julian approached Kirsten with his financial point of view.

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Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. Scott, should we bring in Julian and Kirsten? Let's do it. Julian and Kierson from Richard Regular. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets of Money podcast. How are you guys doing today? We're great.

Doing good. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm so excited to have you on the show today because I really love your story. But I think you guys can tell it better than I can. So I'm going to have you guys start. Julian, what is your experience with money before you met Kirsten? Wow.

So I would say my earliest memory is bringing me back to my upbringing. I was born in Brooklyn, New York, in a Jamaican household, in a large sort of Caribbean, a West Indian community. And so frugality was very much a part of my day-to-day life. Let's see, you know, when I think about that backdrop, it reminds me of like old school scenes of law and older. It was very much what people would call the hood. We didn't have much.

It wasn't pretty, but we made the most of what we needed to do to get by. I moved to Atlanta shortly after the Olympics. And so that was around 96. I've been here ever since. But, you know, that sense of frugality and trying to squeeze every last penny out of every dollar has always been with me. And so, you know, money has always been something

that I felt like I've been striving for and reaching for. I think about my mom. I grew up in a single-parent household. It was always something that seemed out of reach. So it really wasn't until after college when I really started thinking about other ways to make money, aside from just a job.

I never felt that I needed just one job. I always felt that I needed to have a number of different ways to earn income. And part of that may just be the Jamaican in me. I don't know if you know that joke, but Jamaicans are well known for having several jobs. And so part of that is definitely in me as well. But I just, out of a sense of control

and just wanting to have a greater sense of security for my family, I always felt that I needed to have a number of different ways. earn income. So what did that look like out of college in terms of in practice? Did you have just one job or were you working for multiple moonlighting sources? Or how is that? How did that kind of? Well, going through college, I had several jobs. I used to cook professionally. I used to wait tables. I didn't do that at the same time because that's literally impossible. But once I stopped cooking, you know, I was waiting tables. I was working at the school actually part-time, and I was going to school in the part-time. So you could say that was three jobs. But after graduating, I went right into corporate America, and I did that

for about 10 years. But towards the halfway point of my corporate career, I just started to realize that there was a bit of a ceiling there. And they could just see it and say, all right, you know, even though I'm skilled, it didn't feel as if there were as many opportunities for me to grow. I could have gone to another company and done a number of other things, but it always seemed like there was a ceiling there. And going back to that original feeling of wanting to have greater control over my income for myself and for my family, I ultimately decided to start investing more of myself and figuring out other ways to earn income.

And so I would pay attention to the early days of bigger podcast and all that stuff and got into real estate investing. And in 2014, I got what's now our first. rental property. So what were you doing right out of college? You said that you graduated into corporate America. What was your job? My job was I was basically the point person that would help hotel franchisees

build their hotels. And so there are a number of things that you have to do from before signing the deal to ultimately opening that hotel. And we help people, the team that I was on, we help people sort of check all of those boxes from training to, sales, marketing, to you name it. Even down to construction and design, we sort of help people from end to end to get that hotel open on time.

Oh, so there's a component of real estate in there? There was. There was, which is, you know, something that was in my mind. And as the wheel started turning and thinking about other ways to build income, and because of the work I was doing, I was working with entrepreneurs, other franchisees. And so, you know, no disrespect to them, but I would say, man, you know, they're no small smarter than I am. They're not geniuses. They're just people that have the capital and we're willing to put it up for this particular endeavor. And so I learned a lot from them while helping them,

but also just in speaking with them and building relationships. Did you have this job going into your guy's relationship? Yeah, that's actually, well, I didn't have that particular job, but for the company that we worked for, that's where we met. We met in 2012, starting on the same team on the same day. Trying very hard to ignore each other. Well, at least I was. Look at her. You can't ignore her.

I failed miserably and trying to ignore her. What a way to start a new job. Attracted to somebody that's working right alongside you. You're like, no, I need to concentrate, but I can't concentrate. But I need to concentrate. Exactly. Okay. Kirsten, let's start.

With your story now, what was your money story like before you met Julian? Yeah, my money story is kind of opposite of his. If we're comparing TV shows, if he was law and order, my upbringing was more like family matters with a little bit of Cosby show mixed in. It was a two-parent household. I had my brother. We've been on vacations every year. My parents worked really hard in corporate jobs.

And I got the bug of entrepreneurship fairly early. My dad bought us a T-shirt press when I was probably 10 or 12. and we would make family reunion t-shirts and just t-shirts for local landscapers. And so I caught the bug of wanting to earn my own money fairly early. And then when I was of working age, I got my first job in the mall selling tennis shoes. And so then I learned how to spend my money really well because I was immersed in retail throughout all of my teenage years. I worked in the mall selling shoes.

And then when I got to college, I still worked in the mall. and I got an internship with a big box retailer target, who became my first employer when I graduated college. So I had a lot of experience in sales and retail, and I developed over the years a big problem with spending. And so I acquired a lot of credit card debt, mostly starting in college, that continued outside of college.

So by the time I met Julian, I was great at selling. I had gotten promoted several times and was great at earning money, but I was equally great at spending money and particularly money I didn't have. So I had quite a bit of consumer debt and I was on a bit of a treadmill living paycheck to paycheck,

but not appearing like I was living paycheck to paycheck. So I have a question about the income side of that. So with the sales experience, it sounds like you're painting a picture of a very successful career as a salesperson in those years. What did that look like? What do you think helped you kind of develop the ability to sell to such an extent?

Yeah. I mean, I think it was just interesting. interacting with people. So retail and pretty much any service industry culture is very team oriented. And so I would have a lot of conversations with people throughout the day. So the psychology of selling was something that I got really comfortable in because I was immersed in it. And then I also got a firsthand view of customers in a real-time environment. So when you're working in retail, you can see transactions in real time. You can see what stops people from buying, what causes them and compels them to buy.

And so after years and years and years of doing this, I just became really comfortable with it. It's second nature for me, especially in a shoe store where the margins are really on the accessories. So you get them in the shoe, but then you have to upsell them into the laces and the cleaner. Stupid spray. Yeah, the socks, the six-pack, the socks that are buying one, get one half off.

And so there were just lessons that you can only learn from being immersed in those environments. You can take all the courses you want. but when you're actually selling and when you're, you know, somewhat commission-based and you eat what you kill, you start to learn it and it becomes natural. So I was going to ask what kind of debt you left college with. Oh, gosh, I don't even know. It was all credit card. And it was probably at that time around $7,000 when I graduated from college. So you didn't have any student loans? No, my student loans were paid for by my parents, thankfully.

I was able to graduate a year early. So in high school, I took a dual enrollment class and a course, which allows you to earn college credits while you're still in high school. And so I went into college with about a year and a half worth of credits. I went to an out-of-state school. And so I was able to complete it in three years. And thankfully, my parents were able to fund it, which was great. Wow.

Julian, we didn't talk about your debt load out of college. Did you have any debt coming out of college? I did. I want to say I had somewhere in the $20,000, $20,000, but I made a point to, so I guess this is, you know, jumping into hacks, but, you know, I made a point to really minimize my student loan debt when I was in graduate school. So I went to the extent of becoming an employee at the school because I wanted employee rate on two women.

And so that was my job for me. I would help students. I would sort of be a mentor in a formal capacity. I was technically considered a graduate research assistant. I would do research. I would help with these big programs. And then I would wait tables at night. But I did all of that so that my tuition could be reduced to $25 a semester.

And so that helped me to get out of graduate school without incurring any additional debt. Okay. This is not a trick that I have heard from anybody who has been talking about paying for college before. You got a job at the college. And then you were paying how much? $25? I paid $25 for tuition and I actually got paid. So if you think about it, if you're a big university, even just a medium size or small university,

there's got to be some sort of benefit there. And I knew that. And so I looked up to see what the benefit was, got a part-time job that made me eligible for that benefit, and that allowed me to essentially earn my MBA at a heavy discount. Wow. You said $25. Was that $25 an hour, like a credit hour? A semester, the whole semester, yeah. So you could take as many courses as you want.

It was $25. And you still get paid. So I got a stipend on top of that. You give them a $20 bill and a $5 bill and you can take any course you want. Is this like, what school is this? Can we talk about that? Like that's $25 of the cheap. And I'm way older than that.

you. The cheapest I ever paid for college was like $60 a credit hour. Oh, wow. Yeah, no, it was $25. I'm in and I think about it. I don't even know like what they would do with the $25. Like you might as well. It might be free. That's what cost is that covering? I don't know. I didn't ask. I was just happy to pay $25. I thought you misspoke or didn't say $25 per credit hour. $25. Oh my God. That is ridiculous. Okay. So we weren't even going to talk about paying for college. And I know you guys have a really great story that I want to get to. But tip, college paying tip for everybody. Get a job at the college.

Yeah. And get the employee right now, not every college is going to give you $25 for a semester. But look into it. I mean, if that is the difference between going to college A or college B, because college B is going to let you go there for $25 a semester, choose that one. Yeah. I learned that in undergrad. because some of my friends were older,

and I realized that they were all employees off the school. And I didn't even connect the dots as to why they were doing it until afterwards. And then when I saw that, I said, oh, I've got to look to see if there are any programs available. And I lucked into one. And it fit. I was able to learn and work, still get a paycheck, actually, and not have to pay much for my college.

I might have a new favorite quote. I've always been quoting Joel from F-I-180, but I'm going to quote Julian now, I got a job at the college and I paid $25 a semester for college. Okay, that is fantastic. I can't harp on this forever because that would make a very boring show. Well, Kirstie, let's get back to your journey where you're achieving some milestones in your career and at the same time racking up some credit card debt. I think we left off right after college.

Yeah, so right after college, I got my first job working at a Target store. because I didn't have any student loan debt, that gave me permission to go buy a brand new luxury car. So that's exactly what I did. I was 21 or 22 driving a $35,000 car. And I continued to pay for that car for several years afterwards because I leased it. It was high interest because I wasn't making a ton of money. And then I refinanced it after the lease. So I ended up paying for that car like twice at the end of the day.

But that was the first step into my debt. issues because I had this massive car note, this big rent and credit card debt, and no savings. What kind of car was it? It was a Lexus. I still drive it today. Lexus, a black Lexus, I is 250. Nice. And so what would you say that your payment and your rent were just between those two items? So my initial car payment was $653. And then I had a rent of about $1,100. I lived in these fancy Lofts Art District of Charlotte. And at the time, my starting salary was $40,000. And so over half of it was just going towards my housing and my car. And we hadn't even gotten to food, clothing, 21-year-old things, like brunching and clubbing. And what made it worse was that I wore a uniform to work every day. I wore

red and khaki. But I still had this massive clothing collection for when I would get off to work, off of work. I would get my hair done every week. I was living a life I couldn't afford. And was that your situation heading into the relationship? Yeah. So I eventually moved away from Charlotte. So I worked in Target for about five years. And then I moved to Atlanta and started in the hospitality industry in a sales role. And so in that sales role, a lot of my lifestyle continued. I did have a roommate the first couple of years that I moved to Atlanta, but I ended up taking all of the money that I saved from splitting rent and spending it on other junk. And so going into the situation with Julian, even though I had all these levers

that could have saved me money, I wasn't using any of them. And yeah, I was in the similar boat. I had a ton of credit card debt and no plan to get out of it. All right. So you're coming from these almost completely different perspectives when it comes to dealing with managing money. and you meet on the first day at the job, at this new job, how do you guys end up dating? What's that story? So I was actually in a relationship at the time, and this is not going to get scandal this.

Why just start there? Well, you know, that's the truth. But I say that I tried my damnedest too, and it was on the tail end of that. So, you know, enough of that. I try my best. I just ignored it, really. It was focused on the job.

It was my first day. It was a huge promotion. I just wanted to do a great job. And then that relationship fell apart, and she was still around, and we were having fun, and we both got big promotions, and so we were just having a good time and celebrating. And because we would travel so much for work, this is what our young brains were telling us,

because we could travel so much for work. You'd be like, you know, let's take it a step further instead of just taking a date or going out on a date. Let's just take a trip. And so we decided to go to Panama, Panama City, Panama. And we were there for a little over a week, I think. And then when we came back, I learned that she put the entire trip on her credit card. And at the time, I was very much passionate about earning passive income and building wealth and being debt-free.

And I was almost kind of angry at herself and at her and at me. And so I told her that if I'd known that she was in debt and that she'd put it all on a credit card, that I would not have dated her. And obviously it was a terrible thing to say, terrible thing. I still regret it until this day. She still reminds me till this day. But I meant it at the time. And because I knew the sort of role that debt could play in lives, and I knew that, you know, the path to your point,

we were on very different paths that it just wasn't going to work out. And it was really just me trying to be a jerk. You know, I regret it. But it did help us. to have some really uncomfortable conversations about money early on in the relationship, as opposed to ignoring them for years and then like some bigger issue down the road, forcing us to have that conversation. So I'm grateful for being stupid enough to have made that statement.

So this is your first real kind of date almost is what you're saying. You had all these kind of like interactions through work and then you just said, hey, we're going to go on a trip together. Well, we had dated in the tradition. sense. We had gone out, you know, for drinks and for dinner and for movies and all that stuff. And we were living, you know, we were doing the whole like honeymoon phase thing where we'd go out quite a bit. And it was starting to, or Julian, more than it was me. Because again, he, in his mind, knew that he shouldn't be spending all this money. And so I think the trip was an excuse to use

some of the miles and to stop doing all the eating out and to actually hang out kind of for free because we had, you know, miles and points and stuff. There was his frugal macking that I fell for. So what was going through your mind here, when you had this conversation? I was angry. I was hot. Like, I had never thought of my spending as an issue. I assumed everybody had credit card debt.

I assumed everybody was kind of waiting for the next paycheck to decide what they were going to do with their money. I didn't know this world of people, like, intentionally not spending lots and lots of money. Like outside of the, you know, suggested 4% or 6% or 10% that you saved, like I just didn't know there were people like Julian. And so when he attached my character

to my spending decisions and said, you know, I just would have never even dated you if I had known this existed. I was pissed. That felt offensive to me. And so after, it took a while for the anger to dissipate for me to actually try and figure out like what he meant to say, what he would have said,

what he would have said if he were in his right mind. So you guys didn't break up over this, clearly. Or, well, did you take any time off? You took a little break. Okay. Yeah, I mean, that feels, I'm not trying to put you under the bus, Julian, but that feels very judgy. I mean, I would have said the same thing.

I'm not saying you're wrong. I would have been like, wait, you have debt. Carl and I never had this conversation because we were both so cheap all the time that I knew he was cheap. He used a coupon on our first date. And I was like, yes, he's got a coupon. Whereas I have seen other people in like some female Facebook groups that I'm in.

I've seen other women say, oh, he used a coupon. No, he's not dating me anymore. Like, wait, why would that be a problem? But anyway, so you guys had a little bit of a break. How did you get back together? He took me out. Oh, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I just, because I just, you know, I felt like a, I don't know if I can curse on this.

Yeah, don't. But I just felt like a, like a jerk. Jerk. It's a safe way to say it. And I missed her. And so, you know, I realized what I said and I had to fight to get it back. And but I still sort of, I restructured the conversation and sort of said, like, this is what I meant. Because honestly, I was, you know, not upfront either.

Like, I didn't tell her. the depth of conviction that I had. I didn't tell her about the world, the secret world of personal finance that I was dabbling in. You know what I mean? I was just out there partying and having a good time just like her. I didn't tell her how passionately I felt about it, and how much of a purpose or how deeply tied to my purpose it felt. And so to, you know, I had to confront that as well and be compassionate and also realizing that actually the vast majority of people, you know, and this data to back this up, we're doing the exact same thing. You know, so to her point, you know, like there are plenty of people that are doing the exact

same thing. So she should not have felt like she was doing anything wrong because it is unfortunately really, really normal to just continue to live above your means and to hope that you can someday earn your way out of it. Following that conversation, how did any behavior change? Was it gradual? Was it sudden or did it happen at all in terms of spending money and accumulating wealth. It felt sudden for me because the first thing we did was write everything down. So we had to come to Jesus meeting where pulled out all the bills, wrote everything down, literally tracked my expenses, uploaded them into men to understand where my money was going. And it was very clear to me that I could no longer afford to live where I was living, which was in Midtown, Atlanta, a very expensive

place. And so I had to break my lease and move to an apartment. that was maybe six or 700 square feet. It was basically a closet for Atlanta in a less desirable part of town. But with that move, I was able to slice my rent payment into almost a third. And so I needed a strong catalyst in order to start paying down the debt. And so it was a series of large changes for me. So the move is obviously a huge one. And then tracking your expenses, your spending probably resulted in day-to-day changes. Did anything happen with the car or any other large buckets of spending? I paid off the car and I still drive it to this day.

I stopped getting my hair done every week. So I embrace my curls. Stop shopping. Sold a lot of my designer goods and like tennis shoe collection. I've got this picture of my shoe collection. I used to have a shoe room at one of my apartments that was just like wall-to-wall shoe museum. So I became very active on eBay and sold a bunch of stuff.

gave away a bunch of stuff. That was pretty, oh, and started eating at home. Luckily, Julian is a great cook being a former chef. So all of the brunching and eating out that I was doing before I didn't do as much. So that's a drastic set of changes. You know, looking for my seat, it seems like, it seems like it's a drastic set of changes in almost every area of your life. And did that happen within the next six months following this or a year?

What did that timeline? Yeah, so we got engaged in 2015. So I would say the majority of my changes happened within a year, within 12 months. I was out of that apartment. So we met in February of 2012. I was out of that apartment by January of 2013 and started piling up money after that. And how long did it take you to pay off all of the debt and otherwise get back to zero from that point? It's two years and a couple of promotions in between.

So I was fortunate to be burning the candle at both ends and would pay off debt, but then would also get, you know, strategic promotions where I didn't pre-spend that money like I was doing before. I could take all the incremental income and throw it at the debt as well. And so I was able to power through it pretty quickly. And did you guys say you got engaged or married in 2015? We got married in 2015.

We got engaged in 2014. Yeah. Yeah. Okay. And it sounds like, would you're around zero net worth or back to paying off all that debt by the time you got married? She was. Yeah. We both were.

Oh, by the time, I was positive when we got married. Because I had already been saving in my 401k and my IRA. So I was positive. It wasn't much, but I was positive. But when we combined, obviously, that was when things really, really took off. And so we spent the next couple of years, we paid off the mortgage in the house that we were in in 20. 17. I also had some debt that I had to pay off. I had a tax debt. I had a car note, student loans. And so we banked through my car note for a while. Yeah, so we banked through all

of that stuff. And then with what was left over, we just went on a savings spree and I picked up a rental property as well. This is always where I get excited is the investment approach. Okay, now, now we've got no debt. Now we're starting to pile up money. Now we're going to accumulate some assets. It sounds like a rental property is in there. Can you walk me through what you guys were thinking about how you're going to deploy all of this cash that you're now generating to investments or passive income? Yes. How did that approach formulated it in this first property and then whatever? It was interesting because, and you're bringing me back because, again, I was still doing, I was deep into this stuff, you know? And so all she would know is that I would

tell her, no, this is something that I want to do. And so a couple weekends and a couple nights, I would just leave because I'd have to go look at some properties or go meet with an agent or something like that. I mean, so I was really sort of doing it on my own. And even after I got it, she just felt like that was something that he's doing and it's fine because we're still achieving our goals. And our goal was to just, you know, max out every tax deferred account that we could. And at the time, we were still in the process of breaking up with our financial advisor because we went move over to self-managing, et cetera. But it was really something that I was just doing. And we really didn't sort of get into it together until after we got married. But to your point, my mindset was,

all right, well, great. This is, we have to own some properties. You know, the economy was still sort of rebounding. I knew there was plenty of room on the upside just compared to the pre-2008 days. And I just felt very confident about it. I went into researching the part of town where we were investing. We felt really comfortable there. And it's proven to work out really well for us. And so the property that we bought in 2014 has appreciated nicely. We've always had a steady stream of tenants in that property. The property where we were living, we paid off that mortgage, and that is now our second and now debt-free rental.

And so combined, we've got two properties that aren't that far apart from us, from one another, and actually not that far from where we live. We've got a management company who basically does all the heavy lifting, and we enjoy passive income. And you know, you got some administrative work every now and then, but for the most part, it's a pretty healthy stream of passive income. So can I ask about that first property? How much did you put down on that property?

And what were the kind of specifics around that? It was a condo. All in, I want to say, I put down around 18. That was including closing costs and commission. But we bought it for, I want to say, $62,000. And the guy that bought it, I'm pretty sure. sure he bought it for 35. It was a foreclosure. He was an investor. I think I want to say he was based out of New York, but he probably made off like a bandit because he bought it, you know, at around 35.

I don't know. My guess is he put maybe 10,015 into it and I bought it for 62. But now it's worth about 130 and the rent is going up and appreciated steadily over the last four years. That's fantastic. And you say that your philosophy is to pay off the properties, the and get the mortgages off them on your primary and for the rentals as well, or is that just the primary? Well, we did it for the primary because it was our primary at the time, and there were a number of reasons why we wanted to do that. One, because my mother is what you would consider financially insecure. And so I wanted to make sure that no matter what happened, we always knew that she could live somewhere and not have to worry about having to pay rent or more, something like that.

The other reason, and we go back and forth because when we think about our wealth building plan, we don't want to have too much in any one particular bucket. And so we're always looking to sort of diversify not just our income, but essentially our holdings. And so we've got X in our portfolio. We want X in rental properties. And so we just didn't want to put too much into any particular rental, especially knowing that we might be able to earn more by putting it into the market. Got it. So you have a portfolio of rental properties. You have these two rents and you have stocks, as what I'm hearing.

Do you have any other investments besides those? Or are those kind of your two primary ways of investing right now? Right now, those are the two. And we're looking to start businesses and invest in other ways. And so we just had a couple conversations with a friend of ours who is a franchisee. And so because of our experience, we know that that business is sort of taking the experience that we've learned working in corporate America and using it to invest in ourselves. And so we're looking at that. We're also interested in e-commerce businesses and other things of that

nature. How have your careers progressed since marriage? Mine has progressed nicely. I think I've more than tripled my income over the last 10 years just by focusing on key strengths and finding areas in the business that are sweet spots for what I'm good at. And so I've always been really good at earning, which is kind of what I use to justify my high spending. And now I'm just good at earning and I use that to justify a high investment rate. Which sounds crazy. But I look at my job as a means to end. They're funding my investments. And that's my incentive to continue to grow career-wise and make more money. Yeah. And I would say mine progressed very well. It ended.

walked away from my corporate career last year, you know, the last part of my career or my time there just got really, really tough. And, you know, it's different when you are debt-free and you accumulated a significant amount of assets. And so when you reach a point where the work environment becomes toxic, it was a really simple decision to make because I said, I don't need this. We don't need this. It's impacting our relationship. It was impacting my health. And I think more importantly, it was impacting my ability to be the sort of father that I wanted to be for our son. So we had our son in April of 2017, and I could tell how it was impacting me during that time. And so I made the decision to walk away and to figure out, I would say, healthier ways,

better ways to earn income. And I don't think we forget that decision at all. It's been a great ride. Going into that decision to leave your job, how was your spending? I mean, I assume that your household spending was less than what you earned, Kirsten, in order for that to work, right? And so can you walk me through that progression? And also, did you stockpile any cash leading up to that decision, like an emergency reserve

of months or years of savings? Yeah, we've pretty much lived on one paycheck, on less than one paycheck since we got married. So that was one of the benefits of being able to pay down our primary mortgage, pay off our primary mortgage, was that we didn't have that huge. huge bill every month. And then outside of that, we always just operated as if there was only one check coming in. And we always picked the smaller of the two checks as the one to live off of. And so when we made the shift to only literally having one check come in, we were able to supplement that partially by our rental properties. And also because we never counted on it to begin with.

And that's just, it wasn't really a transition because that's just the way that we've always been since we got married? I'd add two things. One, it obviously helps when you've got two incomes and they're high earners, right? So it's a lot easier to do when you have that. But I would go back to even the period when we paid off the mortgage, because one of the other reasons was because we wanted to normalize our cost of living when we had a kid. Because you hear all these nightmares about, like, how expensive kids are, much of which did not come true for us at all, by the way. But one of the other reasons why we wanted to get the big mortgage out of the way is so that if for some reason we did run into a situation where having a kid was really, really expensive, whether it was for medical reasons or just once in toys, that we didn't really feel it because we had already done the work to pay up our mortgage.

And so now we can enjoy sort of all of that benefits because it is gone. Our kid likes to play with sticks and cardboard boxes. and we don't really have to worry about buying, you know, all sorts of things for him, with the exception of daycare. I haven't figured out, like, I'm not going to go as far as to go work at the daycare, but I've got to figure out. We can franchise a daycare. No, that is genuinely the hat.

And it's like, you know, if we're going to open up a franchise, duh, open up a daycare. And we know how to do it. And so that's literally one of the things that's on our list because not only would it save us a bunch of money, but I don't see that business model going anywhere anytime. No, people are going to continue to have kids. They're going to continue to put them in daycare because they both have to work so they can fund their Kirsten before Julian lifestyle. Yes, which is fine.

And we'll be happy to have them at the regular daycare facility. So I think it's interesting that you chose to live on the smaller paycheck. I think that's a tip that kind of got washed under the, under the rest of the story. But that's huge because while one of you chose to leave, when you separate from your job, it's not always your choice. So by living on the higher paycheck and then that job gets taken away without your permission, then you're left struggling.

But if you're already working on just living on the lower paycheck, it doesn't matter whose job leaves for whatever reason. And I like to say that the point of being financially independent, isn't to quit your job. But in some cases, it actually is because you want to quit your job, not because you just don't want to work anymore because it is a toxic environment. And I have had a job that was just, I don't want to get up out of bed. I don't want to go to work.

I can't stand working for this micromanaging person another minute. And I'm going to go crazy. And every day, I am filled with dread walking into the office. But now, are you just sitting around drinking tequila on the beach? or do you actually do things? I do things. Yeah, see? So it's not because you never want to work again.

It's because you don't want to work there anymore. You want to do what you want to do. Right. Including running a daycare center or just owning it. You know, it's really fun. I've spent more time around the house. I spend more time, you know, taking care of our son. And I spend quite a bit of time, you know, on our blog.

And we can talk about that later. but it's fun, it's fulfilling, it's helping people, and hopefully we can turn that into something even bigger than we imagined. It sounds like you had enough income from your job, Kirsten, and the rental properties to cover your expenses going into this. This may be a moot point, but I was like to ask, was there a cash stockpile in conjunction with that of some amount that helped you feel comfortable making that transition,

or was that totally irrelevant because of the savings rate that you had from the other sources of income? There was some cash stockpiled, but it would not have covered like everything. My goal was, you know, I just reached this point where, and I'd listen to enough people and spent enough time with Philistate investors where I knew that saving money,

and again, going back to my upbringing, if push came to shove, I know that we can survive on a really, really low amount of money. May not be comfortable, won't be sexy, but if we had to do it, we could do it. And so I felt comfortable sort of taking, the risk not having all of the reserve needed and quite honestly believing in all of the other decisions and research that we've done to say, well, you know who's actually going to help fill

that up, the tenant. The tenant is going to help fill, you know, the cash reserves or the capital reserves that we need. Let's get it to a point where we feel comfortable enough to pull the trigger and then we'll spend the first year, you know, using the cash flow to help bring the reserves to a certain point. Yeah. I also got promoted about three weeks after he. Julian left. And so with that promotion, my bonus structure changed, my income obviously changed. And so we knew that we could count on that. I'm using air quotes because you can never really count on any of it. But we knew that we could count on that and also help mitigate, you know, the need for this massive cash stockpile. Got it. Yeah, I just always ask that because I think that

that's a mental hurdle for some people. It is making that. It sounds like wasn't there for you guys, which I think is great, and it seems like, hey, that worked out perfectly. And I think that some people need to hear that because that can be a huge, that can delay that choice by a year, six months or whatever. It can, you can mess away, man. Yeah. Yeah, I don't know that it wouldn't have been there that we would have arrived at the same conclusion if we hadn't been doing all the work to pay down debt, acquire properties,

you know, in the four to five years prior to that. In my head, I never imagined this scenario, but then when it happened, it felt so natural. And so it's one of the benefits of the journey to financial independence is you come across all these things that you think you would never do. You wouldn't quit your job with a one-year-old. But then you realize, like, actually, I can. Like, we've done the work. We have what we need to be able to make those choices, choices that weren't usually available to us or that we didn't think would be available to us are now there, which is beneficial. So a moment ago you said that you started a blog after you quit your job?

No, we started the blog in 2017. Oh, I didn't know it was that old. That old was that old. Does that consider it old? It's not even two yet. But it's considerably longer. I thought you said that you started it after you quit. I was going to ask, why would you start a blog after you quit?

Why would you start a blog before you quit? Why did you start your blog? Well, so at the time, it was 2017, the idea actually came to us on our honeymoon. moon in 2015, but we just sort of sat on it because, you know, it's a lot of time. And honestly, we were sort of enjoying reading everybody else's blog. But we reached a point where, you know, we felt like there was an audience that wasn't being spoken to. You know, we're black Americans. And I think particularly in the fire community, you just don't see a lot of that. And so it was that. It was a sort of experience that that we went through as a couple. We didn't see a lot of

that. And so we said, you know what, instead of continuing to hope, and look for it, we might as well just be that example for the people that who are also looking for that, that deeper sense of relatability, because oftentimes that's the one thing that will help get them to move them to action. You can be a fan of something or someone or movement or whatever you want to call it and be comfortable sort of sitting on the sidelines and just watching it like a TV show. But when you see someone that you can really relate to, that looks like you, that talks like you, that might be where you're from, it feels that much. much more real. And I think that it's helped some people to say, you know what, I think we can do

this too. It's not something that I like to watch that they're doing. It's actually something that I can do myself. I love that answer. I love that answer because, you know, there are so many people that I hear in the personal finance space, oh, another blog. Yeah, there's another blog. And that's okay because I don't talk like Scott. Scott has a very different viewpoint. It's similar but different. And I think in the entire personal finance space, there's room for enough blogs for everybody to have their own. Because what I say is going to be different than the way you say it, but the way that I say it resonates with working moms as opposed to Julian who doesn't have a job and isn't a mom. So he's not going to say it in the same way that I would. And if you're watching this on YouTube, you can see that Kirsten and I don't look alike.

And that's okay. She has different life experiences. and she can share those with people in a different way than I can. And I love that you jumped into the blogging space. It's been great. I loved it. Yeah, I mean, it feels like a family. It's a lot more work than I thought,

but I enjoy being able to use more different parts of my brain than I was doing before. And so that part is really, really fun. And it's a lot of work. It's surprisingly a lot of work. But it's a welcomed challenge, especially if you want to do it well, it'll eat up a good chunk of your day. But you still have, there are benefits, obviously, that, you know, I'd much rather be doing this than doing a job that I absolutely hate. Now, obviously, if we had to and push King's show, I'd do that. But right now, I think we're in a good spot.

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Okay, so what are you guys doing for health care now and what are your plans for health care in the future? where neither of you have a job anymore? Yeah, so right now we use my employer health care through my job. We also max out our HSA every year. And so once both of us are no longer working, I think the short-term plan would be to either use part of our cash reserves and budget for health care just like we would, any other expense, or to start to leverage our HSA to cover expenses that we couldn't cash flow.

Yeah, that's one of the biggest questions. I get that and child care. And we've already discussed that you will open up a daycare franchise. I don't even know if that's realistic. I mean, he's two now. So by the time we open a franchise, he'll probably be in regular school. But it does intrigue me when you think about how much money over the three to four years you have your child in child care that you spend. It's like, no, you really could probably open a franchise for that same amount of money. And I don't know, It's one of those ideas that I like to fantasize about when I'm not working. Yeah, I will say, though, that is a lot of work.

Yeah, it is. Okay. Well, this has been fantastic. I really like where how you came from two different money backgrounds and money philosophies. And you came together, you figured it out together, and you worked together. Thanks to Julian telling you that he never would have dated you if he had known how bad you are with money. But Julian, you should be reminding Kirsten, look at the place that you are now because you put your foot on your mouth. I love that.

Look at where you are. Like, what if you didn't find out she had all this credit card debt at three months in? What if you never said, wow, I never would have dated you? What if, I mean, Kirsten, would you have changed on your own? No, not to this. Probably not. Probably not. So, but this has been really interesting.

And I think that what makes your story so great is that I never know how to say this. It always sounds like such a crappy compliment, but like what makes your story so great is that you're not unique. Like there are a lot of people in the same position you're in. One of them is more spendy and one of them is more savy. And if you want to stay together, you have to figure out where the middle is and how to get there together. And I think you guys did a really, really great job of that. I mean, Julie, and congratulations on. turning Kirsten around, bringing her over.

My son claps everything, so I'm going to go ahead and do you. Okay, it is now time for the famous four. This is the same four questions and one command that we ask of all of our guests. Julian and Kirsten, are you ready? Yes, we are. Okay. What is your favorite finance book?

I would say the wealth choice by Dr. Dennis Kimbrough. He is a professor here at Clark Atlanta University. And it is basically, it's his version, if you will, of Dr. Stanley's the millionaire next door, except he researched black millionaires and spoke about their experience. And so he documented that and compiled it into a book. And so you get sort of very intimate perspective into the mind of the black millionaire. And that's called The Wealth Choice by Who? The Wealth Choice by Dr. Dennis Kimbrough.

I have not heard of that. I have to check that out. Yeah, it's a great book. It was the one that shook me, like, out of my debt mindset. That's awesome. Okay, Kirsten, what's your favorite finance book? That's hard because there's been so many good ones recently. I'm going to say, for now, this season, it's Broke Millennial Takes on Investing by Aaron

Lowry. I think she just has a really... relatable, direct approach to talking about money to a audience that really, really needs to hear it, which is broke millennials. So we got a chance to participate in one of her book tour stops, and the engagement was incredible. And it's hard to get people who don't have money to engage in money, but she's figured out how to do it. Oh, that's awesome. She's going to be on the show in a couple of weeks, so I will make sure to let her know that you recommended her book. She's a fantastic author. I really enjoyed her first book. And she'll be a repeat guest, right? She was on show number 24.

Look at me pulling the show numbers out. Oh, Scott taken my place. Yes, and she'll be on in, I want to say, two or three weeks from now. Cool. Awesome. All right. What were your biggest money mistakes? Mine was my car, for sure. I was given the gift of student loan free graduation, and I went and created my own version of it. So it is. is the single financial mistake that I wish I could do over? I would say mine would be that first house that I bought. I was waiting tables and working at the school and a student at the time, but the bank still approved that loan.

And so, and that was in 2007, and we all know what happened in 2008. So for the first couple of years, it was peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and hot dogs and baked beans pretty consistently. So, yeah. Yeah, we didn't hear about that one, but that sounds like an unfortunate timing and tough position. Yeah, I just shouldn't have bought it to begin with, but I just, you know, being an overachieer, I wanted to just do more than the normal person. It came back to bite me and blood. Okay, what is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out?

I would say actually recognizing where the real hard parts are, because, you know, we're a little further along on the journey. say way further than most people. And looking back, the hardest part is the beginning. Everything gets better, right? The hardest part is sort of wrapping your head around these concepts if you're unfamiliar with them or taking the action to make those drastic changes. That's the hard part.

Once you get in it and you build a community with like-minded people and you start to change those habits, everything gets easier. Everything gets better and it becomes and feels more normal. I would say the first tip is sort of recognizing that, even if they're being confronted, that that is the hardest part. Everything after that gets easier. And I would say use cash.

Cash has a way of telling the truth and the way that debit cards and credit cards don't. In our world today, a lot of people don't carry cash. We did a little experiment earlier this summer, and you'd be surprised that even cashiers don't have cash in their registers. But until you get the flow of how much a dollar is and how quick, it leaves your pocket, I feel like cash is one of those ways to teach you very quickly how much money you're spending and how quickly you're spending it. Yeah, that is using cash is an eye-opener. I have been just swiping and swiping and swiping and swiping and, you know, I don't want to go to

the bank and get cash out. So I just hit it with the credit card. And then we started tracking our spending. And I'd like to say that I'm good with money. And you start tracking your spending and like, whoa, I spend way too much money. So if I had cash, then I'm like, oh, I got to get this out of my wallet and hand it to you. That's a lot more real. And to your point, Julian, the grind that you just described of a few years that you have to put in in order to get this going, that is, I think, the hard part. That's the, maybe too far, but a potential secret to capitalism here in this world is like, hey, you've got to slog it out for several years. years and grind away $2,000 a month at a time, however long it takes, until you've got a

significant chunk of liquidity that's been invested in something, right? You talk about your situation now two rental properties, stock portfolio, right? Still living on just one income, right? And you have two earners. Like that's the position of being farther along where opportunities will multiply for you guys for the rest of your life with whatever you want to do, that most people just can't get to you. They don't go through that slog that you guys have been through. Yep. All right.

Last and most difficult question here, what is your favorite joke to tell at parties? So this one I just learned this weekend from my cousin, but it is, where did Captain Hook get his hook? I don't know where. The second hand store. That's fantastic.

It's very fine. Very frugal. That's where I actually get all of my pirate attires. My daughter has made it her mission to find jokes for me for my show now, because not everybody is prepared and has a joke. So she gave me this one this morning that I thought was hilarious. Why does a chicken coop only have two doors? Because if they had four doors, it would be a chicken sedan.

Nice. So that one I laughed out loud. Now, Julian's reaction is my normal reaction to these jokes. But I thought that one was very fun. Indies coming around. Because I always feel like I can solve it, the riddle. And then when you start saying it, I'm like, oh, I should have done that. Yeah, almost as soon as she started saying Sedan, I'm like, oh, that's it.

That's hilarious. Okay. Tell me where people can find more. about you. That's my command. We're at rich and regular.com. And then we're on Instagram, Twitter, Facebook, and Pinterest, all under the handle, Rich and Regular.

Awesome. Well, we will link to all of those places in the show notes and make sure that people can find it. Awesome. Awesome, guys. Thank you guys. This was a fantastic show. We had a great time hearing about just the different perspectives and how it came together to create something pretty awesome for you guys in your lives right now. and into the future. Thank you.

It was a great pleasure of talking you guys and hope to see you in person soon. You will. Are you going to any more Camp FIs this year? We haven't booked one, but I wouldn't rule it out.

I know we'll be at FinCon. Will you guys be at FinCon? We'll be at FinCon. And do you have a podcast? No. No. You don't have a podcast. Okay, so you're probably not going to go

to podcast movement then. No. Okay. So we'll see you at FinCon for sure. Cool. And maybe before, maybe you'll be at come back up to Longmont. Yeah. We had a great time.

We did. We really did. It's an awesome city, I got to say. Yeah. It's my favorite pace I've ever lived. Nice. Okay. Julian and Kirsten from Rich and Regular.

Thank you so much for being on the show today. Thanks for having us. Okay. We'll talk to you soon. Thanks. Bye. All right. That was Julian and Kirsten from Rich and Regular.

Mindy, what do you think? I love this show. I love their story because it's not, like I just said, it's not unique. It is the same thing that I hear over and over again from so many people. I'm one way, my spouse is the other. How do we figure this out? And, you know, this is a great how they did it happily ever after ending to that. How do we figure this out? You know, Julian was not so tactful when he said it. But frankly, by his own admission, this led to some pretty uncomfortable money conversations very early on in the relationship, and they were able to move forward and come together. And I love that Kirsten was open to it because now she's got such a better life because of it. So even though he had a not so amazing introduction to money to Kirsten, it really worked out for the best.

Yeah, and after the show, we had a discussion with Julian and Kirsten where we talked about how people in the FI space sometimes get attacked, right? Oh, this person had this advantage, this person had that advantage, you know, whatever. What I think is great about this show is that we just had, Julian and Kirsten have a very relatable life experience, right? There was no overwhelming advantage or anything like that. they had a, Julian wanted to pursue FI, they started dating, they had an untactful situation, that I'm sure that many of our listeners who are interested in eagerly pursuing FI can learn

from when applying to having that discussion in their lives with their significant others. And this whole thing is just a relatable approach to building a better life and lots of optionality into it that I think that anyone can follow their example and repeat similar results if they put their mind to it, right? It's understanding the goal, having a frank discussion, spending in line with your values, and creating the life that you want over a period of a few years. Yep. And getting rid of the debt. You forgot that part. And getting rid of the debt. But again, it's that it's that slog, right? It's that discussion, lifestyle, behavioral change, the accumulation of cash on a consistent basis and applying that to the highest and best use,

which in their case was debt first and now rental property investing stocks. And, soon-to-be business acquisitions. Yeah, I love Julian's comment. We went on a savings spree instead of a spending spree. That's a great term. Loved it. I loved it. I loved that they shared their story with us. I'm so happy to talk to them. They're just so excited all the time. Okay, Scott, shall we get out of here? Let's do it. Okay, from episode 80 of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, this is Scott Trench, and I am Indy Jensen, and we are signing off.