BiggerPockets Money Podcast - How He’ll Hit $500K by 30 (Coast FI Plan)

Episode Date: March 13, 2026

In this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, hosts Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench sit down with Evan Lawler, a full-time engineer and content creator, to break down his plan to reach Coast FIRE with $500,000 invested by age 30. Instead of pursuing traditional early retirement, Evan is building a disciplined, automated investment strategy that allows his portfolio to compound while he focuses on career growth and enjoying his 20s and 30s. Mindy and Scott unpack Evan’s early start in personal finance, his frugal lifestyle choices, Roth account strategy, and approach to negotiating raises and increasing income. From optimizing housing costs in Philadelphia to building long-term flexibility and balance, this episode offers a practical blueprint for anyone interested in Coast FIRE, financial independence, and smart wealth-building in their 20s. To go beyond the podcast: Kick start your financial independence journey with our FREE financial resources - https://biggerpocketsmoney.com/ Subscribe on YouTube for even more content- www.youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney  Connect with us on social media to join the other BiggerPockets Money listeners - https://www.facebook.com/groups/BPMoney Connect with Evan Lawler: Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/the_financialfoundation/ Email: [e-mail] YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/@The_FinancialFoundation We believe financial independence is attainable for anyone no matter when or where you’re starting. Let’s get your financial house in order! Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Mindy and I are so grateful for the following sponsors who make Bigger Pockets money possible. 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. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward. It's to actually make progress.

Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place.

So every decision actually moves in Edle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all-in-one tool. that makes money management simple. Use the code Pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at monarch.com code pockets. When I evaluate debt funds, I look for things like first position loans, personal guarantees, deep experience by the fund operator, low fund leverage, fast liquidity, and consistent returns. These are some of the reasons why I'm excited to partner with Pine Financial Group.

Their fund six offers investors exposure to real estate credit, largely for construction and rehab, with loans originated by an experienced originator with over $1 billion in origination volume. They offer investors an 8% preferred return paid monthly and a 70-30 LP-GP split of everything over 10% paid annually. The lock-up period is nine months with liquidity available within 90 days after that nine-month commitment. The fund is open to accredited investors only. The fund's minimum is typically $100,000, but Pine Financial is able to reduce that minimum for bigger pockets money listeners to a minimum of $25,000. Full disclosure, I am personally invested in this fund through my self-directed IRA. Pine Financial is sponsoring this message and our podcast.

podcast. Go to biggerpocketsmoney.com slash pine, P-I-N-E. Please note that returns are not guaranteed and may vary based on fun performance. I love Matt, said no one ever. Nobody starts a business thinking, you know what would make this more fun? Calculating quarterly estimated taxes. But somehow, every small business owner ends up doing it. Your dreams of creating, selling, and growing, get replaced by late nights chasing receipts, juggling invoices, and wondering if that bad sushi lunch with Scott counts as a write-off. Change all that with Found. Found is a business banking platform built to take the pain out of managing money. It automatically tracks expenses, organizes invoices, and even preps you for tax season without you doing the heavy lifting.

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Don't put this one off. Join thousands of small business owners who have streamlined their finances with Found. What if you could hit a single financial number in your 30s that could allow you to take career risks, never worrying about retirement again? That's Coast FI, and today's guest, Evan Lawler, is working towards it. And welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen. and with me as always is my more than CoastFi co-host Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy.

Excited to talk about a concrete financial plan here. We'll get that in a second with Evan Lawler today. He's a full-time engineer and a part-time content creator. He's known as the Financial Foundation on Instagram and YouTube and many other social platforms. And we're so excited to hear about the foundation that Evan has already created for CoastFi and his new big milestones that are coming up. Evan, welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Thank you so much.

I am so excited to be here. hope that we can generate interest today with the audience. Perfect. Yes. Already. That's a real, credit to you. How does your journey with money start? Can you start from the beginning for us? Absolutely, yeah. So I was fortunate enough to grow up in a household where money was a common topic of conversation. So I know a lot of people in their young adulthood need to learn a lot of those foundational topics of finance early on. But thankfully, it was common for us to be having conversations about low cost index funds around the dinner table. So for us, that gave me a super big head start.

As well as I was always encouraged by my parents to start a Roth IRA. So from the age of 16, I was able to invest a lot of my earnings from the summer and part-time work. So I was able to go into college with something like $25,000 already invested. And how old are you now? I'm 25 now. Okay. And you plan on reaching COVID.

FI in about five years? Yeah, that's my goal. My number is $500,000 by age 30. Currently, I'm actually a little bit behind that goal, but my objective is to increase my income in real dollars so that I can make up ground. So tell me about what makes you feel like you're behind that goal. So just from my projections, so at my current rate, I invest about $3,300 per month. And so running the projections using a 7% growth rate, I'm actually on track to hit Coast Fire at age 31 or 32, depending on a couple different things. So I'm hoping to be able to put more away so I can hit that 500 by 30. And why Coast Fi instead of going Whole Hog and getting to traditional Fi? Yeah, Coast Fire is very interesting to me, and there's probably three big reasons that I really

like it. I love that fire has broken up into these different flavors of fire. But for For me, Coastfire initially was the math. So I think it's hard to imagine for some people building a $5 million portfolio over 20 years, but it might be more obtainable to say, hey, I can make $400,000 or $500,000 over 8 to 10 years. So building that investment portfolio was initially interesting. Next, I think that it's unrealistic for me to imagine a time where I will not be working in some capacity and earning an income. I love to work both as a content creator and as an engineer. So for me, Coastfire continues with that assumption that I will continue to work. And finally, someone who is achieving Coastfire or on the path to

Coastfire still has financial independence retire early well within reach to them. So for me, it's my current path. But in the future, if I decide to pivot to traditional fire, that's still available to me. So once you reach Coastfire, are you going to continue to put money, away for your retirement so that your retirement can start stepping back, or are you going to live life? So I'm not totally sure what Coastfire, the freedom and flexibility, what that will grant me in the future. But I think that that's the magic of financial independence, is that you buy yourself the opportunity to choose. I'm super interested in entrepreneurship, and I don't know whether that'll be content creation or engineering, but I think that in the future, Coastfire could

grant me a lot of possibilities. What kind of engineer are you? I'm a mechanical engineer. I am surrounded by engineers. I am not an engineer, but I am surrounded by them. I just met another mechanical engineer. So mechanical engineers don't get paid peanuts. What sort of investments are you making? How much money are you putting away over the course of a year? And what are you spending? How are you keeping this Coast FI goal going. Yeah, you're right. Mechanical engineers definitely don't earn peanuts. We're not like some of the software engineers where you have like a super high ceiling, but it's still a very solid income. So me currently, I earn just under $100,000 and I'm investing close to $40,000, including my company match. Right now, I'm putting a ton of that money, basically all of that money,

into my Roth IRA and my Roth 401K, and my portfolio is 100% U.S. equities. So I'm in the S&P 500, specifically FXAIX. Evan, it sounds like you graduated college with some student loan debt and have begun your journey over the last several years, aggressively accumulating from there. I imagine some raises have gone into play, and I imagine frugality is a component of your journey, but I'd love to hear it from you. What has your story with money looked like since graduation, How much you've been able to save and how have you chosen to invest or allocate those savings? Yeah, just as you said, when I graduated college, I had about $30,000 in student loans. And the optimizers out there will probably hold it against me.

The interest rate was about 4%. But I still chose to pay down those loans aggressively. I found that despite knowing the math, I was struggling to sleep at night, knowing that I owed that much money. So I was able to graduate and create a large difference between the amount that I was earning and the amount that I was spending. For a time I was living at home. After that, I was living with a roommate in a super cheap apartment, driving an older used car. And so in doing so, I was able to pay down these loans aggressively and begin to invest aggressively. And at the time, I hadn't even known about Coast Fire or really dove into the fire community yet at all.

But with the margin between my income and my spending, I was able to begin pursuing those goals without even knowing what they were yet. Awesome. And when did you discover fire? When did this instinct to accumulate money translate to a more coherent strategy to pursue freedom? I was always interested in personal finance and learned about that in high school and was listening to a ton of content throughout college. Fire to me, I initially had this assumption that in order to pursue financial independence, you had to be living on peanuts and never spending any money and it was a really extreme lifestyle to pursue. But it was through getting engaged with content like your show and others that I learned that you can pursue these goals in lots of different ways. And there's a spectrum of people that pursue financial independence, whether traditional fire all the way down to Coast Fire. So I learned about that as I graduated college, which would have been 2020.

and kind of had just dove in over the last couple years. Evan, I ran your numbers through the Fionnaires Coast FI calculator. And in order for you to have $500,000 by the age 30, that says that you're going to grow to about $5.2, $5.3 million by the age 65. Is that what your numbers are calculating as well? Exactly right. Yeah. So my goal is to reach that $500,000 by 30 and then be around using the 4% rule and

inflation-adjusted $200,000 per year retirement income at age 65. So that's exactly right. And how much are you spending right now? I'm spending a little bit less than $40,000 a year. So 40,000 to 200 is kind of a big jump. And yes, between age 30 and age 65, you'll probably spend a little bit more. But as somebody who has struggled moving from saving to spending, this is a huge jump. How do you plan on embracing your spending side? That's a great. question and I'm excited by the fact that the fire community has kind of addressed to this concern. I think as more people actually achieve early retirement, it's this quote-unquote problem which has emerged that definitely needs to be addressed. For me personally, I imagine that my spending will go up substantially just as I have a family and get married and buy a house and things like that. I think a lot of the spending will be eaten up by that, those kinds of things. But I also think that it will be a bit of a journey for me to learn how to spend more because now I'm absolutely more frugal than I am not. So learning that skill will be a learning curve.

And what do you spend money on right now? Like, what are you giving up? And are you in a high, medium, low cost of living area? I live just outside of Philadelphia, which I think would be in the medium to higher cost of living areas in the suburbs of Philadelphia. So one of the ways that I save money now is that I should. share a super cheap, old, no frills apartment with my girlfriend. It's like 650 square feet. And honestly, that's probably my biggest rock. It's the thing that moves the needle the most for me.

And that's one way I've been able to save a ton. And how much is rent? Rent for us is $1,195. And that's together. So you pay half of that. Yeah, yeah. We split it equitably. But yeah, I pay a portion of that. Okay. I mean, that's huge. Yeah. When I do some of these like analyses, across the country. One of the things that I think people in the West Coast, there's no options like that on the West Coast, or they're very rare, very different. In the East Coast cities, you have this very crazy dynamic, you know, excluding New York City, for example, in many of the places like Philadelphia, Baltimore, D.C., where there are really cheap places to live. Sometimes the places that are very cheap, are very undesirable for folks in the fire journey. And Philadelphia, I think,

is actually one of those places where there's really great income opportunities and really cheap housing opportunities in certain cases. Tell us about how the tradeoffs that you're making with an apartment that is this cheap. For someone who maybe is a skeptic on whether this can be feasibly done desirably in or around Philadelphia. Yeah, I think you're absolutely right. We have a spectrum here in Philadelphia that you can be in an expensive high rise or you can live like me in a building from the 60s or 70s that doesn't have anything to write home about. some of the trade-offs that we have is that there's no amenities and that square footage is tough to come by. So we have to make decisions every single time we buy something, not only if we can afford it, but if it's physically too big. So, for example, we were able to find this really big, beautiful family table for free on Facebook marketplace. We were going to go rent a truck and get it, but instead we ended up paying $50 for a much smaller table. which was lower quality because we could have never fit it in this apartment.

We'd have taken up all our space. I understand why some people are skeptical about kind of living small, but I think it's almost a virtuous cycle that as you live in a smaller place, then you accumulate fewer things. You save money not only on rent, but the things that you buy. Yeah, and another big call out I'll share is that because you live near Philadelphia, you don't have to purchase YouTube TV's Sunday ticket to watch the Eagles across the course of the season, which is a major expense that I have to factor into my fine number here personally.

So that's another big, big advantage of living where you live. Absolutely. Yeah, but you don't have to deal with the game day traffic. So that's the tradeoff there. Go birds. Go birds. I wanted to talk about the amenities that you're giving up. I say this in air quotes because I don't know that you're really giving them up.

Just because you don't have those amenities in your building doesn't mean that they're not available to you at all ever. I've seen some and it's been a hundred. hundred years since I lived in an apartment building, but I've seen apartment buildings that do have laundry in the building and then some that don't. There are apartment buildings with a great gym or a swimming pool or both or a doorman or, you know, an elevator. I was never fortunate enough to live in a building that had an elevator. What are some other amenities or what are some amenities that you would like but don't come with your less expensive apartment? I think the biggest one that stings me is a gym. So I have these old used dumbbells that my previous tenant left here. And so I'm lifting on the floor of my living room.

So if there were one thing, either the space to kind of have like a gym or a lot of apartment buildings offer those gyms, but you're totally right. Some of the amenities I think are out of this world that some of the apartment buildings offer. Like, you know, a pool, a doorman. I know one place that goes out and gets coffee for the tenants of the building each day and has it down in the lobby with bagels. Something like that would just be totally out of this world. The one hill that I'll die on that I think that the amenities is not worth it is an in-unit washer dryer. So currently we have an external laundry room. And in order to have your washer and dryer inside your apartment, you'd have to pay hundreds of dollars more.

But personally, I don't think it's worth it at all. And there's three in the laundry room. So if you can go when no one else is going there, you can do a ton of laundry. And so I always get a lot of hate on that on social media. I wonder if people take the time to like work it out how much extra it costs to have an in-unit washer dryer. I really like having a washer dryer in my house. But there are times that I have had to go to a laundromat, our washer broke. So I had to go to the laundromat to do my laundry. And it's a hassle, but it's not worth. I had to wait until Carl got home so he could fix the washing machine. It's not worth it for me to pay $500. to have some guy come out and fix my washing machine when I could go to the laundromat,

which has gotten infinitely more expensive than the last time I was there. But a couple hundred dollars a month versus walking down the stairs to do your laundry, you can take that couple hundred bucks and put it into your Roth IRA that you mentioned before or put it into your, you know, paying down your debt. Dave Ramsey has such a great quote, live like no one else now so you can live like no one else later. And do you get a lot of hassle from your friends that you live? in a lesser apartment building, again, in air quotes, because I think it's not lesser at all.

Yeah, I think that is a great point. I think that people should spend money on whatever they want to spend money on, but you're exactly right, Mindy, that I think if you actually count the cost of a lot of these things, you'd realize that you're paying hundreds of dollars for something that only potentially marginally improves your life day to day. I do get a lot of slack from my friends about my apartment building. Some of them live down in D.C. and have really nice places, again, with the nice amenities. The in-unit washer dryer, I got a lot of hate on. But all in all, I've been this way for a long time, so they know where I'm coming from. And especially with my social media page, they're watching me try and save money as much as I can. So they do give me

a hard time, but it's all in good fun. 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. It helps you see exactly where your money is going, and more importantly, where your taxed refund can make the biggest impact. Because the goal isn't just to look backward, it's to actually make progress. Simplify your finances with Monarch. Monarch is the all-in-one personal finance tool designed to make your life easier. It brings your entire financial life, including budgeting, accounts and investments, net worth, and future planning together in one dashboard on your

phone or your laptop. Feel aware and in control of your finances this tax season and get 50% off your Monarch subscription with the code Pockets. What I personally like is that Monarch keeps you focused on achieving, not just tracking. You can see your budgets, debt payoff, savings goals, and net worth all in one place. So every decision actually moves in Edle. Achieve your financial goals for good with Monarch, the all in one tool that makes money management simple. Use the code pockets at Monarch.com for half off your first year. That's 50% off at Monarch.com code pockets. When I evaluate debt funds, I look for things like first position loans, personal guarantees, deep experience by the fund operator, low fund leverage, fast liquidity, and consistent returns.

These are some of the reasons why I'm excited to partner with Pine Financial Group. Their fund six offers investors exposure to real estate credit, largely for construction and rehab, with loans originated by an experienced originator with over $1 billion in origination volume. They offer investors an 8% preferred return paid monthly and a 70-30 LP split of everything over 10% annually. The lockup period is nine months with liquidity available within 90 days after that nine-month commitment. The fund is open to accredited investors only. The fund's minimum investment is typically $100,000, but Pine Financial is able to reduce that minimum for Bigger Pockets Money listeners to a minimum of $25,000. Full disclosure, I am personally invested

in this fund through my self-directed IRA. Pine Financial is sponsoring this message and our podcast. Go to biggerpocketsmoney.com slash pine, P-I-N-E. Please note that returns are not guaranteed and may vary based on fun performance. 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,

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30-day trial at audible.com slash BP Money. So what else do you think that you are giving up or pushing down the road by spending less than $40,000 a year. Yeah, I definitely live a modest lifestyle. I haven't been on many big vacations. Thankfully, in Philadelphia, we have the wonderful Jersey Shore, which people flock from all over the world to come visit. So I get to go there for my vacations. I don't have always the nicest clothes. This Patagonia was used and a birthday gift. For me, I focus so often on what I have and what I can go out and do that I don't even often think about what I'm giving up. And just like you mentioned, Mindy, I'm always running the cost.

So if I want to hang out with my friends and have a bunch of food or even go to a local restaurant, I know that I can afford that. So those things that bring me a lot of joy, I actually do go spend money on. Have you listened to Rameet's podcast? I have listened to Rameet's podcast. Yeah, I've listened to probably every episode. The only show I listen to more is Bigger Pockets Money. All right. Would you characterize your life as a rich life?

I would absolutely characterize my life as a rich life. And just like Grameet talks about in his podcast, I don't think other people would want to live my life, and I'm totally okay with that. And I think that I focus on the things that bring me a lot of joy with the understanding that in the future, I'll spend more on the things that I want to do, but I think that I live a very rich life. We have made a conscious choice to keep housing expenses in particular very low, and that is

the fundamental variable in your savings rate. I also want to call out that you said you're making about 100 grand, you're spending about less than 40, and you're accumulating about $40,000 per year. A byproduct of that is that you're paying taxes voluntarily to max out your Roth instead of your 401K. So first, I'd like to hear about that decision. Why are you just, why are you, why are you making that decision right now when you could arguably increase your savings rate with a 401k. And what are you projecting? Where does this lead and by win? Currently, I'm totally maxing my Roth opportunity. So Roth IRA and Roth 401k, 100% allocation into my Roth. Obviously, I have my company match, which is pre-tax dollars. The reason I like Roth is because from what I understand

Roth is first in, last out. And I understand now that these years are my first in years. So I think that it grants me flexibility in the future and I don't have to worry about ever-changing tax rates or potentially increasing tax rates. So having the flexibility to take that money out without any tax implication is something that's super appealing to me. My current assumption show that I'm on track to be 32 years old with about $564,000, which would be my Coast Fire number, but I'm trying to bring that number to 500,000 by 30, which would achieve my Coast Fire goal as well. So let's talk through how you project this out.

First of all, is that number just the amount you're going to have in your Roth 401K? That number is across all my retirement accounts, so my IRA and my 401K. Okay, great. What are you assuming for your salary growth over this time period? I'm assuming that I'm going to continue contributing the same amount. But if I make more money, my current assumption is that I won't put any more towards my investments. And do you assume that you're going to see salary increases over the next five years that are meaningful? I haven't built it into my projections too much, but I do expect that I will see salary increases over time.

I think this is a really important point because I think that, you know, how can you build your model any other way than what you're doing here as a base case? And there's almost no way that someone who is living frugally, working very hard, self-educating, who's 25 at the very beginning of their career, is going to go a five or six or seven-year period in a situation like yours without finding salary increases, right? It's a very low probability that could happen. It could happen. And if it does happen, you're better positioned the most because of your savings rate. And it could happen that you get laid off. And actually there's a big setback. But the most likely path forward is promotions and opportunities, right?

If someone offered you a promotion in a few years or said, hey, here's a two-year path to becoming a manager. Would you say yes to that opportunity right now? Yeah, I absolutely would. So I think that there's a very good likelihood that will happen. And this is missed by a lot of people, right? The career growth does not happen linearly. It's a compound or step ladder over time for situations like this. Have you modeled that out at all?

Have you thought about what that career path looks like in a field like yours? I haven't modeled it out. I think that my conservative nature, I always want to make the most conservative assumptions possible. And I think you're exactly right that I am underestimating my ability to grow my income in real dollars. But I think that if I incorporated those changes, it would show that. that I am at least on track to achieve that goal.

One of the things that I observe, again, I don't know the Philadelphia market very well, despite being a birds fan. I don't really know the neighborhoods or those opportunities. But on paper, you know, in a spreadsheet, it looks like a prime place to house hack or potentially look for cash flowing real estate opportunities because of a relatively low, medium price and relatively reasonable rents as a ratio to that price. Is that your observation as well? Is that going to be a part of your plan at some point in the next few years?

It's such a great question, and it's something that has been spinning around in my mind for years now. I have so much more research and understanding to build on my end, to understand how to effectively go out and house hack and do those things. I think you said in the past regarding house hacking that it's something like a hundred hour obligation in order to reach some level of functional understanding, and I've got about 80 hours to go. So from my preliminary understanding, I think that you could be exactly right. It could be something that I incorporate into my financial picture moving forward, but I would have to make sure that my girlfriend was on board as well. I just think your approach to how you're handling everything is so wise. You've kept your housing costs low. You are making calculated decisions. You're going down an optimized stack for, you know, an order of operations and investing.

You're making a clear tradeoff. you understand the cost and you understand what you might get in return. And I think that you're right to be both interested and skeptical of house hacking or real estate right now in the Philadelphia area. I will say that I don't know if you've considered this as well, but I think that your career based on what I'm seeing has excellent prospects, but not like top 1% prospects for income, right, is what I'm gathering from what you're saying here. Like there's a very realistic path to $200,000 a year in your 30s, but not $500,000.

a year in your 30s on the current career trajectory. And all of that, it's right where you should be in terms of your mental state, right? If you're, if you were making, if you had a path to make much more than that, I'd say, don't house hack a $200,000 quadplex, you know, in Philadelphia, right? That doesn't make any sense because then you're going to, then in 10 years, you're going to be making $500,000 in your big law or finance career. And that's going to be a complete distraction. But in your case, there's a real path where if you house hack several times,

you can own several pieces of property, get into that $200,000 range, and continue to deploy capital in there with a skill set that you've developed. You can also go the other route and just invest passable. You have both options there. And that's where I think you're correctly treating real estate as an option and not a clear yes, no at this point. And I'll be really interested to see what you end up doing, given your position. Yeah, I totally agree. And I appreciate you saying that it's a wise path. I like to consider myself almost like a young Scott Trench taking on the world in the Philadelphia area again. So really almost a compliment for yourself. I think you're doing a much better job than I did. So I was just so hard. I was not considering Coast Fire. It was get ahead at that

point. So I think you've just taken all this stuff and are making much better decisions than, you know, or thinking about it much more robustly than I was at 25. So I think you're crushing it. Thank you. Yeah. And I think you're right about the income growth that a lot of people like they almost turn their brain off a little bit when they hear like oh boohoo instead of earning 800,000 top line you could possibly earn 200,000. That's still a lot of money. But at the end of the day, those are two like categorically different numbers. And I think you're exactly right that for some people who are investment bankers or management consultants who have such a high ceiling, they can go just work their job. But I think for people who are engineers who earn a very

strong salary, but maybe that ceiling is not quite so sky high. Those other opportunities are really important. Yeah, real estate is such a powerful tool for someone in that category because you can swing the hammer yourself and it makes sense to do that in the extra hours, right? The 70th hour at your job does not return in those situations. And that's why it makes some of the sense. It's why it made so much sense for me as a financial analyst, right? There was no credible path when I started down my real estate journey as a financial analyst to making big bucks. without some sort of really hard or total, total pivot. And so it made perfect sense to spend my extra time after my day job doing something

that could create value like real estate. But again, if I had been in one of those other other trajectories, it would have changed. And in your case, one question that I'll also ask here is, is you are accumulating the vast majority of your wealth and retirement accounts right now, right? You've discussed that. You know, have you considered the opportunity cost of that or have you considered amassing some after-tax position on top of that intentionally as you kind of approach 30 to make some of these other options like real estate or entrepreneurship or those types of things, maybe a little bit

more accessible? Or is that off the table for now? Well, he's got the money in the Roth. Does that kind of cancel out the need for a large after-tax portfolio? Because he can access the funds that he's put in after five years. Great point. And when we say after-tax, are we talking about a brokerage? Yeah, I'm more asking, you know, you're potentially interested in real estate. There's kind of like a, I want some options as I approach KOSFI. Is the intent to use the money that you're committing to these retirement accounts as those funds? Or do you have some other plan to amass cash or other liquidity to create those options at that point via another mechanism? It's definitely something that I've considered before.

By tying up that money into these retirement accounts, I get the advantage, the tax advantage, But I totally understand that the trade-off there is that I basically can't access that money without using the Roth that you mentioned, Mindy. But at my current savings rate, I planned that if my income were to grow over time, that I would modestly increase the amount that I'm investing to try and achieve that Coast Fire goal of 500 by 30. But any additional income, whether that comes from my job or my part-time content creation, my consideration for that would be to take. that money and make it more flexible and available to me, probably through a brokerage account in order to have the opportunity to pursue those goals in the future. Are there any mechanical engineering side hustles available? I'm not a mechanical engineer, so I've never even looked.

The one that comes to mind is that if you are a certified professional engineer, which I'm not, you have to work for at least five years, then you can start a small company which reviews and approves or denies and stamps drawings, which is a way that some people make money. It's not exactly the industry I'm in, so it's not something that I've ever really considered doing, but it doesn't lend itself particularly well to a bunch of side hustles. Do you have any side hustles that you do or are interested in, or is it kind of not worth your money or your time because of the money that you make in your main job? The only side hustle I have primarily is my content creation.

So just kind of sharing my foundational principles of personal finance, I've been able to kind of grow an audience there and from that kind of like initially now like a modest income. So it's really just that that main income or any real estate income that you might have. So have you thought about job hopping? Definitely. I know the statistics around job hopping are historically great. I haven't looked at them now whether or not it's still worth it to be doing that. Currently, I've just been at the same company since school. It's only been about three years or so. But it's definitely something that I've looked at in the future, whether it's to job hopping and get a greater opportunity or to use the

offer from another company to negotiate at my current company. Yeah, that is a, skill you could start learning and growing is your negotiation skills, negotiation for more time off or better pay or better benefits or work from home some days if that's an option. That's a skill that I never had and I kind of wish that I did. Yeah, negotiation sounds like a super great simple thing to do, but I totally agree when I was graduating college and they gave me the number. I said, great thank you. And even though I should have, I knew that I should have negotiated. Yeah. Well, and when did you graduate? I graduated college in 2023. I mean, don't beat yourself up for not negotiating that. Nobody negotiates that their first offer. You're like, I'll take it. Yeah. Yeah,

exactly right. Exactly right. But do you have a praise folder in your inbox? A praise folder. In your work inbox. Anytime somebody says, Evan, you did such a great job on the XYZ project. Thank you so much for your input. You put that in your praise folder and go back through all of your email and look for anybody saying, hey, you did a great job or your contributions helped us. And then when it's time to ask for a raise, you don't just go in and say, hey, boss, I'd like a raise. You go in and say, hey, boss, here's this giant printout of emails.

Don't just forward them, print them out and hand them to him. Sorry, trees for killing you. But here's all the reasons why I am such an asset to this company. and I think that you should give me a raise of X dollars. That's awesome. Yeah, I have a list of running projects that I'm working on and completed, but I love that idea of collecting that feedback because I think that that really goes a long way. I don't have a praise folder, but...

Yet? Consider it done. Yeah, exactly. And I would love to take credit for that, but that was Aaron Lowry from Broke Millennial who first suggested that, that I heard first suggest that. So praise to Aaron. Good job, Aaron. Thank you, Aaron.

I'll piggyback on Mindy's thing here. And I'll say on top of that, or, you know, as a parallel, I would in the next six months approach your boss and say, what opportunities are there for me over the next couple of years? And how do I think about what I need to do? Like, what are some bars I can clear to be eligible for those opportunities? Is there a chance to work into a management role? What are some things you like to see? And we talked about this on a recent episode with Paul Pant, but a lot of companies and a lot of

divisions, depending on how big your company is, will need a full year to put into the budget your raise and promotion in there. So if you can get way ahead of that with your manager and really kind of crush it, you can start to make those odds much more probable. It may be unrealistic to ask for a raise in February when we're recording this. I think it'll also get released in March because everything's baked in. But if you have those conversations now, those leaps can be much higher probability if you're getting way ahead of them in thinking in those capacities. saying what are those clear things I need to deliver or demonstrate. So that would be my advice on top of Mindy's to keep a praise folder.

And a lot of your coworkers are not going to your boss and saying, what can I do to improve? What can I do to grow? So your boss already thinks you're awesome. And now he thinks you're extra awesome because you want to make his life easier. When you do a good job, he looks good. And then his boss praises him. Or she. Or she.

Yes. I'm sorry. So sexist of me. But having that initiative. is so valuable. Wouldn't you say, Scott, as the head of the company? Oh, I'd love it. If someone came to me with that, I would say, great, here are some things that I really need done. If they get done, this makes it so easy for me at a high level. And of course I'll do that. If this timeline is perfect, I can put that into the budget for next year instead of, you know, asking for more money

right now for an off cycle situation. Like, that would make it really easy for me. Yeah, I think that's great advice and awesome insight because I think especially as a young, professional. A lot of people go in and they feel as though whether it's a bonus or a raise that the conversation is happening right there and that this is the only moment that you could have mentioned getting a raise or getting a bonus when in reality, like you mentioned, that decision might have functionally been made in the summer or the year before when the budget was created. So I think that's great advice and I'll definitely be doing that. What I think is so awesome about your story is it starts with an engineering degree, a high

ROI degree, right? That's not as fun as the at Vanderbilt, we had the HOD degree, which is relatively easy set of class work compared to the engineers in there. But the engineers, a lot of times, get very high starting salaries. And the career progression is very, is excellent. And especially in the first, you know, five, 10 years for a lot of engineers that pursue that professionally. That's the number one thing that makes this fairly straightforward from an income perspective. The second is, you live frugally. You live way below your means. relative to the peers that are earning the same amount of income as you in your city. And then you have a basic grasp, a very strong basic grasp, a very excellent grasp of the foundational principles

of personal finance, and you go down the stack investing. And what's so awesome about your situation here is that for other engineers that are pursuing similar career trajectories, there's nothing that that can't be repeated here. It's just very basic stuff that leads obviously to freedom with a very conservative projection profile. So, Congratulations in what you're doing, and thank you for sharing this. The thing that's awesome about what you're doing is that it's so repeatable by others who graduate college with an engineering degree or similar. Absolutely, yeah. I really appreciate that. And I think you're exactly spot on that my approach is to do the basic elements as perfect and as much as I possibly can.

And so far, so good. So thank you. Last question before we wrap up, Evan, how do you feel about money these days? I used to feel nervous about money. I like to keep it and I didn't like to spend it. And I would agonize over these small expenses. But I will say a testament to myself, pat myself on the back, that over the last couple of years, diving into personal finance content,

including bigger pockets money and running numbers, I've recognized that the smaller expenses that financially ambitious people tend to agonize over really do not move the needle. compared to the three to five big decisions that you might make throughout the year, transportation, housing, asking for a raise, the investment vehicles that you choose to buy into. So with that, I found myself sleeping sounder at night

and feeling far more confident about money and finding it as a way to enjoy my life more, not something to hoard or agonize over. That's a wonderful evolution there. I also would guess that there's a bit of a, well, it seems like it's pretty much on autopilot these days, feeling to it. That's probably both frustrating and boring, perhaps. Is that at all a reasonable conjecture? That's exactly correct. And that was, thanks to Ramee, talked a lot about

like building automations into every single thing that you do. So autopilot is spot on that I don't have to check my investments or everything comes out automatically. Of course, do I still check the investments every single week? Of course I do. But I don't have to. Yeah, I think that's everybody. And thank you so much for coming on, the Bear Pockets Money podcast. Thank you for all the support. Where can people find more about you? Thank you so much for having me. You can find me on Instagram, Facebook, TikTok, and YouTube at the underscore financial foundation.

Awesome. And I follow you across most of those, but not all of them yet. I'll have to go. I don't think I have TikTok downloaded on my phone. So I'll have to get that one. But thank you for all the great stuff you put out. Thank you very much. I really appreciate it.

Yeah. Thank you so much for your time, Evan. We'll talk to you soon. Talk to you soon. Okay, Scott, that was Evan Lawler, and that was a lot of fun. I'm so excited for his future, and I bet he crushes his goal. What did you think of his story? Yeah, I thought it was great.

I bet him a dollar after the show that he will approach his goal by age 28 and a half because he has not factored in raises or promotions that I think are very realistic. First career, he has not factored in growth in his side hustle. He has not factored in any other upside events that could possibly hit his situation, although there could be offsets, too, with the stock market. it's only a dollar bet here. This is my gambling budget for the month. I'm very optimistic about his path forward. We also talked about one more issue. I'm like, oh, these things happen right after the recording sometimes. But I asked him, and he's going to post this to the financial

foundation, I think, in the next few weeks, what would have to change about his income profile for him to flip from prioritizing the Roth to the tax deferred or 401K equivalent for his position? And I think that was a really good thought exercise. And I'm really interested to see what he, what he comes up with, what his answer is for him personally. I think we'll have to do with marginal tax brackets, but I'm really interested to see what he comes back with on that. I think that's a fun thought exercise for other people to contemplate as well. If you're currently prioritizing the Roth, under what conditions would you flip to the 401k or tax deferred equivalent? That's a fun challenge to question to answer for yourself. I think so too. I can't wait to see what he says.

That'll be really interesting. Scott, are you doing a Roth 401k or a traditional 401K? I am now when and if extra income hits, I will prioritize the HSA first and then the 401k at this point right now. The tax deferred 401k. Yes. That's what I do too. We would love to hear from you. Anybody prioritizing the Roth 401k over the traditional pre-tax 401k, hit us up and tell us why. Mindy at biggerpocketsmoney.com.

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