BiggerPockets Money Podcast - How to Reach Coast FI by 45 and Build a Life You Actually Want

Episode Date: October 20, 2026

How do you go from financial mistakes and debt to financial independence? On this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, Kelley Long shares her journey from money struggles in her twenties to reaching Coast FI and building a life with more flexibility and financial freedom. Kelley discusses paying off debt, changing her money mindset, investing for long-term wealth, and spending intentionally without sacrificing the things she loves. If you're pursuing Coast FI, early retirement, or financial independence, Kelley's story offers practical lessons for creating a financial future on your own terms.To go beyond the podcast:Interested in a Flat Fee Financial Planner? Go to https://biggerpocketsmoney.com/fipro/Interested in Learning More About Buying a Franchise? Check out: biggerpocketsmoney.com/franzyGet 50% Off Your First Year of Monarch by using code ‘Pockets’: https://www.monarch.com/pocketsConnect with Kelley Long:Website: https://www.financialblisscoach.com/Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/financialblisscoach/We believe financial independence is attainable for anyone no matter when or where you’re starting. Let’s get your financial house in order!See Privacy Policy at https://art19.com/privacy and California Privacy Notice at https://art19.com/privacy#do-not-sell-my-info.

Kelly Long reached Coast FI in her 40s, giving her the freedom to work as much or as little as she chooses. Today, we're hearing her money story, including how she went from financial messiness in her 20s to building a portfolio that supports a high level of spending and gives her incredible flexibility. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me as always is my loves to Coast on a mountain bike co-host, Scott Trench. Thanks, Mindy. Let's jump right in and hear about Kelly's ride. Kelly Long is a CPA PFS in a financial coach over at Financial Bliss. She also hosts the Financial Bliss podcast where she helps people navigate the many personal and financial decisions that come with building a life you love. So welcome, Kelly, to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. Hey, I'm so excited to see you guys. Thanks for having me.

Awesome. Well, you realized that you were CoastFi after doing all the right things. So can you give us a little bit of your money story that led up to reaching by? Absolutely. I grew up in a kind of average middle class family. My parent, my mom was a teacher. My dad was a route salesman for a chip company. So they were just kind of regular working people and still are. I'm very lucky that they're both still with us and kind of on traditional retirements. So I never really had a very extravagant lifestyle. I was encouraged to do, you know, go to college and get a good job making a lot of money and save as much money as possible. And I made a lot of goofy cash flow mistakes early on in life in terms of overspending and carrying credit card debt.

But eventually got my life together. I am a certified financial planner and CPA after all. So I have all the credentials that tell me that money works. And I finally started to walk my talk about in my mid-30s. All along, I always kind of thought I'd eventually get married and have kids and settle down. I had a practice marriage in my 20s that, you know, I just learned I had the wrong partner, but I still was on track to kind of live that average, or not really average, but typical life script of the kind of employed American. Then I got to be about 40. I was married. My husband and I had tried for a couple years to have kids and decided it was going to take a little bit more science than we really wanted to explore. So we took a pause. I really started to think about what

my motivations were to be a parent and what I thought my life would be like and realized that being a mom at 40 was very different than what it would have been if I had become a mom at like 28 or 30 when most of my friends became moms. Started to think about what life would be like without kids. And that's when I started really crunching the numbers and realized that, like, I could quit my job and stop saving for the future and just have to earn enough money to pay my spending money and still be fine. And it was kind of like a, I had been running the numbers to see if I could afford to go part time. So that's the kind of in a nutshell. But I'm happy to dig into any of those pieces. Let's jump back to your 20s before you started walking the talk. What did your financial position look like? And you had referenced a practice marriage. I love that phrase. How old were you when you got married the first time? I was 28. Okay. So let's talk about your money in your 20s. Graduating college, what was your financial position? I graduated college with about $15,000 in student loans, which was still kind of low. I graduated in 2000. So this was right before kind of the student loan crisis happened or ballooned. I had probably $6,000 or $7,000 worth of credit card debt. And that debt was a result of realizing that the summer before I started my first job, so I graduated

in April and started in September at an accounting firm, that that was the good last time for potentially 40 years that I would have three months off. And so I spent a lot of money traveling. And I put it all on a credit card and I bought a lot of clothes. And then I ended up having to buy a brand new car because my old car seized up on me. So I bought that earlier than I needed to. and I made a huge, huge financial mistake, which was I based my car lease payment and my apartment lease payment that I had locked into on my gross salary. So I thought I was being so responsible I had written out all of my bills and estimated for food and entertainment and I forgot to factor in taxes and the cost of benefits. And so my first paycheck hit and it was like,

I was immediately eating ramen and looking for a roommate. Oh, wow. So I, I knew, I mean, I was a accounting major. I knew that the credit card debt was not great. And I felt very like responsible. I mean, like I'm deliberately taking on this debt. So like one example of part of the balance was my firm, Deloitte, reimburse me for a CPA prep exam, which was $1,500. So they, or a course. So they said, here, go ahead and sign up for this course. And then we'll reimburse you for it. So I put the $1,500 on my credit card. They sent me a check for $1,500 and I spent it. because I was like, well, I'm going to be making so much money. So my first salary was $39,000, which was a decent salary in 2000. It wasn't the highest offer I had. Actually, Arthur Anderson offered me

45, which it turns out it was a good thing. I didn't take that because I would have been unemployed in about six months. But it seemed like a lot of money. And it was. You know, my rent was like $500. And I didn't find that the cash flow was there to pay off my debt as quickly. And so I kind of floundered a little, but I knew I needed to pay off this debt soon. Remember when George Bush sent us all like $600 checks? No, I do not. Oh, you were probably still in like elementary school. So like in 2001, I think we all got checks for $600, every taxpayer.

And I immediately turned around and sent that to Visa. Like I was very diligent about playing off this debt. And then that was when somebody gave me the book, Rich Dad, Poor Dad. So I was dating a very Scott type guy, very analytical, very analytical, very fire motivated. He was acquiring rental properties already, and he just thought I was insane for having debt. And in fact, that's part of the reason we didn't last because he didn't like my money style. But that was my first indication of, oh, like there's more to money than just earning a salary and paying your bills and putting money in your 401K. Those were the only things I was doing.

I find that very interesting because you're an accounting major. You know how money works. and you're not that you're not allowed to make mistakes, but you're like, oh, this guy told me that our money situation isn't compatible. And it, because it doesn't seem like having $20,000-ish thousand dollars in debt was this like giant weight on your shoulders. Oh my goodness, how fast can I pay this off kind of situation, right? It was because I felt like every paycheck, I would literally have these little post-it notes and I would write down the check amount and then I would subtract all the bills I

had before my next paycheck and what was left over. And it was very little money. I mean, I was like, if I wasn't dating someone, I was finding people to take me on dates to not have to eat ramen noodles. Like, I was very, very tight and very frugal. So it was a good exercise in living on as little as possible because I did know it was costing me a lot of money. This was holding me back. I didn't have any savings. And I actually did lose my job one year in. Deloitte did a under the radar layoff. So October 5th, I think. oh my gosh, it was like almost exactly 26 years ago or 25 years ago as to when we're just having this conversation. It was sometime in October of 2001. I was called into HR and said like, oh, go find a new job. So that was a panic. I was lucky enough to find another job by the time my

paycheck ran out. But that was another wake-up call like, I had no money if I had, I would have been bankrupt if I hadn't found a new job right away. So I just lived a very tight life through my 20s. And then I did get married. And that, of course, made things a lot easier sharing expenses. And I was able to pay off the debt within a couple years of getting married. But then very quickly after that, I got divorced. When you're ready to start your business, Northwest Registered Agent helps you do more than just file paperwork. You get all the tools to build a real business identity from day one, a business address, website, phone number, operating agreement, free guides and more at no extra cost.

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Use our link so they know we sent you. Terms apply. Subject to approval and eligibility. Bill cards are issued by column N.A. Member FDIC, pursuant to license from MasterC International Incorporated. Let's pick up the story there. You're divorced. Can you let's know where you are in life at that point and what the financial situation looks like and what comes next on your journey? And I'd love to hear about how that leads through to the fire mentality when that begins to emerge. My practice husband and I were very similar in our earnings levels and we had very similar money habits. We were both frugal-minded, but had struggled with debt. And we bought a house that I remember driving away from it and knowing that this was the

house we were going to purchase. It was a $285,000 house and it seemed so expensive at the time. And he owned a house and we were selling it for $110,000. And that seemed like so much money because he had bought it for less than $100 and it was a flip. And so we were making a lot of money on that. I remember driving away from looking at that house and saying to him, you realize if we buy this house, I will have to keep working throughout my career, that I can't take a career break to raise children in order for us to afford this mortgage. And he said yes. So at that point, we had enough money in the bank to buy a house and to kind of stably be homeowners, but we were definitely not thinking at all about fire. It was more about how can we survive kind of the average

life cycle of a couple and we lived in suburban Cincinnati at the time. So getting divorced was a financial decision just as much as it was anything else because it was within a couple months of that home purchase that I realized that things were not good. And I don't wish to disparage my past partner, but I made a mistake in marrying him. And I remember my mom saying, honey, if you get divorced right now before you have kids a year from now, no one will have to know that you were ever married. But all I could think about was the money. We're going to have to sell this big house that we just bought. We're going to lose money. We got so many wedding gifts that I feel like I needed to return. I owed people money. It was going to wreck the financial

progress I had made. And that was a significant thing I had to overcome in order to leave a situation that was making me miserable. So I would say that was the first time I had practice in making a choice that was countercultural that was not financially technically correct and then learning that I could survive it. Of course, I did end up back in debt again in order to establish myself at an apartment. I made some other boneheaded choices. I quit a job in the middle of the key session in 2008 with only $10,000 to make. We'll get to that. If there's one thing we're, what we're leading to is that you can screw up a lot and still end up Coast Phi. How long did you sit with that decision before you decided to say something to your then husband? I mean, from the

first time it occurred to me that maybe this wasn't a good fit, was actually before we even bought that house. So it was about a six-month process of like me thinking. it through, going to counseling. But when my mom sat me down and said, I don't think this is right for you. And the fact that I was the first born grandchild on both sides, I was the first one to get married. All of my aunts and uncles were still married to their original spouses. There were absolutely no divorce in my family. So I would be the first. And the fact that my mom was telling me to do it was like all I needed to kind of push me over to, okay, I need to make peace with this. And it was about a week later that I said to him, like, I think we need to rethink this. And then I took a week to, I had a work trip and then I came home and I said, it's time. I think we need to break up. And then about, that was like in September and we filed for divorce on my 30th birthday, which was a huge like wink from the universe, I guess. I mentioned I lived in Cincinnati. Being divorced in 30 was like social suicide. So to have the divorce like coincidentally filed on that day was the universe going like, you're going to be fine, kid. And look, you are. I am. You know, it's the true example of

that which doesn't kill you, make me stronger. It was hugely embarrassing. I was devastatingly ashamed of myself for making this decision and making this choice and not working out. In retrospect, obviously, I think probably it showed me that people don't care as much about your choices as you think they do. And that did free me from a lot of, I think, one of some of the things that hold other people back financially is I stopped doing things because of what other people thought of me. So what was your financial position after the divorce was finalized? I was. I was still okay. We hadn't really combined our money too much since we were equal income. We didn't have to split any retirement assets. And the one thing I always did right through all of these boneheaded

decisions is I always contributed to my jobs 401K to at least the match level. And I never touched that money. I don't know the specific numbers. But shortly after we were, we split up, I did switch from working for banks. I went to work for Morgan Stanley and I had to put all my money into Morgan Stanley accounts. And I want to say my IRA was worth like $40,000 or $50,000. my rollover. And I had a little bit of employee stock purchase stock from fifth third and PNC banks that I worked that I had saved. I want to say I probably had maybe $50,000, $60,000 in investable assets and about $10,000 in the bank. Did you go back into debt after you got divorced? So after I got divorced, I was super frugal for a while. I'd been planning to buy a new car.

And instead I stayed with my old car that was paid off. I found a really cheap apartment until I got settled. So somebody said to me, wait a year before you make any major life decisions. And I at the time was like, whatever, but I listened and I'm really grateful for that advice. And I've since given it and everybody rolls their eyes and says whatever, but the ones that listen, I always come back and thank me for that. So about a year in, I did go ahead and rent a really expensive, fancy apartment, like the place I had my dream place. And then that's when I left my job. And that's where I got the net worth numbers and went to work at Morgan Stanley. But that was in the same. summer of 2008. So if you remember, the fall of 2008 was the best time to be in finance ever,

especially as a rookie. I had negotiated a good deal there. So I was recruited to work for a team. And I didn't understand the difference between how bank investment management departments and Wall Street firm brokerage investment departments worked. So it was a great lesson in the inner workings of how those companies make money when they invest your money. But I had to be in an apprenticeship for like three months. So I wasn't even a license broker when the market crashed. And Morgan Stanley had agreed to pay me a guaranteed salary of $70,000 for two years, which is unusual. So they had hired me to kind of make one of their rock stars happy to join his team. But then the market crash and he was like, you're on your own kid. You got to go under the regular comp plan.

So then I was basically at risk of being fired. And at that point, I still had $10,000 in the bank, but now I had doubled my rent. I didn't have a car payment, but my car was getting old. And I needed to make some investments in my networking to get my name out there and either start a business or get some clients. And so that's when I went into credit card debt. I remember putting down $5,000 to sponsor some women's event in Cincinnati that I put on my card. And then shortly thereafter, Morgan Stanley called me in and said, peace out. So I started putting all of my bills on a credit card until I could find my footing financially. I had enough cash to pay my rent through the end of my lease, but everything else had to go on a card. And so I remember my bill coming and it was

$12,000 and I was like, okay, something has to change. And that's kind of when I stopped that second bleed of finances and found a way. I moved out of my apartment, started paying down my debt. Actually, I call it my invisibleine epiphany. So in the midst of all of this, I cracked a tooth. And I went to see the cosmetic dentist that all of the professional sports players used in Cincinnati. And he said, before I can fix your tooth, I think you need orthodontia you need Invisaline to get your teeth straight. And that's $3,500. So I did some quick math in my head, and I put out my credit card and figured I needed to pay like an extra $1.15 a month or something to pay it off in three years. And then I thought, if you would have told me yesterday, I had to

start saving $115 a month. I would have said that was impossible. But somehow I found $115 a month to pay off this bill. And that was a huge aha moment for me in terms of changing my financial orientation away from bill-orienting towards investments. That was a huge moment for me. Of course, the slide had started. Too many decisions had made for me to just like stop everything. It was about three years before I stopped accumulating debt, but that was the last time it ever happened. What does good financial decisions look like here? Like, you tried, based on what you had in the early years, to budget responsibly. You just forgot taxes because you didn't know. I remember being, you know, 23, getting my first real corporate paychecks. I guess the question

what was a mistake with knowledge you had or should have had at the time in all of this? Because I'm hearing all these challenges, but it's not like I'm looking at this and being like there's a lot of really bad decision making going on financially here. That's what I'm struggling with. Well, I think what's really important is that on paper, before I was 35, I was technically fired from two professional jobs, but I never viewed that as a failure. I never viewed any of these as failures. I viewed them as the consequences of choices that I had made.

and I trusted myself to make choices to get through it. Obviously, I hope to not make the same choices in the future with the same consequences, but I think that was a really important key to me continuing to, like, I never thought of myself as a failure or kind of a mess with money. I never thought I was bad with money. I knew I was really good with the day-to-day aspects. I always paid my bills on time. I was really good at kind of doing the math, but a mistake I made was that a part of the part of the way. I was a part of the way. I was a part. that I leased in downtown Cincinnati and I said I got my dream place. Part of the reason I could afford that was it was my lease started the same month my car was paid off. So I just rolled my car payment into my rent. That was a really big mistake. I should have kept my rent to what it was and used that money to save or to set aside for a future car purchase, ideally. How awesome was the apartment? It was the dream place. And I think the thing that was really worth mentioning about that was I never thought when I got married, I was like settling that I wasn't going to do all the cool things I thought I might do. I was

like trading. Well, you know, I'd also want to be a mom and live in the suburbs in a big house. So I guess I'm not going to live downtown in a cool loft. And then I got the chance to do it. And I was a little afraid that I was going to love it so much that I would never want to not live downtown in a cool loft. And so within a month, I realized the downsides of it. It was very noisy. It was hard to get anywhere. And I was super relieved that It was a cool place. I love living there and I knew I was going to be ready to leave. The book, The Alchemist, informs a lot of my life. There's a part in the book where the crystal merchant talks about not going to Mecca because he's so afraid that that's his biggest dream that if he achieves his dream, he won't have anything to live for. And that's kind of where I was with this.

Like, don't avoid the thing you really want just because you're afraid that you won't have anything else to live for. It was worth it, even though it was out of my league. And I would probably advise a lot of people against it, but I would probably more say, just be really clear on what you're giving up. I was tying myself to continued employment for at least 15 more years with some of those decisions. So we're coming out of this apartment. What happens next? What's the next inflection point in the journey? I moved to Chicago. Oh, did you become an Indiana Bears fan? No. Bengals for life. I did not become an Indiana Bears fan. But we do have that hat. So I met a guy who was moving to Chicago and I thought, what the hell, I need to get out of this

lease anyway. I sold everything I owned, including my car. And that gave me the cash to pay my own share of the bills, moved in with him. He is a corporate move for him. So his job paid rent for the first six months to a year. Then my bills went down to like my Verizon phone plan, making my student loan payment, which was $106.86 and paying $350 a month towards my credit card debt and then paying my basic living expenses. So he let me live rent free with him for about a year and a half. So that's worth mentioning that I did have a partner who was generous with me. And then about a year and a half and he was like, all right, the gravy train is closed. I need you to start shipping in half. And that's when I went and found a full-time job paying about $65,000 to start.

And then I negotiated a raise to $80,000. This was in 2012. And throughout this scenario, you you have always been contributing to your company's match at the 401K. What does your portfolio look like? What are you investing in at this time? I mean, I'm an index investor through and through. So at this point, my IRA and my retirement assets are managed by my financial planner. And it's definitely a mix of index funds, a little bit of bonds. When we did our financial plan. We'll get to that because that's sequentially, we're not quite there to when we decided to hire a financial planner and why we did that because I am a financial planner. But at the time, it was very much like a target date fund. Okay. Let's keep going from 2012 to the present. So how do

things unfold and how do we arrive where we're at? So 2012 was when I went back to full-time employment. So for three years, I had been, I made my first go at being a money coach with, you know, $10,000 in the bank and quickly into debt. So I was making enough money at the time to pay my bills and put a little bit into an IRA every year, but not much. So for about three years, I took a little bit of time off saving for the future, but I also was not accumulating further debt. I had a lot of side gigs. I worked the front desk at my gym. I taught fitness at another gym to get a free membership. I was a pet sitter. I worked at Michael's Crafts one day a week. I had a lot of ways that I had money coming in while I was trying to figure out this coaching thing.

And finally went back to full-time work, making about $80,000 a year. Then that relationship ended. which I just am grateful that he was kind enough to wait until I was financially stable. And I moved into my own place and was very balanced. So I was still going to be on the traditional financial track, hoping to retire in my 60s. Still thought eventually I'd meet somebody, have kids. So I'd always had that in the back of my mind. And then I met my husband. A year into our relationship, the apartment that I was renting, somebody was building

a high rise right outside the door. It was going to block all of my light. and I knew I had to move. And I said to him, I'm not moving twice. So either I'm going to move in with you, we're going to find a place together, or if you're not cool with that yet, then you need to supplement a place that you'll eventually move into. Well, I'm going to rent a place that you can join me. So we started looking for rentals in Chicago, and our budget was $3,500 a month, which was $30% of our gross income. So I did the whole financial planning. Your housing cost should not exceed 30% of your income. And when you're renting, that can be your full budget, right? So we started looking and we were picky. We needed a

place with the balcony. It had to be in a certain zip code. It couldn't be on the bot. It couldn't have anybody above it unless there was cement floors, blah, blah, blah. And a realtor looked at us and said, why are you rent? You have that budget. Why don't you buy a place? And so we did. We bought a condo. My mother-in-law is still mad that we moved into got, bought a house before we even got engaged, let alone got married. But it was a, you know, at that point, we were 36 and 37 years old. We both felt like we knew each other. Our relationship was permanent. We did sign some financial agreements. We bought the place jointly so that either of us would not be in trouble. And about the same time, I also switched positions to working for financial finesse, which was my last full-time employer as a financial coach. And that job

is really where the big inflection point started because I had to be a really good financial planner. I had to talk to people in that job about how to manage cash flow and debt issues all the way up to what to do with $5 million in equity. I started to really listen to the things I was telling people and questioning why they didn't apply to me. And it was the start of a real mindset shift. So I was about 37, 38 at that point of like, why can't I max out my 401K? Like, why am I hoarding cash? Because at that point, my debt was gone and I was actually accumulating assets. And so I just maxed out my 401K.

And then I learned that about the beauty of HSAs. So 10 years ago, 2016, I stopped spending my HSA and let the money accumulate and started tracking it. And now my HSAs were $70,000. I put about $30,000 into it. I started like actually practicing all of the things that I was teaching people how to do. And five years into that job was when I realized I was Coast Phi. So why do you think you weren't practicing what you were preaching before this last position at financial finesse. Because I know it's so easy to sit here and be like, oh, you should do this. And then in real

life, you're like, I'm not doing that. I just didn't think it was applicable applicable to people like me. I think there was a huge mindset piece of my identity. Like, it just hadn't occurred to me that someone like me would be someone that could afford to max out their 401k. To me, that was something that rich people did. And I didn't view myself as rich. You're making $80,000 a year. Like 10 years ago, that's not poor. No, it wasn't. It was a decent income. But it wasn't. 1% income. I kind of always thought of myself as like just an average earner who didn't do that stuff. So it was really me being like, well, why do I think that? It's not true. And then literally just shifting and saying, I'm going to challenge myself. So I give this advice all the time in my

practice with my coaching clients. Like just try it. Just increase your percentage from 5% to 10%. And if it sucks, then dial it back the next paycheck. Like a lot of people make their spending decisions around what's available and I'm one of those. I do spend on vibes. So this is a hack for my personality. One of the interesting things that I think is fascinating about your situation is we're kind of coming approaching the present here. You have a choice or had a choice over the last five, seven years about whether to finish the play, as I like to say in terms of finishing out the traditional financial independence journey or sit at CoastFi and just ramp your spending. And you chose the latter. How did that decision come about and was there back and forth?

What was the process for arriving at this position? It's been a long, like, five-year process. So I won't bore you with all of the details. But essentially, it comes down to thinking through the values in our life situation right now and where we're headed. My husband and I are now approaching 50. He'll be 50 this year. I'll be 50 next year. We are so fortunate that both of our parents are still living and well.

And we thought we will never regret spending more time with them when they're fun to hang out with. A lot of our priorities have shifted right now towards maximizing time with people that we care about and away from earning as much as possible, which has been a huge challenge for both of us. I mean, there are days when I'm sitting at my desk going like, I don't need to be here right now. Why do I feel like I need to be working? And it's like a default while I should be in the office. It's Monday at 2 o'clock. So it's been a shift of intentionality around, first of all, we need to spend time with the people

that aren't going to be here forever. But second of all, recognizing that when you're in your 30s, 50 sounds really old, but we're not that old. We have a lot of life left. And so when we ran our most recent financial projections, our question to our financial planner was, can we afford to buy a second home, a vacation home, for $359,000 with cash? And he choked a little like, oh. So we have a a brokerage account that supplements our income at this point. And so he plugged that into our plan and said, well, it takes your chance of success down to 62% from like 97%, which made him very uncomfortable. And I said, I'm quite comfortable with that, but let's look into what the failure would mean. What would cause this plan to fail? And everything we could find was that the 38% failures all

happened in the next 10 years and they would be major market movements. The next 10 years is when we have the most optionality with how much we earn. It would be really easy for either of us to triple our income within a year through at worst employment. So my husband's a independent contractor physician and he chooses his hours and his patients. He's a psychiatrist so he doesn't have to have a hospital affiliation. And I run a very casual money coaching business that my top line revenues like $50,000. I could easily make $500,000 as a CFP in my town. In the next 10 years, before I'm 60, would be the easiest for us to do that, both mentally, logistically, you know, ageism hasn't kicked in yet. We still have our skills. We have a great network. So that didn't feel

like it's big of a risk. If we had been 70 and he said this rate drops your chances of success to 62 percent, you might run out of money. We might have made a different choice. So this decision set has led to an environment where you have a very substantial amount of wealth. You're a coastfai, but I imagine you'd be fire at lower levels of spend if you just chose to cut back on there. And you spend $20,000 a month. Is that the right headline number? That's what we budget for. That's the highest spending month. That's the month that our HOA dues come due and property taxes and disability policies and things. Tell us about the life that this spending provides. Like, how awesome? Most people have no idea the level of wealth that my husband and I have.

which is fine with us. But we own a four-bedroom house with a pool and the best view in town in Arizona where we chose to move to be closer to my parents' winter home, which we also own. We travel. We are still getting used to buying first-class tickets for trips longer than three hours. We're literally right now trying to overcome the hump to book a trip to New York City in December and just buy it. The points game does not work for buying first class at first purchase, you just are committed to. We have the American Airlines executive card. I've got like 250,000 points, not enough to fly first class to New York for two people in December. Anyway, we are having the landscaping done in our yard that we really want. It's mostly about traveling freely. Our cats eat the

best food. They have their dentals are up to date. We give generously to friends and family, but the area that is probably lacking the most right now is in generosity, particularly around like help the community, and that's an area that I'm looking to make more intentional investments, both financially and time-wise. You wouldn't, I mean, I drive a 2016 Ford Escape. My husband drives a used 20-23-Rav-4 plug-in. Like, we don't drive fancy cars. Our house is fine. We live in a subdivision-type house. But if we had to, we could, you know, downsize pretty easily. So it sounds like you are fine. You are as financially independent as you want to be. You just don't want to stop the additional spending that you started and you both like your jobs, right?

Yes, we love our work. And that's actually a really important piece of the puzzle. So you are fine. You just aren't R-E. I think a lot of people come into this like, oh, I can quit my job early. Yes, because I hate my job. And they focus so much on being retired early. They're not really focusing on being financially independent and creating the job that they love. It sounds like you really enjoy this financial coaching business that you have. Your husband, enjoys being a, did you say psychiatrist or psychologist? He's a psychiatrist. Psychiatrist. I don't want to, I know one is different than the other. One's an MD. Yeah. Yeah. So he enjoys doing what he's doing and you can work as much or as little as you want.

So if you enjoy it and also you don't have to do it full time, why wouldn't you continue? I mean, that's kind of the job that Scott and I have created for ourselves here as well. And it's a really awesome position to be in. And like I don't see. anything wrong with flying first class to wherever you want to go, it's really nice to fly first class. And I met you at FinCon a couple of weeks ago. You're not a short person. Cramming yourself into those little seats in the back isn't so much fun. So if you have the ability to sit up in first class or just buy the exit row seats, that's so much more space too. It's just the psychological like, who are we to spend $1,900 on airfare? We're not going to Italy. We're going to J.M.

FK, but then I have, you know, I didn't fly first class to FinCon. And even that hour-long flight from Phoenix to Palm Springs was like, oh, like, don't touch me. So, I mean, I think probably the thing that we're still shifting towards is, I don't think I got into this. The reason we hired a financial planner in the first place is that I didn't trust myself to draw my husband's goals out in a way that was really going to be conducive to build a plan. He's more frugal than I am. And he's very oriented towards earning. And I mean, his father is still working at the age of 85. So I needed somebody else to draw out other things that he wants to do with his time besides work so that I could continue to like help him find the balance. Because he would just work all the time and be stressed about it

without somebody else outside of the marriage telling him. So we hired this financial planner who walked us through our prosperity intention first and it's on our refrigerator. And I'm always like, this is what you said was important to you, babe. But when we ran the numbers, we had to say like what retirement age, we're like, oh, I don't know, let's say 55. And then, you know, well, what, but what would you earn? And I'm like, I don't, I think it'd be hard for me to not keep doing something after 55. So let's say $10,000, but I think it would be hard for me to actually keep my earning less than $10,000 even at that point. So it's like our plan is so, there's so much money left over that we want to give it away now or spend it, that we're trying to find that

balance now of like we want to maintain the option that we won't be poor if one of us is unable to work or if there is a significant market event that drops our brokerage account, which is where we get all of our supplemental income right now, that like we'd have to make really painful choices. So that's part of the reason we're fine with like continuing to work now. But I mean, I see myself like always doing something out in the world, you know. And I think most people feel that way our generation and younger. Like work does not have to be horrible. Earning does not not have to be horrible. Like, I can see myself being fine being a Walmart greeter at 75 because I'm social. This is a great point here because I think earlier in the conversation, you said something to the

effect of, I don't want to be a bag, what was a bag lady? A bag lady, yeah. I think that's like a horrible fear a lot of people have. A lot of women have that fear, especially older women. What I think is really interesting is like there's a whole bunch of circularity in the financial independence world that is just not admitted. And it's like everybody gets into the 4% withdrawal rate. Like I literally today had this whole argument in the YouTube comments about a withdrawal research. We had the morning star lady on a Christine Ben. She's great. We discussed this.

And everyone gets into it, who's the most rigorous in the 4% withdrawal space? And it's like, guys, the data set is like five overlapping 30 year periods for US data only. So, I mean, there's just no like, like you can have the most rigorous person on and your air bar is huge.

Still, the best possible. academic interpretation of that is still huge. So we have all these different circularity components in the space, this huge air bar and questions like, for example, are you financially independent? If you could spend $10,000 a month, but instead choose to spend $20,000 a month and work. Like, is that a financially independent situation? One of the things we talked about at lunch, Kelly, was this question as well, which is, at 35, spending a very conservative withdrawal rate makes a lot of sense. form a safety perspective based on those air bars. And it also gives really good odds of the portfolio

compounding such that you can ratchet spending much more safely, something you can't do with traditional 4% rule research. I think that confuses people, at least with the traditional stuff there. But at some point that flips, right? Like, that doesn't make sense to spend that conservatively at that same portfolio level at 55 or 60, right? Because that's the time. So there's a whole bunch of these questions that have not been answered with academically backed rigorous quantitative research may be unanswerable, I don't know, especially as we think about the step changes in spending. But I'll start with, after framing those questions, I'll start with us. Do you consider yourself financially independent or not? Technically, yes. I think so. The phrase I probably would say is more work optional. The fact that I am

closer to 50, like this conversation would be very different when I was 40 because of the time that's passed in 10 years and how much the market has changed. I used to track my net worth on a monthly basis. I've gotten kind of lazy about it, but I do have my net worth from October 1st, 2016, which is the closest I could get to 10 years ago. And then I pulled up my personal, just my own investments in cash. So I don't, not including real estate, not including my vehicle, which I mentioned is an old car. Just to kind of look at that, I didn't even include 50% of the assets that I share with my husband. So in October of 2016, my net worth was $146,497. The same asset pool, which has grown and changed, which I noted, we can go through this if you'd like, is $713,227.27 as of yesterday.

Yeah, $550,000 in growth in 10 years. And so much of that is investment growth, but not all of it. Part of that is my business checking. That's $1,200. That didn't start that to. 20-20. My HSA. I did not have an HSA in 2016 is when I actually stopped spending my HSA and started investing it. So that's $67,000 of that $700,000. I have a Roth IRA that I started in 2023. I can't contribute every year, but in the years that I have contributed, it's worth about $21,000. And that's just invested, I think, in the Fidelity Freedom 2040 Fund. I have a SEP IRA that I started in 2022 with business income. That's $45,000. And then the rest is my rollover assets from my jobs.

And I have some I bonds. I have like $5,000 worth of eye bonds that I've been, I've fought like back when they were insane. But they're all paying higher than what my current interest rate on my high yield savings account. So I'm keeping them. What percentage of your wealth is in deferred retirement accounts? I'd have to like look specifically.

On this screen, it's let me just do a quick math here. It's 5.7th. So 75%. And that checks out against our overall net worth. Just a rough back of the numbers, our brokerage account that I mentioned is where we like pull for extra money. Plus our cash savings is worth is probably about 25% of our net worth. But the other 75% is retirement and real estate, which is I mentioned the home that we live in, the condo that my parents use for the winter, and then the condo we just purchased in northern Michigan.

So I find this fascinating because, you know, I'm starting to get a reasonable picture of where your position is. you have a significant amount of wealth, and it's almost all in the deferred, and you're earning a high income right now and spending a lot, which means you basically have to continue contributing to those accounts. Yes. It's just shifting of assets at this point. But that means that the wealth and the deferred accounts is continuing to grow as a percentage. And if you're decumulating or you're using some of the other assets, it's going to be even bigger of a percentage. Again, I think this is like a fascinating. There's a circular problem here in personal finance and financial independence. that hinges on this, right? You spend the whole career contributing to the tax deferred account. It's now a very big number and that number is going to get bigger and bigger and bigger as long as you guys continue working. And then, you know, like you are a real RMD, you know, challenge here. That's coming one day without that.

Is that something you think about or how do I think about financial independence and the circle that is tax deferred contributions continuing to work after hitting financial independence, not being able to access any of the money in the 401k or the deferred account is certainly not in. in the current year or the next year without extremely bad tax arbitrage from the early contributions. How do I think about that? Am I framing the question reasonably? I totally get what you're asking. You're going to hate my answer. I don't care. Okay. But here's why I don't care because charities are going to inherit my assets. And so there's no tax efficiency to my inheritance, a need to my inheritance. Is that the goal I'm continuing to work and not not draw down the assets because I want to give away a large terminal balance? No, I want to I want to, I want to, I want enjoy it all. But I think it's more like if I find myself in the position of having large

RMDs that drive me into a higher tax bracket, that it won't be a hardship for me. And so there's the psychological act. Like if my primary focus was reducing my lifetime tax bill, I would probably be making different choices. But that would probably require me to have less cash flow going out towards things that I want experiences or home improvements or the other things that I get to enjoy and more towards taxes on Roth conversion. You know, we every year kind of, we do do a little bit of tax planning in terms of keeping ourselves within a bracket and liquidating some high, appreciated stock at low basis. You know, a couple years ago, I opened a donor advice fund and put a big chunk in there to help with our tax situation. So we are doing some tax planning, but at the

end of the day, like because I have a significant amount, like my traditional IRA that is rollover, not the SEP is almost 400,000. And then I have a Roth managed IRA as well. So I have two Ross. I have one that I manage and one my financial advisor takes care of. So that's about a 25, 75% split too. What accounts are you withdrawing from? You said you have these investments and that's where you're drawing your supplemental income from. What types of accounts are you pulling from? Are you pulling from any of the tax advantage accounts or is it all like after tax? Not yet. We have one large, brokerage account that this is an important part of my money story, honestly, that we haven't touched on at all. My father-in-law made some really great investments on behalf of himself and my husband

and sister-in-law back in the 90s. And that's where all of our supplemental income comes right now. So he bought Apple stock, Microsoft, J.P. Morgan Chase. So when my husband and I got married and I discovered these investments, I think the portfolio was worth like $400,000. So that was 11 years ago. 100 of it was Apple. I panicked and said, that's way too much of our net worth. And so he sold half of it and gave me $100,000 and said, invest this somewhere. So I didn't even mention that as part of my net worth, but we have a joint account that I basically mimicked a target date fund, but made my own index fund for fun that has now grown to like $340,000. So it's $100,000 that I invested in 2015 is now worth like $340,000. That's a brokerage account that we don't drop.

from yet, but that's available to us. But the most of the money is in this stock that just won't stop growing. And then my husband, I mentioned as a physician, and I don't know if you're familiar with the stereotype about doctors, but they do love to chase big money ideas. If there are any doctors listening, I say that with the deepest amount of care and love and respect. He got this idea from a friend, like, oh, you've got to be doing angel investing. And so he comes to me and I'm like, it's gambling. Like, this is not like, this is play money for you. So every once in a while, he'll come to me and go, hey, is it okay if I buy this company at IPO and this company will not, you have to be an accredited investor, which means you have to have at least a million dollars of investable net worth or a high

income that we do not have. And this company, it's called MicroVentures, recommends that you not invest more than 2% of your net worth in any of their opportunities. And then they say, one out of five of these opportunities will IPO. But one of those opportunities was Palantir stock. So he bought the minimum amount at IPO, and that has grown into enough money that we just sold half of the holding to help buy this condo in Michigan. Honestly, my focus has been less on getting money out of tax deferred accounts and more on reducing the Apple holding, which continues to be like 30% of the overall taxable portfolio. And every year, I'm selling as much as we can without putting us up into the net investment income tax range. And every once in a while I screw up and we qualify to make Roth IRA contributions. so I didn't sell enough. So I remember, Mindy, I've told you, like, I wish I would have

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your money in just minutes, not hours per month. Monarch saves you time and actually helps you use it wisely. Use the code pockets at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch core half off at just $50.00. That's 50% off your first year at monarch.com with the code pockets. What I just think is so fascinating here, and this happens so frequently inside of the FI community for those who continue to work, well, I'm going to call it like this. I'm going to say the tax-deferred wealth that you've built has seemingly zero impact on your day-to-day life and consumption at this point. It's all a future retirement number here. And there's no harvesting at all of it. In fact, the pile continues to grow. And I just think that's such an interesting, and it's not like you're

unusual with this. This is a very common thing. Mindy's doing the exact same thing, you know, late in her fire journey. I think that this is a real, like, there's something there that's just not discussed enough, right? All of your consumption is happening from the, in you earn plus and then that's also on top of that going in and the gains realized in your after-tax position that's what you're using to do life right now the way you're doing it and I think there's something there's something there that I'm not I'm not I can't quite wrap my head around that to me that's just money that's not available to me but also knowing that it's there and looking at the projections over the next 40 years which is actually my financial plan has me

live until 95 it's like 50 years pretty close to 50 years from now like looking at that does give me the comfort that like, I don't need to add to that pot. I don't need to add to that pile anymore, even though, you know, I couldn't start spending $389,000 right now. Like, that wouldn't last. And here's the thing. I can't help myself. I have to keep pushing on this point here. Here's the thing. You don't have to add any more to it, but you do. You kind of have to, because of the tax perspective, it's very hard with a physician's income plus your income stacking on top of that, plus any gains going on here, to then not defer more into these accounts. Okay, but let me qualify. My husband is a physician, and they do have a high income potential, but my husband's income is like $100,000 right now.

Okay. So he's kind of more of an average worker. So have you then stopped contributing to the deferred? We contribute to our sub IRAs strictly from a tax savings perspective because it lowers our self-employment income tax. Got it. Okay. But usually we're using money that we took from the brokerage account to fund it, not from our earnings. I mean, it's all the same in the eyes of the IRS, but we wouldn't be able to make the full contribution to, of the SEP IRA with our lifestyle and our earnings. So it's like we're kind of trading one for the, you know, selling 15% tax stock to save basically 50% taxes because of the contribution to the SEP. I don't know, but I think that I would guess that if you did a lifetime tax calculation using a planning software, there's a very good chance that tax software would tell you, maybe you contribute to the SEP IRA bizarrely to avoid the self-employment taxes in some degree,

but it will tell you to aggressively begin Roth converting if your income is 100,000 plus 50,000 minus whatever step IRA or HSA contributions. Well, it's the capital gains that get us. So we have like $200,000 of capital gains. Those stack, though, right? So those will only be after the ordinary income up to these brackets. But it still puts us in knit territory and like the 3.8% Medicare surtax. There's also like the potential to put us into 20% capital gains rate.

I think it would be interesting to see that because Mindy was told by the money guys to convert up to like what the 22 or 24% bracket, Mindy, was that you? Is that what they said? Yes. Might have been as high as that. Even with NIT and state income tax, you won't get up to a 22% unless you do a huge capital gain. It's the capital gains. It's the capital gains. I mean, seriously, we're selling like $200,000 worth of Apple stock at least every year. But that will only be taxed at a 15% capital gains plus NIT. That does contribute to the overall calculation on some of the other taxes, yeah. Anyways, I think it would be an interesting exercise. I think this is a very common situation in the fire world that will happen to people in their 40s and 50s. And then the problem is so circular because it makes sense at the time. I might not be rich. So I surely should defer. But then your income continues to ramp or continues to stay high. And so it gets harder and harder to stop. Like Mindy continues to earn income right now. So it's kind of hard to then not contribute to the defer. I mean, I think I'm a bit of a fire. pariah because I'm less concerned. Like, you're totally right. I am sure my lifetime tax bill is higher than it would have to be. Ideologically, that's a problem for me because I don't love where my tax dollars are being spent. But fundamentally and functionally, it's like at this point, right now, it's not worth my time and energy to figure it out or to overcome the psychological aversion to like paying all that

taxes. Roth conversions benefit my future wealthier self or my heirs. And so I would be more inclined to give the money away that I would spend in taxes right now to people who need money. Yeah. If you're going to give away the money, if that's, if that becomes the goal, then this is textbook. I completely agree. Yeah, yeah. So I mean, you're not wrong, though. Well, awesome. So what's next? What's the most, what's the most exciting thing you're looking forward to in the coming months? Well, I'm really excited about my book launch, which is, you know, taking up all of my energy. But we have a really fun trip to Morocco planned in April. That's a yoga adventure. And so we'll be spending a week between Marrakesh and the Atlas Mountains and the desert as well after the trip we're going to fly over

to Nice and spend a couple days on the French Riviera. So that's probably the biggest thing I'm looking forward to in the next year. Nice. That's awesome. Yeah, two places neither of us have been. So I mean, we're both Sagittarius, so we love to travel. Well, Kelly, this has been absolutely fantastic. I hope you have a fantastic trip. Best of luck with the book lunch. So Kelly, where can people find out more about you? Sure. My website is Financial Blisscoach.com. And my podcast is Financial Bliss with Kelly Long. It's available on all platforms. So if you go to my website and then slash book is the book page slash podcast is more on the podcast. But I really appreciate you guys bringing me on to share more and talk about my journey and help me reflect on some things a little differently as well

because we're still a work in progress on embracing our status as fires. Well, you crushed it. And thank you for sharing the story here. Despite, you know, a lot of challenges at the beginning of the journey. It seems like life is wonderful now. And congratulations on all you've achieved. And look forward to hearing how the upcoming trip book launch and the next chapter goes. Thanks. And I think that's probably the most important thing I want people to hear who are experiencing challenges is when they happen in your life does matter. Like I at 35 never, if you would have told me I'd be sitting here telling you this story, I would have laughed you out of the room. And so things can change quickly and they do often for the better. So it's never too late. Kelly, it was lovely to see you again

and we will talk to you again soon. Thank you. All right, Scott, that was Kelly's awesome money story. I love her message at the end. You can be a financial mess, for lack of a better word, and not have that just to find your entire life. Take the steps that you keep hearing on this show over and over again. Take those steps and apply them to your financial situation, and you will improve your wealth. It sounds like she's got a wonderful life and situation here.

The individual choices she made, the story is wonderful. I think her situation, though, shines this broader light on the hard, questions, the philosophical, hard questions that are circular in financial planning within the fire community. Like, are you fire if you spend $20,000 a month, but your portfolio could only support $8,000 or $10,000 a month in spend? And if that is your plan, do you change? Now, now all of a sudden, do tax planning principles that would have worked in the situation where you would have spent eight or $10,000 a month, flip on their head and become different? I think yes. I think that too little of this community in financial independence is honest enough about the possibilities of winning

and of good problems happening later in life and income sources stacking and stacking and stacking and how that circularly changes your tax planning and the way you want to build your portfolio. And Mindy, I think you're a perfect example of that in this space. So I think it's a good problem and I think that there's lots of ways to go about it. And I think it's negated in there in her situation here, Kelly's situation. because of her intent to give in the portfolio, although I don't know if that's the primary goal or secondary goal or how she's thinking about that exactly, but there was clearly some intent to do that. If you're going to give away your portfolio, then it's a great answer to just defer the entire way through.

That's a wonderful plan there. But if there's other goals that are coming into it, I think it shines a light on these questions that I look forward to continuing to explore in the next few years. Yeah. And I think that she will be giving away what's left over. We specifically asked her that and she said, yeah, I want to spend it all, but I know that I won't be able to spend it all. So she will give what's left over. And in her situation, it's because there are no heirs. And she doesn't have anything to do with it after she's done with it. So she's going to spend as much as she can and then give away the rest.

And I think that's a great mentality. She's thought it through. She has thought past her and discovered that these are the causes that mean something to me, this is where I'm going to put my money after. Well, either way, she's crushed it. She's got a great situation going on here, and I wish her the best of luck and happy time is traveling first class. You know, I've never actually traveled first class ever in my life. You can't call me frugal these days, but I fly coach every single time, every single flight for my entire life so far. Maybe like a premium economy in one or two situations out there. That's just not one of those things that I've yet prioritized. Must be awesome. And Scott, I sat next to you on a plane recently. You don't really fit an economy. So I felt great. On these plane rides, I get like all my work done, the emails finally down to zero. I crushed it on that flight.

Yes, but that's not physical comfort. That's mental comfort knocking out a bunch of stuff. I'm saying I looked over and you didn't really fit in that seat all that well. So I would encourage you to look into your flying rules. And perhaps when you are, it was just the two of us traveling to BPCon that your kids weren't with you. Maybe you sit in the exit row when you. when you fly in the future because that gives you a little bit more space to spread out. I don't even need the space and I like to sit in the exit row.

You know what? I'm 6.1.220 and yeah, I don't quite fit in the seat necessarily. But if you gave me $5,000 to plan a trip and I planned it in an economy and you gave me another thousand to upgrade to first class or business class, I think I'd decline it and I'd put that $1,000 towards the bar tab or the next meal if you forced me to spend it. I just don't think that's one of those things I value is like the temporary comfort of the flight. Okay, I'll allow it. I will encourage you to sit in first class once, though, just to see if you really want to say no to it. Yeah, maybe my tune will change one day, yeah. We took a flight to Amsterdam earlier this year and had lie flat seats on the plane ride over.

And now we're going to Japan next year. And I told Carl, we are flying lie flat seats. I don't care what it costs. I could see that. I could see being able to sleep on the plane being worth it at some point in my life. But I have not experienced that yet. Yeah, it was definitely worth it. And to Japan, here. Here's a little travel tip to anybody who's going to Japan. There's an airline called Zipair.com or dot org, or I don't know what their website is. But they fly to Japan, lie flat seats. They only go to Japan.

They go from the west coast of America. They were half the price of United. So we are saving significant amount of money and all four of us are flying life flat to Japan. There's a little tip for you. Shout out to Jolene, who gave that to me. I'll be in coach. Yes, God will be in. coach and I will be well rested when I get there. Okay. Now, we know that some of our listeners

have trouble finding flat fee or advice only, not A-U-M advisors who understand financial independence. So we are building out a network of these professionals, along with other professionals like tax planners, and we are gathering them all up and putting them on our website at biggerpocketsmoney.com slash phi pro. That's F-I-P-R-O. So if you're looking for an advisor, head on over and check it out. We might have one that's perfect for you. All right, that wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. He is Scott Trench. I am Indy Jensen saying, see ya, Kia. I'm skeptical of a lot of financial products, but life insurance isn't one of them, at least not term life. For the vast majority of you listening, term life is simply the right answer. And the smartest way to buy it isn't one big policy, it's a ladder. Your need for coverage is. isn't flat. It declines over time. You've got a 30-year mortgage, a couple of young kids,

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