BiggerPockets Money Podcast - The Mad Fientist’s New Rule To Retire Early Even Sooner

Episode Date: December 24, 2024

If you want to retire early, the Mad Fientist is your guide. For over a decade, Brandon, more commonly known as the “Mad Fientist,” has been running simulations, experiments, and exercises to discover which road to early retirement is the fastest. Now, in his forties, Brandon has time to reflect on what worked, what didn’t, and his regrets on the sprint to early retirement and financial freedom. And he’s also got a new update that’ll make your early retirement journey smoother. After tinkering with the beloved and rarely challenged 4% rule, Brandon decided it was time to sit down and calculate how much you really need to retire early. For decades, financial freedom chasers have been breaking their backs, trying to have as much stashed away as possible to enjoy their well-earned time off from work. But, it turns out that this number might be overinflated, and you can retire with much less than you think. That means your early retirement timeline just got a LOT shorter. In this episode, Brandon will describe why the 4% rule may be a bit too rigid, how to ensure you’ll have enough during early retirement, what to do during a market crash or correction, and why spending thousands of dollars on a coffee machine isn’t such a bad idea. If you want to maximize enjoyment in early retirement, instead of building a big bank account you probably won’t use, stick around! In This Episode We Cover Early retirement rules of thumb you MUST know when on the path to FIRE The 4% rule and why you DON’T need to follow it to a tee Retirement withdrawal rules and how much to spend during a crash/correction The skill of spending and what Brandon regrets most from pre-FIRE life Tracking your expenses and why knowing your costs is CRUCIAL to early retirement And So Much More! Links from the Show Mindy on BiggerPockets Scott on BiggerPockets Listen to All Your Favorite BiggerPockets Podcasts in One Place Join BiggerPockets for FREE Email Mindy: [e-mail] Email Scott: [e-mail] BiggerPockets Money Facebook Group BiggerPockets Money 119 - Coronavirus: Is It Time to Give Up on Financial Independence? w/The Mad Fientist BiggerPockets Money 161 - Backdoor Roths, Mega Backdoor Roths, and Roth Conversion Ladders w/The Mad Fientist The Problem with the 4% Rule (and Why You Could Retire Even Sooner) Hear Brandon's New Album! Try Baselane, the One Platform for All Your Property Banking & Finances Get to Early Retirement Faster with "Set for Life" Find Investor-Friendly Lenders BiggerPockets Money 18 - Accessing Retirement Funds Before Age 59½ with The Mad Fientist Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-592 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email [e-mail] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Ho, ho, ho, we hope you are having a holly, jolly, frugal, and festive holiday season. With the Bigger Pockets Elves off tinkering to make even greater shows for next year, we bring you one of our favorite episodes for an encore. In this show, Brandon, the mad fiantist, will describe why the 4% rule may be a bit too rigid, how to ensure how you'll have enough during early retirement, what to do during a market crash or correction, and why spending thousands of dollars on a coffee machine isn't such a bad idea. If you want to maximize enjoyment in early retirement, instead of building a big bank account

you probably won't use, stick around. Welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast where we interview Billboard chart-topping musician Brandon, the mad biologist. Hello, hello, hello. My name is Mindy Jensen. And with me, as always, is my saving overspending co-host, Scott Trench. Great to be here, Mindy. I always love to invest my time.

with you on Bigger Pockets money. I like that one. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else. To introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting. That's right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business, or become a Billboard Top 100 musician.

We'll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams. Scott, I am super excited to bring the mad fiantist back for round four of our podcast with him. He is always a delight to talk to. Since we've last spoken with him, he has been very, very busy. He's going to share with us what he was up to in these last few years. But we are here today to talk about the 4% rule, which I love, you love, he loves. Scott, let's give a quick overview of the 4% rule.

Sure. So the 4% rule is a rule of thumb that says that for the periods that we have data on market performance for, if you started with a $1 million portfolio and you withdrew 4% of that or $40,000 per year, in no historical 30 year period would you have ever fully run out of money over the course of that retirement, if you will. So it's widely regarded as a very, very conservative rule of thumb for early retirees. If you want to spend, you know, $40,000, you need a million dollars and you're done. you're financially independent if you have a 6040 stock bond portfolio. If you want to spend a $100,000 a year, you need a $2.5 million portfolio. And so once you know your spending level, you can quantify the amount you need to become financially independent. And today we're talking to Brandon the Mad Scientist, as we mentioned, and he really kind of took that analysis to another level here. And he broke apart that spending. So let's say you want to spend $100,000 a year, you want a $2.5 million portfolio. This is a very comfortable financial independence portfolio. But let's say that, you know, half of that portfolio was discretionary spending. So

those would be vacations, travel that you didn't need to do, but would like to do. Well, in that case, you wouldn't quite need $2.5 million. You could get by with less, perhaps much less. Perhaps you could get by on a 5.5% safe withdrawal rate. So, you know, for example, if you need a $2.5 million portfolio to spend $100,000 comfortably in early retirement, if you were able to say 50% of that's discretionary and I'm willing to cut back in down years for the market, you could retire and still spend $100,000 with as little as $1.8 million, which is a $600,000 difference. It makes a dramatic difference in the time to early retirement for that individual. So these rules of thumb are very important and the mad scientist brings three very simple rules to executing on what I just discussed there.

So if you're in a, once you have quantified your desired spending and bucketed it appropriately and realistically into discretionary for you and non-discretionary spending for you, then he has three rules that will allow you to retire with a substantially higher safe withdrawal rate. So first, while in a bare market, which is a market defined as 20% off of previous highs, just withdrawal zero for that discretionary spending. Two, if the market is in a correction about 10% below recent highs, then withdraw 50% of that discretionary budget. So if it was $100,000 in spending, $50,000 was non-discretionary and $50,000 was discretionary, you'd spend $25,000 on discretionary items. And then the third rule is, all other times when the market is not down more than 10%, withdraw your entire discretionary budget.

So very simple rules might shave off years in the journey to financial independence for many people. Very simple rules backed by math and data not only from Brandon's big brain, but from Nick Majuli and his data and big brain too. They're not just making this up. They have run the numbers. They have discussed it. Ad nauseum. It is past performance is not indicative of a future gain, but these two guys together have a really good grasp on the numbers, the math, the data behind all of this. They're not just guessing. And they wrote an article together, which was published at the madfiatist.com, and we will link to it in our show notes. Nick Majuli, for those who don't know, wrote the book, The Excellent Book, Just Keep

Buying, which I highly recommend people go check out. And we got a chance to talk with him on episode 347 of the Bigger Pockets Money Show podcast. So go check that one out if you're interested. And of course, you'll know Brandon, the Mad Fiantist from his work over at The Mad Fiantist or his three previous appearances here on Bigger Pockets Money. We are going to welcome Brandon, the mad fientist, back to the podcast. If you don't know who Brandon is, you have been living under a rock. He is the mad fiantist, a man who delights in reading the overly complicated U.S. tax code and translating it into easily understandable English for all the rest of us.

He has a website called the mad fientist, a blog, The Madfcientist, and a podcast, the financial independence podcast, where he educates people on financial independence. Brandon has appeared on the Bigger Pockets Money podcast, episode 18, episode 119, and episode 162. Brandon, welcome back to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. I'm so excited to talk to you today. Yeah, thanks for having me back. It's always good to chat to you guys. And I can't believe it's been that many episodes.

Yeah, I wouldn't have said it was that many. But, yeah, thanks for having me back again. I can't believe it's been that long since we last spoke with you. I know nothing has happened since then. Yeah. Yeah, lots has changed. Well, can you give us an update about what's been going on since we last chatted on episode 162?

Yeah. So biggest thing is we had a kid. So we have a 10-month-old son and he's keeping us very busy but very entertained as well. So that's been amazing, even better than I probably would have anticipated or expected. So that's the biggest thing. The second biggest thing is we bought a house. So we've been, we had been renting since we sold our house in 2014 in Vermont.

And we just bought a house in Scotland, which is where my wife's from. And that has also been an amazing change, which has been a long time coming. We've been looking for a couple years. And, yeah, after selling our house in 2014 and thinking, I'm never going to be a homeowner again. Like, I'm so happy to be a homeowner again. So it just shows you how much things change over the years. And, oh, yeah, I think, I can't remember the last time we talked. talked, but maybe since then I've released an album, which was the whole, like, big goal of

wanting to reach financial independence was to actually be able to write and release my own music. And I did that. So that feels still to this day like my biggest lifetime accomplishment, just because I know all the torture that went into it and self-doubt and all the things I had to do to actually release it. But yeah, that's all too. So there's been loads of stuff happening. Well, I'm sorry you're so bored in retirement.

I love the people that say, I don't know what I'm going to do when I retire, so I'm just not going to retire. I'm like, don't worry, you'll fill up your time. Oh, yeah. No, it's busier than ever these days. And yeah, now I'm trying to fit all that other fun stuff in between just, yeah, throwing a ball and chasing around my 10-month-old. It's so awesome to hear that congratulations in your album, your little baby boy and your brand-new house over in Scotland. We should probably talk at some point. We could spend a whole episode on how the real estate markets differ in.

Oh, yeah. in Scotland in the UK versus the United States. But today, we'd like to chat about first and foremost, an article that you recently published with Nick Majuli, author of Just Keep Buying, who we also chatted with your Bigger Pockets Money podcast. And you guys talked about the 4% rule and how the 4% rule is actually the 4.15% rule and now the 4.8% rule. Could you give us an overview of this work that you did with Nick and the conclusions you took from it?

Yeah, sure. So it all came around because I had read his book, just keep buying. And I really liked it because all his arguments were backed up by data and historical numbers and lots of charts and graphs and things that I love. So he reached out on Twitter and I was going to have him on my podcast, but I'm not doing much podcasting these days. So when we were chatting on Twitter, he's like, hey, if you ever want to run a simulation on something or want me to dive into some data for you, just let me know. And there's always been this thing that bothered me about the 4% rule for many years, but I'm very lazy. So I never dove into any of the, you know, the thoughts that I had because it was just something

that was just in the back of my mind for so many years. So when he offered that, I was like, well, that's exactly the thing that we should collaborate on because, yeah, the 4% rule obviously is very big for fire people because it lets people retire as soon as they hit that number that, you know, 25 times their annual spending, which is 4% of their portfolio. So it's a huge thing in the fire community, but it's always bothered me because it's, it wasn't made for early retirement. And it was made for standard retirement, which a standard retiree in my view is very, very different than an early retiree. for instance, Mindy's just back from a beautiful vacation in Hawaii with her family.

And, you know, if the market was down 30%, maybe she wouldn't take that. And, you know, that's very different than saying like a 75-year-old who has fixed medical costs, fix mortgage, you know, maybe less flexibility, less of their spending is going towards discretionary spending. You know, yes, they need to have 4% of their portfolio and they need to adjust that upwards for inflation every year. But the flexibility of an early retiree is very different. And I didn't feel that the 4% rule captured that. So I wanted to dive into the data and see, hey, if yeah, you do have a lot of flexibility in your lifestyle and your budget, what could your withdrawal rate be? And I assumed

it would be quite a bit more than 4%. And in fact, it was. You have a really great chart that's super helpful in this article, calculate your new withdrawal rate. Do you talk about? You talk about it. You your discretionary expenses. And it seems like the key here is to be tracking your spending. Sure. Well, yeah, that's a given for even retiring early in the first place because you need to know how much spending you need to be able to have your portfolio cover. So, so yeah, that's the entry ticket to get in the game at all is to have a good grasp of that. And to then be able to break it down into necessary and discretionary, that's important for this particular article. acquire, right? Because, yeah, the more of your spending that's discretionary, the more you could

pull back when times are tough and when the market's tanked 25%. And being able to do that means that your portfolio is going to have a lot more probability of lasting because you're not going to have to sell when stocks are low and you can maybe ride out a bare market and not really do any damage to your portfolio because, you know, the overwhelming trend is up into the rights for the market. And the only time retirees get into trouble was when they have to sell when assets are depressed. And some of your audience may be familiar with the sequence of returns risk. Sequence of returns risk is because you're withdrawing from that portfolio. So if you're taking out money this year and you're taking out a big percentage of your

portfolio when markets are down, then that's going to really make it less. likely your portfolio is going to last 30, 40, 50 plus years in an early retirement scenario. So yeah, so like I mentioned earlier, tracking your spending is the entry point into the game at all. But yeah, being able to break that down into necessary and discretionary is helpful if you're going to do a more flexible withdrawal strategy like I talked about. 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

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titles. Lately, I've been listening to Bigger Leaner Stronger for Fitness, the anxious generation for parenting perspective, and several Arthur Brooks' audiobooks that have been excellent for mental well-being. What makes Audible so powerful as its breadth. Beyond audiobooks, you also get Audible originals, podcasts, and a massive back catalog across business, health, parenting, and more, all accessible in one app. If you're looking to turn everyday moments into real progress, Audible has been indispensable for me over over 10 years. Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. So last year, I did an experiment where I publicly tracked my spending over the first five months. of the year. I was going to do it the whole year and I'm like, wow, this takes a long time.

But it gave me a really good idea of where I was spending. And I got some pushback from people. They're like, oh, my goodness, you have so many categories. That's too many categories. And I mean, I did have a lot of categories. I had some, you know, I separated it out from alcohol and beer at breweries and, you know, parties because I have parties in my backyard. But I did that on purpose. Because those are the things that I can absolutely cut out, no problem whatsoever, if the market takes a huge tank and I need to pull back on my spending. Great, not having parties anymore, not drinking alcohol anymore, not, you know, traveling anymore. I think it's really important to have, like, maybe you don't have to be quite as granular as I was. You could just have, you know,

necessary spending and discretionary spending in your, you know, your two buckets that you're, you're tracking. But I do think it's important to track what is necessary and what is more frivolous so that when if you do need to pull back, if you need to spend a little bit less, you can figure out how much is in there. I love your chart. I'm looking at it right now. I'm like, wow. If I have 70% of my expenses are discretionary, I could spend six and a half percent withdrawal rate and have a 98% success rate. Yeah. So Nick put that heat map together. So after you ran all the stuff, you put that heat map together, which I thought was a great way to visualize it. Because you can see that, you know, the 4% rule isn't 100% success rate. It's around like 96% success rate, which again, nothing's ever going to be a sure thing. Like the future is not going to be like the past and things are going to be different. So shooting for 100% success rate is very, I think, foolhardy just because it's it's not necessary. Like you're going to be flexible enough to. to maybe deal with those scenarios if, uh, if you happen to have the worst luck that there ever was.

And, um, so yeah, so looking at that heat map is very, um, eye opening because it's, it shows you, it's like, okay, the 4% rule assumes, um, zero percent discretionary spending because it assumes that all of your expenses are going to be, uh, adjusted upwards for inflation every year. And, uh, it, it just assumes that you need to spend the exact same amounts in real terms every year for their next 40, 50 years of your early retirement. But if you're someone like me who has over 50% of their budget is discretionary, you know, travel, eating out, going to bars, restaurants, things like that, over 50% of our spending was discretionary. So you could have the same probability of success with 50% discretionary spending with a 5.5% withdrawal rate.

So that's that's a pretty major jump. So to put it into like early, retirement numbers. So say your spending is 40,000 a year with a 4% rule, that means you have to wait until you have a $1 million portfolio to be able to retire early. But if you have the flexibility that I talk about in the article and you have 50% of your spending going toward discretionary expenses, you'd potentially only need to save up $727,000, which, you know, that's like a quarter less than that you would have to save in your entire career and you could retire that much earlier. Again, it comes with caveats because there's no free lunch. But, you know, the article itself was more just like a thought exercise to get people

thinking about it and not to be so freaked out about, okay, I need to save until I have, you know, a three or a two and a half percent withdrawal rate. And it's just overkill. And I think people are potentially working a lot longer than they need to be if they, if they in fact want to retire earlier. Can you define fixed and discretionary expenses? Yeah. So I think it's for everyone to.

define for themselves. So for me personally, like I mentioned in the article, some things that people would classify as discretionary are like not negotiable for me. So for instance, like, I want to go back to the States at least once a year to see my family and friends. And yes, that's travel and that's technically fun. And I could cut back on that if I needed to. It's not like a central like roof over my head or food in my stomach. But for me to have a fun and enjoyable early retirement, then I definitely need to go home to the state. So for me, that's not discretionary. That's essential. But if you wanted to like bare bones it and like what's essential, it's like, right, mortgage or rents essential, food, grocery budgets, essential and, you know, heating and

utilities and all that sort of stuff. But that's the thing with this method is that you can just define that yourself. And for me, some things like going out for dinner once a week, that's, I think that's going to be essential for me. Just, well, not now with a 10-month-old, but eventually get back to that because I do enjoy it. And it just adds to a really varied and interesting life. So, yeah, at the default level, essential is the things that you have to have to live with, you can't live without. But for this strategy, you can define that however you want. That was one of the things that I thought was really interesting about this, because my mind immediately leaped to, okay, how do you take the conclusions that you guys put together to their logical extreme?

and say, what does that mean, right? So what is discretionary? What is fixed? Well, let's say that you're thinking about house hacking, for example, and you buy a duplex and the other side covers your mortgage. Well, now you don't have any fixed expense for housing, potentially. If you've paid off car, you have no fixed expense for commuting, maybe just a little bit of the insurance and gasoline there. So that leaves you with, you could theoretically take this and say, wow, there's a tremendous amount of expenses that are, in fact, truly discretionary here. And you can start chunking down the amount that you need to live the financially independent lifestyle pretty dramatically by following these conclusions and get up there and upwards of 50, 60, 70 percent discretionary spending.

Absolutely. And that was a side benefit of this idea and this whole strategy. I liked the idea of, one, having people focus on reducing their fixed costs. And also for someone like, like me who's super naturally frugal and struggles to spend on myself, even though I know we have enough. And I know that, you know, there's lots of room in the budget to do things, fun things, and buy nice things and stuff. I also liked the flip side of that where you have this discretionary budget. And in years that the market's doing well, then you have this money that you feel like, oh, I can spend all of that discretionary budget and I'm going to try to make the most of it. So I like both of those side benefits.

It's like one, it gets you to focus on your fixed costs and maybe lower those as much as you can, which is really the important thing, like the fixed cost or the main thing that will impact your spending and the success of your portfolio and things like that. But then it also lets you live a little with your discretionary budget. What I like about the article is that it shows you from the opposite. You mentioned a few minutes ago, people are like, oh, it's not the four percent. I have to, you know, knock it down to the three and a half or three point seven five or even two and a half percent rule, then I'll be okay. You're like, no, look at this. You can actually increase it depending on what your spending is. So many people question the four percent rule. And my first thought whenever anybody questions the four percent rule is, have you read the original article? The original Bangan article in the journal of, I can't even remember. what it's called is so interesting and so, I mean, convincing. He did so much research. He didn't

just say, you know, I think 4% is going to be okay. He did so much research and, you know, insert the past performance is not indicative of future games. But he's so smart. And this is not the what can you squeak by withdrawal rate. This is the safe withdrawal rate. Worst case scenario. If you hit the worst case scenario ever of all time, the safe withdrawal rate is 4%. And you can extrapolate it up or ramp it up in times of really great returns. So I like that this article, if somebody was questioning the 4% rule, could look at it and say, oh, I really could do more. I don't have to pull back and do less. But, you know, we're all human and we don't think in those terms. think, you know, oh, worst case scenario or I'm going to run out of money. Are you going to run out of

money in one day? Like, then you're doing it wrong. You definitely didn't save enough if you're going to run out of money in one day. But Brandon, do you continue to look at the market? Do you continue to keep an eye on the market, even though logically you don't have to? Oh, yeah, big time. Yeah, it's still an interest to me. I would be better off not because, yeah, what's the fidelity study where it was like the dead people and the people that forgot they had the account were the ones that performed the best because they weren't in there messing around with it. So yeah, I'd be better off not looking. But yeah, no, it's still an interest to me, so I still look.

And yeah, I was just speaking to Nick the other day, actually. And Nick was just saying how I think with a 4% rule, you're more likely to die with four times your initial amount than you are to retire, to die with less than you started with. So that's how, just to reiterate what you're saying, how, you know, people go crazy and start thinking like 2.5% rule. And, you know, all of those arguments assume that this time's different and the future is going to be different, which it will be different. But to know that the future's going to be different and to assume it's going to be that much worse, I don't, I don't buy that. I, if anything, I think the future is brighter and productivity is going to increase dramatically

due to, you know, automation and AI and things like that. So I'm, if anything, more, optimistic for to own these stocks than I am pessimistic that this time's different. And I have any idea that it's going to, why it's going to be different. And I know so much that it's going to be to, to, to, to, to, to then say that it's going to be 2.5% is the only way to go. It just, it doesn't make sense to me. Just diving down this tangent. One more step to just, you know, show how much I agree with what Brandon's saying here, right? There is this study about how housing costs have skyrocketed over the last 40 years. And when you normalize for, one, you know, inflation and then the size of new construction homes, they haven't really increased that much.

It's just that everyone today, when they're buying a new home, is typically buying a much bigger home with more bedrooms and more bathrooms than homes that were constructed 40, 50 years ago. So to that point, like 40, 50 years, like, we have cooler stuff now. You can get an iPhone, you can get a Tesla. You can get, you know, you can travel faster and more cheaply than previously. So it's just that your money can purchase way more today, but to keep up with the Joneses will inevitably harder and harder and harder with each passing year to live the lifestyle that you'll see folks in Instagram. The beach isn't getting any better. The weather in Scotland isn't getting any better or worse. Like if you want to go out and enjoy the outside at a park, like that time is going to be perfect now and in the future.

And it's free or very low cost at that point in time. And I think that's what folks really, I don't think folks really take that through to the conclusion. If you want to maintain your lifestyle today going into the future, you'll probably be able to do so adjusting for inflation at a relatively cheaper and cheaper rate throughout the years. But if you want to keep up with the newest technologies and live in the newest places, then that's where the discretionary spending needs to have ample room for growth. Yeah, couldn't agree more. And not caring what the Joneses are doing is the biggest. trick for pursuing financial independence or doing whatever you want with money. Because, yeah, I feel like that was such a gift that I didn't care.

So that made it a lot easier. And I don't know how you do that. But yeah, it makes your whole life a lot easier not caring what the Joneses are doing because the Joneses are pretty crazy. So you in your article put this, you know, took keeping up with the Joneses, I guess, what was this tangent to a mathematical calculation here. You said that you have withdrawal rules that you have in certain market conditions. Could you go through those for how you recommend someone who's starting perhaps at the 4% rule or something like that or at the withdrawal rate you suggest?

And then how you recommend they think about their spending from a discretionary standpoint? Yeah, absolutely. So yeah, like I said before, there's no free lunch. So just because you have 50% discretionary spending doesn't mean you can just bump up from a 4% rule to a 5.5% rule without changing anything about how you. spend your money. So it just doesn't work like that, sadly. So when we were going back and forth with Nick, we were trying to think of a way to incorporate discretionary spending and flexibility into a withdrawal strategy that wasn't like overly cumbersome or just really complicated.

And the conclusion we came to was, right, okay, so let's say that every December 31st, if you're retired with this new method, you look at your past performance over that year. And if the market is in a correction. So if the market is, you know, 10% to 20% off its highs, then you make one change to your discretionary spending. Otherwise, if it's 20% or more down from its the market highs, then you do this other change. Otherwise, you can just take your entire discretionary budget. So to go back to the scenario of where you're 50% of your spending is discretionary, this is how it would look. So say you spend $40,000 a year, 50% of that is discretionary.

So that means your essential spending, spending, which is $20,000, that's going to just increase every year with inflation because we figured, you know, this is essential stuff. So it does have to keep pace with inflation. So if you're renting, you're going to have to keep pace with rental inflation. If you're factoring health care costs into that, then you're going to want your essentials to be covered by, to increase with inflation. The discretionary is not adjusted for inflation. So, for instance, so let's say you're $20,000 of discretionary spending.

If the markets are up or if they're down less than 10%, then you take out that full $20,000 for that year. If the market is in a correction, so 10 to 20 percent down, you would take half of that. So $10,000 would be going towards discretionary spending. And if the market's in a bare market, so 20% plus down, then you would have have no discretionary budget. And this goes back to my other statement of like, you know, you define discretionary how you want it. So definitely put put some essential fun in your essential bucket so that you're not having just a completely terrible year when when there's a

bear market. The good thing is, you know, it's very rarely in a bare market. And the market, like I said, is overwhelmingly up into the right. So most of years are going to be good. So you're going to be able to get that full discretionary budget. But like I mentioned before, like I, there's some side benefits to this that I think are really good for early retirement. And one of those is, one, it'll allow you to annually assess what you're spending on discretionary-wise. So it's easy to get into a routine and just spend the same thing every year. And you may not even like it anymore.

So having this at the forefront of your mind, at least once a year to be like, actually, I don't need that, you know, health care membership or health club membership or whatever. Or maybe we did travel too much last year and it wasn't actually that enjoyable and we'll just cut back this year. I think that's beneficial. Secondly, it could also fix one of the things that I was most surprised about and that was most challenging for me. And that was the fact that money no longer was a motivating factor in my life. So my entire life has been geared around money, like study hard in high school to get a good, you know, to get good grades and get a good SAT score so that I could get a good college and that would lead to a good job and studying

computer science, you know, that was going to hopefully lead to a good salary. And, you know, my whole life, like, even side businesses and hobbies, like, were geared towards like, oh, I can maybe make some money off of this to then have enough and to realize like, oh, money, more money doesn't matter in the same way that, you know, more tap water doesn't matter, which was a, reference that Mr. Money Mustache wrote about like a decade ago. I think that when I read it, I was like, that doesn't make any sense. But now, you know, when you're in that position, it's like, oh yeah, it's like, yeah, it's great having tap water and it's great knowing that it's there and you need as much as you want, you can take out and it's great and it's going to be good for you. But, you know,

you're not filling up buckets of tap water just to, you know, to save and to have more of it. And like, you know what I mean? It's not like I'm going out and scavenging for more tap water. but getting more of it doesn't really make sense. And that was really a tough transition to make in my mind because then it was like, well, what motivates you? And not having that biggest source of motivation was very disorienting. But having this method, then yeah, maybe you're going to want to have a side business to account for those down years. And you don't want that discretionary spending to drop to zero. So maybe you are going to be more inclined to like pursue that side hobby that, yes, there's annoying things that you have to do up front to get over the hurdle of then making money,

but maybe that desire for money will still be there and it will push you through those things to do rather than just having sort of no motivation, no monetary motivations anymore, which again, I don't think it's an interesting way to live, but yeah, I don't know if it's better or worse. I think that it comes down to, you know, if you have, if you're in, if you are an early retiree and you have a million dollar portfolio and you want to withdraw. all at the 4% rule, right? Going back to the basics here that a lot people are very comfortable with, right? That's 40 grand a year. And the market crashes 20% in the first year. Well, you know, maybe if you want to, either you can cut back on the spend and spending, discretionary spending,

like you suggest, Brandon, or you could just get a part-time job for that one year. And much more likely, to your point that you referenced earlier in that Nick calculated, you're four times more likely to end up more wealth over the end of 30 years. So you're much more likely to see that the average 10 plus percent return of the stock market in the early years and blow way past the spending goals, the amounts of money that you wanted to set aside for spending. So if you're willing to just run those odds, you're like, oh, my downside is great. I'm going to, I'm going to work at Starbucks for, you know, part time for part of this year. As my worst case scenario, that's pretty good.

And your best case scenario is you, again, pursue these side projects. You're much more likely scenarios. You pursue these side projects. You release an album. It goes platinum. And you make millions. Right. Is that what happened here? No, I didn't go platinum. I did get on the billboard charts thanks to the

Metfinalist listeners, which was ridiculous. So yeah, it made it onto the billboard charts for one week, which was still amazing. And I got the plaque. It's in the States off to get it now shipped over to my house now that I have a proper studio. But yeah, got the plaque with the platinum disc on it and saying where it landed on the charts and everything, which is ridiculous. So yeah, but no, no, no platinum, sadly. So that's phenomenal. And we're linking to that in the show notes here. So if you want to go read the article or listen to Brandon's album, you can go check those

out at the show notes here at Bigger Pockets Money. But anyways, so the point is you're much more likely to have a large surplus once you reach any of these milestones, four, five, six percent, whatever around financial independence and begin pursuing your own thing and living the life you want. And I think that that's an important takeaway from all of this math. do all this theoretical research, we do all this math to back into these numbers. And the answer is, if you're just reasonably flexible and creative over that period of time, you're probably going to be fine. You have a whole year, every year, to figure out any of those things, to Mindy's point earlier,

you're not going to run out of money overnight if you've accumulated an estag of hundreds of thousands or millions of dollars and invested in a 6040 stock bond portfolio. Which, yeah, and that brings up two good points, which reminded me of as you were saying that. So the first is that, as you mentioned, And we haven't even touched the FI portfolio due to some of the software I wrote before I even started the METFINITES. That's earning money. And we don't really spend that much. So we still don't spend that much.

So that's an important caveat because everything I wrote about is all theoretical. I'm not actually living that withdrawal rate, which again, living it is definitely different than theoretically thinking about it. But I'm not living the 4% rule either. So I can't. I talk about it in a in a sense of like, yeah, I'm looking. at this from the outside. So that's an important caveat to make just to tell people that because I don't want anybody thinking, oh, this guy's not living the walk or walking the walk.

The second thing is it reminded me of the big change that I forgot about at the beginning of the episode when you said there's lots of things that have changed. And that is that I have started to spend more and I love it. And as somebody who's super naturally frugal who is like, you know, spending money is like, it means that I failed in some. way and that's like the last resort. Over the past few years, I've tried to get better at spending and it has been so much fun and we can talk about that more if you want, but that was the other thing that I knew. I knew there was one other big change that I had forgot about at the beginning and that was it.

Yeah, I want to talk about that too because your latest podcast episode with Rameet inspired quite a bit in my own personal life, so thank you very much. The back to a point that I've been trying to make, but then we keep going off on these other tangents that I wanted to make earlier is that you won't run out of money overnight because you are going to continue to monitor the market even after you retire. I don't know a single early retiree who has gotten here and then they're like, you know what? I am never going to pay attention to the market again. I'm totally fine. I'm just going to go off on my little 4% rule plan and never, ever, ever look at anything again. And then, you know, Wallop gets a surprise.

Oh, my goodness, the market's down. I had no idea. I mean, it's not like the news doesn't cover it in perpetuity every time there's a, you know, blip in the market. So you will be able to course correct. And I think being aware of the fact that it's not the 4% rule, it's a 4.15 and it's really the 4.8. And that's the worst case scenario. and, you know, keeping track of what's going on in the market and, oh, wow, it's down. Maybe I'm not going to take that epic three-week trip to Hawaii with my family and spend like crazy because the mad scientist and Rameet told me to.

Maybe I'm going to pull back a little bit. Maybe I'll just go to L.A. or I'll go up to the mountains of Colorado. Or maybe you'll have an epic three-month trip to Thailand and you'll come back, having spent less than you would have had you not gone anywhere because you're young and you have flexibility. you are adventurous and you're all these things that maybe an 85 year old retirees not. And that was the whole point of the article. Yeah, I love it. So we just, we cover all this math. We cover all of these reasons why the 4% rule and these other rules of them make it so ultra conservative. You should really be going higher than that. Why is it that no one, I mean, I got met one person in all these years, we've been talking about financial independence who is actually retired on the 4%

rule and then not got and not had some sort of you know side bet you know a pension or a large cash cushion or a business or a side hustle or a book or a whatever with this why do you think what do you think it is about you know the amount of energy that's been devoted to reassuring us on this number and the fact that if you talk to any early retiree essentially uh none of them have actually left at the four percent rule they all have an ace in the whole because they're all overachievers yes yeah big personality. Yeah, I think, yeah, if you've, if you've been able to do this in your 30s or 40s or 50s or whatever, then yeah, you're an overachiever and you're obviously very interested in things and you research them and you take them to the extremes if you think you can. And you're just wanting to

do something else as well. So when you can do something else without having money being the thing that drives you, then you can make decisions that nobody else makes. And like, for example, with the mad scientist. I post maybe once every three, four, five, six months. And that's like every, every how to make money blogging tells you that's the worst thing you can do. You have to do every week or you have to be consistent. I say no to so many like interview pitches because I'm like, my audience won't find this interesting. Yes, you're going to promote my blog and that would help grow the podcast. But I'm saying no because I'm not interested. So my audience isn't interested. So every decision I make for Matt Feintest is with my audience in mind and money doesn't even enter the equation.

So it's like that's going to help my blog stand out from somebody who's pitching like everything that's paying them or like, you know, they're plastered with ads or whatever. It's like you get to do these things for another reason and then people notice that. And then you end up making money ironically anyway because of that, because of that that you're not trying. Yeah. So how should we think about these rules of thumb? Like, is this the beginning of the finish line? Is that the practical reality of these rules like the 4% rule? In spite of the fact that they're clearly, you're way past it financially. You've got all the money you need for the rest of your life as long as you're confident you're spending projections. I think it's a safety blanket.

Okay. So I knew I would make more money after quitting my job. I just knew it because I all so many of my interests, like right now, I'm after speaking to Remit and him helping me spend more. spend more. He's like, try to think of ways you could spend more on something you love. Like, what do you love? I was like, I love my morning coffee ritual, my pour over, my beans, grinding it, smelling it, buying different beans, all this stuff. And he's like, well, how could you spend 10 times in the amount? And like, it blew my mind. It made me sweaty. I had a actual physical reaction to it because I was like, I'm already spending a lot. Like, this is already a lot.

I'm spending like 10 pounds a week on fancy beans and they shipped directly to my house. And I just bought this 300 pound grinder that's super fancy. And like it literally made me sweat. But since then, I've just kept going back to it. And now I think I'm going to buy a 3,500 pound roaster, home roaster slash home roasting slash commercial that does like a kilogram of beans that I can roast. And even then, I think I'm going to start selling them because my neighbor sells like cakes to all the hikers that go up the hill.

And I'm like, oh, maybe I'll just team up with her. and I can, you know, sell some beans from her. And that'll help me get better at roasting because I'll be roasting more because I won't have to drink everything I roast. And there it is again. It's like there's another way that money is going to come in that it doesn't have to. And it's not going to impede on my enjoyment of the roasting hobby. But it's just another way that it's coming into my life that, you know, I wouldn't

have expected. So anyway, so I knew that I was going to be making money some way because all of my hobbies have logical ways to make money, I guess. But it's a safety blanket. Like someone who's so risk-adverse that they're saving 70% of their salary, they need to know that if everything goes wrong and I'm, you know, confined to my bed and I can't go out and make money or I can't make money on the internet or anything, then I'm going to be okay.

And that's what I think the 4% rule is these days. And I think the people that need a 2.5% rule need a really, safety blanket that's just overly excessive and they're just going to be too sweaty under that's the safety blanket to kill the metaphor finally. Well, this is a great set into talking about the idea of spending more and all of these concepts that I think are really hard for a lot of five people. And I can see a lot of people who are listening who are not yet financially independent rolling their eyes at this problem.

So I want to go back one second here and ask you about the arc here, right? You started out and you were very frugal. Like you saved a large portion of your income and that's how you built your wealth. You amassed a large number of interests in various things. You have music royalties. You've got the bad finance blog. You've now got your coffee roasting enterprise. All of these items are contributing to your wealth. And now you have this very large surplus, I'd imagine, that enables you to spend more. And you've got to shake these habits that got you here to make the most use of the wealth that you've created here. Do you think that's the arc that people should set themselves up

for or do you think that there's a like, do you think that the necessity or that being so frugal and so extreme in the early days is a necessity to give you the ability to have these problems about letting go and spending more today? Yeah. No, that's a very interesting question. And I think you have to know yourself. So if you're a naturally spendy person, then this is a whole, this conversation seems crazy to you.

But I know for the fire community and I know Mindy and her husband are right there with me. when it comes to not being able to spend even though they probably could. I know this is definitely a much more prevalent situation for fire people. So yeah, I think first is to know yourself. And if you're naturally spending, then, you know, don't just let yourself go crazy. You really need to dial that in. But yeah, for someone like me who is looking back on his journey to financial independence and now after that with the surplus, I'm lucky.

in the sense that there's not a lot of regrets getting to FI. My wife and I traveled to 50 countries. You know, we did it cheaply and we were really good at travel hacking. And so it didn't break the bank. But we didn't sacrifice those experiences, which I'm really grateful for. And really the only thing I regret about my entire journey to FI was missing out on a few bachelor parties with my buddies in my 20s because like I lived in Scotland. They lived in the States. I wasn't going to fly to the States a month before the wedding and then fly back for the wedding. You know, I wasn't going to fly the month before for the bachelor's party. It just seemed crazy to me.

But I can't get that time back. And a book that I only recently read that I wish I had read in my 20s and 30s was Die with Zero. And that was after I published about, I published this episode with the Ramit and a lot of Matt Fontes readers were like, you need to read this book. And so good because it talks about like how there's like a season for everything. And, you know, I'm not going to get that drunk 20 idiot time back with my friends. And I'm not in those stories where they all were 20 year old drunk idiots together.

And I wouldn't want that now in my 40s. I could have a half a beer and then I'm going to fall asleep because I got a 10 month old. So in that sense, I wish I had just relaxed a little bit. But also, you know, spending is a skill. And I had not, I did not have that skill. And I'm only developing that skill over the last two or three years as I've actually, actually worked on it. So I think I could have let my foot off the gas a little bit during my time to FI and I could have exercised that spending muscle a bit to figure out, hey, what is worth spending on?

And I just thought all spending was bad. Whereas now I'm like, wow, some of this stuff is really making my life better, like some of these things that I'm buying, which I always hated things, stuff. But man, some of my stuff is like, it makes me so happy every day. And then spending on experiences as well. Like elevating some of those experiences has been really fun. So yeah, so I think I would have eased off the gas a little bit, maybe taking a little bit longer to reach the five goals and everything. But, um, but I'm thankful there's not too many regrets. 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

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You said, I thought spending was bad. And I hear you. I feel you. I totally identify with that. And I'm just starting to get over it. I can't tell you how timely and helpful your episode with Rameet was. And how seen I felt from that episode. Thank you so much.

When he told you to start spending more 10x, I'm like, I'm sweating too when you're wedding. You said, but some of this stuff makes my life better. And I have never until like, what is that phrase? I was today years old. I was, I don't know, a month ago old when I started realizing that spending isn't bad if you can afford it. And some of the stuff that you spend makes your life better or more enjoyable or, you know, you just love. You just love. it. And it's okay to spend money on something that you enjoy. And spending is a skill. And it is hard to make that very big change. And then right after your episode came out, Pete had an article about buying a Tesla. He just spent $50,000 on a... Did you see the hate he got from that?

No, I didn't. People were so mean. I mean, some people were like, hey, good for you. And some people were like, oh my God, I'm never reading your blog again. I can't believe you would be like this. Why do you have to, and by Pete, I'm sorry, I mean Mr. Money Mustache. Why do you have to be so hate-filled? He clearly can afford it. He's not, you know, simultaneously on food stamps and spending money on big, fancy things that he can't afford. He's got lots and lots of money that he can afford to buy this car, no problem. Yeah. So that makes me think of two things. first is that's sort of why I've stepped back from the fire community over the last few years

because at first, when it all started out, it just felt like all these people like doing really interesting things, like breaking the mold, going against common knowledge and doing them. And that was very exciting. And then it got so big 2018, 2019. And now it's so big that there's a group think within the fire community that like, why would, why would Mr. Money Mustash get hate for making a choice when, Everyone knows he's very good with money and he's responsible and he's able to do what he wants with it. And it's getting to be like this group think.

And now I'm rebelling against the fire community. So it's like when I started, I felt like I was rebelling against common financial knowledge. And now after fire is taken off so much, I feel like I'm rebelling against fire because, yeah, every individual is different. And like, I, nobody should be judged for any decisions they're making because you don't know what goes into those decisions. and especially someone who's as knowledgeable and intelligent as Mr. Money Mustaches, it's like, why would you go against him? The second thing is the Tesla has always lived in my brain as something that I feel encapsulates this problem more perfectly than anything else.

So I happen to know Mindy and her husband very well. And I know her husband has invested in Tesla way back in the day and probably made enough, just off that, one investment to buy 50 times. Teslas and he's obsessed with Tesla. He's obsessed with EVs. He reads about them all the time. And yet he still doesn't have a Tesla. And I think my work can't be done on this topic of like freeing people from the chains of their past frugality until Mindy and her husband get that Tesla because I think that just epitomizes what I'm currently now trying to fight against. I love it. And I think, but I don't want to lose sight of the fact that, you know,

The journey to financial independence starts for most people with this pretty extreme bent on frugality. And it's consistent across all three of us, for sure, right? And it's part of your identity, I think, for a number of years, right? This is how you view yourself. You don't, you know, you make conscious decisions about these places. You're very clear, conscious about where you live, what you drive, how you spend your money on food.

You tightly control expenses. And that's a necessary stepping stone. and we should encourage people to do that. That is a step in the road to success here, right? As the years go by, a five, seven year grind. But not so hard that you skip your buddy's bachelor party or the wedding or the trip with your friends and family. I love that caveat, right? These are life experience you're never going to get back. But where you lay your head at night for five or seven years, that can make a big difference about whether you're going to become financially independent. What kind of vehicle you drive, what you eat on a day-to-day basis, all that kind of good stuff. Just to interject real quick, because I think, that's what's made this so fun is that I've gradually added these things to my life. And it's different. I look to some of like my younger siblings. Like they just went from university to rate to have the fancy car and the nice place and all this stuff. And like I sort of feel bad because they didn't get to have that like sort of grungy apartment life after college. And they didn't sort of like have to struggle and like go to hostels and, you know, like some sketchy hostels and their European backpacking trip and stuff.

So, like, I feel like, yeah, adding this stuff in gradually is so much more fun because you're getting that dopamine hit just super gradually, but it's, and you can more likely afford it. So I'm sorry to butt in there, but that was such a important point that you made is that, yeah, you definitely need to sort yourself out early, especially if frugality is not natural like it is to all three of us. But adding it gradually makes it way more fun because you just get that slight dopamine hit as you go. And then you like I can't imagine what's going to be fun when like some of these younger kids are 40. It's like when you're when you're maybe not you're not getting wasted with your friends and stuff and traveling the world and stuff like like I'm glad

I had this nice house to be like my 40 year old thing. Like now I get to buy these cool things for my nice house. Whereas if I had that super fancy house right when I got to be 20 without you know, without house hacking or without having roommates or without, you know, then what would be, what would be I get my kicks from these days in my 40s? Yeah, I think that's right. But, you know, one of the things I wanted to make a point was in that journey to a frugality, of extreme frugality, that's your identity. That was my identity for a long period of time.

Perhaps that was how you viewed yourself, Brandon. That's perhaps how Mr. Money Mustache viewed himself. And then after a while, that ceases to become important. Like, it's just not a relevant factor in your life to be frugal. There's a huge pile of surplus money. The tap, you know, if you leave the tap on, tap, you know, because it's flowing water, right, the metaphor we were using earlier, you know, like for an extra few minutes to fill up your, your water bottle with a little bit excess, like, that's great.

Like, you can do that. And so that changes. And I think that folks ingrained too much of the like frugality thing is like this lifetime concept in there that then they lash out in the financial independence community at the folks that are starting to spend more. right, which will happen inevitably if you just spend less than you earn it and continue to invest. The pile will grow bigger and bigger and bigger after you hit the 4% rule, for example, once you get to the beginning of the end, whatever we called it with the 4% rule, the safety blanket.

That's exactly right. And that's one of the issues I see with the fire community because I had that struggle, just me personally, without a name for it, but now there's a name for it and now there's a community and now there's a Reddit subreddit that people are going to judge you for all these decisions. So it's even worse. So for me, it's taken a lot of years and thinking and like actual like dedication to try to unwind some of that natural, um, identity association with frugality. But now it's even harder when you're immersed in a community that, you know, um, espouses it so much in it.

And yeah, that's a, that's a shame that, you know, like then people are judging people for it, which is, uh, even, even worse because yeah, um, that's not the point. It's not who has the most money at the end wins. That's not the point at all. Yeah, or who can spend the least amount. It's being comfortable. It's being flexible. It's having enough money that now you can do whatever you want. I was having dinner last night with friends, and they said, you know, we were talking.

So there was a couple, Jen and Scott, and then we met a new. new to the FI community, David, and he was like, well, you know, I like my job. And Scott said, well, you don't have to retire. You, you know, you can still work if you want to. And I think that there's a lot of people who are like, oh, well, I have to retire. I don't want to pursue financial independence because I don't want to retire. I'm financially independent and I still work. You don't have to quit. If you like your job, you can continue to work. You can cobble together some sort of employ situation that you enjoy most. Maybe you work five hours a week. Maybe you work, you know, 20 hours a month or whatever. It's whatever you want. It's, it just gives you flexibility.

And it isn't about, you know, how, how little can you spend? Although I do, I do find enjoyment in Jacob Lundfisker's extreme frugality. I find it fun to voyeur through him, but I'm not going to go that, that route. But I also don't. don't think that he minds it either. Like, I think he really enjoys that. That's not something that he's doing and he finds pain in it, but he keeps doing it anyway. I think the lesson is go all out. Give yourself this problem, right, in life. This is the kind of problem that you want. And get to that 50, 60, 70 percent savings rate, but don't get so wrapped up in that as your identity that at the end, you can't evolve to living the lifestyle that you want and make yourself happy, right? There's

there's more to life than having a large pile of money and continuing to spend like you're a college student, you know, at that point. But again, you know, if you want this, this world of financial independence, you have to go through that phase to a certain degree. And we can't forget that either, sitting on our high, our relative high horses here after having gone through that grind individually. No, I think that's a fantastic point. And that's, yeah, exactly. All of life has to be an experiment because we're so bad at knowing what makes us happy. And I definitely took it way too far in the frugality space. And I definitely pushed that boundary. I tested it and realized that that was way too miserable for a long-term life. And now here I am on the other side. And you're

right that the sequence does matter. Don't test the fun spending side and see how far you can go. And that without first testing the other way. So you're absolutely right. The sequence matters first tests and find your boundaries on that edge and then slowly start adding things back in that you think could benefit your life and then get used to that spending and get used to using money for that reason. And then, yeah, hopefully one day you'll be in a situation where you're able to then test the other boundary. And yeah, it's way more fun than I thought it would be. And it's way more challenging than I thought it would be because I haven't ever hit the targets that I've set to try to test that other boundary.

boundary yet because it is I'm so so used to being that frugal guy and old habits die hard. I love how Rameet told you to spend 10 times the amount of money and so you bought a coffee roasting business essentially. I haven't told them that. Old habits die hard. Because I haven't bought it, but yeah, I'm definitely going to get back in touch with them because I wouldn't have thought of that otherwise. So we'll see how we go.

Well, Brandon, are there any other things you want to share with us before we kind of wrap up here? No, I think we covered so much of what I've been thinking. about recently and yeah I appreciate you guys getting me on the show to talk about it because yeah it helps with my thinking as well and my plans for going forward because like I said it's all an experiment I don't have the answers and nobody does have the answers because it's so individual so you have to find the answers for yourself okay Brandon this is it's always delightful to talk to you come back anytime of course but where can people find you before you come back again okay so the most important thing to go to is madfcientist.com slash album because there you can find all the the music stuff I'm doing,

which is what I'm really super into after leaving my job and hopefully going to start playing some live shows. So if you can follow me on Spotify and stuff, that all helps with booking gigs. So then we can meet up in your hometown and we can talk about finance stuff over a beer, but at least then I'll be there with the music stuff, which would be super fun. So yeah, Mattfindist.com slash album. But you can find me anywhere that mad scientist exists because that's me. It's a made-up word. So I'm Matt Scientist on Twitter and Facebook and MattFiantist.com. And yeah, that's everything, I think.

So thanks for having me again. It's always great chatting to you guys. And where can we buy the beans, the Mad Scientist coffee rosary? Well, yeah, that'll be very local. So it's a very small village in Scotland you'll have to come to. But I'll see you at one of my shows and I'll tell you where and I'll maybe bring some beans with me. Awesome. Okay. I'm going to hold you to that. Okay. Thank you, Brandon. This was so, so much fun. And we will talk to you soon.

Thank you so much. Thanks again, guys. See you. Bye. All right, Scott. That was Brandon the mad scientist. He's always awesome. I'm sorry, Brandon the mad scientist, Billboard chart topping musician, a new dad, new homeowner, and future coffee roaster master, Brandon the mad scientist. Yeah, I love talking with Brandon every time. What a, what a humble, happy, hardworking, brilliant person. Right. I mean, every time we talk to him, we learn something. He's very thoughtful. He, his ego is so in check. I just enjoy talking with him every single time and love the life that he's created for himself through humility, hard work, smarts, and discipline and grind. Yeah. He is such a delight. And he's so giving. He loves to take those

horrible tax documents and read through them and translate them for you. He loves to take these complicated issues and think about them and look for loopholes, look for ways around them. And this most recent article about the 4% rule is just yet another example of him taking this hard and fast rule, the 4% rule, that has been kind of overly simplified by a lot of people. Oh, it's 4%. It's always 4%.

He's like, no, it doesn't have to be 4%. It could be 5%. It could be 6%. I think it's important to keep track of where your money's going. I think it's important to keep track of what the market is doing. And if you are on the path of financial independence, if you are in a position of being financially independent, you are most likely going to be tracking your spending at least loosely.

And you are going to be keeping track of the market because that's the kind of person you are. So this is not adding anything to your plate. It's just giving you more options. And that's kind of what financial dependence is all about. Yeah, I completely agree. And I also think I just want to come back to that conversation we happened earlier, right? Like, we're, I think that the three of us are going through this, this wonderful shift in thinking about, oh, what does abundance look like now that we've kind of crossed this hurdle of the 4% rule and are well beyond it, each of us? That does not change the fact that the way I got here, the way Mindy, you got to your current level of.

the way Brandon got there was a grind of many years that was pretty intense and all out and very frugal and very dedicated for a long period of time mixed with a high income and low spending for many of those years, especially in the later stages of the journey to fire. And there's evolution that comes after that. And I at least want to continue to really heavily encourage that I think it's a healthy approach. And yeah, like go all out for those first couple of years and then look up after you've caught across that 4% rule and begin open up and say the rest of my life, the next five decades potentially, if you can do this in your 30s or 40s, are going to be whatever I want them to be. And I can go and reinvent myself

five or six times. Don't let it become your identity to the point where you carry on too cheap after the, after the thresholds for financial independence are hit. Absolutely. I really love the tapwater analogy from Mr. Money Mustash. I don't need to have Home Depot buckets full of tap water around my house. I can just go to the tap and take it out whenever I need it. I don't need to hoard it around the house. Money's the same way. All right, Scott, should we get out of here? Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast with Billboard chart-topping artist Brandon, the Madfcientist. Get his album at madfiantist.com slash album. He is Scott Trench and I am Indy Jensen, saying, later days, nanta rays.