BiggerPockets Money Podcast - We Paid Off $500K in Debt: Now We’re on Track to Retire (Early) in Our 50s

Episode Date: April 25, 2025

Fear that early retirement is out of the question because you have too much debt? It’s not game over. Whether you’re debt-free or still chipping away at your student loans, today’s guests are proof that FIRE is never too far out of reach—even if you’ve got half a million dollars in debt! Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money podcast! Amirra and Mazi Condelee’s first date was an all-timer. While many consider personal finance a taboo topic, they cut right to the money talk—specifically, debt. And it was a good thing they did because they’ve racked up a combined $500,000 in student debt. Most would assume this spells doom for financial independence, but Amirra and Mazi knew they could pay it off by increasing their income, cutting costs, and staying disciplined. In just five years, they’ve snowballed out of student loan debt and toward their long-term goal—retiring in their 50s. Now that this power couple is nearly debt-free, they’re focused on saving for retirement. Tune in to learn what they still need to do to reach their (high) FIRE number, why they refuse to downsize their dreams, and how they plan to spend their retirement! In This Episode We Cover How Amirra and Mazi crushed $500,000 in student loan debt in just five years Best practices for paying off debt and fast-tracking financial independence How to determine whether your FIRE number is too high (or low!) The money conversations you and your partner NEED to have How to “travel hack” your way to FREE vacations (without spending more) And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on BiggerPockets.com and https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-634 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

Imagine being asked on a first date how much student loan debt you have while still trying to make a good impression over dinner. For our guests, this unexpected question became the catalyst for a complete financial transformation. What would you do if you suddenly realized you were about to graduate with $275,000 in student loan debt and your future spouse was bringing an additional $230,000 into the mix? Most couples might panic or avoid the topic altogether. But our guests took a different approach. Together, they developed a strategy that eliminated over half a million dollars in student loan debt in just five years. Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

My name is Mindy Jensen. And as Scott is out on paternity leave, Amanda Wolf is stepping in and filling his shoes. Amanda, thanks so much for joining me today. Thanks for having me. I'm excited to be here. Give Scott a little rest. Yes. Bigger Pockets has a goal of creating one million millionaires.

You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone. No matter when or where you're starting. Today we're joined by Amira and her husband, Mazi, and I am so excited to hear more about their money story today. Hello, hello, hello, and thanks for being here. Hi, thank you so much for having us. We are pumped to do this episode together. So excited. Okay, I want to know which one of you asked the other one about the student loan debt on the first date.

That was me. I was the one who brought that conversation up on the first date. We were having lunch. On a lunch date. It wasn't even a dinner date. There were no dates on this first date, you know? So I think it was a Sunday lunch, Sunday brunch kind of thing. And, you know, we're getting talking, getting to know each other.

The question, I understood she was in school, but she was in school doing like a clinical rotation outside of the state that she was in school. She was in school in Boston. But she was in Houston doing. this clinical rotation. And I was just like, wow, that's like a long ways from home. I was like crunching the numbers in my head. I was like, wait a minute. So like you're paying for housing and like travel, living outside of a place where you're not at school at. Like I just imagine. I was like, man, that's a big undertaking financially, especially living off of student loans. So mentally I was running the numbers in my head. And that's how we got to, wait a minute. So how much

student loan debt are going to have that for all of this? Did you not want a second date? It was a good test. I think I think my response was a good test. Yeah. Well, and I I want to know how you felt when he asked that because the money nerd in me is so proud of Mazzie for asking that. Like, wait a second. What kind of debt are we talking about, girl? But also, the romantic in me is like, come on, Mazzie. That's not the first date question. Full transparency. I was older, but I was still pretty new to this concept of dating, honestly. And so I had never been on a first date and had someone ask me anything financially related. So I was like, is this normal? I know I'm a little inexperienced with dating, but is this like normal? And so I don't know. I was so

would take it back. I was so caught off guard, but it really did kind of give me insight into who Mazi was as a person on that first day. And I was like, I don't mind it. I like that he is straightforward. I like that he likes transparency. And so I was like, these are all qualities that I would enjoy in a partner anyways. But it definitely, it definitely took me back a little bit. But it wasn't a do-breaker, obviously, because here we are married five years later. Before we get all on Amira's case, Mazi, one of you had $275,000. One of you had $230,000. So it's not like you're coming in you're all innocent. Fair, fair. However, I didn't start my debt journey until after we've been dating for about, what was it, eight months. So I was going to graduate school. She was on the tail end of

graduate school. And we met, you know, right before I started, about six months before I started and about six months before she ended. So like, I didn't have that much debt yet. I knew I was going to, but I didn't have that much debt yet. I knew the ROI on what I was going into debt. And I knew the ROI on what I was going into debt for was kind of worth it. So I wasn't too concerned. Okay, what did you study? I studied anesthesia. I went to nurse anesthesia school. I was a registered nurse prior to that. So I was working in Houston as a registered nurse in ICU. And then I decided to get into graduate school and studied. It's called certified registered nurse anesthetist. Freaking power couple. Yeah. So yeah, I got in. I knew about eight months before that I was going to graduate school.

And then we kind of met when we were about six months out. Okay. So you are starting to date. You're realizing that you're going to have a large amount of student loan debt when you are both done with school. Like, how did that feel? I can, I see this number on the paper and I am kind of sweating. And it's not even mine. I think that we, we knew that the debt was kind of looming while we were dating.

But I will say we didn't really have a ton of conversations, really about my debt in particular, in particular until we were thinking about marriage. So then we were like, okay, obviously we love each other, we want to get married. We have to talk about finances. And so that's when Mazi kind of re-brought into the conversation, hey, you've graduated now, you're in a lot of student loan debt. And I think that when we realized how much we were going to have collectively, I don't know. I was a lot more like, we'll deal with that when the time comes.

Like we don't have to talk about that right now. Whereas Mazi was very much like, no, we need a plan of action immediately. today. And I was like, I don't even know my total numbers. Like, I don't want to log into my student loan account. I don't want to look at this thing. I just want to ignore it. I'm probably going to be in debt until I die. Like, that was very much my mindset at the time. And it wasn't until we started having those conversations right before we got married that I was like, no, we have to actually like come up with a plan to get rid of the debt. Yeah. When we first met, I mean, we both knew. We dated for those six to eight months. It was kind of like, all right, we're going to put a pen in

this until like you start working and we figure that out. It was always in the back of my mind. But as we got closer to getting married and everything, that's when I was like, okay, like, realistically, like, this is a big number that we're like bringing in to like both sides of the marriage. We needed to have a plan of action because most people, I don't think she logged into her student loans until I remember we're sitting in like our, my little apartment for graduate school. like you need to actually like just log in and see what it is because she was already graduated. I was like you need to like know what like just a base payment is for these before like we get too far here. So like that was like kind of like an eye shocking moment, honestly, when she logged in.

And we saw that the interest that occurred and the actual number. Were you taking out student loans simply for your student costs like housing and food and school and books and all of that? Or were you taking it out for other things as well? So I max borrowed. I took everything out to cover housing, my carp, like all the things that happened during the three years that I was in OT school. And so the loans paid for me to live, basically for those three years. So I came out with significantly more than I should have because I wasn't watching my living costs. Like that was the biggest thing. Like I didn't have, you know, a lot of roommates. I lived in a really nice apartment as a grad student. I had

I had a car lease. I took vacations. And I'm super open about admitting all of the mistakes that I made to get to this point. And so it was a massive number, but it's kind of not every OT is in this much student loan debt. I just made a lot of mistakes because I just lacked the financial literacy. And the money didn't feel real as I was taking it out. I was like, oh, I got a refund check. Great. This is income. And it's like you don't think about the fact that, no, actually, Mary, you have to pay that back later. And so I wasn't, I just wasn't thinking, you know, I wasn't thinking that. way. But to answer your question, yeah, the money that I took out was to do all of these different things while I was three years, you know, without really having a real job. I was like a nanny and I did newborn care specialist, but I didn't have an actual job job while I was in OT school. Okay. I think that's really important to note. You just said something that's like the million dollar quote of this show. You said, the money didn't feel real. It kind of isn't real because it's this like on paper money. It's on the internet money. It's not in your hands that you are then paying to somebody. You're just transferring from here to here. It was never yours to begin with. So what is something

that you think you would do differently if it had felt real or what's a way that it could have felt more real to you? Because I mean, you're not like I'm not saying, you know, wow, Amira, what a big mistake. Like, you're not even close the first person I've heard say this. The first thing I would have done differently is think about the actual school I was enrolling in. So I went to a private school that was out of state and a very high cost of living area, which made all of my, you know, groceries, rent, everything go up. So I would not have, it was a great school, don't give me wrong, but I wouldn't have chosen that school because I really couldn't have, I couldn't afford to have gone to that school. Like, if I think about it on paper, it was a really expensive school. The other thing I would have

done differently is the type of degree that I got. So I went for an entry level doctorate, which is really, really expensive, whereas I could have gone and gotten a master's and then maybe taken a year and done the doctorate program later. At the time, I thought that our profession, it's very similar to PT. There's some differences there, but PT is a required doctorate and I thought that OT was moving towards a required doctorate. And so that's why I went and got the really expensive degree. So those are definitely the big two factors, I think for me. I should have just went to a cheaper public school, got a master's degree and kind of went from there. But yeah, that's the, that's the big part I would have done differently, I think. And then there's like the small things,

like maybe not gone to every single brunch that I was invited to and maybe not gone on, you know, a trip to the tropical overseas, like little things that I did that I was like, I probably couldn't really like I probably couldn't have afforded to do that if I think about it. Yeah, or even like not taking all the loans because you also said something earlier that was like, I took out the max amount. And I think that a lot of people don't realize that, you know, while you're in that application phase and you're offered these loans, you can decline a couple of them, right? Because it's usually several coming in at once. And so I think that's something that people don't realize too is that you don't actually have to take every dollar that's offered up to you at that time.

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Kickstart your well-being journey with your first audiobook free when you sign up for a free 30-day trial at audible.com slash BP money. Thanks for sticking with us. So my next question then is around what your finances looked like before even meeting and going into school. So what did those look like? It seemed like Mazee was a little more proactive, if you will, when it came to his finances. and you were more like maybe focused on the end goal of getting your degree.

But what did your finances look like before that? Well, to be fair, she never actually started working because, you know, she was undergraduate, graduate school, no break in between. So that's like, is that seven years? And that's when I'm there. So she didn't really have the chance to be a working adult. Where me, on the other hand, I was a working adult. I was, I'm a little bit older. And I was working as a I see you are in for probably five years when I met her.

So I already had bought in my first house. I already had a paid off car. And I already drained down. I think I only had 80,000 coming out of undergraduate. And it was at 20,000. So like I've already had like I was making money, paying for things. Investing. Investing, traveling.

I was doing all that. I was already kind of like full adult at the age of 23. I had a little bit more of a head start, to be fair. So you were already investing then, Mazi. Yes. Okay. And then what about you, Amira? No.

So like you said, I came straight from undergrad. So I honestly still kind of had like college girl mentality. Like I wasn't thinking about the big girl things. I wasn't thinking about investing for retirement. I wasn't thinking about any of that. But I also didn't have a quote unquote real job. I was doing nannying work. But that's not, you know, that's like babysitting.

And so that was helping fund some of my stuff in college. But I didn't have an actual. professional career. So I wasn't, I wasn't really thinking about that kind of stuff, honestly, very much in goal. I was like, well, once I become an OT, once I have the degree, then I'll think about all of these different things, but I didn't have the income to even sustain, like, thinking about my finances. There's things I should have been doing and I could have been doing, like just tracking my spending, just like watching my overall spending, thinking more about saving. The one thing I will credit myself, I was never into credit cards. So I had a credit card,

but I used it very responsibly. So I never got into credit card debt. I always make sure to pay it paid it off, you know, that month. So that was like a big thing. The only thing I really thought about was, oh, I can't go into credit card debt. I know that's really bad. But to me, student loan debt and credit card debt were two very different things. And so it may know, like I didn't bat an eyelash taking out over 200 grand of student loans.

But if I had like $200 in my credit card, I would be like, oh, my gosh, I can't have that. So I just think we were in two very different seasons of life. Like you said, we're about four years. years apart. So we were just in very two different seasons of life. So I think that is why we approached our financial situations so differently. I do want to talk a little bit about your actual debt payoff journey. So you had mentioned that you were getting pretty aggressive in the last couple of years paying off the debt. So what specifically changed in your approach during that period that accelerated your progress? I think it starts with the birth of Jaden. Yeah. Yeah. So we had our first baby.

So Mazi had just graduated. We had our first baby. And I decided I wanted to become a stay-at-home mom. And we made the decision together. We talked about what would that look like financially for me to lose my income. I wasn't making as much as Mazi, but it was still, you know, a significant amount to the household. And so we were like, okay, what does that look like? And so we were like, well, if I don't want to work, then we're going to have to replace my income. And so we started thinking about how can Mazi replace his income without necessarily having to work more? Because at the time, We were living in a place where it's super busy. It was a big city. And he was doing like 24-hour shifts. And he would be gone for like two to three days straight. And we had a new baby. We had a newborn. He did that one time.

And I was like, oh, no. I'm going to lose all my marbles if you do that again. So we got to figure something else out. And so we started thinking about it's called locums, which is very similar to like travel nursing. And so you go to high paying locations and you're able to make significantly more without necessarily having to work more. And so we decided to move about three.

three hours from where we were living at the time. We're very far from our friends, our family. I would say that was like the biggest sacrifice when it came to our debt payoff journey. And it was so that Mazi would be able to quickly increase his income without necessarily having to be gone more and still give us like a really healthy work life balance now that we had a baby. But I think it was definitely having a baby. I mean, having a baby just makes you think about everything differently. And so that was for sure kind of the catalyst with being like, okay, let's figure out how to increase. your income. And then as terms of when we decided to get aggressive, it was really, Mazi was just so tired of the loans, which I'll let you talk more about why you decided to, because we met with

a financial coach. Shout out to Shung, she's from Save My Sense, and we met with her and she combed through all of our finances. And she had put us on a plan to pay them off at the end of this year, and we paid it off at the beginning of this year. So we were pretty early in her plan that she made for us. But I guess I'll let you share why you decided. it to get aggressive. Yeah, so you kind of start obsessing over it when you're paying these, at least I did. I would like log in and like look at the balance like three or four times a day. Like it was becoming obsessive to the point where like you knew down to the scent how much you had. You knew down to the scent how much interest occurred from the last time you logged in. And you knew like,

hey, when I get paid, I'm going to put this much on it. And like it became a little bit of an addiction, honestly, you wanted to see the number gone and you really gain some steam when like you saw that principal balance going down because most people when they pay the loans off, they do like maybe once a month payment. Interest takes like a big chunk and then like the rest goes to principle. But like when you see that principal number going down in big chunks, like mentally it feels your fire or you try to at least make it seem like it does. It makes you want to do it again and again and again. And like it's almost becomes like a game like, oh, wow. Like, I see it went from like, you know, 60 to like, now 50. And like that like just makes you sleep a little better at night. And like less interest

is being occurred. And like, you just get the steam and you just go after it. Yeah. So I had to obsess over it for a good two years. And like, I really started like the last year like just like nothing else mattered other than like getting that balance to zero. I really wanted to be done before the beginning of this year. But we had another baby and it's a little bit. We slowed to slow it down a little bit. I hear babies are expensive. Yeah, they're not cheap. Okay. So, Masi, I hear the obsession. I understand where you're coming from, but, and I had a similar obsession. Don't think that I'm like perfect in every way because I'm not. My whole FI journey was was very much like head down, nose to the grindstone. Do it, do it, do it, do it. And we didn't

take time to stop and smell the roses. How do you balance the immediate goal of debt payoff with living your life, with investing for the future? How did you specifically balance it? Or did you not? I mean, I didn't balance it at all. We saved for the future and did nothing fun. No, we definitely saved for the future. So a little background.

I chose a place where, you know, they cover my housing. They pay a higher rate. I could work a little bit more hours. And I had like a pretty cool schedule where like I'm home during the mornings. I just going in the evening so I could help out with breakfast and lunch with the babies. So we had to move far away to find this location that had hit all those boxes. They paid me to enough where if I worked, like I couldn't do the student loan journey. However, like I could take like not make a student loan payment.

And then that was our payment for fun. So for example, for her 30th birthday, we went to a Caribbean island and hung out, got to take a week off. I just didn't make a student loan payment that. And that kind of like extended it out a little longer. But I did recognize, like, you know, you got to take your smell the roses moment, you know, especially after two years. And then having, you know, the kids too. Like you have to like enjoy and smell the flowers. However, our baseline like would have like moments of joy. But our baseline was still very low housing and housing debt or cost to live. And when we're just doing our regular day to day, most our income went to the loans. Because we kept our expenses so low. So we didn't pay for housing. Both of our cars are paid off.

I think our biggest, like, it's probably groceries and Pilates, honestly. That's like our two biggest expenses right now. So we definitely budget it for those. But I think our income was able to support, like you said, those little moments of joy. Because I was not going to let him just obsess over the loans and then not have any fun for several years. Like I was like, we can't do that. So I think I brought a little bit of the balance. too to Mazzi because I wasn't quite obsessing over them. I definitely wanted to see them gone to

you, but I was also like, we have to enjoy life at the same time. Like, I don't subscribe to just, you know, eating off. What did your saving and investing look like during that debt paydown journey? So did you guys take a pause during that? Were you doing little bids? I did the bare minimum just to reach whatever the maximum retirement for the 401k was. It wasn't a ton. We didn't do any extra investing. We didn't do any saving really other than just we kept a three months emergency. We have a eight month emergency fund that we saved a long time ago before we even had our first. So we didn't prioritize saving money necessarily because we already had an emergency fund. So any extra money really went towards investing. But we did already have, I just want to be clear,

we did already have a healthy emergency fund. So that's why we weren't like needing to necessarily save money. Yeah. And we and we did invest. for like 529, HSA, yeah, those things. We maxed out the accounts that would make sense, but we didn't do anything extra like a tax brokerage. But you do have a tax brokerage. I do now. Now that the debt has been paid down.

So yeah, what is because the debt paydown journey is very recent, right? So now you guys probably feel like you're just flush with cash, I'm guessing. So what do you guys, what does it look like now? How are you saving and investing now that the debts paid off? And you also didn't add that you're an independent contractor. And so one of the big pieces to the puzzle, we have an amazing tax team who's really good at tax strategy. They don't just input numbers and that's it. But they actually help us save most of the money that he makes, which is like massive.

When you're trying to pay off that much, you have to be able to like actually save money and not owe so much in taxes. So I think that was a big part that maybe Mazi didn't say yet was he's a contractor. And so saving on taxes allowed us to put big chunks to. I want to point out that you are using a tax strategist. I love that so much for you because you are in a higher income bracket. You could just have a lot of money going to the government. And I always want to pay all the taxes that I have to. I never want to pay any taxes that I don't have to.

And there are these, they're not even loopholes. They are strategies that you don't know that you don't know. So if you find yourself in a similar position, have a conversation with a tax strategist. Whatever your tax strategist is costing you, they will. will almost always save you way more than that because they introduce you to these concepts. You're like, I didn't know that was a thing. I didn't know that I could, you know, deduct this from my taxes. I didn't know I could alter my income in this way. And then all of a

sudden, all of these doors open up. So clearly I'm making a lot of that up because I am not a tax strategist. But if you, you know, if you find yourself with a lot of income, don't jump over dollars to save pennies by not going to the tax strategist and having a conversation. I mean, you don't have to do this all the time. You do this like at the beginning of the year. And they're like, hey, look at all these things you could potentially do, which ones work for your mentality, your goals, your strategies, your income, et cetera. And you can pick and choose from multiple. So yeah, if you don't have a tax strategist, you need to find one like a CPA or, I mean, just Google tax strategist in your area. Ask your friends.

Ask your rich friends. Your rich friends. So that's what, I mean, that's where we are now. We do have this influx of cash every month that's not going to the loans. And we don't necessarily have all of the deductions that we had before when we're paying off the loans. And so I think for us, we're trying to be very strategic in our spending so that we don't owe so much in taxes next year. Yeah, I think that's a big thing. And also, we're going on a vacation next month.

Oh, there you go. So more vacations too. Yeah, for sure. Yeah. This will be the first time that we actually have this much money coming in without necessarily a huge debt payment that we're attacking. So we're kind of starting, we're just the beginning stages of living it right now. It's mostly just going towards retirement, I think, at this point. Yes. Well, and hopefully a little living today, like you mentioned. So some vacation, yeah, a little bit of balance. And because I was wondering earlier, you know, hearing Mazi, if you thought you had over corrected in life at all. And it sounds like maybe there were like some blips there, but you you guys are bringing really good balance to each other's lives. I think when it comes to all the money stuff, even if the conversation on date one started like a little, a little like in your face kind of situation. But it sounds like you guys, you guys brought like really good balance. So, so then my question would be to you, Amira, what role did your partnership with Mazi play in your own success? And what advice would you give to couples who might be avoiding some difficult money

conversations. That is such a good question. So I will say he was truly the catalyst for me like getting my act together when it came to money. I stopped being so afraid to have those conversations. And I kind of did like a complete flip. And now I do financial coaching for other OTs and other healthcare professionals because I'm so passionate about just increasing financial literacy and not making the same mistakes. That's why I'm super, super open with my mistakes on my financial journey. because I think that if I would have had someone like me in my life, maybe I wouldn't have done some of those things to land in so much debt. And so I think that I really credit him with like pulling me out of my little turtle shell and being like, okay, we can talk about money in a really healthy way. I think a lot of times you think of talking about money in a marriage is just fighting about money.

But it can be really, really healthy to have those conversations. And so we didn't mention this. We eloped. So we eloped. So we got engaged. And then we eloped, I don't know, like three weeks later. It was like less than a month later. We decided we went to Sedona and we eloped under a rock and it was the best decision ever.

But we knew going into marriage that because it was so quickly that it happened, we were like, hey, money is like one of the top things that people fight about. And we don't want to fight about money. And so we had just like really, really open conversations. And so I think it's helped overall to our communication because when you're so open talking about one of the most uncomfortable topics, money and makes communication in a marriage, I think so much easier. I can go to him with, you know, really, really anything and not feel that. that discomfort because we have tackled the most, one of the most uncomfortable subjects in a marriage. And so I think it has helped just our overall communication, you know, as husband and wife. And then I think my biggest piece of advice to couples would really just be to have those

conversations. Like it is uncomfortable, but, you know, it's also really uncomfortable to be fighting about money. And so wouldn't you rather have those discussions and being able to just align with like your financial goals and the dreams that you have for yourself to support the lifestyle, you know, that you're envisioning for your family. So it's kind of almost like rip the band-aid. And I think I get this mentality from him for sure with Rip the Band-Aid off with things. And yeah, just know the first few conversations. It might be a little uncomfy, but eventually you'll get on the same page. And also seek out outside support if you need it. Like I said, I was doing financial coaching and I still hired a financial coach because I wanted a different

lens, a different perspective on our situation. And she really helped us to ask the right questions to each other like, hey, Amira is okay with prolonging the student loans for a little bit more and maybe investing more. Like, how do you feel about that, Mazian? So she kind of helped guide that conversation to you. So if you need to have an outside person come in, there are so many people within, like, the financial coaching space and personal finance that specialize in talking to married couples and helping you to have those conversations. But they have to be had. They're so important. And I think it makes for, I know, I'm not even I think, I know that it makes for a very, very healthy partnership. You have now paid off all of your student loan debt.

What does your current debt picture look like, like housing or, you know, anything else that you've got? Is it just the mortgage? So the house I owned back in Houston where I turned into a rental. So that's still the only debt we have. And that's it. That's it. Wow. Okay.

Great. So from 500,000, five years ago to a mortgage where I'm assuming the rent covers the mortgage. The rent covers the mortgage. I think it was back in the day when $300,000 could get you a house. It's a townhouse and the medical center in Houston. I think there's maybe like 220, but the interest rate's like 2.9 percent, something unheard of. And yeah, the renters have been renting consistently since I started school and have never left.

So it's been great. Okay. So where is your money going specifically now? And let's look at like balances. What is your net worth and what is your, you know, where is all that in your portfolio? So the market is taking a turn in the last couple months. That's why I was like, do you want to talk about this?

You sure? So before we had some things implemented nationwide, we were seeing at a net worth of closer around 700,000. Wow. That's awesome. Yeah. So honestly, back when, like you said, when I was a young pup and someone told me to put 10% of when I was working as an ICU,

nurse into, I'll never see it, I'll never worry about it. I did exactly that. And like when I started graduate school, I think it was like 200 or 300 just sitting in a 401k. And of course, it grows over time. I've added more to it since I've started working. It just grew with the S&P. No, I didn't do anything fancy. Just put it in the S&P and just let it ride. So it's grown up to about that. And I had a tax broker's account I started putting money, dumping money into. And I still just invest in the S&P. So all that together. collectively with the house was around 700, give or take the downswings we've had. And what is your timeline for retirement? Are you on the early retirement path? Or are you just

amassing savings for the future? Right. So that's what the coach was that we got. We wanted to, my fire number was 10 million. Is, you haven't changed it. Is 10 million. And I wanted to obtain fire by the age of 52 is what we marched out. So we have to start aggressively pretty much the loan, the money that I was putting towards my student loans will now be going towards investing in retirement. You're hoping to spend $33,000 a month in retirement. Yes. Okay. And what do you spend this money on? And I'm just asking, I know that nurse and athetist, which is such a hard word to say. It's a hard word to say. It's a tongue tie. It's a tongue tie. It's a tongue tie. You can just say C R&A.

Yeah. My uncle is one of those. So I'm familiar with the term. I just can't say it. But where is 33,000 a month going? Which is your, like, if $10 million is your fire number and you get to that, you can absolutely, per the 4% rule, spend the 33,000, I just, I know that people listening are used to that number being a little smaller.

Well, I'm assuming with inflation, 10 million today is not going to be 10 million tomorrow. So I would imagine 33,000 a month, which, feel more closer to like 25,000. And based off what we're spending now a month, we're around about 20, 25,000, give or take, given what we make and how much we spend on months. Housing probably won't be a factor, hopefully not a factor come at that time. But we also are active. We like to travel. We like to do things. So I just kind of want to, I was just kind of based it off of what I'm doing now. Now, of course, if we fall a little shorter that number, it's not the end of the world. It's still a healthy amount. But I was kind of just shooting for the moon on

that one and trying to replicate our current living situation. A lot of it honestly goes towards travel. So like if we think of it like a travel sinking fund that we contribute to each month and then we take maybe two trips, but we take big trips, like a pretty significant travel trip. So I would say a big chunk of that spending is going towards saving for travel. Yeah. Because we also do things. where we bring in our family and we don't want to have to burden them with, you know, paying for a bunch of stuff. And so we'll get like just a massive Airbnb or something like that.

So we do a lot of traveling, but we love to bring our family with us. Okay. Can I be your family as my first question? Also, how much are you spending right now? Do you track your spending at all? Do you know how much you're spending right now? Yes. So it's a little complicated because we have like the personal side and the business side.

So personal side hovers around 8 to 9K. per month and that's everything from honestly we spend a lot on wellness i'm not gonna lie we spend a lot on um like self-care wellness and by we i mean i kind of mean me um mazi also is really into like gym memberships and training and things like that and so that's a big chunk of it also groceries where we live it's really expensive for groceries and we're the type of people we love steak we love lamb um and we that's an area that we've tried to cut back in so many times but mazzi's like i don't want to go to the grocery store and not be able to get my steak if I want to have steak. And so we could be probably a little bit more cognizant, but just given his income, it's

something that we're comfortable splurging on groceries to be able to get, you know, whatever snacks or food that we want to get and not have to worry too much about it. So I would say wellness, groceries. Well, and it's also you have two kids. So it's like I was going to say, and the kids. Oh, yeah, those. Yeah. Yeah.

We do a lot of activities with the kids. Yeah, we do a lot of activities with the kids. We have like our toddler and mountain biking program right now here. So, and like swim lessons, all these, it's like the little things kind of add up. So on the personal side, yeah, I would say about 8 to 9K a month. And then on the business side, what would you say? It's mainly just taxes. It's mainly tax.

But you have to pay taxes every month. Yeah. So that's a big chunk of. Taxes eat a lot. And paying yourself. And paying, I pay myself. Yeah. Which isn't a ton.

But taxes paying myself, that's, that's about it. It used to be the student loans for that. Yeah. It's gone. Okay. So when you stop working, then your taxes goal. way. Like, I'm assuming that your business income covers all of your business expenses. So I would even push that to the side. I did quick math. I rounded up for you to $10,000 a month, which is a fine number of

$3 million per the 4% rule, which is a very different number than 10 million. That's going to be a lot longer timeline to amass. And I'm just wondering if there's any way you can shorten that a little bit. I have reached financial independence. My husband and I did it seven years ago, eight years ago, maybe nine years ago, but then, oh, well, one more year. We'll just work one more year. I'm not sure if the numbers work. And then the market continued to go up and our number, our net worth continued to go up. He finally quit his job when we had two X our fine number, which was based on our spending. At the time, that spending has gone up a little bit. because our fine number has actually increased quite a bit more than just because we had such a

great market. I have seen the last couple of months, just like you have, Mazzie, I have not been a fan of the down market that keeps going. Down it goes. I am combating this by just not looking at it because I'm not pulling out of the market right now. So it's an on-paper loss. But I just don't want to look at that paper. that loss is real hard to watch. So I just threw out some numbers at you where what you're spending now is more of a $3 million fine number. It doesn't take into account.

I think the travel. Have you listened to our episode 606 where we featured the points guy talking about how he's opening up credit cards to get these travel rewards so that he can then spend it that way. He gave us lots of tips on different cards to open up in different ways to travel without spending all the money that you're traveling. That was my goal last year was to get into travel hacking. I had like a whole plan. Then I found out I was pregnant again and I was like that plan has gone out the window and I just haven't picked it back up. And so Mazi has told me so many times he's like,

you really have to figure out this whole travel hacking thing because I have friends who do it and are very successful. I think we we played around with it. We went to Hawaii maybe a year ago in like December. And I think we used our MX car to travel hack and get like a room upgrade and free breakfast. little things like that. But I have not gone all in just because I am overwhelmed by it. But I will definitely check out that episode. I think that's, it's good. I need to get back into like my goal of figuring out travel hacking. Yeah, 100% right there with you. I am super, super busy. And I have done the most bare minimum travel hacking that I have ever been able to do. All right. Question, Mindy. When you and your, your partner were planning for your fire,

were you planning 20 years in advance in accounting for inflation or were you planning what I'm spending now, like you said, we're spending 10,000 a month now, but 20 years from now, how much is $10,000 worse? Yeah. So we didn't do that kind of math. We read the Bill Bingen article, the original 4% rule article that he published in like 1996 or 1998. And we're like, okay, this makes sense because he like lays it all.

It's a really long article very into. depth. If you don't have a copy of it, I'm happy to send it to you. It's kind of hard to find because it was only in print back in the 1900s when they didn't have the internet. But it's a great article. We're like, you know what? This makes sense. Based on a 30 year time frame, when you are spending this much, you can have this much money and it'll last you for 30 years. So we're like, that'll totally work. We're totally going to do that. We didn't think about inflation. We didn't think about lifestyle creep. Our original 4% rule, you're going to laugh at this, was based on spending $40,000 a year.

Oh. We spend $40,000 a year at that time. We don't anymore. We spend one. You're going to be camping. It sounds like you're retired. Well, it's a tent only. No mattress pad.

At the time, my house cost me $176,000. You can't get that here anymore. The way we're going now, like, I mean, even a vehicle these days is anywhere from $60,000 to $70,000 now. Average house is roughly around $500,000 now. And that's right. Now, 20 years from now, I can only imagine what the average cost is for lifestyle, which is why although 3 million would be sufficient for us now, 3 million in 20 years might be a little less. We have to take one final ad break, and we'll be back with more from Amira and Mazi.

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See Golden Nuggett Casino.com for details. Please play responsibly. Welcome back to the show. I just want to propose thinking about the number because you don't want to continue working for, you know, 20 more years, then retire, then discover, oh, inflation wasn't as bad as I thought it was going to be. I really did only need three or five million dollars. I worked too long and I didn't incorporate all of this stuff into my life. Now, if you are more of a Ramit Seity fan and you are continuing to enjoy your rich, life while saving for retirement. That's really different. But I'm going back to Mazi, who was obsessed

with his money and nose to the grindstone and focusing and checking it four times a day. I hope you're not checking it four times a day now. I only log in once a week just to make sure it still says zero. Okay. Once a week is great. But yeah, I just, I want to make sure that you have a realistic number or you are continuing to think about it. Oh, now we're at $3 million. I still feel like I need a little bit more. Or now I'm at $5 million. You know what? We aren't. increasing our spending so much, maybe it is a good time to rethink what I'm doing. Or, you know what? You hit $3 million and you're like, I really like my job. I'm going to keep working one day a week or one week a month or however you can do it. Because once you have a lot of experience

and there's still a shortage of health care workers, once you have this experience, you can kind of dictate your own schedule or, you know, more so than fresh out of college person. So more I just want to plant a seed like, hey, maybe $10 million doesn't have to be the number. remember, revisit it once a year or, you know, once a quarter, not four times a day. That's good. I think that's good because I, we were on an episode together, Mindy, where you said that that was one of your, I don't know if financial regret is the term that you used, but like I wish we had checked in on it more because we worked far longer than we needed to and it was just unnecessary

and we missed out on, you know, some more leisure time, if you will. So I think that's good advice. That being said, to kind of piggyback off of that. So obviously the road to 10 million is probably a little ways away here. So what are you going to do to stay on track for that goal? And have you considered potentially like reducing that number and then maybe just working on the business not working full time? Like have you explored or thought about any other avenues or is it going to be kind of like head down, let's get to 10 million? What is that going to look like? Well, I don't think it'll be nearly as aggressive as it was when we were paying off the student loans. That was much more head down,

like nothing else matters other than this. I think on the road to 10 million, it's definitely more of the journey. And like I said, 10 million was like more of a like, it's a soft number that we threw out there. Just like, I think, you know, spending roughly around 40,000 a month is like, we're good. Like, we're comfortable. No matter what the circumstances have, we should be a okay. How we're going to get there, that's what our financial coach shung laid out for us. us, it's still a heavy investing amount in a tax brokerage account, pretty much throwing it into the S&P, expecting closer to 7 to 8% returns. And what it looked like is roughly about $15,000 to $20,000 a month that we would be investing. And that should roughly get us there

by the age of 52. And so not knowing how old you are now, so how many years away is that? 34 now. Okay, 34 now. Because I'm already thinking like the kids will grow up at some point. So like those expenses will go away. We also are thinking about our parents as they get older and being in a position to comfortably take care of them, which is a conversation, you know, we don't love to have, but it's a conversation we have to have. And so I think to Mazi had kind of built in a little bit of a buffer to be able, whatever that ends up looking like for our parents.

But knowing that although we have siblings, it likely will be us as the ones who are kind of making those plans for our parents. So I think adding that into why that number maybe he wanted to go larger. So this is the whole family retirement fund. Yeah. He didn't really mention that. But it's not just us. It wouldn't just be for taking care of us.

It's our kids, our parents. Like, yeah. That makes more sense. Yeah, I appreciate the context in that. And that's, that makes that number more understandable, more reasonable, because it isn't just you guys. So that's cultural thing. I'm not planning to support my parents in their age, but they also have like taken care of it themselves. No, we're like first generation investors, I feel like I think. Just financial mindset. Yeah. Yeah. Both our parents, they don't,

retirement wasn't a thing that they really thought about. Like finances wasn't a really thing that they planned for like all the above. Like they just, it wasn't, it was more of just, you know, work, get paid, pay your bills, repeat. Not, oh, like, I'm going to be 65. Like, what am I going to live off of none of that? Like, luckily, my mom house has paid off. Other than that, like, she doesn't have much of a retirement plan. We just want to be able to, like, socially-security is it. So, Social Security will be there. And that's, like, the extent of their retirement planning. That is a lot more understandable with this $10 million number. And 20 years, it sounds like you're you're definitely adding stuff back into your life now that you're not

paying down the debt anymore you're adding in the enjoyment and the fun and the travel everywhere so yeah i've got just a little bit of homework for you amira to go and listen to episode 606 so you can start learning about travel hacking without having to do all the work um because it's a lot i have done none of the work um i opened up like two credit cards that's my travel hacking that's your Travel hacking. Perfect. Learn more from Mindy on travel hacking. I am kind of curious. What is the average number of people are putting for their fire or like, what is a more

reasonable number that people kind of shoot towards? One million dollars was like the number for the longest time. And then people are like, you know, I would really rather have a more robust retirement. So I hear three million. I hear. And three million you're spending, you know, $10,000 a month, $120,000. thousand dollars a year. I hear five million, kind of on the outside. I've heard people say 10 and 20 million counting only for themselves. And the way they say it, a lot of time just sounds like,

I just threw a number out there. Sure, I'd love to have 10 million dollars. If anybody wants to write a check, that's J-E-N-S-E-N, send me $10 million. I'm totally cool with that. I'll even pay all the taxes. I also see people working far longer than they had to because they had this number in mind that either didn't come from doing all of the math or they were like, well, I want to have this big lavish lifestyle in the future. Well, you could have a lavish lifestyle now. Oh, no, I don't spend money now. And I know from personal experience, if you don't spend money now, you're not going to spend money later. I spend a little bit more than I used to, but I don't spend a lot because of the way I was brought up. We didn't have any money. My parents are children of the Depression. Like my dad's one of

seven. My mom's one of eight. There was never enough money for anybody. So they'd never spent money. And they took that to heart. And they're like, well, now that we have money, we can't spend it. And I am following along in their footsteps. So it's difficult. It doesn't sound like, and I don't mean this like in a bad way, but it doesn't sound like you are having a hard time spending the money. So you will be able to enjoy, you know, now and in the future. That makes sense. And there's all kind of fires now. There's like lean fire, fat, barista fires, like a new one I heard. I've not heard of barista fire. There's like all these different ones that you can, you know.

Yeah, there's all different flavors. You can choose your own adventure. It's awesome. I just want to make sure that you are working long enough, not too long. Because one more year syndrome is absolutely a incurable syndrome here in the fire community. Yeah, I mean, we're definitely getting a sense of how much is enough, even when it just comes to income and, you know, hours working, we're kind of hitting that road, that crossroad of like, all right, we're not in debt anymore. So we don't have to stay making or doing what you're doing

to claw out of debt. But I also have this sick syndrome of wanting to make more than, well, yeah, I'm not in debt, but I'm also now at zero. Essentially, I finally clawed out of the pit. And now I want to see what's like, oh, maybe making this sort of kind of money and getting to like do more like beneficial things or enjoying it a little bit more. Whereas I'm like we can take a pay cut, move back closer to family, settle down, like stop this whole travel thing. So I think that's definitely where we are now is just determining kind of what direction we want to go and do we want to stay at this income and being able to, you know, aggressively invest in all these different things. Or can we like slow down a little bit and make different lifestyle changes? That's currently the crossroad right now. Okay.

Well, I think that's a, you know, it'll come in time as you're now paying attention more to where the income is going, where this, like how much extra savings you have. Because, you know, once you have hit your number and stopped retiring, you're also not going to be saving anymore. So that's income that you don't need to account for. So I just think there's a lot of, you know, there's a lot of moving parts and you're, you're conscious of it. And that's the best of all of this is that you're thinking about it.

Okay. Amira and Mazee, this was such a fun conversation. I'm so thankful for your time. Where can people find you online? Yes. So Mazzy's not online. So if you want to find something, it will be with me. So I have a podcast called The Money Matters in Occupational Therapy podcast. And so that's a really fun place where I bring on guests. And we have all the conversations about money and finance that we should have had in school, but we never did. And so that's a really fun podcast to listen to if you want to check that out. And then on Instagram, I'm at Marvelous Miracles with 2Rs. I'm sure everything will be in the show notes, but that's where I share more about just finances and life is a stay-at-home mom, being an occupational therapist, all that. And then we have a really exciting new project coming out that we can't share too much about, but just know it's a platform that we're building to help connect healthcare professionals with the financial support and literacy and resources that they need. So we're super excited about that. We've just hired like, you know,

all the business consultants, braining approaches, we're going through the trademark process, all that fun stuff, but it's really going to be centered around being able to just have specifically health care professionals have that support that we don't really get in school. And so be on the lookout for that. And I'm sure I'll mention it in my podcast and on my Instagram page as well. I was just going to say, can I go to Marvelous Miracles with 2Rs and find out information about that when it's been announced? Yes, yes. Yeah. Yeah. And we're planning to be at FinCon this year to be able to chat more about that. So I will meet you in real life. Oh my gosh. Yay. Okay, wonderful. Well, Amira and Mazi, thank you so much for your time today. I really appreciate it. And we will talk to you soon.

Thank you so much for having us, Mindy, and Amanda. All right, that was Amira and Mazzi. And I loved their story, Amanda. I loved how he wasn't afraid to ask in an open, not accusatory way about her student loan debt on their first date. I mean, that's quite the bold move there. But it clearly worked out because it set the tone for their entire relationship. we are going to be conscious about our money. The answer that she gave also set the tone. Oh, well, here it is, not being defensive, not being offended that he asked. It was just a get to know you question. And she gave him a, you know, matter of fact, answer. And I think there's a lot more great money tips from people just when you have this, this mindset of I'm going to ask a question openly and I'm going to answer the question honestly, as opposed to, you know, getting all up in your feelings about it. What did you think of the show, Amanda? I totally agree. It was a bold move to ask that question on date one for sure. But I also felt like it was so refreshing to hear how their

relationship had kind of evolved over time, having two completely different spending, saving, and investing styles. You know, he was kind of like nose to the ground right from day one, whereas she's more like, oh, this is monopoly money. Let's, you know, I'll worry about this later. But then it seems like they've really just kind of became their best selves coming together and balancing each other out. And now that they were able to pay off like what, half a million dollars worth of student loan debt, build their family, travel. Like I think that they are just a really beautiful picture of what can be when you start those money conversations really, really early because money is the thing that fuels all the other things in life. Absolutely. Start those money conversations early, especially because if you're listening to this show, money conversations, money. money topics, finance in general, is important to you. So don't partner up with somebody that it isn't important to. Or if you are already partnered up, start having these conversations so you can get on the same page.

All right, Amanda, should we get out of here? Let's do it. That wraps up this episode of the Bigger Pockets Money podcast. She is the Amanda Wolf. She Wolf of Wall Street. I am Mindy Jensen saying, got to go, Buffalo.