More Money Podcast - 185 How to Make Work Optional - Tanja Hester, Author of Work Option & Blogger at Our Next Life

Episode Date: February 27, 2019

I had Tanja Hester from Our Next Life on the show back in November 2017 for episode 133. Back then, Tanja was still an anonymous blogger who hadn’t yet quit her job yet to retire early with her husband. Well, a few months after we recorded that episode she left her job and has been officially retired ever since! Not only that, she finally revealed her full name on her blog and the news literally went viral, being picked up by MarketWatch. Because of this, Tanja has had a very busy retired life, that includes doing speaking, writing for MarketWatch, and of course publishing her first book Work Optional: Retire Early the Non-Penny-Pinching Way. Since so much has happened with Tanja since that first episode, I wanted to have her back on the show to talk more about what life is like in early retirement, and how you can strategize to retire early too! Retiring Early Isn’t About Opting Out Planning to retire early doesn’t start with the number crunching (or at least it shouldn’t). You need to figure out the “Why” before the “How”. Most people just think retiring early is a way they can finally opt-out of working, or subtract something from their life. Instead, you should think about it as a way to add more to your life. As we discuss in this episode, most early retirees aren’t just chilling on a beach reading. That’s nice for a vacation, but that can get boring quick if it’s your every day. Instead, think about what things you want to do now that you don’t have to focus all your time and energy on earning an income. Maybe it’s volunteering. Maybe it’s starting some new hobbies. Maybe it’s writing a book like Tanja. No matter what it is, retiring early isn’t about opting out of work, it’s about opting into a life that’s more fulfilling and meaningful to you. You Can Continue to Earn Money in Retirement Another thing we discuss is the idea that by retiring, that doesn’t mean you have to stop earning money…or working for that matter. Early retirement or financial independence means you don’t have to work to earn an income anymore. But, that doesn’t mean you can’t if you want to. From talking to so many early retirees on the podcast and in real life, all of them are working in some way. Usually not full-time, but they are definitely staying active and contributing to society in some way. And yes, this means they earn money. Earning money doesn’t negate the fact that they are financially independent or retired. It just means they have extra fun money to play with. Follow Your Own Path I see and hear so many conversations about F.I.R.E. (financial independence, retire early), most of which are negative. Many people believe it’s a dangerous idea because most people will either run out of money or it’s just completely impossible because they aren’t high income earners. As Tanja mentions, early retirement isn’t for everyone and that’s okay. Moreover, one person’s path to early retirement shouldn’t serve as a template you should try to mimic because it may not work for you. Personal finance is personal after all, so if early retirement is something you want to do, do your research, learn from other people’s journeys, then carve out your own path that’s unique to you. For full episode show notes, visit https://jessicamoorhouse.com/185 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to episode 185 of the Mo Money Podcast. I'm your host, Jess Morales. Welcome back to the show. I've got another repeat guest because there's so many great people I've had on the show and I want them back when they're doing something new and cool. Usually that has to do with them launching a new book. And this guest was on my show about a year, 20 year and a half ago. And at that time, I think I was able to say her first name, but not her last name. She was still an anonymous blogger because she is a FIRE blogger. And in case you don't know what that means, FIRE is an acronym for Financially Independent Retiring Early. It is a whole niche within the personal finance community all about people trying to basically invest and save up enough money so they can quit

their jobs and do whatever the heck they want, retire early. And not just like the retiring early that we may typically think about or we used to think about, which was like, you know, retire by 50, that's retiring early. These people are retiring at like 35 or 40, crazy early. And so, so there's a whole thing. If you want to like do some research, fire, crazy. It's very interesting. Anyways, this guest was on my show to talk about her journey to achieving fire with her husband, but she was still at the time working her day job and was just about to quit. And so she couldn't reveal her full identity. Well, now she left that job. She's been financially independent for a year now and

retired for about a year with her husband. And she is now a public. She's gone public. We know her name now. And she has a book coming out. So I'm talking about Tanya Hester. She has a book coming out called Work Optional, about Tanya Hester. She has a book coming out called Work Optional, Retire Early, The Non-Penny Pinging Way. And I'm so excited because even though in our last episode, we did talk a lot about her journey to retiring early, this book isn't just about her journey. She interviews a ton of other people who were able to do it in lots of different life circumstances because her situation, you may or may not be able to relate to it. So she wanted to make sure she could kind of show that there's lots of different ways and different people who've been able to

retire early. You don't just have to, in her circumstance, she had a great job, so did her husband. They earned very big salaries. They don't have kids. And so that's kind of their journey. But there's a lot of people who are able to retire and have a family and so on and so forth. And so we dive into all that good stuff in this episode. I'm so excited to share it with you. But before I get to that interview with Tanya, here's just a few words about this episode's sponsor. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, CDIC. Have you ever been told to be careful where you put your money? Because if your bank goes under, you'll lose everything. Here's the thing. That person has no idea what they're talking about. Thanks to the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, our savings are

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and your savings, visit cdic.ca. Once again, that's cdic.ca. Welcome, Tanya, back to the show. It's been a year since you've been on my show, which is so exciting. And I feel like I don't even know if I said your name on the last podcast, possibly, but you are still anonymous. You're still anonymous because you hadn't officially retired yet. And now you're out in the open. You have a book coming out and you're officially retired and living it up, living your best life. I'm so excited for you. Yeah. Thank you so much. I'm so excited to be back. Thanks for having me. You're so welcome. So last time we chatted, you were, I want to say, maybe a few months away

from handing in your notice or just exiting, you and your husband both exiting your careers and starting your retired lives. So that was kind of where we ended. So we talked a little bit like high level. What does the fire movement mean? What's retiring early? Because that was something that you're working towards. You were able to achieve your goal.

What has life been like now that you've been kind of officially retired? I'm going to put that in like little bunny ears for about a year. Yeah. I mean, life is good. Can't complain much. Yeah. I cannot complain. We're talking midday on a weekday. Yeah. I know, right? It's so good. Yeah. And I'm not worried about client emails piling up or any of that stuff. I mean, it really is a wonderful thing. But I think that the last year of early retirement, we have learned a ton. And I think it's reinforced a lot of the notions

that I had already been thinking about, but it's really reaffirmed that early retirement is amazing and a huge privilege, but it also doesn't make your life perfect. It's not magic. So we had some ups and downs in our first year of early retirement. We had to definitely figure

out some stuff, just kind of a new relationship rhythm, which I think is very, very normal. You're seeing each other a lot more, I guess. Yeah. I mean, it's funny because Mark and I always both worked from home. And even though I traveled a lot for work, I still was mostly home. And so we were around each other a lot more than folks would be who go commute to offices. But it still has taken some adjustment of, you know, like we'd always said, we want to be able to wake up every morning and figure out what we want to do that day. And that seems like a very clear thing. But for example, for me, that meant actually literally wake up and say, okay, what do we want to do today?

And apparently for Mark, it meant closer to like one night thinking about what do I want to do tomorrow? And that's such a silly little example, but that actually led to a lot of tension. And we had to kind of recognize that and go like, okay, let's realign here. Because he was ending up going out and doing stuff with friends rather than with me. And I think that was natural. He felt like he was doing what we agreed to, and I felt like he wasn't. So anyway, just like one small example of something new you have to figure out, even if you really like spending time together and are used to time together, it's still going to be a totally different dynamic. Yeah. And I guess that's true to whether you're retiring early or just retiring. And honestly,

I feel like whenever I talk to people, I mean, I'm younger, and so I'm only in the stage where it's like retirement planning, but I don't have too many conversations with people about like, what does retirement life look like? And, you know, my parents aren't retired yet. So they don't know. And my grandparents were retired for decades. So it's, it's like interesting to know, like, what is that initial, you know, transition like, like, it's, it's got to be something going from, and you both had like very, you know, busy, stressful jobs and ending those and kind of starting with like, we can do anything, which is a blessing and a burden kind of, because you're like now, but what do we do? Yeah. To be honest, I haven't really struggled with that question because I'm one of those

people who's interested in so many things. Well, you've been busy. Like that's the thing. It's like you had some, you were, I know because, you made some plans kind of before you made that exit. But I guess that's probably normal. If you're already planning to retire early, you're probably making plans for what you want to do in your early retirement. I mean, I think that there are two ways to think about going into early retirement. I do think that there are those who go in just thinking about the subtraction element of getting rid of work and are only focused on that. And frankly, I think that's a mistake because I think that that leaves you kind of flailing when you get there. And I've

gotten a lot of letters over the years from people who said they did just that. And then they got to early retirement and they were like, oh, I'm bored now. I'm lonely because all my friends are at work. What do I do? And they ended up going back to work. And we did not want that to happen to us. So I think the other way to think about early retirement planning is to focus on not what you're subtracting, but what you're going to add. So like, what is it that you actually want to be doing? How do you want to spend your days? How do you want to spend your time? And that was very much where our minds were. And so getting here, it was just, I mean, to be honest, it was still too many things we wanted to do. So we weren't able to do everything,

but we sure did a hell of a lot. And we had some really incredible trips and adventures and it was amazing and totally worth it. But I think it's really important if you're thinking about early retirement to really focus on what you want to do with your life and with your time and not just think about getting rid of work. Yeah, which I feel like is always the main focus when people are talking about it or it's talked about in the media. It's always about, oh, people want to retire early because they don't want to work anymore. It's like, well, that's probably the initial reason, but you have to kind of go deeper. Otherwise, like you said, it's like you'll get lonely, you'll get bored, you'll get depressed, whatever. And it's not a magic solution, you know? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. No, that totally makes sense. And I get it. Like,

we live in a world in which the work culture is really unsustainable. Like, we as workers are expected to work so many more hours now than our parents or grandparents did. And we are expected to be reachable at all times. And that stuff is not good for us. And so even though work is a good and noble thing, and even though work gives us purpose and can help us feel productive and help us feel useful in society, the pace of work today is what is the problem. So I totally get why people are thinking about opting out in some way. But I think it's also important to pair that with the thinking about, okay, so what are you going to do instead? What do you want your life's purpose to be? What

gives you joy? What's going to make you feel excited to get out of bed every day? I don't think folks should go and assume that that's going to be automatic once you have free time. Absolutely. So one of the things that you're busy with is obviously writing a book, which is so exciting. It's called Work Optional. Do you want to talk a little bit about what your initial idea for the book was, like why you want to write this book, and then we can kind of dive in. Yeah, absolutely. So the full title, which I think is important, is Work Optional, Retire Early the Non-Penny Pinching Way. And that, I think, gives a big clue to my focus in the book. You know, I think that they're in the narrative about early retirement for folks who've heard

about it. And of course, not everyone has. But for those who have, it's often accompanied by a story of ultimate frugality or people cutting expenses to the bone and living what I think to a lot of people would look like a very joyless existence, or at least just an existence that's not necessarily worth the hard work you're doing in your job. And so I wanted to make it more accessible by stressing that you don't have to pinch pennies. You don't have to be super frugal. You don't have to be a natural super saver. And you also, frankly, don't have to be super frugal. You don't have to be a natural super saver. And you also, frankly, don't have to have a high income to get some form of early retirement. So the book talks, of course, about full early retirement, like what we were able to do. But given that that's just not accessible to everyone, like if you earn a medium wage and

you live in a big city where rents are expensive, mortgages are expensive, everything's expensive, you're just not going to be able to save 50% of your income. Like, let's just be real about that. But to me, that doesn't mean that you're excluded. It means that we just need to look at other options. So the book also talks at length about semi-retirement. Like if you can cut your hours down or get a good cushion of retirement savings

so that all you need to do now is cover your day-to-day expenses. Maybe that means you can work a whole lot less or you could work seasonally or part-time in some way. And then we also look at what I call career intermission. So could you take a year off work, you know, once or once every decade or even once every five years,

or just frankly have enough saved so that if a job is abusive, you can leave that job and not worry about how long it's going to take you to find another. Or I mean, things like, could you leave a relationship so that if it's bad, a lot of people stay in bad relationships because they can't afford to move out or they can't afford to leave. Like having that flexibility is really important for kind of personal empowerment. So it's all about all that stuff, but more importantly, doing it without having to like live a really extreme frugality lifestyle. Yeah. And I think a lot of people, when they think about FIRE, they do think about the extremes. And

it could just because some of the splashy stories that are out there are from people who went to the extremes in order to achieve it. I've talked to some people on my podcast and there's a lot of stories out there. So-and-so, early retirement by 35. And you're like, how the hell did they do that? And it's either they just, yeah, we're incredibly frugal, like, it's like, I can't imagine living like that. Or like you said, they're a really high net worth earner. And then so people will always be like, well, I can't live frugally like that. I don't want that lifestyle. Or, well, I'm not a high net worth earner, so I can't achieve that. But you kind of, it sounds like you're kind of taking note in your book talking about this isn't fire net,

isn't that like realistic for everybody? And but it's, but it's not really meant to be like, that's not why the movement was really created. It's for me, like when I think about it, I think of it as like kind of a cool aspiration, but it may not be. For myself, I'm like, I don't know if I will be able to realistically retire in my 40s, but I'm okay with that. And even still, if I probably look at lots of the strategies out there and read your book, I'd probably still be able to probably save more for my regular retirement, which is also a good thing to strive for. Absolutely. And I think some form of flexibility in how much you work

is accessible to most people. And that's really what I wanted to stress. Because I mean, the thing is that's so hilarious is like the early retirement movement, the talking point is sort of like never work again. I don't know a single early retired person who doesn't work at all. Who's not working. Yeah. I think that's really important to talk about because a lot of, yeah, the idea is that you, you know, kind of like you said, you opt out, you're not working anymore and you can do whatever you want. Well, most, most of the people that I know who've also achieved early retirement, they still work in some capacity. Just probably not the job that they did, but they're doing something and

they're probably also earning some other money on the side. And I think that's a big thing to talk about too. Totally. I think we are wired as humans to want to work in some way, to want to create things or do things or just to be active in a way that makes us relevant in the world. And like I think about for me, I've always written. I wrote in high school. I mean, I won a poetry contest in first grade. Like I have just always been a writer and it's something that I did for free for a very long time. And it's why I started the blog. I never expected my blog, Our Next Life, to actually be read by other people. I thought it was just for me. And so,

yeah, I know that there are those who will look at the fact that I wrote a book and say, oh, you're not retired. Like, you're missing the point. I have always written for free. I love writing. The fact that now someone actually wanted to publish it in a cover and put it in bookstores, I mean, like, that is a dream come true come true. Why would anyone say no? Come on. I know. And something that I wouldn't have been able to do if I still had my job, frankly. And so it's to me like if there's stuff that you would choose to do for free and it happens to pay you a little money in early retirement, awesome. That doesn't negate your early retirement. It just proves that something is accessible for a lot of people. And that also the thinking of early retirement as all or nothing is really flawed thinking because

most of us aren't going to sit around and just play video games. No, I agree with the idea that a lot of people's perception of what retirement is, is kind of flawed. And it could just be because the only idea most of us have of retirement is what's advertised to us, which is, you know, you're old and gray and on some sailboat for some reason. But it's, I agree. It's like, I feel like all the naysayers out there, they're like, oh, well, if you earn money in retirement, you're not really retired. It's like, well, sure. I don't think so. I think if you don't need to earn any extra money and you have just like cash that you can use as your income, then you're retired. If you earn money on top of that, good for you. We should all be striving to earn more money. Like, why not?

Yeah, totally. And we view anything that we earn now as kind of gravy and we allot it to a few different things. So last year, I got a book advance. It wasn't huge, but it was something. So we use that to add an extra trip. And so last year we went to Taiwan, Mexico, France, and Monaco. So the France and Monaco trip was like the bonus add-on. It didn't fundamentally change our lifestyle, but it let us do something awesome.

If we make more money this year, we've decided that we're going to use that to add to our donor advised fund, which is more charitable giving. So it's stuff like that where we don't rely on any of that. And I think that to me just feels like honestly the greatest privilege and the greatest power that we don't have to make any decisions on the basis of money and we can do really amazing things if we happen to get more. And like, I don't know, I just, I, I feel so lucky to be able to say that. And, and that, that is just something that I hope will inspire others because I do think it's easy to look day to day at your finances and say like, oh my gosh, how am I going to save? This is really hard. Look at all this stuff in front of me. But I think when you know what you're aiming for and you have your life vision in place, it's so much easier to make

different financial decisions than just saving to save, which is very boring. But if you save to get to this place of personal power and personal choice, it just, it's so, so worth it. So I really encourage everybody to think about it that way. Yeah. Being able to never compromise your values for money, being able to never compromise who you are or compromise what you dream of doing in life. It's just an amazing thing. And it's a lot more accessible than I think folks think because it's really not all or nothing. Absolutely. Now, obviously there's risks involved and that's also something that's always pinpointed in articles and stuff.

And I'm sure you saw like, you know, Sue Zorman was on that Afford Anything podcast, and then it went viral. Everyone's been talking about how she's so against fire, la la la. But, you know, there's some good points that she brings up, not necessarily that I agree with most of what she had to say, but she brings up like, what if something happens, basically? And you may have felt this, I don't know, but like, you know, with the whole around Christmas time, you know, the markets took a dip. How, as someone who is like in their retirement now, how does seeing market swings affect you? Like, are you like, it's okay. Cause we're in this for the longterm and you're still obviously investing your money, but like, how does that kind of affect your future plans? Does it have any effect?

To be honest, it doesn't. I honestly think Susie had really good points in that conversation with Paula. She was talking about the unknowns of healthcare expenses, which is a hundred percent right on. She was talking about things that you might need as an older person or the fact that a lot of expenses in the US and Canada, especially, are increasing it faster than the rate of inflation. And those are all legit points. I mean, I do think Susie is quite out of touch with what things cost. She spent several million dollars caring for her mom in nursing home care. That's not maybe the level that most people are going to need. That's one nice nursing home. Yeah. I suspect it was. But I think people took some of her numbers and then wrote off all the arguments underlying them, which I think was a mistake. And I think that being really honest

with yourself about risk is super important. And so I talk about that extensively in Work Optional of how can you build in different levels of contingency so you have some backup sources of capital. We talk a lot about sequence of returns risk, which is exactly what you're talking about with the markets diving. The markets doing badly early in your retirement is the single biggest risk to your money lasting. And so we talk about building up a cash cushion so that you don't have to sell when shares are down. We talk about looking at a lower safe withdrawal rate. So people often will talk about the 4% quote unquote rule. And I talk a lot about why you might consider a lower rate withdrawal rate. So people often will talk about the 4% quote unquote rule. And I talk a lot about why you might consider a lower rate than that, like maybe three to three and a

half percent. Yeah, I've been seeing that actually in articles, people saying, you know, that rule may be a bit outdated. People should maybe consider it more of a 3%. That might be a bit safer. Yeah. And I know that that's a bummer to hear if you're looking at like, okay, so for folks who aren't familiar, the 4% rule basically says that if you have a portfolio in retirement, you should be able to start by withdrawing 4% at the beginning and then adjust that upward by the CPI, the Consumer Price Index, which is an inflation index in the US. Adjust that up by the CPI each year and then take that amount out, adjust it annually, and you have a very good chance of not running out of money. However, that's based on past market returns. And there are a lot of folks who think that there's a good reason that returns won't reflect that in the future. And so regardless,

whether they will or not, going to a slightly lower withdrawal rate of three to three and a half percent really increases your chances of your money lasting. And that, again, like I know that sounds like a bummer because that's looking at instead of saving up 25 times your annual spending, you might need to save 30 to 33 times. But I really do believe that anyone who can save 25 times your annual spending can save 30 times your annual spending. And especially once you get to that point with compounding and interest and all that stuff helping you, it really takes a lot less time to get from that last, you know, that last five X of spending than you'd think. And it gives you so much more peace of mind, so much more comfort to know that you're not going to run out of money when you're old and can't do much about it. And so that's a really big

topic of discussion in the book. It's just like making choices for yourself, but understanding the risks and deciding how you want to choose to mitigate them. Absolutely. And I know another thing that you hear from people is, you know, we've talked about some of the arguments out there like, oh, you have to be a high net worth earner or you have to live really frugally. What do people say to you about like, but what if I want to have a family or raise a family and be early retired? Like, is that even a possibility? Yeah, it's a super common question because of course most people do have kids and Mark and I don't. And I've always been really transparent about that fact. And so certainly we were able to retire early much faster than we would have

been able to if we had kids. But because that is most people's experience, I included a ton of case studies in the book of families and folks who do have children to show how they did it and different ways that they kind of counteract some of those expenses or how they think about saving. So I really wanted to show that just because I'm the one telling the story and I don't have kids, that doesn't mean that it's only possible if you share my circumstances. Like we earned six figures each. We didn't come out of college with huge debt. Like we definitely had advantages and I want people to understand that. So the book is not about, here's what I did. You do the same thing. It's saying, I did this, but more importantly, I did a lot of homework about

how this can be applied broadly, including to people with, I did a lot of homework about how this can be applied broadly, including to people with kids and give a lot of guidance to, you know, really just make your own plan. That's the goal. It's not to copy what I did. It's to, it's to do something that suits you and your situation. And if that includes a family, that's great. That's still totally doable. And you, you mentioned before, I think I hit the record button, that the book isn't just you and your story. You interview a lot of other people who are able to also attain fire. What are some of the stories of those people that you found very interesting? Are they different from yours or there's a lot of similarities?

Yeah. Everybody's story in the book is a little bit different. And I would just say, generally, the book is not about me. It's not like a memoir that tells the story of the journey. You know, the story of our journey is pretty boring. It was basically figuring out systems to help us save and then letting time pass. And that's not the most compelling read. It's instead a guide to help you think about your life and your finances and get on the path that feels right to you. But in those stories, some were, I have a single woman who was really into making frugality kind of a hobby and a challenge. And I didn't personally relate to that because I am not naturally frugal,

but I wanted to put it in there for inspiration for people who like kind of making everything a game of how little can I spend on this? How little can I spend on this? I talked to a military family who is going to be able to retire in their mid forties because of military pension and healthcare. I talked to some other families where one woman went to work for herself after saving a good cushion so that she's still working, but she's now working at home. So she gets more time with her kids and her family while the kids are still young. And even though it's going to slow her down a little bit on the path to full early retirement, it gives her much more quality time in the meantime. So it's really just stories all

over the place of people doing what's right for their situation. And that's, I think, ultimately what I wanted to show is there's no right answer here. It's really about what is your life now? What do you want it to be? How can you go from where you are now to where you'd like to be in the fastest amount of time possible, but without making your life miserable in the meantime? Yeah. I would love to know the secret sauce for that. Now, do you find that most people... I'm curious too, because I know you've talked to so many people over the years and also just doing the book, but have you found any kind of failure stories of people trying to attain it

and just not quite making it? And what are some like potential pitfalls or things that people do wrong to basically force them to be like, sorry, you have to start at square one or you have to, or maybe you did, you know, reach fire or you thought you did and then you had to go get a job again because you couldn't afford it. Yeah. I think that most of the stories that I've personally heard have been along the lines of people who probably saved adequately financially, but didn't think about the life portion of early retirement and then got to the other side and just weren't happy and so went back to work. And so that's one sort of feeling, you know, where I think you really do have to plan for both parts. I would say the rest of it,

there was a really fascinating story that ran in MarketWatch in December, you know, where I think you really do have to plan for both parts. I would say the rest of it, there was a really fascinating story that ran in MarketWatch in December, I think, which I'm sure you can share in the show notes about what happens when people under plan. And I think in a lot of those circumstances, it really stemmed from people taking the idea of early retirement to too far of an extreme. So in some cases, like we've seen people sell a house and move into a van and say, okay, we're going to save enough so that we can afford van life indefinitely. Well, like that's cool in your twenties or maybe 30, but like. I don't want to be 60 living in a van. Then you're that old crazy person in a van. Right. And also, yeah. And like, what if you need extended medical care? If you live in a permanent

house that you can modify for a wheelchair, you can stay in your home and get in-home care. Whereas if you need to, you know, if you live in a van, you can't do that there. So you're going to have to go into a nursing home and that's much more expensive. And at least in the U S that's not covered by Medicare, whereas in-home care is. So thinking through stuff like that, that's something that I cover a lot in the book, but it is something that I've seen where people really go for it. You know, there's this like hip term right now of lean fire. I kind of hate the terms of lean fire. Yeah, I've heard of lean fire and fat fire. Who knew there were so many different versions of fire? Is there an average fire, lean fire, and fat fire? Is that how it goes?

You know, to be honest, I'm not sure. And I don't like those designations because everybody's number is going to be different and sort of classifying like, okay, this is fat fire. Like, that's just silly. Your number should be totally based on your own life. Also, no regular person will know what you're talking about, so who cares? Right? It's like, I'm fat fire. It's like, what the hell is that? Yeah, for sure. And I think that a lot of the stories that I've heard have been folks who are, if we're going to accept that jargon, which again, I don't like it, but have been folks who are more on the lean fire end of like, what's the minimum we can save? And then they haven't really thought through sequence of returns risk. Like they haven't thought about what happens if markets tank for an extended period, or they haven't thought through what if we need to change our living situation and move to somewhere more permanent. And that's the stuff that, you know, I just think is so important to think through. It's like, it's great if you want to live like a nomad for

however many years, but then what? Then what if you're sick or you lose some of your mobility, which is really common. Or your family gets sick and you have to care for them. Totally. There's some important things too, because I know a lot of people in the farm movement are younger, like in their 20s or 30s. And I think there's something to be said about having some life experience, really, just experiencing family getting ill or market swings. I mean, a lot of people in their 20s have never experienced a market crash. And you're like, oh, so you have no idea how you're going to react when there's the next recession. And I think it's important. Yeah. Oh, it's so

true. And most of the FIRE blogs have popped up since the 2008 financial crisis. And so I do think there's a huge amount of recency bias in there of people assuming that the kind of stock market returns we've enjoyed over the last decade are normal, which of course they are so not. This has been the longest bull market in history until recently. And so, yeah, we have to talk about that. We have to talk about long-term average returns and not just recent returns where people are making 10% to 15% a year. Great, I'm glad for you, but you can't expect that all the time. No. Yeah. It's just, I think as I get older and I talk to younger people about this, I'm like, oh, you didn't experience the recession like I did. I was in the thick of it, like right at the beginning. And it's always in the back of my

mind that it's going to happen again because it will. But it's like, it was so traumatic for so many people. It's like, oh yeah. It kind of drives me crazy when people are like, oh no, this is just how much you're going to earn. I'm like, no, not forever. Just wait. Yeah. Yeah. I'm totally with you. Yeah. Well, I feel like I've I can't wait to share your book. It's out in February. And I'm going to, of course, include more information in the show notes. I'm so glad that we had this chance to kind of find out what you're doing now after a year and now you're out in the public and doing awesome and have this amazing book that I think will – not just – I'm really glad that it's not just about sharing your story, which I think is important.

Like you've got a great story and it's very cool to like learn about a real person who did this, but learning about other people's stories too and you have a lot of great information. I mean you always had great information on your website, but I'm excited that you have now a book that you can share with everybody. Yeah. I'll just say my blog approach has always been, I don't like bloggers or financial experts who go out and say, this is the way you do it. It's X, Y, Z. Because we say this all the time to where it becomes trite that personal finance is personal, but I really, really believe that. And so I have always made it my mission in the blog, rather than saying, here are all the answers, I've tried to say, here are the right questions

to ask yourself, a lot of which I think people are not asking. And so translating that into a book was a little bit tough because you do have to give some answers in a book. You can't just say, here's a long list of questions. But I think I was able to do it in a way where there are a lot of questions in the book. It asks you to think really hard about what you want out of life, what you're willing to change in your finances, what you're not willing to change. And then it lets you build all of that into a comprehensive plan that isn't just some cookie cutter like ABC, here's what you do. It does require a comprehensive plan that isn't just some cookie cutter like ABC, here's what you do. It does require a lot of the reader to do that hard thinking. But I think if

you're game to do that, you'll come away with a really, really strong plan that sets you up for success. And that's something I'm really proud of. So I'm so excited that you let me come here and talk about it. And I'm excited for it to be out in the world on February 12th. I know. I feel like this is like a great book for not just people like thinking about fire or who even know it, but like, this is a great book for anyone at a turning point in their life or need some guidance in their life. Like this would have been a great book for me to pick up when I first finished university just to get my, cause a lot of the finance books are so dry. Like this is the least exciting and it, you know, and then

like you can kind of work backwards to be like, I want to achieve this cool, cool goal. Um, how do I do that? So let's start with the budget and kind of work your way that way. So I think it is a great book for like, if you're, you know, finishing school and just starting your life, or if you're, you know, in those turning points as us millennials have several of switching careers and so on and so forth, this is a great book to kind of be like, what do I want? What do I want my life to be? And then adding the kind of financial component to it. Yeah. Yeah, absolutely. Awesome. Well, okay. So where can people find or buy the book, get more information about you in

the book? Where can they look? You can buy the book wherever books are sold. So Amazon is always a good one. Yeah. Yeah. And please use Jess's link if you're going to buy it off Amazon. Yes, please. And otherwise you can find me at ournextlife.com, which is my blog. And I have info about the book, Post Your Bear. And your podcast. I forgot to even mention your podcast, which has done so, so well, The Fairer Sense. Thank you. Yeah. You can find me at The Fairer Sense, C-E-N-T-S, with my co-host, Cara Perez. And that is currently in season three. It airs every Wednesday. And then, yeah, on social, I'm at our underscore next life on both Twitter and Instagram and slash our next life on Facebook. So lots of places, lots of places. Awesome. Thanks so much for taking the time to chat with me, Tanya.

Always so good to talk to you. Thanks again. And that was episode 185 with the wonderful Tanya Hester. Make sure to check out her website, our next life, lots of great stuff on that. The blog is really what, um, kind of catapulted her to, you know, she went viral because of her blog. And once she announced on her blog that her and her husband were able to retire early, you know, it was in the press and everything like that and helped her get this book deal. Now she has a book called Work Optional. So make sure to check that out. Also check out the show notes, jessicamorehouse.com slash 185. All the info about what we talked about, some important links you may want to check out. So go to the show notes.

Other things I'm going to share, including what? Another contest. If you want to win a copy of Tanya's book, which you of course would because it's super exciting. Stick around. Just a few words I want to share about this episode's sponsor that I'm going to share how you can win a copy of her book. This episode of the Mo Money Podcast is supported by the Canada Deposit Insurance Corporation, CDIC. Did you know that if you bank with a member of

CDIC, your eligible deposits with that bank will be protected up to $100,000 in each of CDIC's seven different categories. So if you had $100,000 of eligible deposits in an account in one name and $100,000 of eligible deposits in a joint account, your entire $200,000 would be protected at the same financial institution. That being said, CDIC does not insure stocks, bonds, mutual funds, or other investments. Just cash and term deposits like GICs with original terms to maturity of five years or less. There's quite a bit to know about how CDIC protects you, so why not test your knowledge with their free trivia challenge at depositinsuranceendurance.com. Or to learn the ins and outs of how CDIC works so you can feel confident about the safety of your savings, visit cdic.ca. Once again,

that's cdic.ca. All righty-roo. Are you ready? Are you ready for this? If you want to win a copy of Tanya Hester's book, Work Optional, go to jessicabarhams.com slash workoptional. Super easy. You probably could have figured that one out. But any mahoo, I just want to also remind you, I'm giving away a copy of her book. I'm giving away a copy of Melissa Leong's book, Happy Go Money, and a copy of Shannon Lee Simmons' book, Living Debt Free. So a lot of books I'm giving away. So might as well enter all of these contests for your chance to win a copy of their wonderful books. And I have a lot more authors coming on the show throughout the next couple months.

And that means more book giveaways. I'm just like feeling like very giving lately, I guess. So I'm just like, yeah, let's do it. Let's give away some shiz. Yeah. So very excited about that. What else can I share with you? Oh, I know. So we talked, you know, a little bit about investing in this episode. And if this is something that you want to get started with, if maybe FIRE, independence, retiring early or just retiring at all is a financial goal of yours, which probably is, you probably want to get started as soon as possible, as early as possible. That's pretty much the only way you're going to be able to achieve all of those things. So make sure to check out the show notes for some more details about my new online investing

course called Investing Foundations for Canadians. You can also go to jessicamorehouse.com slash investing foundations. It is a course I created to break down what investing means, the terminology, the different, you know, components, the different investment products, the different investment accounts, what the hell an RRSP means and how to utilize it the best way, what an index fund is, and is it actually a mutual fund or is a mutual fund something different than an index fund? I get into all of that really important stuff. So when you are ready to invest, you know what to do. You know how to talk to someone about it. You know what it means to use

a robo-advisor and what they're talking about in terms of like rebalancing your portfolio. You'll know what that means. So make sure to check out that. There's a free preview so you can take a look. And yeah, you're not going to regret it. There's some already great reviews from past students. So check it out. Yeah. Okay. That is it for me. Thanks so much for listening. I'll be back here next Wednesday with a fresh new episode. So as always, have an amazing week. And if you, you know, want to send me some love, give me an iTunes review.

I'm going to give you a shout out on a future episode. So yeah, I'm going to stop talking now. Thanks so much for listening. I'll see you back here next Wednesday. Have a great week. This podcast is distributed by the Women in Media Podcast Network. Find out more at womeninmedia.network.