The Personal Finance Podcast - Hit This Number and You Can STOP SAVING! (Even When You are Young)

Starting point is 00:00:00 On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to talk about Coast Fire. What's up, everybody, and welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm your host, Andrew, founder of MasterMoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're going to be diving into one of my favorite topics, which is Coastfire. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to MasterMoney.com slash newsletter. and you can respond to any of those newsletters and ask your questions.

Starting point is 00:00:39 Also, if you're getting value out of the show, consider following us on Apple Podcast, Spotify, YouTube, or your favorite podcast player. And if you are really getting value of the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, today, we're going to be diving into Coast Fire. And I'm going to be explaining what Coast Fire is, why it's such a powerful method. and we're going to go into a lot of different things about Coastfire. I want you to think about this for a second.

Starting point is 00:01:10 What if you could stop saving for retirement in your mid-30s or in your early 40s? And you had the ability then to still retire comfortably at the age of 65. Maybe you feel as though you're getting burned out at your daily job. You're sitting in your cubicle right now or you're sitting in your office right now and you're saying to yourself, I don't know how I'm going to continue to keep pushing like this for a bunch of years further down the road. vote. Maybe you feel as though I want to be financially independent, but becoming fully financially independent seems so difficult in my 30s. I would have to save so much money. I'd have to reduce my spending drastically. And this is something that feels as though it is way out of reach. How would

Starting point is 00:01:49 I ever do this with the rising cost of living in addition to trying to just get myself to financial independence? Listen, I know it can be stressful. I know how hard this can be. And in fact, that's why this podcast exists to help unlock this for you. Because I remember how you felt in your exact position right now. And it wasn't until I had the lightball moment understanding, oh, I have more options than I ever thought I actually did. But I just have to make sure that I understand how to manage my money well so that I can take advantage of those options. See, people who don't manage their money well, they can't take advantage of very specific opportunities that are laid out for each and every single one of us. And in fact, most people don't realize

Starting point is 00:02:26 you have free will. And with that free will, you can do a lot of very cool things with your money, but you got to get a little bit creative. Most people teach you to take the traditional path, get a job, go to work, commute every single day, come home, make dinner, pay your bills, get up every morning again, the alarm clock goes off at 7 a.m. You drive to work, you go to work all day, you come home, you make dinner, you pay bills. What is that call? You're just working in a circle and that is called the grind. And there's nothing wrong with the grind. All of us are grinding right now. We are out here grinding in these streets. But guess what?

Starting point is 00:03:05 There's some really cool stuff that you can do with your money. And so that's why I'm going to present Coast Fire to you. Now, we've talked about Coast Fire in this show a couple of different times. We've had Andy Hill on the podcast who has achieved Coast Fire and we've had conversations about it with him. We've had specific episodes very early on in this podcast talking about Coast Fire. But I want to touch on this again because I feel as though Coast Fire needs to be a milestone for a lot of our wealth builders out there.

Starting point is 00:03:29 A lot of you out there need to work on thinking through Coast Fire. so that once you achieve it, you can relax a little bit. You don't have to worry so much about being stressed out about your money. Instead, you can enjoy your dollars more by achieving Coast Fire early and often. And the beautiful thing about this is, maybe you're like, I wish I could achieve full fire by the time I'm age 30. Well, if you can't do that, that's okay. Coast Fire is attainable for many folks out there.

Starting point is 00:03:56 And once you have a plan in place to get there, it's going to really, really be a big, big difference for you. So by the end of this episode, you're going to be going to be a big, to know how to calculate your coast fire number. You're going to know what Coastfire is. You're going to know how it works. You're going to know everything you need to know about Coastfire. I'm trying to make this an ultimate guide for you so that you can then go out and see, is this work for my family? Does this work for me specifically? And is this a goal that I actually want to go after and achieve. If you're in your 20s, if you're in your 30s, it's going to be even easier for you because you have so much time for this money to compound. If you're in your 40s or your 50s, you can still achieve Coast Fire. And I'm going to show you exactly how this works. Okay. So what is Coast Fire? That's the big question many people are asking if you are new to financial independence or if you're new to building wealth. So what Coast Fire is, it means that you've invested enough where you don't have to contribute another dollar to retirement and compound interest is actually going to carry you across the goalpost by the time you turned age 65.

Starting point is 00:04:55 Now, 65 is not a hard set number. You can achieve Coast Fire if you want to retire by 55 or 45, but you just got to do the math to understand how this works. Now, you are not financially independent today, but you will be financially independent later. And here's the thing. The thing about Coastfire is time does all the heavy lifting for you. Your money starts to work for you as an employee to you instead of you having to work so hard for your money. I love that concept. I love the idea of my money working for me because the more dollars I get working for me, the faster I can become financially free and live the life that you actually want. how many of you are sitting there right now saying to yourself, man, I am just not doing what I thought I was going to do. This is not what I was called to do.

Starting point is 00:05:41 This is not what I was led to do. This is not what I feel as though I should be doing. And so you're sitting at your desk right now or you're sitting there at a job site right now. And you're saying to yourself, ah, there's got to be more to this life than just going to work and coming home. Coast Fire is one of those things that gives you that freedom and that flexibility. Why? Because then you don't have to make as much to make contributions to your investments. and instead you can just cover your bills.

Starting point is 00:06:04 And so that's what I want you to understand as we start to think through this. And the cool thing about Coastfire is I want you to think about this as you are trying to get a big boulder over a hill. And so Coastfire is the time frame where you are pushing this boulder up this hill. And once you get it to the top, all of a sudden you get to let go the boulder. You've done all the hard work and it just rolls down the hill for you to the other side. this is what I want you to think through when it comes to Coastfire. The ancient Egyptians are well known for being able to move multi-ton giant blocks across hills and mountains and all these different areas and nobody has any idea how they did it.

Starting point is 00:06:46 Nobody has any idea how they moved it across the hill or those blocks. But many people have come up with different ideas of different mechanisms that hate they have used. And in reality, I want you to think about the same thing. You are building something that is massive. The massive thing, the pyramid, is your portfolio. And you are pushing block after block towards that pyramid. And then all of a sudden, imagine if that pyramid got built for you after a few years. You built the first quarter of that pyramid and then all of a sudden the entire pyramid was built up.

Starting point is 00:07:19 That's what Coast Fire does. It automatically helps you build wealth and allows you to do this on autopilot. And you know, Andrew is. all for building wealth on autopilot. That's the big thing. So the goal with Coastfire is you are still working. You are still working towards your goals, but you can stop saving when it comes to retirement. You can stop saving for retirements if you want to. Now, not everyone is comfortable just stopping in total, but you can stop if you want to, and that's why it is really powerful. Now, why does this work? Well, the reality is the reason why this works is because of compound

Starting point is 00:07:55 interest. Time is going to beat your contributions every single time. And if you can get money, invested early and often, a dollar invested at age 30 does far more for that dollar than if you started to invest it at age 45. And so if you are starting off early here and you decide, okay, I want to get these dollars invested, it's going to make a huge difference. At age 30, $300,000 invested with no more contributions over the course of the next 35 years at a 10% rate of return can grow up to $8.4 million. Let me say that again, because I want people to understand this. If you start at age 30 with 30, with $10,000, rate of return to $8.00,000. Let me say that. It's $300,000 invested.

Starting point is 00:08:32 Let's say you just really hustled. And you got to age 30 and you had 300 grand invested. You were maxing out your 401K. You were maxing out your Roth IRA. Maybe you're a teenager listening right now and you started as a teenager just saving and investing. And you watched this money grow over the next 12 years. And you had $300,000 invested. And you stopped by age 65.

Starting point is 00:08:50 If you never added another dollar to this account at a 10% rate of return, you would have $8.4 million in. of that account. Boy, oh boy, is that something. That is a amazing example of compound interest and how much power you have by investing early and often and what time can do. But even if you're in your 40s and you're like, oh, I missed a boat. This is too late. No, it's not too late. You can still do this and there are cool things that you can do here. You're just going to have to work a little harder. Put a little more elbow grease in there. We're going to have to hustle a little bit more. But that's my specialty is helping you out because you'll be able to really make a huge difference

Starting point is 00:09:28 because you still have time. If you're 45, you still got 20 years, my friend. And with 20 years left, there's a lot that you can do. Now, if you got a 7% rate of return with that same exact example, it would still be $3.2 million. Now, in today's spending power, that is really, really powerful. If you've been listening to this show for a while, you know it's not just me anymore.

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Starting point is 00:11:12 one of my favorite upgrades we've made and we got it from Wayfair. I wanted something that looked clean, professional without spending a fortune or making the project overly complicated. And the slat wall completely changed the look of the studio and it's now the backdrop for every single We record. You're probably looking at it right now if you're watching on video. And one thing I appreciated was how easy Wayfair made it to compare options. Between the customer reviews, real photos, and Wayfair verified products that are hand-vetted for quality and durability, I felt confident I was getting something that would look great and last. And if you're planning a home project of your own, Wayfair Rewards gives you 5% back every day, making those upgrades at an even better

Starting point is 00:11:52 value. So join Wayfair rewards today to get 5% back on every purchase and start saving on your next home upgrade. Head to Wayfair.com to shop all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R dot com. Wayfair, every style, every home. So once you achieve Coastfire, there's a couple of things that are going to come into play here, and I'll teach you how to achieve Coast Fire a second. But once you do it, there's some things that change. One, is every dollar that you earn becomes optional. This is not something where you have to worry about every single dollar going towards your investments. It becomes optional in terms of if you invest those dollars or not. So I achieved Coast Fire in my late 20s. And when I did it, this was something where I had to make

Starting point is 00:12:41 a choice. Well, do I want to continue investing to grow my portfolio over time? Or do I want to stop right now? And here's the thing. If I would have stopped right then and there, my life changed a lot in my early 30s. I was already married, but I had kids, and I had three kids over the course of the first five years of my 30s. And so my goalpost changed. My goals changed. And so I'm glad I continue to invest, even though I hit Coastfire. But I knew in the back of my head, well, if I wanted to take a risk or I wanted to go after it, I wouldn't have to worry as much about doing something like that, because at least my Coast Fire number would get me to the place in time where I would have my minimum retirement number. And that's my goal when I was thinking about this. But then once the goal post

Starting point is 00:13:23 changed, I continued to invest and continue to allow my dollars to grow over time. And honestly, I'm super passionate about investing. And so when it comes to this, I just like doing it. I like getting more dollars into my investments. It's one of the things that I get true value out of is investing my dollars and watching them grow. Now, but what could you do? Well, you may decide, I want to work less. I don't want to work as many hours anymore to earn the extra $1,000 that I am investing every single month or the extra $500 that I'm investing every single month, but the extra $200 that I am investing every single month. And some of you out there are investing a lot more than that. But you may be saying, well, maybe I'm just going to work less. I'm

Starting point is 00:13:59 going to reduce the amount of hours that I'm working because we don't need this anymore. Or maybe you're in a two-income household and one parent wants to stay home with the kids. And so you don't need that extra income because most of that income was going towards investments and emergency fund. And you just need them to, you know, maybe make a part-time income from home for 15 hours a week. And so you have the flexibility to have. have one person working full time and one person staying home with the kids and spending time with them and building those memories and having the ability to just maybe make a little extra income. That's another option that you have. Maybe you decide you want to change careers and you

Starting point is 00:14:31 know that once you change careers, you're going to have to start from the middle or the bottom and you're going to have to work your way up with that career change. But this allows you to do so. I just talked to someone recently who's 33 years old who wants to go back to med school. They want to start over at med school. I love that. I have a family friend who started med school at 39. These are really cool things that you can do. And once you hit Coast Fire, you don't have to worry as much about those decisions because worst case scenario, you hit your retirement number. And so these are some cool flexibility things that you have. Maybe you want to start a business or maybe you want to downgrade and take a lower paying job that you're more passionate about. Maybe you're really passionate about teaching kids in high school. And you want to go back and be a high school teacher. And you know that once you restart, you're going to make $40, $60,000 per year. And that's your overall goal. Maybe you want to travel more. Maybe you want to take bigger risks. Coastfire allows you to have some optionality here and it allows you to have some flexibility. Now, as you can see, when I talk about stuff like this, imagine stacking something like Coast Fire or knowing the fact that you can do

Starting point is 00:15:32 something like barista fire or knowing that you have these options available to you. These are really powerful options. And if you stack a couple of them together, all of a sudden, you are diversifying your personal finances. And I think most people don't talk about this. They don't talk about diversifying their personal finances. Sure, you know about diversifying your portfolio, you know all about diversifying your assets, but you don't know about diversifying your personal finances. And that's one thing that I am really, really big on is thinking through ways that you can be flexible. I call it flexibility with your money, but it's also just diversifying your strategies that you have available to you when it comes to your finances.

Starting point is 00:16:10 The math is simple here. And I want to talk through how we're going to walk through this. But there's five things I want you to know. One is your current age. Now, when you get to be in your 30s like me. Sometimes I forget how old I am. I think I'm 35 when I'm 38. You know, you never really know how old you are. And in my mind, I'm still 21. So that's the one thing I want you to know. But you got to know your current age. You want to know your retirement age. So you want to know when you want to retire. Maybe for some of you, I know a lot of you I talk to in Master Money Academy. You all are saying you want to retire in your 50s. Some of you are saying, no, I want to keep working. I'm going to retire in my 60s. And some of you are saying, I want to retire in my 40s.

Starting point is 00:16:45 We're going to work on this. And we're going to work on how to figure all of this out. I want you to tell me your retirement goal. So how much you want to have in retirement, you're expected return. So the assumption that we are going to have in play here is, is it going to be a 7% return? Are you going to go assume a 10% rate of return? How are you going to think about this? Because you don't want to be off with that number. And so if you're thinking through, okay, well, I think I need to know what to do. I think, you know, 7% is right around the conservative number that is A. Okay. I like to be conservative when I'm planning for retirement. And then if it does better than that, that's great. And then you want your inflation assumption because we always

Starting point is 00:17:18 to factor in inflation when you're thinking about retirement numbers because inflation is going to what eat into your buying power so we want to make sure that we have that in play as well now what is the formula for this what is the coast fire formula how do we want to think about this well we have our retirement goal and so we want to go and look at our retirement goal and figure out exactly where we needed to be now this is just a compound interest calculation run backwards okay let's say for example, you want to spend $120,000 per year in retirement. You feel as though, okay, by the time I'm retired, I feel like I need $10,000 a month to be able to cover my living expenses. Okay? Well, if you want to spend $120,000 per year in retirement, you need your Coast Fire number to get you to $3 million by your

Starting point is 00:18:04 goal. So your goal age could be 60, could be 65. Doesn't matter what it is, but let's put in your goal age, okay and so let's say that at that 7% rate of return you decide you need to figure out where you need to be before you can hit that retirement goal now you can do this a number of different ways there's a lot of cool coastfire calculators online that are really really good that you can test out and use nerd wallet wealth partners has a really good one that we can link up down below that i think is fantastic but in reality you can use one of those or if you want to work backwards on this you can take out a compound interest calculator so that you can see a couple of different options you can say to yourself okay Well, I'm 30 years old now. By the time I turn age 35, I'm going to have 30 years before I reach retirement. So how much do I need to have invested in order to achieve that goals?

Starting point is 00:18:51 So let's look at this for a second. So all you got to do is take 120,000, multiply that by 25, and that's going to be your goal number. So if you want to spend that $120,000 per year, you multiply that by 25, and that is going to be $3 million is what you want to have invested, okay? So let's say you get there and you want to get to that $3 million invested. But you have 30 years before you want to get there. You're 30 years old now. You want to try to get to the number you need invested by age 35.

Starting point is 00:19:15 So over the course of the next five years, how much do we actually need? So you can start to plug this into a compound interest calculator. I'm going to do this live right now as we're talking. And we can look and see, okay, well, at a 7% rate of return, $200,000 is only going to get me to $1.5 million. All right. Let's bump it up to $300,000 at a 7% rate of return. That's going to give me to $2.2 million.

Starting point is 00:19:37 All right. Let's bump it up to $400,000. And that's going to get me to $300,000. $3,044,000. It's a simple calculation, and a lot of times people overcomplicate this, but you just got to play with some of these calculators and make it a lot easier. But again, there's plenty of Coast Fire calculators out there that are great that are just going to do this work for you. But if you want to kind of test out these assumptions and kind of play around with some of the numbers, you can also do it inside of an investment calculator to get those numbers right.

Starting point is 00:20:01 I just recommend using a Coast Fire calculator. That's the easiest one because you just fill in your answers. NerdWalt-Walth Partners, again, has a great one. We can put down below. But I think that's kind of the route that I would go. I think Wallet Burst has one. There's a couple other. I think even Andy Hill has one on MarriageKids and Money.com. There's a bunch of great ones out there that you can kind of test out. And kind of compare the two.

Starting point is 00:20:20 Compare some of these calculators together. I think that's going to be something where once you start to do those comparisons, it can be really, really helpful. So I want to give you a couple of new examples here because these examples, I think, are really helpful. And whenever we do case studies on the show, people absolutely love it. So I want to make sure that we're doing case studies for each and every single one of you as we start to think about this. So example one is I want you to meet our 28-year-old engineer Marquise.

Starting point is 00:20:45 Now, Marquise is someone who is interested in Coastfire and his goal is to have $2 million by the age of 65. So Marquise has 37 years for his money to compound and he already has $260,000 invested. Now, when you are an engineer, you make a good income. And so because you have that good income, you can put those dollars aside and have the ability to get to a level like this when you're 28 years old. If you're listening right now and you're like, I don't make an income like that, don't worry. We can go look at some of this as well for different scenarios. But if your goal is $2 million by the age of 65, because Marquise wants to spend $80,000 per year, and at a 7% rate of return, that $2,000 is going to grow to about $3.2 million by the time Marquise is age 65. So he's already there

Starting point is 00:21:29 plus an extra million dollars if he wants to. Now, if you want to be a conservative at a 6% rate of return, he'd have about $2.25 million, so both these examples are already past his goal. So his Coast Fire number today is only about $164,000 needed at a 7% rate of return, or $232,000 at a 6% rate of return. And he's above both of those numbers. Now, this is the cool thing that I want everybody listening to understand. Many of you listening right now might have this epiphany and not realize that Coast Fire exists. And you might have this epiphany where you go to one of these calculators and you go plug it in and all of a sudden you realize, oh my goodness, I'm Coastfire already. How cool is that? Many of you out there could be because a lot of you wealth builders, when you send in questions or I talk to you in Master Money Academy, you've already most likely hit the number, which is such a cool thing to see. Because once you realize this, you're like, oh my gosh, I'm in a way better situation than I ever thought I was. And for many people out there, you're listening to me right now and you're like, is this real? Like, is this something that actually can be done? Yes. You just got to do the math and understand how this works. And be conservative, which you're

Starting point is 00:22:34 your numbers. I don't want you using a 12% rate of return or 11% just to make it work easier because then you're going to end up with a retirement that is possibly at risk because you didn't run the numbers properly early on. No, instead, we just want to make sure that we are doing this in a simple way at a 7% rate of return. If you want to be really conservative, you can even go to 6%. But if you're worried about the future of the USA or whatever you're invested in, then just be conservative at a 6%. Or if you feel as though your portfolio is going to prove 6%, then look at it that way. And that's the cool thing about this example, as many people could be Coast Fire and not even know it. Now, let's look at an example number two. Now, this is a high income example. And so this is going to be a physician.

Starting point is 00:23:14 And our physician's name is going to be Karen. Okay. So Karen has a goal of $3 million at the age of 65. And she is 25 years old right now. So she has about $150,000 invested currently. And at a 7% rate of return, where Karen currently is with $150,000 invested, that grows to about $814,000. She is nowhere near her goal of $3 million. Okay? Her Coast Fire number today is about $550,000, and she is well below it. So since she is a physician and she's making $400,000 per year, she is going to need to adjust her plan and start investing more dollars so that she can catch up.

Starting point is 00:23:51 And she's going to have to plug these numbers in the calculator. So she decides, okay, what I'm going to do is I'm going to have an aggressive path for saving over the course of the next five years. I am going to reduce my spending. I am going to live like I did in college. I'm going to live like I did in residency, and I am going to move on and have the ability to retire. And as my income increases, I'm going to take those raises and I'm going to save them so I can hit coastfire by a certain age. That way, I have the ability to know that at a certain point in time, if I want to stop saving and investing and I want to go enjoy more of my dollars than I am making with this high income, I absolutely can. High income earners, and I know we have a lot of you who listen to this podcast.

Starting point is 00:24:26 If you are a high income earner, I want to tell you this right now. You have the ability to do some amazing things with your money. But it comes down to you. You have to take the responsibility and know that many high earners right now in this country are living paycheck to paycheck. And if you are living paycheck to paycheck, I want you to know that I can help you. I can help you through this process, continue to listen to this podcast or join our one-on-one coaching for high earners.

Starting point is 00:24:53 These are the things that are going to help you dramatically long term. But you need to understand that you have the most valuable asset of all which is a high income. And if you waste that high income, all the work that you did to earn that income is just being thrown into the wind buying things that you don't care about. When in reality, what you really care about is freedom. You care about freedom. And so for many of you out there, if you can break that paycheck to paycheck cycle, which is not easy, I understand it.

Starting point is 00:25:20 But if you can break that paycheck to paycheck cycle, you will maximize your dollars and maximize the amount of time and energy and work that you are putting into making this money. I know how hard it is to get to that level. And when you get there, you got to make sure that you understand where your dollars are going, especially up front and having a plan in place and an automated plan in place, in fact, is the really big key so that you can focus your time and energy on your career and your family and not have to worry about your money all the time. That's the key.

Starting point is 00:25:46 Now, let me give you a third example of someone who is a teacher, who maybe their income is a little lower than the first two examples. And let's look at this teacher in terms of how they can think about this. Now, one, teachers have an option for them. They have something called a pension. And that pension can help a lot of teachers if you are going to work the amount of time that it takes to earn your pension. If you're not, then don't count it as guaranteed income instead plan for not having that pension, okay? But we're going to use a teacher that has a pension that covers a big chunk.

Starting point is 00:26:14 So the investment goal is smaller. So this teacher at age 35 needs about $600,000 from investments at age 65 and currently has about $90,000 invested. Okay? So this teacher needs a lot less than what most people would need because they have a pension in place. Maybe you work for a union. Maybe you work for a big company that's had pensions for a long time. And this is a guaranteed pension. You want to make sure the pension's guaranteed, but it's a guaranteed pension.

Starting point is 00:26:40 Maybe you work for your city. Maybe you work for your county and they all have pensions. Those are really good benefits, guys. If they are guaranteed and they're vested and they're locked in and you have that pension in place, boy, oh boy, is that great. So at a 7% rate of return, since this teacher already has 90,000, thousand dollars invested. This grows to about $685,000, which is past the goal. And so Coast Fire today is only about $79,000. That's all he needs, this teacher needs, in order to be able to invest those dollars. So a pension can be something that is a Coast Fire cheat code, because all you

Starting point is 00:27:15 got to do with when you have a pension, maybe you have Social Security, is you got to just fill in the gaps so that you can save and invest less. So for those of you out there who, you know, have that pension available, maybe you're a mill, military, maybe you're a teacher. Whatever you are doing right now, utilize your pension as a tool and a massive tool when it comes to retirement. But you want to make sure that it vests. I think the big mistake most people make is they're guessing, I'm going to get a pension, but then all of a sudden 15 years down the line, they don't have that guaranteed pension. And they realize they don't want to do this job anymore. And so you want to plan in a way that makes sense. But if you know that you're going to get that pension, it is a cheat code for sure when it comes to Coastfire. So now let's talk about some of the biggest advantages of Coast Fire. and then I want to talk about some of the downsides as well. So first, let's get into some of the biggest advantages. Well, Coast Fire, I think, for many people, you can see the largest advantage, which is it reduces your overall financial stress.

Starting point is 00:28:09 You don't have to stress as much about making sure that you're hitting your retirement goals and hitting your retirement numbers. No, you have your retirement question answered by just achieving Coast Fire. And this is why I think a lot of you out there, when you're trying to think through what is the first couple of things I should be doing with my money. Well, sure, I know I need to get my employer match and I need to make a sure I have my emergency fund in place. But, you know, once I get that stuff going and I get that stuff rolling, what should I really be targeting here? I think you should be targeting Coastfire early

Starting point is 00:28:36 because it reduces that stress and it reduces that anxiety. Even if you aren't going to achieve Coast Fire for the next decade, you're going to take it slow, but you want to hit this number. I love that for you. I love that for you because it removes the big monkey off your back. It removes the weight of the world on your back and allows you to have the ability to save and invest to these dollars. Plus, what's another advantage? Well, think about the career flexibility you have. If you achieve Coastfire, you have flexibility to do what you want with your job as long as your job can cover your bills and it can cover your expenses. That's pretty cool. That is a cool position to be in that most people probably don't realize they currently could be in right now.

Starting point is 00:29:16 So if you're a good saver or investor, check your Coast Fire number to see if you have that flexibility. But you could take the more interesting job that fulfills your days more than the high. higher paying one. I love that because for years and years and years, what I did was I had to take the higher paying job just to be able to make sure that I was doing this the right way. And so for many of you out there, you're probably doing the same thing. I know people in Master Money Academy have to do that. They talk through this and they're like, I got these two jobs. One pays a lot more, but one just, you know, lets me have this flexibility and I can kind of do what I want and they don't really bother me. You want to have the one that lets you have the flexibility that they don't bother you.

Starting point is 00:29:51 But the only way that you can worry about that as much is if you have this Coast Fire number hits. Okay. Another thing about Coast Fire and a great pro is that you have less lifestyle inflation. All right? You know what the number needs to be that you need to hit in order for you to be able to retire. And so you're not going to just keep increasing your lifestyle every single year because then it's going to put your whole Coast Fire number out of whack. Why? Because you know you want to spend $80 to $100,000 per year. So you're not going to go buy a $10 million house and then whack out your Coast Fire number unless you are willing to go back and grind and save and earn and invest. And so it just reduces for most people, them having to worry about lifestyle

Starting point is 00:30:25 inflation it much. Plus, it just gives you a better work life and balance. If you got an emergency fund in place and it's six plus months and you got a coast fire number hit, you're like, I'm unstoppable here. I could get fired today and I can go work part-time at Costco as a cashier, which by the way, Costco cashiers I just saw the other day make on average about $33 an hour. Backup plan right there. And I can go be a cashier for a little while until I find my next job. I mean, you've got options and flexibility and most people just don't realize they have this free will. You've got free will available to you, and you can do some of this stuff. But also, you get earlier freedom.

Starting point is 00:30:59 If you hit your Coast Fire number and then you aggressively want to save really quickly over the course of the next decade after Coast Fire because you feel as well, I want to achieve financial freedom even faster, you got the option to do that. And so for many of you out there, you're thinking to yourself, well, I'm calculating this Coast Fire number. I want to do this. How should I think about this? I would kind of even make sure that I invest and save a little bit more than even the number I think it needs to be. that way, if you adjust or tweak your number, then you don't have to worry about it as much. And I would make sure that I'm calculating this on a yearly basis and understanding exactly where I stand so that you can readjust if you need to year in and year out.

Starting point is 00:31:34 So once a year, make sure you know your Coast Fire number and are looking at it, okay? But it also just allows you for more intentional living. Now you've got your North Star in place. You know what you're doing. You know where your number is. And so then you can make tweaks. You can make adjustments and you can do this in a way that makes a ton of sense for most people. Now let's talk about the downsides because I don't think that.

Starting point is 00:31:54 the downsides of Coast Fire are talked about enough, and I want you to be informed on both sides of this equation here. We need to understand what the good is, but we also need to know what the bad is because there are some downsides to Coast Fire. This whole strategy lives and dies on assumptions. You could be 25 years old and you're assuming something is going to be the way that it is over the course of the next 35 to 40 years. And many people listening, that might be their first thing that they're saying back to me, you know, they're screaming at their screen or they're yelling at me in the car while they'll drive into work, like, but you're assuming something is going to be working for me for the next 35 years. I get it. And so that's a downside, I think, to Coastfire, which is why I think you need

Starting point is 00:32:34 to track the number on a yearly basis, understanding that your goalpost may move, just like my goal post has moved because I had kids, my family change, my lifestyle did inflate, which I think is positive for most people is to have some lifestyle inflation, but it did happen. And so because of that, I need to adjust my number. And you're going to need to do the same thing. If you want to be successful with Coast Fire, you're going to have to track your number on a yearly basis, and you're going to have to make adjustments. Secondly, as returns aren't guaranteed. We all know this, and we've said this, but many of us are blinded by the returns we've had

Starting point is 00:33:06 over the course of the last 20 years or so, where since 2008, we have had a wild bull run. Sure, we had COVID, we've had some down and dips and pullbacks, but they are nothing compared to what should have happened over the course those last two decades. And so we can become blinded by just a massive 20-year bull market. I thought the market would pull back in 2015. It is now 2026 when I'm recording this, and the market has just bowled all the way through COVID and all these different crazy things that have been happening throughout the world wars,

Starting point is 00:33:37 all different things. And so returns aren't guaranteed, so anything in this world can happen. And so you just want to make sure you're prepared for that. Inflation is the third thing. Inflation can run hotter, and if it starts to increase over time, sometimes you want to make sure that you're just sprinkling in some more sauce

Starting point is 00:33:54 when it comes to making sure that you are adding to your retirement. That's another thing I would consider to do. What's a beautiful thing that helps you with that, though? Something like an employer match. If you have a good employer match and you just make sure you continue to get that free money, get that match, you could be still saving and investing anywhere from 6% to 10% of your income without even having to do anything because your employer is doing a ton for you. And so that could help you just make sure that you,

Starting point is 00:34:18 outpace inflation, that could help you with a lot of different things. So making sure you're adding that number in is important. Another thing is that retirement expenses can change over time, which is why I want you to continue to track the number. The health care one is a big one. We've got to keep monitoring health care and seeing what happens. If you haven't heard our recent episode that we did on health care, check that out. Plus kids, you might have aging parents.

Starting point is 00:34:38 You might have all these different things that are changing. So you got to track this on a yearly basis. And then if you want to save or invest or retire earlier and you make that decision 10 years down the line, well, then you're just going to have to have to adjust your coast fire number and start to invest again. You're going to start to have to have to put dollars towards your retirement and investments. And so things could change over time. Those are the downsides is your assumption could be wrong. That's what it really comes down to. And if your assumption is wrong, this is why we want to just track this yearly. You don't want to just

Starting point is 00:35:06 do your coast fire number, which is what a lot of people suggest for some reason, which I really don't understand. But you don't want to just have your coast fire number and just, I'm done. I'm going to forget about this now. I don't have to worry about it anymore. See you when I'm 65, retirement. account. No, that's not what I want you to do. That's not what a prudent person would do. That's not what a wealth builder would do. Instead, they would look at this on a yearly basis on a minimum, and they would say, okay, I feel as though I'm on the right track here. This is where I was projected to be. And you can even break these down, like with investment calculators. You can break them down to see where you feel as though they should be on a yearly basis. And just remember, markets go up and markets go down. So don't let it make you freak out, but just make sure you're kind of tracking this so you know where you are on a yearly basis.

Starting point is 00:35:47 And one thing I think a lot of people think is Coastfire is like, I'm done, I'm never going to save ever again. It doesn't mean you're never going to save or invest again because a lot of people are going to want to. A lot of people are going to want to get ahead. They're going to get those dollars going. But it means that you don't have to. You're not required to anymore. You have the ability to say, all right, I've got money in place and you've removed the obligation. You haven't removed the option, but you've removed the obligation of having to save and invest for your retirement.

Starting point is 00:36:16 And I think that's the power. When obligations get removed out of your life, it makes it so much easier and simpler, so you don't have to worry as much. So how does Coast Fire compare to some of the other sources of fire? Now, we're going to do an entire episode on the different types of fire so that you guys can understand how this works. But Coast Fire is one that if you compare it to something like Lean Fire, for example, lean fire means that you're retiring fully on a very minimal amount of money per year.

Starting point is 00:36:44 So like a Mr. Money Mustache, if you go back and read his blog, that's what he's. did was Lean Fire or something like Jacob Lund Fisker from early retirement to extreme. That's what he did. And Lean Fire is basically not the lifestyle I would want to live. So many of you might be a-okay with Lean Fire and you might be okay living on $30,000 or $40,000 per year. I am not. And so that's not something I'm interested in. But it's great for frugal folks. If you're frugal and you don't have to worry about it, then that's great. Then there's Barista Fire. So the way barista fire works is that you save a certain amount of money that's going to cover, let's say, 50, 75% of your retirement. And then the rest of your retirement, you plan on

Starting point is 00:37:22 taking a part-time job in an industry that you are interested in. But many people also will use barista fire as they'll go to like a Starbucks. This is the reason why it's called barista fire. And they'll work 20 hours a week so that they can get the health insurance as well, which saves you a lot more. So there's things like that that we can look at. Then there's fat fire. Meaning if you're a high-income earner and you want to have 10 to $20 million invested, then you want to live this lifestyle where you can have this lavish, retirement lifestyle. That's what fat fire is. And there's traditional retirement where you are just kind of working, saving, investing throughout your entire career. You retire at a traditional age

Starting point is 00:37:56 between 60 and 65 and you're just doing it on a monthly basis. Many posts do that. That's the way most people do. And there's other types of fire out there. There's things like location arbitrage. There's so many different things that you can do. And we will talk about those in that episode. But I just want to kind of compare it to some of the other options out there so that you can get your mind going and thinking, okay, well, what are the options that I actually have? Those are some of the ones that you have. So who should consider Coastfire? Well, I think anybody out there should consider using it as a milestone marker on your finance journey. It gives you that diversification of your personal finances. It allows you to have the ability. And we'll do an episode on diversification

Starting point is 00:38:36 of personal finances. I think it's an interesting topic. But it will allow you to do some cool stuff. But also, it's great for people who are burned out. If you're a burned out professional and you want to make a career change or if you're a parent that wants more flexibility, or if you're an entrepreneur, if you're a teacher and you're like, I mean, I just want to get to this point in time, or you're a nurse and you just feel as though you just need this career change or you need to be able to take your foot off the gas and not have to take those extra shifts in the middle of the night and just to make ends meet. Well, this is a great way to do it. This is a great way to think about it and a great way to work through some of the things that you could be doing. So this may not be ideal for people with little save yet or those who are planning to retire early. If you are planning to retire really early like in your 40s, this is.

Starting point is 00:39:19 a little bit harder to do. This is more for people who think as though they're going to continue to work over time and they just want an option and flexibility to be able to get to that point in time. But I think everybody, even if you are going to retire early, you're going to hit Coast Fire at some point in time. It's for people with, if you have unstable income, it might be harder or if you want to inflate your spending over time, meaning if you feel as though you're going to drastically increase your spending over time as lifestyle changes, it may not be the perfect option for you, but it's still a goal that you should hit and you can adjust every single year. I think anybody out there should try to achieve Coast Fire as one of their earliest financial independence goals.

Starting point is 00:39:50 Because once you get there, all of a sudden, you can then realize, oh, this is possible. I can do some really cool stuff with my money. And this is the first fire step that I could take in order to get to the point in time where I feel as though I'm making progress. Most of us picked a bank years ago and never really thought about it again. But when you stop and look at what you're actually getting, it makes you wonder if there's a better option. That's where Chime comes in. because CHIME is changing the way people bank. They're not like traditional banks that pile on fees or gatekeep the best rewards.

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Starting point is 00:43:50 is going to eat into your buying power every single year. Do not ignore inflation into your calculations, okay? Make sure you are at least looking at like a 3% rate of inflation. That's kind of on average. You go to 2% if you really feel there, but I like to be a little more conservative again when I am doing this. Do not forget taxes. Tax is a big deal when you are running these numbers. If you have this all in a taxable, brokerage account. You're going to have some taxes that you're going to need to look into. So don't forget those. You know, not accounting for future goals like kids or buying a bigger home or a business. Those are all things that could derail this. And I don't want you to derail it if you don't

Starting point is 00:44:23 account for some of that stuff. And don't underestimate health care. If you're not factoring in health care into your number that you're spending every single year and you think you're going to retire early, this is before Medicare. So this is before traditional 65. Then you want to make sure that you're factoring in that health care. And I think for many people out there, if you're like uneasy with this and you're like, can I really stop? Can I really stop investing? Yeah, you can, but I would still continue to invest. Many people I talk to, if they're uncomfortable with that, you know, you got your employer match that you can keep getting. That's a great, you know, sprinkle in that every single year you're going to, you know, be able to invest a few thousand bucks. You've got things like a Roth IRA.

Starting point is 00:44:59 Maybe you want to continue to contribute to that at least. And so got these two things that you're contributing to. Maybe it's your 401k that you enjoy because you need to get some tax breaks. Sure, you can do that as well. And I think just having the ability, to think through, well, if I keep investing, even if it's a small amount of money over time, you know, this is going to help me pace, is going to help me keep me comfortable with this strategy. So I don't have to just be aggressively investing every single year. And that's going to give you that the ability to be able to do that. So here's your action plan if you want to do this. One, is I want you to calculate your retirement number, meaning how much you're going to need

Starting point is 00:45:33 by the age of 65 or whenever you feel as though you want to retire. Two, as I want you to determine your coastfire number. You can use any of those calculators online. Again, We'll link NerdWallit Wealth Partners down below, but there's a bunch of great ones out there. I want you to compare it to what you currently have invested now. When you run it through a Coast Fire calculator, you're going to see how much you currently have invested now. And I think you could see if you already are Coast Fire. And if you already are Coast Fire, let me know down in the comments below. If you're listening on Spotify or YouTube or Apple Podcasts, let me know down below.

Starting point is 00:46:04 I want to hear from you. If you ran these numbers for the first time, you're like, whoa, I'm Coast Fire right now. Let me know. I want to hear from you. Decide whether the flexibility. is worth reducing future savings. So that's the big question for a lot of you is, is this flexibility worth it to just stop reducing future savings? For some people it is. For some people, it's not. And then revisit this every single year because your goals are always going to change.

Starting point is 00:46:27 And these are things that you're going to need to be doing. But you may be closer than you think. And I want you to run the numbers this week and I want you to check. So once you finish listening to this episode, run the numbers. I want to hear from you and see if you are actually Coastfire. Well, listen, thank you so much for listening to this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast. Again, if you want to join me and you want to join Master Money Academy, I want to invite each and every single one of you to do so. All you have to do is click the link down below in the bio and you're going to get seven days free inside Master Money Academy. What do you get with those seven days?

Starting point is 00:47:01 Well, we have all of our courses inside of Master Money Academy. But in addition, every single week, I do a live coaching call where I can coach you through any personal finance situation. that you are working on. And I can help you through the process. We do this on a weekly basis inside a Master Money Academy. Plus, if you've got questions, you can ask or question to the community. We have some really sophisticated people in there. We have actually people who are money coaches in their own rights that are inside Master Money

Starting point is 00:47:24 Academy who help people and they do this as a business. So there's all kinds of folks inside Master Money Academy, which is really, really cool. And I'm really, really excited for the direction that we are taking it. We actually just moved Master Money Academy to a new platform. And so really pumped about that as well. So again, click the link down. down below in the show notes if you want to join Master Money Academy. And also, if you are interested in doing some one-on-one coaching, we will have that available

Starting point is 00:47:47 over the course of the next couple of weeks. And you can inquire about that as well and see if you qualify. So you have to apply for that. But if you do qualify, we can talk to you about that too. So thank you guys so much for being here on this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. I value guys so much. And I think that for many of you out there, understanding that our goal with this show

Starting point is 00:48:10 is to make sure we bring you as much value as possible, some free value. This is a free value show so that you can take these and put them towards your life and build wealth for your family. That's our goal with this is to help you build wealth for your family,

Starting point is 00:48:23 build generational wealth for everyone in your life so that you can help them through this process. If you know someone who get value out of this show, stop what you're doing right now and share this with them. Share this episode with your friends and your family so they know how Coast Fireworks as well because this is how we grow and spread the message about personal finance

Starting point is 00:48:40 so that more people can understand how it works. But we are not taught this in schools, and so you want to send this to as many people as possible so they can understand how to build wealth as well. Listen, I appreciate you. Love you all, and I'll see you on the next episode.

The Personal Finance Podcast - Hit This Number and You Can STOP SAVING! (Even When You are Young)

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