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How to Reach Financial Independence Without Putting Your Life on Hold with Justin Peters

September 21, 20260 comments♥ 0
00:00 First of all, tomorrow's not guaranteed. So you should be enjoying today just as much as you're setting your future self up. And then second, I do think financial independence, especially for most people, it's got to take some time. You know, we're talking about decades that you're going to be spending. So if you're not enjoying that time, ultimately, you're either got to burn out and probably take two steps back and or you're going to resent the whole process, the whole journey when you get to the finish line. So I'm a big proponent and enjoying the moments while also, like I said, taking care of your future self. I was being prudent with financial decisions, but I think I took it just a little bit too far. And honestly, looking back and reflecting on that period of my life, I realized I would trim off the last 10% of the optimization.
00:39 And I'd probably get 100% life satisfaction back from it. On this episode of the Personal Finance podcast, how to pursue financial independence and still enjoy your life. 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 talking about how to pursue financial independence and still enjoy your life. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the mastermoney newsletter by going to mastermoney.com slash newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcast, Spotify,
01:26 YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you want to help out the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. Now, on today's episode, I'm going to be talking with Justin Peters. Now, Justin is the host of the five-minded podcast, a podcast all about how to achieve financial independence without going to extremes. And if you've ever felt as though being on the path to financial independence means that you have to feel deprivation or you have to be deprived, this episode is for you. Now, Justin has spent years talking to people who have reached financial independence,
02:05 but the one thing that he noticed that a lot of people went through was that they didn't know how to spend their money. So he developed a framework that helps you spend intentionally. And I think this is such a cool way to think about how to make sure you're spending your dollars on your values. And so today, we're going to be talking about how Justin thinks about spending money, some of the mistakes he made in the past when it comes to financial independence, and we're going to be talking through how he manages his money, how he thinks,
02:30 about spending money and some of the things that he does in his relationship as well to help him and his wife get on the same page. This is one of those episodes that is definitely less about the math and more about the mindset, which is what I absolutely love about this. And you're going to really, really enjoy this one. So I am so excited to introduce Justin Peters back to the Personal Finance Podcast. So Justin, welcome back to the Personal Finance Podcast. Andrew, it's a pleasure, man. I'm excited for round two. Me too. We're going to have some fun conversations here about financial independence. And I know for all the listeners right now, your favorite topic that we talk about on this show is financial independence. Every single time we talk
03:09 about, you know, trying to pursue financial independence, kind of the messy middle that a lot of people fall into or just kind of thinking about this process. Those are some of our most popular, popular episode. So I'm really, really excited for this and excited to dive deeper into this. Now, I want to kind of talk through this with you because I think you're a master at this, is kind of figuring out how to enjoy your life while you're on the path to financial independence. And you've developed these systems that I think are just awesome when it comes to figuring out what your values are and figuring out, you know, how you want to approach financial independence, but also be able to, you know, have some funds, do some things that are actually enjoyable. So can you talk about why it's so important when you're on the path to financial independence to actually enjoy your life a little bit here? Well, I appreciate you call me a master at this because I didn't feel like a master while I was going through the front half of this journey.
03:57 But a couple of things come to mind when you ask me that question. First of all, tomorrow's not guaranteed. So you should be enjoying today just as much as you're setting your future self up. And then second, I do think financial independence, especially for most people, it's got to take some time. You know, we're talking about decades that you're going to be spending. So if you're not enjoying that time, ultimately, you're either got to burn out and probably take two steps back and or you're going to resent the whole process, the whole journey when you get to the finish line. So I'm a big proponent and enjoying the moments while also, like I said, taking care of your future self. for sure and I think you know I think about my 20s for example and in my 20s I was just super frugal and it was this time frame where I was just getting my money together I was trying to dig myself out of a paycheck to paycheck situation and all of a sudden I went from someone who was spending some money to having this scarcity mindset where I just did not know you know what to do with my next dollar and every single time I started to think about spending money I even remember feeling as though like it would just stress me out it would cause me to stress and anxiety and I did not know what my values were whatsoever
05:03 And so early on in my financial independence journey and even all the way to my late 20s, I just remember like foregoing things that I wish I would not have done. And this was a learning experience for me. I know now like for a lot of people, I get to help a lot of people in these situations, try to figure out, you know, how to find what their values are. But do you feel as though, you know, early on in your financial independence journey, you kind of struggled with something similar to that? And was this, you know, was your relationship with money broken?
05:31 or was this something that you felt as though you had to kind of work on over time? It's such an interesting question that you asked that. Because on one hand, like, I don't feel like my relationship with money was broken. You know, I actually loved learning about money. I liked making money. I liked saving and investing. But then on the other hand, there were pieces of my relationship with money that were totally broken, spending probably being the most obvious.
05:54 It sounds like similar to you as well. I mean, I grew up in a household where saving, investing, earning money was praised, but then spending money, even spending money on things that were meaningful and valuable was not something that was praised. So I do think I had a little bit of a broken relationship, especially with spending money. But come on, what personal finance content creator did not have some kind of broken relationship with money at some point in time? So yes, I had to go through all the same trials and tribulations that you're illustrating in your response as well. Did you ever go through like the Mr. Money Mustache phase where you kind of, you know,
06:28 So for me specifically, what I call that is like I read Mr. Money Mustache this blog and I would go through like every single article and I'd be like, okay, I'm going to bike to work. And I was so excited to like do this. My wife's like, well, there's a, you know, this is an eight lane highway that you're going to be biking to work. I don't think you're going to work. And so like there's just all these different things that I was thinking through. I was like, okay, I want to just make sure I'm spending, you know, less than $30,000 per year. I want to make sure that I'm just not. There's no waste whatsoever.
06:56 I'm optimizing everything. I'm doing my own work and working on my own house, even though I'm a terrible handy person. And just all these different things that I was kind of trying to figure out. Did you ever kind of go through that early on or were you just kind of, hey, I got this set up, but I just didn't have my values or spending set up correctly. Oh, no, I wore the badge of honor of how little I could spend. You know, I was always proud to be the frugalest of my friend group. And to some degree that was helpful. And, you know, it's nice to be cutting out some of the things that honestly didn't really bring me a lot of joy, but so many places.
07:27 It was a struggle. I remember a little bit because of circumstances I was living in San Diego. And I was just so strapped for cash. I was like, I switched jobs that I took a pay cut. I was living off like $50,000 in San Diego. You know, my house was like eating up like half of that. So yeah, I found myself doing like really dumb things. Like walking pretty much everywhere I could. Really like, oh man, grocery shopping would take three times as long as it needed to be because I'd have to like price check the per ounce for like everything that I bought. I'm like, why am I. I I'm doing this. I like that. I was being prudent with financial decisions, but I think I took it just a little bit too far. And honestly, looking back and reflecting on that period of my life, I realized I would trim off the last 10% of the optimization, and I'd probably get 100% life satisfaction back from it. I love that. I think thinking through this and kind of figuring out some of the decisions that you make, because it did for me create decision fatigue. The same exact thing, like when you went to the grocery store, you're just trying to optimize for every single purchase, even if it's 25 cents.
08:28 And I'm sitting here like trying to think through this. And I remember getting to the end of the day and I was just like mentally exhausted from my own doing. I was just going over like every single purchase and every single price change and every single thing. And it would take me forever to even buy anything, which in some circumstances is awesome. But then in some circumstances, it was just one of those things that I was just overly frugal.
08:46 It didn't make sense. You know, get your mental capacity back so you can actually put it towards things that actually bring more value. So you developed this kind of system or these, these four spending principles that kind of helped you when it came to, you know, being able to spend on things that you actually value. And so can you kind of talk about these spending principles, how they came about and some of the things that you did to put them into place? Yeah, you teed this up great because the exact situation that you were talking about with that decision fatigue was the exact situation I was in.
09:15 I was in this crux where I was about halfway through my financial independence journey. And I still wanted to be prudent and financially responsible, but I wanted to loosen the reins a little bit. and I just couldn't allow myself to do that. Like this decision fatigue on every spending decision was exhausting me. So one day I, you know, it was the end of the year, I think probably four or five years ago. It was the end of a year and I was thinking through, okay, this next year, what do I want to spend on? Like, what can I do here? And I came up with a list of four rules.
09:45 I didn't have names for them at the time, but I slapped names on them just to help articulate them a little bit better. And then eventually the rules turned into principles, like kind of guiding light instead of like hard and fast rules. So I have four that I really love to follow and I still practice today. One is a fun fund. This is just taking a portion of my money and it has one job and that was just enjoyment. Like I have to spend this portion of money on something that would just bring me a lot of joy. So how I did this was if I made $5,000 that month and I spent $4,000, I'd have $1,000 at the end of the month left in my checking account. What I normally do is just take that $1,000 and invested in an IRA or a broker.
10:24 account or whatever, wherever I was going. And I implemented the fund fund that year, and I had to take 10% of that 1,000 now and set it into a different account. And that account could only be spent on, like I said, fun things. So that was the fun fund and that helped a lot. It just like alleviated a lot of like, oh, I kind of want that, but I shouldn't be buying that. Well, how much money do I have in my fund fund? Oh, cool. I have some money in there. I'll go ahead and buy it. So that was principle number one. Principle number two is the oops budget. This is like a no questions asked buffer so that when something unplanned, unexpected, that was money related, happened, I had some money set aside that I could just go ahead and deploy that to that
11:02 situation. Because it was often like an already stressful moment. And what was happening with my money was I would run it, I'd have an accident, you know, maybe I cracked my phone and I got to buy a new phone. And you know what happens when you need to break your phone. Like that is a problem they have to deal with right then and there. And I would layer on top of this like financial stress too like, oh my gosh, now I just wasted like $1,000 and I got to like go buy a new phone. Are you doing, Justin? So I came up with this oops budget. It was a thousand dollar sinking fund that I set up. Now it's a little bit more fictitious. I just know in the back of my head that I have $1,000 for no questions asked type situations. And when a situation comes like this, I'll do like, that's a bummer. But I got my oops budget. Go ahead, take care of the situation and move on. So that's been great. Spending principle number three is the guilt free spending categories. A lot of people have. similar ideas to this too. Rameit Sati was the one I really stole this from. I love the how to money guys too,
11:58 and they talk about their craft beer equivalent. Very similar. Like every year I pick one or two categories in my budget. That gives me like an outsized happiness to spend on. And the goal isn't to underspend in that category. Actually, I think underspending would be a signal that I failed at this. I should be spinning more than I really set out to spend on some of these categories. So for me this year, I have two things.
12:21 That's relationship and health. If it's a friend to ask if I want to go grab dinner and it's kind of a no questions thing, I want to go grab dinner with them or it's health related. I just ran a really big trail race about a month ago. It cost me way too much money to buy the ticket, the entrance fee, the hotel for all of that. It was like $1,500 for me to go and run. And I'm like, you know, Justin, that was an investment in my health. So this year, those are my two categories and I'm not feeling guilty about spending on those categories.
12:49 And then the very last one was one that I think is really got to get at the heart of this conversation today. And that's my moments that matter list. You were talking about some regrets on spending. And looking back in my 20s and, you know, I was hyper frugal, but I don't regret most of that frugality. But there was one moment that I really regret. A friend invited me to his wedding. And it was an out-of-state wedding. It was in a high cost of living city.
13:15 and I remember going back and forth about attending, and I ended up declining. And the reason I declined was it was going to cost me like $1,500 to go there. And I regretted it almost immediately as soon as I decided, as soon as I put in that no on the RSVAP, and people ask me this question, like, do you ever regret not spending on things? And that is the only thing that really comes to mind on me. So with that in mind, I came up, you know, on that day I was coming up with these principles. I made the moments that matter list. These are a list of life events or experiences where it's just pre-decided that money won't have an outsized influence on that decision.
13:54 I do think there are a lot of decisions that money should be a one, two, or three factor. Like, I don't want to over buy a home and then be stuck in this mortgage cycle or buy a fancy car that I don't need. But there are a couple of situations or experiences where I want money to fall down from a one, two, or three slot on the factor list down to like nine or ten. So of that, weddings is on that list. If someone invites me to a wedding, sure, I can say no if I just like don't want to attend the wedding. It's not someone I'm super close to, but I don't want money to be the reason why I say no. And then another one that I put on my list this year was visiting my parents.
14:30 I'm recognizing that I'm having more and more limited time with my parents. They're aging. And any time, no questions asked, if they say, hey, Justin, I'd love to go to a Cardinals baseball game. Like, you want to come back to St. Louis sometime? buy the ticket. I don't care if the flight home is $150 or $500. I'm going to find my way back home so I can spend some time with them. I love that. And I think these are just so incredibly valuable for people to think through and people to have on hand. So I have some questions on these because I think
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18:35 Head to Wayfair.com or shop the Wayfair app for all things home. That's W-A-Y-F-A-I-R-com. Wayfair, every style, every home. Wayfair, every style, every home. So when it comes to, so I have something similar on the first one, which I call it the blow fund, but it's a fund where basically I started this because my wife and I, when we first started kind of building wealth and kind of working through our personal finances, we couldn't figure out like how to just kind of put money in place where we could just
19:09 blow it on anything and no questions asked be able to kind of manage money together. And so I realized pretty early on that we were just going to separate these two places and we can just spend that, you know, within that given month, it just spend it on something that we really want. Like even if it's frivolous or something stupid, we can go and buy those things and there's no questions asked there. So is that kind of how yours works too? It's like stuff you're actively trying to spend those dollars to kind of help you kind of enjoy life more or just kind of get more value out of certain things in life? Or is it something that you are a little bit more cautious about spending, but you want to spend it on those things that you have been kind of waiting to
19:42 spend money on? Probably the first definition. It really is. I think my biggest struggle when it comes to money is just like buying things that would bring me joy or improve my life. I've moved through a couple of these things with like the guilt-free spending and the moments that matter. Like I know the big things, but it's some of the little things that like the everyday
19:59 happiness that I want this fun to really optimize for. So right now I'm like really back into 90s nostalgia. I was a kid of the 90s, born in 93. and I love Pokemon and I'm like reinvesting and getting my Pokemon card collection back. So a lot of what's coming out of my Fun Fund right now is just buying Pokemon cards, to be honest. I love it. Shiny cardboard. Yeah, exactly.
20:21 Exactly. I have my son got really into like sports cards recently. So we started to say like send them to PSA to start grading stuff and started to like open packs and we opened packs. And I got really good at like figuring out which ones. I just not to go too detail for the audience here, but I built like this whole algorithm. them inside of Claude that told me which cards would have the highest chance to get a PSA 10 or Jim Mint. And so we started to send cards in and we came back with like thousands of dollars worth of PSA 10s because Claude figured out exactly which ones. That's cool. So it was actually pretty
20:53 fun. So that's a whole separate conversation. We should offline that and talk about that because I'm so interested in that. It was a really cool thing. So yeah, we'll chat about that. But that is like a fun optimization. I think that's a great example because it's one of those things where I get into like a bunch of different little hobbies all the time. And I'm like, well, where am I going to pull this money from, you know, this category or where else? But I think that's perfect for exactly what you're talking about there. And then when you have kind of your, your oops fund, I have a something similar, I call it, like stuff I forgot to budget for. But typically my, but what it really is is like a spot where, like, if there's an emergency, that's a quick emergency and I don't want to
21:28 pull from my, you know, giant emergency fund that I have on hand, you know, I have these different categories in place that kind of help me with that. Is that kind of what this is, too? It's kind of like a buffer in between your emergency fund or is it part of your emergency fund? Yeah, it's definitely a buffer. Actually, early on the first couple of years, I did this, I did have a totally separate sinking fund for this where I'd every single month I'd put, let's call it, like $200 into this fund. So I'd come out with about $2,400 at the end of the year that when accidents come up, the things I didn't budget for, etc, like I would just pull out of that sinking fund. Now, like I said, it's a little bit more mental. Like I ended up moving that money back into my general emergency fund. It's just sitting in there.
22:06 just because of simplification, which might be something we talk about later in this conversation. And I just know mentally like, hey, Justin, don't worry about the things that are like under $2,000 that you can't control. Don't beat yourself up for it again. Just go ahead and pay for it. So now it's way more psychological. It used to be a little bit more mechanical back in the day. I love that.
22:25 And the gilfrey spinning, I think, is for a lot of people, they understand that. It's kind of like the bigger ticket stuff that you're thinking through and kind of, you know, this is the stuff that I want. This is the stuff I want to be able to spend money on. And these are some of the areas that I want to spend more on, whether it's, you know, being able to, you know, take a vacation or a trip or whatever else it is, you know, stay in a fancy hotel, you know, take a first class flight. There's all kinds of different stuff that you can kind of put into this category, I'm sure, or if you want to get, you know, an amazing, you know, road bike or if you want to be able to
22:54 kind of do some cool things, that's kind of what that category is for, some of the bigger stuff potentially, right? For sure. I find myself if I'm going to be hypervigilant on 10 of my budget categories and really make sure that I'm prudent and I'm spending well in those, that allowing myself one or two budgets for flexibility and freedom because I know it's bringing me some kind of outsized joy and happiness, then I think that's a pretty good tradeoff. I'd rather crush five or six categories and then really enjoy one or two things that I know is going to bring me enjoyment. For sure. I think
23:24 that's so important for everyone to have. And I think for many people listening, if you don't have something like that, it's worth going through this exercise and kind of thinking through what you truly value and identifying those values and where you're going to put that money. The last one I absolutely love. This kind of reminds me of like we had Sahel Bloom on the show and he was talking through kind of the five different areas of wealth. And one of the areas he was talking about was like this time that you have and you only have a limited time left with your loved ones and some of it is aging parents just like you're
23:53 talking about. Some of this is like I always think about it with my kids where they say, you know, your kids are going to be under your roof for a very small period of time. It's like that 18 years is like 90% of the time that you're going to spend with them. And I always think about that like, you know, even right now I have an 8 year old, a 5 year old and a 1.5 year old. And like the time that I'm spending with them right now is going to be one of those things where I'm going to be 90 years old, kind of not being able, you know, in a situation where I'm looking back on life and this is where I'm going to want to come back to. This is the point in time where I'm going to want to spend a lot more time. And I think being able to make decisions where you can spend time with family members like aging parents, my parents, my parents,
24:31 are getting older to, like where they're, you know, approaching 70 now. And, you know, you're going to want to get that time back and having to make that decision or not being able to spend time with him because of money is not what you want to be doing. And I think same thing with your wedding example is a perfect example of like spending valuable time with friends or being able to be with friends on big moments like that, I think is so incredibly valuable. So how did you come up with this and how do you kind of think about what should go in that category? It was honestly just a reflection of 10 years in my 20s.
25:01 and being like, what did I really regret from it? And like never did like upgrading my car or buying more better clothes or any of that stuff really come to mind. It was really just like these one or two experiences that I'm like, ooh, that that's what it is. And like I said, the goal of this wasn't necessarily to alleviate spending entirely in these categories, but really just deprioritize it as most I can. And I don't know. For some reason, my brain just works like that. Like, I have to, like, give myself the permission to say, hey, this is a spending category that's in your moments that matterless, Justin.
25:38 Like, just press the button. Like, you're not got to regret spending an extra $100 on the flight whenever you're really got to look back and enjoy the four days, five days that you spent with mom and dad and did me certain things. So, yeah, it was a combination of reflecting back on regrets that I had and then really kind of looking at my expenses and being like, what are the things that push comes? to shove, I would still want to spend my money on. And that's kind of what made this list. Do you think there's kind of a fine line for a lot of people pursuing financial independence between kind of how they're thinking about this, where there's people who are disciplined. And we always obviously have to be disciplined when it comes to spending. Otherwise, if you just spend freely without thinking about it ever, it could be one of those things that gets out of control. But is there a fine line between kind of discipline and deprivation for a lot of folks out there?
26:26 And kind of how do you think about that? Oh, that's a really good question. And it's something I spend a lot of time on, and I think it's something that the financial independence community honestly should be doing a little bit more work on between discipline and deprivation. If we're talking in terms of spending, I think it really comes down to not now versus I'm not allowed to. So not now being like, that's the disciplines. Like you know, I'd love to spend this $200, but I'm putting that towards another goal. Like I'll, I'm going to do that eventually, but I have a different priority right now versus deprivation could be like, I could afford to make this $200 purchase, but I should shouldn't be spending money on something like this.
27:03 You know, that's where I kind of see a lot of the difference between the two. It could be the exact same moment, but it's really how you're thinking about it, mentally approaching it. So, yeah, that's what I see. But I'd love to get your thoughts on this, too. I feel like I struggle with this sometimes between, like, modulating between the deprivation and the discipline. I've moved a lot more towards, I actually spend a lot more than I ever thought I would.
27:24 And now I have developed this time frame where, like, I wanted to move as far away from deprivation as I possibly could get. And I wanted to do this experiment. And I started to do this experiment. We're like, okay, if I can focus on increasing my income over this next couple of years and I did it over the course of like seven or so years, you know, what would that look like? What would that feel like and how would I feel if I did that? And when I started to do what, what I realized was my priorities shifted and they shifted in a way that I never anticipated, but I really started to prioritize things like health. I started to prioritize more so things like convenience. And buying back. my time and in health or like two areas of my life that I probably would have not spent money on,
28:04 you know, previously. I would have said, okay, well, I could go outside and run or walk or lift weights, you know, at a gym membership for 20 bucks a month. Why would I prioritize, you know, other areas of my health when I could just kind of hack my way to it? But then I realized, oh, no, this is one of those things that I actually do value. And once I got comfortable spending a little bit more and getting away from that deprivation line, it allowed me to do this. And then secondarily is I started to realize once I had kids that I wanted my time back. I wanted more time back so I could spend more time with them because it's not worth my time or energy to like spend five hours mowing my lawn, for example, or spend two hours every weekend, cleaning my pool. And so instead I wanted to buy that time back, which before I would spend, you know, five, seven, ten hours a weekend on my lawn. I remember like waking up Saturday and I'd be like in the yard until like three o'clock in the afternoon. I'm like, what the heck am I doing? They finally hired it out.
28:53 It was like $60. I couldn't believe how cheap it is. And now that's one of the best $60 I spend per month. And so it's one of those things that like I've developed and gotten closer away from that deprivation line only because I decided I wanted to try to spend more. And so I think for people listening, if you're going through this, like if you're saying to yourself, I'm pretty frugal and this is not everybody. Some people are on the opposite end of the spectrum. You need to spend less. But if you are someone who is overly frugal or feels as though you struggle with the skill of spending, just try to.
29:21 spend a little bit more. And you're, you know, listening to a personal finance podcast and having someone tell you to spend more is probably the opposite of what you thought was going to happen. But I think it does help you kind of get into the realm to figure out what some of your values are. Sometimes it's hard to know what your values are until you actually try it out, to test it out, to see if it's something you really want. And so many times I would just evaluate this in a couple different ways. But that's kind of how I got there. It may not be the right way, but that's kind of how I got there. But you got to make sure that you're still hitting your goals. And it really for me comes down to if you're hitting your financial freedom goals, if you're hitting your savings
29:54 rate goals, if your net worth is increasing every single year, you can do experiments like this. You can do fun stuff like this and it'll give you the ability to be able to kind of see what it's like, see what it's like, see what it's like. We just took a weekend trip down to the Bahamas and I spent more in four days than I ever thought I would spend in my life. But it was one of those things that like I enjoyed every second of it because it was memories that we made as a family. Like, here's a great example of it, okay, is we did the like swimming with the dolphins encounter, okay? And years ago, I would have never, ever done something like this because it was like an hour long for five of us. And it was like $990. But you got to touch the dolphin, the dolphin
30:36 like kisses you on the cheek. Like you get to watch it do all these different tricks. And years ago, I would have never done something like that. But like it was my kids absolutely loved it. It was like one of the most memorable things. They're still talking about it today. And so it's just like one of those things that you just got to try and you just got to do. So these are just examples that, I think, for many of you out there, are really, really interesting ways to kind of think about this. When it comes to this, though, like, do you think that most people need to kind of establish those baselines first? So they need to establish that savings rate line. Do they need to establish kind of where they want their investments to be before they start to kind of spend more on some
31:11 of these values? Or what is your order of operations and how you think about that? Man, you just named it so well right there. And listening to you give the response back to the last question there too. I do think this is really just a sequencing or an order conversation. There are people that would really benefit from not doing the $20 gym membership because they're working their way out of credit card debt, just go walk outside, do some of the body weight free things that you can do. And that $20 is going to give you an outsized impact on your budget now versus someone that might be way later in their financial independence journey that has had disciplined for decades that has been hitting their goals.
31:48 that would honestly benefit from the opposite, spending a little bit more, reducing the savings rate to some degree, and honestly finding some of the joy and fulfillment in spending. So yes, I'm a big fan of front loading, especially this financial independence journey, really working on the savings rate from the get-go, and then right-sizing it throughout your journey and rewarding yourself as you make progress to. Like it's, that's something that I think I struggle with. And I know many other people in the financial independence community have struggle with, too, just moving the goalpost. It's like you, you promised yourself that like this was kind of the end or you would start loosening the reins at this point in time. So you've got to start doing it at some point in time. You've got to reward yourself for all the hard work that your former self put in. For sure.
32:32 And that's my number one struggle is that goalpost moving. But I think for many people out there, you're going to see it to where, you know, once you get to a point in time. And I think Coastfire is a great, great point in time where this can have. happen is if you get to Coastfire and all of a sudden you realize, okay, well, if I slow down the amount that I'm saving or if I just stop immediately right here, I can still coast my way, obviously, into retirement because Compite Inter is going to take over and it will get my, you know, investments all the way to the point in time where they need to go. So that's a great first goal for like anybody listening who hasn't reached CoaseFi yet, this is a great first goal to get to because then
33:03 you can start to loosen up the reins a little bit and have the ability to do some of this fun stuff. But being able to make sure that that savings rate is in place and making sure that you're kind of working towards those goals as first. And that's why I love, you know, front-loading, just like you said, that's the same thing I did. And I don't regret it doing any of that whatsoever because it allowed me to kind of get to the point in time where I could take my foot off the gas a little bit. And you're going to really, really appreciate that your younger self did that.
33:28 I've never met a single person that's like, I wish I didn't save in my 20s. Like it's usually people who said, hey, yeah, I'm so glad I did. Maybe they will regret things like what you're talking about here where they regret taking a specific trip or they regret missing out on something. but we all are going to regret spending decisions, whether we overspend or we underspend. And so in reality, the better situation I think for most people is to kind of front load some of this stuff. Do you think there are purchases or maybe you have some specific ones for you that are always worth it while you're on the path of financial independence? I really hate to be prescriptive on this.
34:02 But I talk to a lot of people that have gone through financial independence are honestly just a lot of older people in general and taking some wisdom from them. and it's kind of affirmed a couple of things that I feel like were always really worth it on my path to financial independence. They were travel and experiences. They were my health, personal development, relationships, and safety and security. Like any time that I spent on those, I never really regretted it. And then on the flip side, like I said, I hate to be prescriptive because it's got to be different for everybody. But there are some things that I felt like were very easy for me to avoid in my financial independence journey. early on when I was, really focused on my savings rate and reducing my expenses. And that were
34:46 convenience purchases, like food delivery. It was a fancy car, not a reliable car, but a fancy car. New clothes, housing in like the most popular area of town. Like those were some of the things that were easy sacrifices for me that really kind of moved the needle to accelerate my journey. And honestly, just allow me to like then experience those a little bit later in life when, you know, now I'm in my 30s and it's nice whenever I can order some food to the house because my wife and I don't want to go out. You know, the $14 extra charge on it's not the end of the world versus like I said when I was 22 just getting in the car and going to pick something up myself or making a meal at home was an easy sacrifice I could make. Are there any, you know, questions that you think people should ask themselves or exercises people should go through where they're trying to figure out what their values actually are. I mean, a lot of people know maybe like what their hobbies are or something that they're interested in.
35:37 But if someone's trying to identify, hey, how do I separate my values from things that I just kind of feel as though we're frivolous and that I want? Is there anything that you did to do that? Did you sit down and like write these out? Did you sit down with your wife and kind of talk through this? Or how did you think about it? I wish I had a really good exercise for you on this. But this was like a lot of trial and error for me. Like this is the thing I love many experiments. I love small experiments. And I think non-consequential experiments are a great way to actually figure out your values. You were you were talking about this earlier. where, you know, on your next trip, spend the money on the all-inclusive and like, how does it feel? Does it feel good? Does it feel not good? Like, the nice thing is that that might be like a $1,000 decision in that moment that you can contain. And then maybe the next month, cut back, like, cancel all your subscriptions. And then at the end of the month, like, which ones were you really, like, yearning for and which ones didn't really make sense for you. So I like turning things on and off and seeing like, how does that impact me? Is that something that I miss? Is that something that I don't miss? And then I think just, just the bigger value questions you want to think through are some of the things that I talked about on the moments that matter list. Like, where are the experience or the moments that you really want to show up for? And to that regard, just trying to deprioritize money the best you can in some of those decisions. One of the areas that people worry about a lot as they're on this path is kind of thinking through lifestyle creep. And I think lifestyle creep can be something that too many people in the personal
37:02 finance space may say is like the worst possible thing it could happen. And for most people, that's their problem. Their problem is that, you know, death, either death by a thousand cuts or they're increasing their housing, their transportation, their food costs way too much. And that's why they're still living paycheck to paycheck, even though they're making, you know, $200,000 per year. You'd be shocked how many people, we have done like some studies recently. We're looking at people who are making over $150,000 per year who are still living paycheck to paycheck. And it's over 50%, which is just wild. It's crazy. But when we think about this, is some lifestyle creep good. Like, do you think some lifestyle creep is good? Or should this be something where, hey, we're kind of staying at, at one,
37:36 specific level no matter what we're making. I think some lifestyle group is definitely good, especially if you're disciplined and you are hitting the marks on your financial goals, humans crave progression and progress. And there should be small rewards throughout your journey here. So, you know, kind of staying flat and, and, you know, maintaining the same kind of budget, especially in a world where everything's just getting more expensive naturally. Like, it's got to be so hard and so deflating in your journey. But if you're hitting your financial goals, if you're increasing your
38:06 income every single year. I do think you should take a portion of that and consider what were some of those things in my disciplined moment that I said, you know, I would like to spend money on that, but not yet. And then thinking through, okay, how can I start adding some of those things in as I progress through financial independence? And one thing that really helped me, we talk about our net worth and the 4% rule. And I always like, as I was building in this journey to financial independence, I had this like outsized portion of money that was just sitting there in these accounts. And I really couldn't do anything with it. Like I wasn't like it wasn't like liquid cash that I could deploy at any point in time.
38:43 But it wasn't, it shouldn't be ignored either. Like that was all the progress that I've made over this time. So what I did was like on my spreadsheets, you know, when I was like figuring out my my cash flow, I do my income, like how much am I making this year from my W2 and my business and my side hustles, how much am I spending. And one thing that helped was just. add one more thing in my income category. And that was just like my, my 4% minion. It was like I looked at my net worth, it multiplied it by 4%. That's essentially like we're working towards fire right there. But I added it to my current income. So then that kind of like boosted up like what I was, how much money I actually could could afford in my life. And that gave me a little bit more reassurance that,
39:25 hey, Justin, like if you're making $100,000 and you're spending 50, you got a 50% savings rate. But you also saved $200,000 over here on the side too, and that shouldn't be ignored. Like, you should be considering, like, how much if you were to deploy that, that little minion to your life right now, how much money that could also bring into your life or your world right now. So I did that, and, like, I actually realized, like, oh, my income was probably more than I thought it was. It was a little bit more outsized. And that allowed me to be a little bit more comfortable, slowly, gradually, increasing my lifestyle as I was also working and building my net worth up too. My relationship with money has changed a lot over the years. Early on, I thought building wealth was about making more money.
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42:37 extra we have left over in order to be able to spend on things that we value or things that we enjoy. Do you use like, is spreadsheets the route that you go? Do you use like a money tool? Or how do you kind of do that? And what are your money routines look like? I'm an old school spreadsheet guy. Probably because like I'm like an Excel Google Sheets wizard and I just like built the tool that I wanted to on on that front. But yeah, at the end of every single month, I catalog my income and my expenses. I track my net worth. I update the accounts and put my net worth in there. And then I do all the small maintenance stuff, like get my receipts for my business or my HSA accounts, etc. But yeah, I honestly think
43:15 data has been king for me. Like it wasn't until I really started tracking everything. And I realized A, how much progress I was making on the network side. And be, honestly, how much surplus or flexibility that I had on the cash flow side that allowed me to, actually become a little bit more comfortable running some of these mini experiments, spending some, and kind of figuring out what I actually like to enjoy spending my money on. I found that once I started to do exactly that, and I use Monarch Money, there's a bunch of tools out there, but that's what I use. And I found once I started to do this, I realized, oh, this is actually kind of freeing, because then all of a sudden I could kind of see the difference between my money's
43:52 actually going where I wanted to go first. But secondly, then I can actually kind of see the difference and kind of use those dollars towards my values or use some of these dollars towards, you know, something big that I want to save up for it. So I thought, you know, it's a really freeing feeling for listeners who just haven't done this before or gone to this exercise. It just kind of develop some sort of money routine.
44:12 Like I have a routine where, you know, every week, I kind of check the accounts. I pay off my cards every week. It just keeps me on top of everything. It's just there's not a real reason why I do it outside of just staying on top of everything. Then every single month, I just double-checked my transactions that they're all automated in the right, you know,
44:26 the right spots. and I kind of check my cash flow, the net worth and all those different things. And it really does not take long. How much time does your routine take you? Because you're on spreadsheets. So you're manually doing it. It's a little bit of, honestly, 20, 30 minutes a month. And some of that's just because I like to, like, overdo some things.
44:41 Like, I put the exact date in versus just, like, I probably could just put August for every single transaction that happened in August. I really don't run, like, a date-specific reports or calculations. But, Andrew, I am totally with you. everyone that is starting their personal finance journey, the first piece of advice I give them or the first action item is just reconciling your expenses and just figuring out cash flow. Like, what's coming in, what's going out? And that could be scary for some people, of course, like, but it can be very freeing for many people. Like, many people don't realize my wife was one of those people.
45:14 I started helping her years ago with her finances just when we were dating. And she, like, always said she was bad with money and she's overspending and stuff. And then for like a year we tracked all of her expenses and income, and she was doing way better than she thought. And that piece of information, that reassurance was so freeing for her and got her really excited. And then of course there's like the little optimization. Whenever you're like looking at your expenses every single month, things start to show up that maybe are just on autopilot or auto pay monthly subscriptions and stuff. You're like, I don't care about that anymore. Let's get rid of that.
45:46 So regardless, if you're doing better or you're doing worse, I think knowing where you're at in that spectrum and then give the information is super important in your journey. And that's where I think it's been become popular for people to say like, oh, you don't need a budget, you don't need to do all this stuff. But in reality, if you start doing that, you're going to realize because that's about as much time as I spend per month. And it's probably like right around, you know, that 30 minute mark. And most people think it's going to take them hours.
46:08 And it's not. It's just not going to once you get into this routine and once you get into the habit of doing it. And even when you're first getting started, this feels like a daunting task to you. You could spend five minutes every single day. And I know really, you know, people who are good with money who don't do this. but it's just one of those things where if you want to make sure that you're getting every dollar towards the things that you actually value like we're talking about here, it is just a great
46:29 thing to do. So you mentioned that, you know, the goalposts move sometimes for people like they move for me all the time. Has your definition of enough changed or is it something that you're, and is that something you're working on if it has? Man, I think I'm always working on this. It's changed for good and bad. I definitely feel more ease with like how much I've saved and honestly just my confidence to make more money if I ever need to like that's the great thing about becoming a business owner you feel very confident in yourself that that you can make more money if you need to but I struggle with moving the goalpost like so many people in the community do you know at the beginning of my journey I was so excited just to reach
47:07 lean fire and I was like I could do that like I reach lean fire if I make a little bit extra money on top of that that's great if not like I can live that lifestyle and now well getting married is one thing that will change that perspective a little bit, but I'm like, man, I want to reach Fat Fire now. So, yeah, I feel better about my enough number and I don't feel uneasy with how much I've saved. But at the same time, there are moments when I'm like, I spiral and I'm like, oh, no, do I have enough? Do I need to keep saving and investing, et cetera? So you recently just got married. So congratulations publicly on the podcast. We've already talked about this in private. You had a really cool wedding, which I think was a very,
47:42 very awesome way that you did it. But when I think about, you know, managing money in a relationship, and we're doing it on the path to financial independence. Have you found any challenges along the way? And what are some of the ways that you and your wife now talk about money? Do you do like a money meeting? Do you just have conversations throughout the day? Or how do you kind of manage money together as a couple? Yeah, luckily Gabby and I started this long before we got married. We've been dating for I think seven or eight years at this point in time. We've known each other for like 11 or 12 years. So we've had a pretty open relationship about money. I ended up being kind of like her money manager whenever she first started this journey of her own. And then she drank the fire Kool-Aid, and I kind of got her excited about this journey as well. But yeah, at the end of every month, I do all my reconciliation and kind of get all the numbers onto the spreadsheet. And then we come back together. And we'll look at, I'll highlight line items that I'm like, hey, I want to ask you about these certain questions or, hey, we need to collect a receipt for that. And that keeps us on track. And then we just do a high-level cash flow.
48:40 Like, hey, how much money has the family brought in this month? How much money is the family going out this month? what are some big purchases that are coming up in the next quarter? What are some things that we want to continue saving for? How are you feeling about money right now? Do you feel deprived? Do you feel okay? Is there anything that's changing? We'll have this open conversation every single month. And honestly, that's been helping us. And she's really great at like the administrative details. So if there's like small things that need to get done over the next month on the money side, she can usually handle all of those. And then I kind of look big picture and just help make sure that the cash flow is
49:15 working pretty well in our finances. When you first got her on board, like you guys were having conversations about money and she used to feel like she was bad with money, did you make any mistakes along the way? Let me just tell you why I'm asking this question. The first thing I did was when I first got married, my wife and I were trying to figure out our money.
49:33 And the first thing I did was at the time we were using like the old school wine app that you had to manually kind of put everything in. And I pulled it out and I was like, look at this. We're overspitting it here, here and here. And this is crazy, yada, yada. And I can tell you right now that's the wrong way to do it. Instead, what I realized was like pretty quickly, I need to start to have these conversations in a way where I'm kind of showing the outcome.
49:56 And so, hey, if we do this, we can become financially free at this age. Or if we do this, we can take X amount more vacations. And that's what we really wanted. That's what we both really wanted. But I was looking at the nuance and showing, you know, just kind of placing blame. I was young then. We got married when, you know, in our early 20. So it was one of those things where I was also immature.
50:13 But at the same time, I think that was something that I learned a lesson that day. And it was basically, hey, let's focus on our goals and what we want and our why. And then we can work backwards from there. Did you make any mistakes along the way doing that? Or were you kind of already, you know, in a point in time where you kind of knew how to handle this? Andrew, I feel so seen by you. That was my exact problem. I think ultimately it was just assuming that people look at and view money the same way I view and look at money.
50:41 And for me, I was the spreadsheet guy and the optimization guy. And, you know, if you cut these certain things out, you could save this much amount of money. But yeah, you're right. I wasn't putting the why behind it. I wasn't really looking at what Gabby really wanted from money. And it took me a while to really sort that out. But she kept asking her, like, I kept asking her, like, why she wanted to get good with her expenses. And I found out, like, she wanted to make a career pivot.
51:06 And she wanted to feel confident that she could step out of this job that was paying her very well and step into a different job. and really have the safety and security that comes along with a healthy savings and good financial practices. And whenever I started painting that for her and her being able to make this change and that she's got to be okay, that's when things really clicked. And she started to get excited. And then she kind of moved me out of the way and she just manages her money her own way. So yeah, I think I beat my head multiple times trying to convince her about savings rate and the 4% rule and financial independence and all that. And I really just need to paint it for how she she wanted money to act in her life at that time.
51:44 Exactly. I think that's a big key. And I know for many listeners and many people even in, you know, that we talk to in our academy and things like that, they all kind of mention this. They're just trying to get on the same page. And I think it's just so important to paint that picture, paint the outcome and kind of get everybody on that same page. And all of a sudden, it's just going to work out in your favor. Having those regular meetings and kind of making sure that you both are on the same page,
52:06 I think is super important too. And it doesn't have to be like a, you know, we're going to say, sit down and we're going to have powerpoints and TV. You can sit down with a glass of wine and kind of enjoy the time frame. It doesn't have to be this whole strenuous thing. But instead, you can actually kind of try to make it fun. And I think that's one of the cool things when it comes to some of this stuff, just making sure you're communicating like anything in a marriage, but also just making sure that you're in your relationship, you're just trying to go towards the thing that you both actually want, which I think is so important.
52:35 Definitely. Yeah. And I think both partners being involved in the finances to some degree is also really important because I think there have been moments that Gabby's just been like, you just do it all. And I've realized that I want us both involved, both invested. Although we both have different roles and responsibilities whenever it comes to the family finances. We both ultimately know what's happening and we're both taking some responsibility for that. For sure. And I think that's the that's the huge key overall. Well, Justin, this has been absolutely amazing. I appreciate you so much for coming on here. I know our listeners are going to love this as well. Can you tell our listeners where they can find out more about you, your
53:10 podcast and everything else you have going on. Yeah, if you want to achieve financial independence and have fun along the way, I host a podcast all about that. It's called F-I-minded or F-Minded, anywhere you listen to podcast. If you love Andrew, I've had him on the show a couple of times, so just search F-Minded Andrew G. and Cola, and his episodes will show up. Awesome. Well, we will link all of those down below in the show notes so that you guys can check that out. Justin, thank you again so much for coming on here. Andrew, it's been a blast. Thanks for having me, man.