The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Retire in 10 Years or Less!

Starting point is 00:00:00 On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, how to retire in 10 years or less. 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 how to retire in 10 years or less. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join the Master Money newsletter by going to

Starting point is 00:00:34 master money.com slash newsletter. And don't forget to follow us on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, 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 that really, really does help the show and cannot thank you guys enough for leaving those five-star ratings and reviews. Now, today, we're going to be diving into how to retire in 10 years or less. And my goal with this episode is I am going to start with the tactical stuff. We're going to dive into. exactly how to plan this out for your specific lifestyle if your goal is to retire in 10 years or less. Now, fair warning before we dive into this, if you want to retire in 10 years or less,

Starting point is 00:01:16 you have to be extremely aggressive. And I mean, in some situations, if you don't earn enough money, it really is not possible for every single person. And so what you have to understand is that this is going to be something that is not an easy path. This is why it is a path that a lot of people do not follow, but it is possible if you have the right plan in place. So I'm going to show you how to develop that plan step by step so that you can think through, does this work for my situation? Because money is the ultimate tool to buy your financial freedom. Imagine what that life would look like if you actually were able to retire in 10 years. You could spend more time with your kids. You could spend more time doing the things that you love. Maybe you spend more time doing

Starting point is 00:01:59 part-time work that you love. So it's not a full retirement. It's just something that allows you to transition to something that you enjoy more. These are all fantastic reasons to pursue financial freedom. But the other thing I want most people to note off the top is that even if you can't do this in 10 years, what if you did if you stretch it to 15, 17, 18 years, it is a lot easier than trying to just really get there in 10 years or less. And we're going to talk about exactly why in this episode. Secondly, I also am going to be talking through your savings rate and why it is one of the most important things if you do want to retire early. Plus, we're going to dive into some of the psychology sides in addition to some of the other options that you have available if maybe

Starting point is 00:02:42 this is too aggressive of an approach for your specific situation. And so the psychology side is very, very important. And I think it's a really interesting conversation to have when it comes to some of the other options that you have available because most people don't realize how much flexibility they have in their life, especially when it comes to their finances, and especially when you start to do some of this stuff and get your finances together. So I'm really excited to dive into this episode without further ado. Let's get into it. All right. So the first conversation that we are going to have, and especially if you want to retire in the next 10 years, is you need to understand your savings rate. This is going to be the thing that gets you to retirement in 10 years. This is

Starting point is 00:03:22 going to be the majority of your money, especially with that shorter time frame, because you don't have enough time to allow compound interest to really kick in and make a big difference. folks with the 30 to 40 year time horizons will have compound interest that is going to help propel them to that next level. But for you specifically when you're looking at your savings rate, this is going to be something that you really need to understand. Now, I am going to talk through something called the shockingly simple math behind early retirement. So when I first got into financial independence and I first got interested in the fire movement, I came across this blog called Mr. Money Mustache. And longtime listeners know I have talked about this a number of different times.

Starting point is 00:03:59 If you're a subscriber to the newsletter, you have already seen this chart because I preempted you guys with this chart a couple of weeks ago to show you exactly how to think about this stuff to prep you for this episode. And so when we start to think through the shockingly simple math behind our retirement, Mr. Money Mustache laid it out very simply, basically showing that your savings rate is going to dictate how fast you can actually retire. And so when we start to think about our savings rate, I want you to look at this chart and I want you to understand how important. this truly is. Now, the thing about the shockingly simple math behind early retirement is in that original article, he used a very modest rate of return. And so I wanted to update it. And I said, okay, well, what if you got a 6% rate of return? Or what if you got a 7% rate of return, 8, 9, or 10% rate of return? How do the numbers shift? And they are going to shift dramatically based on what rate of return you get. Now, for me specifically, when I am planning long term for

Starting point is 00:04:55 retirement, I like to use the 7% rate of return. Why? It is, very conservative based on what the S&P 500 has done over the course of the last decade or so. But in addition, I do not want to overestimate my rate of return when I am thinking about retirement. Now, the S&P 500, we actually just talked about this in Master Money Academy, has returned a little over 15% over the course of the last decade. And over the course of the last 50 years, it's returned right around 10% to investors. But we still want to be conservative when we are planning out our retirements, because if you overestimate it and, for some reason, the market returns a lower number,

Starting point is 00:05:32 then you are going to be working much longer than you originally anticipated. I would much rather have more money in my retirement account and get there sooner based on having a conservative estimate than having an overly aggressive estimate. And so when we're thinking about retirement, I just want you to keep that rate of return in mind. Now, on the screen, we're going to put this shockingly simple math behind early retirement chart that I want you to understand, okay? And what you're going to see here is that your savings rate is going to dictate when you can retire.

Starting point is 00:05:59 So if you look at something like a 10% savings rate, at a 6% rate of return, it would take you 45 years before you can retire. At a 7% rate of return, it would take you 41. At an 8% rate of return, it would take you 38 years. And at a 9% rate of return, it would take you 35. And at a 10% rate of return, it would take you 33 years before you can retire. So why is this so important to note? Because what are the financial gurus out there tell you to do? They say, save 10% of your money, and you'll be completely fine.

Starting point is 00:06:29 Even in the best case scenario of a 10% rate of return, you'd be working 33 years before you'd be able to retire. I don't like that. And I don't think most of you want to be working over 30 years in a job you do not like. So if you are someone who is very interested in retiring in 10 years, you most likely aren't loving what you're doing day in and day out right now. Or you may just want to have the option to have that FU money so that you can walk away at any point in time. And so this is why we always start you at the 20% savings rate. And that's what the minimum is that I want you to be saving. Why?

Starting point is 00:07:05 Because if you look at that 20% savings rate, even at a 7% rate of return, it's 27 years before you retire. And so it's less than 30 years. And this is starting from ground zero. If you have $0 invested, it would take you 27 years before you were able to retire. So at a 8% rate of return, it would take you 28.5. At a 9% rate of return, it would take you 26.7 years. And at a 10% rate of return, it would take you 25.2 years before you retired. And so this is why I want you to stay at that 20% rate, because best case scenario, you can retire in 25 years.

Starting point is 00:07:44 So let's say someone starts off at the age of 25, they go and save 20% of their money. Well, now at the age of 50, they are able to retire. Now, these assumptions obviously are very simple. your expenses are going to change over time and the way that you think about money is going to change over time. But if you keep your expenses the same, if you decide financial independence is something that you want to do and a lot of people in the fire movement do this,

Starting point is 00:08:05 they keep their expenses the same, then you will have the ability to get to that point in time. But let's say you wanted to raise that savings rate. And a lot of folks will say, okay, 25, 30%, that's a great range to be in. Let's look at that 30% savings rate. So if you make $100,000 per year, this means you're saving $30,000 per year. At a 7% rate of return, that'd be 24,

Starting point is 00:08:25 years before you can retire and at a 9% rate of return, that's where we are jumping up to 21 years and then at a 10% rate of return 20 years. So if you bump it up to 30%, you could shave potentially five-ish years off of your timeline. But now let's look at the most popular one that a lot of people do is somewhere between 40 and 50%. So let's look at the 50% rate of return because a lot of folks in the fire movement, they begin by saving 50% of their income. Well, how would you even be able to do this? Maybe you and your spouse work, for example, and you save one income. And the other income is the one that you live off of. If you can start that habit and get that ball rolling, man, that is a powerful thing. Or if you're really young right now and you get in the habit of saving half of your income and saving

Starting point is 00:09:05 investing towards the future, that is going to be a huge deal, especially if you're a high earner. Now, let's just be real right now. Obviously, a lot of folks are just trying to get by and a 50% savings rate is really, really high for some of you. And so I want you to note, hey, we're saying this is tough. This is difficult. We know it's difficult to do this. And so you really have to have the right situation or increase your income in order to be able to do this. And so as we look at a 50% savings rate, I just want to show you the power of having that. A 50% savings rate allows you at a 6% rate of return to retire in 15 years. At a 7% 15 years at a 7% rate of return. This allows you to retire in 15.7.7 years. 8% 14.3 years. And at a 10% rate of return,

Starting point is 00:09:51 13.1 years. But how do you retire in 10 years or less? What is the savings rate that you actually need? Well, if you look at the chart, at a minimum, a lot of folks will say you need to save 60 to 65% of your income. And this chart is going to show you exactly why, because that's 65% of your income, you would be able to retire in 10.2 years at 7% rate of return. It'd be 9.8. At an 8% rate of return, 9.5, a 9% is at 9.2, and a 10% rate of return is 8.9 years. So, this is the area that you want to target if you were thinking about retiring early. Now, you may be saying to yourself, how the heck am I ever going to save 60% of my income? That is absolutely impossible. For some of you, it may be impossible if you are in a situation where you can't reduce your expenses low enough

Starting point is 00:10:41 to be a livable amount by saving 50 to 65% of your income. or if you have a higher income, you may be able to do this if you are okay living on a smaller amount. Let me give an example of this. Let's say you make $200,000 per year, but you're okay living on $80,000 per year. Well, that'd be a situation where someone would be able to get to the point in time where they could save enough money to retire early. I'm going to give you a case study later on to show you a really specific example of this so that you can see exactly how this works, but I want you to understand this savings rate and how powerful it is. Now, if I remember correctly, folks like Mr. Money Mustache, for example,

Starting point is 00:11:15 save 70 to 80% of his income during his working years, which allowed him to retire right around the age of 30 or right after the age of 30. And so people who retire early, they do drastic things like that in order to be able to get to that point in time. And so what you're going to see here is you've got to live like no one else

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Starting point is 00:14:05 And so setting the savings rate, this is the entire game. You've seen people on this show like Cody Berman, for example, who we recently just interviewed on the podcast, who retired at the age of 30 by having a really high savings rate. He increased his income and had a really high savings rate and allowed him to do that. You've seen Justin on this podcast who also had a really high savings rate and was able to retire in just a couple of years because he had this super high savings rate. And so their income was high and their savings rate were high. If your income is not high enough, though, you can stretch out your retirement timeline and still retire early with an aggressive savings rate. And so, their income was high. And so, it just does, it may not be 50% to 65%. Okay. So we need to set up that savings rate first. And at a 50% savings rate, you're looking at roughly 17 years. At a 65, you're looking at 10.5 years.

Starting point is 00:14:49 But you can look at this and say to yourself, well, I can't do that, but what if I did 30 year? You know, what if I did 30%? Well, you're still looking at retiring in 24 years. So if you are someone who is 25 years old, for example, then you would be able to retire right around 49 years old. Pretty cool to be able to retire in your 40s. And I think for some people out there, just being able to retire early by having a higher savings rate can be really, really powerful.

Starting point is 00:15:13 Two is once you figure out what your savings rate is going to be, I want you to calculate the actual amount that you need. When it comes to financial independence and early retirement, one of the biggest misconceptions out there is that you can just go out and use the 4% rule and you're done with it. Yes, the 4% rule is a wonderful way to get this done with the back of the napkin mask. So everyone listening right now, I want you to understand what your retirement number is based on the 4% rule. Now, if you're not familiar with the 4% rule, this rule states that you can retire and draw down 4% of your portfolio every single year and adjust for inflation every year thereafter and be able to preserve your wealth long term. But let's say you retire at the age of 30 or 35. I think the 4% rule is a little bit aggressive if you're retiring in your 30s. You need to bump that down to 3.5 or 3%

Starting point is 00:16:01 and you can run some simulations to kind of see exactly where you land. But this is something that's going I need an adjustment. Again, we want to make sure we have this bulletproof financial plan. And the way to do that is to come up with some scenarios and what would happen in those scenarios. We just recently had an episode talking about the guardrails approach and how important that can be and having dynamic spending thought processes. And so if you do want to retire early, deciding how much you want to withdraw is going to be very important. But for quick math and something that's pretty accurate for the most part, the 4% rule is a great starting point that we want to make sure that we are utilizing. So you say to yourself, okay, I can spend $60,000

Starting point is 00:16:36 per year, then that means you need $1.5 million invested. The quick math is if you spend $60,000 per year, multiply that by $25, that's going to give you the amount that you can draw down 4% every single year. Or you can reverse it and say, okay, well, if I have $2 million, 4% is $80,000 per year, and that is how much I can withdraw. So you could think of it in two different ways. Now, the 4% rule was created by a guy named Bill Bangin, and then it was made popular by this study called the Trinity study, where they looked at retirees who had portfolios in place, and looked at how they could preserve this portfolio over the course of 30 years. For you specifically, again, if you're going to retire early,

Starting point is 00:17:13 I want you to run a bunch of different scenarios of what would happen in different market conditions because we do not want that sequence of return risk to wipe somebody out early on in early retirement. Now, obviously you have a better situation where you can go back to work because you're young enough, but it's just something I want you to note. So we need to calculate that actual number. Now, we have a tool also if you go to mastermoney.com slash resources that helps you calculate your retirement number and is one that I really, really love. So you can also check that out and go through that process. It factors in things like Social Security. If you have pension

Starting point is 00:17:46 income or any other income in there, it will help you factor that in. Okay. So two is you need to calculate that number. The back of the napkin math is think about how much you spend every single year right now and multiply that by 25. That's going to give you the number in place. Number three is then if you are serious about this and you want to increase your savings rate and get to the point in time where you want to retire early, maybe it's 10 years, maybe it's 80, years, maybe it's 15 years, then you need to attack the big three. Every single person that I know who is financially independent who did it very quickly, they attacked the big three. What are the big three? It's housing, food, and transportation. So number one, let's talk about housing. A couple of different

Starting point is 00:18:23 things that you can do when it comes to housing is a finding a home that you can afford. For example, if you can find a home that you can afford that lowers your overall housing costs, most people who are trying to achieve financial independence spend between 15 to 2,000. 20% of their income on housing. So a couple of different ways that you can do that. One, you can find an affordable house, which is much more difficult in today's day and age than it used to be. Two, is you could do something like house hacking.

Starting point is 00:18:48 So there's a book called Set for Life by Scott Trench, and he lays out the foundation of financial independence and how he utilized house hacking as a big portion of doing this. And he is a big proponent of the fire movement in addition to house hacking in real estate. And so house hacking means that you buy something like a duplex, a triplex or a house that has an in-law suite, and you live in one unit, and then you rent out the other unit, okay? And so when you do this, it either lowers your overall housing costs or in some situation allows you to actually make money just for living in your house.

Starting point is 00:19:22 So that is one option to do something like house hacking. A second option is to do live and flips. So Mindy and Carl Jensen, who have been on this podcast, and we will link that episode down below in the show notes, they did something called Live and Flips, where they would live in a house for two to five years, renovate the home as they're living there, and then flip it and sell it and then do it over again. The beautiful thing is, if you live in the home over the course of the last two to five years, you do not have to pay taxes on the gains all the way up to $500,000 if you're a couple, or $250,000 if you're single, if that is your primary residence. And so because of this, they were able to do live and flips over and over and over again, and I think they still do these

Starting point is 00:20:01 every couple of years as part of their early retirement plan. So, Those are two great scenarios of ways to reduce your overall housing cost if you are trying to achieve financial independence. Because again, housing is one of the biggest expenses for most people. You want to keep this as low as possible, obviously in a safe area, but you want to keep this as low as you possibly can. Number two is transportation. Most folks who are financially independent don't take on things like car payments until later on down the line. So many of them that I know, they will buy and pay cash for cars and they will find a used vehicle. that they can drive as long as they possibly can.

Starting point is 00:20:38 So an example of this is someone buying a Toyota, for example, and driving that Toyota over the course of the next 10 years. Maybe you find a $10,000 Toyota camera, or you find a $15,000 Honda Accord, a car that you know that you can drive for a really long time. Maybe you find a $17,000 Toyota Tacoma. And so you find these vehicles that you know are going to last a really, really long time.

Starting point is 00:21:01 And you buy them used. You buy them when the depreciation it already happens. You pay cash for them. and then you move forward from there. Car payments are going to get in the way of you trying to achieve this financial independence goal as fast as you possibly can. And so you want to look at a different way. You're going to have to do pretty much everything very different from what all of your peers do,

Starting point is 00:21:20 from what everyone around you does. If you really want this, if you want that financial freedom, if you want to have freedom with your time and energy for as long as you possibly can within your life, you absolutely have to do it this way. Number three is food. So finding ways to find great, awesome, delicious food, means that for the most part you have to cook at home, but you can still cook at home and do some really cool stuff. I have seen folks like Mr. Money Mustache talk about this, where he goes and reduces his overall grocery bill,

Starting point is 00:21:47 but he's very conscious about how much he is spending at the grocery store every single week. And so to do this, you really need to have a budget dialed in or at least be very good at spending your money. You either need to improve the skill of spending or have your budget dialed in and figure out exactly how much you need to be spending on food and groceries. dining out is a luxury for most people who are trying to achieve financial independence. You can do it a couple times a month, maybe once or twice a week even, depending on how much money you're making. But it's one of those things where you will probably have to do less if you want to retire in 10 years. Financial freedom, depending on the timeline, comes at a cost. And I'm trying to make this as realistic as possible for some of you so you understand how difficult this can actually be.

Starting point is 00:22:26 A lot of the fire influencers out there make this seem like it's a really easy thing. And in my opinion, it's not easy. but it is something that can be worth it depending on what your goals are. So those are the three big areas that you want to focus on when it comes to reducing your overall spending. The fourth one that I would throw in there would be other things to look at are like health care costs, daycare costs, depending on some of the bigger ticket items that you have in your budget. But those are the big three that most people have. Now number four is, okay, I'm starting to work on my spending. I'm trying to reduce my spending overall.

Starting point is 00:22:57 I've got this really high savings rate. Where do I invest my dollars? Where do I put this money? Well, there's a couple of places that most people who are trying to achieve financial independence look. Is tax advantage accounts are a big portion of what they do? And we'll talk about how to access those early in a second. For the most part, filling up tax advantage accounts can be really, really important. But there is a trade-off to this, which we'll talk about right after, okay?

Starting point is 00:23:19 So 401K all the way up to the match first is going to be the one place that you really want to consider when you are thinking about investing your dollars. Okay? Your 401k match is a 100% rate of return. It is free money. Every single person listen to this podcast, if you get a 401k match, you need to take advantage of it.

Starting point is 00:23:36 It is the most important thing that you can do with your dollars is get that 100% rate of return. Even before paying off high interest debt, I want you to get that 401k match because that return is so high. Number two is the HSA if you have a high deductible health plan. This is going to do a number of different things for you

Starting point is 00:23:52 even when you retire early. One is first, it's going to give you those triple tax benefits, meaning money goes into an HSA tax free, you invest it and it grows tax-free and you can pull the money out tax-free as long as you have that qualified medical expense. And so for folks who retire early, if you have some qualified medical expenses, this is going to allow you to pull some of that cash out of your HSA early in retirement. And so it gives you one option that allows you to do this. It may fund, you know, a portion of what you spend every single year. The other thing it does is once you get the traditional, you know,

Starting point is 00:24:25 retirement age at age 65, it basically turns into an IRA later on on, on the the line and so it can grow tax free and have the ability for you to have some flexibility there. Next is to look at the Roth IRA. So the Roth IRA allows you to put $7,500 per year currently. And if you are over the age of 50, you have that catch-up contribution available to you. But the Roth IRA is one that you want to try to max out if you are not above the income thresholds. If you are above the income thresholds, then doing a backdoor Roth IRA is another great option. And then going back to the 401K and maxing that out at $24,500 per year. If you want to retire in 10 years, you most likely need to be maxing out the majority of your retirement

Starting point is 00:25:04 accounts. But the other option is, okay, you say, well, how am I going to access this money? Sure, there's a number of different ways on how you can access this money. You could do a Roth conversion ladder. You could do things like ASEP, substantial equal periodic payments. But these are complicated strategies. In reality, you want to talk to someone when you were thinking about doing some of these strategies.

Starting point is 00:25:22 And so one of the easiest ways to look at this is potentially looking at something like a taxable brokerage account. Now, there are tremendous tax benefits to contributing to these tax deferred accounts or these tax advantage accounts. So you want to make sure that you look into the benefits of those, but also look at the additional benefits of something like a taxable brokerage account. If you are deciding to invest in a taxable brokerage account, there are no income limits. There's no limits to how much you can contribute every single year. And in addition, you can pull the money out whenever you want. Now, you need to note the tax differential on taxable brokerage accounts versus something else like those tax advantage accounts.

Starting point is 00:25:58 When you put money in a taxable brokerage account, if you pull it out within that same year, then you're going to pay short-term capital gains. These are not good things to pay because it's basically the same as your income tax. And so for most people, when you sell inside of your taxable brokerage account, when you've owned the stock for less than one year, that's when you pay those short-term capital gains. Not the best situation for most people. Number two, though, is if you've owned the stock for longer than one year, you are going

Starting point is 00:26:24 to be paying long-term capital gains. And when you do that, it is a much more tax-efficient way to think about investing in a taxable. Why? Because there are three different brackets when we look at how much you pay in long-term capital gains. And so for 2006, the federal long-term capital gains rates, if you are taxed at the 0% rate, meaning you make less than $49,450 per year as a single filer, or $98,900 per year as Mary, filing jointly, then you would be paying the 0% tax. So think about this for a second. You retire early and you decide I'm going to be retired. If you make

Starting point is 00:27:04 less than that in income, you don't have an income anymore. And if you make less than that an income, you're going to pay zero percent tax on that money. Plus the standard deduction. So when you look at this standard deduction, this allows you to also save an additional amount on this, which is going to be a really, really cool thing for those of you who have long-term capital gains rate. Now, if you make over $49,451 as a single filer, all the way up to to $545,000, or if you're married filing jointly and you make $98,901 all the way up to $613,000, then you would pay the 15% long-term capital gains rate. And so that is going to be one where for most of you, you either fall in the 0% or the 15% rate. And then if you make over 545,000 or

Starting point is 00:27:47 $613,000, then you'd pay the 20%, which is still significantly less than what your income tax would be. So what does this tell us right here? Taxable brokerage account. are way more tax advantage than people give them credit for it. In fact, I am starting to really consider a taxable brokerage account to be one of the coolest accounts out there because of the way that these income limits when it comes to long-term capital gains are changing. They're changing in our favor and they are increasing every single year. They're doing a great job at keeping up with this.

Starting point is 00:28:18 And so because of that, I really, really like these accounts even as some tax advantages come into play. Now, if you are someone who has an income or you're going to take a part-time job and you feel as though it's going to take you above those thresholds, then maybe looking at the tax advantage accounts could be great. But these are also really wonderful for people who decide to retire early because you have the flexibility. And if your income doesn't rise above $120,000 plus $1,000 per year,

Starting point is 00:28:41 if you are married, then you're in a pretty good situation to maybe pay 0% capital gains tax. So check with your CPA, check with your advisor if you have one, on this kind of stuff, because I think it's really important to run those numbers when you're thinking about retiring early and developing this plan and putting that together. So that's going to also bridge you to $59.5. Is having that taxable brokerage account.

Starting point is 00:29:01 So you need to have that available for most situations, especially if you want to retire early. I think that's the account to use. I think that's the main one to use is the taxable brokerage when we go through these steps. Next is you want to figure out what your gap is. So the difference between your income and expenses, you're going to aggressively invest that as fast as you possibly can.

Starting point is 00:29:19 And so you look at your income, you look at your expenses, and you figure out what that percentage is. Once you do that based on all the stuff we just talked about, you invest as much as you possibly can, and then adjust that gap if you can as time goes on. If you increase your income, the gap is going to grow. If you decrease your expenses, the gap is going to grow. And here's the beautiful thing about a high savings rate that I want most people to know. The more you save, it actually works in your favor in two different ways.

Starting point is 00:29:42 One is you are increasing the amount that you're saving over time, but you're also decreasing the amount that you need to spend every single year. And so it's a two-part equation that allows you to accelerate your path to financial independence by increasing that savings rate because all of a sudden you realize okay if i make 120 000 per year and i save 60 000 and i'm able to live off 60 000 well that means it reduces the amount of money that i need to live on is that 60 000 maybe you were spending 80 before and now you reduce it down to 60 but it also increases the acceleration rate of your financial independence by your savings rate meaning that you also are saving 60 000 and that 20 000 difference can make a huge, huge deal.

Starting point is 00:30:23 So these are the steps that I want you to take. These are the things that I want you to think about if you want to retire in 10 years. But you got to map it out with your savings rate. You got to understand what your retirement number is going to be. You got to understand what your expenses are going to be in retirement and how much you truly want to spend. And once you have those three numbers, you can really make a huge dent in your financial independence timeline.

Starting point is 00:30:45 Now let's look at a case study for this because I want most of you to look at this and see, you know, what would this look like in reality? Well, let's look at Marcus and Priya, who want to retire at the age of 39. So Marcus and Priya are a couple, they're in their late 20s, and they live in a mid-cost city, and they don't have kids yet, okay? And they start around $150,000 combined as household income. So maybe each one of them is making $75,000 per year. Then there's one move that they do that drives everything. They lock in their lifestyle at spending $60,000 per year. So they make $150,000 between the two of them. They lock in their spending at $60,000 per year and they never move it.

Starting point is 00:31:22 Okay. So from year one to year 10, they decide we're going to spend $60,000 and we're okay with this. The number one thing they decide to do, though, is during this 10 years, they want to increase their income. They want to make this easier to get to. And so increasing their income is their number one goal. So they go on offense. They do everything they can to get promotions.

Starting point is 00:31:41 So Marcus stacks a couple promotions. Priya builds a side business into a second income. And the household income grosses about 300. thousand dollars by year 10. So they doubled their income over the course of 10 years. I have seen this happen with plenty of people in Master Money Academy. I have done this time and time again over a decade. It is not a massive leap to double your household income over the course of 10 years. 10 years is a long time when it comes to working years and you can absolutely do that. And so by keeping their spending pinned at $60,000 per year the whole way, their savings rate runs from a 50% savings rate to start

Starting point is 00:32:15 all the way up to 70% and everything above that $60,000 that they need every single year gets automated into things like low-cost index funds and things like their taxable brokerage account that allows them to be able to build up this portfolio. And their number at 25 times $60,000 per year is going to be $1.5 million. So with that small head start and a 7% rate of return, they cross over in 10 years. Now here's the interesting thing about this case study is of that $1.5 million, about three quarters of the money is money that they actually had to put in. It's money that they had to contribute to this account, whereas someone, if they had a 30 year time, it would be pretty much reversed. But because it's only 10 years, they had to contribute the majority of this money, and only about 25% is compound interest.

Starting point is 00:33:06 Now, once they retire, compound interest will take over long term. And if they reduce their spending enough, they could be able to get to a point in time where this portfolio, grows over time and they can actually spend more. I've seen this happen to people who retired early, like in the 2010s, where they retired early and all of a sudden their portfolio continued to grow because we've had wonderful market returns. And so they are actually able to spend more now than they did when they originally retire. Now, the big thing you're thinking here is, well, what about inflation? You're going to adjust for inflation every single year. So you need to adjust for that inflation rate no matter what. And so a lot of times the 4% rule bakes that in. But if you have a longer

Starting point is 00:33:42 time horizon, I would adjust it down to 3.5% or 3% is the way that I would truly think about it to be conservative. Now, that may be overly conservative for some of you. And if you look at some of the most recent research on the 4% rule, in reality, they say you can spend right around 4.9%. So maybe if you retire early, the 4% rule can work out. But I just like to be a little more conservative, especially in those early years, sequence of returns risks, those types of things. We want to make sure that we are avoiding. So that is an example of how this could work for someone who is a earner. Now you're saying to yourself, well, I make $60,000 per year. I can live off $40,000 per year and save 20. Can I get there? Most likely not. Most likely you need a higher savings rate to get to that point in time.

Starting point is 00:34:24 Since your savings rate is going to be the throttle that allows you to get to early retirement in 10 years, you need to make more money than that. And so for most people, unless you're willing to live on a very small amount of money, which in 2026 is pretty difficult, you need to figure out what your timeline is going to be and then get to that point in time where maybe it's 15 years, but that's A-OK because you are buying back your freedom. And so even if it's 15 years, that is an amazing feat. That is half the time of when most people retire. In fact, it's faster than half the time. And so that's, I think, for most of you, is really, really cool. Now, I want to dive into a couple of things on the psychology here right after this. Summer's almost here. And I want to spend time planning trips

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Starting point is 00:37:10 $1 per month trial today at Shopify.com slash pfp. Go to shopify.com slash pfp. That's Shopify.com slash pfp. All right, so a couple of things I want to talk about that. I haven't heard a lot of people talk about when it comes to fire and retiring early.

Starting point is 00:37:29 And some of the things that I think we need to talk through is number one, understanding, obviously this is a grind. I have said that throughout the entire episode. This is not an easy thing to do. I'm not going to sugarcoat it. saving 65% of your income is not an easy thing to do and not everyone can do it. But two is I want you to make sure you actually want this.

Starting point is 00:37:48 Because when we think about early retirement, it might be a wonderful dream to get to the point in time where we can retire early. But let me just give you an example of this. When I was in my 20s, I told myself, I want to achieve lean fire. And lean fire means that you achieve financial independence and when you achieve financial independence, it's basically the bare minimum that you need. So I told myself, okay, I want to get at the point in time. where it's the bare minimum of my need, then I'm going to be happy and I'll be able to retire

Starting point is 00:38:11 and do whatever I want with my time. And I realized pretty quickly when I got to that number, I don't want to spend this amount of money for the rest of my life. That doesn't feel like a life fulfilled to me. I wanted to spend more. And so I changed my goals once I got closer to that goal because I had changed. I got married. I had kids. And so a lot of things had changed within my life. And so for you specifically, I want you to think about, is this what you actually want? and there's ways to test this. So one of the ways to test this is you could do something like a mini sabbatical. A sabbatical is basically where you take a certain amount of time off. And when you take that time off, it gives you, you know, a pre-test to see if you actually like spending time, you know, doing other things.

Starting point is 00:38:53 So let's say, for example, you go to your boss and you say, okay, I would like to take a three-month sabbatical and you can give whatever reason you can. Obviously not everybody can do this depending on what your job is. But you could say, I'm going to take a three-month sabbatical and see if this is what I want to do. because you could take a sabbatical every five years or so, for example. And Jillian Johnson has a great book on this, talking about how to take sabbaticals, how to talk to your boss and those types of things. So if you are interested in this concept, definitely check out her book. But you can take these sabbaticals every couple of years.

Starting point is 00:39:21 And this gives you that feeling of early retirement without having to be so aggressive on it. So that's one thing I think is really cool that you could do, is kind of have these, you know, timeframes where you take time off or you save up to take time off. And that's how you plan it out because you can, you know, work much longer when you have these longer breaks. And so I think that's a really cool way to think about this. So making sure you actually want this is number one. And finding ways to test the waters is really, really important. If you are going to retire early, I want you to know what you're retiring too. We did an entire episode on this talking through thinking about, you know, when you retire, what are you actually

Starting point is 00:39:55 going to be doing with your time? Because it has been shown that people who retire, if they don't have a plan in place on what they're going to do with their time, they end up not living as long. They end up not being as happy or fulfilled. And so you want to know, what you're getting into. Is there a charity or cause you believe in? Do you just want to spend more time with your kids? Be able to homeschool them maybe? Or maybe you want to spend more time with family members or aging parents. Maybe you want to do more of your hobbies or your interest. Or maybe you just actually want to finally start that business. And so once you do that, you have the flexibility and the ability to do this by retiring early. So there's a lot of things you want to make sure that you were

Starting point is 00:40:28 thinking through. But if you have no plan in place, your days begin to drift and you become bored. and then all of a sudden, if you become too bored, then you can become depressed or anxious, and I don't want that for anybody out there. So making sure you understand what you're retiring to, I think it's a conversation that you need to have. Also, you can explore lighter versions of this. So there are things like Coastfire, for example.

Starting point is 00:40:49 Maybe you want to get to the point in time where you're just reducing the overall days that you're working. You want to work four days a week. Well, you can get to CoastFi, and all of a sudden, you reduce the amount of days that you're working, and you don't have to have that high savings rate. CoastFi is basically where your savings get to a point, time and all of a sudden compound interest can kind of take you the rest of the way all the way

Starting point is 00:41:08 until early retirement age. So that is something that you can consider. The other option is to do something like barista fire. I love barista fire for flexibility. So it originally was called barista fire because people would take a job, a part-time job at Starbucks in order to cover their health insurance when they retired early. But what I like about barista fire is you could take a part-time job to cover the rest of the expenses that you need. Maybe you get your portfolio 50% of the way there and then the other 50% you decide, actually, I really enjoy spending time surfing. And so you go and move to a location where you can surf more and more. But in addition, you become a surf instructor.

Starting point is 00:41:46 And so the other 50% of your income is made up at becoming a surf instructor. So you spend all day long spending time surfing. I think that's a really, really cool concept. We've talked with this with a number of different things. Maybe you love Pilates. And so you decide, hey, I'm going to get 75% of the way to my goal. and then the other 25% I want to teach Pilates classes. And that's going to be my income and I'll do it one to two days a week.

Starting point is 00:42:07 And that allows me to be able to retire early and do something that I love and spend my days doing things that I enjoy. Maybe you love pickleball and you want to be a pickleball coach. Maybe you love fishing and you want to be a fishing charter captain or spend time out in the water. So many cool options out there of things that you can do. Maybe you love your hometown and you want to be a guide or a tour guide. Maybe you love travel and you want to be a travel guide. There's really great ways to find additional income sources. is with barista fire, and I think there's so many different creative options that you have out there.

Starting point is 00:42:35 So that's another one to think through. Also, you want to make sure that your partner or your spouse is all the way in on this if you are going to do it together. Otherwise, it could be very difficult to achieve this goal and it can be something that you really want to think through. And another big thing to note is healthcare. So health care can kill this plan pretty quickly if you don't have a plan in place. Health care, depending on where you live, can cost anywhere from $1,000, all the way up to $2,500. And if you're saying to yourself, well, I can live on $6,000. $60,000 per year, but it costs $2,000 per month for health care and you didn't factor that in. Well, in reality, you're going to need $84,000 per year in order to be A-O-K.

Starting point is 00:43:09 And so if you're used to your employer paying for your health care, you want to make sure that you develop a plan for health care or look deeper into the cost. One of the things that I like to do is go and shop your health care. You can go to ACA, for example, or you can go to your local state health care plans and kind of see what those costs are, so you have an understanding of what your options are. This is something that doesn't look like it's going to get any better anytime soon. So you probably are going to have to factor these numbers in for anybody retiring early. I don't care if you're retiring at 55, 69.

Starting point is 00:43:37 But anytime before Medicare kicks in, you want to make sure that you're factoring in health care, because this can be something that can blow out your budget entirely. So you do all this planning. You get to early retirement and all of a sudden health care just absolutely wipes you out. So that's why a lot of people like barista fire because you can get a part-time job that will carry you through early retirements and into Medicare years. So people would work at Starbucks because Starbucks used to give, you know, health care benefits to people even when they worked part-time. There's probably a full list somewhere of companies that will do that.

Starting point is 00:44:05 So I think that's a really cool option and one to keep thinking through. If you've ever felt like your bank is working against you instead of for you, you're not alone. Between overdraft fees, monthly fees, and just trying to access your own money, it all adds up fast. That's why Chime is changing the way people think. Chime offers fee-free banking built for you, not the bank. That means no monthly fees, no overdraft fees with SpotMe and access to thousands of fee-free

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Starting point is 00:46:40 Now you may be saying to yourself, okay, all this is great and all this is grand, but why would I even want to do this? What are some of the reasons why you'd want to do this? Well, you get your healthiest back early on. You get your highest leverage years and you get the years where you are the most fresh. And for those of you who are high performers out there, my guess, and most people who retire early, they find something that's going to allow them to make more money. In addition, because they have all this additional free time, it's just in their nature to go out and try to find something else that is going to allow them to make money, but now they have the flexibility to do things on their own term. So you get your early years back, the times where you really don't get those early years back if

Starting point is 00:47:14 you retire at 60. If you're in your 30s or 40s, you get those back where you are the the healthiest. Two is time with your kids. So if you have young kids, this is one of the most valuable times that you will ever have. You will lay on your deathbed if you spend all your time working and not spending time with your kids and you will lay on your deathbed and you will regret it. That is the number one regret for most people is not spending enough time with your family. You want to look back and say, I spent some wonderful memories and wonderful time with my family. And if you haven't read the book, Die With Zero, I fully encourage you to read that. Three is you have full control over your calendar, your time, your energy, and everything else that you could do.

Starting point is 00:47:49 And for most people, that's going to bring joy. That's going to bring happiness and really, really give you the opportunity to reduce your stress and anxiety around everything in life. So those are just some of the things that you can do with this that I want you to just consider. Make a pros and cons list if you are considering doing this aggressively and decide if this is right for you and your family because there are a lot of factors that come into play. even if you just save aggressively or try to get to this goal and you do it in 12 years or 14, 15, 20 years. It's really, really cool goal to try to achieve. And I think for most of you out there, you're going to be very happy that you did this in the future. I know for me specifically, I was pretty frugal in my 20s. And looking back, I am so happy I was.

Starting point is 00:48:28 It allowed me to have that financial foundation that everything else is built off of. So very, very important to make sure that you think through that. So that is the plan on how you can retire in 10 years. those are some of the steps that you can take. If you guys have any questions on that, feel free to shoot me an email. And right now, we're going to dive into a couple of your questions

Starting point is 00:48:48 that you sent via email. Join the Master Money newsletter if you haven't already and you can respond to any of those newsletters and we will answer your questions there. But let's jump into a couple of your questions. All right, so the first question comes in from Lauren. Lauren says, thank you for the great content. What is a reasonable rate to pay a CPA

Starting point is 00:49:06 to do our personal and my husband's business taxes? I feel like every year my bill goes up by hundreds of dollars, but it also feels like a lot to move the needle to someone new. Not sure if $2,200 is reasonable or not. So Lauren, thank you so much for listening and thank you for the kind words. This is something where when you're thinking about your CPA, I think for most people out there, especially if you have a business like your husband does,

Starting point is 00:49:29 you need to have a CPA in your corner. Now, for some of you, if you have a simple W-2 return, it may feel as though it's a waste of money to have a CPA, unless you're a really high earner. So for some of you out there, you may be better off just going with the turbo tax or something like that, but you can evaluate the cost and kind of figure out if that's something that makes sense for you. But for others of you out there, if you have a high income or you have a lot of complicated things happening with your taxes, maybe you own real estate or you own businesses, a CPA is very, very valuable because they can put together tax strategy

Starting point is 00:50:01 that saves you much more than what their fee costs. And what I've noticed, just like what Lauren's noticing, is that the costs have gone up over the course of the last couple of years and every year most likely they will continue to go up. And there's a number of reasons for that. One of which though is, and I talked to my CPA about this for a while, the cost to even hire a CPA at a CPA firm has gone up dramatically. CPAs are very valuable. There's less of them available over the course of the last couple of years with experience is what he kind of explained to me. And so it does seem as though sometimes this stuff can go up over time. But $2,200 for a business and a personal return is right around standard.

Starting point is 00:50:37 and is something that doesn't seem overly expensive to me. But one of the questions that I want you to figure out and ask yourself is, is my CPA saving me more in taxes than the fee I'm paying them? Because tax strategy is a big part of this. And so for me, me and my CPA, we meet every single year and put together what we call a tax plan. Now, the tax plan allows us to figure out the strategies that are going to work based on my personal situation that will allow me to save more in taxes.

Starting point is 00:51:04 So how would this work? Let's say you're a high earner. and you make $300,000 per year. Well, if you make $300,000 per year as a household, then you can go to your CPA and say, what are some of the strategies that I can look at? Maybe they'll look at your stock options. Maybe they'll look at some of the things that you own

Starting point is 00:51:21 or the stocks that you own. You could do tax loss harvesting. There's a lot of different things that they can put into play to really help you save on your taxes. If you're a business owner, it's a must because of a number of different things, but even just making sure you're making your tax payments on time, making sure that you are categorizing, your expenses correctly, making sure that you are taking advantage of every single tax

Starting point is 00:51:40 advantage there is for business owners out there. And there's a lot of them this year. Making sure you know all those different things is really, really important. Ask your CPA. Why did the fees or the cost increase from last year? What are some of the things that you're doing to make sure that we make up for these costs? And ask them the hard questions because that's really, really important when you are thinking through some of this stuff is you want to grow them. And Master Money Academy, we give a lot of our members there a list of questions to ask your CPA. It's like a two-page document we give them to make sure that they, are making enough, you know, headway when it comes to some of this stuff. So definitely,

Starting point is 00:52:12 definitely ask as many questions as you possibly can about the fees. And then once you find one, if you find a good one, and it's pretty, it's pretty annoying to move it to somewhere else. But if you do have one who is just not doing enough, then moving it is probably worth its weight and gold. So if you could find one that makes a lot of sense. And then handing over your documents early, like there's a bunch of different things that you could do to make sure the fees go down a little bit. But I think that's a really, really good starting point. And again, $2,200 for a business return and a personal return is right around the standard rate. But have the business pay for it.

Starting point is 00:52:43 It should be a business expense for sure. Making sure that you get that, at least that write off on the business expense side is going to be very important. Thank you so much for that question. Let's jump into the next one. All right. The next question is from Alyssa. Alyssa says, hi, Andrew. I love the show.

Starting point is 00:52:58 Your Q&A episodes are my favorite and I've helped shape how my fiancé and I approach your finances. We are both 28 getting married this year, and I am a physician assistant earning around $105,000 per year. That's fantastic. And he is a project manager earning around $129,000 per year. Wow, you guys are crushing it. We max out our Roth IRAs, his HSA, and contribute heavily to our 401K and 403B. We want to buy a forever home, have kids, and ideally have me transition to per diem work for about four years to stay home with them. should we shift some contributions from retirement accounts to a tax of brokerage for flexibility,

Starting point is 00:53:36 and how do you weigh in the tax advantages we would be giving up versus the flexibility we would gain over the next five to 10 year time horizon? Well, first, Alyssa, congrats on getting married. That is absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for the kind words about the show. And you guys are absolutely crushing it. You're maxing out your Roth IRAs. You are contributing to your HSAs. You're contributing heavily to the 401K and 403B and at age 28. That is. is rare. Plus, the amount of money that you both are making is absolutely incredible, and you can do some really cool stuff with that right now. So what I would do is kind of figure out some of the non-negotiables first, is I would make sure that you are obviously taking advantage of that 401k

Starting point is 00:54:15 match no matter what or the employer match on the 401k and the 403B. That's free money and an instant return overall. But secondly, is that HSA, I would continue to contribute to that as well because you get those triple tax advantages. And so that's something if I were in your shoes, I would make sure that I was continuing to contribute to. Now here's a couple of things to do. It's one, you can decide, okay, well, if I want more flexibility, what would our income look like if we needed to draw down on this taxable brokerage account? Because if you decided maybe you wanted to retire early, like we were talking about today, that is something where we can figure out, okay, well, does it make sense for me to contribute more to my taxable based on our current situation? And it definitely

Starting point is 00:54:51 could. And in fact, a taxable should be probably part of your plan, especially if you're considering going to that per diem side of the equation and potentially even at some point in time deciding that you don't want to work as much anymore because you want to stay home with the kids. Well, that's going to be something to definitely consider. But number two is I would continue to make sure you're making contributions to some of those retirement accounts like the Roth and 401K, even as long as you possibly can. Because those tax advantages are something where you're young and that Roth IRA is going to grow tax-free.

Starting point is 00:55:21 So definitely want to make sure that you are utilizing that. And the flexibility that you do have with the Roth, not that I would personally ever consider doing this, but the flexibility that you do have with the Roth is that you can with draw contributions at any time. So this is one of those areas where obviously I don't want you interrupting compound interest, but you do have a little bit flexibility with the Roth if you absolutely had to utilize some of those funds. And then using the 401k and 403B, I would try to get as much money as I possibly could in there for as long as possible. And if you have extra surplus, then also looking at that taxable brokerage account. The taxable brokerage account, though,

Starting point is 00:55:52 if you feel as though you could retire early or you feel as though you're going to want to have this money earlier, then you can prioritize that a little bit ahead if you want to to have that additional flexibility, there's nothing wrong with that whatsoever. In fact, if you're trying to compete with like the 401k and 403B and you're saying, okay, well, maybe we just want to, you know, have X amount of dollars in our taxable to give us that bridge. I have no issue with that whatsoever. And for folks out there who are listening who are young, even just getting a big chunk of money into your taxable early and led to a compound over time, it's a really cool idea. Because if you do that, then you have enough where you know it's going to bridge you to the next step, where you can either

Starting point is 00:56:28 pull some of that down before you retire for cash on hand. You can use it for health care. You can use it for so many different things. And the flexibility is one of those areas where I absolutely love it. I've used my taxable to buy businesses before. I have a taxable account for vacations that I'm using as a portfolio to draw down on vacations. There's so many cool things you can do with the taxable account. So I definitely think that it is something that if you, if your timeline is is retiring early, look into the tax taxable for sure. Now, how do you weigh the tax advantages you'd be giving up? It kind of depends on where your finances are going to be when you have that taxable. Like I said, in the episode today is you can have up to, you know, since you're married,

Starting point is 00:57:06 you would be able to have up to a little over $120,000 per year after the standard deduction. So like right now in 2006, you could have up to $96,700 if you're married filing jointly in that account and pay 0% on taxes. And then if you make over that, then you would pay, you know, 15% on that tax. right. So the 15% differential is the number that you would run to figure out what the difference is. But when you're looking at this, the other thing to consider is the standard deduction. So you actually have the $96,700 plus the standard deduction is going to allow you to save on that specific amount when it comes to your taxable brokerage account. And so I would run those numbers based on the

Starting point is 00:57:45 taxable plus standard deduction versus kind of what you would have in your 401k and 403B. And that would give you an indication of the tax differences based on your personal situation so that you could figure that out because even if you're paying the 15% tax bracket, it is something where sometimes that tradeoff is worth it, depending on what is going on and what your personal finance goals are. So that is one thing I would definitely look at, is see which brackets you fall into and then running the numbers based on that. So thank you so much for sending in the question. You guys are absolutely crushing and I'm so excited for you guys. Let me know what you guys decide to do. And good luck on the wedding. That is so, so exciting. I think that's fantastic to hear what

Starting point is 00:58:23 you guys are doing and you're absolutely crushing it. So that makes me so excited. And thank you all for listening to this episode. I truly appreciate each and every single one of you. If you guys have any questions, again, you can shoot us an email by going to mastermoney.com slash newsletter. Join the Mastermoney newsletter and you can respond to any of those there. Also, you can leave a comment on Spotify, YouTube, or wherever else. And we may add your question to the show as well from there. So thank you guys so much for being here. If you want help from me directly, join Master Money Academy. me. We'll give you a seven day free trial down below in the show notes so you could check it out, join some Q&A calls. You can check out all of our courses in there, check out all the other stuff

Starting point is 00:59:00 we have going on, see behind the curtain. If it's not for you, no worries, you got a seven day free trial. So thank you guys again so much for being here on this episode and we will see you on the next episode.

The Personal Finance Podcast - How to Retire in 10 Years or Less!

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