The Personal Finance Podcast - Why you NEED a Financial Independence Bucket List With Justin Peters

Episode Date: April 30, 2025

In this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast,  we are going to Justin Peters about  how to create a Financial Independence bucket List. Watch this episode on Youtube How Andrew Can Help You:  Listen to The Business Show here. Don't let another year pass by without making significant strides toward your dreams. "Master Your Money Goals" is your pathway to a future where your aspirations are not just wishes but realities. Enroll now and make this year count! Join The Master Money Newsletter where you will become smarter with your money in 5 minutes or less per week Here! Learn to invest by joining  Index Fund Pro! This is Andrew’s course teaching you how to invest!  Watch The Master Money Youtube Channel! , Ask Andrew a question on Instagram or TikTok.  Learn how to get out of Debt by joining our Free Course  Leave Feedback or Episode Requests here.  Car buying Calculator here Thanks to Our Amazing Sponsors for supporting The Personal Finance Podcast. Shopify: Shopify makes it so easy to sell. Sign up for a one-dollar-per-month trial period at  shopify.com/pfp Chime: Start your credit journey with Chime. Sign-up takes only two minutes and doesn’t affect your credit score. Get started at chime.com/ Thanks to Fundrise for Sponsoring the show! Invest in real estate going to fundrise.com/pfp Thanks to Policy Genius for Sponsoring the show! Go to policygenius.com to get your free life insurance quote. Go to https://joindeleteme.com/PFP20/ for 20% off! Indeed: Start hiring NOW with a SEVENTY-FIVE DOLLAR SPONSORED JOB CREDIT to upgrade your job post at Indeed.com/personalfinance Turn your business dream into reality! Apply now at www.oneday.org/pfp  Go to Acorns.com/pfp and start automating your investments and get a $5 bonus today! Shop Data Plans and Save Big at mintmobile.com/pfp   Links Mentioned in This Episode:  How to DOUBLE Your Income in One Year | E164 Andrew Giancola Connect with Justin Peters on Social Media Instagram Website Linkedin Podcast Connect With Andrew on Social Media:  Instagram  TikTok Twitter  Master Money Website  Master Money Youtube Channel   Free Guides:   The Stairway to Wealth: The Order of Operations for your Money  How to Negotiate Your Salary  The 75 Day Money Challenge  Get out Of Debt Fast  Take the Money Personality Quiz Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

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Find your advisor at IG Private Wealth.com. on this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, how to create a financial independence bucket list, and take many retirements. What's up, everybody? Welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host, Andrew founder of Mastermoney.com. And today on the Personal Finance Podcast, we're joined by Justin Peters to talk about financial independence.

If you guys have any questions, make sure you join that Master Money newsletter by going to Mastermoney.com. slash newsletter and also follow us on Spotify, Apple Podcasts, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is. And if you're getting value out of the show, consider leaving a five-star rating and review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. So today we have Justin Peters on the show. And Justin is the host of the five-minded podcast, a podcast that I have been on a few times already. So if you haven't checked out those episodes, I highly encourage you to do so. But Justin is coming on to

and is one of my favorite people in the podcasting industry. Justin and I are going to be talking through things like a financial bucket list and how you can create a bucket list and still achieve things that you want to be doing while on the path to financial independence. We're going to talk through how to take many retirements and why, if you feel like you're getting burned out, how you can plan yourself a many retirements to give yourself a break. We're going to talk through how you can do that. We're going to go through how to gamify savings in some ways that you trick yourself into saving more and or just gamify the process of savings. In addition, we're going to talk about how to create a financial independence flex schedule. A five flex

schedule allows you to create flexibility in your schedule so that you can do the things that you love. And this is going to be an episode. I am really, really excited for you guys to hear. We're going to have Justin on this podcast more because we love to talk about financial independence here. So without further ado, I want you to welcome Justin to the personal finance podcast. So, Justin, welcome to the personal finance podcast. Andrew, man, I am so stoked to be here. Thanks for inviting me on. I'm excited to talk about what we're going to talk about today.

Absolutely. We are really pumped to have you here as well. And we're going to be talking about financial independence today. And I know a lot of our audience members are really, really interested in this topic. So I'm excited to dive into some of this. But before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah. I talk about personal finance and money all day long.

I have a podcast called Phi Minded. I just rebranded it. And you're actually going to be the very first episode of the new rebranded show, which is awesome. But long story short, I essentially found financial independence maybe seven or eight years ago, slipped into it mostly from the sense of like I recognized I didn't want to be working or at least being forced to work the rest of my life. And slowly over time got better and better at this. And then I saw the power of financial independence for myself. And I wanted to start helping other people with it.

And that's when I got into podcasting. It's so fun when you kind of have that moment in time where you realize how cool financial independence is and how you go back and you can start to buy your time. And I think that realization is that light ball moment is what I always call it, is one of those things that you just always remember kind of that point in time and where you were and kind of what you were doing at that time. And I think that was huge for me as well. But you have this really cool system and the way that you approach financial independence is also very cool. And one thing that you have is called the financial independence bucket list. So can you tell me about that bucket list? So can you tell me about that

bucket list and kind of some specific items that you've included in that. Yeah. And taking a step back from that, too, I should have put a preface on this. I love financial independence, but I also want to enjoy my life now, too. And I definitely fell into the victim trap early on of just depleting everything, being super frugal and recognizing that after a couple of years of really pursuing financial independence and this kind of mentality, it wasn't got to be sustainable for me. So slowly over time, I decided how can I insert a lot of fun?

into financial independence and not just like post reaching my fire number, but also like throughout the entire journey too. And one of the concepts that came about while I was doing some brainstorming on that is this financial independence bucket list or phi bucket list. It's very similar to a normal bucket list, you know, coming from the phrase, you know, kicking the bucket, what do you want to do before you kick the bucket? And people make these like really cool list of all the different things they want to do. And I wanted to take that concept, but put it into the phi world.

and essentially how does this apply to my Phi journey? And not only like, what do I want to do post reaching financial independence, but whatever some of these things on this list that I can start applying to my every day as well. You know, a lot of things on my list personally don't cost a lot of money. I mean, there are some things. Of course, there are places I want to go and things that I want to buy and whatnot. But like so much of what was on my list or what I was uncovering on my list was attainable

without any additional money, but more so just some flexibility and freedom. And I think that is one of the most refreshing parts about kind of your approach to financial independence is I was the same way. In my 20s, a lot of times I was really frugal once I discovered financial independence. I was a huge proponent of like Mr. Money Mustache way back in the day. And I'd read every single one of his blog posts. I'm like, yeah, I'm going to live on $25,000 a year too. And it was one of those things where I got so excited about it. And I brought it to my wife, and she was not so excited to live that frugally. And so it was one of those things that we had to kind of find a balance. And over time, my expenses had kind of grown over time. And I

realize pretty quickly that instead I want to spend more on the things that I love and make sure that I help and prioritize that as well. And so the five bucket list is definitely something I think that a lot of people can look at and take that approach on as well. So what are some of the you must have items to include it in your five bucket list or what are some things that you add to that? Yeah. And I created the five bucket list because I was so tired of people asking me, you know, whenever you get into the financial independence movement and you start telling people that aren't in this movement, that you're going to maybe retire in your 30s or your 40s. The question I always get is like, well, what do you got to do with your time?

And the first couple of times I heard that, I kind of dismissed it. I was like, don't worry, I'm too type A. I will figure out things that I want to do. But then I was like, actually, that's a really great question. What do I want to do with my time? And I started creating this bucket list. I have a couple of different broad categories, places I want to go. That one's really obvious.

I like to travel. My girlfriend really loves to travel. So she definitely boosters this category for me, and we have a lot of different things. I actually got to cross out one last year, which was Tokyo. Tokyo was on my short list. I really wanted to go. And we actually ended up putting the money aside and making the trip out to Tokyo, which was great. So places I want to go.

Then there are things that I want to do. These are your more typical bucket list type things. It could be like run a marathon or see Machu Picchu, whatever. One that is on my list that I'm really excited to eventually do is read all. seven Harry Potter books. I don't know why I have read a half of the fourth one. Like, that is all I've read. I like the movies. I enjoy them. And I, for some reason, it just like landed on my five bucket list at some point in time. I was like, you know what? I'm going to read the Harry Potter books. Like, whenever I get time to read now, it's usually personal finance or business related books.

But I want to, as I get closer and closer to financial independence, start just reading for fun. And for some reason, I think the Harry Potter series would really jumpstart that. So that's another big one that's out there. And the last kind of general category that I have is habits or just like I have in parentheses every day. And this one came through a lot of conversations. And it wasn't as tangible as like go to Tokyo or read the Harry Potter books, but more so like how do I want to embody and live every single day? So one thing that has been on that list for a little while is I want to be outside more and in front of a computer screen less. And over time, I've started to really focus on a couple of these habits. These are the things that usually don't cost me a whole lot of

money, but I just want my life to be centered around them. So, like, now I have a rule where if it's 70 or 80 degrees outside and sunny, I want to be off work by 330. Like, that's just like a hard rule for me. Like, I can always come back to work at 730 or 8 whenever it starts getting dark. Don't worry. But, like, I'm going to go enjoy four or five hours of the awesome weather, if that's the case. And luckily, Austin has been given me tons of that recently and I've been benefiting a lot from it. I love that. I think that is such a cool idea is to kind of have all these different types of of things on your bucket list. Now, first of all, I think a lot of us listening want to travel. We have a ton of audience members who love traveling. We talk about travel hacking a lot and some cool things that

you can do there. And I think for me, that's a big one for me specifically as well, of kind of thinking through some of the things that I want on my bucket list is to travel a lot more. And I think that's going to be a big one coming up for sure. But I love the idea of kind of how you integrate some these other different areas, things like habits, for example, that's an amazing thing to go out and do. A, you're going to feel so much more refreshed to go outside and spend more time in sunlight. Like, for example, that's something I need to do more. I'm sitting in a studio right now with all the windows blocked off and I'm like in darkness half the time. And so it's one of those things that I think is just so incredibly powerful. And I love how you kind of balance that. Now, when you have all

these things on your list or when you have these items on your list, how do you balance being able to chase after some of those things? And then how do you balance also saving for financial independence in the future? So obviously some of the things on your list are free, like the last example. But outside of that, if you wanted to go travel more, how do you balance those two things? Yeah, I think that's the million dollar question right there, or the crux of a lot of what I like to talk about. And I think it can't be challenging, but prioritizing. Like right last year, we knew Tokyo was got to be expensive, at least the flights, although it was way cheaper than we were expecting. The U.S. dollar versus the Japanese yen right now, as saved

us a whole lot. But at the beginning of the year, we knew that we wanted to allocate a certain amount of money to crossing this bucket list item off of our list. And we set that aside. And we knew outside of that, we were maxing out our 401ks, our IRAs, we were doing all the things so that we wanted to give ourselves the permission to spend some money now and enjoy the current moments. But also, we were taking care of ourselves. And I think we can get into the habit, especially the super savers out there, of recognizing that. that it isn't necessarily always about just how do I max out all of my accounts and get as much money as I can into some of my investments. But if you intentionally take a step back at the

beginning of the year, look at your list and be like, what are some of the monetary items on this list that I really want to prioritize? I think that helps me at least kind of relieve or get relieved with the fact that, okay, I'm going to be spending a little bit of money, but they're intentionally spending this money on the things that I've been wanting to do for a very long time now. Absolutely. And I think it's almost one of those things. A lot of times when I create these lists, I will prioritize them from like most important to least important. When I have most important up there, sometimes the most important thing is actually a pretty expensive item. And if it's one of those things where, like say, you want to travel to multiple countries all in one big trip,

if you want to do something like that and it's going to cost you, I don't know, $7,000, $10,000 because you're going to go for multiple months or weeks, whatever else. If you want to do something like that, it's worth that time and the energy to start saving for it now, even if it's a big, huge goal, just start putting dollars towards that big huge goal because you're going to be so surprised at how fast you can actually achieve that goal, even if you just automated over time. That's one of my favorite things to do. And outside of that, you can start to go, you know, check other things off your list as well. So is this something that you kind of keep in a Google Doc? Or how do you kind of organize all of this? It's a note in my phone. So anytime an idea comes to me, I just quickly open up my note and throw it into the sheet. And then once again, at the beginning of the year, I typically open that up. And I highlight a couple of things. or bring some things to the top. And I'm like, these are the ones that I really want to focus on are prioritized this year. Awesome. What advice would you give someone who is just starting to create their own financial independence bucket list?

Is there any way or thought process you have for this or frameworks that you can kind of give as tips for that? Yeah, I think, I mean, I loved how I started, which was just opening up a note in my phone. And over the course of the year, as ideas came by, I just added them. I didn't really try to scrutinize them at all. Like I wasn't saying no. I was really just like creating the list and getting the master list put. together. And then over time, you know, categories started to emerge, priorities started to take place. And some years, I just crossed things off. I'm like, ah, I thought I wanted to do that.

Like, I was, I really wanted to brew my own beer at some point in time, but now I hardly drink anymore. So I'm like, I don't know, it doesn't like resonate the same for me, which I think is totally fine. So you can move and shift things as your own life changes. But yeah, I think just don't overthink it and figure out whatever method makes sense for you to capture ideas and put a quarterly or annual reminder on your calendar just to check the list and start to prioritize a couple of things on your list. I love that. And I actually, before, you know, I don't drink much anymore either, but when I used to drink

a little more when I was younger, I used to try to brew beer. Yeah. And when I did that the first couple of times, I messed up like five batches in a row and I just completely quit. So I was like, I'm done this after that. That's one of those things for sure. It's supposed to be super easy. And for some reason, I couldn't figure it out.

But it's one of those things. I love those ideas. It's just kind of coming up with some really cool activities that you're in. interested in and it just kind of going after it is is the best way to do this now I want to shift gear slightly here because you have a really cool concept that I absolutely love for a lot of people which is taking many retirements and I think many retirements are something that most people probably have never even thought of if you've never heard of this before and it's something where you did this you took a seven month many retirement and so what kind of inspired you to do that and then

what did you do during that time and how to change your perspective of financial independence well. I would love to sit here and tell you that the inspiration was positive inspiration, but if I'm being honest with you, I took a sabbatical at the end of 2019 and mostly through just being burnt out. I was 27 at the time. I'd been working pretty much full time since I was 15. Like even through high school and college, spring breaks, summer breaks, weekends, I was trying to fill as much time as I could towards working. And I recognized, going into my mid-20s, I was feeling burnt out. And on top of just being overworked from hours, I wasn't doing work that really felt purposeful or aligned either. But I wasn't sure.

Like, I was so exhausted every day coming home. And I just, like, wasn't sure what I wanted to change into. And the thought of, like, having to start applying for jobs and looking for new jobs at this time felt overwhelming. And I was having an amazing conversation with somebody. I was doing some career exploration. I thought I might want to do career coaching. So I called up a career coach. And he actually flipped the script on me and just started like actually being a career coach to me. And it was like, hey, Justin, you've been telling me about this money that you saved and that you're unsure what you want to do. Like, why don't you just take some time off? And that felt like such a novel idea, especially someone in their mid-20s, but definitely somebody that has grown up in a

frugal household where his father was always telling him like, you got to work, you got to provide, you got to be a sense of society, whatever. And I was like, wow. And it took me about three months to really act on some of that advice that he gave me. And I was like, you know what, that's actually a really great idea. So I end up leaving my job, creating a self-made sabbatical for myself. And I had a ton of things planned. This started January 2020. And of course, you can tell how a seven-month sabbaticals got to turn out in 2020. COVID kind of wrecked havoc on a lot of it and canceled a bunch of plans for me, but it was the best decision I ever had. I reentered the workforce with way more clarity. I started a passion project, which was a podcast, which turned into now a business and a career

of mine. It was the best thing that I ever did. And I highly encourage people to do it in their own life too. This is why I love talking about money so much. And this is why personal finance is so powerful is because you were in a job, you were getting burned out, you were working really, really hard. And all of a sudden, you had this tool that was sitting there that you could actually go out and utilize to buy back your freedom, take that break, refresh, and figure out exactly what you want to do. And this is why I love talking about personal finance so much because it is so incredibly powerful what you can do with your money and it gives you so many cool options. And optionality and flexibility is why we talk about financial independence so much and why you can

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Learn what's driving Canada's productivity decline and discover actionable solutions to reverse it. What is considering doing a mini-retirement? Maybe they're working right now and they're getting burned out. Or maybe they just want some time to themselves to kind of focus on doing something interesting or maybe they want to go travel or whatever else it could be. What would you recommend to them to make it somewhat of a fulfilling experience? Yeah, I'll definitely answer that question. But just to add on to what you were just saying there too, I want to remind people that

all the investing, the savings for your retirement, for your future self can also be applied to your future self tomorrow, not your future self at 65. for me personally, looking back on it now, I'm so glad that I took that break. And I wasn't saving and investing for my future self during that sabbatical. I just didn't have income coming in. So I wasn't prioritizing that. But I would much rather have taken those seven months off now than take those seven months in addition to whatever I'm going to be doing in full retirement, you know, in my 60s, 70s and 80s.

I think it's really important to remind people that all that work that you're doing with your money now, you can deploy that at any point in time. And of course, you need to set yourself up financially. in order to do that. But if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling overwhelmed, don't be afraid to take a mini retirement of any capacity. At minimum, like, maybe going in asking your employer for two or three or four weeks off and truly taking just a little retirement or sabbatical, I think is super important. But if I were to kind of walk it back and talk about the practical, the how, first, I mean, I'm so focused on money and so type A that I didn't

want to set myself up or sabotage myself and be forced to like come back into work. early because I ran out of money. So I would be looking at your finances and putting aside a certain amount of money for that time. I actually spent way less money than I was expecting to spend. Part of that was COVID and I just wasn't able to do all the things that I wanted to do. But part of that was also just like the things you recognize that you spend money on, like convenience food or terrible times to take a flight, but you have to get back on a Sunday night in order to start working again on a Monday. A lot of those things like kind of came off my plate whenever I was taking my sabbatical and I could take the cheap Tuesday afternoon flight instead of the expensive Sunday flight. So actually, I ended up spending $11,000 total throughout this sabbatical in terms of how much money I made versus how much money that I spent. And I did make a little extra money just because I was available and like random projects came up. Like a speaker was in town and they needed a live audience and they were paying like $500 for you to go to this and be a participant in a live audience for a day. I would have never said yes to that when I was working full time. But

I was kind of bored because it was, you know, coming out of COVID. And I was like, sure, I'll go sit in an audience. And it was a speaker that I really liked. So first thing, first, take care of the money side. Make sure that you have enough set aside that you feel really comfortable with that. And then second, really be thinking about what's my intention behind this mini retirement? Is it to take a step back and just decompress and live a little bit slower and get rejuvenated? Or is it to explore a new interest or hobby?

Like for me, podcasting was super important. I've always wanted to start a podcast, but I was just too tired to do it after work hours. So starting my sabbatical with a project in mind and knowing I wanted to put a lot of focus into that was really important. It could be travel or it could be some of the things on your five bucket list too. Maybe your intention is to set work aside entirely and start crossing off a couple of things that you really want to focus on because maybe you're soon to be a parent and you want to make sure that you can spend six months prior. to becoming a parent, doing some traveling, because it's got to be a little bit harder. So I think setting some intentionality before you go into your mini retirement will be really important. So you don't just flounder and waste your time.

And then six months later, you're like, oh, shoot, like I had all this time off, but it wasn't really how I wanted to spend my time off. And when it comes to the tactical side of this, so when you're thinking about, you know, taking a mini retirement and you want to go through this process and you kind of mapped out some of the things that you want to do, how would you recommend people kind of work backwards when they're looking at the financial side? So would you say, hey, just save X amount of dollars that you, you know, whatever you spend every single month, would you save that amount of money for the amount of months that you want to work?

Would you give yourself an extra cushion? Or how would you personally think about that? I personally would give myself an extra cushion. I think you never know. I was looking for employment in late summer of 2020. And that is when there was a ton of layoffs and everybody was looking for a job. So I was really taking a six-month sabbatical and ended up being seven just because it took me a little bit longer to find a job. So I definitely add a little bit of cushion just for that reason, or if things are just going

great and you want to extend to have that option there, I think is great. I would definitely think about what's my monthly expenses currently. And then what are some of the big ticket items? If you're going to do some traveling, just add that in from a tactical standpoint, add that into your budget for your many retirement. And then on top of that, maybe you're saving some money leading up to your many retirement, but you can do some other things. Like turn off your auto dividend reinvestments.

And then you can have some dividend income coming in from your tax bowl. accounts throughout your mini retirement, that will kind of pat or cushion some of the money that you've already set aside. Absolutely. I love those ideas. And I think there's a lot of really, really cool things you can do. Even while you're taking your mini retirement, if there's stuff in your house, you've got a little time. If there's stuff in your house that you don't utilize anymore, start selling that stuff and you can kind of get it out of your house, deep clutter, especially if you're looking to kind of minimize some of the possessions that you have in your house and those types of things as well. Now, are there any creative mini retirement ideas that you have? Have you ever

seen anybody kind of doing this consistently every couple of years? Or have you seen this be something where people will kind of do this, you know, on a yearly basis? Or what are some of your thought processes on that? Yes. Actually, whenever I was taking my sabbatical, I was truly calling it a sabbatical at that time. I didn't have the concept of many retirement in my head yet until I interviewed Jillian Johns Red. And she was the one that kind of put these words into my mouth around many retirements.

And she's a great poster child. I think she's like, maybe in her 40s or something, been pursuing financial independence for like 20 years and she's taken 12 mini retirements throughout that time like every year or two she's like intentionally taking a retirement and they've been for completely different reasons. I think her most recent if I'm remembering right is she really wanted to redesign her backyard and she lives on a couple of acres. So she wanted to have an orchid back there and some gardening and a bunch of different things and she just wanted to like take a couple of months off to really prioritize on building out that entire backyard. She's also wanted to do

a national park tour and go to all the national parks with her and her family. So she did a mini retirement on that. And then I know her husband took a mini retirement because I think he wanted to get into like automotive repair, but he needed to go back to school to learn some of those skills. So he just took some time off, went back to school. He could 100% focus on getting the certificate or this degree that he needed in order to step into this new career. So it's like three totally different concepts around a mini retirement. And she's done them all, which is. super cool. And that's the other cool thing about being able to do some of this kind of stuff. If you have, you know, someone who you're married to or you have a spouse in your life or someone

you live with and you kind of share the bills, like one of you can take a many retirement, well, the other one's still working and there's income coming in and kind of reverse it if you want to. If you're not, you're doing specific activities where you both need to take that many retirement. So there's a lot of cool options here that I think a lot of people have if they want to kind of branch out and get creative with this. The cool thing about personal finance, This is why I love financial dependence is it's really creative. And so there's so many people out there who kind of create flexibility in their life and they can do so many great things with their money buying back their time.

Even geo-arbitrage comes in a lot with many retirements. Like maybe you do like traveling is your focus, your intention for your many retirement. And you going to stay over in Asia for six months is probably got to drastically reduce your cost or your expenses on a monthly basis too. So I almost see people like pairing up. really cool, like personal finance tactics like geo-arbitrage with something like a mini-retirement. And then maybe they only need to save like 50% of what they were expecting to save versus like 100% if they were to take that time off in the U.S.

I love that. And I think that's another great idea. I remember back 10 or so years ago, a lot of people would go to Thailand, for example, because the exchange rate was such a drastic exchange rate between the dollar. And so you could live on so much cheaper there than you could, you know, in the U.S. And so people would go there. They would start, you know, online businesses or things like that. as well, just to see if it would work. And it was a really cool concept. I think that a lot of people

would be able to go out and do. So I love the thought process there. And I think there's so many cool things that you can do. It gives you flexibility. Now, there's another concept that you talk about called basically gamifying savings. And I love thinking through this a little bit too, because I think a lot of people kind of think of savings as something boring or just putting money into their retirement accounts or their saving in their emergency fund, but they don't think of a way to kind of make this motivating and interesting to them. So how can people, people kind of reward themselves along the way when they're trying to reach their financial independence goals.

This has been a huge one, a powerful one in Andrew Giancola's words, for really making financial independence achievable and fun. Is gamifying the process? Like, who doesn't love a game? And I think this one really stuck with me whenever I interviewed Justin Brown Woods from Price of Avocado Toast. He is a former teacher and he uses a lot of gamification in his classroom to teach ideas. And that really stuck with me.

And I started figuring out, how do I gamify my own financial independence journey? And to make this more fun and exciting. I mean, the concept is simple, I think. Figure out what are you trying to get to? Is it a debt payoff number? Is it a financial independence number? Whatever it may be. It could be even like saving for a down payment or a new car or something.

And break that up. I like to break it up in like 10 different milestones. And then throughout that process, reward yourself whenever you're hitting each of those milestones. So maybe you're trying to reach financial independence. You want to get to a million dollars. And every hundred thousand, you reward yourself. And you dictate the reward. Maybe you look at your five bucket list and you pick 10 things off that list and you're going to say, okay, every time I hit a new $100,000 mark in my net worth, I'm going to cross off one of these big bucket list items. I'm going to go take that vacation over to Tokyo. Or I'm going to invest in this course that I've always

wanted to take, et cetera. So I think there are tons of different ways. that you can gamify it. And one that I'm doing currently, which I find really fine, is I force myself for every $10 that I save intentionally spending one of those dollars too. So like if this month I'm netting $1,000 and, you know, 900 of that is got to go into my IRA. I have to spend a hundred of it on something else. And right now I'm like a true 90s boy, I'm back into collecting Pokemon cards.

So I just essentially go and blow it on buying new Pokemon cards. But it's been so fun at the end of every month. like start to reconcile all my expenses and be like, ooh, how much do I get to spend this month? I love that. And I think that's one of those things. If you're someone like how Justin and I probably are when we were, you know, early 20s and we were really frugal and you have a hard time spending money, that's a great way to kind of look at that too, is to kind of force yourself to spend money. So you get more comfortable with it. Because spending money is a skill. And if you can start to develop that skill over time and start to spend those dollars on things that you value,

it'll absolutely change the way that you see money going forward, which I love. So that's absolutely amazing. Now, you have another game called the Save and Match. game. What is that about? Tell me about that more. Yeah, I think that was a little bit of what I was talking about from the spending piece to it, but you could flip it too. Like, you kind of have to know or recognize who you are. Are you the frugalite, the super saver? Are you the spender? And whichever you are, kind of apply the opposite or the inverse. So for me, once again, like you were saying, I grew up really frugal. I really have a hard time spending money on things that I find are more like once than they are needs.

So I did this forced like, okay, for every $9 that I save, the next dollar has to be spent. You could do the opposite, though. You know, do a save and match. So for every $50 that you spend, maybe you are the spender. So you go out, you go shopping, you spend $50, take another $50 and put it into investing or saving for your future. I love that. I think that's the absolute way to kind of look at this.

And we even talk about this all the time where we want you kind of spending in a certain range for your things that are your necessities. And we want you to save and invest at least 20% plus on your income. but then we want the rest of those dollars to be spending on things that you absolutely love. If you can get your income high enough and get your necessity low enough, you can really spend a lot of money on things that you absolutely love. And it's just figuring out that game and kind of that adjustment based on your budget and how much you spend every single month. So how does pairing rewards with your FI bucket list kind of, is that something that you do is when you're, say, for example, you want to save that million dollars and you hit your first hundred thousand? Would you kind of take something off your five bucket list and look at that and say, hey, I want to go.

all on the vacation that's at the top of my list? Or how would you kind of think about pairing those two together? 100%. This is why I think all three of these concepts that we talked about around many retirements, gamification, and the five bucket list, they can kind of work interchangeably. And I think it's super powerful in that sense. But yeah, I think your five bucket list can be your reward system. I think you should be prioritizing the things that you're adding to that five bucket list.

So if you're doing the save and match program, then maybe you are like for every dollar that you spend on eating out or for clothes or whatever. whatever, you put a dollar into your Tokyo bucket. And whenever you start, you finally reach that number, go and spend or go and actually take that trip. So I definitely think you should be pairing up the five bucket list with your gamification process. I love that. Now, I want to ship gears here to another thing that you talk about, which is the five flex schedule. And I think this is one, it's along the same exact lines of what we've been talking about thus far. But I think this is something else where people probably have not thought about this a ton, where it can kind of creatively

create gaps in space within your schedule so you don't feel like you're just burning yourself out all the time. So can you kind of explain what the Five Flex schedule is and how people can build more freedom in their work week before reaching full financial independence? Yeah. Whenever I ask people, like the reason why they want to hit a certain net worth number or why they're so focused on saving and investing for their future self, I hear two F words. And it's not Ferrari. Like, Ferrari never comes up. They don't want to buy a nice, expensive car. I almost always hear freedom and flexibility. Those are the two things that I hear. People are, they want to accumulate enough money so that optionality becomes super apparent to them. And they're not forced into a certain job. They're not

forced into a certain work schedule, et cetera. So I think as you are getting closer and closer to financial independence, you should start to adopt a five flex schedule. And what I've mean by this is once again, that habit section on my five bucket list, those things should start to become more and more clear and more and more evident in your daily life. And that's why I put this like 330 rule on my calendar where I have to go outside at 330 if it's a nice day out is because one of the habits that I wanted to do was spend more time outside. And I love going outside when it's a nice sunny day out. And I'm like, why do I need a wait until post-financial independence? How can I start to embed some of that into my current schedule.

Like, there's nothing holding me back. I very rarely have meetings after 3.30 most days, unless I'm working with someone on the East Coast or somewhere else. So what's holding me back from, like, doing that last hour or two of work right now versus eight or nine o'clock or just tomorrow, in all honesty? So I like to be thinking through, like, what is your ideal day look like if money wasn't an issue? Like, if you didn't have to work, if you didn't need to show up to that nine to five, now,

let's start to reverse engineer that and figure out throughout this process, how can we start to add more of that into your day to day? So it could be a silly rule like mine where you're off at 3.30 if it's a nice day. Maybe you're somebody that doesn't like to do meetings a lot. So you do no meetings before 10 a.m. or meetingless Mondays, like, that could be something that you try to add in. Or like, you don't have to work full time, but you still want to work a little bit. Can you negotiate from a five day to a four day or three day? Like, I think starting to think through what your ideal day or week or month looks like whenever you are in your retirement stage, how can you start to add some of those things right now as you're pursuing financial independence? I completely agree. And I do this exercise quarterly. So I go every single quarter and I will go back and look at what is my ideal day. What exactly would I do if I had a perfect day? Maybe it's being productive. And sometimes I'll do it on a work day and I'll do it on a weekend. And I'll pull out a piece of paper. And I will go through and actually map out my exact perfect day.

And then I will go back because I do my goals quarterly. I do them every 12 weeks. And I'll go back and look at my goals every single month. And I will say, how can I make sure that my goals are going towards this perfect day? And so I go and I will look at that every single quarter because this is so incredibly important, I think, is to create that flexibility. And so a lot of rules have come out of just doing this exercise.

For example, like what you were just talking about, I take zero meetings typically, except for on Mondays before noon. And the reason I do that is because that's my most productive time. And so for me specifically, I want to make sure I can do all of my deep work before that time frame. A lot of other things came out of that as well, like making sure that when I am done with work later on in the day in that gap where I'm spending time with my kids, I just do not have any electronics or anything around me during that time frame because I want to be present. And there's a lot of different things that kind of have developed over that time frame.

Even when it comes to health and fitness, I wanted to prioritize health and fitness and make sure it is one of my top priorities. So what does that look like? When can I do that? What are some timeframes I can do that? And so I try to integrate all of that into this to make sure you have the time available for this. And that's what I love about flex scheduling as well is because if you want to take time for yourself or you want to have some flexibility, you can do that. You can map it out. But it's just kind of being

intentional when it comes to this. So what are some boundaries that you set? Are there specific boundaries that you set for yourself when it comes to flex scheduling? And what are some thoughts or things that you have surrounding that and how has it impacted your productivity as well? Yeah. I mentioned the no meetings before 10 a.m. That's definitely something I do. My best deep work is before 10 a.m. I usually about 7 to 10-ish. I like to be focused on that one or two important projects that are really got to move the needle. So that's an important boundary for me. The 3.30 nice day rule is a big boundary of mine. I try not to do anything on Sunday that I wouldn't want to do, like just for fun. So if there's like a project, I'm really excited and I'd just been itching to get into it,

I'll work on it on a Sunday, but I do nothing. I don't schedule any meetings. I don't really even schedule anything with friends on Sunday. Like, I just want to wake up on a Sunday. And whatever I'm feeling like doing is what I want to do that day. And sometimes it is hang out with friends. Sometimes it is a project that I've like really been itching to do, but I couldn't make time for it this week.

But yeah, my Sunday free day is a huge goal of mine. And it just helps level set and get me right for Monday morning. And then I go hard again on Monday morning because I'm like usually ready to start working again. Now, if somebody wants more flexibility in their schedule, maybe they want to just have more time for themselves, or maybe they want a day where they can focus on productivity or maybe it's a side hustle or something else, how can they negotiate this? What are some things that they could do? Could they negotiate a four-day work week with their boss? Could they negotiate working from home? Or what are your thoughts on that on how they could maybe create more flexibility in their schedule if they're

working a hard nine to five right now? I think both of those suggestions that you just mentioned there, the four-day work week or a work-from-home day if that's important to you. It could be the than no meetings before 10. And, you know, I, whenever I was working, I let my boss know this. And she's like, yeah, that totally makes sense for me. I'd much rather you, like, focus on the needle moving projects than be at meetings. So if you want to block your calendar prior to 10, cool. As long as, like, if anything urgent comes up, I can reach out to you during that time.

That's great. So I think most bosses would be pretty receptive to this if you have a logical argument for it and you're a top performer. And it probably goes hand in hand with your plan for negotiating a raise. You can negotiate other things, not just monetary things, but negotiate other things. So if they pair that with your process for negotiating a raise, but instead they negotiate a work from home policy or a four-day work week, you know, proving that you're a top performer and that you can still get your things done in the boundaries that you set and demonstrating

why these new boundaries that you are setting are going to improve your productivity. It's an easy yes for me as a manager. Absolutely. And I think that's one of those things that a lot of managers will look at that and be able to kind of see that outcome, especially if they're looking at this in a logical way, and be able to do that. I have a very close friend who's a very high performer at a really large national bank. And here's a great example of this. And he's a pickleball addict. Like he's obsessed with pickleball. And he figured out a way to block off his calendar in the morning. We're from

like 7 a.m. to 10 a.m. They allow him to go play pickleball if he wants to go play pickleball. And he does that every single day. And then he's a really high performer the rest of the day. But he created this flexibility into his schedule, even though he works a standard 9 to 5. He figured out how to create flexibility in this schedule because he's such a high performer. So there's so many different examples of that where you can kind of do some pretty cool things as well. So I think I love having a flexible schedule and it just creates more fulfillment and it kind of reduces stress and anxiety and everything else around your job. This is the fun part of being a part of the financial independence movement. So many people think differently about work. Like they're kind

of prioritizing their life and then they're fitting work into their life versus the reverse. So many people have to like fit their life around work. And the nine to five schedule is just not optimal for everybody. Like if you're if you're a parent, you might need a different kind of flexibility or someone I was at economy conference, which is a financial independence conference. I was just there. And it was so fun talking to all these nomads or van lifers or RV living type people and how they're doing work, but they're like doing work on their own terms or their own schedule. And they've negotiated. I'm going to work out of my camper van for a month and not be in the office. And I love that money, that FU money that you build over time kind of gives you the opportunity to be like,

this is my proposition. And if you can't fit into that, it totally makes sense. That's fair. That's fine if you guys got rules at this company. But like I'm willing to walk away in order to get this five flexibility that I want and find a different job that might fit. How do you see things like when people will kind of create some of this flexibility? Do you think there are seasons and times where you need to kind of put your foot on the gas and really, really work hard. And then are there times where maybe you take your foot off the gas and you kind of have a little more time? For example, maybe you're working on a huge project at your company and you're working 12-hour days for 30 days in a row or something like that crazy. And then do you see that there's times where

you can kind of figure out and map this out throughout the year where maybe there are times where you go really, really hard and become that high performer? And then there are other times where you take your foot off the gas, maybe it's seasonality or something else. Or how do you look at things like that. Yeah, I think that was really well said. And I don't even think five flex schedules have to be like a permanent or ongoing thing. It could be a seasonality thing too. Like tax prep people. I am guessing they are super busy from January to May, Juneish. And they can probably have a lot more flexibility to negotiate a five flex schedule July till the end of the year. Like they might have to take client meetings. They might have to do some extended tax stuff or do some coaching with

clients, but they probably have a lot of opportunity to build in some of these things, knowing that they're probably going to be a little overworked coming out of the tax season, too. And I think that would totally make sense. And so many other jobs, it's the same way. A lot of things shut down after Thanksgiving, like that Thanksgiving to New Year's timeframe, people are doing like business critical or BAU type stuff, but like everything else, projects, they kind of like fall by the wayside.

So that might be a good time. Like maybe from Christmas to New Year's, you can take off and you can build in some flexibility, or you can drop down to four days a week during that five or six day period or through the summer. If you're, I mean, there are so many opportunities dependent on your occupation and career path that you might be able to strategically think through where can I add or make this ask that wouldn't even be a hard ask because of my occupation or industry recognizes that there needs to be a little flexibility here. Absolutely. I even think, you know, I know guys that were in sales, for example, who, you know, the first six months out of the year, they have to hit these quotas. but once they hit that quota, they can kind of take their foot off the gas and almost kind of do nothing for the second half of the year. And I think there's just so many jobs like that where people can look at, you know, ways to develop these systems and put this together where you can figure out, hey, I put my foot on the gas for a couple of months, then I take it off.

Then I put my foot in the gas for a couple months and take it off. And there's some fulfillment with that as well. I think achieving things is one of those things, especially if you're type A like Justin and I are achieving some of those things are really, really impactful in your life. but then you also want to make sure that you give yourself time to recharge, rest, relax, those types of things for sure. So I think it's a big, big difference. I want to shift gears here to questions that we ask a lot of our guests. And these are some of my favorite questions to ask our guests.

Sometimes we mix them up at times as well, but I just want to kind of get some of your answers on this as we go through this. So what part of your work or life makes you come alive? Oh, podcasting. I absolutely love podcasting. I've interviewed you twice and I hope it comes across whenever I'm interviewing you, but doing prep research for my interviews and then having the conversation, I'm usually so stoked to finally have that conversation because I've done eight,

10 hours of prep leading up to this. I've learned so much from this guest that I'm like super stoked to have the conversation. So yeah, I light up any time I get to do stuff with podcasting. Absolutely. And Justin is one of the most prepared podcast hosts I've ever seen. So it is absolutely amazing when you do that, which I absolutely love. What is your biggest fear when it comes to money? Probably running out of it.

That might be cliche, but I think I am slowly trying to overcome a scarcity mindset. I think so many people that grew up frugal probably have to overcome this and just running out of money. I'm that dude that's like every month. I rerun the numbers, although they didn't change that much. And I'm just like, you know what, Justin? Just like let it go. Like you're going to be fine.

You're super smart. You know how to make money. You can always retreat back and live probably $30, $40, $50,000 lifestyle if you need to. Like, it is okay. You are so smart and adaptable. don't need to be worrying about money anymore. I struggle with this same exact thing. And I still, even today, like still just think about that all the time.

What if I run out? What if it all disappears? So it's just one of those things. I think a lot of people have that same kind of thought process when it comes to one of their biggest fears for sure. How do you plan to level up your finances this year? Ooh, the big thing that I've been doing this year is simplifying. Like, I'm trying not to optimize too much with like credit cards here and here

and my high-yield savings account over there. I was like, I really just want to like log into one place, kind of get the most optimal but simple approach. So like I've been consolidating a lot of things into one or two or three providers and not necessarily card chasing or doing anything like that. Like I love interviewing travel hackers. Chris Hutchinson's coming on the show next week and I'm super stoked to pick his brain about some of this things. But also as I'm approaching financial independence, I'm like, it just matters less to me. And I'd rather just have some peace of mind and simplicity whenever it comes to my finances. Absolutely. That is the number one thing that I try to tell people as well, is try to simplify, reduce the amount of accounts that you have. Put them all in one place. Just make it easier on your life because just, you know, rate chasing on high yield savings accounts or whatever else is just really, really something that. Some people love it. Like if you absolutely love it, then go for it, you know, more power to you. But for me, I'm not one of those people either. So like I just kind of, hey, I've had the same high yield savings account for years now. And it's just one of those things that I'm not willing to rate chase them more enough. It's a big drastic difference, obviously I would. But I agree with you. Simplification is a definitely.

definite way to level up your finances and make it much, much easier. So what legacy at some point in time when you have kids? What legacy do you want to leave your kids if you had them? I am very appreciative of my dad and everything he did for me, setting me up for personal finance. Like, I'm 31 here. I probably don't really have to worry about money too much the rest of my life. And I almost give 100% of that credit to my dad. He instilled a hardworking mindset into me, a super saver mentality. But the one thing that I'd really like to encourage, encourage my kids too is to find some balance between setting up your future self and really, really enjoying the current moments. And I don't regret a ton in my life, but there are moments

that I wish I would have gotten a push from a different direction, the other side of the pendulum that said, hey, you know, like, go study abroad. Like, you don't have to worry about working this semester. Like, that's totally fine. Or even the push into my sabbatical. Like, it kind of took me a little bit longer, although I probably knew it three months prior. Like, I wish someone kind of just shoved me straight into it. And I think a lot of that was just stemmed from from a little bit of scarcity and mindset that I was talking about and not wanting to disappoint my parents. So I just want to find a good balance with my kids of like taking care of your future self and being able to be independent, but also like enjoying the life because tomorrow is not for certain. I love that.

What is the best money advice you've ever received? Probably a recent one is you can always make more money, but you can't get more time back. And I've been trying to instill a little bit more of that. I mean, I've so much great wisdom throughout the entire year or throughout the last couple of decades that at that moment was really, really important. But for the piece of advice that's really resonating right now, that was given to me. And that's really had me rethinking a lot of stuff right now. I think about that a lot, too. And I think it's one of those things that time is something that I think most people don't think enough about. And for the most part, if you look at everybody who is on their deathbed, the biggest thing that they regret, it's always time related. And a lot of times,

I think most of us probably need to either, you know, think through our time. It almost keep like a time budget type of thing because it's so important. It's so pressure. And it goes by so fast. I even like, see, you know, my kids' lives and how, you know, my oldest is almost seven now. And it's just one of those things where I felt like we just had them. And it's crazy because he's like almost 50% of the way, you know, out of our house. So it's just a, it's just a crazy process. And it's so interesting that if we don't value our time, it's going to be something we all regret. So I think that's a huge one for sure. The last one is my favorite.

And this is one we've gotten some cool answers on. But what does wealth mean to you? Ooh, freedom. Freedom, optionality, flexibility. All three of those words are super important to me whenever I think about wealth. It's not necessarily the person with the most amount of commas in their net worth. But the person that has the most amount of flexibility, freedom, and optionality, whenever it comes to how they're spending their time day to day.

I love that. And I think you embody this throughout this entire episode, I think for sure, just showing how much freedom that you can kind of develop just by building wealth over time. Well, Justin, this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for coming on here. Where can people find out more about you, your podcast, and everything else? Yeah, five-minded on any of the podcast players, whatever you're listening to right now.

I'd love it if you came and checked it out. The most recent episode is probably with Andrew. We talked about how to double your income in one year. He gave some really good tips and tactics on how to do it. do that. But for all the things around achieving financial independence and having fun while you're doing it, come check out fine-minded. Absolutely. I highly, highly recommend that it is an amazing show. So everybody please go check it out. Thank you, Justin, again, so much for being here. And I can't wait to have you back. Instacart knows that some people go bananas about getting the perfect, well, banana. Some want them green,

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