 This session, however, is going to be one I've been looking forward to. We're going to be talking about financial independence. Our interview E is going to be Brad Barrett. He's the host of the Top 50 Business Podcast, ChooseFI. He's passionate about financial independence and mostly helping people take action to make their lives richer in every way, wealth, health connections, and ultimately happiness. He achieved financial independence at 35, which is pretty impressive to those of us who didn't come out of residency until about that age and lives in Richmond, Virginia with his wife and two daughters. So welcome. Interviewing him is Sean Mulaney. He's an advice-only financial planner and the president of Mulaney Financial and Tax. He writes the Plutus Award-winning blog, FITaxGuy on the intersection of tax and financial independence. He also has a personal finance YouTube channel and published a book that apparently 21 million people in this country need. Solo 401k, the Solo Pernoers Retirement Account. A book about his favorite retirement account in 2022. So Sean and Brad, take it away. Thank you very much, Jim. Before we get started, I do want to address the elephant in the room. I'll be collecting questions during the session. So your questions go to Jim. I do want to address the elephant in the room. A lot of people believe financial independence is all about deprivation. Well, I think we could safely say after two nights at the luxurious, the opulent Bethesda North Marriott, that is most certainly not true. So, well, Brad, thanks so much for being here today with us. Yeah, thank you for this conversation. Let's kick it off with what has the pursuit of financial independence meant to you? Yeah, that that's a good one, Sean. So the pursuit of financial independence has essentially changed everything in my life. It took me from I was a corporate tax accountant doing corporate state tax returns, which, as you can imagine, is as mind-numbing and groundhog day as that sounds. And now I'm I think it's not hyperbole to say, like, I am a different human being. I get to spend time seeing my daughters grow up. I at this point now they're 15 and almost 12, and I left my corporate career eight and a half years ago. So since they were little girls, I've been home and I've been there every single day when they get off the bus. And as Sean said, I think the caricature of fi is that it's about deprivation. And I reject that so wholly you can't even imagine because to me it's about reorienting to what actually matters in life and having the financial wherewithal to not be stressed constantly. Right. So obviously speaking to the choir here at Bogleheads, but nevertheless, most people are financially stressed all the time. And that is an ever present and they can't think about anything else. But when you focus on saving money, obviously investing wisely, but saving money specifically, and you have some net worth, you have some space to take a step back and say, what do I actually want to do in life? What is what do I want my life to look like? And my wife and I actually, it's interesting, Sean and my wife went to high school together and we we grew up about four minutes apart on Long Island and reconnected about what, a handful of years ago, five, eight years ago, give or take. And my wife and I lived in this high cost of living area. And we got married at 26 years old and basically decided at the point, OK, look, we're both CPAs. We have done everything conventionally well. We've succeeded college and getting great jobs at the best accounting firms. And but it all seemed like a hamster wheel. It all seemed like this never ending there, you know, the carrot when you're at an accounting firm or an investment bank, et cetera, or a law firm is, oh, I can make partners some day. Right. But I looked around and I looked at the partners and I saw them working until two a.m. just like I was in tax season. I mean, literally state this is the old days, right? But like literally stapling tax returns with me at one forty five in the morning because April 15th or October 15th, the deadlines coming up, right? And that just that wasn't a life that I aspired to. It didn't it didn't make any sense. And at twenty two, I looked around and said, OK, there has to be something better. There has to be some purpose here other than just I'm going to do this for the next forty years. I just simply didn't want to. And luckily, my wife is of similar mind and we just saved money. And at that point, we didn't have an investing philosophy. We hadn't come across J.L. Collins, Simple Path to Wealth or Bogleheads or Vanguard. But when we focused on our savings rate, it enabled us to really stockpile money and give us choices. And when we got married, like I was saying a minute ago, we decided, OK, look, we can make a life here on Long Island, but we don't want to. It's always it was always going to be giving something up. There was no way that one of us could stay home with these future future fictional kids, as I like to call it. Like at that point, we didn't have kids, but we knew someday we would want to. And it's incredible now to look 15 years, 18 years after the fact and say, wow, all those plans we set out as I mean, kids 25. It's worked out better than I could have possibly imagined. So yeah, it's it's it's interesting. Sean, it's been a it's been a wild journey. Yeah, Brad, I really like some of that reframe there, because essentially you and your wife Laura met one of the biggest goals of financial independence well before you ever retired from your day job. Right. You were able to have your wife stay home with your children. And you weren't financially independent at that point. You probably weren't even all that close. Maybe I don't know your numbers, but you're right. So I think that's just like a great reframe of the whole, you know, people think it's tech pros and we're going to get to retire at 40. Well, no, you just saw it with the Barrett's that it was, hey, step one, goal one, a huge goal is mom gets to stay home with the two daughters. I think that's fantastic, Brad. Yeah. And you hit on something which is there's many of you have heard of fire, right? So financial independence retire early. And I feel like the RE is such a distraction. It it becomes this that it sucks up all the oxygen in the room, essentially. People only focus on, oh, what are you going to do? Sit around, do nothing, just be unproductive and just, you know, waste away. In essence, I'm like, it becomes, oh, these 30 year old kids, they're just doing nothing. And I just, again, that's something I reject so significantly. I don't know anybody. Well, a, as you notice, this is about financial independence. There's no retire early. My podcast is choose FI, not choose fire, because again, it's a distraction. The RE is irrelevant. I don't know. I know there are a lot of my friends here in the audience who also create content in the financial independence world. And like, I can't think of one single person I've ever met in the FI world that just sits around and does nothing. Because that's not what we aspire to. We aspire to make a difference in the world. We aspire to add value to our community. Whatever you define community as could be as micro as your neighborhood to your religious organization, to the local nonprofit, to your university, to whatever it may be. And when you have that time and space to focus on these things, you actually can for the first time in your life. So it does feel a little bit odd for many of us to step off the career path because I think so many of us have defined success as the career path. But if you can just reframe it and not think that you're being unproductive or people are going to look at you differently or or negatively and just say there is a big wide world out there. And if I'm really, really fortunate, I get nine decades on this planet. Right. Think about that. Really fortunate. You get nine healthy decades to spend any of that additionally working for money in a job that you don't absolutely love, that you're not cartwheeling down the road to go to. I think that's the height of folly. It doesn't make any sense to me. Brad, what are your thoughts on the difference between financial independence and conventional personal finance? Yeah, that's that's a good one, Sean. So I would certainly not define Bogleheads as personal as traditional personal finance. I think I think to me the biggest thing and one of we had thought about calling this talk the the superpower of financial independence. I think the traditional personal finance world. It's almost like like fear mongering to a large degree. I know you hear the the Susie Ormans of the world say, oh, you can never retire or you're going to need twelve million dollars because health care. OK, well, you know, health care is expensive. Nobody's going to deny that. But do you need is twelve million dollars completely made up? Yeah, of course it is. Can most people aspire to ten, twelve, fifteen million dollars? No, they can't. So what do they do? What do you what do humans do when we're met with something that is just so far out of reach that we can't even contemplate it? We throw our hands up and we go on yoloing our lives, right? And I think what Phi does is and the biggest superpower is is it reorients around what you can control? And I think this is really the biggest distinction is Phi looks at and it's funny because this is going to be the least technical talk of this entire weekend, obviously by a mile. But Phi looks at what does my life cost? OK, it's not just some magical number for your financial independence or your retirement number. It's not based on what a retirement calculator says because I mean, frankly, those are fundamentally flawed because they start with your current income, which is wholly irrelevant to what you actually need in retirement or financial independence or whatever you want to call it. We look at what does my life cost and that's actually what I need to cover to live each year, right? Just very simply. Again, this is a rethink, but it's pretty evident once we think about it and then again, the technical, we can have large in-depth conversations, but just very simply even just saying the 4% rule. Again, we'll put to the side the analysis and just say, all right, my life costs $80,000 a year, multiply by 25. I need $2 million. That's my Phi number. Mine. It's not what Suzy Orman tells me. It's my Phi number because my life costs $80,000 a year. And now of course that's going to change and seasons of life of, you know, you can model that clearly, but I think what's so beautiful about the message of Phi is there is some degree of certainty and you control the starting points. And like Sean said, there is a caricature of Phi being about deprivation and I think that's because, frankly, many of the early adherents of the fire world were people who, you know, Jacob from early retirement extreme who spends whatever it is, $8,000 a year on his life. Like I don't aspire to that. I can't imagine any of you do either. I mean, that's not a life I want to live, but if Jacob wants to live that, then wonderful. If that's great. If your life costs $30,000 a year, all right, well, you need what $750,000 to reach Phi and that's your life and you control it. And so again, I think just that fundamental starting point is really the biggest differential. Brad, what do you think are the superpowers of financial independence? Yeah, well, I mean, I guess that that is honestly that's one of them is really that starting point. Yeah, superpowers. So I jotted down some things here. So, right, it certainly gives you certainty. I think the your savings rate being critical. So I don't know if anybody's ever heard of Mr. Money Mustache, which is kind of a funny name, but he's the biggest name in the financial independence world. And he has an article that I would suggest every single person read. It's called the shockingly simple math behind early retirement. And I think this is this is one of those aha moments. So yeah, everybody that's take a second, write this down shockingly simple math behind early retirement. Because when you see it, it's one of those moments you can't you can't unsee. It's similar to when you learn about about Vanguard and low cost index fund investing, you can't unsee it when you see that. Hey, if I had my money in a 1% expense ratio fund with a 1% advisory AUM, I'm going to lose whatever it is 30 to 50% of my net worth over a 40 year period, right? Like you can't unsee that. It's the same with this in terms of, Hey, what is your savings rate? And Sean, this frankly goes back to your question. What's the biggest difference between traditional personal finance and Phi is traditional personal finance says, oh, you're succeeding if you save five or 10% of your income. And yeah, I mean, you know, to some degree, you're certainly better than living paycheck to paycheck. Right? We can all agree on that or going in the red every month, obviously saving five or 10% is better. But when you look at that article and I don't have a committed to memory unfortunately, but it's something absurd, like 45 or 50 year working lifetime, you would reach financial independence if you save 10%, it would take you about, is that roughly somewhere in the vicinity of 40 years? Something like that. Not entirely sure. Again, don't quote us, but it's somewhere right around there. It might even be more frankly. But if you save 50% of your income, which to most people sounds outlandish, but if you happen, like I think about my daughters before they've made any mistakes, right? Before they bought fancy cars and a big house and went to college and got $200,000 of debt. If I can reorient them around saving 50% of their income, I would argue you essentially cannot possibly screw up your financial life. If you save 50% of your income, you can. I mean, I've done incredibly stupid things. I invested in some real estate speculation. When I was in 2007, 2008 that cost me hundreds of thousands of dollars and because I oriented around a significant savings rate, it's but a blip. I mean, sure, would I love to have compounded? You know, it's probably $700,000. Would I love to have that money? Obviously I would, but I don't think about it ever again because it was but a blip. And so you look at that article and I think it's, I think he has it as if you save 50% of your income, you reach five in 17 years in his article. I think a lot of people have it a little less than that actually 14 years. So somewhere, you know, again, we're not going to quibble over exact details, but somewhere in the 14 to 17 year period. That sounds like a much better working career than 40, 50, 60 years. So again, orienting around savings rate, I think is just absolutely critical. All right, let's get away from the technical stuff and back towards the lifestyle stuff. Are there major life changes that are necessary in order to pursue financial independence? Necessary, no. But every single person and I almost cringed as the words were coming out of my mouth, talking about my daughters and saying, Oh, before they bought fancy cars or big houses and, you know, frankly, if you saw my house, it's a nice big house in the best part of the Richmond metro area. Like this is not about deprivation. And if you want to drive your BMW, great, do it. That's wonderful. Make choices based on value. Okay. And what you value and not what your neighbor wants you or, you know, the keeping up with the Joneses nonsense, right? So I think, Sean, I lost the plot on your, your actual question. So just the major lifestyle change. Are there major life changes necessary? Thank you. I'm sorry. So, right. And I've led this story with, I lived in a high cost of living area and I moved to a lower cost of living area, which again is something that I almost cringe about because I don't want anybody to think that that is a prerequisite that you have to live in Richmond VA or Alabama or, you know, wherever fill in the blank. Not the case at all. Again, it's orienting around a mindset of savings and savings rate. However, that fits into your life. It might very simply, there are two sides of an equation, right? So earning additional income, upskilling, negotiating. We have multiple episodes on salary negotiation, which has been a remarkable thing for our community. I mean, I get emails constantly from people. Hey, I, the woman's name is financial mechanic. She goes by, so I heard the episode with financial mechanic and I negotiated a $15,000 raise with my next job. I get these all the time. So obviously there's two sides of an equation clearly, but is your path to fight going to be accelerated by cutting out some of the frivolous waste, which we all have in your budget? Yeah, I mean, it obviously is. I'm not going to sit here and lie to you and say, if you're living the YOLO mentality and you're living paycheck to paycheck or going into the red every single month, that you can just continue doing that and reach fine in 10 years. It's not going to happen, right? What is the critical part? And this is, I think, really the fundamental lesson from my podcast, which I mean, you know, I'm not one of those pat myself in the back people, but 600 episodes, 65 million downloads, a community of hundreds of thousands of people across the world. The common bond is very simply taking action. Okay, so you can get all the information you want from Bogleheads this weekend, but if you just sit there and just passively take it in, it's worth nothing. You might as well go home. You have to get up off the couch and take action to make your life better. Very simply, hard stop, end of story. So I think that is the thing that I've been hardened by most of people pursuing fine and people in our community is they understand that every situation is personal. You know, the old cliche, the personal finance is personal, right? It is because everyone's situation looks different and I don't give blanket advice to anybody. The only advice is you have to take action to make your life better and you have to determine what is valuable to you in your life. So for me, automobiles mean nothing. There literally gets me from point A to point B and driving old cars. I recently upgraded from a 2003 Honda Civic to a 2013 Honda Civic. So you can tell just just how much I care about what people think of me driving around. But that decision to essentially have no car payments for the last 20 years, except for obviously two lump sums. I think when compounded that's a somewhere in the vicinity of $400,000 plus decision. And obviously timeline, etc. You know, we can go on into all this. I have podcasts about it, but nobody really cares. But it's a massive decision, right? And that's one thing. Do I feel like I'm depriving myself because I drive a 2013 Civic? No, gets me where I'm going. Again, if you value that, if you value BMW or something, okay, do it, but understand it's a finite pot of money, right? And you can grow your income, but at the end of the day, the easiest first steps, I think are cutting frivolous things. So yeah, I guess Sean, that's that's what I would say it is certainly not a prerequisite, but you have to take action. Absolutely. So Brad, what type of investing strategies do most people pursuing financial independence follow? Yeah, so this is near and dear to everyone. Everyone here certainly it's most people in the five world follow J.L. Collins and his book, simple path to wealth. VTSA X obviously total stock market index fund from Vanguard has become really thanks to J.L. and his book and his message and is the stock series on his website. That's almost become like the default investment strategy and you know, of course it's not. It doesn't start and stop there. But I think for a lot of people low cost index fund investing is where the vast majority of people in the five world put their money and I know for me it was and I'm sure many of you out there have had the same aha moment with Bogleheads is when you see it again, it's one of those moments you can't unsee once you've seen it, right? You you understand. All right. What is the likelihood that I'm going to beat the market net of net of fees and taxes for for trading over a 40 50 year investing lifetime? What's the chance I'm going to beat the market? Approximately zero right? So why would I even try if if like literally the brain dead version? It's the only place I can think of in life where putting less effort in is going to get you better results. So again, I'm preaching in the choir here. Obviously, I don't need to waste a lot of time on this. But yeah, the vast majority of people put the I would say the vast majority of their net worth in low cost vanguard Vanguard and the like index funds. There are many people who pursue real estate as an investing strategy. Certainly there's a large overlap between the bigger pockets community. Anybody who's a real estate investor certainly recognizes bigger pockets and you know, of course, there are always the religious arguments of dividend investing and real estate and people thinking that that their specific type of investment is going to outperform. I mean, I find it a little little dubious at best yet to be yet to be swayed. So the vast majority of my net worth is certainly in low cost index funds. So yeah, I mean, Sean, I think it's it's probably a pretty large. There's a there's a large sample, but I would say the vast majority of people it's index funds and real estate. Yeah, it's certainly an area I think of overlap or alignment between the typical Boglehead and the typical financial independence person. You know, Brad, so you are one of the most prominent voices in the five community. And one of the things I appreciate appreciate about your voice is your very goal oriented, right? What are we trying to get to? What are we trying to achieve here? But you're certainly not the only voice in the financial independence community as it should be, right? Got a question for you about that, though, are tactics over emphasized within the financial independence community? So are tactics so like precise tactics? Yeah, I mean, things like it could be backdoor Roth IRA could be 529. It could even be just maxing out your 401k getting your employer match. Do we spend, you know, HSAs are all sorts of tactics out there, even on the investing side, right? Are tactics too? Are we focusing too much on tactics in the fire in the financial independence movement over sort of the bigger picture and the goals? Yeah, yeah, that's a good one. And so for me, I focus, I don't want to speak for the community at large certainly, but for me, I focus so little on the tactics. So yeah, I mean, I guess I would say by extension, if there is significant focus on the minutiae, I think it's missing the forest for the trees. I really do. So because again, I think the biggest driving factor and obviously all the events that I've been to today have been phenomenal, but you know, we're getting into the weeds and I think if you're saving 0 to 5% of your income and you're focusing on little tenths of a percent of return, I think you're missing the forest for the trees. I think the better way to start is to really prioritize your savings rate because the bigger shovel you have to throw and just put it in low cost Vanguard funds ETFs wake up in 50 years. You know, what's the is it? I don't know if it's bogal or if it's, I think it was bogal wake up, you're going to need a cardiologist on hand, right? So to me, it's all right. Focus on savings rate, but then honestly, it's focused on your life. I think so many of us and this is something, frankly, like is very personal for me now is so many of us lose sight of ourselves. Right? Like we lose sight of who we are as humans. What lights us up? What we want to do with our our finite time on this planet and again, this is very personal for me and I'll tell you honestly, but like this is something that's going on in my mind now. I have focused and again, our goal before our kids were born was to spend so much time with our kids and and mission accomplished. I mean, it's incredible. But I think just like anything in life, you can get out of balance. And I think I think what Sean's question ultimately is asking is can we get out of balance with our personal finance? My question is, can we get out of balance with our lives? I think they're inextricably tied. I think you need to take those couple of steps back and figure out what you want your life to look like. So I have these funny little examples of like it almost sounds laughable, but I think I've watched fewer than 10 movies in the last 15 years. I think I used to be a huge English Premier League soccer fan like back in the 1990s, like before it's big here. And like, I probably watched fewer than 10 matches in the last 20 years. And like, you know, again, this is very personal and this is not necessarily what this event is about. But I think it's important and I think it's important to be honest with ourselves. And of course, each of you are going to have something different in your own minds and your own lives of, all right, focus on what's actually important. Don't necessarily focus on the little tenths of a percent of, oh, if I over contribute to my 529, I or if I contribute to my 529, I'm going to get a state tax benefit. And what's the absolute maximum? Should I be in the Utah plan or I live in Virginia? You can do all that stuff. And I think it's fine at the margins and I think it there is a place for it. So I'm not saying it's not important, but I think you have to look at your life. I think you really do and you have to say, what, what am I doing here? What am I doing on this planet? For the nine decades that I'm afforded if I'm really lucky and don't focus on the tactics. Don't focus on the minutiae. Focus on your relationships. Focus on the real things that matter. So yeah, Sean, I mean, that's, that's what I got. Great. So those of you in the audience, you may listen to the choose if I podcast. You may think of it as sort of a one way street, right? Brad talks into a microphone, maybe as a guest on, but it truly is a two way street, right? Especially at the size and scale of choose if I, you should see how active their Facebook group is. Brad is a very successful newsletter. They sends out every Tuesday. He gets tons of responses to that. So you really have sort of a view as to the community and the listener reaction. And I'm going to ask you something about the five movement, the five community. And we're going to talk about this a little later today, just in the Boglehead's context. You know, I worry about other sources, such as, say, TikTok and what they're putting out about personal finance. As much success as you've had and as the fire movement, five movement, whatever you want to call it is had, are we missing 20 and 30 somethings? Are we missing a cohort out there that might be getting their financial information and education from other sources that perhaps are looking to sell more financial products, you know, in places like TikTok, you know, I think we're probably somewhat familiar with things like IULs and all that. There's a lot of that content on TikTok or, you know, maybe you're sent, maybe Brad, hopefully you're getting a lot of 20 and 30 something interaction. What are your thoughts on that? Yeah, it's a it's a good question. It's hard to say. I think I think there's always the allure of get rich quick. Right. I think there's always the allure of there's some secret behind the curtain. And I mean, I guess at this point, I have a fairly decent net worth. I know a lot of other wealthy people. I've yet to find the secret behind the curtain that's actually real or hey, I'm led into this room now all of a sudden. So, you know, for me, I orient my life around simplicity, certainly. So, which again is preaching the choir here and bogelheads investing. But yeah, I mean, I think unfortunately Sean and we saw this with GameStop and we saw, you know, the Robin Hood. I think there is a mentality of YOLO some intersection of YOLO get rich quick and stick it to the man. Right. And like not understanding that investing in stocks is not gambling. Right. I think like if if we can proselytize for one thing here as bogelheads community, it would be everyone. You hear it. You hear the phrases, right? I'm going to I'm going to gamble gamble in the stock market. I'm like people think of it as risky like I'm I'm rolling the dice. Like I've actually heard people use this phrase like no, you're buying a tiny little ownership percentage of in the case of a VTSA X of three to whatever is 4000 American companies and 100 plus million workers and their ingenuity and hard work. That's a totally different thing. It's not get rich quick. It's you were buying a tiny little ownership piece of all of those companies and getting all of these amazing American workers and workers across the world as essentially your employees, right? So yeah, I mean, Sean, I think ultimately everyone is susceptible to the get rich quick mentality. So I think it's it's incumbent on people like us to again not stand up and even though I just use proselytize and shout from the rooftops and try to like win people over. It's to look for people in our lives who might be open to a message of orienting around long term thinking around savings rate around smart low cost investing. And where do you find those people? How can you help them? Like I have never found success in spouting. I'm not a very outgoing person in general. So if you see me sometime later this weekend, come up and say hello because I'm probably going to be standing in the corner. So. So I'm not running around telling people about five. But when I hear people talk about oh, I invested in my 401 K or even down to oh, I'm clipping coupons like people who are oriented around again somehow saving money somehow thinking about money because I mean, I think all of us know the vast majority of people are just kind of yoloing it and we never learned. We never learned personal finance. It's not like I'm not blaming anybody if it's all of our faults. But if you can find those people, I think we can make a difference in our own lives and families and communities in a very empowering and positive way as opposed to like demeaning people. Obviously that never works or talking down to entire groups of 20 somethings that whatever, you know, fill in the blank and find people to help in your lives. Find that younger niece or nephew or cousin who hasn't made mistakes yet. And of course, this is not predicated. We have a lot of we have a bill here from catching up to Phi for late starters. If Phi is not about getting it right at 17. But it's a hell of a lot easier, right? Like, let's be honest, but there are many people in the Phi community. I would even hazard to say the majority of people in the Phi community who are finding it in their forties and fifties. So it's never too late, but again, not to sound like a broken record, but you have to take action. You just you have to very simply. By the way, so we're getting close to the time for the audience question. So if you have one, please write it down. Dr. Jim's in the back. I'm going to challenge you here with a two parter, right? I know this isn't really fair, but I'm going to do it anyway. So are there contradictions in the financial independence movement and do they matter? And I'll give you an example, right? Maybe someone out there is in the fire movement, Phi movement, and they're like, you know, I'm going to retire early at say age 50. Well, how are you to support yours? I'm going to leave corporate America, right? Done, right? No more nine to five job, no more corporate America. All right. Well, how are you to support yourself in your early retirement? Invest in corporate America. Right. So, Brad, are there contradictions in the fire movement and do they matter? Yeah, that's that's an interesting one, Sean. I've never never thought about that. So yeah, this will be on the fly thinking, but I don't always dangerous. I don't think that's a contradiction. Certainly. If that's a if that is a caricature. Yeah, I mean contradictions where my mind goes, and I don't know if this is necessarily a contradiction, but is like the. This is going back to the RE, the retire early and if you take that as kind of the bare bones of this whether, you know, whether you believe that or not, but a lot of people think, okay, once you leave your corporate job that you have to be done, you are retiring early, hanging up, hanging up the boots, whatever, and riding off into the sunset. And that's it. You're going to sit on a beach and sip umbrella drinks. And that's the only definition of successful fire, which you know, you can tell dripping with sarcasm because I think that's preposterous. I think what most of us actually aspire to is making a difference. However, we define that. So, you know, again, Sean, I'm not sure if this is necessarily a contradiction, but I think I think what should be apparent to all of us is after you leave your traditional job or frankly renegotiate your current situation, right? Like, I think what phi does is it gives you power and it reorients and this doesn't mean lord it over people or be a jerk at work and because you can because you have power. It doesn't mean that at all, obviously, but what it means is when you are not beholden to your job, like most people are, right? Most people's lives will fall apart in somewhere between 30 and 90 days without their current income because they live paycheck to paycheck. It's a house of cards. They might even make a nice income, but if you spend it all and you have no net worth, you are poor. You know, that sounds a little extreme, but it is the truth. If you have no net worth, you're living paycheck to paycheck. I don't care if you make 70 grand or 300. Same bottom line. Same net worth, right? So I think, yeah, ultimately, it's like I was saying, you can reorient and not lord this over people, but what do I actually like as part of my job? For people that I'm sure there are many of you who would say I love my job and I believe you to a degree, but I'm sure there are many aspects of your job that you don't love. I'm sure nobody wants to go to endless meetings and fill in TPS reports and whatever other nonsense, right? Well, I wonder if there's a way to re, I don't know, reorient. I guess I'm overusing that word, but to change the entire way that your job looks and add more value, potentially the same value with less time spent at the office. Okay, so what does that look like when you reach financial independence and the power is in your court? Could it look like? Hey, I only want to come in three days a week for four hours, but I really love this aspect of my job and I think I do it in a way that would be really hard to replace. Nobody's irreplaceable. Obviously, but this would be really hard to replace and there's no need to because I want to keep doing this. Well, I think the powers that be at your office will be a little bit taken aback at first, but I suspect you have more power than you think and that would be kind of like a parting message that I would leave to everyone here is I think you have more power than you believe and when you are at this point of financial independence and even frankly far before it, the power just keeps subtly shifting towards you and then you can actually devise a life that you want to live and it's not just the same groundhog day nonsense over and over again. So John, I didn't exactly answer your question, but I think the contradiction is, you know, it's ultimately like it's not either or right? Like you're going to be doing something, but you're going to be doing it on your terms and that might mean earning income for most people, it will be in some way, but it doesn't have to be the same amount of income. It can be a tiny little fraction. It can be anything. The ball is in your court and I think that that is just so powerful. All right, we've got some audience questions. We don't have that much time, but we're going to try to get through some of them. This one's very personal to you, Brad. How did you feel about your portfolio during March 2020? And did you rebalance or spend less after restrictions were lifted? Yeah, this is a good one. It's I think all of us would like to believe that like Dr. Jim over here that we have an investor policy statement and we have we have steeled ourselves for whatever calamity is going to befall us or the world. And I think what's really important to remember is we're all human, right? And we're I think for me 90 percent of personal finance is up here in this little primitive brain and 10 percent of it is numbers and getting the minutiae and all the tactics, right? So yeah, I mean, I'm not going to lie in March of 2020 when the world when who the heck knew what was going to happen? I mean, I freaked out like everybody else did and luckily because I have some degree of knowledge and I understand that this is you know, in this case a 60 year investing horizon. I didn't sell everything and run for the hills and buy gold and MREs and whatever other nonsense right? But like I'll cross my mind, you know, like I'm sure it did most of us. But obviously that's what having an investor policy statement where that helps or even if you don't have it written down just understanding that this stuff happens, right? It's not going to be COVID next time. It's going to be something something is coming, right? And we've all seen the numbers and I'm not going to get the paraphrasing, right? But like if you miss the 12 best days in the market over a 20 year period, you lose X percent of the return, right? Like it's you cannot let your emotions roll you. But man, it's it's hard right? It's hard. I think a lot of us freaked out. So did I did I sell a little bit? I mean, this might be the first time I've publicly said, yeah, I did. It wasn't a lot. Thankfully, it was just it was emotional and it was rash and it was stupid, frankly. And it obviously cost myself, but it was luckily I didn't make anything terrible. You know, this wasn't a significant thing. So, you know, my and I guess to the second part of the question. I am still in a unusual place where my I own a number of websites. I travel miles one on one where I help people like travel the world with credit card points. So like and I have choose if I so I'm earning enough money to cover my life expenses. So in all candor, like there has never been a month where I've had to draw down on my assets. So I am not like the prototypical, but again, there is no prototypical five person because I think many of us continue to earn some amount of money after we've reached five. But yeah, have I reached a point where I'm earning zero dollars and drawing down? No. So I mean, frankly, my tactics and strategy didn't have to change which I think is perfect world scenario anyway that hey, I'm not changing anything amidst calamity or coming out of a calamity. I think we should all again, the hardest part is up here. Let's all be honest for themselves, right? So anything you can do. It's like running the reps on things. How can you get these reps in and do we want calamities to befall us to get these reps in? No, but okay, I've been to through 2008 and again, I screwed up royally on real estate there, but at least I've learned and now I look at real estate as I own a couple single family rentals down in Georgia and I own them mortgage free and there's nothing can go wrong. So like, that was a lesson that I took from it and I will never make that speculation mistake ever again. I learned that I am as susceptible to freaking out as anybody amidst a market downturn, but now I understand the emotion. I understand what's going to happen the next time in my own head and hopefully I'm the wiser for it. Here's a little one Brad that is near and dear to your own heart. Kids are expensive. What advice do you have for parents of young children seeking to reach financial independence? Yeah, I mean, I think kids can be expensive. I don't think kids necessarily are by definition expensive though. I guess if we look at opportunity cost, which I think so I would argue that my kids have not been terribly expensive like out of pocket. But I think that would be a silly analysis because the opportunity cost is my wife has not been working now essentially for 15 years. So I would have to be a fool to stand up here and say kids are not expensive, right? So opportunity cost has to function has to matter in any equation. I think pursuing phi with kids is just like pursuing phi to a large degree without kids in the sense that it's about choices, right? So and every single person is different. Now, my kids are both excellent like I guess they were national level swimmers as younger younger girls and we had them in a very expensive year round swim program and that was a choice we made and that was very, very expensive but we made that choice from a place of value and I think that's the important part is so I'll take this you know, 30,000 foot view is make any spending decision whether kids or just in your own life from a place of value and not from a place of impressing people or impressing your neighbors or whatever it may be and you know, frankly, so this swim program I said was in the past tense is they fell out of love with it it's anybody I don't know if anybody has swimmers in here but that is a brutal sport I mean they're swimming 20,000 yards a week and like it's just ludicrous and we could have forced them right? If we were parents who cared about oh my kid got a scholarship or my kid is swimming Division one like they could have easily done that but they fell out of love with it and that was the day they stopped swimming because it wasn't about us right? So I think a lot of parents and this goes let's all be honest with ourselves it goes with the car decal that you put up on on the back of your car right? Like again my daughter who's a the older one who's an excellent swimmer that very easily could have said MIT but she stepped off that hamster whale she stepped off this swimming and it was made with eyes wide open and you know I'm kind of going off the rails here but I think the more important point is yes kids can be expensive but I think just like anything kids don't want fancy stuff they want your time and they want your attention and they want you to put the stupid phone down and just spend time with them right? So like yeah kids can be expensive as you make them or they can be as inexpensive as your family wants it to be right? Like there's so many free amazing I live in Richmond VA which is not like the center of the universe by any means but we could do something free outdoors or some festival every weekend of the year if we decided and that cost nothing I know we had and I know we're running out of time here but Liz from frugal woods on way back in I think was like episode 12 of choose a vine early 2017 and she was saying that the interesting thing of living in a city is everybody thinks it's so expensive she's like that's laughable yeah it's expensive to actually the rent but everything else is free they lived in Boston and there are 30 universities there with events every single weekend so I think the larger point that I would I would give to everybody here is think a little bit differently okay we're all thinking a little bit differently being here at bogelheads we're thinking a little bit differently being in the five community think a little bit differently you don't have to be cookie cutter you can actually do what you want to do based around your values so that's my challenge think a little bit differently and get up off the couch and take action Brad well first of all thank you for being here today and can we get a round of applause for Brad Barrett