Doug: Hey, what’s going on? Welcome to the Doug show. My name’s Doug Cunnington. And in this episode, I’m going to cheat a little bit. This is a rebroadcast from my other podcast, mile high fi. Now the thing is I’ve recorded hundreds of episodes for the Doug show and hundreds of episodes for mile high fi.
And. The thing is not everyone listens to every episode. And even if you listen to it, you probably don’t remember an episode from a couple of years ago. So I need to do this more. This is a great interview with my friend, Andrew Giancola. He is the host of the personal finance podcast, which launched during the COVID timeframe.
I’m sure we all remember that. From a few years ago and it really took off. So Andrew and I connected at a conference, like I talk about conferences all the time and how you can really have like a good connection if you’re able to hang out with people in person. So that’s what happened with Andrew and I.
And the cool thing is Andrew actually signed up for one of my courses a while back. Like in 2017 or so, and I recognized his name and I saw it popping up and I was like, I think I know that guy’s name, but that seems crazy because that podcast is so big. So why would I think he was in my course? Turns out he was, uh, the course had nothing to do with his wild success.
But in this episode, it is sort of personal finance perspective overall. So in Mile Hi Fi, we’re talking financial independence and personal finance generally. There’s some lifestyle stuff, of course. But anyway, that’s sort of the focus. So we We talked to Andrew. We hear sort of his origin story. We talk about early retirement.
We talk about making a hundred K per year, and we talk about his podcast as well. So pretty fun conversation. We’ll link up to all the places that we mentioned, um, including his podcast, highly recommend it, especially if you’re sort of on the beginner end of your personal finance journey, there’s a. A lot of episodes where it like breaks down something and gives you actionable, real strategies and ideas and tactics that you can use where honestly, the mile high fi podcast is a little bit more just talking.
Now, this episode is from 2022. And my cohost for Mile HiFi, Carl Jensen is on there. He subsequently left the show a couple of years after this was recorded. Uh, Carl and I are still friends. He just was very busy, which is an ongoing thing. Anyway, I’m rambling on here quite a bit. I think you will enjoy the episode.
And if you have any questions or you want to connect with Andrew, there’s links. And he’s quite accessible. He publishes on YouTube and he’s on social media and he does all the, all the right stuff that you’re supposed to do. So with that said, I’m going to send it over to this episode with Andrew Giancola.
Carl: Hello world. Welcome to the mile high five pad podcast. I’m Carl Jensen with my cohost Doug Cunnington. And we have a very special guest today. Tell us who you are and what you do. Absolutely. My name is Andrew Ginkola. Thank you guys so much for having me. And I’m the host of the personal finance podcast.
Awesome. And why did you start your podcast? So initially I started my podcast to teach a lot of other people kind of the steps I took towards financial independence. And it was one of the, the biggest moments in my life was starting this podcast because very early on when I wanted to start building wealth, I graduated from college.
Andrew: And when I was about 22 years old, I was making 30, 000 a year. A lot of people in the financial independence community know that you can probably live on 30, 000 a year in certain areas, especially 10 years ago when this journey started. But at the same time, I was living to paycheck to paycheck and I had no idea where my dollars were going.
So figuring out how to actually manage money was one of the best things that I ever did. So I went from learning about financial independence and learning how to actually handle my money. And then I wanted to teach people those steps as well. So that’s originally why I started the personal finance podcast was teaching people the steps I took to reach financial independence as fast as I possibly could.
And when did you reach financial independence? So for me now, I, I reached a point where I was at least at coast fire. And that was kind of the, the main goal for me initially. So I got to millionaire status at about 32 and I was gonna, you know, do lean fire. Lean fire was my initial goal. After that, as time progressed, I had kids, my goals kind of changed and really now I’m going all in on the podcast.
So really, I’m like work flexible, essentially going in all in on the podcast. And then from there, what I’m, my plan to do is actually get kind of closer to fat fire now because my, my, uh, goals have kind of changed.
Doug: Okay, very good. And when you were When you were on the way to FI, was retiring early a big driver, or were you trying to get out of a job, and did you think that you would, you know, start, I, I don’t know how long you’ve been in that position in Coase FI, but like, did you think you would start another project and start working on that?
Andrew: So very early on I read a blog by some guy that you guys might know called Mr. Money Mustache. And I read his blog while I was in the corporate world. And when I was doing this, it was, I wanted to get out of this cubicle that I was working in so fast. Like I, there was nothing else I wanted to do was get out of this cubicle.
So I did a bunch of things that, uh, to work towards getting out of that cubicle. And so my initial goal was to reach financial independence as fast as possible. So I didn’t have to work anymore. That was my initial goal. Then, as I started to progress, I started to find things that I actually enjoyed doing, where the real problem was I was doing something that I didn’t enjoy doing every single day.
And once I found things where I actually enjoyed working and enjoyed what I was doing in my businesses and all those other things, then I was actually fulfilled and I was happy. And so now it’s one of those things where I just want to do, you know, work on the podcast and some of our other businesses and day in and day out.
That’s what brings me fulfillment and happiness.
Carl: So that’s pretty interesting. How would you react to the internet retirement police who say, Oh, you went for financial independence, but now it sounds like you’re working and you’re enjoying it. How do you reconcile your previous self with your current self, where you are kind of back at a job?
I know you said your work flexible, but you’re still that four letter word work. You’re still doing it.
Andrew: Absolutely. And what I found very early on is when I had more time on my hands, a lot of people talk about this when I had a lot more time on my hands. I honestly just was not fulfilled and I was not happy.
And a lot of people can kind of go through this process. I’ve noticed a lot of people, maybe within the first six months of financial independence, all of a sudden they realized I have nothing to do. I don’t know what to do with my time, especially if you don’t have hobbies or something that you’re working towards.
So one big thing for me was. figuring out what do I need to do next in order to create that fulfillment. And so figuring out how to build businesses is something I absolutely love doing. And so for me, this is what makes me happy. And truly that’s what money is there to do is to create fulfillment and create happiness and figure out what.
Makes you come alive in life. And so for me, that’s what these businesses are, especially teaching people about financial independence and how to manage their money and how to go through this process is one of the best things for me. So a lot of people will come and say, Hey, you know, you’re not financially independent unless you’re not working.
And to me, that is not the case. It’s really going towards what. actually is fulfilling for you and being able to do those things. Having the freedom to do the things that you actually enjoy is what true financial independence is. And so I spend my time working, but it’s working on things that I want to work on.
It’s working on my businesses that are actually increasing my net worth over time. And being able to do that is one of the best things I ever did.
Carl: And I’ve got a further comment. I want to hear what you, Andrew and Doug have to say about this. For me, at least, I don’t know how unique this is, but there’s tremendous value for me in having.
autonomy over my time and being able to dictate when I’m going to do something like I’m working on a house project now and I, I’ve hired some people and sometimes I have to be there at a certain time to work with them or do things like that. And for some reason, it’s maybe it’s some issue with me, but it completely changes things when I know I have to be there versus I’m doing it for myself.
And who knows if that person wouldn’t have shown up, I might’ve been doing the same thing, but it’s completely different when you’re. dictating your life. And when you have autonomy over it, do you find that as well, too? Like if you had to do this podcast for a boss and you had to be on time and somewhere at a certain time, would that change it for you?
Andrew: Absolutely. And I’ve even tried the other way where I was doing like some consulting things where I’d have to show up to specific meetings that were not in my control. And I, Absolutely hated it. So I backed out of doing that and then kind of continued with my own businesses because now you can set your own time.
Like, for example, we have a nanny who watches our one and a half year old every single day while I do some of my projects and when she’s watching our young child, like for example, she had to leave early yesterday and I had the freedom and the autonomy to be able to go spend time with him for a half a day and be with him, you know, the rest of the day.
And most people can’t do that. And having that freedom just really brings fulfillment. I get closer to my family. I’m closer to the people around me. I get to spend more time with my friends. And so this is where I’m truly fulfilled as having control over my time, controlling your time and, and working are two very different things.
And understanding that controlling your time and doing things towards what fulfills you is one of the most powerful things I’ve done. For sure.
Doug: And I’m not going to repeat exactly what you just said, Andrew, but I’ll tell a quick story. There’s a company who wants to sponsor my other YouTube channel, and it’s a.
Pretty good amount of money, but they want to know my schedule for what I’m going to publish. And I don’t do that. And I’m like, I’m going to have to work ahead and plan for months. And I’m like, I don’t think I want the hassle. Like I’d rather like not get the money and just shoot from the hip. So, and just because they wouldn’t really be a boss.
I mean, I can dictate, I’ll probably, you know, counter with terms that are much more flexible and easy for me to fulfill. Of course. I mean, there’s some minimum stuff I need to do, but I don’t want to have to say, I’m going to, here’s my publishing schedule for the next three months. I’m just not going to do that.
So it feels kind of boss like if I have to answer to someone, even if I agree to the terms or whatever. So, and anything like that for you, Andrew?
Andrew: Exactly. I’ve had the same thing where we’ve had sponsors approach us and they want us to publish certain piece of content on specific dates, which means I have to, you know, rush to get that content done and to post it.
And even though it’s a good amount of money, I don’t want to do it. And I usually almost always say no, because they’re trying to control my time instead of me controlling my own time. And I didn’t, you know, pursue financial independence so that we could control our own time. And so having, that’s what it feels like.
It feels like a boss to employee relationship instead of, you know, actually being a business owner, which is the, the, Massive difference between the two. And what was your corporate job? So initially what I did was I was a financial analyst for a very large healthcare company. So I worked on a special teams project, which we would go out and we would look at like struggling locations that we had within this business, and we would look to improve some of those struggling locations and figure out what was going wrong.
And then as I started to climb up the corporate ladder, then I would work on acquisitions. I would work on contracts with big insurance programs. And doing that along those lines. But everything was back to becoming a financial analyst and working directly under some of the executives there. And then how many years did you work there?
I worked there for five years initially. And then after that, then I went and started my, my own business with some partners and we started investing in real estate and starting to build that real estate portfolio as well. So that was kind of phase one was working in the corporate world. And phase two was venturing into, um.
to real estate and kind of investing in a bunch of different properties. And then once we eventually sold that company, that’s when you know, I could have that freedom to work on my own. Gotcha.
Doug: And then how old is the podcast? How long have you been working on that?
Andrew: So June, 2020 is when we started the podcast.
We had a little extra time during a COVID 19 and I was trying to figure out what to do with that extra time. And so we started the podcast in June of 2020.
Doug: Very, very interesting. It’s, it’s a blessing that we had the pandemic, right? No, I’m just kidding. It’s a joke. But a lot of people like got to see what was important and they were like, I don’t like to go to this job and you had a little extra time.
So I say it in jest, but a lot of people had some time to think about themselves. So I think I pulled that off, right? Okay. So a lot of our topics are kind of more advanced. A lot of these are lifestyles. So on your show, you cover a lot more, not necessarily basic, but some of the one Oh one topics and you have branched out to other areas.
So we’re going to focus on a few of those areas that we just don’t talk about. Carl and I may not be experts in the same way that you are in, you do a lot of preparation for your pot. So. First one here is a steps to approach early retirement. So again, most of our audience is advanced and they’re on their way to five, they kind of already have their system in place and they’re just, you know, doing the reps or they’ve already reached fi.
So how can we advise people at the beginning of their journey when they’re green, they don’t know anything. Everything’s brand new. And let’s say this is an actual person. So we’ll give a shout out to my friend, Sarah in San Diego. Let’s say, uh, she’s about 25 with a good job, high cost of living city. How would you advise her to get started?
If she doesn’t really know much about fi. Early retirement or anything like that.
Andrew: So these are my favorite type of folks to teach about financial independence. And there’s a number of reasons why, because once you unlock this for people, all of a sudden they become obsessed with it. And it kind of gives them a, the fire in their gut to actually pursue financial independence.
And that’s truly what you need when you’re trying to go after financial independence. And so the big thing to understand is that there are three phases to building wealth. And when you’re going about building wealth. One of the best things that you can do is align your values with building wealth. So a lot of people don’t understand.
You got to figure out what your why is, why you’re actually going after financial independence and figuring out what your enough number is and figuring out what enough is, is one of the most powerful things that you can do. So for example, If you take into consideration the 4 percent rule, let’s say you need 80, 000 per year to live in San Diego.
Now, San Diego has a really high cost of living. That may not be the right number, but let’s just say, for example, you need 80, 000 a year. Well, in order to have 80, 000 a year to live off in retirement, you’re gonna need 2 million invested into something to be able to draw down that money for that 80, 000 a year.
And this is kind of where the impetus starts when you’re pursuing financial independence is knowing what that enough number is now. How do we get there? That’s the big question that we have to understand. And the first thing is the catapult to pursuing financial independence, which is your savings rate.
Your savings rate is one of the most powerful things that you can invest in. Look into and ensure that you are growing over time. And one of the best posts that Mr Money Mustache ever put out, and this is kind of the one that unlocked this for me, was the one where it was the simple math behind early retirement.
I can’t remember the exact title, but that’s kind of where you can kind of look at savings rate and say, Hey, my savings rate has a major factor into how far I can get to financial independence and how. fast I can get there because if you’re trying to look to get there between 10 to 15 years, you need to have a savings rate to catapult you to that level.
And the cool thing about that blog post is what it showed you was, Hey, if I only save 10 percent of my income, I’m going to be working for 50 years. And the last thing most people want to do is be working in a cubicle or in that corner office for 50 years answering to someone else. So to be able to increase that savings rate and get it up as high as you possibly can is the number one thing.
You can think of the traditional finance advice from say Dave Ramsey or Susie Orman. They say save 10 percent of your income. And truly, that’s dangerous advice for most people because it’s not what they really want. Their priorities are really to have that freedom. And that’s what financial independence can unlock for you is that financial independence.
Is that financial freedom? Now, the second part of this is ensuring that you can grow your income over time because most of us start with an entry level job. And so when we have that entry level job, maybe like me, I was making 30, 000 per year, but being able to grow that income and take that income and put it towards wealth building activities, investing those dollars or an emergency fund is the second phase that you definitely want to be doing.
So your savings rate comes in, then you’re taking those dollars and you are looking to grow your income as well. And as your income grows, what you want to watch out for is lifestyle inflation and lifestyle inflation is as your income rises, then you start to spend more dollars. But if you can keep that lifestyle inflation at bay and take those extra dollars and put them into those wealth building activities, You can truly achieve financial independence so much faster.
And typically someone within the financial independence community is looking to save at least 50 percent of their income and try to grow that over time as well. And so that is one of the most powerful things that you can do on that front. And growing your income can come in a bunch of different ways.
One of which is the first place we always look is to grow it at your day job. So that’s the place you spend most of your time. So building skills and looking for ways to grow it. After J job is one of the most powerful things that you can do. And then the second thing is to grow your income with side hustles and additional projects, which is some of my favorite ways to do it as well.
And some of the ways that I did it very early on so that you can grow your income over time and get to that next level. And then lastly is investing. You have to invest your dollars in order to be able to retire or become financially independent. I love low cost index funds. That’s my drug of choice, but there’s a bunch of different ways that you can invest your dollars.
I’ve also invested in real estate for a very long time. Uh, and then there’s also investing in your own businesses and things like that as well. But figuring out these three phases first is the best thing that you can do, especially if you’re just starting out so that you can get to financial independence as fast as possible and then pursue the life that you want.
Doug: When did you get started on your journey? Were you pretty quick out of the gate?
Andrew: So I started out of necessity almost, because what I did was when I was 22, I was making that 30, 000 a year. What I wanted to do was initially figure out, okay, what do I need to do in order to get to the next level? And I remember at one point in time, I went to go fill up my gas at a gas tank and, or.
fill up my gas at a gas station. And when I went to that gas station, I looked at my checking account and I didn’t even have enough money to fill up my entire gas tank. And this was kind of the aha moment for me. I said, this is never going to happen to me again. I was extremely frustrated with my financial situation.
And this is kind of where it started when I was 22. And so I made the goal, Hey, I want to save my first hundred thousand dollars by the time I turned age 25. And that’s the first step I took was saving that first hundred thousand dollars. And when I got to that first hundred thousand dollars, then it started to become a And I started to see compound interest working in my investments and things started to grow from there.
But getting to that point in that starting point was one of the best things that really just struggling early is what kind of taught me and made me kind of pursue financial independence.
Carl: Cool. I have a followup, but I was at a pretty fancy party earlier this year and I usually don’t talk about financial independence with people.
I find that when I bring it up, it usually falls on deaf ears. People look at me confused and. They try to change the conversation. It’s not nearly as interesting to them as I would have ever thought it would be. But I’m talking to this other person and, uh, my friend comes in and starts describing what I do.
I’ve got this blog about financial independence. This other person goes, Oh, tell me about that. So my friend’s like, well, it’s when you, you save up some money and you try to maybe not spend a lot when you’re young and then you can save a lot and you can retire early and her response, she looks at me and says, wow, that, that sounds pretty horrible.
I think she might have been maybe joking, but she didn’t look like it. I think she was pretty serious.
Doug: Do you know which part was horrible to her?
Carl: I think she didn’t like the postponement of gratification. She wanted to buy stuff now and have a rich life while she was young. She didn’t want to, and there was nothing.
that could have convinced her to give that up, at least based on my friends or my description. And I’m not very, I’m not very convincing, hence why I tried to stay away from this topic. But do you ever, what do you think about that, Andrew? Do you ever try to how would you convince someone? Like if you had to, I don’t know if you do this on a regular basis, which is probably a mistake.
There’s that saying, when the student is ready, the teacher will appear. But have you ever tried to teach someone before the student is ready?
Andrew: So I come across folks like this all the time, and there’s a lot of people who will say, you know, it sounds miserable to do that. And I guess I understand it from a standpoint, depending on where you came from and, you know, how you’re kind of your family reacted to money.
There could be a lot of situations where you just want to spend those dollars and, you know, have fun in your twenties, all those other things. So sometimes for people, they may not be able to retire in 10, 12, 15 years. They may have to take a little bit longer. And so for them, we kind of create some things where you can do both.
So if you want to spend those extra dollars, that’s a choice that you can make. And if that’s what make brings you happiness and fulfills you, then fine. You can do that. But at the same time, just know it’s going to take you a longer period of time before you can have that freedom and that financial independence.
So what do you value more? What do you weigh more? And that’s kind of, we talked through some of those options and sometimes when you talk through some of these things and you kind of weigh out those options, they think through what they actually value and what really brings them happiness and either.
It’s going to be, they’re going to continue on the path that they’re on, or it might change their mindset a little bit. And then they want to have more of that freedom. So there’s sometimes there’s just little things that will kind of unlock it for them. But I come across that all the time. It’s it’s a it’s a constant conversation that I have with people, and it’s interesting to see when the light bulb actually goes off in people’s head and they actually want to pursue financial independence.
And it always seems like maybe it’s gonna take a little bit longer, but you can also do both. There’s there’s options here.
Doug: You mentioned lifestyle inflation before, and based on the age that you mentioned all this opened up for you, it sounds like you probably kept it under control, but is that is that accurate?
Did you have any instances of lifestyle inflation? I have,
Andrew: so the, my lifestyle has definitely inflated since I had kids. So actually later on, so very early on, I was extremely frugal. Uh, it drove my wife crazy, but I was extremely frugal in our twenties. And then as life progressed and we had kids, I’ve noticed lifestyle inflation since we had kids.
So that’s kind of where my goals change from being lean fire, essentially. To kind of shifting it a little bit because I see our spending increasing as we have kids and bringing more people into the household. So initially one big lifestyle inflation, for example, I mentioned we have a nanny and we also have another child in daycare.
So our expenses have increased significantly because of that, because my time is dedicated to growing the businesses and my wife has a career as well, um, that she loves to pursue. So between those two things. Our lifestyle has inflated as we’ve had kids on. That’s, I think, one of those things where people have to expect when you’re in financial dependence.
If you’re not completely financially, if you’re not at complete five yet, what you’re going to have to do is kind of figure out how you’re going to handle those types of situations and think through some of those things. Because when life’s changes, there are some changes that you have to make as well.
Doug: And I have to guess I interviewed you, Andrew, for my other podcast. So I know some of your numbers, you make good money on the podcast. And if your wife is still working, I have a hunch that you still potentially have a very high savings rate. Is that accurate
Andrew: So we’re, we’re saving, uh, well above a 50 percent of our income.
It fluctuates every single month, but it’s usually somewhere between, you know, 50 and 80%.
Doug: Okay.
So the lifestyle inflation is still like a drop in the bucket because you’re still making money, right?
Andrew: Exactly. So our, our expenses have gone up and then, and then my wife still works just because she absolutely loves it.
She has a high level job at a large company. So she, she loves doing that and it kind of gives her fulfillment as well. Um, but our savings rate is still has stayed pretty high, but our expenses have risen. based on but our income has risen as well. And
Doug: what advice do you give to people? Again, let’s say someone in their twenties, they just got a promotion, I could picture myself when I got a raise.
And I’m like, Oh, should I buy a new car? Because I have a, you know, whatever small 3 percent raise, I’m like, ah, I should spend this. So what advice do you give people, especially if they’re in a Group where their peers are upgrading their lifestyle. And they think I should look for a new house. I should do all this other stuff.
How do you keep them on track?
Andrew: One big thing that we look at on the podcast all the time is the cost of opportunity, opportunity costs is one of the biggest things that we. Always, always are looking at. And for example, just an episode on what it would cost if you upgraded your car, just every five years, every 10 years and every 15 years.
And the impact is multimillion dollars just by upgrading every 15 years. Even it’s going to cost you millions and millions of dollars to drive that car. So looking at the opportunity costs and figuring out what those numbers are is one of the best things that you can do, because it’s going to change your mindset.
If you see millions of dollars that you could have invested in it and grown over time. It’s one of those things that can completely change your mindset. Now, if something really brings you happiness and fulfillment, like I keep talking about here, if that’s something that you really, truly enjoy and deep down, you would rather do that thing than, you know, have that freedom.
That’s your choice. And that’s something that, you know, it’s up to every single person, but at the same time, there’s a trade off every time you buy something like that. So, buying things like depreciating assets or something I love to stay away from, but some people, if they love it, that’s your choice, but you’re, it’s at the cost of freedom.
And so that is. That is the thing that you kind of have to think through and running those opportunity cost numbers or something that can really be life changing once you learn how to do them. And that’s why we try to teach them so much.
Doug: Yeah, my my car is like 16 years old. It’s a the worst car on the whole neighborhood
Andrew: I do the same thing.
I try to drive them till they die It’s just like the it’s I could care less about cars and I have like I have a truck and I love trucks I just drive the truck till it dies and that’s it. What truck do you have? I have an f 150 Not by choice. It was just like the you know, I don’t care what brand it is usually but it’s one of those things I’m just gonna drive it until it completely dies Cool.
Doug: Cool. Yeah. I have an F 150 as well.
So what do you and your wife splurge on where you’re like non negotiable? This is a thing that’s a high priority for us.
Andrew: A lot of times we’ll go on like date nights and things like that. So we’ll splurge on those types of things. For the longest time, when I was really frugal, I would splurge on like craft beer.
That was a big one for me. Now it’s less of a splurge because now I drink less than I used to. Yeah. But a big one is just date nights going out, that kind of thing. And then another big one is health and fitness. So health and fitness is a huge one for me. We built a home gym inside of our house and building a home gym.
I think we spend about 7, 000, but it was, there was so much value in that. And I use it literally every single day, seven days a week. And I, it brings me so much happiness and fulfillment that when I built out this home gym, I went over the top on it. But it was just one of those things that every single day I use it and it’s part of, you know, to me, health is part of wealth.
So, that was one thing that I’m really happy that we invested in.
Carl: You said a comment a couple of minutes ago that I want to ask you if you have a good story about. You said when you were younger, you were super frugal and it drove your wife nuts. I think those were your exact words, drove her nuts. Do you have any good story or an example of you being super frugal with something?
Absolutely.
Andrew: Absolutely. So. For the longest time, especially when I wasn’t making a ton of money, I did not want to spend any money whatsoever. So like, I would try to, one big thing was I knew the big three expenses were a major impact on how you spend your money. So I would try to bring down housing, transportation, and food like crazy.
And for example. After reading you know, Mr. Money Mustache’s blog a long time, I wanted to start biking to work, but work was about 20 miles away. So it was one of those things where I was trying to reduce that transportation costs. I did it a couple times, and it was one of those things that, you know, I didn’t continue to do that because biking 40 miles a day wasn’t the quickest way to get home.
But there’s a bunch of other situations like that. I would try to bring our grocery bill down as low as possible. So I had to figure out a way to kind of get my wife on board. As I was doing this, and I think a lot of people struggle with this when one person wants to pursue financial independence and the other one doesn’t.
And I figured out a solution that at least worked for us. And what I did was in our budget, I actually made a line item called the blow fund. And this was an amount of money that I could, you know, she could have. And then I could have, we had two separate line items and she would get quadruple the amount that I would get every single month.
But this was money, no questions asked. You can just blow this money on whatever you wanted. And that kind of relieved that tension of pursuing financial independence and being frugal because she had this set amount of money that she could just kind of blow on anything and it truly helped kind of propel us forward.
So that’s one little quick hack that you can try and see if it works. And it was one that now she’s completely on board. She understands it. But it’s also a lot different as our income has risen over time.
Carl: Blow fund. Isn’t blow a word for a cocaine?
Andrew: It sure is. Yeah. Yeah.
Carl: Florida’s blowing the blow fund down below.
You’re you’re all right.
Doug: Exactly. You can use it on any drugs you want.
Carl: Any drugs yet. Don’t distribute it
Andrew: This is mile high five, so,
Carl: Oh my God. Oh, should we get into the next question? Any more followups, Doug?
Doug: Nope. Good to go.
Carl: Okay. This next question sounds like I’m reading clickbait because it is, or the heading is how much should you save by certain ages?
I always see this pop up on social media and on what’s that business insider. Are there any specific benchmarks? This is kind of a, it’s a ridiculous question, but I’m curious to hear your thoughts, Andrew.
Andrew: Sure. So we, we create a lot of these by age episodes and really what I’m doing when I create these episodes is a, these episodes do really well.
Like you said, they do have clickbait titles and we kind of model some of our titles after YouTube instead of modeling them after podcasts. And there’s a reason for that. But what we really want to do is kind of motivate people to kind of compartmentalize the way that they think about money. And I see a lot of our life as thinking about money in phases.
And so we kind of compartmentalize. If you want to retire by a certain age, this is what you need to do. And so it kind of gives people when they’re in a certain age range, a lot of people will come to ask me like, what do I do? I’m in my twenties. What do I do next? What’s the next thing I have to do? So we create these episodes so that they can kind of figure out, Hey, if I’m in my twenties, I need to be doing.
X to retire by X date. So the specific episode that we did, the latest one was, you know, how to retire by traditional retirement age and get to get to that point in time, because some people who aren’t willing to pursue financial independence still have to have a financial plan to be able to retire by that specific age, we have another one that’s coming out in a couple of months.
That’s going to be for financial independence. If you want to retire in 10 years, 15 years, 20 years, all those different things. And so when we did this episode, we assumed, you know, if you need 60, 000 per year in retirement, here’s how much you need to save. If you need 100, 000 per year in retirement, here’s how much you need to save in 150.
So we did. We did 60, 100, 150, and we assumed a 10 percent rate of return on some of these investments as well. And obviously that is high. We can adjust for inflation, do all these other things. Uh, we have some other tricks for that, but we do that just to motivate people. We use the 10 percent rate of return to motivate you.
We look back at the S and P 500 since 1929. Use that 10 percent rate of return. Obviously it’s probably closer to seven to 8%, but we ran these numbers at a different rate of return only to show what your money can do when it compounds over time. So this is kind of the impetus of how we set these up. And these by age episodes are one that a lot of people will come back and say, Hey, this is, this is.
Really helpful to be able to kind of see what I should be doing during this age range. And for everybody, it’s a little bit different. There’s a lot of assumptions that we needed to take into consideration, but at least starting it off and having a starting point for a lot of people is really, really helpful.
Doug: So if, if someone came to you and they’re like I’m 30 years old, how much should I have saved at this point or 40, or you could pick an example. I know that there’s a sliding scale, so you can make some assumptions just to walk through like one example.
Andrew: For sure. So say for example, someone is in their thirties and they want to retire by traditional retirement age, for example.
So some of the numbers that we ran during that time where we would go through, Hey, if you’re age 30, here’s how much you need to be on track to hit that point. If you’re age 30, it’s 56, 197. If you are 35, the number is 115, 711. And then if you’re 39, it’s 188, 000. And what this is showing is if you want to get to that point, Where you have that 60, 000, those are the numbers that you need to hit.
And then we went through a hundred thousand and 150, 000 for each person. So really all this is, is it’s simple math and showing people how compound interest works. If you take that same rate of return, here’s where you need to be by this age. If you’re behind. Then you need to work towards catching up and you can absolutely do that.
And if you were ahead, don’t take your, your foot off the break, continue so that you can retire early. And so that was kind of the point of the episode and kind of how we kind of laid this out. And then in the future one that we’re doing, it’s going to be very similar. Only how do you do this so much more aggressively so that you can retire in a very short period of time.
Those are kind of how we lay these out so people can see, Hey, am I on track? Am I doing what I need to be doing? Cause most people just don’t understand how to run this math. Obviously we can all use a simple investment calculator. But for a lot of our listeners, they are learning how to do some of this stuff.
So we put this into place so that they can see and kind of have their eyes open to what the possibilities are. If they start to get their dollars investing now. Got it.
Doug: And the great thing with the internet, especially with clickbait titles, just like this one, you’ll get these crazy comments. People will have an issue with whatever you say.
So what flaws, cause obviously when you set this up, you’re thinking what issues with these assumptions, how is this going to, um, like draw opposition and how can we go ahead and counter that ahead of time? So any issues with making these assumptions or running a simulation like this?
Andrew: There is a ton of flaws with, with kind of running some of these simulations.
One of which is every single person’s financial situation is different. Their values are different when they want out of life is different. And so running these in a box, for me, this would drive me crazy to wait until 60 to retire. So like, for me, this would not work at all whatsoever. For some people it would work.
Say, for example, you’re a doctor, you want to pursue your career for a long period of time. Then in that situation, maybe this would work for you. And at the same time. The other assumption is a lot of people will, you know, feel behind if they see that number and you know, they haven’t saved it all. Maybe they’re, maybe they’re 40 years old.
They haven’t saved a single dollar and they say, Oh, I need, you know, well over six figures by now to be able to retire by age 60 and so taking that assumption, obviously you. You and I know that we can save money extremely fast and be able to retire in those 10 years and get those dollars actually working for us.
But somebody who is just starting may feel like that’s a daunting task. So there’s a lot of other assumptions as well. Like we don’t know what the investment returns are going to be in the future. So you can assume a 10 percent rate of return, but you really need to adjust that down for inflation. It’s probably closer to seven to 8 percent if you’re investing in something like low cost index funds.
So looking at some of these assumptions and assuming them. Without taking into consideration every person’s personal financial situation is definitely one of the flaws into thinking through something like that.
Carl: Cool. Ready to move on?
Andrew: Yep.
Carl: Okay. Let’s talk about income versus expense gap. Not quite as click baity.
So the gap between those two, uh, is what makes a difference. And that’s what you alluded to with that shockingly, I think it’s called the shockingly simple math behind early retirement, the Mr. Money Mustache post anyway. Can you think of any ways or tell us about any ways that we can cut expenses to increase that gap?
Andrew: And I can definitely even make this into a clickbait title if you want to, but, um, so growing the gap is one of the most powerful things that you can do when you build wealth. And the gap is the difference between your income and your expenses. Like Carl just said, and. This is where you really need to start if you’re pursuing financial independence.
And what most people do is they focus on the wrong things early on. They focus on like clipping coupons, for example, where they’re saving one or 2 every single time they go to the grocery store and they’re looking for different ways to save a buck or two. What we try to focus on is focusing on the big ticket items first.
What are the massive things that will change your financial situation? So for us, this is obviously the big three is the first one, which is housing, food and transportation. So. If you can reduce your expenses in this, these big three areas, then you can really, really accelerate your path to financial independence.
So housing is a massive one. So say for example, you can look at interest rates right now. They’ve just jumped to six to 7%. Well, if you had the same house that I, I bought a house in 2020 and I have a 2. 75 percent interest rate. That’s my same exact house. If you bought it now, you’d be paying 1, 500 more per month just in the interest on that house.
So reducing housing expenses is one of the best things that you can do. There’s a number of ways to do this. You can house hack, for example, where you can find a duplex or a triplex, live in one unit, rent out the other unit. And the cost of your living is going to be significantly reduced. That is one way that you can do it.
You can do a live in flip, like what Carl and Mindy do. And when they, when they go in, they. They read, they find a house that needs to have work. They live in it for two years, then they flip the house and there’s there’s all different kinds of things that you can do in between there. But there’s a bunch of different ways that you can hack your way into reducing your housing costs.
You can also move to a lower cost of living area if you can work from home or do something along those lines. And then food is the second one. Food is a major one that a lot of people think they spend way less than they actually do. And so once they start to run these numbers, they can see that, Hey, I’m eating out way too much and or I’m spending too much on groceries.
Groceries is a big one where I’ve worked with people and talk to people about their personal financial situation. They think they’re spending 500 a month on groceries and they’re spending 3,000 a month on groceries. So that’s a major one where people kind of think that they’re spending way less than they do.
So reducing your food expenses is a very powerful one. And then transportation is another one. So transportation, obviously, if you can go without a car, that’s absolutely fantastic. Not a lot of people are willing to do that. So if you, if you do have a car then just reducing how often you either buy a new car and make sure you never lease a car.
That’s like a cuss word. If you go on my podcast and, or, you know, doing some of these other things, but reducing your transportation costs is a massive one because these all have multimillion dollar impacts. Some other big ones so that people don’t think about like mortgage interest is one that I just talked about your asset allocation is a huge one on how you’re investing your dollars and you can save a lot more money that way by making sure that you have the right asset allocation.
A for your risk tolerance, but B so that you can grow over time. Another big one is just making sure you keep your investment fees low. Your investment fees have a six figure differential as well. And we’ve run it where if you have a financial advisor with one to 2% Taking one, 2 percent fees. It’s a multimillion dollar impact on your money over time.
So there’s a bunch of different ways, but focusing on those big three first, then you can bake in the small ones and reduce the amount of discretionary expenses that you really don’t care about. So one big exercise that I like to talk about is that you can think through, Hey, what in my. What actually brings me value because once you figure out what brings you value, you can cut out everything else and then spend those dollars on what brings you value.
And that’s kind of how I think through when I spend my dollars every single month.
Doug: Any followups on that, Carl expense wise, you have any big tips?
Carl: I don’t think so. I was kind of surprised that you, and I don’t know if this is on purpose, but you put housing and then food and then transportation in that order.
Was that intentional? Do you think food is a bigger expense than for most people or a bigger waste than transportation?
Andrew: I think that transportation is a much bigger item on the list, so it’s not in a particular order. Um, housing is obviously the biggest, biggest one for most people, but transportation involves so many different things from maintenance to your insurance to actual, you know, just buying the car.
So, when you run those numbers, transportation usually, depending on the situation, but usually transportation has much higher costs.
Carl: Yeah, transportation kind of shocked me. I don’t have any new cars. The car I drove over here is from 2003. Our other daily drivers are 2010. They’ve been paid off for a long time.
We have super cheap insurance on them, just the, the, the minimal, I think all our insurance is like 600 bucks a year. And I’m like, Oh, that 56 cents or whatever the IRS says is how much you can deduct. I’m like, that’s crazy. Who’s. Ben’s 56 cents a mile. And I’ll back up a second before I get to my point.
I do all the old maintenance on my car too. I fill them with gas. I rotate the tires and all that stuff. And then I did the math on the car and it wasn’t actually that far. I think it was in the, like, I thought it would be like 15 cents, but. with fuel and everything else. I think it was between 30 and 40 cents and we have cheap cars.
I do all the old maintenance. I think most people probably spend more than that 56 cents, especially if you’ve got a nicer car, like a European brand and you take it to the dealership for all the maintenance. It’s shocking how much it is. And I think what you said about food is most people underestimate how much they spend.
I think that’s also true for transportation.
Andrew: Absolutely. And I’ve, I’ve seen people, you know, when they, when they look at transportation, the average amount that, uh, the average. The average person last year spent over 8, 000 on transportation costs, and that doesn’t count buying the car. So just the maintenance depreciation, all those things factored in the average U.
Individual spends over 8, 000. And if you compound that over a long period of time, it is a massive amount of money. It’s millions and millions of dollars, and most people just don’t see that. And depreciation is obviously a major factor as well. So having cars For a long period of time is going to help you reduce that significantly because you’re losing so much money.
If you’re re up, you know, if you’re, if you’re buying new cars every couple of years, so that’s one of the most powerful things as well,
Carl: man, I’m going to go home and give my bike a hug, Doug. I’m a bike hugger.
Doug: So expenses is great. Making more money is the other piece. And you have a framework to make six figures per year.
Six figures is a popular benchmark. And actually I remember when. We were young Carl and 50 K a year was like pretty impressive. And Andrew, I think you’re a little bit younger than, than we are. What, what was like the benchmark when you got out of school? Like what was a good salary? I remember thinking if I made 70, 000 a year, I was set for life.
So yeah, 50 K was great. Now it’s like a hundred K, 10 K a month or something. That’s a popular one online. So anyway, what’s, what’s the framework. Can you walk us through that?
Andrew: So a hundred K is another nice round, uh, clickbait title that we can use for kind of figuring out how we can make the most money that we possibly can.
And So that’s what kind of what this framework is. And the way that we kind of built this out was I have a very specific way that I would get promotions at my job, which I’ll talk about here in a second. But there’s also other ways to make money. And most people think that they have to only do it at their job.
But what you got to understand is your 100, 000 per year can come from multiple income sources. And in fact, I think it’s pretty dangerous to only have one income source. And so I love. Looking for different ways to diversify your income sources. If you have a business, you can diversify your income sources in a bunch of different ways, or you can have side hustles and all these other things.
But the first place that you want to increase your income so you can get to that, that a hundred thousand dollars is at your job. And we have a very specific way. I’ll walk through here in a second. But the first thing that I always do is when I was at my job, I looked at the people above me and said, what skills do these people have that I don’t have that I need to work on so that I can get to the next level.
Now, sometimes they don’t have more skills than you. It’s some. Sometimes it’s not a meritocracy. It’s a situation where people just get promoted because they’ve been there for a long time, but you can look and see people above me. What skills do they have? When I was in finance, it was having really, really exceptional Excel skills because you can create reports for executives that they’ve never seen before by having these amazing Excel skills.
So I worked on my Excel. And worked through workshops and all these other things, got different certifications in Excel to make sure that I could get to that next level. And this is one thing that I looked at to help me. But when you’re already at your job, you can actually figure out what skills that your boss wants you to have so that you can kind of get to that next level.
So the big thing for me was making sure that when I wanted to earn more money at work, I started to follow through with this plan. And my wife still does this plan to this day. And she’s been getting promotion after promotion. She’s the youngest person in her position that’s ever been in that company.
So this is the cool thing about this system is that it truly works. And I’ve done it. My wife’s done it. I’ve, I’ve coached other people through this and it works really well. So the first thing I always do is identify when my yearly review is going to be. And when you figure out what that yearly review is going to be, then you have a benchmark six months beforehand where you can start this process.
And what the way the process works is you meet with your boss six months before it is time to to have that yearly review. And what you’re doing in this meeting is you’re figuring out all the areas that you need to improve so that you can either make more money or get that promotion. Because as we know, if you just get that 3 percent raise every single year, Even right now, inflation is eating away at that 3 percent raise.
You just got something where you’re not actually making less money than you did last year. If you got that 3 percent raise, you want to make a lot more money every single year. So you got to figure out a way to get there. And the way this system works is so there are no surprises when you get to that point.
So you, you identify the areas you want to improve and you ask your boss, Hey. What do I need to do in order to get this promotion? And you’re going to talk through some of these situations. Maybe it’s taking on more projects. Maybe it’s doing some other things that are going to help the bottom line of the company.
There’s so many different things that could come up, but having this conversation is one of the key. Thanks. Now, the next thing you want to do is kind of work on, you know, what you need to do to get to that next level. So you’re kind of working through some of this stuff and you’re going to be doing some of this stuff after you have this conversation with your boss.
Then three months before your yearly review, you’re going to meet with your boss again, because they’re not going to remember that you had this conversation. They’re extremely busy. So following up with him is one of the best things that you can do is making sure that you get into your boss’s office.
Have these follow up meetings and make sure that you are top of mind because the yearly review is coming. So that’s another big thing as well. And when you do this check in, make sure you’re on track. Make sure you both are on the same page and have this check in together. And then you do it again one month before you do the review, making sure you’re doing the right things, making sure you’re on track so that when that yearly review comes up, nobody is surprised because what a lot of people do is they go to your yearly review, they walk in and their boss has no idea they’re going to be asking for a massive amount of raise and they’ve done nothing to actually get to that point.
where there’s a bunch of surprises and they haven’t even gone up to bat and figuring out who is actually going up to bat to give him that raise. So this is kind of the process that we follow so that there’s no surprises. Now, the next thing you want to do is have a wealth protection plan in place. So making sure you have your emergency fund in place, making sure you have things in place so that while you’re building wealth and trying to, to get there, nothing’s going to get in your way to ensure that, you know, it’s going to stop you from getting to that a hundred thousand dollars per year.
And then you’re gonna the next thing that you can do is if you’re not at 100, 000 per year yet at your job, you can create side hustle. So there’s a bunch of different ways where you can create active income and passive income. And some of the active income sources are things like you can, you know, do side hustles like start a side business.
For example, I just met a girl a couple of weeks ago who makes 200, 000 a year picking up dog poop in people’s backyards. So there’s so many different things that you can do for a side hustle. And you can get really creative with it. You can do, use your skills that you use at your job. Maybe you’re a web developer and you can help other companies, uh, with their coding.
Maybe you’re someone who is a copywriter and you can help with copywriting. There’s so many different things that you can do as a side hustle, but figuring out what those things are is the next step into the framework and then finding ways to, to find passive income as well. So, One way I love to look at passive income is looking for things.
Now, nothing is truly passive, but buying things maybe like your investments or real estate, uh, that actually cash flows or ensuring that you can, you know, invest dollars into niche sites like Doug and I have talked about in the past where it’s not passive completely. You’re doing work too, but once you complete, you know, a blog post, for example, it’s going to make you money for a very long period of time.
So there’s so many different things in this, this framework that’s going to allow you to kind of get to that point. But the big key here is. Ensuring that you understand it doesn’t have to come from one source, but just making sure you’re taking the proper steps to get there is, is how you’re going to get there.
You got to take it step by step and break them down into micro steps to get to that point.
Doug: I have a followup for the promotion idea. So I have a lot more or a more cynical view on the promotion process and the review process. We worked at different places. I’ll, I’ll focus on the positive side. So when I was trying to get promoted.
I did much of what you talked about and it turns out my boss didn’t directly have control on whether or not I got promoted. So I talked to a couple of people that were a few years ahead of me that had navigated the same sort of, um, management consulting promotion process. And they said, well, you want to make sure that you have the buy in from.
the upper management. So not your boss. You need your boss’s boss. And then a couple of levels above. I don’t have any business talking to those people. They don’t want to hear from me at all, generally for any kind of work related thing. So when one thing I figured out is like, if you volunteer to do the community events, then you could talk to anyone in the company.
You can go up to the CEO and turns out no one wants to run community events. They’re looking for volunteers. So I started volunteering for these things and then I could reach out to vice presidents, whoever I wanted. I could, you know, go on Saturday and do whatever the activity was, get to talk to them and get to know about their family or whatever else, and actually I like have some connection.
It wasn’t, you know, just like purely, uh, you know, these cynical motives or whatever, but. Eventually, when I was up for promotion, I just said, Hey, I knew the, the, the call was happening. All the managers and directors get together and they hash it out and they negotiate and they like, they push people. So I emailed every single person that I worked with on the.
I’m going to say, Hey, I’m up for promotion. If you can just say, Hey, I support Doug. He worked with, uh, worked with me on this thing that helped a lot. So I had like 15 or 20 people say, Oh yeah, Doug’s good. I actually, I worked with him on this thing. So I did that a few times. And like. Just shot through because no one else had that.
Andrew: And that’s a huge key in this as well. And you have to be talking to the person who can either go up to bat for you or can actually make that decision. Otherwise you were just wasting your time having this conversation. If you have a, like a really low level, mid level manager that you’re talking to, most of the time you’ve got to figure out who can go to bat for you.
And being creative, like, like Doug just said, is one of the best things that you can do, because if you’re talking to the wrong person, this entire process will not work. So you have to first. Figure out who the right person is that you need to talk to. And then from that point, then you can kind of follow the process along as, as, as it progresses.
But I’m finding the person who can go up to bat for you is the best thing that you can do for sure. It just took me a long time to figure out who that was. Yeah, that’s, it’s a game for sure. This is why I don’t like the corporate game at all. Oh yeah.
Doug: All right.
Carl: Yeah. One other thing to add to your framework, Andrew, which I think is very good is, uh, one thing I discovered in corporate America is people aren’t really going to, most of the time, they’re not going to advocate for you.
And your boss is distracted. Your boss might be managing five other people. So they’re going to forget. a lot of the stuff you did, both good and bad. So what I would do is I would keep a note on my computer. Anytime I did something worthwhile, I would make a note of it because I’m going to forget about most of that stuff too.
So when it came to review time, I’d be like, Hey, I did this, this, this, this, this, this. And they would have no answer for it. And it’s stuff that I probably would not have even remembered most of it if I wouldn’t have kept track of it.
Andrew: And that’s a great tip, having like a running document or something kind of, kind of classifying the things that you’re doing is, is probably, cause you’re going to forget it for sure.
I mean, I remember forgetting stuff all the time until I started to kind of implement some of this stuff.
Doug: Yeah. Save emails where people compliment you, stuff like that, especially clients. If you happen to work in a client atmosphere. Yeah.
Carl: If you’ve got some bad ones, just send those right to the recycle bin.
Yeah. Okay. Let’s change. gears a little bit. Uh, this one does not sound clickbaity. Well, maybe it is a little bit. I’m sure you could put a twist on this, but I want to talk about protecting assets with stuff like insurance and wills. And this is something near and dear to my heart because I really hate insurance.
Like I’ve been one accident in my life. It was just a year ago on the way to your place, Doug. And I didn’t use even use insurance for it. So I’ve probably paid in my life. I don’t know, like tens of thousands for insurance and I’ve never used it once. Health insurance too, probably hundreds of thousands actually.
What are your thoughts on insurance? And am I just full of shit, Andrew?
Andrew: I’m the same way as you where I would rather assume the risk a lot of times. There are some insurances that I, that I carry now, like, like car insurance. I try to keep it as, as inexpensive as possible home insurance I have to have.
But there’s some other things that you know, within my situation, like I’ll, I actually have low cost term. term life insurance as well. And initially I didn’t want to do this, but once I had kids, I put it into place. It’s like 30 bucks a month. I have that in place and that’s it. Now I get in battles all the time with the people trying to talk about universal life insurance and all this kind of stuff, because obviously that’s the biggest rip off in the world, in my opinion.
So like a lot of times we’ll kind of go through some of the processes of having arguments where people want to invest their dollars in life insurance instead of. using it for what it’s for. But outside of that, I just kind of try to keep it as lean as possible when it comes to insurance. And then with health insurance, I have a high deductible health plan and contribute to an HSA and HSA, I think is one of the best things that you can do to build wealth over time because those triple tax benefits, as long as you’re maintaining those receipts Making sure that I can keep those insurances low is I agree with you completely.
I I’d rather assume the majority of risk. I wish I could assume even more risk. But while my kids are younger, I have some additional insurances in place just for that reason.
Carl: Uh, Doug and Andrew, do you both have umbrella insurance plans?
Andrew: I do not. I don’t either.
Carl: Okay. I have one and it’s just because someone told me to get it.
I’m not even sure why. I think if you’ve got any net worth, you’re supposed to have it to protect your assets. And
Doug: how much does it cost? Like, what does it cover?
Carl: Well, the strange thing about it is if you get it, you have to have all your insurance under one carrier. So we had to have home and auto insurance under that.
And I think ours covers like three or four million. And actually, the funny thing is now we pay less for insurance because just changing it and making it all under one plan cut down our insurance. So. It saved us money. And now we have additional insurance.
Andrew: That’s interesting. I’m gonna have to look into that as well.
Because I think if you can kind of put it all under one umbrella, I mean, that would make sense for it to be kind of kind of reduce that cost significantly. And like, you can look at someone’s like, how much some of these insurance companies make, and you can see, you know, obviously, they’re overcharging you for some of this stuff.
And so that’s why I’m kind of anti insurance as well, just like just like you are. But at the same time, some of it, you have to have it’s just it’s just part of life, I think.
Carl: For anyone who doesn’t know what an umbral plan is, I think it’s, uh, if you have significant assets and someone slips on your sidewalk, they can’t sue you and take your assets that umbral plan would cover you for stuff like that above and beyond what your homeowner or car insurance would cover.
Doug: Got it. Cool. And then anything with like wills or. Things like that. I, I know Carl, at one point we talked to like, if we have wills and Elizabeth and I just set up a couple simple ones to make sure like things were specific but other than that, we don’t have anything fancy like a trust or, or anything like that.
So, and I, I can’t remember, do you have stuff set up or?
Carl: No, we have to get on it. It is one of my goals. It was supposed to be a goal for this year or last year, but yeah, we have kids, so it’s even more important for us. So.
Doug: Okay. So Andrew, what do you think? Okay.
Andrew: Yeah. So with, with wills, um, a big one for me is I felt like I did a little too late, but my kids are what kind of made me do my will.
And wills like a really simple document. I use a, I use a website called trust and will. And it was really easy to kind of follow through the steps. I didn’t go through an attorney or anything, but kind of following through those steps. It cost me like a hundred bucks or something. There’s, there’s sites where you can do it for free online too.
But kind of just going through that process and setting up a simple will is what I think, you know, the, the, the basic thing that you need to do. And then another big thing is, yeah. A lot of people don’t do this. And I was surprised, but assigning your beneficiaries in your investment account, that’s another part of estate planning that a lot of people just don’t follow through with, but making sure you have those in there is, is really something that is probably the, you want those dollars to obviously go to the person you want them to go to.
So making sure those beneficiaries are in there. And if you have, you know, well over a million dollars in assets and you have a bunch of real estate or something like that, then trust come into play as well. But really if you have under a million dollars in assets, it. Uh, trust is probably overkill until you get to that point and your will will go inside of your trust as well.
So once you have a will, it’s kind of the starting point for, for everybody. So even if you don’t have many assets, just having a will in place is kind of a good idea just so you can, you know, make sure that everything goes to who you want it to go to.
Doug: Carl, you got to get on it. It’s pretty easy. We just.
Use the website, I think, or yeah, something pretty simple. And then we just had a couple of neighbors witness and they signed it too. And that was it.
Carl: Doug, do you need any information from me in case you’re leaving anything to me? Like my last four digits of my social or anything?
Doug: I think I need your, I need your full social actually.
Carl: I’ll get that to you after the show.
Doug: Okay. So as we’re wrapping up here, you know, you talked about why you started the show. Do you have a specific goal and can you explain why?
Andrew: Sure. So I like big challenges. So there’s not a huge reason why for this outside of, I kind of just want to do it. But one big thing is my goal is to teach as many people as possible how to build wealth.
That’s kind of what the entire goal, that’s the bird’s eye view goal of what the podcast is. And so my big goal though is. Long term, I want to try to hit a million downloads per month. Now that’s a very difficult goal to hit. I may want to diversify that from YouTube and, and podcast downloads as well, maybe eventually.
But that would be like my long, long term goal is to be able to do that. And I think it would be something cool. I just like to set lofty goals and try to pursue them. That’s one thing that I just think is fun to do. And and so that’s kind of our, our major goal there. And then outside of that, it’s just teaching as many people as possible.
Like I said, how to build wealth. That’s the, that’s the real true key.
Carl: Cool. Wow. A million per month. We’re only like 990, 000 away from that, right? We’re close.
Doug: Yeah.
Carl: Yeah. It’s pretty amazing. You have one of the top podcasts in the world of personal finance. It’s super impressive. It more so you’re totally independent, right?
Andrew: I am. Yes. Yes. We’ve had people, um, come, come try to try to bring us into a network, but we’re independent still.
Carl: There goes the next question, Doug. Anyway, we’ll skip over that one. Just kidding. Uh, do you have imposter syndrome? Did you think you’d grow this fast or did you plan for the success?
Andrew: I did not whatsoever.
I thought like for the, for the longest, I was just like my mom and my wife listening to podcasts, that’s about it. And I did not think this would ever happen and kind of set it, I tried to set it up in a way where I, you know, maybe it could happen, but I never actually thought it would happen, especially this fast.
So for, for me, imposter syndrome did kind of set in early on. I try to keep it out of my head, but it’s, it happens to most people. And I think for a lot of people, it’s something you just kind of have to work through. And now it’s, it’s, I figured out a way to kind of suppress it more than I, than I used to kind of think through it.
But at the same time, it’s still something that’s very prevalent there. And so figuring out ways to kind of get over that mental roadblock is has been something that’s been huge for me.
Doug: Yeah. Like how many people download an episode like on the first day, for example?
Andrew: On the first day, I think there was maybe 10 or 12 total.
Um, and the name might’ve helped with that. And we have a very generic name. I almost named the podcast money bags instead, uh, went with the personal finance podcast. I’m glad I didn’t go with that original name. And so, but initially it was just like 12 people. It’s probably my friends that I kind of told about that we started it.
And that’s about it.
Doug: That’s pretty good. And then when you release an episode now, how many people download it? Like seems like they’re probably subscribed, for example.
Andrew: Absolutely. So we, I can see like a subscribers and all that kind of stuff. We have a couple hundred thousand subscribers. I think we’re getting close to close to 200, 000 subscribers.
And then when we release an episode, typically we’re like within the first couple of days, it’s about 20, 000 downloads within the first couple of days. But then what I’ve noticed is actually our back catalog has a high download rate as well. So what that tells me is that people are kind of binging through listening to some of the old episodes as well.
So we can kind of see once people find the episode, what I was trying to do was create a bingeable finance, personal finance podcast. And that was kind of my initial goal. And so I kind of intertwine all of the episodes together intentionally. And that’s kind of, it seems like it’s working on that front where I can see some of the back catalog.
Actually, our highest downloaded episode was from 2020 for this year. So, uh, it’s kind of interesting to see that and how it, how it kind of grows over time. Gotcha.
Doug: Well, I was going to say, it must freak you out. This is not helping. It must freak you out. So like you publish an episode, like 20, 000 people get it like almost instantly and listen to it pretty quick.
So yeah, does, does that freak you out ever?
Andrew: It like, actually, I kind of think through this sometimes and think through at any given time, there is. Thousands of people in 24 hours a day. There’s thousands of people listening to my voice. And I think that is the weirdest thing ever. Cause you know, just, just, it’s just so weird to even kind of think about it when you start to think about all that stuff.
Um, but yeah, that is, that, that is something that I try not to think about a lot. Yeah.
Doug: So sorry about that, but you have like a silky buttery, smooth voice. It’s so soothing.
Andrew: Well, I appreciate that. It’s if you listen to my early episodes, it’s a little bit different than it is now. I don’t know. It just kind of evolved over time.
Um, But, but it’s not something I’ve had a couple of the people tell me that as well. So I appreciate that. I’m not lying. It’s for real.
Carl: Yeah. Great voice. The new Dave Ramsey or I don’t know,
Andrew: except that I like to invest and pay down on debt at the same time, but
Carl: yeah, no debt free scream for you. Uh, should we wrap it up, Doug?
Yeah. Uh, Andrew, what does wealth mean to you?
Andrew: So I absolutely love this question and it’s one I ask all my guests as well on the podcast. And wealth is a number of things for me. So I’ll try not to be too long winded on this cause I haven’t so many thoughts on it. But but wealth to me really comes down to what you get to do with your time and how you spend your time.
So for me, One big thing is giving back to causes I believe in and giving, donating to charity, those types of things. Now that’s run one reason why I want to grow my wealth more than just being at lean fire is I want to give back to a bunch of different causes I believe in. So that’s one big reason to get to that next level.
Another one is I get to spend more time with my family and being around my family, you know, Creating better relationships with my wife, with my kids, with my extended family, my parents who are, are thankfully still here. So there’s a bunch of different things on the family side as well. And then health is a major one where I’m able to pursue my fitness or mental health and all these different things to kind of grow my health.
And then lastly is, you know, having fun and being able to be with friends and doing the things that I love on that side as well. So between all of these things, that’s what wealth truly is to me is having the freedom to be able to pursue all of these things and having a life that actually brings me enjoyment and fulfillment.
That is one of the most powerful things that you can do with your money. And that’s why I love pursuing. Well, what does a perfect day look like for you? It depends on if it’s a work day, if it’s a day that I’m working or if it’s a it’s a free day. But if it’s if it’s just a day that I’m doing nothing, the best thing for me is like starting off the day with a workout early on in the morning.
I like to lift weights. That’s my favorite drug of choice when it comes to working out. And then from there, it would be just, you know, spending time with my my wife and kids early on in the day. Doing some things with them and then, and then beyond that, just kind of doing things with friends as well.
Like, you know, going golfing, those types of things fishing, any of those types of things. So I love outdoor activities. That’s why when I moved to where you guys are and so, anything outside would be, would be absolutely perfect for me. But I’m not one who is really picky about what my perfect day looks like.
Cause I have a lot of perfect days, I feel like, and that came after having this freedom and this flexibility.
Doug: Perfect. And then what about a workday? So what is a perfect workday look like for you too?
Andrew: So for me it’s, I have a productivity system that kind of, I, I implemented that is as long as I’m com accomplishing the tasks that I want to that day, it’s gonna be really powerful.
So the, the workout’s a big thing in the morning again. Um, but then after that throughout the workday I have I time block every single hour. So accomplishing big items that I really wanna accomplish brings me a ton of fulfillment, which is why I still like doing this. Um. So going after some of those big ticket items, maybe it’s, you know, checking off, having a big win with the podcast or having a big win with something else is something where day in and day out.
I absolutely love doing this stuff, so I can’t imagine not doing this ever. And so that for me is kind of having freedom is being able to do this day in, day out, have that fulfillment and also having a time where I can do whatever I want. I can rest and not have to be doing this every single day. So between those two things, those are a perfect day for me to be just accomplishing some of those big tasks as well.
Carl: How often do you watch the sunset? I know you’re near the ocean.
Andrew: I watch it. I used to be real. I used to live on the ocean. So for the longest period of time of the night, hurricanes come and they flood everything. So I moved. But but for the longest time I used to watch it every single day. Now we still get to, luckily we still see where the sun sets.
So for the most part, a few times a week at least. And usually I’m playing outside with my kid when the sun is setting, which is, which is kind of cool. So, almost every day now at this point.
Doug: That’s great. Well, Andrew, this has been fantastic. You’ll have to let us know when you come to town. We’ll have to do something and yeah.
Where could people find you?
Andrew: Sure. So you can find me on any podcast player that you’re listening to this, the personal finance podcast. Also at master money. co is our website. And then in addition, we have a YouTube channel at master money is the, the YouTube channel as well. So you can find me on any of those places and then any social, social media, Tik TOK, Instagram, all those things at master money co.
Doug: Perfect. Yep. We’ll link up to all that stuff so people can get to it really easy.
Thanks a lot, Andrew. We’ll talk to you soon.
Andrew: Awesome. Thank you guys. I appreciate it.
Carl: Yeah. Thank you.