How to Get Rich Slowly, Take a Year Off, and STILL Retire Early

welcome to the BiggerPockets money podcast where we interview one of the ogs of the personal finance blogging Community JD Roth from getrichlowely.org and talk about life after retirement hello hello my name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my get rich slowly co-host Scott trench thank you Mindy great to be here with my got rich swiftly by investing in literal rocket ships co-host Mindy Jensen Scott and I are here to make Financial Independence less scary less just for somebody else to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe Financial Freedom is attainable for everyone no matter when or where you're starting that's right whether you want to retire early and travel the world go on to make Big Time Investments in assets like real estate start your own business or just kind of understand what a day in the life of a financially independent person looks like will help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself toward those dreams Scott show it's called the moment where we share a tip or trick on your financial journey and this money moment is is do you have a habit of spending too much online try using the three day rule once you add an item to your cart wait three days before purchasing not only does this rule help curb impulse spending but sometimes Brands will email you coupons if you leave items sitting in your cart do you have a money tip for us email money moment at biggerpockets.com now you'll notice I didn't take that tip today at the very end of the show you will hear that JD shares an amazing book recommendation and I went and bought it while we were talking I was so impressed with his review of the book and I cannot wait to read that however otherwise that's a great tip Scott I am super excited to bring JD Roth to the show I can't believe it took us 432 episodes to get him on what is wrong with us I don't know this the JD has just uh really kind of been a Pioneer in the financial Independence base in the uh personal finance space has really been you know doing this for like 20 25 years providing great advice helping tons of people and then living his best life um and it's just really awesome to learn from him um I think you really admire what he's built and you know just just as a quick heads up this is obviously one of the stories about someone who is financially independent and a glimpse into their into their lives which we think is really important to emphasize here at BiggerPockets money this is the end the goal um for a lot of folks is getting to this point and then reaping the rewards and no JD is not a Mega millionaire here with you know millions or tens of millions of dollars in assets he'll talk about his net worth it's something that's very achievable for a middle or a middle class American over a a 10 to 15 year journey to fire so this is a very realistic financial situation and these these uh are the the opportunities and challenges and struggles that uh many folks who are successful on the journey to fire uh will will share absolutely JD Roth is an OG personal finance blogger who founded getrichslowely.org to document his quest to get out of debt over time he learned how to save and how to invest and today he's managed to reach early retirement actually a long time ago he managed to reach early retirement he wants to help you master your money and your life no scams no gimmicks no get rich quick schemes get rich slowly just smart money advice to help you reach your goals JD Roth welcome to the BiggerPockets money podcast I'm so excited to talk to you today thanks Mindy you you're very excited I love the enthusiasm I'm always excited to talk to JD Ross all right so for people who don't know you the the one person listening who doesn't know you tell us a little bit about yourself how did you get involved in personal finance and how did you start blogging okay well so the start blogging thing is easier to answer I I've been blogging since before blog was even a word so back in 1994 I think it was I made my first website uh in 95 96 I started reading but were then called Web journals they weren't called blogs and in 1997 I started trying to write my own web Journal it was it it was trying to document my weight loss at the time and it by 98 I had started writing about movies and cats and computers and comic books and and just having a lot of fun so I started blogging over 25 years ago but again we didn't call it blogging back then that word had not invented at the time I was deep in debt my parents were bad with money I didn't have anybody to learn good money habits from so I grew up and I was bad with money and I I was just really struggling eventually I had some people recommend some personal finance books to me including your money or your life uh by Joe Dominguez and Vicki Robin and The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey which of course those are two huge books in the personal finance Community uh so I read those books and the way I process things is I write I've always been like that so I write so I wrote an article for my personal blog about uh I call it how to get rich slowly because uh reading those two books in a bunch of other I went to the library checked out a bunch of personal finance books I thought that the theme that I saw was there's no reliable way to get rich quickly but if you do the right things you can get rich slowly so I wrote that article uh it went the 2005 version of viral and about a year later I was looking to start a website to try to make some spare cash to help me get out of debt and I thought oh I'll start a site called get rich slowly and that is how the blog was born an overnight success in just 25 short years right exactly uh so 2023 fast forwarding just a little bit is the year of JD the year you give yourself permission to do you and now we're halfway through how has your decompression Journey been it has been awesome and it has been interesting so just to give a little bit of context um you know I started getting rich slowly in 2006 uh then I sold it I sold it actually in 2009 but I stuck around until 2012 writing it and running it and stuff uh and then after 2012 I took a few years where I actually did try to be retired uh then I started another website and eventually I bought get rich slowly back and I just found that oh my gosh it's so much much work it's such a headache and you know I've got other things going on in my life too I struggle with my mental health my girlfriend and I have moved 2000 2020 was I mean 2020 20. 2022 was a really shitty year for me I had a lot of stuff going in my life uh my mom died my best friend slash cousin died three pets died all this other stuff was going on it was just like ah so I reached the end of last year and I'm like man I have got to do something for myself and uh so I decided 2023 how did I make it the year of JD and so what I've done is given myself permission to put myself first which which is a hard thing for me to do uh I don't know about you but for me I put other people first or I try to that that's my goal anyhow and so to say no this year is for me and what I want to do it was difficult at first and now we're about six months into it and I'm like okay I kind of like this what are what are some examples of things you said no to and things you said yes to regarding your you know putting putting yourself first and um how has that impacted kind of how how your mental health and how your how you uh your relationship with yourself so examples of things I've said no to well first of all let's take Financial blogging you know I've been writing about personal finance now since 2006. and uh I'm burned out on it I was burned out on it many years ago which is why I sold the site originally uh I'm burnt out on it again so I've decided that I'm gonna walk away from writing about money and I've turned the side over to my business partner Tom and I just want to get back to doing what I used to do writing about the caps and the computers and comic books just just writing about everyday life it it's fun for me and um people seem to enjoy it but so that that's an example of the stuff I'm trying to reject is work I'm also trying to kill some of my bad habits I like computer games I've been playing computer I've played computer games my entire life and uh so I've tried to set aside the computer game that I've been addicted to most for the past 10 years and I've done a good job I used to play about two hours a day I think I played two hours total since middle of April so that's that's really good uh but I've also been it's not just that I'm saying no to things during the year at JD I'm also trying to say yes to things so an example of that is uh I'm trying to learn about art I've never done anything artistic in my life I mean outside of writing and I've never done anything with Visual Arts so I've been trying to teach myself to draw uh in fact when we get done with this interview what I'm going to do is pull out the iPad and sit down and do some more clumsy sketches but I've also been doing solo travel I I'd love to travel with people but my cousin who is my primary travel partner he died last year so he can't come with me Kim is my girlfriend I love traveling with her but she has a job how can you believe it uh and so I decided I need to give myself permission to do some solo travel and so uh that that's what I've done I spent most of the month of June on a cruise ship believe it or not going up the coast of Norway all the way up to the Arctic Circle and then back down to Iceland and that was amazing that was that was a chance for me to try to do nothing it's just decompress do nothing go to the ship's gym sit in the ship Spa read mystery books just do nothing it was hard I love this yeah I think it's great I I think it's uh uh you know and it really you know rough 2022 to have the the ability to kind of go go down this journey and um see its kind of power for for what it's doing for you it's just awesome here um has this has this been a financial burden are you unretired now as a result of this or how do you how how do you think about the the impact this has had uh on that aspect well that's a good question because you know travel well travel doesn't have to be expensive and in this case uh I've done my best to uh keep it as cheap as possible I'm not a travel hacker like some people we know uh but I listen to what the travel hackers do and when I can incorporate their advice I do incorporate it uh so I guess Scott what I would say is I'm not the most frugal person in the first place and I'm willing to take on a lot more risk than many other people are so I talked to a lot of people in the financial Independence Community who are risk averse and they're the ones who tend to stick around in their jobs for five ten years longer than they actually need to because they're like what if something happened and maybe I need more money I'm just the opposite of that I'm like well I'll figure something out uh so I'm not I guess what I'm trying to say is I'm not spending a huge amount but I am spending more than I would if I just stayed home right and uh I'm still financially independent it's all good it's uh but I'm I I consider myself a ride on that edge if we go by the strict definitions I'm like walking a fine line and I think most people who pursue this would not do that okay well let's talk money since you brought it up let's look at your portfolio in terms of percentages or Phi number or whatever you don't have to give exact dollar figures but what does your net worth look like now in comparison to when you officially retired after however many years of retirement and spending and all of that like do you look at your portfolio and your net worth and think oh I'm gonna have to go get a job no I don't think that but I think I could get a job if I needed to and then that is part of what keeps me uh same I guess so this is a great question and something that I think about a lot if you look at my net worth today compared to when I reach Financial Independence it's exactly the same maybe not to the penny but you know within a percentage or two it's the same and it's been the same now for 14 years and I think for a lot of people they would view that as a failure they'd be like oh my God you're you should be accumulating money you should be extremely but I do this as a success because I'm living I'm maintaining my Nest Egg and I got exactly the same net worth as I had 14 years ago and I've been able to enjoy life with the rest of the money right I've taken the growth that I achieved in using that money this isn't a deliberate thing I I don't want to I don't want people to think that I'm sitting down with spreadsheets and making this happen it's just worked out this way you know we meet safety he talks about mindful spending or conscious spending and I'm a huge proponent of that so I do spend on things like travel I do spend on things like books but I cut back on tons of other stuff because it a lot of other things just do not matter to me that is something that I have advocated for for years spend on things that matter and cut back on things that don't matter if you don't care about the thing they don't spend money on it that's just silly and you know spending money on something to to uh keep up with the judge is when you don't even care about it is is ridiculous uh what are some of the things that you have cut back on for a long time answer would have been closed and I guess I still don't spend a lot on clothes uh relative to other people's budgets uh it's just I've changed how I used to shop a lot at thrift stores and now I'll buy like one or two quality a very expensive pieces of clothing per year and I'm happier that way uh so getting back on clothes for a long time I lived in a very small home we lived on a 1200 square foot home out in the middle of the country uh so that was one way I don't need a big fancy house um and so I guess housing would be even this house that we have here that we're living in now is slightly more expensive than the house we used to live in uh but we were able to pretty much just transfer the equity over I had to put down a down payment and that's the difference but um so coming back on clothing cutting back on housing in a way the travel too I mean I do travel and it's important to me but the way I travel is often very different than the way many people travel because for example I don't need fancy Logie a fancy hotel is wasted on me so I I stay in the cheapest possible place I'm happy to stay in a shack as long as I can spend a lot of money on food I just went to a Michelin star restaurant in a Reykjavik Iceland and that was the most expensive meal I've ever had in my life it is also one of my favorite memories of my life too how about um how about the mental aspect here of I it sounds like you've basically gone through this journey of retiring in an official opacity twice now um how how how what is that like from a mental perspective how does one kind of adjust to that new reality after selling their business which is you know abrupt uh or there's likely an Abrupt change or even maybe there isn't maybe there's a gradual process there and then what's it like going through it a second time so the first time it was a gradual transition because I sold the the site but I stayed on for three years to manage it and to run it and so I could not tear myself away and even after I did tear myself away I felt this emotional attachment to the community and felt like I had deserted them and so I could never really tear myself away and plus I had my identity was tied up in my work right my identity was tied up in personal finance and I know a lot of people go through that with their jobs their identity is tied up in their jobs so the first time I retired um it was great because I was able to do things that I had always neglected I got in shape I learned Spanish I started to travel I started to learn to play the guitar uh my girlfriend and I took 15 months to travel around the United States in an RV it was fantastic and when I look back that period from roughly 2012 2013 to 2016. that is the best time of my life so now in 2023 what I'm trying to do is you know again I said my 2022 was rough uh but I'd also allowed my mental health and my physical health to decline and I think largely is because I was back at get rich slowly doing this work and feeling this pressure when I didn't need to do it and now that I've spent six months trying to be retired and that's what I keep telling people is I'm trying to be retired it mostly succeeding uh it's been wonderful because I'm again allowing myself to spend the time to get physically healthy again I've been working on my mental health and it's all just coming together and I feel like I'm more myself and when I am born myself and when I'm happier I'm not just better for me I'm better I'm a better partner for Kim I'm a better friend to my friends I'm just better for the world in general when I do put myself first which seems counter-intuitive I have to say no uh I'm struggling a little bit with exactly what you're saying now I'm wondering if you have any guilty feelings in taking a step back do you have any guilt in being uh quote unquote selfish and putting yourself first because I absolutely do is it so what makes you feel I do but I'm curious what makes you feel guilty well this isn't about me it's about you but it makes me feel selfish so why would I put myself first when I could put myself last and put everybody else first yeah no I I've had those feelings I've had to wrestle with those feelings and in fact that's what a large part so when I took this solo trip uh on the cruise ship and off the cruise ship it wasn't just for fun I mean it was but it was also meant for me to have a month where I could just reflect on life reflect on what it is I want to do and try to get squared away in my head and I did a lot of reading uh I read one book over and over again it's uh the miracle of mindfulness I just read this four times on the boat and I've read it in the past and this is a classic of the like mindfulness literature and it says all the things you would expect it to say uh about being present in the moment and I think being present in the moment in many ways it I've been thinking lately that a lot of Buddhists thought seems pretty selfish in a way because it's about just being here being now and being with yourself and yet at the same time I think that makes like I said earlier makes me happier and it when I'm happier it helps me be better for the World At Large so yeah Mindy I hear what you're saying about feeling guilty and feeling selfish but trying to like get squared away on or understanding that this actually makes me better for everybody else around me helps me get over that selfishness or that feeling of selfishness yeah when I am not in the moment I'm thinking about the 396 things that I have to do and I'm not paying attention to what you're saying I'm just kind of nodding and aha yeah wait what did you say or I just agreed to do something that I wasn't even paying attention to so being present is really important but so why should I feel guilty about pushing away everything else and focusing in the now and paying attention to my surroundings and you know when I can put away everything and focus then it's a better relationship all around and when I'm happy everybody else is Happy exactly and you said something else just now like you said that oh you're distracted and you say yes to things and you're like oh wait what did I just say yes to this is another thing I'm realizing that when I was happiest a decade ago I was deliberately saying no to almost everything that came my way and so much of what I'm doing now is also learning to say no no I don't want to do a speaking gig no I don't want to write this for your website it is it brings up the same feelings of guilt and selfishness but at the same time my time is mine and I need to use it in the ways that are going to make my life better so that I can then be able to help make other people's lives better you know going back to how money kind of plays a role in providing these options for you how yes would you describe your portfolio relative to other folks in the fire Community are you more conservative with your portfolio more aggressive you said it hasn't it hasn't moved much in the last decade or so um is this an enormous pile of money is it a uh something that would be attainable for for someone working you know a full-time job within a 10-15 year period how do folks think about that and how do you I think a lot of people would have a lot of trouble with a portfolio that didn't move in move much in 10 years doesn't seem to bother you at all though and you've been you know able to really do run a lot of experiments and and really work on on your relationship with yourself with with your your situation so I'm actually pretty public with uh my finances and what I have the structure of the portfolio I would say is probably very typical look the fire community in that is primarily in index funds and real estate well my Network's about 1.6 1.6 million and I've been public about that on the blog before I've never shared it on a podcast so it feels odd to say it out loud uh about a million of that is um invested in some REITs but primarily in stock market index funds and then the rest of that is in a variety of other things like the house there's a lot of home equity look in the place where we live but I also have investments in other companies so not all of it is liquid but still I feel like for a lot of people this would seem like oh my God I I read the stuff on Reddit I go to the financial Independence subreddit I go to the fat fire subreddit and I read this and there are people who are like oh my God you can't retire with less than three million Financial Samurai I read his stuff and you know he thinks you need to have three four million whatever it is and I'm like well it really depends on your lifestyle right and I don't feel like I deprived myself in any way I have a life that I love I do things that I love I enjoy um I can't do everything there's no question I have to make some choices where I'm like oh no I'm sorry I can't go on this trip to Europe with you which is fine I can't have a Tesla that's fine I don't need a Tesla and so I'm able to prioritize what's important to me and my million dollars of invested assets plus my real estate all it all works out and you know like I say if I get desperate well maybe then I'll write another book or start another blog or go get a job but so far not even close to desperate do you feel any pressure to do more or make more money or like there's there's this always be hustling and uh there are some bloggers who blog about how much money they make blogging and there are bloggers who are constantly posting net worth statements and this is how much money I made last month and look at all of my income streams and look at all of the money that I'm making and do you have any pressure to do do you feel any pressure to do that too because you are from the beginning sure absolutely how do you deal with that I want to make it clear that I never set out when I started vlogging I was doing it just as an outlet so I never sat out to make money from the blog and in fact I had to have a fellow blogger come to me and say JD why don't you have that at the back in the day I had the top search result for savings accounts if you search for savings accounts get rich slowly came up first and I didn't have that monetized in any way and I had a fellow blogger it was actually Jim Wang um from wallet hacks he came in and he said Judy why don't you have your savings account page monetized what do you mean and so he had to explain it to me and once I monetized that well things took off uh so anyway I hang out with people I go to blogging conferences I participate in Mastermind groups and I hear how much people make and I'm like oh my gosh this is amazing so of course I'm like oh I could do this too why don't I do this too and I think the answer is it doesn't feel true to who I am right so I started my blog to help myself and to try to help other people not to make money off them and I know that it's possible to help people and make money at the same time I'm perfectly aware of that and another thing is when I start monetizing what I'm doing it it feels like work instead of feeling like something fun to do instead of feeling like a hobby it feels like oh my God this is a job so that's kind of a long answer about like yes I do feel the pressure but then I also feel the pressure because we live in a society that's deeply steeped in the Protestant work ethic and this idea that I'm still youngish I'm 54. um I'm healthy I should be working I should be productive I should be doing something demonstrably make Society better right now and so for me to take this time off it's difficult and one of the things I've been doing is is like reading books about how to do nothing and reading essays there's a someplace I've got it uh Bertrand Russell the philosopher even 100 years ago he wrote essay on I think it's called a praise of idleness and he was talking even then about how there's all this pressure in modern society back in 1923 or whatever it was to just be go go go go and of course that's only gotten infinitely worse by well not internetly or is a magnitude worse uh in the past hundred years there's just this pressure to do things and be things and we no longer take the time to just decompress and be just exist and I think that's unfortunate so I'm gonna jump in here with this today today I woke up at 5 45 hopped on uh a bike did it did it work out ate breakfast while uh you know uh hanging out with my baby and and wife when she was you know when they were up uh when you know when they got up and all that uh drove to work got into work around 8 15. was in meetings from 8 30 until uh one one o'clock now we're doing this podcast which is my favorite part of the day um another couple of meetings after that we're gonna get dinner with a co-worker who's flew into town I'll be back uh at 6 30 or so to put baby to sleep and hang out for a little bit and then I'll do a little bit more emails and go to bed so that's life of a CEO what's a day in the life of of JD at this point uh before yeah and I'm I want to get really jealous here well first of all Scott I want to say that it it I've never been that busy but I mean if you're happy doing that that's awesome you can find balance and pleasure and enjoyment and fulfillment from that kind of Lifestyle absolutely pursue it typical day for me this is great question okay so I get up I drink my coffee and as I'm drinking my coffee I'm reading what's going on in the world I think most people do this or many people do this um after I'm done with my coffee I take the dog for a walk we're usually out for an hour hour and a half walking all over Corvallis I live in Corvallis Oregon I come home I go to the gym it's usually after the dog walk I'll go to the gym uh three four five times a week I come back make myself something to eat and then I've got the afternoon to myself and so I get to decide okay what is it I'm going to do uh often I had house tasks I have a full list in front of me a house tasks that I need to do um but I've also this year I've made it a point to try to get back into reading reading for pleasure for so long and I know many people have struggled with this uh recently uh when I was younger I read for pleasure all the time but somehow over the years I've gotten so that I can only read short form stuck and I think it's because of the Internet it's kind of conditioned me and I've gotten so that I don't read just science fiction novels like I used to and so I'm trying to make myself read right now the book that I'm really enjoying is this book from Rick Rubin called the creative act a way of being this is one of the best books I've ever read it's uh it's just fantastic um so okay I read I do stuff around the house I might run errands uh and then in the evening uh once Kim is done with work and she comes home I make her dinner we watch something random on television and I've got a couple of things that I'm doing like I have this thing we have a second run movie theater in town and so my thing is every Wednesday night when they play their second run movie I go I go see it so like last night I went and watched Batman from 1989 and I think the next movie is Raiders the Lost Ark and then Stand By Me is coming up so I go do that every Wednesday night it's just a way to get out of the house and do stuff but what I really want to do is take art classes so that that's an awesome day like I yeah and and JD I I love I love what I just described to you it's a full action-pack I don't have a minute to to breathe it's this classic representation of the products to work I wouldn't have been able to articulate it like that before you said it um and it's good you know uh but I also look forward to the day and that and you know at some point down the line when I can you know like that life my life the day that you just described sounds like a wonderful wonderful Thursday you know of a third weekday to just go go out and hang out um or Wednesday at the at the movies and so I think that that's that's the goal for people is to get to that and and kind of enjoy those things and explore these different Outlets so I one question I'd have as a follow-up to this is um you know yes I'm I'm working full-time uh currently and I have this this busy schedule here is there a book you'd recommend or a resource you'd recommend that can help say hey go go check this out and you can begin bringing elements of what you just described into your like today you don't have to wait until you're you know um you know jobless or whatever fully fully retired you can do parts of this this mind you can adopt parts of this mindset much earlier than that it seems strange for me to recommend this Rick Rubin book so Rick Rubin is a music producer he's a very prominent music producer and he wrote this book uh the creative act a way of being and I'm not finished with it I'm only about halfway through that I really in a way it's the answer to the question that you're asking um because what he's urging people to do is to embrace Life as a creative person he says everyone is creative no matter what they're doing whatever your job is you are creating and he he urges people in a way it's also very Buddhist very Zen he urges people to be more aware of those surroundings and I think this is something that uh even somebody as busy as you Scott could probably find a way to set aside 20 minutes each day okay here's something that people have always told me I needed you to do and that's meditate I have never been able to meditate I've tried so many times and it's I have that monkey mind it just jumps all over the place and I think the issue that I've had is I'm trying to get all the thoughts out of my head and what Rick Rubin wants you to do is sit and just notice everything and so I think somebody like you Scott you probably have 20 minutes you could set aside to either do traditional meditation where you're trying to like just notice the thoughts as they come up and mean or do the Rick Rubin thing where you're like just paying attention to the world around you and trying to soak it all in and to appreciate it and be grateful for it um I think that's one thing that almost in Wicked I will definitely check that out yeah I need I need to incorporate more of that in my life because I'm just go go go go go go go all the time and um the piece that I think some of the things that you're you're doing in your day that uh those are things I can incorporate today um without having to be retired at this point and um I think other less and I will say this so and who knows maybe you end up cutting this part out but maybe you don't uh so I I've struggled with my mental health I struggled with depression and anxiety and uh ADHD and maybe you don't wrestle with any of that Scott and so for me a lot of what I'm doing is an attempt to address the mental health issues to find ways to live so that I'm happier and not suffering from this and so what he's describing hey what I'm doing with the year of JD is a way to address all of this and to uh I don't know become more grounded it'd be more true to who I am no absolutely I think um I certainly struggle with with some of those elements I wouldn't you know yeah and I think that these are really important things to incorporate so I I definitely need to hear this message today and I think that's helpful I'm gonna I'm gonna go check out the book do you think our busy culture adds to these issues and uh do you would you recommend taking a year for yourself to wind those down would you recommend more than a year do you think that a year is enough well I think a lifetime is probably the best way that's hard no I would absolutely recommend in a year sounds too daunting for people start with a month uh make make it the month of you but I think uh making it takes a while to get ramped up and to get comfortable with doing this so I think saying oh yeah 2024 will be the year of me that's a great way to do it but yeah man yeah I think our culture when you st when you start paying attention you will see that our culture is very much driven by productivity and action and activity it everything places a value on this and if you are inactive or you're still or you're calm or you're not doing anything that seems to be productive it's viewed negatively you know not 100 of the time but in most cases it's viewed negatively and I think that's unfortunate because this decompression when you create margin in your life you're happier and you have room to breathe and yeah I have a lot I could say on the subject I'm trying to like one of the things that I've done that's really helped myself is I'm trying to spend much less time Time online because of the work I've been doing over the past 15 years most of my life has been spent online and I've come to realize that that has probably contributed heavily to my mental health struggles and so I'm deliberately staying off social media as much as possible although I do post to Facebook but I use it as a Blog so I've I've trying to get out of my uh computer games that were online uh Reddit I have a huge Reddit problem where I just I go in I know a lot of people get sucked into Instagram or to Facebook or to Twitter I just sucked into Reddit and so for the past two months I'm trying my damnedest to quit Reddit I still struggle with it last night I spent an hour on it but for the most part and I'd really squash that habit and it it helps me be happier you it takes a while to decompress compress for 2024 to be the year of Mindy what can I be doing now to prepare for the year of Mindy so that I can hit the ground running which is not the point of decompressing I know but it's so that I can set myself up for Success so yeah the short answer Mindy is to spend time in the rest of 2023 getting clear on what it is that's important to you so that you can then spend the time in 2024 focused on those things so last year probably around this time because I remember listening to the audiobook during the summer a good friend recommended a book called designing your life how to build a well-lived joyful life it's by Bill Burnett and Dave Evans I read it thought it was amazing read it again and then a buddy and I we worked through it so the book has all sorts of exercises in it and avadi and I worked through the book we got all these note cards and paper and we'd meet once a month to go over the chapter we were working through and one of the things that try one of the amazing things about this is it has you eventually uh draw up three different five-year plans so you drop a five-year plan based on okay what is your life like now what might that look like five years from now uh one is like okay if you couldn't do what you're doing now what would your fallback be what would that life look like five years from now and then the third one is like okay just dream project if money was no object if there was nothing holding you back what would you do and so that's your third five year plan um Andy it's a pretty powerful exercise and uh so I long answer again because that's how I work I guess um if somebody were trying to come up with a year of me for 2024 I would say start now in 2023 working through designing your life or a similar book or similar exercises to figure out what's important to you and what kind of things you might want to focus on because when I did this I came up with art and so that's why I'm pursuing the art history that's an awesome answer I love that right I mean how how do you know what you should do in 2024 you should think about what you want to do in 2029 or 2028 five years from now yeah that in the perfect situation I've never heard of a I I I think I I have that book and I read the first chapter and somehow I got distracted it's sitting in my bookshelf I'm gonna pick that one up but yeah I gotta go check that out that's an awesome I never heard about dipping with three different um Visions there three different five-year plans um that that incorporate those things so I'll go check that out and actually complete this one here that's awesome it's a great exercise I recommend it even if you are content with what you're doing it's a great exercise to do so I have one last question for you JD it's two-parter here in this in this context in in in in the process the discussion that we've had today and how you're living your life and approaching 2023 do you think that people um tend to still over save or wait delay this point of early retirement far too long to get to that point and second um we talked about taking a year of JD or maybe potentially a 2024 a year for Mindy um here do people need to wait until until they're Phi to achieve that or would you recommend you know um looking back people do this much earlier and maybe do it on the on the journey to to Phi at some point Okay so you're going to remind me the second part when we get there the first part uh do people tend to oversave well I think obviously average people do not oversave but I would say that people who are interested in financial Independence the people who are actually focused on it and committed to it yes from my experience talking with them over the past 10 15 years they tend to oversave and the thing is they know they tend to oversave they just can't help it because it's a risk aversion it's again I have a buddy here in Corvallis uh loving to death he has far more money than I do he's frugaler than I am he cannot pull the trigger cannot pull the trigger and it's because he's scared he's like what if x happens what efy happens I'm like yeah those are possibilities you have this balance you have to do you have to think of today and you have to think of tomorrow right and that's that's where the struggle is if we knew what day we were going to die all of this would be so easy because we would just like oh I'm dying on the January 1st 2039. well then you just optimize for that date right but we don't know when we're gonna die uh the thing is today is knowable we know what our life is today we don't know what life is like tomorrow so to me in some ways you can't neglect tomorrow obviously but you've got to make sure that you're uh enjoying today I think too many people in the fire movement sacrifice happiness today for uh theoretical happiness tomorrow I think you've got to find a balance there and that balance is different for everybody so I hope that answered the question no I think I think it's a great answer and I think that the other part of that question was should I just go ahead like I'm but let's hypothetically I have five hundred thousand dollars um on the way to financial Independence I think I need 1.5 1.6 to to get there should I just keep grinding for another five seven years um you know try to enjoy try to pull back a little bit and enjoy myself or should I just take that leap year now and or you know that that you're off now uh you're of me and you know spend fifty thousand dollars of that and enjoy that year tremendously at this point what would be your advice to that person my answer is it depends I'm not a person who believes in like one answer for everyone it's situations are different but I would say that generally speaking if you think you might want to try something now you should try something now don't let fear hold you back if you've got say you your hypothetical I think was half a million saved and your goals 1.5 um if you would like to try to take a gap year take a sabbatical do it in my experience talking with all sorts of people who've done this sort of thing nobody has ever regretted doing that I've never talked to anybody who's saying damn I took a year off and now my whole life is I've never talked to anybody who said that it's the opposite is usually true and the thing is when you take these Gap years or when you take time off to explore when you take a sabbatical often you discover new things about yourself or about the world and you're able to go in New Directions that you would not have otherwise been able to do before I think that's a really really powerful answer rent yeah I I don't think we're ever going to find the person who regrets taking that Gap year off or they're going to be few and far between in the fire world I think this is true I mean again you could look at lottery winners and or or whoever people who get windfalls and then they spend it all at once but that's not what a person in the fire Community is going to do they're going to go live their life uh within their means for a year and see what it's like and I think I can't say everyone that'll be right for everyone but I think that for many people if not most people they'll find that oh okay I can do this and I should have done this earlier well JD thank you so much for joining us today um a lot of really good insights here it's just a privilege um to to know you to to have had the discussions with you over the years and watched watched your journey see how many people you've helped and then gotten an Insight today into um what life is like in the in the the five Community the The Good the Bad and and the uh uh the ways to kind of make the most of of the um the position of power you put yourself in from a financial standpoint thanks okay JD I normally ask our guests where can people find out more about you but you're taking a step back from social media so how can people get in touch with you well uh what I would say is even though I'm trying to like do nothing uh I do I really enjoy writing I'm going to be writing to my personal website it's just jdroth.com I mean if you want to read about my cats my computers and my comic books and all that come hang out there it's just gonna be a place to have fun it it it's interesting I have neglected the site for like the past five ten years because I've been focused on other things it's always in disarray and uh I'm undergoing the process as many knows of like trying to revitalize it I've got to pull in things from all over the place and get it fixed up but my aim is that uh going into 2024 this will be a robust place where it's fun for me to just write about whatever and uh just fun place to hang out like Old School blogs were I wanted to be like blogging was 20 years ago awesome that's jdroth.com go check that go check that out and then uh we'll also link to that in the books mentioned on the podcast uh today off the show notes Here for this episode yes and actually just bought that book designing your life uh thank you to JD rothford recommending that and thanks for Amazon for making it so easy JD this was super fun I got so much out of our conversation I really appreciate your time I always love spending time with you thank you so much for joining us today thank you I appreciate it this was great and we'll talk to you soon okay Scott that was probably my favorite episode that we have ever done I love JD I love talking to him again I can't believe it took us so long to get him on the show and I had a wonderful time talking to him I love that over the last 14 years his net worth has stayed the same while he continues to live his best life and anybody who thinks that's a failure is flat out wrong I agree I like what like Define winning from a funny in a financial context JD is winning like that that is a win this is someone who has a over 1 million dollar net worth we're not like trying to pretend that's a small number or anything but this is this is someone who's been successful there and then has really been able to use that to you know optimize the life that he wants that he wants to lead so this is what this is what we should you know all be striving for here uh in term in terms of wealth and you know I don't think that you know it you know JD's gonna look back one day and say gee I wish I had earned a lot more money here he's gonna say I'm I'm happy with the way that I I built Wells and and how I how I uh try to optimize my time and the efforts I put it into it in my best life and I think that's that's what that's the aspiration here for for a lot of folks yep I love his tip at the end the book designing your life if you want to make 2024 or heck the rest of 2023 the year of you go get that book check it out do the three different five-year plans and see what you can do to make the rest of this year next year the Year of you I'm very excited to get that book uh it comes in two days yeah look I I I think you know that's that's great advice we've talked in the past about this um on the show here but it all starts with uh what do you want and that is what designing your life I think will potentially give you is is a clear definition pen to paper of what you want and once you know what you want you can then begin to build a plan to get there it's the root of all the finance Fridays all the things that we discuss on BP money it all starts with what do you want right if you've got the biggest pile of money possible 30 years from now there's a strategy for that if you want the freedom and flexibility to do what you want five years from now there's a plan for that if you want to take 2024 off and go travel the world and backpack around Europe there's a plan for that well what you know you have to figure out what you want and no you can't have all three of those maybe you can um if you're if you're particularly creative but it'll be hard to have all three of those things but it won't be hard to have any one of those or maybe even two of those that you choose yeah what does Paula say you can afford anything you can't afford everything so you can have anything you can't have everything make a list of what it is you want all right Scott should we get out of here let's do it that wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets money podcast he is Scott trench and I am Mindy Judson saying farewell turtle shell BiggerPockets money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott trench produced by Kalyn Bennett editing by Exodus media copywriting by Nate Weintraub lastly a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible [Music] thank you

Channel: BiggerPockets Money

Views: 37,588

Keywords: get rich slowly, retire early, jd roth, personal finance, how to get rich, how to invest, real estate investing, real estate investment trust, reit, stock market, index funds, retirement, retirement savings, save for retirement, how to save money, financial freedom, financial independence, financial independence retire early, fire movement, fire community, fat fi, nest egg, net worth, sabbatical, finance, biggerpockets, biggerpockets money, biggerpockets money podcast, money

Id: XLJMSmlisFY

Length: 51min 8sec (3068 seconds)

Published: Mon Jul 31 2023