Mr Money Mustache & Mr 1500

[Music] alright guys super excited about this episode we are getting the opportunity today to speak with mr. 1500 and mister money mustache and this episode is one that has been requested for a long time by our community and we want to do a couple things with it obviously we could talk about the how of financial independence but it's something that I think has been covered really well over the past several years and over the past like seven years on mister money mustache calm what we wanted to do today is have a slightly different episode almost like let's take a look back mister money mustache over the past seven years has reached millions and millions of readers I mean the information that him and Carl have been putting together when they've been forming this community have changed thousands and thousands of lives today what we wanted to talk about is how to create reality what's next I mean you're well into your early retirement financial independence like what's next for you guys community building and second generation five very excited about this conversation and to help me with this I have my Coase Brad here at me today how you doing buddy hey Jonathan I am doing quite well and yeah I've certainly been looking forward to this for a very very long time and to your point many of these topics are the essential themes that we talk about here at choose if I write community building is probably number one and I think what Pete and Carl are doing both generally for the FI community but very specifically in their hometown of Longmont Colorado he's just amazing and clearly second generation Phi is something that is near and dear to all of our hearts on this podcast and to many of those listening how do you pass this on to your kids what type of lessons do you pass on how do you make the best life for them while also understanding that their path is not necessarily yours so it's it should be a fascinating fascinating conversation and with that Carlin Pete welcome to the podcast thanks a lot it's been a long time coming so we are happy to be here yeah holy cow I was way back in episode 14 and how many years ago is that it was a while ago but it's been very cool to see your trajectory in the meantime you guys are kicking ass it was decades in internet years you know I was actually Carlos the planning on having you on the show for all your namesake episode 1500 but I was worried we might have to kick the can down the road a little bit too far if a couple years is decades in Internet years you're gonna have to have me on when I'm like two or three hundred hopefully that AI stuff comes to reality in fact I've watched choose that by takeoff so much that now you guys are so big that we have to wait in line to be podcast I was sending you Christmas cards every year trying to make this happen are you kidding me what I wanted to do you know I kind of set this up I can't think of any individual that has had their website mentioned more on our hot seat on your favorite blog or article of all time I mean yours has been that light bulb moment for so many people and so I'm positive that the vast majority of our community is very familiar with your content but what I don't know if they're as familiar with is like your your story and I kind of want to rewind a little bit here and have this kind of walk down memory lane because the blog was not your path to financial independence you reached financial independence and then you start a documenting your story and your story that we started reading about happen back in like 2011 could you just take a couple minutes and kind of talk us through like what that moment was for you why you felt like sharing your story you just put us back in time here for a second oh yeah okay so the my five story which has been told many times was boring that was just software engineering from the years between like 1998 and 2005 roughly then I almost forgot that I was financially independent but then got so frustrated that I decided to start writing about it in 2011 and that came about basically because I wanted to I was surprised that all the other high income people that I knew weren't also in the same position so it was more it was born out of frustration so I just started writing some stuff into a Microsoft Word document and or a Google Doc I guess and then I then I thought well maybe I should try publishing this and really have to give a lot of credit to the former mrs. mm because she really encouraged me to not just write it privately but to put it online and once it started finding its own audience that was a real key and this is probably the thing that makes or breaks almost any blogger is if you start getting enough people reading your stuff right away and commenting and giving your feedback then you're encouraged to keep going and keeping going is the real key to success but almost nobody can keep going in the absence of feedback so I was super lucky because of like the early retirement extreme guest posts that I did like a free round of initial readers and and so many of so many pieces a good luck is what kept me going to this point and now it's really easy cuz I can just write stuff occasionally can we just talk just for a second about your notable lack of a mustache like like I feel with that moniker you should have like fur you know coming down like we're recording this we have video for this no mustache man so where does the moniker come from well the mustache is seasonal like sometimes I would go it again but that's not really what the blog is about it's not about a facial hair mustache it was about like the you know first of all Triple M just sounds good and money and you must stash your cash and the idea of like the old senior Western gunslinger / mayor of a town it was basically just like a random kind of bit of inspiration that gave me that name it doesn't have a exact literal meaning but I have certainly grown out mustaches occasionally in order to try to be in character and to be honest I'm not willing to put in that level of commitment cuz you have to like comb that and like no-clean soup out of it it's just not worth it for a part-time hobby of being a blogger Peter I'm curious about about that inception point of when you started the blog I think myself included and so many really hundreds of thousands of people just love your writing style right like it just draws you in and and I'm curious have you always been a writer like have you always I mean you're an engineer right do you know that you were gonna be this good frankly like did you always love writing please go on can we go I mean it's a real serious question I've always been curious about how does a guy who is the ultra optimizer engineer like get to be such a creative writer okay well my secret is that I'm not really an engineer like it's true that I like optimizing stuff and I was okay at math and good at software development but really I'm born from a long line of artsy's like sort of hopelessly disorganized writers artist musician people so I pay the price for that in terms of like never being able to find my car keys and my wallet or any of this stuff well fortunately I have a bike so most of that is unnecessary and in fact I think early retirement was partly a coping mechanism for me in not wanting to stress about like money making and keeping track of careers and stuff I was just like well why don't we just do this another way put it all on autopilot so I can focus on doing what I really want to do so I think writing and music are one of those things that is kind of like as a real artsy side to it in a human and you can certainly nurture that but there's also a lot that you're born with or born without so in my family thanks to my dad's hair did you get a lot of free music and writing ability and that's what he did he was like a jazz musician and a writer for his whole career so I'm thankful for that and so that just means I have fun with it it's all cool you know I've never done this on the show before and I just I want to do it today so with you guys with your guys permission I actually want to take like two minutes and read the first guest post that Minister money moustache ever did one month basically right Pete after starting your blog on early retirement extreme would you humor me for this exercise I feel like that's pretty long but yeah you're welcome to give it a shot I haven't seen this thing in many years awesome a few months ago I had an explicable need to start writing about personal finance why because the people of the United States just needs some serious schooling and I couldn't hold back the urge to add my voice to the still small course of people dishing out these lessons every time I walk past a Starbucks drive-through lineup of idling Cadillac Escalades and then return home to read about record levels of foreclosures bankruptcies and complaints about our recently inflated but still cheap gasoline I become fired up again every time people complain about not having enough money to raise their kids while continuing to buy new products on credit it forces me to write even more the reason I must write is because I am somewhat of an alternate version of Jacob originally a software engineer by training I could not help but try to optimize my money earning and spending in the same way the software engineers compulsively optimize their code to be as simple and efficient and self-evident to future software engineers as possible in the industry they call it elegant to me money feels just like software if you're earning and spending is not elegant than it's crappy and if you're causing suffering to you and your species and planet by not optimizing it's an emergency because of this optimization my software engineering career was short-lived I had put aside enough money to support a middle-class lifestyle with the wife and young son shortly after the age of 30 so it was no longer efficient to keep trading free time for more money and it turned out that not having a real job was a lot of fun I took on all the challenges and hobbies I never had time for I got to read right exercise learn camp hike bike drink buying beer and wine II weeknights sweep the driveway on Thursday mornings in my pajamas and my wife and I get to be double stay-at-home parents our five-year-old boy is completely flourishing with this unlimited attention as we read through hundreds of books together and keep advancing to new levels of learning in our sorts of fields but the rest of the world was not getting any more efficient I saw the gullibility of the poor in the middle class citizens of the rich world and in the way in which more advanced corporations are able to take advantage of a skull ability to keep everyone forking over most of their income and debt payments and it just seemed more ridiculous with each passing year at first I spent my creative energy on making fun of people it is after all kind of funny to watch people causing their own financial destruction and then angrily blaming the president for their fate but then I realized it would be even more fun to try and change the behavior of some of these people at this point I discovered the early retirement extreme blog as well as the sort of other ones on the internet and so a new superhero was born his name is mister money mustache and he is basically the persona that constantly is talking inside my head when I see the rest of the world making stupid financial decisions mister money mustache is bossy and he has strong opinions but he's also quite knowledgeable and a good listener he's like a good set of windshield wipers to keep the windows of his readers clear from the that rains everyday from the world's marketing machines there's a couple other paragraphs in here but like I died like this is this is you 2011 one month after you start writing writing this post on jacob from early retirements extreme blog and wait the best part I just want to I want to reach down here put in context that I think almost seven years in I think you've had like 29 plus million visitors on the site at this point I noticed this comment on that blog Jeremy says hi mmm I read a little bit of your blog and I'm loving it already in about seven years of blogging the only constant trend I see or more readers and more bloggers people are dialing down to their favorite content and if you can at least provide something simony I am sure you will get plenty of readers so that was one of your early feedbacks on a guest post Karl what are your thoughts on that article man I had actually never read it this is my first time so I'm gonna try to desorb it all but yeah I think about history bunny mustaches trajectory we ended up at the same place we came from different places though which I think I bought off and I think mister money mustache probably had a little bit or stable of a childhood than I did so the reason I'm here today is because as I could see the mistakes my parents made with finances and it terrified me and put this fear in my soul as a young kid and by dad's struggle with alcoholism so there were struggles growing up so I've kind of questioned myself like am I even worthy to be here because mister money mustache had this perfect operated he came to all these realizations for the right reasons whereas myself I came from a point of fear and I guess it's okay I've come to reconcile that it doesn't really matter where you come from it's where you ended up and our trajectory is pretty similar so I'm happy with it now but yeah that's a hell of a post yeah that's funny in it because we literally ended up in the same place because Carl is just on the other side of this door behind me right now and guys one thing that was in that article that I really want to touch on is change of behavior right so Pete in there you said like it's easy to kind of laugh at people but you realize that you wanted to help change people's behaviors and and I found that like people can can read and they can you can read blogs they can listen to podcasts but like getting people to actually get up off the couch and take action is what separates successful people from from those who are just gonna keep on doing what they're doing and Carl I guess start with you like have you found in your writing anything that actually gets people to change their behavior like actionable tips that jump off the top of your mind that you've noticed it's more successful than not like Jonathan and I talked about this a lot here we would love to bring this concept to more people but there's a different message for everybody there's certain things that that sink in better than others and I just love to hear your thoughts on yeah well first of all I will tell you what it's not working what doesn't work especially for me is telling people especially in the real life if you tell people they're making a mistake or call out some errors you think they're making they're gonna be even more resistant and they're gonna fight you so the conclusion I came to for myself is to lead by example just show what an awesome life you're having and what you're doing and let people come to ask you about it there's an old saying that goes when the student is ready the teacher will appear and there's different kinds of stimulus that might make the student ready if someone goes through a real bad financial hardship if there's a recession or they're going to lose our house there might be a point where you can get to someone so if the message is ready what they need to hear they're gonna learn and it's going to resonate with it I think about this because that's how I came to this whole movement so I was a saver and we were pretty frugal but I still had a big house we were buying new cars then I had a bad day at work and I googled how do I retire early and boom up comes JD Roth and mister money mustache so that was an inflection point in my life I don't know if I would have been ready for the message if I didn't have that stress and that hardship in my life I think similarly a car leading by example is a great idea and more importantly if you're a blogger it's good to sort of apply the same things that they teach authors when they're trying to write friction which mean don't do what most financial websites and blogs do which is just to lay out a bunch of principles and definitely ignore the old principles of journalism which is where you write yourself out of the story I think for finance or behavior change you want to be a character in your story where you're telling the story of your own life and it has to be a life that your readers would want to live so you should be talking about what you did that day and you know details to like not just my wife picked up the kids in the car it has to be like the old 94 accord we used into the driveway and stuff things that you learned people want to hear details of your life they want to live like you and you have to be personable and basically they have to feel like they are your friend and if they want your life then they're more likely to listen to the tips that you're giving on how to live that life I love what you said in particular about be a character in your story or like have a story that other people will want to emulate right because that is I'm trying to put myself in in those shoes circa 2012 I'm reading about this character on the internet called mister money mustache he doesn't have a mustache but his life is awesome and apparently it's happening on 25 to 27 ka and I just wanted to show you this we're on video I want to show you this and see if this looks familiar ah yes this is great for the podcast on hands down it looks like it's not installed though what's going on well I had to take it down to show you okay this is Ematic energy management solution so there was a post on mister money mustache talking about finding vampire drain in your house and if you're gonna optimize your finances you're gonna optimize your food why would you not optimize your electricity bill so this device was posted as a wonderful source to identify and I can tell you that my wife held it against you for a couple weeks because for about a two-week period of time I was going through the house turning off breakers checking to see what my expected output on this would be determined and like when everything is off for us to be down at zero I never got it there there's still like a five I don't know if it's kilowatt or 15 kilowatt there's a vampire things not that or you'd have like thousand-dollar electric bills every month I don't need terms of which you speak but basically I was like messing around with the air conditioning I was messing around with all the blue lights and LEDs but you know doesn't really matter the larger point is because of the character that you were writing about this mister money mustache and these little projects they were just small like not everything was hey go invest in your 401k it wasn't all academic some of it was just life and looking for ways to operate at the margins this was really one of my true introductions to the aggregation of marginal gains without those words but because you got me interested in little things like this I then listened to your advice on other things and I think for me if I look back being willing to try that was also being willing to look towards alternative forms of information that could take myself and my family to a better place and I just want to kind of tie that back maybe Brad to your point like what role has mister money mustache had in your own journey to financial independence we were actually at the Phi Summit a couple weeks back and I did an entire presentation on inflection points in my life and I actually left out the ones the inflection points on my my thigh journey and clearly the very first one was finding the shockingly simple math article and I mean that was like one of those lightening bolt type moments for me where it just changed everything it's basically like after you take in some information you quite simply cannot see the world the same way you saw it before so just something like that I know personally that that changed my entire life without question but I guess my question to you Pete and Carla I'd be curious as well for your your thoughts after Pete but you talked about you know this character of mister money mustache and I think my question would be like do you think of him as he character is he a slightly embellished version of Pete is he a significantly embellished version appeal and when people meet you in real life do they expect you to be Pete the normal guy or this superhero who talks about face punches and and all these other things on the block yeah they usually expect me to be a bit more bold than I am like I'm kind of soft-spoken in real life and I've learned the hard way that people don't want to hear advice in person you know sometimes the last Pacific specific question and you can answer that specific question but people in the Starbucks lineup don't want me to be walking down in the stupid drive-through and like saying how stupid they are through each window and especially not punching them in the face so always face punches things it's just it doesn't go over quite as well in person yeah and so like I'm not a violent person physically in real life but I certainly have a violent imagination and I really do feel quite a visceral frustration with how stupid stuff is in the way United States is like just wasting this incredible opportunity for Prosperity that we have like we're pretty good even though we waste 75% of every dollar that goes through our economy because we're just so inefficient so I just see what could be and I'm like I can't you just claim this like at least take the easiest low-hanging fruit so that frustrates me to no end so mister money mustache lets me voice those frustrations and loud Chris word enhanced dialogue that I wouldn't say to real people yeah so I've always thought about mister money mustache says Pete on steroids the first time I met him I think it was would have been way back in 2013 I was I was so nervous I was actually shaking on my drive up to Longmont my wife is like what the hell's are all with you I'm like it's mr. briney mustache this guy used changed my life we're we could to talk to about my guide oh my god and then I meet him he's just like an average normal guy so I'm always humor by how people react to him here at headquarters and I will say that there's no shortage of people who look kind of like Pete like guys who wear flannel with beards and facial hair are a bit over he's represented so sometimes someone will be looking through the window at our headquarters and they'll see somebody else who they think is Pete and I've always wanted to screw with I'm like hey protect your Pete just threaten up with a punch on the face are you saying that there are better representations of mister money mustache inside mister money mustache headquarters than Pete himself oh yeah it's definitely some more manly like proper Colorado dudes here that I would use as a stunt double if we were making a movie yeah well let's talk about this community in the headquarters just for a second here like this kind of tie is Peter I'm curious like going back to Brad's question like the inflection points in your journey do you have any big moments that you remember including the community headquarters that I've been kind of like a guiding light for you and would give our audience an insight into kind of what drives you now for me it's been more not really inflection points but like a gradual change so first starting a blog to begin with was a giant thrill and I was excited to have comments at all and then I would do everything I would say yes to everything for the blog I remember even when people said hey I'm in Longmont for the weekend can I stop by and go for a beer or something I used to say yes to that because I was so starved for meeting like-minded people and attention maybe and variety in my life but then as that got like more and more overwhelming I dialed that back then I was doing a series of trips related to the blog and and then I realized those aren't really satisfying because you could spend your whole life traveling and not really meeting any real life nearby friends in your town so the headquarters which is a co-working space was a way to address like let's take all of the benefits of community that a blog or online platform gives you but make it real in a way that can make your life better in real life so starting at here you basically have to live nearby in order to have any value of joining our our club here so we're pretty much automatically harvesting a bunch of interesting fun friendly people who are all a little bit unusual because you have to go out on a limb to join something started by an internet guru and because of that it's been really fun and these are real friends and now we find ourselves going out on hikes or bike rides with them or like some of us are playing music together and our kids are meeting and all this other stuff so it was just a gradual refinement of like what starts out as an opportunity and then you you and this is like applicable to everybody who goes into financial independence early retirement because you're not going to know exactly what you want because you've never been in this position of unlimited adult freedom before but once you have it you can start experimenting on yourself and figuring out what it is that really gives you the best life that's what Carl and I are doing we're just doing it a little bit more in public than our average readers might be I guess Carla I'm curious like what's what's been the most surprisingly positive thing to come out of being involved in this like real co-working space where you as Pete said you're getting together with people in your community he's talking about playing music you know I know you guys lift weights in the back you could have you could have anticipated things like that has there been something unanticipated that is added like just a lot of value to your life yeah it's really amazing on a lot of different levels so to answer this question you have to understand what a co-working space is really about so on the surface you might think it's just a place where people go and work because they don't want to work at home and that's part of it because everyone could work at home but they could work in the library so what a co-working space is really about is beating other people and having interactions with with other people and then it goes beyond that it becomes like Pete said it's a community building thing besides the working we have events on weekends and we have all this other fun stuff going on here but the really fun thing to see is some of the magical interactions and one of them happened a couple weeks ago someone came in and I was talking to I'm like eh so what's your full-time job you start work he's like well I work for this company that made their name with auctions on air-cooled old Porsche oh my god that's pretty cool so then a couple minutes later I introduced her to someone else and she said what do you do he's like I worked for this car auction website and she's like oh that's interesting my dad has this old crappy like Porsche 911 in his garage that he's been looking to get rid of and boom they've made this connection that they would not have had that probably would have never happened in the world outside the Coheed space and there's been a bunch of other things like that where people are collaborating on things we're talking about starting a brewery and all these crazy other things so at the very surface it's a co-working space at the bottom the real meaning of it comes from the community aspect though it we're much more than a co-working space if you think about it is that is that you're thinking about it incorrectly and actually just a quick another story that similar is to members who didn't know each other before they have teamed up and got into casual business together to buy the building right next door to headquarters here so now we've effectively doubled our control of Main Street Longmont you know we own these two adjacent buildings and they have big properties in the back and and now we can collaborate and have bigger stuff happening and we're enhancing each other's value by running our two buildings in ways that help each other so that's just another cool thing that wouldn't happen if we hadn't pulled in all these random people Brad what do you think if we can set up like a choose Fi co-working space here for maybe 20 20 maybe you guys will you do like a sister franchise type thing here and a little you know if you're coming on the west coast East Coast you can just pop on in something like that right I think we've actually talked about that execs because since we've started this the other thing I didn't mention is I've had just two people this week contact me about me starting their own spaces a migrate if you do one in Atlanta and the other one was in Maine I'm like let's have a reciprocity agreement where we could share each other's space when we're in each other's neck of the woods so yeah I do it choose if I eat that's really cool and Pete I mean you said a minute ago about really not having this much freedom and and free time in your adult life and I think so many of us just go through the motions frankly right like that's the hamster wheel that we talk about here I choose a pie where you're just going off to work because that's what adults do and you come back home and you and you sit in front of the TV because you're exhausted and that's that I'd love to hear how does this look like on a regular day-to-day basis how is this become part of your life even from sunup to sundown like are you at the co-working space for two hours a day five hours a day like are you lifting weights in the morning brewing beer in the afternoon and obviously that sounds like an idealized version but like you know if someone is thinking about start something like this in Maine how would you even describe what they're expected to get out of it like on a human basis on a day to day or week to week timeline the good news is it it's very flexible and you can kind of divine it how you want it so I've traditionally spent between zero and five hours a day at this co-working space so I definitely don't come in every day but as it gets more fun I've been coming in more often especially like now with Carl and Mindy as co-owners there's a lot more fun happening here so it draws me down here more but I live within a walking distance of the place so every time I need to get her the house I'll usually come down perhaps with like a workout some weight training as the excuse and then that will always lead to more stuff like I'll do some cleaning up and then get into some conversations and then maybe fold open my laptop and do some work so I like the fact that it's unscheduled and random and it's open-ended other people are probably a little bit more schedule driven than me I will say that the more time you spend at your co-working space as an owner the faster it will grow because you're you know your members will find that energy and find themselves hanging around more you'll be able to keep it in better condition you know setting things up sooner and meeting people's needs sooner like extension cords or plants or sweeping or whatever else you want to do so I was a little lazy for the first year of operation in the co-working space it still did pretty well but it is doing a lot better now that putting more energy into it the Carl come in like a bolt of energy lightning just do it like Instagram account the first day and another account and then he's adding pictures and then adding Google listings and yeah we've signed up something like 25 new members just since Carl joined and then that's meet me double down my energy again so we are I think it's gonna be all up from here which is it was already so great it's it could potentially become like the studio 54 of Longmont well you know I did see you guys host Allen Donegan with this pop-up school I know that guy even got some coverage from PBS it looked like it was just an incredible opportunity and I think it only continues to grow from here yeah that's been really good so one thought I always said Peter and I had a conversation a couple weeks ago and that conversation was I in the past I've always really wanted to own a storage locker facility because I thought it would be minimal time devoted to it well you've got money coming in but since then I've changed it I think the best business to be in as a co-working space cuz there is money coming in but you also have this awesome social interaction the co-working space makes me a better person like what Pete said everything about it doesn't just happen here we have a Thursday hike so we'll all go for a big hike with a bunch of members from the space and we've got these events and weekends I'll come here for a date night with Mindy on Sunday night well yeah the kids are playing with their frets let's walk over to HQ and have a drink so it's like the Country Club of Phi it kind of is my life is better because of it yeah the funny part is a storage locker business I used to think the same thing yeah it's a passive income it's a growing market but you're actually wrecking a little bit of your town by running such a thing because you're wasting land that could be used for something productive and you're in encouraging people to erect their lives which is holding on to stuff and paying to store it when when pretty much everything then storage should be like Craig's listed it's a sign that people have gone too far in most cases long-term storage so the co-working space it feels good in your heart because you know that almost everybody who's a member is getting constant lifetime benefits from that and helping each other mister money mustache on a storage facility I would struggle with the contrast between those dollars whatever people that are having storage unit how do you make your money storage units what other random thing I'll say about the co-working facility is we like because we could do some good in the community too we're sponsoring bike to work day next month we let nonprofits use the space event what it's not being used so it feels good to be able to give back to people who need a meeting space but can't afford to pay $100 an hour or whatever they cost everything like that aspect hey Carl I'm curious ooh obviously most of the people listening to this podcast aren't in Longmont they're not in areas where there are these fi or Musashi and co-working spaces how would you suggest someone like maybe a couple of the things you've seen work exceedingly well like you talked about the hikes that you haven't in the weekend or like to work Dave are there any things that people can take and start up tomorrow that you think would help foster community because ultimately that's what we're talking about here right we're talking about community and human interaction and connection can you think of just a couple of the top of your head that you think people could make moves on tomorrow yeah I can't actually what are the things we have to help supplement the co-working space is a slack channel so even if you don't have some physical environment syrup a slack channel and hit up your local cheese fi group and invite interesting people there's a lot of people who don't come to the co-working space on our regular basis but we'll hit up the select channel if they need help or if they want to have a barbecue and want to invite some people over so start building your community locally through this lecture and I'll find some interesting people and have them on there that's probably the number one tip I can stay cool crosses slack channels any any other tips yeah one thing that's that does very well I find throughout the world as your own shoe safai Facebook group so whenever people ask me how do I find community that's usually my first suggestion because I know the Denver one and now we even have a Northern Colorado one because the Denver one got so big there's a lot of good people on there and I don't see a lot of nastiness which might be typical of a yahoo group or some other group so yeah and join your local choose a PHY group and if there's not one that's Brett and Jonathan to create one cool well we got so much more to cover but I don't really want to totally walk away from this I I think Brad and you can just nod if you concur I think we should try to make working with these guys on making more of these co-working spaces with the reciprocity agreement in place I think that could be a really valuable part in an obvious next play to really help these local groups for an actual community in their community that's that's really what this comes to guys a lot more that we want to cover I appreciate you humoring on some of these questions one thing that came to mind for me that I think our audience would be fascinated by is looking at the second-generation fie conversation she both have kids they're either about to be teenagers or are teenagers I know Pete in your case you're your son is helping you with your YouTube channel and he's documenting some of these money lessons and plus he's had the benefit of kind of watching you model this behavior over time I'm I'd be glove for you to start off and talk to us like what what do you think is what do you think is connected to the next generation what do you think he's already picked up what are you still working on and maybe even talked to us for a couple minutes about college planning that sort of thing yeah I have definitely strong opinions about childhood and it was funny because Carl mentioned earlier he thought that I had a perfect childhood and it's kind of the opposite I had a I had a bit of a hippie style upbringing there's four of us siblings so we were a lot of times left to fend for ourselves like especially on activities and and finances thing you know perspective but that really helped so the biggest thing my parents did right other than reading us Lord of the Rings and all the other wealth classics did not get us much of anything that's kid you couldn't just have whatever you wanted the Christmases were pretty small like present wise and as soon as we were 14 or 15 years old we were pretty much paying for our own clothing and you know you still got free rent and and food but that was about it so we had to pay for most or all of our own university education as well get part-time jobs I remember cutting the half acre grass with this crappy gas-powered lawn machine like even when I was about 10 years old or 11 or 12 so I was forced to be frugal because it was really hard to get money and I didn't want to just lose it right away so that was my upbringing and I tried to keep the best parts of that for my son while removing some of the stuff because I don't want him to have a perspective of shortage or cheapness or lack of generosity I want him to feel all those things are on the positive side but I also want them to feel like money is something that's finite and it comes from your own efforts not just from begging your parents so that every time he wants to buy something has to be a trade-off like okay this is less money I'm gonna have for the future and money also can lead to passive income and early retirement if you invest it instead of just leaving it sitting around and I think my son has picked that stuff up because he now has his own sort of bank account which I keep track of and I see him making these like he thinks about something rather than just buying it and he trades off mentally between one thing or the other and he appreciates the fact that his interest is growing every month I think he has something like forty nine dollars to his name right now it's pretty good for thirteen year old and so passive income from that is more than ten dollars a month which is like a solid videogame every two months video game machine yeah as long as he doesn't go too crazy and I've waffled on so I've always paid him for things that are genuinely payable like usually just small sums but now he's helping me with this YouTube project that we are doing I'm really only doing my YouTube channel you know as a way to collaborate with him on something cuz it's like super fun bonding but I'm paying him like twenty dollars an episode for the video editing cuz he's actually a genuinely skilled video editor and we're splitting revenue from the YouTube channel which has now made like over a thousand dollars so he's made 500 others from that so now I'm wondering okay are we gonna go too far because if this channel takes off he could be making like a young adult type of money about some B's 14 years old and and this is a big concern for me I don't want him to like get a distorted perspective of how easy it is to earn money and I think that's the trap of wealthy or middle-class people in general is that we pamper our kids too much and like don't worry Junior your only job is getting good grades we're gonna pay for your college we're gonna buy for your car for you and then we're gonna get you the down payment we're gonna pay for your wedding and there will be a nice estate for you at the end like all that stuff I think is quite risky as a risk of making your kid not ever have the benefit of having to work hard and and find their own way money-wise so I'm trying to recreate I'm trying to simulate that because we as a family are wealthy enough that he wouldn't have to work ever but I think that would basically ruin his life and and also I think big inheritance is and stuff like that are not really a great idea either because if you do your job as a parent and your kids gonna be fine so they don't need your money when you die rule number one a parent raising don't ruin their life rule number two make sure you follow rule number one let's say you're teaching your son these lessons which obviously you are over you know many years he's just he's getting this by being part of this household right and let's just say this YouTube channel does blow up and because of skills he's picked up as a video editor and he's picking up real world skills and earning money from this is working a traditional job like her wireman in your mind or would that be sufficient if he's picked up these skills and he's picked up this knowledge of understanding that money isn't infinite he's working in a traditional job in your mind does he have to do that I would say probably that's no it just depends on the person but I'm thinking back to my traditional jobs I didn't even know that the internet was going to become a big thing when I became an adult but now there's no denying that this is real and this is how most of the world's money is made is through something at least that goes through the internet but whether or not it's strictly all online like our stuff is now it's it's still an important skill so I would have marketable skills being good at online stuff it's probably the most you know which includes knowing how to use a computer and and sometimes knowing how to write software which is also getting quite good at yeah I really don't have a big problem with what he's doing I just wanted to also you appreciate manual labor for its own joy because there is something you get out of that that you can't get out of even being the best computer user in the world is being able to use your body and your hands for something is like a real blessing that can't be replaced it's a very very core human thing so my next job as a dad is to make sure he picks that up it's the manual side of life Carl do a little compare and contrast here you know I guess rule number one don't ruin your child right what are your guys thoughts with what the plan is for them Mina's college just an obvious everybody has to go to college you're gonna go to college or is this an ongoing conversation what are your thoughts no I think college is probably the right answer for most kids despite what you end up doing even if you're gonna be an entrepreneur high-valued college I like my time there but I don't think it's a slam dunk like it used to be I remember when I was growing up my mom was like you are gonna go to college and now is it and thinking back that seems kind of silly like not everyone should go to college or needs to go to college but what are the things we try to do now we're all kids is try to introduce them to entrepreneurial concepts for example this summer in last summer we worked on a bird and bat house business with our children one of them gets it one of them doesn't but we're trying to show what goes into sturdy your own business how you market it how you have to build this how you have to pay for raw materials and all that type of things so we're definitely trying to give them other ideas but it's a struggle even if they do go to college similar to what Pete was saying I think it's important no matter how much when you have that your kids think they have some kind of skin in the game so even if we have infant of money at that time and we kind of have that now I'll probably still have my kids pay for part of it and maybe we'll swoop in there at the end and help them pay off their loans but I think it's important for them to know that they have to work that nothing is just handed to them because that's not how life is like Carl I'm curious so you said there with this business that you guys created one of your daughters got in one dinner and I'm curious like where you see that otherwise with with money lessons and like how do you tailor the message to your to your two daughters who really are both different ages I believe ones nine and ones 12 right now but they have different personalities and different ways of approaching this like have you found a message that works for each of them yeah and just to go back a second I've heard people say I'm a born saver and I think there's something - if there's definitely a genetic component because even our older daughter when she was six we'd go to the store she'd have some money and I'd be like well you can buy this but if you buy it that money's gone forever and you won't have a chance to buy anything or you could save it and it earns interest and almost like 99 times out of a hundred she would say okay dad I'm not going to buy this I think would be better to keep the money in the account our other child the younger one she's like okay I want that stuff sloth from Target like really once you spend that it's your electable what's that money's gone it's gone she's like I don't care dad I want it to stay you know and I tried to teach him compound interest so I paid them like 1% a month which is significant and the younger one I'll be like why does Claire get more money than me well it's because Claire is save more oh it's not fair so I think so you get it eventually but I just have to keep working at it before you talked about teaching your son how to do things with his hands and build things and I'm curious about doing hard things generally right and I think this might even play into exercise and lifting weight I have never lifted weights in my entire life until yes seriously alone okay there's a happy ending to this yeah yeah yeah no until about two years ago when I started CrossFit and and I really liked it but I realize like I really wanted to get stronger and I recently try to program called strong lifts and I mean this program basically works on on the main compound movement and literally yes day I was in my basement doing a personal record at squats and I just felt so good about myself because I could have been sitting on a couch watching TV I'm down there really working my ass off and like it's something that I never knew I would have enjoyed it's something that I never would have even entertained but yet this has become a big part of my life and I think a lot of it comes down to you doing hard things I know David can unwrap titude has an article called the art of the hard part and he talks about coming out of the hole at the bottom of a squat and just how mentally difficult it is but man how good do you feel about yourself when you do that and if you haven't read that article I definitely recommend it but I'd love to hear your thoughts on doing hard things generally I knew we lifting is a big part of your life I just love to hear your thoughts yep that's pretty much the secret to everything is you get happier when you do things that are challenging to you and it's probably like a curve there's a sweet spot between if life is too easy you're depressed and if life is too hard like you're in a war zone and you're losing your children you're starving you're also not happy at all but there's a sweet spot of effort and exertion and difficulty and luckily you can choose it in the rich world here like you can choose to park at the far end of the parking lot or walk to the store and of course that's harder than parking like right next to the produce and reaching out of your you know window and putting and then driving to the gross you know to the checkout and swiping your car which is what drive throughs are like our society its biggest downfall is it it goes so far and convenience that it takes away the good parts of the effort to and that wrecks your life so doing squats is a great example that's an extreme one but I much need to do something difficult every day this is my biggest revelation of the first 13 years of retirement or whatever is no difficulty means not a good day I go to bed less happy those days so I make sure I get out for like that hour walk and and workout and if I'm gonna go to the grocery store I'm not gonna take a motor vehicle because that's too easy and running the co-working space is harder than not running a co-working space but that makes me happier and all these principles is so magical because those are also the same principles that make you wealthier to look as you're you're gonna spend less money if you choose wisely and you're going to yet higher rate of pay if you're an employee or a business owner who's choosing the harder path so it's amazing how like the whole secret to a good human life is pretty much do hard stuff and embrace it I'm glad you've discovered that too all right guys so what I wanted to do next I have a couple like rapid-fire questions for you and I just thought it'd be kind of interesting to put these in one particular place and I think I know what your answer is gonna be for many of these but I think it'll still be valuable for us in for our audience so let's start with the word retirement like Pete come on man be honest look how busy you are are you really retired well I'm not very busy and yes I'm retired but I did have to change the official definition of retirement for the United States just to make sure people understood because it was kind of ridiculous before it just involved like golf and intellivision and that wasn't acceptable to me so it's good now internet retirement police have officially given you a tag on your Wikipedia page for the definition of retirement all right here's another one for you so this is one that's really interesting you both of you are very very optimized individuals and you have optimized your finances to the point where working is optional regardless of your definition of retirement which has been updated the question is Pete pay off your house or invest so many people in the financial independence community think that paying off the house is a sub optimal decision where do you you have a paid off house where do you come down on this it's pretty close like if you're just thinking about the numbers it's not even a huge difference so I always tell people to go by what their heart tells them and for me I probably would have made slightly more money by leaving my house mortgaged and keeping that money invested in stocks and especially if you look at the last five years I would have been really true but I'm still not I'm still happy with the decision because I sleep better at night just knowing that I have these low monthly bills and when it really boils down to it everything is about how you feel like the only reason to retire early is and to get any money in the first place saved up is because you feel better about it so I happen to feel better not having any debt on anything so that's what I do but the good news is in at least in the type type of middle-class numbers we're talking about now the value of your house is not a giant percentage of your total wealth anyway so it's not like a make-or-break decision either way Karl your thoughts yeah I'm in the camp of not paying it off and I'm surprised you said Jonathan there's a lot of people who support that uh uh I don't find 80 in my day-to-day like a small part of that is what else I could be doing with the money I think most of the time you'll do better if you did it in the S&P 500 but the other part of it is just having that money available like the powder keg of money that I could potentially do something else if some other interesting project comes up so I don't know if I would have been able to own part of this co-working space if I still had the mortgage but it's a personal decision and also self control decision if have you net cash around is gonna tempt you to buy a Cadillac Escalade like pay off your house immediately don't think about it for even one more second yeah I mean a while maybe it's a suboptimal mathematical decision and to Pete's point it's probably not as bad as most people claim man the psychological benefit of having that paid off I mean I envy it frankly like I II go back and forth with my wife all the time I'm like should we pay this thing off should we not I would love to have it paid off so anyway just just my two cents but next question I want to ask you guys about like a luxurious life like I feel like I live this amazing life of abundance and and I'd love to hear your thoughts you know many people would would look at us and say oh you're depriving yourself but yet like I feel like I'm rolling in abundance where do you come down on that and like are there any luxuries that you would like to buy but you just don't for some reason so for me I'll just give you my two quick things a hot tub and a sauna for my backyard so it wouldn't cost nearly as much as I probably feared it would be well under $10,000 and like I know it would greatly enhance my quality of life but like I still feel stupid guilty whatever word it is and and I hate even using those words but it's true and that's just the fact of life I have not bought them even though I would love them and I can afford them by any any measure I'd love to hear your thoughts just generally on the topic and then very specifically about like any items that you you would love to buy but for whatever reason something's holding you back I like your thought process you think you want a hot tub and sauna but you force yourself to stop and think about it at least for a while because the more that you can afford and the the bigger your money situation gets if you don't check yourself it gets ridiculous like that's how people end up with 10 homes memberships to golf club that they've never seen and like rows and rows of cars is because they don't have this balance of questioning yourself and I think it's okay to get things that you really do enjoy I literally owned thousands of items myself and a lot of them are pretty nice and luxurious like a lot of them are tools or gadgets you know smartphone laptop the stuff I'm using to talk to you right now entire co-working space full of stuff and most of it I don't regret buying but I think that's because I always thought about each thing and made sure that the pros and cons were we're weighing correctly and like hot tubs for example are notorious for being aspirational purchases that you hop in a few times and then you just you wish that you had more friends to come and use it after a while and then people end up selling I'm on Craigslist for 50 bucks after they've drained you know gone moldy and and had a few seasons of underuse so Brad he's her neighbor he lives down the street he has the sauna and the moldy hot tub yeah in fact doesn't doesn't Carl have a hot tub that he put in and now it doesn't use very much I do have a hut but I bought it for $50 and it is currently broken and leaking so I yeah i know i use it zero percentage so that's yes and how does that make you feel it's probably a burden on your psyche and like every hot tub can get broken and leaky so anyway that's that's a trade-offs like you might still come down on the side of getting it Brad but it's great that you're thinking about it and I think that's all it really takes to keep you out of trouble because the wealthier yet the less that threshold of affordability is going to hit you but there is definitely a point of enough and your life gets more and more complex for everything that you add I think I'm already at maximum I'm maxed out that's why I don't want anything that I don't already have because I know that would be more work to take care of and think about that extra item and I'm already like feeling pretty you know my limited mental capacity is quite full already with everything that I own yeah consumers of time and mental bandwidth are definitely the enemy of life my latest blog post was about my ongoing battle to not buy a Tesla car like the model 3 specifically because it's beautiful and it does every you know it's like the culmination of cool technology humanity's ever invented but then I would have this car that I'd be worried about getting faded and scratched and you know keep track and I'd worry that I'm not using it enough because there's not really much place for a car in my daily life because I've specifically set up my life work and bike everywhere so even though this car is gorgeous and I can afford it I'm probably not gonna buy it for years if ever until I really really I'm sure that it would enhance my life more than it then added a tax of mental bandwidth to myself and I doubt you're gonna find it for 50 dollars on eBay so I could borrow it free from a friend though cuz everybody else has a model 3 nowadays and they're like oh I hardly ever use it you can just take it I drove in a Tesla with mister money mustache it was awesome alright so I got another one for you guys like the fire movement like is this a movement is there something in the water is there there there like is this going somewhere what are your thoughts Pete you well it's certainly good branding and I did not come up with this idea of fire movement so I can credit whoever kind of first coined those words but it's excellent like everything is about creating like my whole blog exists to try to change behaviors right and across like hundreds of millions of people so in order to do that you have to make ideas that stick in people's head and that they naturally spread themselves so fire movement is a good idea because as soon as somebody one of the bloggers or something put that idea out I noticed all the newspaper stories and like PBS special and other stuff we're repeating it and now when the public hears this kind of stuff they're like oh the fire movement that sounds pretty big if it's an entire movement so just describing it that way already makes it real the other way to measure it is how many people are aware of these ideas and how many people are practicing it I think those numbers are definitely better than they've ever been certainly in the millions in the United States alone and that's pretty big you know like most companies would drool over getting that type of market share so it's pretty good so far we definitely have a lot of work to do like I'm not going to be content until we're building car free cities where people are walking and playing frisbee and parks and you know kids are growing up healthy and outdoorsy and we're doing stuff a bit more like efficiency in terms of happy living but you know luckily I still got like between 60 and infinity years to live depending on medical advances so you guys we got lots of work that we and still get done hey Pete our mutual friend Jillian from Montana money adventurer she talks about moving the ball forward I love this phrase that she uses talking about these little incremental steps you know you guys have this co-working space hopefully many more of these are gonna pop up throughout the country and maybe even the world what steps do you see to move towards that vision that you have are there concrete things that the audience can take to just move that ball a little bit forward yeah I think it really depends on how motivated you are so 99% of the readers and Watchers and listeners of our type of blogs and podcasts are just looking to improve their own family life and create a better life for themselves and that's already great because when you change yourself you're influencing your friends and your neighborhood and just for example walking your kids to school if you're close enough instead of driving that leads to chain reaction where your friends are gonna do it more and you've improved your entire town some people upon realizing how good these results are in their own life they get a bit more evangelical about it and they want to spread it even more so those are the type of people who might become writers or bloggers themselves or they might get involved in city governments in China for example make their town more pedestrian friendly or make the car infrastructure safer so less people are harmed by cars and it really doesn't matter you know I love when people take responsibility but everyone's gonna do what works for them and it still seems to spread regardless and I think the reason it the idea of financial independence tends to spread by itself is because it's fundamentally right like it aligns with human nature and a lot of the corporate stuff we've been doing for the last 50 years is directly at odds with human nature is like consuming more and more and working more and more so we don't even see our own kids and frankly like sitting in cars where your physical body rots away and you're just like stressed out by traffic and pollution these things are fundamentally not what we evolved to do like this is painful for a human and it makes us less happy so all I'm doing with stuff I write about is trying to align the real world to be more like what us as humans or creatures that have certain living conditions that make us happier I'm trying to make the real world match what we like to do in our lives so that's why it's going to be a winning prospect all over is and it markets itself is because people live better when they do that so I think it's gonna be you know it's gonna be a long-term Rin you know I love that the mainstream has picked it up I love that MarketWatch has added a fire movement tab to all of their money articles now like it's an actual thing but I think the counterpoint when the mainstream picks it up is like the messaging right like Oh be careful of the fire movement or five things that five reasons you should never retire early whatever whatever like listicle yourself to death but what I want to come back to is like you guys are essentially retired using your liberal definition of the word and more importantly financial independence you've reached that point in your several years past that metric in your case Pete well over a decade should we be worried is there anything that you realize now I wish I had followed the normal narrative I wish I had stayed at work so Carl I'll start with you what are your thoughts do you look back at this choice to walk away from corporate America with regret I've never had that thought even once I I guess when I first stopped I missed the big paychecks that I would get every Friday that direct upon us into the bank account but I don't think there's any amount of money that would cause me to go back to work the big thing is figuring out what's important to you and usually that doesn't revolve around money vacations are nice and I guess a new under Tesla would make me slightly happier but but I have no use for cuz I don't drive anywhere but ya figure out what makes you happy and realize that usually doesn't involve money at least not directly and go with it yeah the quick answer your question is that no you should not be worried because worry is a waste of time there's never a reason to worry about anything but financial independence is really just the starting point as I said earlier it's getting rid of the money worried which is a great thing to get rid of initially and then begin this journey of exploring what really makes a good life for you and it's really a much more human way to live it's like being in a 60 year university freeform class where every day you learn something different yeah I certainly have no regrets and it's challenging but it would have been much harder for me if I were also dependent on a job at this age I could see myself having like some serious midlife crises at this stage being 44 years old and still dependent on a job and worried about that job going away feeling like I'd be out on the streets if I didn't have it so it's like it's a no brainer it's definitely a win the biggest issue I have with the fire movement as you see people discovered and they embrace it and then they'll be like hey my numbers and I only have like 830 more days until I could retire and what people say that I get all queasy inside cuz that's the wrong way to go about life and that's the wrong way to view fire you have something from mr. 1,500 [Laughter] you are absolutely right because I realized about halfway through I'm like what are you running to you're just running away from a stressful situation what the heck are you going to do after you quit your job this is ridiculous and I even thought about deleting the blog because oh but it looks like a fool because I have to stay at work cuz I have no idea what comes after this so if anyone's listening don't lament that you're not fired yet even if you have a pointy hair boss you hate find some way to find happiness and every single day and think about what life is gonna be like afterwards but start plenty for that now and start living life now don't wait to live life until after you hit your number do it right now alright guys now in those shows that would be the end of the episode but on this show Pete we would love to give you the chance to tackle the hot seat are you ready for this yes of course in a world drowning in debt and rapid consumption trapped by the chains of lifestyle inflation these questions highlight the secrets of those who have broken free welcome to the choose fi hot seat [Music] I repeat question number one your favorite blog that's not your own I don't really read blog so that's a pretty tricky question but I'm I've become a bit of a fan of fifteen hundred days recently and I especially liked the most recent one article about how Carl allegedly hates the 4% rule of like how much you have to save for early retirement because he what it really cleanly on why it's it's really nonsense that people spend their lives worrying about this super academic pointless like should I save three point two or four point zero it's like just relax and retire all right well question number two your favorite article of all time now I'll give you a little bit of leeway here this can be either someone else's article or one of your own is there is there an article that you read out of maybe the 500 plus articles over the last you know close to seven years that for you still stands out yeah the funny part is my favorite article is not anybody else's favorite article so from my perspective it's this one that's called the practical benefits of outrageous optimism and it starts out with this photograph of Captain Picard and I just think it's like it makes me laugh at my own stuff and I think it's very practical whereas other people they they usually talk about my you know shockingly simple math to early retirement which is more of just like a dry somewhat mathematical post so for my own entertainment at one of the favorite but for like the purpose of my blog reaching people that other one is a favorite and I'm glad you let me pick stuff from my own because I really can't remember you know it's short notice what my other favorite stuff on the internet is that I've read so if you go back to episode 14 when you asked me that same question my answer was the same as Pete's the benefits of outrageous optimism I can't believe we're on the same page with that I'm kind of embarrassed but I that the thing about fire is the numbers are easy but the hard part is the optimism part of knowing that everything's going to be okay the simple part about fire is the numbers wrapping your emotions around it that's the hard part and that post probably set me free more than any others like wow stop worrying you stupid shirt know that stuff you worry about all the time ever comes to pass so I actually printed out the post and I have it in my office hanging up so every time I started thinking about some nonsense like look read it I see Captain Picard there make myself read that article I've probably read it like 500 times about now because my nature is to worry so sorry to hijack no that's great Carl I absolutely love that and it's cool to like so you literally have this hanging up in mister money mustache world headquarters I have it hang it up in my office alright question number three your favorite life hack it is discovering that bicycles are faster than cars to get around in most situations people like me who are impatient with inefficiency there's nothing more inefficient than like looking at where you're trying to drive in your car but you see like ten other people bumbling in front of you in a parking lot like oh I just want to be there and a bike you just slice through everything and you park exactly in front of the door and then you go in and you get home and you like if there's something the way like some stupid curb you just jump over the top of it and like on top of all that it makes you more physically fit and saves you money it would just change the entire world if everybody knew this cuz I see everybody's still fighting in the parking lot even right now after I've been writing about this stuff for eight years I'm pretty sure I have the bike trailer because of you as well just carrying stuff on your bike everyone's like well I love to bike but what if I have a pencil that I have to bring home it's a real concern I mean it's like people don't know what a backpack is they don't know what a trailer is they don't realize you can carry kids on bikes and they love it it's just yes there's certain hacks you got to get out there and bicycles have these it's already solved for you Oh what if it's not like exactly 72 degrees and perfectly sunny on my bike and like then you point out like loathing exists and you can use different alright hey question number four who I'm excited about this one your biggest financial mistake that was a there was basically a business mistake so shortly after retiring early set for life financially I thought well I like working and I like carpentry so I'm gonna start a construction business but it rapidly like through the interaction with an optimistic friend it turned into like a speculative house building business where we're buying land and building luxury like eco-friendly houses on it in this super expensive neighborhood at the top of a housing bubble so we've built beautiful houses the first one sold immediately for more than the asking price and then the second one basically never sold and we rode it down like a burning you know roller coaster full of skeletons into Hell like super super scary and I saw my life forced and dwindling because I had something like five hundred thousand dollars of my own money in this company basically in the house and I caused you know just wrecked my first few years of retirement because I'm a worry prone person going back I could have just told myself don't worry you're gonna be fine but I didn't know that I was like 31 years old at the time 32 and who just don't do that if you're gonna retire take it easy collaborate with your friends help them build fences but don't go start a million-dollar company involving credit I'm talking about hardwork fences are hard but your real estate story is worse than brats okay worse than offense all right Pete I think that might answer question number five here but just in case the advice you would give your younger self don't start the construction company and in general though I tell him just to not worry about anything and like start with the more obvious stuff because I was always a little bit of an anxious kid I would be afraid that's like three year old to go to another kid's birthday party without my mom there I had like an anxiety type personality and I had to I've had to beat that out of myself throughout the subsequent decades and a lot of stuff including retiring early was partly a mechanism to protect myself from worry I was like well if I get all the money taken care of I never have to worry about money so but it also taught me about worry itself and now I'd say for the most part I'm I'm relatively normal and and and certain things I'm better than normal about not worrying but other things I still worry about so that's the best thing to counsel myself and I think a lot of people would would benefit from this advice too they tend to worry about things like way more than they need to and it's really the word it definitely hurts you and you can you can recover from situations a lot more than you give yourself credit for it to like bottom line is you're gonna be making a few phone calls and you know pressing a few mouse buttons and keyboard buttons to solve almost any problem these days so just relax and do it now we do have a bonus question for you what purchase have you made over the past twelve months that has added the most value to your life and if you say a Tesla I'm gonna in this conversation right now yep I'm about a car of any sort and my last twelve months but it's cool I do have an answer to this question so you know my wife and I are separated if people don't know this yet it's an important personal detail and at that moment I decided to spring for like buying my own place my own house in the neighborhood because I always realized I'm a homeowner at heart I love having control over stuff and I want it to be right within a short walking distance of the family right we don't want to be one of those far apart families so that happens to be the most expensive neighborhood inexpensive city so I paid extra to get this these privileges and I'm really really happy that I did like that place has given me joy and solace every night you know like and it's a wonderful place to host my son and Friends it's been like a never-ending stream of visitors coming through there because I got extra bedrooms it's a small place the small house but it's more than just a budget apartment or like you know I could have live in a van down by the river if I wanted to save money and I'm glad I spent more on housing that that really meets my my lifestyle needs and yeah I feel that every time I'm there every time I open the door and every time I play loud music in there and if time I go to bed though home is has always been a big part things that make me happy so I'm glad I stuck to being willing to spend money on in this case awesome well you know Carl from mr. 1,500 days and Pete mister money mustache I think people know where to find you but Pete in your case most people have heard of your blog most people have read your blog but there probably is an individual that is hearing about it for the first time on the show and my question to you is someone comes to your content you've got 500 plus articles like how would you want them to interact with your blog what is the best way for them to dive into that content just read whatever's on the home page like your suggestions yeah the good news is it is set up specifically for that like if someone were to just go to mister money mustache calm there's like a little flippy box with five to ten you know recommended articles to whet your appetite and then there's also clear links saying like are you really hardcore here's a list of all the articles makes it really easy to navigate or do you like to read offline here's a link to the app you can get a free app that reads my blog super nice for like both Android and and iPhones so I'm hoping it's pretty easy to get to get into it just from with that as a starting point and Carl for our community someone's listening to this they want to find out more about your story we featured your story in episode 14 of our podcast highly recommend that people go back and check that out but if they want to go straight to your blog and find out more what is the best way to do that they were to go to 1500 acecomm and I always recommend that they don't go go visit someone useful like Pete first because my blog is more of a if you wanted to see what life is like after fire read by blood but if you want to read the mechanics repeat or early retirement extreme or mid find hist get that out and then you could read my blog so Carl and Pete thank you so much for joining us on the show today it's been been great being with you Brad we knew that this was a special episode and we knew that we're talking to Carl and Pete and in particular mister money mustache our show has been going for two years we have not had him on the show yet this was our opportunity to really find out more about his story but I think more than that we had an obligation because our community is so familiar with him to go a little bit deeper like we don't need Pete to teach us the how of fie right but I think as a leader in this community as a guy who has a message that is resonated around the country going behind the scenes and walking through kind of the four different goals that we set out how did this happen tell us a bit more about how we got here tell us a little bit more about community buildings second generation fie and how to create reality for the future what does it mean when you're 10 years post fie like what are your goals and objectives look like for yourself and for those around you and Pete and Carl brought it I was so compelled by the information and the story that they brought to this conversation and grateful to them for being so generous with their time yeah Jonathan I agree completely and Carl and Pete have become friends of mine over the last couple years and it's this nice treat right it's a rare opportunity to get to ask them these real in-depth questions and go back to to those formative moments right like when Pete is starting this blog what is he thinking like does he think of himself as a writer like I've always wanted to ask him that question and to get that opportunity today was was really fantastic and I think what we spent a lot of time here talking about Jonathan was obviously the FI community and how we helped foster this and bring it together right we see this movement how do we bring it into people's lives and I think that is a huge goal of mine and I know it is clearly for Pete and Carl as well if you got value from today's episode and if you've been getting value from the episodes up to this point just take one second and press the subscribe button on the platform you're listening to this on just let the providers know you're getting value from the show and you want to be here when we produce additional content if you want to support us in what we're doing here at choose fi here four easy ways one leave us an iTunes review to do that just go to choose fi comm slash iTunes to use our page to sign up for travel credit cards if you want to travel the world with miles and points instead of your hard-earned dollars then just go to choose fi comm slash cards and get started today three if you're working on the milestones fi set up a personal capital account to track your progress and use our affiliate link it's completely free and just choose fi comm / PC P as in Paul C as in cat and for and most importantly find your friends co-workers and family members who might be open to this message and tell them about the podcast have them start with episode 100 it is a fantastic starting place alright my friends the fire is spreading we'll see you next time as we continue to go down the road less traveled

Channel: ChooseFI

Views: 79,243

Keywords: mr money mustache, fire community, financial independence, mr money mustache tim ferriss podcast, early retirement blog, peter adeney, mr money mustache bike, mr money mustache fire, mr money mustache blog, mr money mustache podcast, mr money mustache index funds, mr money mustache interview, mr money mustache ted talk, mr money mustache cars, mr. money mustache youtube channel, mr. money mustache budget

Id: a8ilhh7T0e0

Length: 69min 51sec (4191 seconds)

Published: Sun Jun 09 2019