Late Starter Real Numbers: 1.5 M ➜ 864 K — And Back Again | J. C. & Bev Webber | 163 - Catching Up to FI: Financial Independence for Late Starters

Episode Transcript
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(00:02):
I was the eldest of five with a single momfrom about the time I was eight years old.
Being the eldest and how things went,I knew how to balance a checkbook
by the time I was 10 years old.
We were very poor, so it was roughbut we made it, my mom's biggest

(00:23):
hope was that she wanted to keepall five of her children together,
and she worked very hard at that.
Grew to an appreciation of nothaving any money and started
earning my own at a very early age.
Little things like I either had to buy myown clothes or make them, and I did that

(00:43):
starting in my late junior high school
My boss at the startup hadto really talk me into it.
He walked me around the pond behind ourcomplex, and we had a long conversation.
I just didn't like Apple.
I didn't wanna work for them.
But Steve Jobs had come backnot time before that, and so I
thought, well, we'll give it a shot.

(01:05):
So I agreed to come over and itgave me a $10,000 sign on bonus,
and oh, and I had a bunch of shares.
They gave me a couplethousand shares sign on bonus.
So yeah, I said, I'd give it a shot,but I loved the position I ended up in.
I loved the work that Iwas doing at one time.
I even told my coworkers thatI love my job so much that I

(01:26):
'd pay them to let me do it.
It was that much fun.
at the point where we retired,we had an 11 $10,000 CDs and one
was maturing every three months.
And right
about that time, the financialcrisis of 08-09' hit and

(01:46):
our nest egg went from 1.51.
Our portfolio 1.51 down to 864,000at the end of February 09'.
We sold the house.
We were on the road living in a motorhome and we had $864,000 to our name.

(08:43):
Hello and welcome backto Catching Up To Fi.
Jackie, we're back from vacation.
It was just the 4th of July.
We're recording this On July 9th,I went to DC and I hung out in a
nursing home with my wife's auntand uncle and learned all about
what it was like to age beyond 80.
It was interesting and I learnedhow I didn't want to age into

(09:05):
my eighties and how I did.
And we spent the second half of ourvacation with the esteemed uncle
Frank Vasquez and his wife Mary.
I got to sit in the easy chair from whichhe records his podcast, Risk Parity Radio.
He even let me read theletter questions on the show.
I was the first voice other thanhis wife's or his on the show.

(09:29):
I feel so honored.
What a great vacation.
How was yours, Jackie?
It was great.
You gotta send me a copy of thatepisode 'cause love to hear it.
And Frank, I know he's your buddyand he's a friend of the show.
I also did a lot of traveling.
All of my family is in thesoutheast, so between South Carolina,
North Carolina, and Georgia.
So had a great 4th of July.
Saw a lot of fireworks, ate a lotof watermelon but we are back at

(09:52):
it and we got such a treat, right.
Oh yeah.
We have a late starterstory for you today.
We love our experts, we love ourinfluencers, we love our fire people,
but we especially love other latestarters when they tell us their stories
about how they overcame a late start.
Jackie, we're here withJC Weber and his wife Bev.
Why don't you introduce them?

(10:13):
Yeah, and I would say I wannastart calling him the daddy
of late starter stories.
Okay.
JC Weber started his early career in themilitary and then was a bartender before
landing a job in big tech at Apple.
He retired from Apple at the endof January, 2008, and he hit the
road with his wife Beverly a fewmonths later and never looked back.

(10:37):
We'll find out during our conversationwith him today how he weathered the
financial crisis in 2008 and managedto not let it derail his plans.
So he was a late starter and did his veryfirst net worth statement on the back
of a three by five card when he was 51years old, and that was December 2001.

(10:58):
At that point, he had a whopping$120,000 in investments.
Now, six years later, just sixyears later, he and his wife grew
their net worth to $1.8 million.
So he's an honest guy.
If you're doing the math though, JCreached early retirement at age 57
after just getting started at 51.

(11:19):
So Bill, there's still hope.
So he turned it around and it's soimpressive and so much of his story
resonated with me, including divorce.
His rise is inspiring and it'sa great example for other late
starters, I'm also very jealous ofall of the Apple stock that he owns.
'cause I bit individual stocks myself.
So he now travels the country andhis RV and visits places around.

(11:44):
And he is just living his bestlife along with wife Beverly.
we sold the RV two years ago.
We now own two houses.
Well, you gotta tellus about that too, man.
We got some juicy stuffto get into, right, Bill?
So JC is meticulous in trackinghis numbers and is very transparent
in sharing with us today.
So he'll be sharing thegood, the bad, and the ugly.

(12:05):
So JC and Beverly, welcometo Catching Up To Fi.
Thank you.
Thanks for having us.
Yeah, I mean, we listened to you onMillionaires Unveiled, but this, if I'm
not mistaken, is your second podcast,and we love having new podcasters
with us those are stories thathaven't been told to our community.
Those are stories that aren't outthere in the greater FI bubble.

(12:26):
You may find yourselves on manyother podcasts after this one,
which is great because people needto hear those inspiring stories
about the fact that, you know what?
We recovered from our shame,remorse, regret, and anger.
We got to work and we made thishappen to a retirement just
like Jackie did from 38 to 49.
She retired early whenshe woke up from 51 to 57.

(12:47):
You guys retired earlyafter a late wake up.
I'm still working.
What's wrong with me?
I know.
No, he's the, he's the only,
Be comfortable enough to retire.
yeah, he says it all the time and heis the only working stuff around here.
So we've got so much thatwe're gonna talk about.
So why don't we wind it back we wanna heara little bit about the early years now,
actually, we wanna hear from both of you.

(13:10):
'cause we know that might havebeen a different experience.
So why don't we start with Beverly.
So Beverly tell us a little bit aboutgrowing up and some of your early
money memories and kind of howyou felt about money growing up.
Let's start there.
I was the eldest of five with a single momfrom about the time I was eight years old.

(13:33):
Being the eldest and how things went,I knew how to balance a checkbook
by the time I was 10 years old.
We were very poor, so it was roughbut we made it, my mom's biggest
hope was that she wanted to keepall five of her children together,
and she worked very hard at that.
Grew to an appreciation of nothaving any money and started

(13:57):
earning my own at a very early age.
Little things like I either hadto buy my own clothes or make
them, and I did that starting inmy late junior high school and on.
Anyway.
Things move along.
I got married early.
High school kind of marriage thing.
Now that wasn't with JC, was it?

(14:19):
That was somebody
no,
JC is actually my thirdand my fourth husband
yeah, we're gonna talk about that alittle bit more about how that happened.
So it was a high school marriage and, thatkind of thing and he wanted to move on.
moving forward, I alwaysworked, always, always worked.
I started working when I was stillin high school and had quite a career

(14:42):
with auto and home glass industry.
I think my next big thing I wasworking still at a glass shop.
I applied for a job at Hewlett Packard.
totally changed my world.
It was an awesome move.
It was nice to have moneyand feel comfortable.
I was still single for themost part at this point.

(15:04):
I was still married, sort of tothe first guy, but he rarely spent
any time at home because he waswith his girlfriend all the time.
that's not good.
so now I understand how that one ended.
Okay,
were you a saver?
I mean, you got to thepaycheck with Hewlett Packard.
Did always learn to be asaver or was that a challenge?

(15:24):
Oh no.
It was not a challenge.
I was a saver because unless I saved,I couldn't have whatever I wanted.
It was exciting.
The first time, I got my own credit card.
There's all those littlethings come into play.
At one point I bought a house.
Now this is where JC does come.
We were dating at the time.
We were dating at the time.

(15:44):
Living together.
Yeah, we bought the house together,but she had to sign all the paperwork.
I had no line of credit or anythingor a pot to piss either or pee in
how did you guys meet each other?
Oh, that's an interesting story.
Can I tell that one quickly?
Yeah.
I hung out in neighborhood bars playingpool as my spare time, relaxation.

(16:04):
And one night she showed up with aneighbor that she shared duplex with,
and the neighbor was a young girlwhose parents owned the house, and they
told Bev to please look out after her.
So the girl wanted to go out andparty, and Bev didn't want her
to go by herself, so she taggedalong to like, keep an eye on her.
they showed up in my bar.

(16:24):
So I was shooting pool and Iwas a bit of a shark back then.
I played pool with one hand and I wontournaments and trophies and stuff.
So I think she was slightly impressedwith my pool game, but she spent some time
talking with me and she told me recentlythat young girl knew me and introduced us.
I didn't remember that.
But I had a date later onthat evening down the road at

(16:45):
another bar with that bartender.
So I left to go to my date and I wasdown there 20 minutes and there was a
knock on the door and the doors wereall locked 'cause it was after hours.
So I went and opened the door and thereshe was standing with my cue stick.
I forgot to bring it with me.
Well, So the serendipitousstuff, the chemistry was there.
So it sounds like Bev had her ownfinancial life before she met you.

(17:07):
Did you have problems with debt?
Did you manage to accumulate assets?
What was it like movinginto the larger dollar job?
Did you save in a 401k?
What were your habits at that point?
Yes, definitely 401k and 10% of my salary.
Also on top of that is what I saved.

(17:28):
I am so glad that I did that because itwas, gave me the ability to buy the house,
and also the ability to build some credit.
'cause it was kind of weird
Cause unmarried women back then,it was tough to get credit.
It was still hard andyou had to have money.
I was still very surprised that Iwas able to pull off buying that
house on my own, if you will.
Yeah.

(17:48):
the funny thing, Beverly, is that yousaid that you had to put the house in your
name because JC's credit was jacked up.
Is that right?
he just lived from paycheck to paycheck.
Barely.
She made more money than I did.
Oh yeah.
He was working at these oddball kindof things and I encouraged him, why
don't you go for a bigger place?

(18:10):
And that's how he wound up at Apple.
So you both in California at this time.
Yes.
Because I'm hearing allthese tech companies and
startups and things like that.
They were all California.
so you meet JC and then you guysget together and we'll talk a
little bit more about the marriage.
But JC tell us a little bitabout your money stories growing
up and kind of the habits thatyou formed and your experience.

(18:34):
So I think I'll start highschool, going into the service.
It was April of my 18th year I had mybirthday in November 11th, veteran's Day.
Which allowed me to never workor go to school on my birthday
my entire life cause this is
national holiday.
So I had a couple of traffic accidentsand totaled my, my little Volkswagen bug.

(18:54):
But the next car I totaled was my dad's.
So he was not a happy camper.
He could have a violent temper andI ended up with a black eye after
that traffic accident in his car.
So I decided to leave home.
So I joined the Air Force this theday after I got outta the hospital
and shipped off during Vietnam.
And I don't know why I didn't realizethat there was a war going on.

(19:16):
I was oblivious to that.
And it wasn't until I was in basictraining that I realized they might
send me to Vietnam, I studied hardin tech school and got good grades.
And so I was able to pick myassignment and pick my career.
So I became a medical hospital adminclerk, filing medical records, and
arranging for medical evacuations.

(19:37):
And then the war was winding down.
And so after three years and ninemonths, I got a three month early
discharge from the Air Force becausethey're lower in the head count.
I became an inactive reservistfor three years and nine months.
And I banged around the countrylooking for different jobs, couldn't
really find anything decent.
So I went down to recruiter's office tosee if I could get back into the service.

(19:58):
And the Air Force said, no,we've had enough of you.
So I went to the Naval Recruiter'soffice and they took me in,
they knocked me down one grade.
I was in E four, but they brought me backdown to an E three and, and brought me in.
And so then I spent a year on theship, and then I went to tech school
and then I learned electronics.
Had another program with the Navy that ifyou were accepted at a local college, you

(20:19):
could get out three months early to attendthis first semester that was starting.
I signed up for junior college, gotanother early out three years and nine
months, aced my college experience.
I got a 3.95 grade pointaverage out of four.
And, was a member of the CaliforniaHonors Society and all the classes
I took, I got A's in everythingexcept one history class.

(20:41):
And I was explainingthis to my dad one time.
I said, well, I only got one B.And he thought that I meant that
was my best grade because that wasa horrible high school student.
So he said, well, at leastyou got a b. I said, no, dad.
That was my worst grade.
I got all A's.
He was blown away that I did that
well congratulations on that andalso thank you for your service.

(21:01):
So you served in the first one, didyou say the air Force then the Navy?
Yes.
Thank you so much for your service.
And sounds like, did themilitary pay for your schooling?
So you had no debt, youdidn't have to pay yourself?.
I was on the GI Bill.
It was so cheap back then it waslike $65 a credit or something goofy.
It was peanuts to go to school.
So now that's completely different.

(21:22):
You got outta school, you had wonderfulgrades, at what point did you get
your job at Apple and meet Beverly?
I had a lot of tech jobs, mostly startups.
And then the startup I was with, Ithink it was my third one apple was
purchasing it, and my boss wanted meto come with, but he didn't want every
anybody else on the team to come.

(21:42):
So was him and me that joinedApple together when they
bought that little startup.
And that was in, October of 1999.
It was right before the Y 2K.
It was my responsibility to make sure allthe electronic programs were up to date
and not fail once the clock turned 2000.
And so I had records from all thecompanies that we were doing business

(22:04):
with, certifying their software orthey'd upgrade it and then certify it.
So when 2000 came around,nothing happened to us.
I had to do all that also.
Oh, she did it for hp, for HewlettPackard, because I worked for the
accounts receivable department forthe internal accounting system,
not external companies or anything.

(22:25):
So anyway, I went througha very similar thing.
So I went back in the servicebecause I couldn't make a decent job.
Between Air Force Navy, I learned tobe a bartender and so I attended bar
in New York, Michigan, Wisconsin,Illinois, California and Florida.
During that three years and ninemonths, I was out of the service.
So I bounced all of way aroundthe country, hitchhiking or
riding a little motorcycle.
I had a little 350 Honda.

(22:46):
And I went from California to Floridaon and I don't know where I came up
with money to do all this 'cause Iwasn't really paying much attention.
I would pay all my bills whenI got my check and then I
would live on what was left,
Did you ever have a debt problem?
Yeah.
I think I had maybe or 15 or $20,000 incredit card debt besides the vehicles.
I had a truck, a motorcycle, asecond down the house and the

(23:09):
first mortgage on the house.
This was after we weremarried and divorced.
And so my brother-in-lawwhich is a tax attorney guy.
And so he did my taxes every yearand he saw the situation I was
in and he offered to bail me out.
So he gave me the money to pay offall the credit cards and I paid
him off over time, interest free.
Just gave him money everymonth until I squared with him.

(23:30):
And then that was the time when Istarted learning about investing
and I tried to be a stock picker.
I invested in like 30 different companies.
I put in around 65,000.
And when I learned about index funds, Isold off all those losers and I pulled
out about 32,000 out of the 65 I put in

(23:51):
so when you were the stock pickerwere you working at Apple at that time
or was this before the Apple days?
This had to be during the Apple days.
Yes, it was.
Yeah,
it was during the Apple days.
I was making 130,000 ayear and I was spending 70.
So I was looking for placesto put all this extra money
in, so I tried picking stocks.
So were you contributing to your 401k?
Yeah, I was maxing that out.

(24:13):
Okay.
Awesome.
So you did have some money in yourindex funds through your 401k,
And the employee stock purchaseplan, I participated in that too
did they give you like a15% discount on Apple stock?
Exactly.
Right.
And there was a vesting period, butI don't remember much about that.
It's too long ago now, but yeah.
at one point I had 10,000 shares of Apple.

(24:33):
Wow.
Yeah, that's I said I was jealous . NowI wasn't a stock picker like that.
Okay.
I'm a long-term investor thatactually does research and stuff,
but apple has been the stockthat I have held the longest.
I've never worked forthe company or anything.
but I do have Apple stock.
So the $130,000 that youmade, so was that the peak
No, last year I made 1 36, but if you goon to the social security website, they

(24:56):
have a record of all your earnings andsurprisingly, I made over 600,000 the
year I was quitting in 2017 because Icashed in all my shares that had vested.
Do you ever regret that decision?
Do you wish you would've held onto him?
mathematically, I guess.
Yeah.
But no, I put all that money in abrokerage account, and really that's where

(25:19):
we're living off is the brokerage account.
I have.
About 460,000 the rollover iRA I 'mdown to 16,000 in my Roth, but I've got
1.3 million in the brokerage account.
That's what I did with that money.
okay,
so let me get the salary right.
So as far as your straight up salary,the highest you made was around
one 30, but there was one year.
1 36, but there was one year whereyou were cashing in that Apple stock

(25:42):
and that gets counted as part of yourincome that is to social security.
And for anyone else that's listening,if you wanna check your Social security
earnings history, and it's kind ofinteresting to look at these, isn't it?
Yeah you just go to ssa.gov andwe'll put that in the show notes.
And So you retired in 2008the highest you made was 1 36.
So I adjusted that for inflation.

(26:03):
And in today's dollars,that is about $200,000.
How long did you make this good salary?
How long were you atApple before you retired?
Well, they brought me on board forsomewhere between 80 and 90,000 I believe.
I was there 10 years.
You ever hear of the Peter principle?
explain that to me.
you do a good job.
You get hired.

(26:23):
After you get hired, you do a good job,you get a raise and you get a promotion.
And so they keep promoting you until youreach a level where you're no good at it.
Oh,
That's his philosophy
No, that's the Peter principle.
So they promoted me to be the head ofour department, and I hated the job.
I wanted to solve people's problemsof their computers instead of managing
the eight or 10 people in our group,so I asked if I could get the job back.

(26:47):
All right, so I need to know too,you're in the sort of the era of Apple
where people wanna know, what wasit like working for them for these
innovators back in the late 1990 ninesand into the early two thousands?
What, was that like?
What kind of environment was that like?
My boss at the startup hadto really talk me into it.
He walked me around the pond behind ourcomplex, and we had a long conversation.

(27:11):
I just didn't like Apple.
I didn't wanna work for them.
But Steve Jobs had come backnot time before that, and so I
thought, well, we'll give it a shot.
So I agreed to come over and itgave me a $10,000 sign on bonus,
and oh, and I had a bunch of shares.
They gave me a couplethousand shares sign on bonus.
So yeah, I said, I'd give it a shot,but I loved the position I ended up in.

(27:35):
I loved the work that Iwas doing at one time.
I even told my coworkers thatI love my job so much that I
'd pay them to let me do it.
It was that much fun.
That's a superpower right there tolove your job and that you would
do it even if you didn't get paid.
But after 10 years the,industry was moving on with new

(27:57):
languages, computer programming,languages, new tools and stuff.
And I was real good at what I knew, butI wasn't adding to my skillset very much.
And the kids that we were hiring,I call 'em kids, they were in
their thirties and forties.
They were outshining me withtheir expertise in the new stuff.
So I could see the handwriting on thewall, that it wasn't gonna be long,
that I wasn't gonna be the technicallead anymore of the department.

(28:20):
So when I saw how much moneyI had accumulated, I decided
to put in my papers and quit.
I was gonna quit in December ohseven, but I ended up in the hospital
with my sixth abdominal surgeryfor benign mesothelioma tumors.
Mm-hmm.
And that took me out ofthe work for six weeks.
And I had promised myboss a transition period.
So I had to continue working when I gotoutta the hospital for another two or

(28:41):
three weeks In January of 08' to bringsomebody on board to take my place.
You're a numbers guy.
Let's dig into em' for a little bit,because people need to be inspired
about the rapidity with which youreach this point where, you know what?
I have enough money I'm gettingsort of a little bit of ageism
coming on where new people arecoming in, and I may not have a job.

(29:02):
I need to pre-plan for this.
In 2001, you made your first net worthstatement and you wrote it down, basically
on the back of a napkin or on a note card.
I find it fascinating to see thisbecause the bottom line was your net
worth at that time was only $250,000 andinvestible assets the stuff you can live

(29:25):
off of was only $120,000 at that time.
Bev?
Does that include your finances as well?
You guys were marriedat the time and this was
the,
No, that's just
just you, okay.
That was the individualnet worth statement.
the next six years, somehow you gottwo investible assets of 1.5 million.
So from 120,000 to 1.5 million,you've got to tell us that story.

(29:48):
well, the trigger, the turningpoint, that's a better word for it.
The turning point was my brother-in-lawloaning me the money to get out of
credit card debt and then all ofa sudden I had more money than I
knew what to do with and I had tostart learning what to do with it.
And so I increased the 401kcontribution to the max and I was
putting some money in the IRA andI didn't know about Roth back then.

(30:12):
So I had an advisor at WellsFargo who sold me a bunch of crap.
Illiquid REITs, for example,was one, it took me forever.
Every month I would have to put in arequest to sell all of it, and they
would sell 10% of it, 15% of it,whatever, because they didn't have
the cash to buy me out of all of it.

(30:33):
So it took years to getout of that particular one.
But I have to admit though, he didrecommend a laddered CD structure, which
I put in $10,000 I think every quarter.
And we started off in threemonths, then six months, then nine
months CDs, and then annual CDs.
So at the point where we retired,we had an 11 $10,000 CDs and one

(30:54):
was maturing every three months.
And right
about that time, the financialcrisis of 08-09' hit and
our nest egg went from 1.51.
Our portfolio 1.51 down to 864,000at the end of February 09'.
We sold the house.
We were on the road living in a motorhome and we had $864,000 to our name.

(31:19):
How did that feel?
I mean, you managed to accumulate thishuge nest egg with a high savings rate,
and I presume aggressive investingtactics going from 120 to 1.5.
That in itself in six years is incredible.
But then right as you get to thatpoint, you exit the building.
Elvis has left the Apple building movesinto a motor home with his wife Bev, and

(31:41):
watches his portfolio get cut in half.
You survived the great financial crisis.
What did that feel like though?
I mean, did it scare the shit out of you?
I was surprisingly not rattled by itbecause we were living in a motor home
and we had such control over our expenses,there's a thing called work camping.
There's a newsletter that goesout, work camping.com website and

(32:03):
you can find jobs at campgrounds.
And so we looked into that and weended up getting a job at the Crazy
Horse Monument in South Dakota.
8.50 an hour for the two of useach . And our burn rate dropped
considerably because there was nomore diesel to buy for the motor home.
And the RV site was free, andthey fed us occasionally at the
cafeteria, at the memorial.

(32:25):
So we really were able tocut back on our burn rate.
And slowly but surely by theend of oh nine, we were back up
over 1000001.1 or 1.2 by then.
I wasn't terrified of it all.
so what about Beverly?
How did you feel Beverly?
Yeah.
She knows all the finances, so sheknows how bad it got financially.
Yeah.
It just, happily got a job.

(32:48):
I also never worried.
We could go live outin the desert for free.
Right.
And you guys were in your late fifties, soJC you were 57 at the time of retirement,
and Beverly, were you close to that age?
She's eight months younger than me.
Yeah,
So she's younger than you, soyou both retired early because
traditional age is 67, so youcouldn't get to your retirement money.

(33:09):
But JC it sounds like the CDs that you hadat Wells Fargo that was safe and secure,
that wasn't subject to the volatility ofthe stock market of 2008, did that help?
And then we were earning pocketchange from the jobs at eight
50 an hour we were putting in.
Yeah, those flattered CDs wasjust the godsend, the way that

(33:29):
had wound up being structured
and that Wells Fargo advisor is the onethat suggested I looking for someplace
to put all this extra money I was making.
He suggested the CDs and soI learned about it from him
and went ahead and did it.
Yeah, it was one of those quirky things.
I feel like it was a godsend for us thatunknown to how pivotal they would become

(33:50):
after he started investing in it, andreally saved our bacon, if you will.
Well, one of the things that I thinkother than selling the Apple stock, it
sounds like selling your home reallyboosted your livable nest egg and
moving into the motor home that's whereyou got in part to the 1.5 million.
Is that true?
the 1.5 million was calculated inDecember of 07', and we had sold

(34:12):
the house by then and I think I hadquit buying individual stocks by
then and had learned of index funds.
I put up a three column spreadsheet.
Wells Fargo's doing this with my money.
I'm doing this with my money andjust started putting in Vanguard
and I was gonna compare the threeperformances to decide which way

(34:33):
I wanted to go with my money.
And I did that formaybe a year and a half.
And I didn't like the Wells Fargo'sperformance and I failed at picking
stocks, but Vanguard was doing prettygood, so I moved everything to Vanguard.
And then you managed to havealso a massive increase in home
equity, if I'm not mistaken, inselling your house in California.
Isn't that correct?.
Bought it for 1 38.

(34:54):
sold it for 7 38.
Yeah.
Oh wow.
So in many ways, you downsize just priorto the crash, increased your nest egg
considerably, taking the harvested equityafter paying for a $250,000 motor home.
And that too peaked your net worth.
You had the protection ofa fixed income CD ladder.

(35:16):
I think we netted 400,000 out ofthe house after we paid off the
existing mortgage and second mortgage.
Okay, so that's part of how you gotto your peak nest egg at the time.
And then I'm amazed that for me, ifI saw my portfolio go from 1.5 to
800,000, I'd have a heart attack.
How come you guys didn't, Imean, you seem so resilient.

(35:37):
I mean, yes, this work,camping was part of it.
You just sort of adjusted as thingswent along without really losing sleep.
Tell our audience how they canweather these volatile storms.
'cause you weatheredone of the biggest ones.
I was confident in myability to earn money.
I didn't know how I was gonna do it,but I've always done it all my life.
Right.
Bounce from job to job and theAir Force, the Navy electronics.

(36:01):
I just always found a way to make it work.
So when this happened, we'lljust figure out, a way to do it.
And some of it, now looking back onthe whole situation, some of it you
don't really recognize exactly howbad it really could have been be
as you're going through it, becauseyou're always covering yourself.

(36:24):
I don't know how to describe it.
I think the confidence in knowing we bothcould get a job anytime we wanted to.
Well, not anymore.
Not anymore, but back then.
So that's a great point.
And that leads me to my next question, jcyou discovered the fire community and, and
we'll talk about how you discovered that,but it does hit the point home that people

(36:48):
were tying earlier, as you guys did.
You were in your late fifties, thatyou have human capital and you both
said you knew you could always makemore money, maybe not going back to
the nine to five, but you knew you hadthe human capital make money, not so
much today, you're in your seventies.
So how did you across the FI movementand you said, yeah, that's what I did.

(37:08):
I started listening to financial podcasts.
Paul Pam was one of my early ones.
And Paul Merriman's podcast.
Choose a Fi got into thatlittle later after that.
When the two of 'em, Johnand Brad were together there.
What about the YNAB guy,because you haven't brought
YNAB up and how that's helped.
That was in 2013 though.
that's a good point, Jesse Meishafounded somewhere in their YNAB

(37:30):
and you are a huge YA believer.
Tell us what that is and how ithelps you, this budgeting software.
I think the main differentiationof j Jesse's program, YNAB
compared to others is the otherstend to record what you did.
Jesse focuses on planning what todo with the money you have What's
coming up next i'm gonna haveto pay for, he's all forecasting

(37:52):
where your money goes and then.
You forecast the extrainto your priorities.
What do I want this money to do for me?
What's the most importantthing in my life?
Is it a cruise?
Is it a new car or groceries,
or is it your kids to college?
This tool lets you plan how tospend your upcoming money and

(38:14):
the money you have right now.
That's what I love about it.
I've got like 30 or 40categories in my YNAB
budget.
Excellent.
And, and for those that may nothave heard of it, YNAB is you need
a budget and it sounds like thetool has worked great for you.
So, at the time that you retired,did you guys do any type of planning
to say, this is how we're going totransition from working to now retiring?

(38:39):
Let's start financially and then let'stalk a little bit about lifestyle.
I did a spreadsheet of what I was makingand what I was spending and what I
had left and what I forecasted I wouldneed to live on in the RV lifestyle.
And I was spending between 65 and70,000 a year in earning 136,000.
So I had a lot of extra money,went into investments and stuff,

(39:02):
and I bought a motorcycle anyway.
So the bottom line of thatforecast for our retirement
life on the, in the RV came to.
Just shy of $30,000 a year.
And so I divided 30,000 into 1.5 million.
And I said, oh, look how many years thislast us, our first year we spent 80,000

(39:23):
Yeah.
But the portfolio was,doing good initially you
Yeah.
'Cause we're in that bull market.
So this is post 2008.
So you got 2009 all the way to 2019and 2020 where it was just up, up, up.
So you were living large, but yourportfolio growth supported it.
started out with 1.5 and at the end of17 years we had spent 2.2 million and

(39:47):
our portfolio was with 1.9 million.
We just recently crossed back overinto $2 million portfolio, but this
past week it's been down, so I haven'tdone an update on my spreadsheet.
I like it sitting there saying 2 million.
you sort of backed into a safewithdrawal rate, or a spend rate of an
average over 2007 to 2024 of 6.879%.

(40:10):
I mean, we talked about 4%.
Some people talk aboutthree and a quarter percent.
We now have Bangin talkingabout 4.7% and other friends of
ours talking about five to six.
With a constructed portfoliothat's maybe a risk parity style,
you managed to have a really highspend rate, how did you do that?
I think that's based on a 50 50 assetallocation, and we retired with an 80 20.

(40:33):
And every five years I'd lowered byfive points to where today the target
is 65, 35, 65 equities, 35 non equities.
forecast of 4% is based onmuch less risky portfolio.
my risky portfolio had paid off.
why I could spend 6.8%safe withdrawal rate.

(40:54):
I mean, you had yearswhere you spent 8% 7%.
I look at this 9% right after the crash.
You're giving me cold sweats here
if you guys have not picked up on ityet, Bill is a little bit risk averse.
Bill, what's your allocation?
Are you 70 30 right now?
75-25.
Well, to share with you how riskaverse we are not, on our second date.

(41:16):
I took her skydiving.
Oh, my gosh.
you,
you, I've got over uh,
500 jumps and she's got over 220
that many jumps.
I've done one That was enough.
you guys are risk takers and you didit so much of riding the bikes and
doing the RV traveling and all of that.
I'm just curious 'cause I feellike you were fired before.

(41:36):
It was cool and before it was an acronym.
So Yeah.
So you're leaving the job early.
Did people at your jobthink you were crazy?
Oh, they threw me agreat retirement party.
This must have been ahundred people at it.
It was wonderful, and my wifeand my boss organized it.
Oh wow.
about that job that I had thatI didn't like and I wanted
to go back to being a tech.
They asked me if you knew anybody, and Isaid, yeah, my last boss at my last job.

(41:59):
So I called her up and I said,Hey Debbie, what are you doing?
She said, not much.
I said, how would you liketo come work at Apple?
So she came in for an interview.
They loved her.
They hired her, and she became my bossfor the rest of the time I was at Apple
and she kept raising my pay I was makingfrom 90 to 136,000 was all thanks to her.
Yeah, that's right.
So go find your boss, hire them, and thenask her for the raises 'cause she's your

(42:22):
friend and it'll work out really wellthat's one way to increase your income.
the lesson in that is you be kind topeople, be willing to help others,
and it just all comes full circle.
So obviously you benefited from that.
Now, as you guys are getting older,you introduced another stream of
income that's social security.
Can you tell us about how youmade your decision on social

(42:44):
security for the both of you?
Would you guess it?
The spreadsheet?
Now we have all these fancysocial security calculators.
Mike Piper has done one that isvery good at helping you predict,
especially in a married couple.
When should I take mine?
When should you take yours?
But the way you did it, which I foundfascinating, was you gave yourself
six options and you, you did not waituntil you were 70 or whoever the,

(43:06):
higher income earner was, till 70.
You figured out that, okay, basedon age 85, if I do one of these
options, this is how much I will havewithdrawn from my social security.
At that point, you looked at the endresult of, okay, I will have taken over
a million dollars with this option.
I've taken only $900,000 with this option,and you decided in a very avant-garde way.

(43:28):
Tell us about that.
That was fascinating.
Yeah, I made a column of what ifwe retired at 62 or 63, 64, 65,
66, 67, and all the way out to 70.
I made all those columns of how muchshe would get and I would get adding
them together, and then I forecastedhow much that would come to over the
period of time till we reached 85,which I figure is a good target for me.

(43:52):
Both my parents died before they got to85, so that's the target I used and I
multiplied that times the age I was at,at the different possible filing dates.
But I learned that filing early,there's some negatives to that
besides the reduced amount and it'sabout restarting it or starting over
or delaying all kinds of reasons.

(44:12):
It was smarter to wait untilfull retirement age, which
for us was 66 back then.
So that's when I decidedpull the trigger 66.8 for me.
'cause I waited for her to get tobe 66 so we could walk down to the
office together and file and shecould file for spousal off of mine.
The point I was leading up to,
you wound up filing kids paid.

(44:34):
Oh, why it didn't go to 70 isbecause those four years in between
all that money that I was gettingfrom social Security, I would not
have to take out of my portfolio.
It could stay and grow I wasmaking on average over the
years, 10% on my portfolio.
So I figured it was smarter to skipthat four years of 8% growth and

(44:56):
leave the money in the portfolioinstead and make 10% on it.
So that was a factor.
None of this was emotional for me though.
was all mathematical,
and then your withdrawal rate wasinteresting because people forget about
the powerful level of social security as alate starter, and you definitely leverage
this because your withdrawal rate on yourportfolio after you took both of your

(45:17):
social securities dropped to 2%, right?
One time.
Yes.
It's popped back up becausewe've done projects.
We bought the house in Mexico for cash.
I borrowed 60 grand from my sisterand another 40 grand she gave me.
'cause she wanted tobuy one of the bedrooms.
And then we had a fight about howyou properly cross the street.

(45:38):
And then she wanted Bev on her side andshe'd been picking on me all day long.
That's what she does.
She's my younger sister.
And so Bev sided with meand that blew her top.
So she ran upstairs, gatheredall her stuff out of her bedroom
and demanded her money back.
And so I gave her the 40,000she gave me for the bedroom.
But the 60 was a loan and we had anagreement and so I stuck with it.

(45:59):
And that was to give her back10 grand a year for six years
interest free until I paid heroff, which I did a few years back.
But we're since gone on cruises togetherand we've RV'd together since then.
passed everything up.
Oh, you're one of the few peopleI know where lending and borrowing
money from family worked out.
So kudos that you're still talking
I
borrowed from my brother-in-law to getout a credit card debt, and I borrowed

(46:22):
from my sister so that I didn't haveto take out so much money that I
was gonna have to pay taxes on it.
I had enough cash, they didn't have topay taxes on the, hundred thousand and
the other, the rest of it, it was $180,000purchase I got from my sister, and then I
had to scrape another 40 to buy her out.
so you're a guy with some strong opinions.
So we had this big law that justpassed on the 4th of July, or it was

(46:43):
signed into law on the 4th of July.
So for seniors like yourselfthey have that new deduction.
it's temporary.
It's temporary.
It's temporary.
So So each of you will get anadditional $6,000 on top of
the regular senior deduction.
Is that gonna help you out a little bitand do you follow stuff like that anymore?
Oh god, do I follow that stuff?

(47:06):
I'm gonna try to stay away from thepolitical aspect of this because Good.
I don't wanna piss off half your viewers.
I'm cognizant of what's goingon there and I haven't seen
the specific details about it.
I know it's temporary, but I don't knowif it's a tax credit or a tax deduction.
There's a difference.
If I don't owe that much money,do they give me their difference?
Owe nothing in taxes?

(47:27):
Is that how it works?
Yeah.
It works very similar tothe standard deduction.
So you get your normal standard deduction,but do not have to itemize to get it is
$6,000 per person over the age of 65.
So it has nothing to doreally with social security.
It's dependent on age.
got income limits.
I think it starts tophase out at, I wanna say,
I saw a 150 mentioned?

(47:47):
I think you're right.
It's about 150.
But just to, to be talking to you, I knowthat you're both over 65 and you could
potentially this additional deduction,which will help your numbers look better.
it does lead me to another question.
As you kind of enter some of theselater years, what does your estate
planning and legacy look like?

(48:08):
Kids, grandkids, charity.
we have our wills in place and I havethree grandchildren and two daughters.
And so I think we're giving itto the daughters, aren't we?
No.
Logan's not the
grandkids.
Logan's included?
No.
Oh, oh,
the girls.
The older, yeah.
Oh yeah.
older kids.
That's what we decided to do.
I think we're give a
quarter million to each daughter.

(48:30):
Daughter, and then they cando with it as they please.
Right.
But I'm not gonna give them anymore than that, I don't think.
They're doing great.
They're out of debt.
They have mortgages, butthey have retirement plans.
They're putting money into,they're doing well, both of them.
So don't see the need to rescue them,but nice little quarter million didn't

(48:51):
hurt, but we plan on spending it.
We still got cruises ahead of us
you know?
Okay, jc, you are a numbers guy.
You are a spreadsheet guy.
You communicate with your wife Beverly,about everything, letting her know
where you are, but you're the manager.
You're doing these withdrawals.
How, and it's not necessarily simple foryou, it's simple, but what about her?

(49:15):
What happens if you pass first andshe has to take over the portfolio?
What kind of thingshave you done for that?
Well, this is mainly a cautionary tale.
I started thinking about whathappens if I go before her?
How's she gonna take overwhat I do with our money?
And, the RMD situation seemed to be ideal.

(49:36):
They figure out how much you have, howmuch that's divides up over the year
to meet your obligation for requiredminimum draw, and they send you a check.
So I wanted to use that strategywith the rest of our portfolio.
However, a couple months beforeI started thinking about this,
we were invited by Vanguard toconvert our index funds into ETFs.

(50:01):
resisted this for years, but it seemslike it's gonna be okay and it's a, basis
point's cheaper in the expense ratio.
So I did it to my portfolio,my, , brokerage account, and then.
I started thinking howcould she get money?
So I called them up and I asked aboutcan we automate like the RMDA certain
amount to come outta the portfolio everymonth and go into her checking account.

(50:25):
So all she has to deal withis her checking account.
Well, once you're, once you convertto EF ETFs, they can't do that.
They don't have the procedures,the mechanisms, the plan in
place to automate from ETFs.
Had I left it in index funds, they'dhave been glad to do that for me.
Hmm.
So if you're thinking about leavinga easy method for your wife to

(50:50):
live with after you've gone.
Stick with the index funds, at leastfor now, and maybe down the road,
Vanguard might come up with a procedurewhere they can automate sending a
check every month out of the ETFs,but right now they won't do it.
That's interesting, Beverly,how do you feel about this?
Not that we want either of you to die,but you know, this is something we

(51:10):
have to plan for and my wife doesn't.
I inform her, but she doesn'treally know the management.
Details and our plan is really to probablyat that point, establish a relationship
with a financial advisor so they cantake over creating the paycheck for her.
What about you?
Yeah, I have a little, I guessI have a little bit of concern,

(51:33):
but I was thinking in my mind,okay, the portfolio's big enough.
I know how much I need to take.
I can do the step about getting myself.
The money into my, checking account.
That part, it's all the other stuffof managing the, decisions to make
depending on what's happening with themarket or, do I need to, move something?

(51:56):
It's all that stuff that I,Am not comfortable about.
And as far as our spreadsheetthing, it is a good tool.
I know how to use it and we'llprobably continue to use our own
little personal spreadsheet thing.
You mean wine app?
I mean wine nap.
Yes.
So.
Long term I have still have a concern,you know, and I, and the concern of

(52:21):
what happens if my brain decides toreally, really, really go w wacko.
I, we have to get someone as a backup.
And, my
daughter has agreed to, my youngestdaughter has agreed to be the executive.
Of our state.
Right.
So
I might lean on her to be theexecutor of it when it's just death.
That's, that's what I'm,hoping she's a sharp cookie.

(52:42):
Because we don't, we don'tthink about cognitive decline.
You've had your head injuries andit isn't just about dying first.
It's about, say jcs mind.
Leave this world before and, Then youhave to flip and take care of him.
So there's many aspects involvedin premorbid, estate planning that,
people don't necessarily think of.
And that's where potentially assessingyour finances with a financial

(53:05):
advisor who's got these blind spotsor nuances, that you may not have
thought of, in the front of their mind.
So we, we definitely are.
Proponents of DIY, but themajority of the population does
engage with a financial advisor.
And we've had episodes about how tofind the right financial advisor for,
say, an isolated, project to helpyou create or recreate your plan.

(53:31):
So don't think you can necessarily dothis alone for the rest of your life.
No, and I agree with that.
And, if you have a relationship,built up with maybe your tax
guy, I thought about that.
I can lean on him.
A little bit if I havea question or something.
Unfortunately, the, the smart tax guypassed away some years back and my sister

(53:54):
hired a young kid and she's bringing himup to speed in the tax angle of things.
But right now, I think Iknow more than he does.
So you,
Guys were not only the original FI beforeFI existed, you guys are the original
Die with Zero you're gonna live your bestretirement life and the legacy is planned
in, but it's not gonna be everythingbecause you wanna spend it on your life.

(54:15):
Is that correct?
Right, exactly.
Yeah.
what's interesting too with regards tothis is you mentioned somewhere, and
circling back to the tax picture, you hadseveral years where you paid zero tax.
Is
We kept our withdrawals from ourportfolio as long-term capital gains
and as long as you drew less than afterthe standard deduction, I think it was
like 65,000, 75,000, something likethat, which your reported income then

(54:39):
your long-term capital gains was zero.
And so we lived off that portfolio,pulled money out of there, and
paid no taxes on it for 10 years.
So you're doing a littletax gain harvest thing.
from the
I did some of that too.
I had room in there to do that too.
I sold Apple and bought it back at ahigher price to lower my cost basis.
so . Are you leaving anything to thegrandkids or just your two daughters?

(55:01):
Right now we're leaving it to the parents.
We could change our mindas the kids get older.
we have five 20 nines forall the grandchildren.
It's about 65 grand in there now.
Yeah.
And we'll just see how it goes, butyeah, we wanted to let the daughters
figure out it's gonna be needed the most.
And I'm assuming it's gonnabe the kids depending yeah.

(55:23):
If they're anything like theirparents, they won't need it.
That is really wonderful to hear.
So do you have a certain account thatyou plan to use for inheriting that might
be a better way to inherit than others?
Like for instance, yourbrokerage accounts?
If they get the brokerage accounts,they'll get a step up in basis
so they don't pay any taxes.
Right.
That's probably the smarter way to go.

(55:44):
now we're living off our Social securityand RMD and we're not taking any taxes
out of any of our draws from the brokerageaccount, which is four to 5,000 a month
on top of the Social Security and the RMD.
Not paying taxes on SocialSecurity, not paying taxes on
the capital gains we take out.
But I am having them withhold 30%of my RMD and send it to the IRS

(56:06):
every time they send me a check.
IRS is getting three or bucks amonth, and I'm getting a 1,070.
Out of my RMD.
'Cause initially when we gotsocial security, I had to
start paying quarterlies.
Had to save up the money in my checkingaccount and my tax account would take it
out every quarter and send it to the IRS.
I didn't like that.
So now I'm having it takenout for me from my RMD check.

(56:28):
that's again, it's somethingthat we need to learn.
We're probably gonna get money back.
Isn't that incredible?
How you manage taxes where you can payzero and based on how you withdraw things.
'cause a tax bill is your biggest bill andfocusing on how you manage that will allow
you to spend more money in retirement.
one thing that is important too thatwe are gonna talk about in future
episodes is how you construct yourretirement portfolio different than you

(56:53):
constructed your accumulation portfolio.
Is there anything special you did orthings that you changed in moving from
accumulation to the retirement drawdownportfolio and how you constructed it?
I've worked on my asset allocationwhere, like I said, I lowered
it five points about every fiveyears, so that was part of it.
a tough pot spot right now though,for rebalancing because I have

(57:15):
rebalanced in the tax shelteredaccounts as much as I can.
The brokerage account hasthe bulk of the equities.
So now if I go to rebalance, I'm realizinggains I'm gonna have to pay taxes on.
So is it worth it?
Rebalancing to get back to73 27 I've been afraid of
paying taxes just to rebalance.

(57:35):
if you plan to have the brokerageaccount go to your daughters, would you
then make the allocation a little bitdifferent if you know that it's set up
be inherited by the younger generation.
No, I hadn't considered doing that.
The 5 29 accounts are all 80 20 also.
the interesting thing that peopletalk about days, Michael Kitsis

(57:55):
for example, is that as we age andsay move into our eighties, which
generation are we investing for?
Are we investing for ourselvesat our 65 35 allocation, or is
there a portion of our portfoliothat we can invest for the future
generation in a more aggressive way?
Have you ever given thought to that?
That's called a reverse glide path.
No, I'm not doing futureplanning for the next generation.

(58:19):
I'm making sure that we have what we needand can do what we want, and whatever's
left, they get a maximum of 250 a piece.
The rest of it, we haven'tfigured out where it's going yet.
this is good because in the FI movement,people have a hard time learning to spend
after they've accumulated their save,save, save and they can't flip the switch.
It seems like you guys have had noproblem doing that at all, especially

(58:42):
with these withdrawal rates of six to 9%.
Why is it that there was noproblem flipping the switch between
being a saver and a spender?
I think my earlier days I spenttill the paycheck was gone.
I wasn't concerned about it.
When I'm in the military, I knew anotherpaycheck would come, and when I was out
of the military, jobs were being offeredto me while I was working at other places.

(59:03):
I was turning down jobs.
So I never worried about a living, Ithink I just reverted to that mindset.
When things were dependentupon my portfolio.
I said, we'll figure it out.
It'll be fine.
Spending money.
You brought up, we went onthree cruises last year.
We did a two week mexican eclipsecruise for a two-hour eclipse
Then we did an eight day low carbcruise, a keto cruise to The Bahamas,

(59:28):
and then we did a 22 day cruise.
It was after a 10 and a 12 put.
back to back to Iceland,Greenland, and norway.
Shoot I need to behanging out with you guys.
This year we're putting in artificialturf around our house for 17,000
you're still in California, right?
no,
we're in South Dakota.
We have not been living inCalifornia since, since we moved.

(59:51):
Since we left.
Since we left in the motor home.
Have not been back
except for visits with family.
Yeah.
Gotcha.
So is there any particular reason whyyou decided not to settle in California?
High taxes.
Too many people.
Just everything.
Yeah.
And one of the things we wanted todo when we bought the motor home,

(01:00:11):
driving was that do we want to beour forever place, if you will.
And we visited all 50 states.
We had to fly
Wow.
but the rest of 'em, we drove to
at least once.
I just love it.
Like, you guys are making me want toget to my seventies or I wanna be like
you guys when I get to my seventies.
But I do have a questionaround care planning.

(01:00:33):
Have you guys put any thought into that?
We don't think it'sfinancially sound for us.
We could be guessing wrong on that,but it's a lot of money up front
and they have all kinds of rules andregulations and things they won't pay for.
like going with Medicare Advantageinstead of old-fashioned Medicare.
You just never know if they're gonnareally come through when you need it.
And we have at least right now, enoughmoney that if one of us ends up in

(01:00:56):
long-term care, we can pay for it.
We could take care of it on our own.
Our living in Mexico, we've realizedhow inexpensive it is down there for
medical treatment and for elder care.
So we are selling our house downthere and moving 10 miles away to
a community that offers elder care.
Bev's in a position where she'shaving some physical issues and
she had a couple brain injuriesthat has affected her memory.

(01:01:18):
So they have memory treatmentdown there and they have physical
therapy and acupuncture, massages,hot pools sit in sounds great.
So we're selling our house in Mexicoand we're gonna buy another one in this
community 10 miles outside of town.
And we're hoping they'll takecare of us in our old age.
We're gonna get to the age where we'renot gonna like driving from Mexico

(01:01:40):
to South Dakota every year, a year.
amazing.
gonna have to slow down and wemay end up doing that in that
retirement community in Mexico.
Yeah.
I'm always curious tohear about those things.
And when I ask the question, I purposelyleave out the word insurance because a
long-term care planning situation doesn'thave to include the insurance, but most
people think immediately, it's insurance.

(01:02:01):
No.
It's like, what is your plan?
And you guys have an amazing plan.
Who wouldn't wanna hang out inMexico at this awesome place
that you're talking about?
So I'm always curious about that.
It UNESCO heritage site, and Traveling& Leisure magazine just rated it as the
number one retirement place in the world.
San Miguel de Leyende
Yeah.
And then how does Medicare workwith healthcare costs in Mexico?

(01:02:23):
not,
it doesn't work.
you're, you're self-funding, youmedically arbitrage, but the costs
are so low that you can self-fundthat without needing insurance.
Do you have travel insurancethat helps you cover that?
For emergency air evacuation.
If we get something really seriouslike a cancer or heart attack or
something, put us on a plane andfly us to wherever we wanna go.
In the us in the states.

(01:02:43):
Yeah.
So we can get back on Medicareand I'm continuing to pay the
Medicare premiums till I die.
We need that Medicare backupbecause , you never know what
you're gonna get Disease wise,
it doesn't me that you did yourresearch with this, so that's why I
wanted to hear what you had to say.
Now as, we round this out, welooked at these letters that
you've been writing to your nephew.

(01:03:04):
To me that's a part of your legacy.
Like, what do you want your nephewand the younger generation that
are in your life, your daughters,your grandkids, your nephew, like,
what you wanna leave with them?
the monetary part, but what lessonswould you hope that they would've
learned either watching you or thingsthat are important to you that you

(01:03:24):
hope that will be instilled in them?
Number one is manage your money.
Be aware of where everything'sgone and set your priorities, set
your spending to your prioritiesand what you want outta life.
And number two is whatever actuary you canscrape together, put it in broad based,
low cost, highly diversified index funds.
Do you have any advice for the nextgeneration based on your experience?

(01:03:47):
Oh my,
well, I'll share you.
One of her, she had like an $80,000retirement plan and she managed
to get it into a self-directedkind of thing, and then she loaned
it to her boss at a restaurant.
He made one or two paymentsand then declared bankruptcy
and she lost all the money.
that was a big booboo.
Yeah.
I trusted wrong thing to do.

(01:04:08):
And to make things even worse,I didn't know enough about taxes
so I had never paid taxes on
She went years without filing.
Yeah.
When we got married
and then I wasn't making any money.
I didn't think I needed to, which bringsme into my own little entrepreneurship.
One of the things I did after therestaurant, which we didn't really talk

(01:04:31):
about is I made wedding cakes for years.
This is during our divorce.
Yeah.
During our separation.
12 years.
Anyway that I was not savvy on needing topay taxes and all the jobs I had, I didn't
think I needed to pay taxes on them.
They were,
anyway, so brother-in-law is a tax guy.
He got all her information together.

(01:04:51):
and Gone out to find out and lostaccounts, things they solicit you once
in a while to, put in your informationand they'd hunt for lost accounts.
Well, they found that account ofhers where she lost that 80,000.
So anyway, we gave all this informationto him and he came up with a 12
or $14,000 back tax obligationthat we had to take care of.
a decade ago.
We got out of that

(01:05:12):
Yeah, We live and learn.
And you guys went througha lot of adversities.
Like this was not a smooth road.
You've been through multiple divorces.
Two you've been married twice.
Bev took you back the second time.
The second time had a lot of debt.
You guys have made your mistakesand things like that, but you still
manage to retire early, live agreat life, do all this traveling.

(01:05:35):
So to our late starters,that's who we focus on.
And your story has been extraordinary
Get outta debt quickly.
Don't get back into debt.
If ever, if you can avoidit and invest wisely.
And for me wisely is low cost index funds.
Number one rule is, is that nomatter what you put on your credit

(01:05:56):
card, you pay it every month twice.
A I pay a all
off twice a month,
pays them off twice a month.
And if you're buying a bigger purchase,you figure out how to take outta
your savings to pay for it, not usecredit card as your savings account.
this is great advice.
I mean, as Jackie said,you've overcome adversity,

(01:06:18):
Divorced and remarried becauseyou found each other again.
You lost money in personal loansthere were many things along the way.
'cause the path is not linear.
It's very variable, you've adaptedthe one thing you've learned
again and can teach our audiences.
You've gotta adapt tothe changes in your plan.

(01:06:39):
There's no plan that'sgonna survive 20 years.
Every year.
You readjust according tothe circumstances of your
finances at that time.
a moving target and think our audiencehas learned quite a bit from you
about the realities of accumulation,decumulation and retirement.
You're living your best lives.

(01:07:01):
You've struggled, butyou've enjoyed each other.
You've done it together.
And I'm just very impressedwith this story, Jackie.
Keep track of everything, youwon't know what you need to adjust.
And once your eyes openyou had all that debt.
Like it just looked like youjust moved so fast, like the win.
Thank you for opening up to us.
Thank you for sharing all of your numbers.

(01:07:22):
was such a pleasure.
So much fun to talk toboth of you uh, Bev and jc.
These guys have taught me aboutthe 6.89879 withdrawal rate.
Uh,
and the Die with Zero approach.
Their portfolio constructionallows for this.
Their adaptability allows for this.
jcs should be to writea book about his story.

(01:07:42):
Share the numbers.
It doesn't have to be a fancy book.
It can be a book let, because peopledon't realize and they follow all
these dogmas in the FI movement,but there's only a personal plan.
And your personal plan tellsfolks that, you know what?
The 3.25% rule, it may betoo conservative for me.
The 4% rule is based ona conservative portfolio.

(01:08:04):
I mean, we'll publish if you allow usto your spreadsheets and link and links
to it so that people can go over thisand find detail and say, you know what?
This is what I need to do with my money.
This is how I can live my best life.
I don't need to leave the world with therichest man or woman in the graveyard.
I can use my hard work to live my bestlife into my seventies and eighties.

(01:08:27):
You guys are vibrant examples ofhow to live a robust retirement.
So thank you for being here with us today.
It's been fun.
Thank you both so much.
Love listening to you anddelighted to meet you.
It's face to face.
Aw, thank you.
Alright, we'll see you guysnext time on Catching Up to FI.

(01:08:50):
Alright, adios.
Bye bye.

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Late Starter Real Numbers: 1.5 M ➜ 864 K — And Back Again | J. C. & Bev Webber | 163

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}Late Starter Real Numbers: 1.5 M ➜ 864 K — And Back Again | J. C. & Bev Webber | 163