September 7, 2025 • 61 mins
Darrow Kirkpatrick retired from a 29-year career in civil and software engineering in April 2011 at the age of 50 and started the blog 'Can I Retire Yet' that same year. The Blog was one of the first in the FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) space and focuses on the personal finance needs of anyone who is thinking about retirement or early retirement. He joins us for a deeply human masterclass on retiring, drawing down without drama, and pursuing hard goals the slow, sane way. In this episode, Darrow shares with us:
- The origins of his blog 'Can I Retire Yet?'
- How a nervous breakdown derailed his career
- His six-year, section-by-section completion of the Colorado Trail on forearm crutches
- The inspiration behind his new book 'Two Sticks One Path'
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Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
(00:02):
The month I retired, some peopleat work expressed some questions
like, how did you do this?
Are you sure you'regonna have enough money?
And so I wrote this sort of whitepaper describing my thinking process.
That was the spring of that year.
And then I took kind of six monthsoff just to decompress from work.
But I, I had always wanted towrite and possibly write a book.
And I think it was late in theyear 2011 that I thought, well,
(00:25):
I should try this blogging thing.
And I wrote a few articles or posts,and did a few more, and then got some
publicity, started getting some traffic.
Got interviewed by FarnushTarabi pretty early on.
The Yahoo News did a video.
They sent a film crew to our housethat brought thousands of new readers.
And at that point it was like,yeah, okay, this is what I should
(00:46):
be doing with my time right now.
I've prepared for it my whole lifebecause I've done many backpacking trips,
many long overnight rock climbs even.
I know the dangers.
I know what to do about them.
I have the best equipment I can buystill, when you're on your own, you're
the one that has to solve the problem.
If something really serious happens and.
(01:10):
I was always uber, uber careful for thepieces of the trail I did by myself.
I literally slow my pace down.
I take time to make decisionsabout hopping over rocks and
logs and stream crossings.
Being very deliberate, knowingthat I can't afford to twist an
ankle or get myself hurt out here.
(01:30):
I don't like taking big risks.
I'd rather take a smallpiece, evaluate how that went.
Perfect the system.
Do a little bit more and thenfinally on the trail the last year,
2021, I did about half the trailover a few months, one summer.
So I got some of the flavor ofwhat it would've been like to be a
through hiker, but I'm not, as yousay, I did it in sections, no more
(01:51):
than four or five days at a time.
I can't imagine what it'slike to be a through hiker.
But when I touched that mileposton the very last segment, it was
unbelievable to just stand there.
I was by myself in this huge plateauin the middle of Colorado remote spot
and just reflect back over the sixyears and the almost 500 miles I'd
covered to have achieved that goal.
(02:44):
Hello and welcome backto Catching Up to Fi.
We're on a mental and physicaljourney today, Jackie.
We realize that life is broken up intosegments and parts, and it's not smooth.
It can be bumpy.
There are peaks and valleys.
And today we're gonna talk aboutsome of those peaks and valleys
with an expert on retirement and thepeaks and valleys leading up to it,
(03:08):
and thereafter, Darrow Kirkpatrick.
Will you do us the favor, Jackie,of introducing our guests?
Yeah.
And you know what?
I think I'm gonna call him OGExpert and FI person 'cause he
is been around for a long time.
So Darrell Kirkpatrick, he retiredfrom a 29 year career in civil
and software engineer in April of.
2011 at the age of 50.
(03:30):
Now that's kind of afamiliar FI person, right?
Well that same year he founded thepopular blog, Can I Retire Yet?
And it's focused on the personalfinance needs of anyone who is
thinking about retirement orearly retirement like he did.
The blog won a Plutus award forBest Retirement Blog in 2019.
(03:52):
Darryl's personal finance booksinclude, Can I Retire Yet?
How to Make the Biggest FinancialDecisions of of the rest of your life.
And the other one was Retiring Sooner (04:00):
How to Accelerate Your Financial Independence.
So for Darrow, time in nature iswhat really spoke to him, and that's
one reason he's always been down.
Drawn to trails.
He's been immersed in hiking,biking, and technical rock climbing.
(04:20):
For five decades, he dreamt of completinga long distance hiking trail to
prove he's at home in the wilderness.
As an adult, he's sacrificed thatdream and dedicated himself to
raising a family and managing softwaredevelopment at a high pressure startup.
Then a nervous breakdownderails his career.
(04:43):
With the support of family and mindfulmeditation he recovered after a
year long sabbatical working again.
He reached financial independenceand retired early to Santa Fe, New
Mexico in the Southern Rockies.
At last, he could pursue his hiking dream.
He chose the Colorado Trail becauseof its proximity, beauty, and rugged
(05:08):
challenge, and he, he shared all ofthis in a memoir called Two Sticks One
Path, our Journey Beyond Fear on theColorado Trail, and it chronicles a
six year section of hiking on crutches.
So Darryl believes it's important totake care of yourself, smell the roses,
(05:30):
and not sacrifice too much life qualityin the present for an unknown future.
So Dara, welcome to Catching To FI
Thanks Jackie.
Great to be here.
So Darrow, you retired at 50.
Why?
I did not enjoy my corporatejob, at least at the end.
And honestly, the outdoor sportswere the thing that always brought me
(05:52):
to life and made life worth living,and I wanted more time to do that.
And we had enough money.
We lived frugally and modestlyand saved diligently, and I didn't
have to wake up and run conferencecalls, so I decided not to do that.
Do something different.
So did you always know that?
Did you grow up frugal andwith sort of an eye on finance?
(06:13):
I did not.
What was the reason that you found thispath as opposed to the traditional path
of the paycheck to paycheck consumption,lifestyle that so many Americans and
so many late starters succumb to.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I think I do have tocredit my parents somewhat.
They were frugal.
My father was a military officer,so he didn't make piles of money.
(06:34):
He didn't really have an option tosave up a great deal, although he did.
I guess he retired aftera 20, 25 year career.
My mom was very frugal, so I didhave those habits and behaviors.
I was lucky my wife also is asimilar mindset and then the
things we enjoyed most in life, thecamping, the hiking, the climbing,
(06:56):
the biking, those are dirt cheap.
And we didn't get that much pleasureout of fancy cars or big houses.
And so it was just kindof a natural path for us.
So when you retired Daryl,what was your number?
Like these days it's 25 timesyour expenses or whatever, but
you was in the tech field, ahighly paid field and all that.
(07:16):
So I'm wondering, were you makinggobs of money and a tech millionaire
or were you still a modest income andthings are kind of on the average side.
Yeah, it's not a super flashy career.
I did work for a software company, butwe made civil engineering software.
This was not dotcom type stuff with, sevendigit salaries or anything like that.
(07:38):
I did have a little bit of ownership inthe company enough that when I sold it,
it let me pay off our house in Tennessee.
But again, we're nottalking major bucks here.
We were frugal.
We did invest intelligently and Imostly used the retirement calculators
to get a comfort level and we were inthat neighborhood of the 4% rule 25
(07:59):
x, but I was also using calculatorsto project how our savings would fare.
And that all gave me thecomfort level to retire in 2011.
Really important footnote.
My wife was a public school teacher.
She worked several more years and wegot retirement health benefits from her.
I could not have done it otherwise.
We had enough money, but we didnot have a healthcare option
(08:20):
without her retirement benefits.
Yeah, a big deal.
And was that pre Affordable Care Act?
Let's see.
Affordable Act was 2010 ish, I think.
So it was right around thattime, but it was very new.
I distinctly remember not feelingconfident about pulling the plug in my
paycheck and throwing myself on this newlaw that everyone was still figuring out.
(08:42):
Yeah, it was a much better feelingto have her retirement benefits
through Blue Cross Blue Shield.
I knew that was gonna be therefor us, and it has been until
I went on Medicare recently.
Did you suffer from the one moreyear, two more year syndrome?
Was it hard?
You said it's hard to pull that plug?
How did you manage that?
Was the math enough?
I did suffer from that a little bit.
I actually got prettyclose the great recession.
(09:05):
2008, nine timeframe?
I was really close to pullingthe plug then, according to the
numbers, and I probably rightfullysuffered from, maybe I should work
a few more years just to be sure.
Our son wasn't in college yet.
But then by 2011, my own financialknowledge had increased, the
calculators had gotten better.
My readiness to leave the corporatejob was at an all time high.
(09:29):
So everything came together.
I had no doubt at that point.
And so you mentioned retirementcalculators and you talk about them
in your book, can I Retire Yet?
Which is sort of a personal journey,a personal manifest on how you manage
the decisions in leading to thatand then you shared it with others.
Are the calculators you use still validor are there better ones now that we
should encourage our audience to use ifthey want to DIY, their own retirement?
(09:53):
Yeah, prana was available at that time.
And I have to say I don't stay upto speed on this area any longer now
that Chris has taken over the blog.
So probably people should do theirown research, but I know that
the, Can I Retire at blog featuresprana, which I've always thought
highly of, and then New Retirement,which I guess has been renamed.
(10:14):
And so those would probably bemy starting points these days.
Yeah, we support Bolden, which isthe new brand that It took over
for New Retirement and Steve Chang.
I use that software and I thinkit's critical to help you reassure
yourself that not only are you on thepath, but give you an idea of when
you will be at the financial finishline, even if it's not your mental,
(10:35):
physical emotional finish line.
so why don't we talk a little bit aboutthe blog since you mentioned it, because
I believe it was before its time.
So had you retired when you started theblog or the blog came after you retired?
The month I retired, some peopleat work expressed some questions
like, how did you do this?
Are you sure you'regonna have enough money?
And so I wrote this sort of whitepaper describing my thinking process.
(10:59):
That was the spring of that year.
And then I took kind of six monthsoff just to decompress from work.
But I, I had always wanted towrite and possibly write a book.
And I think it was late in theyear 2011 that I thought, well,
I should try this blogging thing.
And I wrote a few articles or posts,and did a few more, and then got some
publicity, started getting some traffic.
(11:21):
Got interviewed by FarnushTarabi pretty early on.
The Yahoo News did a video.
They sent a film crew to our housethat brought thousands of new readers.
And at that point it was like,yeah, okay, this is what I should
be doing with my time right now.
Oh wow, you have to try
to get us the video so we can
include it.
Because now you've got CNBC Make Itdoes a whole series on FI with the
(11:42):
video crews and stuff, and I thinkit's Market Watch and all that.
So I haven't seen that one,
yeah.
I have a copy.
I don't know if it's online, butI'll send you whatever I can.
Oh yeah, would love to see it becauseagain, you were before your time, so was
Mr. Mini mustache around at the time?
Do you remember,
yeah, but he was small, I met himand hung out with him at FinCon
in about 2013 or something.
(12:04):
I got to know him, but it wasbefore his site really took off.
feel like to be an OG on the front endof this new wave of early retirement?
And it seemed like the great recessionsort of promoted this, the bull market
encouraged this and a lot of FIreesrode that bull market in an ongoing
fashion into their early retirement,and in some ways you got lucky.
(12:26):
Did luck play a role in this for you?
Yes.
I've had very fortunate timing interms of my investment portfolio.
There's no doubt about it.
Other timeframes, this wouldn't be ashappy as story now, but my net worth
has grown throughout my retirement.
We really haven't had serious moneyconcerns and have been able to coast
a bit based on the stock market.
(12:46):
And one of the thing people that arein this movement have trouble with now
is flipping the switch on spending.
They watch their net worth grow and it'slike, okay, we now have Die with zero
and sort of making sure that we takefull advantage of our years and then
pass our wealth on to the next generationin our lives as we're still living.
(13:07):
Are you able to do that?
Do you feel like you have too muchmoney at some point because you aren't
spending it necessarily as fully asyou would because of fears of ending
up under a bridge eating cat food?
Well, there's some flavors of that.
Yes.
I would say that we feel verycomfortable with most projections.
(13:28):
The big question mark is long-termcare and healthcare, and that's on our
minds because we've seen it with ourparents, and both my wife and I have
conditions are a little unpredictablewhat's our end of life picture gonna
cost us if that's not astronomical?
We have all the money in the world andwe should be traveling internationally
and buying fancy cars and doing stuffthat we don't really care to do.
(13:51):
But I would say we're a littlebit cautious just because of the
possible long-term care scenario.
So Darrell, about the long-term care.
Your plan is to just self-pay.
Like do you have a long-term careinsurance policy or anything?
I don't, I've written acouple articles on that.
Every time I dug into it, I justfelt like this was not a good value.
It was expensive and it covers sortof the medium timeframe that we can
(14:15):
self-insure for four or five years.
We can self-insure for 10 years.
It's if one of us needs nursing home carefor 20 years, we might have a problem.
And no long-term care insurancehelps you with those kinds of
numbers that I've ever seen.
and then the evolution of portfoliossort of plays into this too.
Can you tell us a little bitabout your accumulation phase?
(14:35):
Did you discover indexfunds on the front end?
And how did you manageyour growth portfolio?
Because there, a lot of our latestutterers are in that and they
want to see growth as quickly aspossible within market constraints.
What did you do in the accumulation phase?
Honestly, I was pretty conservative,probably more conservative
than the average FI approachwould dictate these days.
(14:58):
Jim Collins with his 90% or more instocks I could never stomach that and
there wasn't great information back whenI was in my important accumulation phase.
So I pretty much targeted 50/50portfolio bonds and stocks.
And I followed an investment newsletterby a guy who's long passed Richard
Young, but he who was a big fan of indexfunds, he was a big fan of low cost
(15:21):
investing and he was very conservative.
He preached more or lessa 50/50 asset allocation.
And the good thing about that is itkept me from jumping off the bridge
during the dotcom blow up, for example.
And back when there was less support,less information around FI, it kept
me saving, kept me from doing anythingcrazy, selling off at the worst time.
(15:42):
So how long was your journey?
You retired at 50.
So was your accumulation phasefunctionally 25, 30 years?
I have a cool chart.
I can't put my fingers on it.
It shows my net worth.
I started using Quicken in like1991, and I have a cool chart of
my net worth from that year on.
It grew pretty steadily and grewfaster in the final corporate
(16:04):
years where he had a higher salary.
Well, it goes to show that you cando this if you're in the long term
without losing sleep and even ina 50 to 70% equity side portfolio.
Did you stick to the simplephilosophy or did it get complicated?
And did you make anymistakes along the way?
Oh, I certainly made mistakes.
Some of my first investments I used afinancial advisor one of my business
(16:26):
associates used and recommended,and he sold me some expensive funds
that I then sold very quickly.
I did a little bit ofdabbling in dotcom stocks.
I remember buying a Red Hat, a Linuxcompany and watching it quadruple
and not selling and watching it goall the way back down and barely get
out of it without losing any money.
(16:46):
But those were small sums that I playedwith the big, the six digit amounts
that I needed to retire went into indexfunds, mostly Vanguard funds for the
most part, left them alone and just letthem do their thing over the long haul.
I think that's kind of the cyclethat a lot of us go through.
It's better to make those mistakeswhen we don't have much money.
Because I had started trying toinvest during the dotcom bubble.
(17:09):
I'm sure I had Red Hat, I hadsomething called salon.com I think
I put a thousand dollars in it.
It went all the way down to $80.
I'm like, well, I finally soldit and said, Hey, I can go get
dinner, or something like that.
But it's probably best that wemake those mistakes when we have
$500 versus 5 million or whatever.
So I definitely feel that.
(17:29):
So with the blog, at what point did youcome to the conclusion that you were.
Kind of done with it.
You had said all you needed to say,and were you going to just end the
blog or was the intention was justto hand it over to Chris or bring
him on board to mostly manage it?
I was really lucky that hekind of appeared in my life
(17:50):
and appeared on the blog.
I think he did some guest posts,maybe he interviewed me for his
own blog that he had at the time.
We were both climbers.
We really hit it off just personally andthen in terms of our financial philosophy.
But I was starting to run outta steam.
It had been about 10 years.
And write by learning.
I learned stuff and I write aboutwhat I learned, and I pretty much
(18:12):
learned what I needed to get throughthis phase of my financial life.
And I felt some frustration.
I was getting maybe more interestfrom readers that I thought were
really well off and were spendingtheir retirement trying to fine
tune their taxes and estate plans.
And I felt like all of us should geton and do something more interesting
(18:32):
with our lives than just that.
That is very interesting andimportant at a certain stage.
But for me, I got to a point where Ipretty much had the finances dialed in.
I could see health issues and energyissues coming up with my aging.
And I wanted to get on and dowhat really mattered to me.
And fortunately, I was able tohand the blog off to a great
(18:54):
person to carry on the tradition.
And Chris has done really well with it.
Yeah, that's interesting.
That'll be a great segue intothe next phase of life for you.
But before we do that, I don'twanna lose track of the financial,
because one thing that is not talkedabout enough in this space is a
(19:15):
transition to a drawdown portfolio.
And how do we structure that differently?
We're all about accumulation.
And drawdown is a more complex beast,and in some ways you need a more diverse
approach to it so that you aren'tsuccumbing to sequence of returns
risk or early drawdown catastrophe.
How did you manage that?
(19:36):
I don't have a great answer andthat's probably one reason I got
to a point where I was startingto run on steam on the blog.
And I wish I had once envisioned my thirdfinancial book was gonna be all about
the drawdown the distribution phase.
And I did do some original research.
I looked at trying to draw down assetsbased on what the Cape Ratio was doing.
(19:58):
So the idea being you're tryingto pull out the assets that had
grown the most and keep yourselffrom selling stuff that was down.
And so I modeled withdrawal strategiesbased on what Cape was doing and
got some indications that yeah,this might be the better approach.
And it's loosely what I've followedmyself, but none of it ever got to the
(20:22):
point that I was confident in writingabout it or telling other people that this
is how they should manage their money.
I guess the basic rule of thumbI've followed is try to sell
my assets in a balanced way.
Not try to predict the market andnot try to do it in reaction to
the market, but honestly, it's beenad hoc for me and I don't have the
ultimate solution to that question.
(20:43):
how do you create your paycheckand do you do it monthly?
Do you have a bucket strategy?
Do you draw from your fixed income assetsand try and protect your equities alone?
And you sell equities, howdoes it feel to do that?
Yeah, it's been a little bitof all of the above strategy.
Also throwing in, we've got aninheritance in the middle of this which
has obviously eased our cash flow.
(21:04):
Part of the inheritance was an annuitythat my mom bought that I would never
recommend, but the fact is we owned it, sowe're getting an income stream from that.
I would say rest of it has beenclosest to a bucket strategy where
I would tend to sell, I'd sayroughly at six month intervals.
And trying to always top off we haveprobably two years of cash or short
(21:26):
term bonds on hand, so trying to topthat off every six months, doing my best
to pull assets out in a balanced way.
Yeah, and again, I wish I couldgive you a better formula.
If I had one, I'd write about it.
it sounds like, Darryl, you don'tthink it needs to be that complicated.
There's a lot of people that talkabout draw down and they get really
deep in the woods with it and theseprojections and all these lines of
(21:51):
Monte Carlo simulation and all of that.
So do you think we overcomplicate thatpart of it now that you're in draw down?
A little bit.
I think that stuff's really useful formaking the decision that I probably
have enough that it's probably gonnalast through all these scenarios.
But I have to say my personal experiencegetting into retired life, life is
always throwing you changes and whateverformula or plan you think you have , more
(22:16):
money will show up one month and thenthere's an expense the next month.
I've found it hard to makethat to automate that process
of drawing down our assets.
So did you just plow through theGreat Recession and into your
retirement with a 50 50 portfolio,or were there any adjustments there?
it's 50 50, 45, 55.
(22:37):
I've been in that range prettymuch my whole investing life.
And I realize now I could have done a lotbetter if I wanted to be more aggressive,
but it didn't suit my personality.
Yeah, I see a lot of risktolerance in the FI movement.
Like you say, 90 10, all the way tillretirement and then some downshifting, and
then when the great recession happened,did you fear that your retirement was
(22:59):
potentially blown out of the water?
the, not really because I'd hadthis mentor, like I said, Richard
Young, who wrote this investingnewsletter, he was very, he'd
been through many market cycles.
He knew about buy and hold.
So I had this voice in my ears saying,if you just hang in there, your
shares are gonna bounce back and more.
And that is what happened.
(23:20):
So I've always had a long-termstrategy, long-term approach.
So, have you done anything differentwith your portfolio since retiring,
for instance, we've got a lot of newasset classes and crypto and stuff
like that, and you dipped your toe induring the dotcom bubble a little bit.
So anything different there?
Not with the big money.
Not with the important money.
(23:41):
I did because I'm a software engineerand I did get the feeling that
Bitcoin had potential technically.
I bought 10,000 of Bitcoin 2016, Ithink, which obviously is turned out
to be a ridiculously good investment,except that I've sold it along the way.
That was pure speculation.
Nothing I would recommend to anybody.
(24:02):
I was a software engineer, so I had alittle bit of a background to make the
judgment, okay, this has some merit.
So I just bring that up toanswer your question, but not
as any kind of recommendation.
Again, I did it with play money thatwas not gonna affect our retirement.
so you were financially set, youdidn't have necessarily the worry,
you had a sleep factor throughoutaccumulation and going into retirement.
(24:24):
You asked the financial questions.
What other questions do we needto ask ourselves before we make
that transition into retirement?
Well, practically the healthcareis a huge one, and it was even a
bigger deal 10 years, 15 years ago.
But then the other thing that I've seenis what are you gonna do with your time?
What's gonna give you self-worth,keep you interested in life?
(24:45):
And for some of us, can'tpicture ever not being busy.
I have a to-do list,project list, miles long.
I need many lifetimes.
But I have good friends, good smartpeople who had distinguished careers
and they have trouble deciding what todo with themselves when they retire.
So I think it deservessome thought for all of us.
So what were your plans?
(25:06):
What were your goals and dreams anddid it work out that way for you?
The first one was writingand writing a book.
I'd always been a strongsort of technical writer.
It had been useful in my career, and Idid dream of writing some kind of book.
I don't think I was super focused onwhat it was going to be, but once I had
a critical mass, a blog post, it wasclear I could turn them into a book.
(25:28):
And so that's where myfirst two books came from.
And then later on, as I started tofeel the effects of aging, my bucket
list that had to do with me beingphysically active got very important.
And that's where the idea of finishinga long distance hiking trail came from.
I think your experience and yourdecision to put your health first.
Like what you did was very physical,the hiking, the biking, and all of that.
(25:52):
So you soon realize that at 70,I'm not going to be able to enjoy
this like I can in my fifties.
So I think everybody should kindof think about that a little bit.
What are you gonna be able to doat 50 that you can't do at 70?
So it may be looking at enjoying thejourney a little bit more and slowing
(26:12):
it down versus I wanna hit it at 65.
And then what can you do at 65?
In your memoir we read throughthat and it was amazing, but I kept
thinking in 10 years you probablywouldn't be able to do that.
So you have to tell us a little bitabout the trek and kind of what you
ended up using in order to do that.
But you didn't give up.
(26:33):
Yeah, that was really the epicadventure of my last six years or so.
And so not only was I getting a sensethat my body wouldn't be able to
do this anymore, like for example,I've pretty much given up rock
climbing and I can do a little bit.
But that I was so passionate andspent decades doing tons of major
and hard climbs in this country.
And I'm at a point now where I can reallysee, gosh I cannot do a lot of that.
(26:54):
And I knew the same thingwas gonna happen with hiking.
in addition to that, I had thisseries of lower body injuries.
Pretty much everything you can havehappened to your legs happened.
Culminating with a hamstring overuseinjury that kind of turned into chronic
pain and chronic back pain and hadme in bed for a while, one summer.
There were some mentalaspects of that too.
(27:16):
But during that, a doctor friendof mine recommended that I trialed
these things called forearm crutches.
'cause he said you can reallyget out and be active with them.
And this is a much better crutch designthan the underarm crutches that they
prescribe for short term injuries.
The for crutches go around your forearmand they kind of give you an extra set
of legs and you can get out and reallymove and get aerobic exercise with them.
(27:38):
And so they wound up beingreally critical to my recovery.
And even though I mostly recoveredfrom that injury, I realized I really
needed this assistance to stay safe whenI'm doing hard hiking going downhill.
My knees aren't strongenough to carry a pack.
And so I really needed this assistance.
But with it I was able to dosome really long, hard hiking and
(28:00):
eventually the Colorado Trail,
How did you deal with.
Being say, disabled because itseems like you had extreme ability.
You climbed extreme rock facesin Yosemite, you did climbs
that expert climbers do.
And then going from an expert climberto giving into, I still wanna do
(28:20):
this, but now I'm struggling witha disability and chronic pain.
What was that journey like?
Because that's not just a physicaljourney, that's a mental journey.
it was very humbling and it was humbling.
I don't label myself as disabled,but I have dealt with disability.
I have been perceived ashandicapped and disabled often.
I still hike with crutchesany difficult hike.
(28:41):
And so people perceive me differentlybecause of that, and I had to let
go of some ego, but I think it waseasier for me than I see some people
who clearly could use a cane orassisted device or not using them.
And that's sad to me becausethey can enable much more
activity and much safer activity.
(29:03):
And so being an engineer,I eventually just perceive
these crutches as great tools.
I mean, these are so effective.
I can climb 3000 feet with these crutches.
I don't care what people, what I looklike or what people think of me because
I'm getting out here and I'm doingthese hard things and enjoying life.
And that became much more important thanthe label somebody might wanna put on me.
(29:26):
Yeah, it seems like a lot of folks, andI deal with this in my family more in
their seventies and eighties where theyforeclose and you can foreclose earlier
on life and just say, okay, I can'tdo this, therefore I won't do this.
is not the mental approach thatI can't do it this way, therefore
I will do it another way.
You are inspirational to thosepeople that would say, you know what?
(29:50):
Can't, won't I give up?
Yeah.
I like your term.
I'd never thought of that before closing.
That's perfect.
I think people give up tooearly for whatever reason.
Again, being an engineer and aproblem solver, I've always been
really interested, okay, I wannaachieve this goal, but there
are these obstacles in my way.
What tools, techniques, trainingcan I get to make this happen?
(30:11):
And so that's helped methrough some of these things.
And what I find interesting is earlierin life, the connection to your father
with this journey, it started with theBoy Scouts, it started with your dad.
He instilled sort of a love of outdoorsin you, and it was nourishing and healing
for you because in your corporate lifeyou had significant mental challenges.
(30:33):
And we hear about this very commonly,where people need semi-retirement
according to Jillian Johnsrud.
And you knew what semi-retirementwere before she really promoted them.
You took a year off afterhaving a mental breakdown.
And panic attacks that must havebeen incredibly traumatic, not
only for you, but for your family.
(30:53):
Yes.
Good point and good to remind us thatthat was a semi-retirement, I call it
a sabbatical in the book and the wholething was enabled by our savings, by our
frugal lifestyle and the fact that we hada huge emergency fund available to us.
I couldn't work, or at least Icouldn't do intellectual work.
I was struggling to make it throughthe days and get enough sleep at night.
(31:15):
But the fact that we had this emergencyfund, we had savings, let me take a
year off to get my house in order.
And it was struggle and a long processwith a lot of support from my family,
from not sleeping and being a wreckto eventually learning mindfulness,
meditation, giving myself the space torest and come back and be able to perform.
(31:38):
And my old job, albeit very carefullywith a little more guardrails in place
to keep myself from getting stressed out.
Well, I really appreciated youbeing so open about the mental
health part and the breakdown.
' back in the day it wasn't evenreally acknowledged or seen as a
sickness or an illness that neededto be addressed and taken care of.
(32:01):
And I think we all, if notourselves, but people close to
us, we've been touched by that.
And you are one of the peoplethat's openly talking about it
and kind of confirming that itdoesn't have to blow everything up.
It doesn't have to totally takeyou off of whatever path and
(32:23):
goals that you have in life.
You got through it.
So I think it takes incrediblestrength to be able to do that.
And if weren't for that, wewouldn't be where we're at today
with this great book where youactually got to fulfill your goal.
You said how many years did youspend on this Colorado trail?
(32:43):
It was a six year project.
Off and on.
Yeah.
With about half of it done the last year.
But yeah, I like what you said.
I think anyone who struggled withanxiety, depression, mental illness,
knows that it's probably neverfixed, is never a point where,
oh, I don't have this problem.
Instead you learn tools for managingit and you learn barometers in your
(33:04):
own body and your own feelings of,oh, I'm getting close to my red line.
I need to back off.
I need to have less on my plate.
And the trail is another example of that.
in some ways a very stressful experience.
But I had developed really good toolsfor managing my anxiety and my feelings
so that I could work through it.
But it's not like you can everforget about that aspect to yourself.
(33:27):
I mean, one of the things that we'retalking about here is fear, and fear
is ever present in our financial.
And life journeys it's a brainstem reflex.
It's a survival reflex.
We have to learn to stomach a downmarket and overcome our fear in
order to realize true wealth reallyand not succumb to the whipsaw.
(33:47):
And you didn't just usetraditional methods of healing.
You didn't use traditionalmethods of healing mentally when
you were say, off for a year.
You relied at times on your father.
You relied on your wife, you relied onhomeopathic methods, and you also found
that traditional medicine in your physicalhealing didn't meet your needs either.
(34:08):
It's incredible that you found a way, notnecessarily along the traditional path.
Yeah, it's a good point.
A lot of readers have been interested inthat and some have challenged me on it.
But it was my own path.
It was a mixture.
Again, as Jackie pointed out 20, 25 yearsago when I was overcome with anxiety,
this was a lot less well understood.
People were a lot less open about it.
(34:29):
It was not something I wantedto advertise to my coworkers.
I didn't even want to talk aboutit with my family very much.
So that was a bit of a solo projectto find my way through that.
The physical issues, I have an anklesprain that never really healed well.
The hamstring, I did get some help fromtraditional care, but these chronic pain
(34:53):
sports injuries are not always clear cut.
What to do about 'em.
And so that's why physicaltherapy, exercise, crutches.
It was my own mixturethat got me through this.
Yeah.
And then on the trail you had severalexperiences where you dealt with sort of
sometimes even life-threatening issueslike hypothermia and fear of not being
(35:18):
able to make it when you're out there,say on your own.. At my age now, I'm
like, even if I'm on a sort of a simpletrail, and I'm often with my wife and
a buddy, it's like diving with a buddy.
But you didn't always do that.
And what if you break your leg?
What if you're stuck in the environment.
What did that feel like dealing with that?
Well, it's not trivial and I'veprepared for it my whole life because
(35:40):
I've done many backpacking trips,many long overnight rock climbs even.
I know the dangers.
I know what to do about them.
I have the best equipment I can buystill, when you're on your own, you're
the one that has to solve the problem.
If something really serious happens and.
I was always uber, uber careful for thepieces of the trail I did by myself.
(36:03):
I literally slow my pace down.
I take time to make decisionsabout hopping over rocks and
logs and stream crossings.
Being very deliberate, knowingthat I can't afford to twist an
ankle or get myself hurt out here.
I also carried a satellite communicatorso I could call for help anywhere,
although that help could be a day coming.
(36:25):
So if I had an acute problem,that's not gonna do me much good.
You need to have the right gear.
You need to be prepared, you needto understand the techniques,
and you need to be deliberate.
And it's still some risk, butthe reward was huge for me.
I love your passion when it comes to that.
And the best part of the book, Ithink initially I did think it was
the super hiking book and all of that.
(36:47):
I do a little bit of hiking now comparedto you Darrow, my hiking is nothing,
but I have some parks in my area andthat is the biggest part of my day.
I don't need even have a dog, so Idon't need to walk my dog or anything.
But if I can get in at leastlike a three mile hike every day.
I feel really good.
Now, these are soft ones probablycompared to you, but you had been
(37:07):
doing this even before you retiredand that answered your question.
I don't know how easy it was tocome to that conclusion, but it
answered Your question is like,what do I do after I retire?
And I'm listening to the passion inyour voice, the passion that's in the
book about this is what you love to do.
It doesn't have toresonate with everybody.
This is perfect for Darrow and thisgives you like this gratification
(37:30):
and that was your thing.
So I hope that everyone listeningwill think about what is their thing?
It could be the thing you're doingall the time now, but maybe you don't
have the time to do it as much as youwant, or the way that you wanna do it.
So I appreciate you digging deep andsharing so much more than the hiking
jargon or the hiking technique.
(37:52):
So everybody should take a look atthis book because it will give you
inspiration for your own journey.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And reviewers have said the book'svery approachable and that was a very
interesting aspect of writing this book.
'cause I was not a newbie likeSheryl Strait and Wild I had
decades of outdoor experience.
I've climbed big walls,El Capitan and Yosemite.
(38:12):
So I wasn't someone who didn'tknow what he was doing out there.
And it was tempting to write a book whereI was a sort of hero of the story and
had everything dialed in and a masterof, you know, the whole experience.
And then I realized I wasn't, Ihad physical problems and mental
problems, and the book would bemore accessible to people if I
just talked about 'em, honestly.
(38:32):
One thing that I find interesting inyour journey, both before and after
retirement, is you needed to withdrawfrom the standard pathway of life in
order to heal and follow your passions.
This seemed to connect you withyour father, but at times it would
disconnect you from your family.
(38:53):
How did you deal with this connection,disconnection conundrum as you were
pursuing more of a solo passion in life?
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Every member of my familyhas some connection to the
outdoors, so that helped.
And I talk about some of my recoveryin the book in terms of being a father
to my son who got very interestedin mountain biking and climbing.
(39:13):
So it gave us this connection and alsogave me a reason to get back outdoors
and sort of reclaim that part of mylife after I'd had the breakdown.
And then to some extentthe same with my wife.
And then she and I do some thingsoutdoors, but there are other things
that we need to do on our own.
That continues to be a work inprogress to make sure that I'm keeping
(39:35):
my family connection strong, evenwhile I'm pursuing my own dreams.
But I think I've gotten a lotsmarter about doing that than
I was when I was younger.
I mean, we can overdo it where it sort ofdistracts from a relationship, diminishes
a relationship, and finding that balancebetween overdoing it with finance.
(39:55):
And staying in the present as GeorgeKinder says, because in the present
is the only moment we are free.
And you found flow in the woods.
We find flow with our families.
When we're present, we're not on ourdevices, we're looking in each other's
eyes and in the moment with ourselves orwith others, I mean, it is so important
(40:18):
for, like I said, finding flow, findingfreedom, finding joy and happiness, right.
Oh, I a hundred percent agree.
I like the way you put that and guys inparticular maybe can get obsessed with FI.
I skimmed your articleon that, on burning out.
I was obsessed with rock climbing.
That was like the purpose of my lifefor a few decades, and it wasn't
healthy for my family relationshipsand I'm very fortunate that, I figured
(40:42):
that out before it was too late.
Because, we've seen divorcein this community where maybe
that's a component of it.
We talk about financial infidelityand financial irresponsibility,
but financial over-responsibilitycan have the same effect.
Say on a marriage or a partnershipit's easy to overdo it out, fear.
(41:03):
And then honestly, the need for control.
And one of the ways we can, I think,become happiest in life is when we
realize that life is a team sportand we need to relinquish this lone
wolf control aspect to ourselves.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Very well put.
I can't say it better.
It's been a long project for me learningthat, and I've tried to tell the story
(41:25):
of me learning that in this book.
Yep.
Well, and Darrell, I knowyou don't focus a lot on the
personal finance stuff anymore.
you still write at all on the blog?
Occasionally I'll do a post.
Yeah.
I'm just curious if you have seenany changes because you pretty much
started around 2011, with your blogand really getting into this, your
(41:47):
well, it might've been before thenbecause you had to be able to retire
early and looking at your numbers.
But what are your thoughts about theevolution of the financial independence
Retire Early Movement community?
Have you seen changesthat you like, don't like?
Yeah, I would like tothink more about that.
It has a different sense.
There are a lot more people involvedthere a lot more young people involved.
(42:11):
There's a lot more diversitythan there used to be, so I'm
not sure I can sum it all up.
I really believe in this principleand people living responsibly, doing
the work they love to do, not whatthey have to do to make a living.
And so these ideas arereally important to me.
And I'm excited to see the waythe movement has blossomed.
I feel some frustration for peopleinvolved in it, trying to make some
(42:36):
income off of it because it's justhighly competitive these days and
there's a lot of information out there.
Yeah, there's even a ETF, they just cameout with called the FI ETF or something,
which is clearly a marketing thing.
I've never even heard of these guysthat's managing it or whatever.
But you hit on diversity.
I definitely think it'sgotten more diverse.
(42:56):
I mean, even our Catching Up To Ficommunity where we are late starters,
because back in the day it was mainlyyoung engineers like yourself, right?
And now you've got, every kind.
Single moms, divorced people,people that are a little bit
older, that's just waking up.
And Bill and I realized that thisgap existed and that's why Catching
(43:17):
Up i was born in the first place.
it was just always interestingto hear from someone that was
there since the beginning.
We have a lot to learn from youand your evolution, and one of the
things you did was you realizedyou weren't a through hiker.
Your goal was like mentally doingthis and connecting the dots.
And sort of we don't need to havea big, hairy, audacious goal.
(43:40):
Like, I haven't accomplished a goalunless I'm one of those very few people
that's able to mentally and physicallyget through the Appalachian Trail,
the Pacific Coast Trail, or even theColorado Trail in one fell swoop.
And you took little bites outta theelephant and ate the whole thing.
What did it feel to realize this goal?
(44:01):
oh, it was amazing.
That's an interestingthing you pointed out.
I'm very incremental inthe way I approach life.
I don't like taking big risks.
I'd rather take a smallpiece, evaluate how that went.
Perfect the system.
Do a little bit more and thenfinally on the trail the last year,
2021, I did about half the trailover a few months, one summer.
So I got some of the flavor ofwhat it would've been like to be a
(44:23):
through hiker, but I'm not, as yousay, I did it in sections, no more
than four or five days at a time.
I can't imagine what it'slike to be a through hiker.
But when I touched that mileposton the very last segment, it was
unbelievable to just stand there.
I was by myself in this huge plateauin the middle of Colorado remote spot
and just reflect back over the sixyears and the almost 500 miles I'd
(44:47):
covered to have achieved that goal.
And then just all the microexperiences embedded in that, all
the incredible moments of flow.
Basically of feeling connected to theuniverse of feeling strong and fit.
Yeah, it was an amazing experience.
I know how that feels because I ran amuch shorter version of your marathon
(45:08):
in running a physical marathon andraising my arms at the finish line and
realizing that this had been a journey,not just of three and a half hours.
In my case, it was a journey of severalmonths leading up to it where you
needed a plan you needed to followthat plan, trust in the plan that it
would carry you to the finish line.
(45:29):
That journey is similar to fire.
And one of the things that I thinkhappens with goals is the initial
elation and then sort of a depression.
You've reached it and then what next?
Did you have a dip in thatemotion afterwards and
realize, okay, I've done that.
What do I have to look forward tonow that I've accomplished this?
(45:49):
How did that feel for you?
I did have a little bit of that,but pretty quickly, and I won't give
away the ending of the book, but Ihad a couple experiences there at
the very end that told me, oh, youneed to write a book about this.
This is a story.
, There's a definite arc, there'san exciting set of challenges
in the middle, there's a clearending that's very satisfying.
(46:12):
And so pretty quickly my next projectbecame getting this book written.
And I still did and do a lot of hiking.
I don't know that I have another longtrail in me, but getting the book written
was honestly harder than hiking the trail.
A really tough intellectual project.
And that has kept mebusy the last four years.
That's right.
Jackie knows that very wellshe had done a couple books.
(46:34):
How funny.
And you did a couple books beforethat, so perhaps that helped
prepare you just a little bit.
So what was your writing process like?
Like for instance, you still hike.
So when you go on long hikes,like do you take a break and
you stop in a certain place?
Like how many hours a day are you walking?
And did you incorporate any writing intoyour, your hiking journeys every day?
(46:57):
so on the trail, on the mainColorado trail, I kept a written
journal and took tons of photos.
And I have a pretty goodmemory for physical details.
So that's where the body ofthat information came from.
But then as I started writing it down inthe book, I guess every writer knows this.
gets in your brain, you're just hauntedwith the book, and you're constantly
getting, oh, I could phrase this better.
(47:20):
a concept I need to cover.
I need to move this around.
And this would happen inthe middle of my hikes.
It would happen all daylong when I wasn't riding.
And so I had an app on my phonethat I could email myself ideas,
and I used that thousands of times.
And then most days I would allocatesomewhere between two to four hours
a day to making progress on the book.
(47:41):
Although I did take big chunksof time off, but it was the
consistency of just being committed.
Okay.
This is an enormous project.
I have no idea when this is gonnafinish, but I just need to put a
couple quality hours in today andI'll get there if I keep at it.
One thing you did that you mentioned,and I wanna mention to our audience,
is there is a photo travel log.
The beauty of what you saw was soimpressive and that you felt compelled
(48:06):
also to share that with the audience.
And that's a companion to thebook that I have yet to explore.
How important was thevisual to the written?
it was really important'cause I used the photos to
reconstruct scenes from the hike.
I knew I was there, I knew the vagueamount, but I'd pull up the photo
and get the details and it wouldhelp me describe, and a lot of people
(48:26):
enjoy the nature writing in thebook and that comes from the photos.
Even if details weren't in the photo.
It would refresh my memory of, oh,that's what we were doing then.
And then they're just gorgeous.
I think everyone agrees.
The photos are amazing and it's morecredit to the Colorado Trail than me,
but it would get me inspired, like,wow, this was an amazing experience.
(48:47):
I need to finish this book 'causeit was unbelievable out there.
Yeah.
And I bet your technical writing skillscame in handy because you were trying to
make sure you were as clear as possiblein painting that picture for the people
that wanted to imagine this trail.
Where did you get thosesavvy writing skills from?
Like, did you take journalismclass in college or something?
(49:10):
So those skills were really helpful,but the thing I did have to learn
is how to tell a story, which is adifferent animal from writing nonfiction.
I joined a really great critiquesite called Critique Circle, where
writers trade critiques of eachother's work, and several people there
got really interested in my story.
They were very talented fiction writers,and they helped me learn how to connect
(49:32):
with a reader's feelings and describethings in a way, and then write dialogue.
And those are the things you don'tlearn writing a non-fiction financial
book that you have to use if you'regonna tell a compelling memoir.
And so I'm really grateful to thosepeople who took me under their
wing and taught me how to do that.
And then there's dialogue in herethat isn't with another person.
(49:55):
There's dialogue with yourself.
There are moments here that are notunlike Tom Hanks movie what's it called?
Stranded or survivor, where hetalks to Wilson, the volleyball.
Did you have a physical object thatyou took with you that embodied
the conversation with yourself?
No, I mean the crutches in some way werethe physical symbol of the hike that
(50:16):
were with me every minute of the hike.
But the dialogue in my head, Imean, those of us are introverts,
are very familiar with this.
I guess all of us are.
But in the book, I use italic generallyto note what's going on in my head and
yeah, that's a big part of the hike.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of introvertsin the financial independence.
Movement.
And then a lot of us have our ownmental health journeys and your
(50:39):
vulnerability in telling yours helpsus therapeutically acknowledge ours.
How important is it to be vulnerablein this community, and, and avoid
necessarily the technical so thatwe can heal too, because your book
is helping heal my own journey.
Well, that's great to hear.
(50:59):
It's been a journey for me to write aboutand be open about that part of my life.
But I learned early on that if I wantedto write a book that really could connect
with people, that I had to tell thatstory and that part of it, you can be
vulnerable, you can be open about thatand still do awesome, incredible things.
(51:19):
It doesn't make incompetentor unsuccessful at life.
You can accomplish amazing thingswhile still acknowledging that
you've got these limitations orthese things you have to deal with.
And so the book is myattempt to communicate that.
as best I can.
you did a great job withputting that book together.
I wanted to mention, we normally do thisat the top of the show, we saved this
(51:41):
towards the end because you have twocharities that are close to your heart.
And from our discussion today,we kind of found out why.
I wonder if you could tellus a little bit about them.
The first one was the NationalAlliance on Mental Illness, and then
the second one was Colorado Trail.
Tell us about both of those.
Yeah, those are super close to my heart.
(52:02):
NAMI, I guess it's pronounced they'rekind of the focal point for a lot
of research and support systemsfor mental health issues issues far
more serious than what I dealt with.
But they're trying to reduce humansuffering and give people a point
of contact who are suffering fromdepression, anxiety, whatever.
So I really appreciate their work.
(52:22):
I know they've helped friends of mine.
I've seen family, membersstruggle with mental health.
So that's super important to me.
And then the Colorado TrailFoundation is the nonprofit that
maintains the Colorado Trail.
A bunch of great people whospend their summers working on
the trail, preventing erosion.
Rerouting it, marking it.
(52:43):
And that is such a resource.
It makes so many people happy,reduces so much stress in the world.
Even if you're not gonna through-hikeit, you can go out after work and the
Denver area and hike pieces of it.
So it's such a gift.
I profile the woman who spearheadedthe construction of the trail
Goody, who is an amazing individual.
(53:03):
And all these people have justgiven us such a gift to create
something like the Colorado Trail.
Yeah, the FI movement in itsessence as Mr. Mustache Pete Aney
talks about is a green movement,whether we realize it or not.
We are utilizing less resources.
We're not succumbing to theconsumption culture in not
(53:25):
living paycheck to paycheck.
We are taking care of our internalnature, external nature and focusing
really outward it can seem selfish toreach FI, but in some ways it's selfless.
And we need to, I think, focus at timesmore on the giving that we are doing in
(53:46):
freeing ourselves from the shackles ofsay, the golden handcuffs and opening
the possibilities of creating and givingback to the world and adding to its
sort of nonproductive robust culture.
very well put, yeah, that green aspectof FI was always super important to
(54:09):
me and I had to kind of throttle itin a little bit on my blog 'cause I
wasn't sure people wanted to hear it.
But this stage in my life, hikingthe Colorado Trail, it manifests.
There are many, many passages inthe book about what I'm seeing in
the environment as I go through.
And I couldn't be more supportive ofthe idea of us all consuming less and
(54:29):
living more effectively and efficientlyby managing, our wealth intelligently.
quick question since you're mentioningthe environment, does anything in
your investment portfolio is like theESG investing or anything like that?
One of my bigger investmentsis Vanguard's ESG fund.
I I won't say that I'm convincedthat's the best way to help the
(54:50):
environment, but that small domain.
It's a small thing that I did.
Yeah.
you talk about on the trailsort of the fact that there are
people that take advantage of thetrail and leave a trace behind.
There's garbage on the trail, there'swaste, and my son grew up in sort of
a pack it in, pack it out philosophy.
(55:12):
Do you think we should be more consciousof taking care of our environment that
way and leaving it how we found it?
Absolutely.
To the point of repetition andhopefully not turning readers off.
I hit those themes in the book.
The book is a how to on how totravel, light leave no trace.
All of the best backpacking techniquesI complain about and go into the
(55:32):
trash, the toilet paper, how touse the bathroom in the woods.
The other issues I've seen the use ofour public lands for grazing cattle,
which are highly destructive and maybe wedon't need to do so much of that anymore.
The broad scale death oftrees at high altitudes.
About 40% of the high altitude treesin Colorado are dead from beetle
(55:56):
kill related to the climate warming.
You just cannot avoid seeing theseimpacts when you go out hiking.
And so I try to talk about themconstructively in the book and explain
what I'm seeing and hope that moreand more people will get interested
in protecting our public lands.
the book touches on so many themes.
It touches on, family relationships,external relationships,
(56:19):
relationship to our environmentfor backpackers on the how-tos.
I love the concept of traveling lightbecause we clutter our lives with stuff.
And then if you do your camino,if you walk the Camino, if you
walk these trails, you realizeI don't need so much to survive.
I really need very little andwhy do I weigh weigh myself
(56:42):
down with so much stuff?
Exactly.
It's one of the parts of backpackingthat I find the coolest that I can
survive for a week at a time with justwhat I can carry on my back plus water.
I get in the wilderness.
And it just drives home howlittle you need to be happy.
It's one of the aspects ofbackpacking I enjoy the most.
we focus on what is enough andthat seems to be the philosophical
(57:05):
battle for everybody in life.
And especially we're, and we're muchmore conscious of it in the FI movement.
It's kind of our enemyand our friend enough.
is this moving goalposts and reachingretirement for late starters alike.
We chase this moving goalpost,putting our stake in the sand
and saying, you know what?
I've reached it.
(57:26):
I have more than enough and it'stime to give back to my family,
my community and move on into thatphase of life that you are in.
You seem very peaceful,happy, you're turning 65.
You probably haven't taken SocialSecurity yet, but now you have Medicare.
What do the the next 15,20 years look like for you?
(57:52):
you hit the nail on the head.
I feel getting to do this hike,getting to write the book about it.
I've realized my major goals in life, I'vegotten to achieve my dreams and then write
about 'em and tell 'em to other people.
And what I'm focused on for theyears I've got remaining is how
to give back at what's the mosteffective way for me to give back.
(58:13):
And that starts with me talking aboutthe book and all these important
ideas that I think we've covered.
It's been a great conversation.
Those ideas are really important to me.
The protecting environment and livingfrugally dealing with your mental
health and physical health issues.
Right now, I feel like talking aboutthe book is the best way for me to
give back, but that could shift.
(58:34):
I'm at a stage where I've won thelottery and it's just about the best
way to distribute the proceeds andtrying to make it less about me.
Well, that is beautiful.
And Daryl, tell us the name of thebook again and if people want to get
in touch with you, what's the best way?
Yeah, so it's two sticks, one path, ajourney beyond fear on the Colorado Trail.
(58:54):
The website dedicated to, the bookis trailmemor.com and it also has
reviews of a couple dozen other booksand that genre that I think well of.
So you can get other readingin that space if you like it.
And then the books available onAmazon and Kindle and paperback.
then I do still occasionallywrite for caniretireyet.com?
(59:15):
I'm not sure which orderto read them in first.
That two sticks, onepath, or can I retire yet?
Which questions do we reallyneed to ask ourselves first?
It's important to askthe important questions.
It's important todiscuss them with others.
I think we've accomplished a lot todayin an hour, and I want to thank our
guest, Darryl Kirkpatrick, for spendingsome of his precious time with us today.
(59:39):
Thank you, Bill and Jackie.
The month I retired, some peopleat work expressed some questions
like, how did you do this?
Are you sure you'regonna have enough money?
And so I wrote this sort of whitepaper describing my thinking process.
That was the spring of that year.
And then I took kind of six monthsoff just to decompress from work.
But I, I had always wanted towrite and possibly write a book.
And I think it was late in theyear 2011 that I thought, well,
(00:25):
I should try this blogging thing.
And I wrote a few articles or posts,and did a few more, and then got some
publicity, started getting some traffic.
Got interviewed by FarnushTarabi pretty early on.
The Yahoo News did a video.
They sent a film crew to our housethat brought thousands of new readers.
And at that point it was like,yeah, okay, this is what I should
(00:46):
be doing with my time right now.
I've prepared for it my whole lifebecause I've done many backpacking trips,
many long overnight rock climbs even.
I know the dangers.
I know what to do about them.
I have the best equipment I can buystill, when you're on your own, you're
the one that has to solve the problem.
If something really serious happens and.
(01:10):
I was always uber, uber careful for thepieces of the trail I did by myself.
I literally slow my pace down.
I take time to make decisionsabout hopping over rocks and
logs and stream crossings.
Being very deliberate, knowingthat I can't afford to twist an
ankle or get myself hurt out here.
(01:30):
I don't like taking big risks.
I'd rather take a smallpiece, evaluate how that went.
Perfect the system.
Do a little bit more and thenfinally on the trail the last year,
2021, I did about half the trailover a few months, one summer.
So I got some of the flavor ofwhat it would've been like to be a
through hiker, but I'm not, as yousay, I did it in sections, no more
(01:51):
than four or five days at a time.
I can't imagine what it'slike to be a through hiker.
But when I touched that mileposton the very last segment, it was
unbelievable to just stand there.
I was by myself in this huge plateauin the middle of Colorado remote spot
and just reflect back over the sixyears and the almost 500 miles I'd
covered to have achieved that goal.
(02:44):
Hello and welcome backto Catching Up to Fi.
We're on a mental and physicaljourney today, Jackie.
We realize that life is broken up intosegments and parts, and it's not smooth.
It can be bumpy.
There are peaks and valleys.
And today we're gonna talk aboutsome of those peaks and valleys
with an expert on retirement and thepeaks and valleys leading up to it,
(03:08):
and thereafter, Darrow Kirkpatrick.
Will you do us the favor, Jackie,of introducing our guests?
Yeah.
And you know what?
I think I'm gonna call him OGExpert and FI person 'cause he
is been around for a long time.
So Darrell Kirkpatrick, he retiredfrom a 29 year career in civil
and software engineer in April of.
2011 at the age of 50.
(03:30):
Now that's kind of afamiliar FI person, right?
Well that same year he founded thepopular blog, Can I Retire Yet?
And it's focused on the personalfinance needs of anyone who is
thinking about retirement orearly retirement like he did.
The blog won a Plutus award forBest Retirement Blog in 2019.
(03:52):
Darryl's personal finance booksinclude, Can I Retire Yet?
How to Make the Biggest FinancialDecisions of of the rest of your life.
And the other one was Retiring Sooner (04:00):
How to Accelerate Your Financial Independence.
So for Darrow, time in nature iswhat really spoke to him, and that's
one reason he's always been down.
Drawn to trails.
He's been immersed in hiking,biking, and technical rock climbing.
(04:20):
For five decades, he dreamt of completinga long distance hiking trail to
prove he's at home in the wilderness.
As an adult, he's sacrificed thatdream and dedicated himself to
raising a family and managing softwaredevelopment at a high pressure startup.
Then a nervous breakdownderails his career.
(04:43):
With the support of family and mindfulmeditation he recovered after a
year long sabbatical working again.
He reached financial independenceand retired early to Santa Fe, New
Mexico in the Southern Rockies.
At last, he could pursue his hiking dream.
He chose the Colorado Trail becauseof its proximity, beauty, and rugged
(05:08):
challenge, and he, he shared all ofthis in a memoir called Two Sticks One
Path, our Journey Beyond Fear on theColorado Trail, and it chronicles a
six year section of hiking on crutches.
So Darryl believes it's important totake care of yourself, smell the roses,
(05:30):
and not sacrifice too much life qualityin the present for an unknown future.
So Dara, welcome to Catching To FI
Thanks Jackie.
Great to be here.
So Darrow, you retired at 50.
Why?
I did not enjoy my corporatejob, at least at the end.
And honestly, the outdoor sportswere the thing that always brought me
(05:52):
to life and made life worth living,and I wanted more time to do that.
And we had enough money.
We lived frugally and modestlyand saved diligently, and I didn't
have to wake up and run conferencecalls, so I decided not to do that.
Do something different.
So did you always know that?
Did you grow up frugal andwith sort of an eye on finance?
(06:13):
I did not.
What was the reason that you found thispath as opposed to the traditional path
of the paycheck to paycheck consumption,lifestyle that so many Americans and
so many late starters succumb to.
Yeah, that's interesting.
I think I do have tocredit my parents somewhat.
They were frugal.
My father was a military officer,so he didn't make piles of money.
(06:34):
He didn't really have an option tosave up a great deal, although he did.
I guess he retired aftera 20, 25 year career.
My mom was very frugal, so I didhave those habits and behaviors.
I was lucky my wife also is asimilar mindset and then the
things we enjoyed most in life, thecamping, the hiking, the climbing,
(06:56):
the biking, those are dirt cheap.
And we didn't get that much pleasureout of fancy cars or big houses.
And so it was just kindof a natural path for us.
So when you retired Daryl,what was your number?
Like these days it's 25 timesyour expenses or whatever, but
you was in the tech field, ahighly paid field and all that.
(07:16):
So I'm wondering, were you makinggobs of money and a tech millionaire
or were you still a modest income andthings are kind of on the average side.
Yeah, it's not a super flashy career.
I did work for a software company, butwe made civil engineering software.
This was not dotcom type stuff with, sevendigit salaries or anything like that.
(07:38):
I did have a little bit of ownership inthe company enough that when I sold it,
it let me pay off our house in Tennessee.
But again, we're nottalking major bucks here.
We were frugal.
We did invest intelligently and Imostly used the retirement calculators
to get a comfort level and we were inthat neighborhood of the 4% rule 25
(07:59):
x, but I was also using calculatorsto project how our savings would fare.
And that all gave me thecomfort level to retire in 2011.
Really important footnote.
My wife was a public school teacher.
She worked several more years and wegot retirement health benefits from her.
I could not have done it otherwise.
We had enough money, but we didnot have a healthcare option
(08:20):
without her retirement benefits.
Yeah, a big deal.
And was that pre Affordable Care Act?
Let's see.
Affordable Act was 2010 ish, I think.
So it was right around thattime, but it was very new.
I distinctly remember not feelingconfident about pulling the plug in my
paycheck and throwing myself on this newlaw that everyone was still figuring out.
(08:42):
Yeah, it was a much better feelingto have her retirement benefits
through Blue Cross Blue Shield.
I knew that was gonna be therefor us, and it has been until
I went on Medicare recently.
Did you suffer from the one moreyear, two more year syndrome?
Was it hard?
You said it's hard to pull that plug?
How did you manage that?
Was the math enough?
I did suffer from that a little bit.
I actually got prettyclose the great recession.
(09:05):
2008, nine timeframe?
I was really close to pullingthe plug then, according to the
numbers, and I probably rightfullysuffered from, maybe I should work
a few more years just to be sure.
Our son wasn't in college yet.
But then by 2011, my own financialknowledge had increased, the
calculators had gotten better.
My readiness to leave the corporatejob was at an all time high.
(09:29):
So everything came together.
I had no doubt at that point.
And so you mentioned retirementcalculators and you talk about them
in your book, can I Retire Yet?
Which is sort of a personal journey,a personal manifest on how you manage
the decisions in leading to thatand then you shared it with others.
Are the calculators you use still validor are there better ones now that we
should encourage our audience to use ifthey want to DIY, their own retirement?
(09:53):
Yeah, prana was available at that time.
And I have to say I don't stay upto speed on this area any longer now
that Chris has taken over the blog.
So probably people should do theirown research, but I know that
the, Can I Retire at blog featuresprana, which I've always thought
highly of, and then New Retirement,which I guess has been renamed.
(10:14):
And so those would probably bemy starting points these days.
Yeah, we support Bolden, which isthe new brand that It took over
for New Retirement and Steve Chang.
I use that software and I thinkit's critical to help you reassure
yourself that not only are you on thepath, but give you an idea of when
you will be at the financial finishline, even if it's not your mental,
(10:35):
physical emotional finish line.
so why don't we talk a little bit aboutthe blog since you mentioned it, because
I believe it was before its time.
So had you retired when you started theblog or the blog came after you retired?
The month I retired, some peopleat work expressed some questions
like, how did you do this?
Are you sure you'regonna have enough money?
And so I wrote this sort of whitepaper describing my thinking process.
(10:59):
That was the spring of that year.
And then I took kind of six monthsoff just to decompress from work.
But I, I had always wanted towrite and possibly write a book.
And I think it was late in theyear 2011 that I thought, well,
I should try this blogging thing.
And I wrote a few articles or posts,and did a few more, and then got some
publicity, started getting some traffic.
(11:21):
Got interviewed by FarnushTarabi pretty early on.
The Yahoo News did a video.
They sent a film crew to our housethat brought thousands of new readers.
And at that point it was like,yeah, okay, this is what I should
be doing with my time right now.
Oh wow, you have to try
to get us the video so we can
include it.
Because now you've got CNBC Make Itdoes a whole series on FI with the
(11:42):
video crews and stuff, and I thinkit's Market Watch and all that.
So I haven't seen that one,
yeah.
I have a copy.
I don't know if it's online, butI'll send you whatever I can.
Oh yeah, would love to see it becauseagain, you were before your time, so was
Mr. Mini mustache around at the time?
Do you remember,
yeah, but he was small, I met himand hung out with him at FinCon
in about 2013 or something.
(12:04):
I got to know him, but it wasbefore his site really took off.
feel like to be an OG on the front endof this new wave of early retirement?
And it seemed like the great recessionsort of promoted this, the bull market
encouraged this and a lot of FIreesrode that bull market in an ongoing
fashion into their early retirement,and in some ways you got lucky.
(12:26):
Did luck play a role in this for you?
Yes.
I've had very fortunate timing interms of my investment portfolio.
There's no doubt about it.
Other timeframes, this wouldn't be ashappy as story now, but my net worth
has grown throughout my retirement.
We really haven't had serious moneyconcerns and have been able to coast
a bit based on the stock market.
(12:46):
And one of the thing people that arein this movement have trouble with now
is flipping the switch on spending.
They watch their net worth grow and it'slike, okay, we now have Die with zero
and sort of making sure that we takefull advantage of our years and then
pass our wealth on to the next generationin our lives as we're still living.
(13:07):
Are you able to do that?
Do you feel like you have too muchmoney at some point because you aren't
spending it necessarily as fully asyou would because of fears of ending
up under a bridge eating cat food?
Well, there's some flavors of that.
Yes.
I would say that we feel verycomfortable with most projections.
(13:28):
The big question mark is long-termcare and healthcare, and that's on our
minds because we've seen it with ourparents, and both my wife and I have
conditions are a little unpredictablewhat's our end of life picture gonna
cost us if that's not astronomical?
We have all the money in the world andwe should be traveling internationally
and buying fancy cars and doing stuffthat we don't really care to do.
(13:51):
But I would say we're a littlebit cautious just because of the
possible long-term care scenario.
So Darrell, about the long-term care.
Your plan is to just self-pay.
Like do you have a long-term careinsurance policy or anything?
I don't, I've written acouple articles on that.
Every time I dug into it, I justfelt like this was not a good value.
It was expensive and it covers sortof the medium timeframe that we can
(14:15):
self-insure for four or five years.
We can self-insure for 10 years.
It's if one of us needs nursing home carefor 20 years, we might have a problem.
And no long-term care insurancehelps you with those kinds of
numbers that I've ever seen.
and then the evolution of portfoliossort of plays into this too.
Can you tell us a little bitabout your accumulation phase?
(14:35):
Did you discover indexfunds on the front end?
And how did you manageyour growth portfolio?
Because there, a lot of our latestutterers are in that and they
want to see growth as quickly aspossible within market constraints.
What did you do in the accumulation phase?
Honestly, I was pretty conservative,probably more conservative
than the average FI approachwould dictate these days.
(14:58):
Jim Collins with his 90% or more instocks I could never stomach that and
there wasn't great information back whenI was in my important accumulation phase.
So I pretty much targeted 50/50portfolio bonds and stocks.
And I followed an investment newsletterby a guy who's long passed Richard
Young, but he who was a big fan of indexfunds, he was a big fan of low cost
(15:21):
investing and he was very conservative.
He preached more or lessa 50/50 asset allocation.
And the good thing about that is itkept me from jumping off the bridge
during the dotcom blow up, for example.
And back when there was less support,less information around FI, it kept
me saving, kept me from doing anythingcrazy, selling off at the worst time.
(15:42):
So how long was your journey?
You retired at 50.
So was your accumulation phasefunctionally 25, 30 years?
I have a cool chart.
I can't put my fingers on it.
It shows my net worth.
I started using Quicken in like1991, and I have a cool chart of
my net worth from that year on.
It grew pretty steadily and grewfaster in the final corporate
(16:04):
years where he had a higher salary.
Well, it goes to show that you cando this if you're in the long term
without losing sleep and even ina 50 to 70% equity side portfolio.
Did you stick to the simplephilosophy or did it get complicated?
And did you make anymistakes along the way?
Oh, I certainly made mistakes.
Some of my first investments I used afinancial advisor one of my business
(16:26):
associates used and recommended,and he sold me some expensive funds
that I then sold very quickly.
I did a little bit ofdabbling in dotcom stocks.
I remember buying a Red Hat, a Linuxcompany and watching it quadruple
and not selling and watching it goall the way back down and barely get
out of it without losing any money.
(16:46):
But those were small sums that I playedwith the big, the six digit amounts
that I needed to retire went into indexfunds, mostly Vanguard funds for the
most part, left them alone and just letthem do their thing over the long haul.
I think that's kind of the cyclethat a lot of us go through.
It's better to make those mistakeswhen we don't have much money.
Because I had started trying toinvest during the dotcom bubble.
(17:09):
I'm sure I had Red Hat, I hadsomething called salon.com I think
I put a thousand dollars in it.
It went all the way down to $80.
I'm like, well, I finally soldit and said, Hey, I can go get
dinner, or something like that.
But it's probably best that wemake those mistakes when we have
$500 versus 5 million or whatever.
So I definitely feel that.
(17:29):
So with the blog, at what point did youcome to the conclusion that you were.
Kind of done with it.
You had said all you needed to say,and were you going to just end the
blog or was the intention was justto hand it over to Chris or bring
him on board to mostly manage it?
I was really lucky that hekind of appeared in my life
(17:50):
and appeared on the blog.
I think he did some guest posts,maybe he interviewed me for his
own blog that he had at the time.
We were both climbers.
We really hit it off just personally andthen in terms of our financial philosophy.
But I was starting to run outta steam.
It had been about 10 years.
And write by learning.
I learned stuff and I write aboutwhat I learned, and I pretty much
(18:12):
learned what I needed to get throughthis phase of my financial life.
And I felt some frustration.
I was getting maybe more interestfrom readers that I thought were
really well off and were spendingtheir retirement trying to fine
tune their taxes and estate plans.
And I felt like all of us should geton and do something more interesting
(18:32):
with our lives than just that.
That is very interesting andimportant at a certain stage.
But for me, I got to a point where Ipretty much had the finances dialed in.
I could see health issues and energyissues coming up with my aging.
And I wanted to get on and dowhat really mattered to me.
And fortunately, I was able tohand the blog off to a great
(18:54):
person to carry on the tradition.
And Chris has done really well with it.
Yeah, that's interesting.
That'll be a great segue intothe next phase of life for you.
But before we do that, I don'twanna lose track of the financial,
because one thing that is not talkedabout enough in this space is a
(19:15):
transition to a drawdown portfolio.
And how do we structure that differently?
We're all about accumulation.
And drawdown is a more complex beast,and in some ways you need a more diverse
approach to it so that you aren'tsuccumbing to sequence of returns
risk or early drawdown catastrophe.
How did you manage that?
(19:36):
I don't have a great answer andthat's probably one reason I got
to a point where I was startingto run on steam on the blog.
And I wish I had once envisioned my thirdfinancial book was gonna be all about
the drawdown the distribution phase.
And I did do some original research.
I looked at trying to draw down assetsbased on what the Cape Ratio was doing.
(19:58):
So the idea being you're tryingto pull out the assets that had
grown the most and keep yourselffrom selling stuff that was down.
And so I modeled withdrawal strategiesbased on what Cape was doing and
got some indications that yeah,this might be the better approach.
And it's loosely what I've followedmyself, but none of it ever got to the
(20:22):
point that I was confident in writingabout it or telling other people that this
is how they should manage their money.
I guess the basic rule of thumbI've followed is try to sell
my assets in a balanced way.
Not try to predict the market andnot try to do it in reaction to
the market, but honestly, it's beenad hoc for me and I don't have the
ultimate solution to that question.
(20:43):
how do you create your paycheckand do you do it monthly?
Do you have a bucket strategy?
Do you draw from your fixed income assetsand try and protect your equities alone?
And you sell equities, howdoes it feel to do that?
Yeah, it's been a little bitof all of the above strategy.
Also throwing in, we've got aninheritance in the middle of this which
has obviously eased our cash flow.
(21:04):
Part of the inheritance was an annuitythat my mom bought that I would never
recommend, but the fact is we owned it, sowe're getting an income stream from that.
I would say rest of it has beenclosest to a bucket strategy where
I would tend to sell, I'd sayroughly at six month intervals.
And trying to always top off we haveprobably two years of cash or short
(21:26):
term bonds on hand, so trying to topthat off every six months, doing my best
to pull assets out in a balanced way.
Yeah, and again, I wish I couldgive you a better formula.
If I had one, I'd write about it.
it sounds like, Darryl, you don'tthink it needs to be that complicated.
There's a lot of people that talkabout draw down and they get really
deep in the woods with it and theseprojections and all these lines of
(21:51):
Monte Carlo simulation and all of that.
So do you think we overcomplicate thatpart of it now that you're in draw down?
A little bit.
I think that stuff's really useful formaking the decision that I probably
have enough that it's probably gonnalast through all these scenarios.
But I have to say my personal experiencegetting into retired life, life is
always throwing you changes and whateverformula or plan you think you have , more
(22:16):
money will show up one month and thenthere's an expense the next month.
I've found it hard to makethat to automate that process
of drawing down our assets.
So did you just plow through theGreat Recession and into your
retirement with a 50 50 portfolio,or were there any adjustments there?
it's 50 50, 45, 55.
(22:37):
I've been in that range prettymuch my whole investing life.
And I realize now I could have done a lotbetter if I wanted to be more aggressive,
but it didn't suit my personality.
Yeah, I see a lot of risktolerance in the FI movement.
Like you say, 90 10, all the way tillretirement and then some downshifting, and
then when the great recession happened,did you fear that your retirement was
(22:59):
potentially blown out of the water?
the, not really because I'd hadthis mentor, like I said, Richard
Young, who wrote this investingnewsletter, he was very, he'd
been through many market cycles.
He knew about buy and hold.
So I had this voice in my ears saying,if you just hang in there, your
shares are gonna bounce back and more.
And that is what happened.
(23:20):
So I've always had a long-termstrategy, long-term approach.
So, have you done anything differentwith your portfolio since retiring,
for instance, we've got a lot of newasset classes and crypto and stuff
like that, and you dipped your toe induring the dotcom bubble a little bit.
So anything different there?
Not with the big money.
Not with the important money.
(23:41):
I did because I'm a software engineerand I did get the feeling that
Bitcoin had potential technically.
I bought 10,000 of Bitcoin 2016, Ithink, which obviously is turned out
to be a ridiculously good investment,except that I've sold it along the way.
That was pure speculation.
Nothing I would recommend to anybody.
(24:02):
I was a software engineer, so I had alittle bit of a background to make the
judgment, okay, this has some merit.
So I just bring that up toanswer your question, but not
as any kind of recommendation.
Again, I did it with play money thatwas not gonna affect our retirement.
so you were financially set, youdidn't have necessarily the worry,
you had a sleep factor throughoutaccumulation and going into retirement.
(24:24):
You asked the financial questions.
What other questions do we needto ask ourselves before we make
that transition into retirement?
Well, practically the healthcareis a huge one, and it was even a
bigger deal 10 years, 15 years ago.
But then the other thing that I've seenis what are you gonna do with your time?
What's gonna give you self-worth,keep you interested in life?
(24:45):
And for some of us, can'tpicture ever not being busy.
I have a to-do list,project list, miles long.
I need many lifetimes.
But I have good friends, good smartpeople who had distinguished careers
and they have trouble deciding what todo with themselves when they retire.
So I think it deservessome thought for all of us.
So what were your plans?
(25:06):
What were your goals and dreams anddid it work out that way for you?
The first one was writingand writing a book.
I'd always been a strongsort of technical writer.
It had been useful in my career, and Idid dream of writing some kind of book.
I don't think I was super focused onwhat it was going to be, but once I had
a critical mass, a blog post, it wasclear I could turn them into a book.
(25:28):
And so that's where myfirst two books came from.
And then later on, as I started tofeel the effects of aging, my bucket
list that had to do with me beingphysically active got very important.
And that's where the idea of finishinga long distance hiking trail came from.
I think your experience and yourdecision to put your health first.
Like what you did was very physical,the hiking, the biking, and all of that.
(25:52):
So you soon realize that at 70,I'm not going to be able to enjoy
this like I can in my fifties.
So I think everybody should kindof think about that a little bit.
What are you gonna be able to doat 50 that you can't do at 70?
So it may be looking at enjoying thejourney a little bit more and slowing
(26:12):
it down versus I wanna hit it at 65.
And then what can you do at 65?
In your memoir we read throughthat and it was amazing, but I kept
thinking in 10 years you probablywouldn't be able to do that.
So you have to tell us a little bitabout the trek and kind of what you
ended up using in order to do that.
But you didn't give up.
(26:33):
Yeah, that was really the epicadventure of my last six years or so.
And so not only was I getting a sensethat my body wouldn't be able to
do this anymore, like for example,I've pretty much given up rock
climbing and I can do a little bit.
But that I was so passionate andspent decades doing tons of major
and hard climbs in this country.
And I'm at a point now where I can reallysee, gosh I cannot do a lot of that.
(26:54):
And I knew the same thingwas gonna happen with hiking.
in addition to that, I had thisseries of lower body injuries.
Pretty much everything you can havehappened to your legs happened.
Culminating with a hamstring overuseinjury that kind of turned into chronic
pain and chronic back pain and hadme in bed for a while, one summer.
There were some mentalaspects of that too.
(27:16):
But during that, a doctor friendof mine recommended that I trialed
these things called forearm crutches.
'cause he said you can reallyget out and be active with them.
And this is a much better crutch designthan the underarm crutches that they
prescribe for short term injuries.
The for crutches go around your forearmand they kind of give you an extra set
of legs and you can get out and reallymove and get aerobic exercise with them.
(27:38):
And so they wound up beingreally critical to my recovery.
And even though I mostly recoveredfrom that injury, I realized I really
needed this assistance to stay safe whenI'm doing hard hiking going downhill.
My knees aren't strongenough to carry a pack.
And so I really needed this assistance.
But with it I was able to dosome really long, hard hiking and
(28:00):
eventually the Colorado Trail,
How did you deal with.
Being say, disabled because itseems like you had extreme ability.
You climbed extreme rock facesin Yosemite, you did climbs
that expert climbers do.
And then going from an expert climberto giving into, I still wanna do
(28:20):
this, but now I'm struggling witha disability and chronic pain.
What was that journey like?
Because that's not just a physicaljourney, that's a mental journey.
it was very humbling and it was humbling.
I don't label myself as disabled,but I have dealt with disability.
I have been perceived ashandicapped and disabled often.
I still hike with crutchesany difficult hike.
(28:41):
And so people perceive me differentlybecause of that, and I had to let
go of some ego, but I think it waseasier for me than I see some people
who clearly could use a cane orassisted device or not using them.
And that's sad to me becausethey can enable much more
activity and much safer activity.
(29:03):
And so being an engineer,I eventually just perceive
these crutches as great tools.
I mean, these are so effective.
I can climb 3000 feet with these crutches.
I don't care what people, what I looklike or what people think of me because
I'm getting out here and I'm doingthese hard things and enjoying life.
And that became much more important thanthe label somebody might wanna put on me.
(29:26):
Yeah, it seems like a lot of folks, andI deal with this in my family more in
their seventies and eighties where theyforeclose and you can foreclose earlier
on life and just say, okay, I can'tdo this, therefore I won't do this.
is not the mental approach thatI can't do it this way, therefore
I will do it another way.
You are inspirational to thosepeople that would say, you know what?
(29:50):
Can't, won't I give up?
Yeah.
I like your term.
I'd never thought of that before closing.
That's perfect.
I think people give up tooearly for whatever reason.
Again, being an engineer and aproblem solver, I've always been
really interested, okay, I wannaachieve this goal, but there
are these obstacles in my way.
What tools, techniques, trainingcan I get to make this happen?
(30:11):
And so that's helped methrough some of these things.
And what I find interesting is earlierin life, the connection to your father
with this journey, it started with theBoy Scouts, it started with your dad.
He instilled sort of a love of outdoorsin you, and it was nourishing and healing
for you because in your corporate lifeyou had significant mental challenges.
(30:33):
And we hear about this very commonly,where people need semi-retirement
according to Jillian Johnsrud.
And you knew what semi-retirementwere before she really promoted them.
You took a year off afterhaving a mental breakdown.
And panic attacks that must havebeen incredibly traumatic, not
only for you, but for your family.
(30:53):
Yes.
Good point and good to remind us thatthat was a semi-retirement, I call it
a sabbatical in the book and the wholething was enabled by our savings, by our
frugal lifestyle and the fact that we hada huge emergency fund available to us.
I couldn't work, or at least Icouldn't do intellectual work.
I was struggling to make it throughthe days and get enough sleep at night.
(31:15):
But the fact that we had this emergencyfund, we had savings, let me take a
year off to get my house in order.
And it was struggle and a long processwith a lot of support from my family,
from not sleeping and being a wreckto eventually learning mindfulness,
meditation, giving myself the space torest and come back and be able to perform.
(31:38):
And my old job, albeit very carefullywith a little more guardrails in place
to keep myself from getting stressed out.
Well, I really appreciated youbeing so open about the mental
health part and the breakdown.
' back in the day it wasn't evenreally acknowledged or seen as a
sickness or an illness that neededto be addressed and taken care of.
(32:01):
And I think we all, if notourselves, but people close to
us, we've been touched by that.
And you are one of the peoplethat's openly talking about it
and kind of confirming that itdoesn't have to blow everything up.
It doesn't have to totally takeyou off of whatever path and
(32:23):
goals that you have in life.
You got through it.
So I think it takes incrediblestrength to be able to do that.
And if weren't for that, wewouldn't be where we're at today
with this great book where youactually got to fulfill your goal.
You said how many years did youspend on this Colorado trail?
(32:43):
It was a six year project.
Off and on.
Yeah.
With about half of it done the last year.
But yeah, I like what you said.
I think anyone who struggled withanxiety, depression, mental illness,
knows that it's probably neverfixed, is never a point where,
oh, I don't have this problem.
Instead you learn tools for managingit and you learn barometers in your
(33:04):
own body and your own feelings of,oh, I'm getting close to my red line.
I need to back off.
I need to have less on my plate.
And the trail is another example of that.
in some ways a very stressful experience.
But I had developed really good toolsfor managing my anxiety and my feelings
so that I could work through it.
But it's not like you can everforget about that aspect to yourself.
(33:27):
I mean, one of the things that we'retalking about here is fear, and fear
is ever present in our financial.
And life journeys it's a brainstem reflex.
It's a survival reflex.
We have to learn to stomach a downmarket and overcome our fear in
order to realize true wealth reallyand not succumb to the whipsaw.
(33:47):
And you didn't just usetraditional methods of healing.
You didn't use traditionalmethods of healing mentally when
you were say, off for a year.
You relied at times on your father.
You relied on your wife, you relied onhomeopathic methods, and you also found
that traditional medicine in your physicalhealing didn't meet your needs either.
(34:08):
It's incredible that you found a way, notnecessarily along the traditional path.
Yeah, it's a good point.
A lot of readers have been interested inthat and some have challenged me on it.
But it was my own path.
It was a mixture.
Again, as Jackie pointed out 20, 25 yearsago when I was overcome with anxiety,
this was a lot less well understood.
People were a lot less open about it.
(34:29):
It was not something I wantedto advertise to my coworkers.
I didn't even want to talk aboutit with my family very much.
So that was a bit of a solo projectto find my way through that.
The physical issues, I have an anklesprain that never really healed well.
The hamstring, I did get some help fromtraditional care, but these chronic pain
(34:53):
sports injuries are not always clear cut.
What to do about 'em.
And so that's why physicaltherapy, exercise, crutches.
It was my own mixturethat got me through this.
Yeah.
And then on the trail you had severalexperiences where you dealt with sort of
sometimes even life-threatening issueslike hypothermia and fear of not being
(35:18):
able to make it when you're out there,say on your own.. At my age now, I'm
like, even if I'm on a sort of a simpletrail, and I'm often with my wife and
a buddy, it's like diving with a buddy.
But you didn't always do that.
And what if you break your leg?
What if you're stuck in the environment.
What did that feel like dealing with that?
Well, it's not trivial and I'veprepared for it my whole life because
(35:40):
I've done many backpacking trips,many long overnight rock climbs even.
I know the dangers.
I know what to do about them.
I have the best equipment I can buystill, when you're on your own, you're
the one that has to solve the problem.
If something really serious happens and.
I was always uber, uber careful for thepieces of the trail I did by myself.
(36:03):
I literally slow my pace down.
I take time to make decisionsabout hopping over rocks and
logs and stream crossings.
Being very deliberate, knowingthat I can't afford to twist an
ankle or get myself hurt out here.
I also carried a satellite communicatorso I could call for help anywhere,
although that help could be a day coming.
(36:25):
So if I had an acute problem,that's not gonna do me much good.
You need to have the right gear.
You need to be prepared, you needto understand the techniques,
and you need to be deliberate.
And it's still some risk, butthe reward was huge for me.
I love your passion when it comes to that.
And the best part of the book, Ithink initially I did think it was
the super hiking book and all of that.
(36:47):
I do a little bit of hiking now comparedto you Darrow, my hiking is nothing,
but I have some parks in my area andthat is the biggest part of my day.
I don't need even have a dog, so Idon't need to walk my dog or anything.
But if I can get in at leastlike a three mile hike every day.
I feel really good.
Now, these are soft ones probablycompared to you, but you had been
(37:07):
doing this even before you retiredand that answered your question.
I don't know how easy it was tocome to that conclusion, but it
answered Your question is like,what do I do after I retire?
And I'm listening to the passion inyour voice, the passion that's in the
book about this is what you love to do.
It doesn't have toresonate with everybody.
This is perfect for Darrow and thisgives you like this gratification
(37:30):
and that was your thing.
So I hope that everyone listeningwill think about what is their thing?
It could be the thing you're doingall the time now, but maybe you don't
have the time to do it as much as youwant, or the way that you wanna do it.
So I appreciate you digging deep andsharing so much more than the hiking
jargon or the hiking technique.
(37:52):
So everybody should take a look atthis book because it will give you
inspiration for your own journey.
Yeah, I appreciate that.
And reviewers have said the book'svery approachable and that was a very
interesting aspect of writing this book.
'cause I was not a newbie likeSheryl Strait and Wild I had
decades of outdoor experience.
I've climbed big walls,El Capitan and Yosemite.
(38:12):
So I wasn't someone who didn'tknow what he was doing out there.
And it was tempting to write a book whereI was a sort of hero of the story and
had everything dialed in and a masterof, you know, the whole experience.
And then I realized I wasn't, Ihad physical problems and mental
problems, and the book would bemore accessible to people if I
just talked about 'em, honestly.
(38:32):
One thing that I find interesting inyour journey, both before and after
retirement, is you needed to withdrawfrom the standard pathway of life in
order to heal and follow your passions.
This seemed to connect you withyour father, but at times it would
disconnect you from your family.
(38:53):
How did you deal with this connection,disconnection conundrum as you were
pursuing more of a solo passion in life?
Yeah, that's an interesting question.
Every member of my familyhas some connection to the
outdoors, so that helped.
And I talk about some of my recoveryin the book in terms of being a father
to my son who got very interestedin mountain biking and climbing.
(39:13):
So it gave us this connection and alsogave me a reason to get back outdoors
and sort of reclaim that part of mylife after I'd had the breakdown.
And then to some extentthe same with my wife.
And then she and I do some thingsoutdoors, but there are other things
that we need to do on our own.
That continues to be a work inprogress to make sure that I'm keeping
(39:35):
my family connection strong, evenwhile I'm pursuing my own dreams.
But I think I've gotten a lotsmarter about doing that than
I was when I was younger.
I mean, we can overdo it where it sort ofdistracts from a relationship, diminishes
a relationship, and finding that balancebetween overdoing it with finance.
(39:55):
And staying in the present as GeorgeKinder says, because in the present
is the only moment we are free.
And you found flow in the woods.
We find flow with our families.
When we're present, we're not on ourdevices, we're looking in each other's
eyes and in the moment with ourselves orwith others, I mean, it is so important
(40:18):
for, like I said, finding flow, findingfreedom, finding joy and happiness, right.
Oh, I a hundred percent agree.
I like the way you put that and guys inparticular maybe can get obsessed with FI.
I skimmed your articleon that, on burning out.
I was obsessed with rock climbing.
That was like the purpose of my lifefor a few decades, and it wasn't
healthy for my family relationshipsand I'm very fortunate that, I figured
(40:42):
that out before it was too late.
Because, we've seen divorcein this community where maybe
that's a component of it.
We talk about financial infidelityand financial irresponsibility,
but financial over-responsibilitycan have the same effect.
Say on a marriage or a partnershipit's easy to overdo it out, fear.
(41:03):
And then honestly, the need for control.
And one of the ways we can, I think,become happiest in life is when we
realize that life is a team sportand we need to relinquish this lone
wolf control aspect to ourselves.
What do you think?
Yeah.
Very well put.
I can't say it better.
It's been a long project for me learningthat, and I've tried to tell the story
(41:25):
of me learning that in this book.
Yep.
Well, and Darrell, I knowyou don't focus a lot on the
personal finance stuff anymore.
you still write at all on the blog?
Occasionally I'll do a post.
Yeah.
I'm just curious if you have seenany changes because you pretty much
started around 2011, with your blogand really getting into this, your
(41:47):
well, it might've been before thenbecause you had to be able to retire
early and looking at your numbers.
But what are your thoughts about theevolution of the financial independence
Retire Early Movement community?
Have you seen changesthat you like, don't like?
Yeah, I would like tothink more about that.
It has a different sense.
There are a lot more people involvedthere a lot more young people involved.
(42:11):
There's a lot more diversitythan there used to be, so I'm
not sure I can sum it all up.
I really believe in this principleand people living responsibly, doing
the work they love to do, not whatthey have to do to make a living.
And so these ideas arereally important to me.
And I'm excited to see the waythe movement has blossomed.
I feel some frustration for peopleinvolved in it, trying to make some
(42:36):
income off of it because it's justhighly competitive these days and
there's a lot of information out there.
Yeah, there's even a ETF, they just cameout with called the FI ETF or something,
which is clearly a marketing thing.
I've never even heard of these guysthat's managing it or whatever.
But you hit on diversity.
I definitely think it'sgotten more diverse.
(42:56):
I mean, even our Catching Up To Ficommunity where we are late starters,
because back in the day it was mainlyyoung engineers like yourself, right?
And now you've got, every kind.
Single moms, divorced people,people that are a little bit
older, that's just waking up.
And Bill and I realized that thisgap existed and that's why Catching
(43:17):
Up i was born in the first place.
it was just always interestingto hear from someone that was
there since the beginning.
We have a lot to learn from youand your evolution, and one of the
things you did was you realizedyou weren't a through hiker.
Your goal was like mentally doingthis and connecting the dots.
And sort of we don't need to havea big, hairy, audacious goal.
(43:40):
Like, I haven't accomplished a goalunless I'm one of those very few people
that's able to mentally and physicallyget through the Appalachian Trail,
the Pacific Coast Trail, or even theColorado Trail in one fell swoop.
And you took little bites outta theelephant and ate the whole thing.
What did it feel to realize this goal?
(44:01):
oh, it was amazing.
That's an interestingthing you pointed out.
I'm very incremental inthe way I approach life.
I don't like taking big risks.
I'd rather take a smallpiece, evaluate how that went.
Perfect the system.
Do a little bit more and thenfinally on the trail the last year,
2021, I did about half the trailover a few months, one summer.
So I got some of the flavor ofwhat it would've been like to be a
(44:23):
through hiker, but I'm not, as yousay, I did it in sections, no more
than four or five days at a time.
I can't imagine what it'slike to be a through hiker.
But when I touched that mileposton the very last segment, it was
unbelievable to just stand there.
I was by myself in this huge plateauin the middle of Colorado remote spot
and just reflect back over the sixyears and the almost 500 miles I'd
(44:47):
covered to have achieved that goal.
And then just all the microexperiences embedded in that, all
the incredible moments of flow.
Basically of feeling connected to theuniverse of feeling strong and fit.
Yeah, it was an amazing experience.
I know how that feels because I ran amuch shorter version of your marathon
(45:08):
in running a physical marathon andraising my arms at the finish line and
realizing that this had been a journey,not just of three and a half hours.
In my case, it was a journey of severalmonths leading up to it where you
needed a plan you needed to followthat plan, trust in the plan that it
would carry you to the finish line.
(45:29):
That journey is similar to fire.
And one of the things that I thinkhappens with goals is the initial
elation and then sort of a depression.
You've reached it and then what next?
Did you have a dip in thatemotion afterwards and
realize, okay, I've done that.
What do I have to look forward tonow that I've accomplished this?
(45:49):
How did that feel for you?
I did have a little bit of that,but pretty quickly, and I won't give
away the ending of the book, but Ihad a couple experiences there at
the very end that told me, oh, youneed to write a book about this.
This is a story.
, There's a definite arc, there'san exciting set of challenges
in the middle, there's a clearending that's very satisfying.
(46:12):
And so pretty quickly my next projectbecame getting this book written.
And I still did and do a lot of hiking.
I don't know that I have another longtrail in me, but getting the book written
was honestly harder than hiking the trail.
A really tough intellectual project.
And that has kept mebusy the last four years.
That's right.
Jackie knows that very wellshe had done a couple books.
(46:34):
How funny.
And you did a couple books beforethat, so perhaps that helped
prepare you just a little bit.
So what was your writing process like?
Like for instance, you still hike.
So when you go on long hikes,like do you take a break and
you stop in a certain place?
Like how many hours a day are you walking?
And did you incorporate any writing intoyour, your hiking journeys every day?
(46:57):
so on the trail, on the mainColorado trail, I kept a written
journal and took tons of photos.
And I have a pretty goodmemory for physical details.
So that's where the body ofthat information came from.
But then as I started writing it down inthe book, I guess every writer knows this.
gets in your brain, you're just hauntedwith the book, and you're constantly
getting, oh, I could phrase this better.
(47:20):
a concept I need to cover.
I need to move this around.
And this would happen inthe middle of my hikes.
It would happen all daylong when I wasn't riding.
And so I had an app on my phonethat I could email myself ideas,
and I used that thousands of times.
And then most days I would allocatesomewhere between two to four hours
a day to making progress on the book.
(47:41):
Although I did take big chunksof time off, but it was the
consistency of just being committed.
Okay.
This is an enormous project.
I have no idea when this is gonnafinish, but I just need to put a
couple quality hours in today andI'll get there if I keep at it.
One thing you did that you mentioned,and I wanna mention to our audience,
is there is a photo travel log.
The beauty of what you saw was soimpressive and that you felt compelled
(48:06):
also to share that with the audience.
And that's a companion to thebook that I have yet to explore.
How important was thevisual to the written?
it was really important'cause I used the photos to
reconstruct scenes from the hike.
I knew I was there, I knew the vagueamount, but I'd pull up the photo
and get the details and it wouldhelp me describe, and a lot of people
(48:26):
enjoy the nature writing in thebook and that comes from the photos.
Even if details weren't in the photo.
It would refresh my memory of, oh,that's what we were doing then.
And then they're just gorgeous.
I think everyone agrees.
The photos are amazing and it's morecredit to the Colorado Trail than me,
but it would get me inspired, like,wow, this was an amazing experience.
(48:47):
I need to finish this book 'causeit was unbelievable out there.
Yeah.
And I bet your technical writing skillscame in handy because you were trying to
make sure you were as clear as possiblein painting that picture for the people
that wanted to imagine this trail.
Where did you get thosesavvy writing skills from?
Like, did you take journalismclass in college or something?
(49:10):
So those skills were really helpful,but the thing I did have to learn
is how to tell a story, which is adifferent animal from writing nonfiction.
I joined a really great critiquesite called Critique Circle, where
writers trade critiques of eachother's work, and several people there
got really interested in my story.
They were very talented fiction writers,and they helped me learn how to connect
(49:32):
with a reader's feelings and describethings in a way, and then write dialogue.
And those are the things you don'tlearn writing a non-fiction financial
book that you have to use if you'regonna tell a compelling memoir.
And so I'm really grateful to thosepeople who took me under their
wing and taught me how to do that.
And then there's dialogue in herethat isn't with another person.
(49:55):
There's dialogue with yourself.
There are moments here that are notunlike Tom Hanks movie what's it called?
Stranded or survivor, where hetalks to Wilson, the volleyball.
Did you have a physical object thatyou took with you that embodied
the conversation with yourself?
No, I mean the crutches in some way werethe physical symbol of the hike that
(50:16):
were with me every minute of the hike.
But the dialogue in my head, Imean, those of us are introverts,
are very familiar with this.
I guess all of us are.
But in the book, I use italic generallyto note what's going on in my head and
yeah, that's a big part of the hike.
Yeah.
I mean, there's a lot of introvertsin the financial independence.
Movement.
And then a lot of us have our ownmental health journeys and your
(50:39):
vulnerability in telling yours helpsus therapeutically acknowledge ours.
How important is it to be vulnerablein this community, and, and avoid
necessarily the technical so thatwe can heal too, because your book
is helping heal my own journey.
Well, that's great to hear.
(50:59):
It's been a journey for me to write aboutand be open about that part of my life.
But I learned early on that if I wantedto write a book that really could connect
with people, that I had to tell thatstory and that part of it, you can be
vulnerable, you can be open about thatand still do awesome, incredible things.
(51:19):
It doesn't make incompetentor unsuccessful at life.
You can accomplish amazing thingswhile still acknowledging that
you've got these limitations orthese things you have to deal with.
And so the book is myattempt to communicate that.
as best I can.
you did a great job withputting that book together.
I wanted to mention, we normally do thisat the top of the show, we saved this
(51:41):
towards the end because you have twocharities that are close to your heart.
And from our discussion today,we kind of found out why.
I wonder if you could tellus a little bit about them.
The first one was the NationalAlliance on Mental Illness, and then
the second one was Colorado Trail.
Tell us about both of those.
Yeah, those are super close to my heart.
(52:02):
NAMI, I guess it's pronounced they'rekind of the focal point for a lot
of research and support systemsfor mental health issues issues far
more serious than what I dealt with.
But they're trying to reduce humansuffering and give people a point
of contact who are suffering fromdepression, anxiety, whatever.
So I really appreciate their work.
(52:22):
I know they've helped friends of mine.
I've seen family, membersstruggle with mental health.
So that's super important to me.
And then the Colorado TrailFoundation is the nonprofit that
maintains the Colorado Trail.
A bunch of great people whospend their summers working on
the trail, preventing erosion.
Rerouting it, marking it.
(52:43):
And that is such a resource.
It makes so many people happy,reduces so much stress in the world.
Even if you're not gonna through-hikeit, you can go out after work and the
Denver area and hike pieces of it.
So it's such a gift.
I profile the woman who spearheadedthe construction of the trail
Goody, who is an amazing individual.
(53:03):
And all these people have justgiven us such a gift to create
something like the Colorado Trail.
Yeah, the FI movement in itsessence as Mr. Mustache Pete Aney
talks about is a green movement,whether we realize it or not.
We are utilizing less resources.
We're not succumbing to theconsumption culture in not
(53:25):
living paycheck to paycheck.
We are taking care of our internalnature, external nature and focusing
really outward it can seem selfish toreach FI, but in some ways it's selfless.
And we need to, I think, focus at timesmore on the giving that we are doing in
(53:46):
freeing ourselves from the shackles ofsay, the golden handcuffs and opening
the possibilities of creating and givingback to the world and adding to its
sort of nonproductive robust culture.
very well put, yeah, that green aspectof FI was always super important to
(54:09):
me and I had to kind of throttle itin a little bit on my blog 'cause I
wasn't sure people wanted to hear it.
But this stage in my life, hikingthe Colorado Trail, it manifests.
There are many, many passages inthe book about what I'm seeing in
the environment as I go through.
And I couldn't be more supportive ofthe idea of us all consuming less and
(54:29):
living more effectively and efficientlyby managing, our wealth intelligently.
quick question since you're mentioningthe environment, does anything in
your investment portfolio is like theESG investing or anything like that?
One of my bigger investmentsis Vanguard's ESG fund.
I I won't say that I'm convincedthat's the best way to help the
(54:50):
environment, but that small domain.
It's a small thing that I did.
Yeah.
you talk about on the trailsort of the fact that there are
people that take advantage of thetrail and leave a trace behind.
There's garbage on the trail, there'swaste, and my son grew up in sort of
a pack it in, pack it out philosophy.
(55:12):
Do you think we should be more consciousof taking care of our environment that
way and leaving it how we found it?
Absolutely.
To the point of repetition andhopefully not turning readers off.
I hit those themes in the book.
The book is a how to on how totravel, light leave no trace.
All of the best backpacking techniquesI complain about and go into the
(55:32):
trash, the toilet paper, how touse the bathroom in the woods.
The other issues I've seen the use ofour public lands for grazing cattle,
which are highly destructive and maybe wedon't need to do so much of that anymore.
The broad scale death oftrees at high altitudes.
About 40% of the high altitude treesin Colorado are dead from beetle
(55:56):
kill related to the climate warming.
You just cannot avoid seeing theseimpacts when you go out hiking.
And so I try to talk about themconstructively in the book and explain
what I'm seeing and hope that moreand more people will get interested
in protecting our public lands.
the book touches on so many themes.
It touches on, family relationships,external relationships,
(56:19):
relationship to our environmentfor backpackers on the how-tos.
I love the concept of traveling lightbecause we clutter our lives with stuff.
And then if you do your camino,if you walk the Camino, if you
walk these trails, you realizeI don't need so much to survive.
I really need very little andwhy do I weigh weigh myself
(56:42):
down with so much stuff?
Exactly.
It's one of the parts of backpackingthat I find the coolest that I can
survive for a week at a time with justwhat I can carry on my back plus water.
I get in the wilderness.
And it just drives home howlittle you need to be happy.
It's one of the aspects ofbackpacking I enjoy the most.
we focus on what is enough andthat seems to be the philosophical
(57:05):
battle for everybody in life.
And especially we're, and we're muchmore conscious of it in the FI movement.
It's kind of our enemyand our friend enough.
is this moving goalposts and reachingretirement for late starters alike.
We chase this moving goalpost,putting our stake in the sand
and saying, you know what?
I've reached it.
(57:26):
I have more than enough and it'stime to give back to my family,
my community and move on into thatphase of life that you are in.
You seem very peaceful,happy, you're turning 65.
You probably haven't taken SocialSecurity yet, but now you have Medicare.
What do the the next 15,20 years look like for you?
(57:52):
you hit the nail on the head.
I feel getting to do this hike,getting to write the book about it.
I've realized my major goals in life, I'vegotten to achieve my dreams and then write
about 'em and tell 'em to other people.
And what I'm focused on for theyears I've got remaining is how
to give back at what's the mosteffective way for me to give back.
(58:13):
And that starts with me talking aboutthe book and all these important
ideas that I think we've covered.
It's been a great conversation.
Those ideas are really important to me.
The protecting environment and livingfrugally dealing with your mental
health and physical health issues.
Right now, I feel like talking aboutthe book is the best way for me to
give back, but that could shift.
(58:34):
I'm at a stage where I've won thelottery and it's just about the best
way to distribute the proceeds andtrying to make it less about me.
Well, that is beautiful.
And Daryl, tell us the name of thebook again and if people want to get
in touch with you, what's the best way?
Yeah, so it's two sticks, one path, ajourney beyond fear on the Colorado Trail.
(58:54):
The website dedicated to, the bookis trailmemor.com and it also has
reviews of a couple dozen other booksand that genre that I think well of.
So you can get other readingin that space if you like it.
And then the books available onAmazon and Kindle and paperback.
then I do still occasionallywrite for caniretireyet.com?
(59:15):
I'm not sure which orderto read them in first.
That two sticks, onepath, or can I retire yet?
Which questions do we reallyneed to ask ourselves first?
It's important to askthe important questions.
It's important todiscuss them with others.
I think we've accomplished a lot todayin an hour, and I want to thank our
guest, Darryl Kirkpatrick, for spendingsome of his precious time with us today.
(59:39):
Thank you, Bill and Jackie.
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