The Powers of Starting Late, Retirement Calculators, and More | Chris Mamula | 086 - Catching Up to FI: Financial Independence for Late Starters

Episode Transcript
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(00:01):
there's all these different budgetingtools, but some way or another, find
a way that works for you and just seewhere your money goes and try to be
able to step back and without judgment.
And, it doesn't reflect on who you are.
It's just what you have been doing.
And these are behaviorsthat are changeable.
But see where your money's going andjust see how much of that it lines
up with like what you say you value.
And, what things can you start to change?
And then how much impact can they have?

(00:22):
what are the biggest things aregoing to have the most impact?
So, housing, cars, food recurringexpenses, what are those things
where you can make a difference?
and I think that's thebest place to start.
I was still in my last year of PT school,making very little money, maybe 10 or 15
grand through the year working part time.
And my wife had her first jobmaking about 35 to 40 grand.
This is in $2,000.

(00:43):
So a bit more than now,but, not a huge salary.
And we just determined we would liveoff of her salary and use Every penny I
got to kind of pay off her debts whichwas, student loans and a small car loan.
And by the time I got my firstcouple of real paychecks, we were
debt free and we were pretty happy.
So we just continued to alwayslive off of her salary and we
just continued to save mine.

(01:04):
I was just following blindly myfinancial advisors advice, and once
I kind of realized what advice wewere getting, I realized how much
fees we were paying, I was justcertain that I was getting ripped off.
And as I started to learn and readand study, I realized like what
we got was not being ripped off.
We were getting very standard advice.
It was what.
If you didn't have enough tohave an AUM advisor you were

(01:27):
going to be sold commissionedproducts and that's what we had.
And so, and it made sense fromhis standpoint, why we had
everything we had but it didn'tmake sense from our standpoint.

(02:05):
Hello and welcome backto Catching Up to FI.
I'm Bill Yount with my esteemed cohost Jackie Cummins Koski and today
we're going to talk about thingslike retirement calculators and
the advantages of starting late.
So let's jump in Jackie.
Tell us who this guy Chris Mamula is.
Well, Hey Bill, how'severything going with you today?

(02:26):
Always great to hang out with you andwith our awesome guests Chris Mamula he
used principles of traditional retirementplanning combined with creative lifestyle
design to retire from his career as aphysical therapist at the age of 41.
He got me beat.
He, his wife and his young daughterthen made a cross country move from

(02:48):
Pennsylvania to Utah to pursue.
Their passion for outdoor adventureafter poor experiences with the
financial industry early on in hisprofessional life, he educated himself
on investing, taxes and retirementplanning and including a recently
earning his CFP credential and CFPis certified financial planner.

(03:09):
Chris now draws on his experience towrite and speak about wealth building.
Investing, financial planning, financialindependence, and early retirement.
FIRE, something we love andlifestyle design at his blog
called, Can I Retire Yet?
Many of our audience maybe familiar with that one.
He is also the primary authorof the book, Choose FI, your

(03:32):
blueprint To financial independence.
It was an awesome book.
It sold tons of copies.
Chris also works one onone as an advice only.
And we'll talk a little bit moreabout what that is and advice only
financial planner with a bundle wealth.
And we'll talk more about it and it's justinteresting to kind of see his trajectory.
So Chris, welcome to catching up to fi.

(03:54):
It's a pleasure to be here andtalk with both of you again.
Yeah, it was great seeing youat Econome and hearing your
talk and meeting you finally.
This, the best part of thiscommunity is meeting the people
that influence your lives.
And we hope today that youinfluence our late starter lives.
Yeah, it's it was fun going to that.

(04:17):
yeah, it was great seeing you in person.
It always is.
It just sort of makes us alittle bit more comfortable with
you and hopefully vice versa.
so Chris, why don't we start with theearly days of your financial life, like
leading up to this shift that you made.
And reaching FI and retiring early.
So can you talk us through that?

(04:37):
Yeah, I mean, so Bill, I know you'rein the medical field, so you'll
probably relate to this, but I went toschool to become a physical therapist.
So for me, it was not quite aslong as you, but, I was eight years
in school between my bachelor'sand my master's and my DPT.
And so you're just learning allthese things about, Things you do
to practice and ultimately to makemoney but you never learned anything
about what to do with your money.

(04:57):
And so luckily for me, I had parents whokind of helped me lay a solid foundation.
As far as just the simple things,avoiding debt, living below your means.
But I had no idea what I wasdoing with investing tax planning.
So I went to my parents and Isaid, what are you guys doing?
And they referred me to their advisor andI had this horrible experience with him.
And 10 years later, after just listeningto everything he said, I'm doing zero

(05:20):
due diligence, cause I just figuredhe was good enough for my parents.
He was good enough for me.
And I realized I was making a lot ofmistakes and that's when I found a
bunch of the other fire bloggers and Iwent kind of headfirst down the rabbit
hole into the whole fire community.
But yeah, I mean, I had the habits.
in place and I kind of was livingthat fire lifestyle of living well
below my means, but all the technicalstuff, I had no clue what I was doing

(05:40):
and I really didn't think it waspossible to retire at 40 or even 50.
I didn't know anybody that was doing it.
I didn't see anybody out there.
So yeah, I was just kind of living myown life, doing my own thing and marching
to the beat of my own drummer, I guess.
Help us a bit with the numbers, becauseour audience likes to know that you
can do it on a low or average income.
Can you tell us, what you were earning,what your savings rate was, and, that

(06:02):
you can do this in a certain amountof time, whether it be early or late?
Yeah.
So.
Our hard, the method to our madness.
Again, we had no systemor, goals or anything.
So all I knew is my parentsreally hammered home to me, the
idea of being debt free and,and, living below your means.
And my wife came from a family,a similar background, but they

(06:23):
weren't as solid with money.
So she paid completely for herself.
Going through school, whereasI got through school between my
parents helping and working andscholarships completely debt free.
And so as we were going to getmarried, it was just freaked me out.
And so I wanted us to be debtfree before we got married.
So what we decided, I was still in mylast year of PT school, making very
little money, maybe 10 or 15 grandthrough the year working part time.

(06:43):
And my wife had her first jobmaking about 35 to 40 grand.
This is in $2,000.
So a bit more than now,but, not a huge salary.
And we just determined we would liveoff of her salary and use Every penny I
got to kind of pay off her debts whichwas, student loans and a small car loan.
And by the time I got my firstcouple of real paychecks, we were
debt free and we were pretty happy.

(07:04):
So we just continued to alwayslive off of her salary and we
just continued to save mine.
So as a starting physicaltherapist in Pittsburgh at the
time, it was very low salaries.
I started also about $40,000 only.
Over time, we both grew our salary.
We both maxed out in like three years.
90 ish thousand neither of us ever madea hundred thousand dollars in a year.
But we always lived off of hersand save mine just cause we
kind of got into that habit.
No reason one or the other, just,we made pretty equal income.

(07:27):
So we had basically a 50 percent savingsrate and we did that from, I guess I got
out of PT school when we were at zeroaround 2001 and I left my job in 2017.
So 16 years it took us.
Wow, I mean, that's incredible.
And, with the compoundingeffect, you're very transparent.
So you're saving roughly 000 a year.
You work 16 years.

(07:48):
Can you tell us where your firenumber was when you reached it?
Was it a number?
Was it a time and you know,what was it when you reached it?
And why did you stop?
Yeah.
So a couple of things I'll say,first off, we definitely weren't
saving 80, 90 the whole time.
Cause like, again, we started at about 40.
So we grew our income.
Over time, but we werestarting much less than that.

(08:10):
And then we were savingreally with no purpose.
So we were paying way more income taxand way more investing fees than we knew.
So and we were losing a lot, like justleaking a lot of money to unnecessary
fees and taxes along the way.
So for a good 10, 12 years, we kindof figured out what we were doing.
So yeah, it was definitely less than that.
And then we just kind of did it becauseit was again, just kind of comfortable.

(08:31):
So when I found the fire community, Ikind of bought into the idea of like,
Retirement and full financial independencewas the goal and, retirement, you need
to have 25 times your annual spending.
So I think that's a great starting point.
Cause it gives you atrue North to shoot for.
But then as we started thinkingabout this, when we were retiring,
it was very low interest rates.
So there was a lot of like, talkabout is 4 percent too much.

(08:51):
And we kind of got into that andkind of got a little bit scared.
There was the idea, like we had a youngchild and our expenses were going to
fluctuate substantially over time.
So China hadn't having to figure that out.
So.
Ultimately, where we kind of settled waswe were going to make this transition
before we found the fire movement.
We, again, I was we're intothe outdoors community.
So we kind of latched onto thisidea of like being a dirt bag.

(09:11):
Like it's the kind of affectionate termused in the climbing community of people
that like just, we'll crash on people'scouches and sleep in cars and whatever.
And that was kind of our lifestyle.
We live very frugally because we werechasing our passions or a ski bomb.
So we were going to move to Utah in 2000.
Well, 2011, and then we didn'tthink we could have a child.
We didn't think my wife could getpregnant after a whole decade of marriage.

(09:32):
And then just as we were about to makethe move, we found out she was pregnant.
So that's what got me very seriousabout the whole personal finance thing.
And so as we were approaching ournumber we weren't quite there.
We were probably about 20, 21 time ourannual expenses, but we realized like
if we didn't make the move at that time,and our daughter started school and
started getting into her own business.
Activities and making friends, itwas going to be harder to move.
So it was really more of alifestyle decision than a

(09:54):
hitting a number or anything.
And we weren't certain that we werefinancially independent, but my
wife had at that point found a workremote part time job that she liked.
And I was my original plan wasjust to work part time as a PT.
But then I kind of fell intothe writing on the blog and with
the choose a five books, I wasmaking some money from my writing.
So I never did go back to work as a PT,but my intention was never to fully retire

(10:14):
and, and we didn't have a set number.
So Chris, I got a quick question.
So I heard you talk about thefact that you guys had been trying
for a long time to have a kid.
And then all of a sudden she's pregnantafter all this time, was there anything
in particular that you could thinkof that might've helped that alarm
or something that you did differentwhere finally, boop, you got it.

(10:34):
She just got pregnant.
Jack, are you askingme how to make a baby?
uh,
No um,
what I'm saying if you'redoing the same thing for years?
And nothing was different.
And then all of a sudden,
because of fire.
I mean, they were, actuallythe stress was less.
They hit their number.
The kid came at or around

(10:56):
fire.
no, like, no, like I said, we had no idea.
We had no idea of fires.
I can't give it any credit.
No, I, I have no idea.
just, life happens.
I can't
So chris, you just told ushow to make a baby and the
jackie was kind of interested.
Maybe she didn't know but atany rate She had an immaculate
conception for her daughter.

(11:16):
So at any rate I do want to know whatWhen in this fire journey did the
child come and how dramatically didthat change your approach to fire?
So that's a hard question.
So let me think about this.
So we were in the process of just I guessour, I could tell you what our plan was
before we knew she was, we were going tohave a baby is we were going to move West.

(11:36):
I was going to keep my PT license.
I was going to take maybe 6 monthsoff and try to find like a part
time, very casual work role.
Like we knew we had substantial savings.
I would say we had.
At least a half a million dollarsin a paid off house, just to kind
of be transparent with numbers.
And so we figured we would just,buy a paid off house and we

(11:57):
would still have a headstart.
But again, we had no concept even ofhow much you would need to retire,
or if that was really possible.
So the plan was my wife had a job offerwith a company called black diamond.
So she was going to work full time.
And this black diamond is acompany that manufactures climbing
gear and backcountry ski gear.
So she would have been making anormal salary working full time
with a company that would kind of.
Provide a social system for what we wantedto do moving to Utah and the mountains,

(12:20):
and then I figured I can make, a bit ofmoney to supplement that, like I knew
we didn't need two full time incomes.
Cause again, we were saving.
80, $90,000 a year with a paid offhouse, probably even more than that.
We probably had a more than a 50 percentsavings rate, but again, just, we
didn't really have a plan, so I can'treally give you a whole lot of detail.
Cause we were just kind of wingingit and making it up as we go.
And then once we found the firemovement what changed was it really

(12:41):
made me take control of my investments.
And really, I just readeverything I could.
It's like all the early firebloggers, you know Pete, Mr.
Money Mustache and JL and mad scientists.
And I found can I retire yet?
Which is now my blog, but it waswritten by Daryl Kirkpatrick at the
time and all those early buyer blogs,I just consumed everything I can
get my hands on and really changedeverything on the technical side.

(13:03):
Yeah, what about the child?
And then how did the child, whendid that hit and how did that change
everything to delay your fire?
Did it matter?
Cause there's a lot of expenses associatedwith the child in college and all
that, depending on what you want to do.
How did that impact you?
it's hard to say, cause we didn't reallytrack our spending before we started
living off of my wife's salary whenshe was making only $40,000, maybe

(13:26):
even a little less, and we both again,maxed out around 90 ish thousand.
So we were.
Increasing our lifestyle anddoing everything we wanted.
So we really just didn'tpay a lot of attention.
So we definitely started trackingour spending after, so I could
tell you what we spent after.
But yeah, I mean, there's really,it's hard to really compare it.
Cause we were just kind ofgoing by the seat of our pants.
Again, we had really good habits ofliving way below our means, but other
than that, we didn't on the technicalside, I don't know what our spending

(13:48):
was, our investing had no plan.
We were just buying loaded mutualfunds and we had a variable annuity
inside of a tax advantage, the Cali wewere doing literally everything that.
I would tell somebody notto do is what we were doing.
But we had the habits in place.
So that made the changes easier.
So we hear that story over and over andover again about the mistakes we made,
and you recovered from them and retiredat 41, but you're not really retired.

(14:12):
You're probably busier than ever.
You're a CFP.
You write this blog.
You do so much.
I want to know if when you got to yourfire number, do you draw down now?
Or is all this extra work coverthe expenses that you have in
the year, this side hustle thatturned into a prime hustle?
Yeah.
So my wife now works 20 hours a week.
She still works with that samecompany, but 20 hours a week.

(14:34):
And then I work only 10 hours a week doingthe financial planning with with a bundle.
And then as far as the blog, I only writelike one article a month, one new article.
And then I have somebodyI brought on who helps me.
So yeah.
I'm not making much money and wecan live mostly off of my wife's
income still, because again, we havea paid off house, paid off cars.
We have very low expenses.
And then anything I do make,we still actually save.

(14:56):
So yeah, we're not drawingdown at this point.
I would say we don't have much ofa savings rate anymore, but we're
basically kind of like livinga paycheck to paycheck kind of
lifestyle, but that's more than enough.
Cause in the background wewere probably financially
independent without any income.
And so that's justcompounding and growing.
And by the time we do start drawingdown, it would be such a low
percentage that it won't really matter.
So we call that Coast FI where if youlet everything grow and you continue

(15:19):
sort of working and living off ofwhat you make and your nest egg is
growing, it'll be way more than whatyou need when you are ready to retire.
Is that what they call Coast FI?
I think like I, I hear people talkabout that now, like that wasn't the
thing, like that wasn't our plan.
Our plan to get to financialindependence and like not have to work.
Yeah.
And if I would have known that.
Our life kind of revolves around ourdaughter's schedule and we thought,

(15:40):
like, maybe we would homeschoolor something, but she's thriving
in a traditional school setting.
And so we're kind of limitedto, like, when we can travel
and when we can do things.
Yeah, so if I would have probablyput more thought into it and realize
that I probably would have donemore of a coast by approach where
I would have cut back even sooner.
Knowing that, we didn't needto work that hard and save that
much for those extra years.
But again, the fire communitywas quite different.

(16:02):
10 years ago when I was 10, 12 years agowhen I was falling into it I was actually
kind of thinking Jackie, I mentionedbefore, I think we started recording,
but I got your book that's comingout and just like seeing a fire book.
First off fire for dummies,which is kind of cool.
Cause that's like sucha pop culture thing.
And like before fire was.
Fringe weird thing.
And then just, the fact that you are ablack woman, like when I started writing,

(16:23):
I was diversity cause I wasn't an engineer
and I was a white guy who happenedto be in healthcare, but like, I was
adding diversity to the fire movementbecause it was all white engineer guys.
I checked like two of those three boxes,but I wasn't an engineer and I didn't
really, Get all these things right.
I had made a lot of mistakes.
So I kind of thought like I was addinga unique voice at that time, but yeah,
the fire community is just so much morediverse and so many different stories

(16:45):
and different approaches and paths.
And yeah, I think it's awesome.
Yeah.
I think we started around the same time.
I think I started learning about it maybearound 2014, 2015, something like that,
and it took me about a 10 year window, butyeah, it wasn't all these flavors of five
coast five fat five and all that, noneof that stuff existed, but I had to put
it in the book while talking about books.

(17:05):
So you guys started early on whenyou put out the choose FI book.
And.
Most, I listen a lot tothe Choose FI podcast.
Bill, did you listen to Choose FI podcast?
Oh yeah, that's where I met Becky.
I met her on her episode and that'show she became our first co host.
Yeah.
And we love podcasts.

(17:26):
We're auditory learners.
So a lot of us that didn't reallyread blogs or even people that
did read blogs, they navigatedtoward the Choose FI podcast.
To me, that was thefirst sort of fire focus.
And the Facebook group grewquickly and it was awesome.
And the same thing with the podcast.
And then along came the book.

(17:48):
We mostly knew Brad and Jonathancause they were the host.
So I'd like to hear more abouthow the book came about your role
in it and like any big takeaways.
Cause the book has been out,I want to say five years.
Came out in 2019 in the fall.
Okay.
So we're close to five years.
So yeah, talk to us a littlebit about the Choose Fi book.

(18:09):
This changed a lot of lives.
It's alongside the Choose Fi podcastand you were very involved in that.
You're the author.
I don't know.
You might've been the main author.
I don't know if theother guys are writers.
So tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah.
So I mentioned like my background offinding, Pete and JL and, and Brandon
and all these different bloggers.
And.
Again, I wasn't into thehardcore frugality by any means

(18:31):
like during our path again.
And I think it may be in some waysI talked about the mistakes and the
negative aspects of not having any rolemodels, but I think on the positive
side, like we spent pretty freely again.
Because we got the big things rightwith housing and cars, and we lived in
a relatively low cost area, I went tothe Super Bowl twice, we got into high
altitude mountaineering, so we've beento Africa, hiked Kilimanjaro, and been on

(18:52):
safari, we've been 20, 000 foot mountainsin South America, so, I wasn't living this
super frugal lifestyle again, the kind of,Thinking about like the diverse viewpoints
versus just, even though I, again, itwas another white guy writing about fire.
So like what I wanted to do as I startedfinding these other fire bloggers, I just
kind of took little bits and pieces fromeveryone, but I didn't go hardcore, like,
I'm going to ride my bike everywhereand sell off all my possessions and try

(19:14):
to live on $20,000 a year or anything.
But I took little bits and piecesfrom everybody, like JLs, investing
philosophy, Brendon's Tax philosophy,like all these different people.
And so as I was doing this.
I never really listenedto podcasts at that time.
Again, that was kind of a new mediumat the time, and I really fell
in love with the early episodesof the Tim Ferriss podcast.
And what he did was interviewed peoplethat were really successful from

(19:35):
all these different walks of life.
And he wrote a book called tools ofTitans, and it kind of took lessons
from each of his individual people.
And I thought that would becool with the fire community.
And so I would maybe I thoughtonce I freed up my time from
being a physical therapist, Iwould start talking to people.
And then as I did that, turn thatinto a book following that model.
Cause I love that bookand I loved his podcast.
And then choose if I came out andI was like, man, they're doing

(19:57):
exactly what I wanted to do.
And so I just reached out to himand luckily I think I got him right
before like they hit that hockey stickmoment where they really took off.
And so they were very open and I guessthey had just, Realize that themselves
that like they were having theseinterviews and they were just starting to
gain some steam, but they were coming fromall these different places and they didn't
have a way to like kind of organize it.
So they love that idea.
And so that's how thepartnership happened.
And, and yeah, I was theprimary voice of the book.

(20:18):
I, I basically wrote the book,but they gave me access to
every interview at that time.
And then kind of gave mefeedback as we were going.
And we kind of worked on it in that waytogether from an editorial standpoint.
But yeah, I was the writer of the book.

(21:29):
So when you proposed the book to Bradand Jonathan, you didn't know them before
you reached out to them about the book?
No, No, no.
And it's kind of funny.
I think there's this perception thatfire people, they don't really fire.
Cause you're making all this money.
And it's this big business thing.
Like Brad and Jonathan, thebook deal was like a Google
doc that we wrote up together.
We never had a lawyer or anything.

(21:50):
And the same thing with mything with can I retire yet?
Like I was a reader of that blog forever.
I sensed that Daryl, who startedit, he never had a guest post on
the site ever and I was reading it.
I sense he was kind of burning out andI reached out and I said, I'm quitting.
I said, I've been writing for a while.
I really haven't had achance to build an audience.
Would you be open to a partner?
And it was kind of the same thing.
It was just like a handshake dealand it turned into a partnership

(22:10):
and he eventually decided to stepaway, but we remained great friends.
And yeah, I mean, To me, that'sthe beauty of fire is like you
can kind of do these things.
There's really no risk.
Cause the worst thing thathappens is just doesn't work out.
But yeah, I think that's kind of partof the reason they have worked out is
because it's kind of low pressure andreally doing it for the right reasons.
And I think people pick up on that.

(22:31):
we were just talking to Tae Kimabout reinvention and you are again,
another example of reinventionand exiting healthcare which
is a difficult field to be in.
And now it seems like you'reliving your dream, living your
best life, following your passions.
And you've even gotten your CFP.
So a book, a blog, a CFP, and this allstem from being a physical therapist.

(22:56):
I find it fascinating and, we wouldencourage our late starter audience to
not let themselves get stuck in the mud.
You can reinvent yourselfeven as a late starter.
Heck, what's his name?
Colonel Sanders started Kentuckyfried chicken in his fifties.
Right.
So I'm looking for myKentucky fried chicken.
Well, and, I'm pickingup on a theme here, Bill.

(23:17):
It seems like Chris is pretty comfortablewith like reaching out even to a
stranger to either ask or proposesomething and taking risk because
you didn't know the choose FI guys.
You really didn't knowDaryl at, can I retire yet?
You reached out to them.
I have been shy in the past and itwould scare me to death to do that.

(23:40):
But you felt comfortableenough to do that, Chris.
And were you afraid that theywould just say, don't bother
me, kid, or not respond or what?
Well, I mean, again, If they wouldhave said, no, I would have been
right in the exact same place.
I would have been if I didn't ask.
So again, there was really no risk.
And again, I didn't, I didn'tknow if I could ever sell.
I didn't know if I could completea book first off, let alone sell

(24:01):
any, like, I didn't know if thatwas going to make any money.
Again, the agreement I went into,can I retire yet with was basically.
I was just kind of there tolearn from him and to contribute.
And then if I could grow it, thenI would participate in the upside.
We kind of developed a dealthat it was no risk to him.
And it was only, I onlybenefited if I could bring value.
So, if you presentthings like that, I mean.
What's the reason for people toturn you down or say, no, I mean,

(24:24):
I mean, the hardest part I think isgetting people to, take your email.
Cause there's, we live in such aworld of so much junk and stuff.
So both of those were email introductions,but yeah, I think if you have an
introduction and you approach thingsfrom how can you add value to somebody
else versus like, how can I get as muchas I can for myself, there's really
no downside in it for them either.
And it definitely increases your odds.
I mean, not everybody's going to sayyes, but it makes it more attractive.

(24:48):
Yeah, let's give a shout outto Daryl because I've read his
book, Can I Retire Yet?, and thatis a treatise on how to do it.
I mean, it's a relatively short book.
It's a little bit dense, but Iwould encourage our audience to
look at that book because it canhelp you reverse engineer your
path to fire as a late starter.
Absolutely.
And

(25:08):
So Chris, can you tell us a little bitof more about the, can I retire yet blog?
Like when did you connect with Daryl?
How long has it been and what isthe blog really focusing on today?
Yeah.
So.
It kind of goes, if I couldgo back to how I connected.
So I knew we were going to leave and I waswith my same employer for like 14 years.

(25:31):
And so I turned in my notice inlike April of 2017, telling them
I was going to quit in December.
So I gave him like afive, six month notice.
And at that point I didn't reallyknow what I was going to do.
And we knew we wanted to move West.
So.
I just, at that point I was thinking Iwas just going to be a part time PT, but
I was writing, I had an old blog calledeat the financial elephant, which is
now defunct, but I let that just die.
But yeah, I had been writing for fiveor six years, just never monetized.

(25:54):
It never really publicized.
It just kind of grew organically.
And I wanted to write more.
I knew that.
And so I reached out, I think to thechoose up I guys first, that would
have probably been shortly after Iquit, or maybe even before I quit,
but I knew I was going to, and thenI reached out to Daryl probably that
summer, like a few months after.
So yeah, I ended up having twogigs like before, before I quit.
So I quit my job on, I think,December 1st, it was a Friday.

(26:16):
And then on the Monday, I guess wouldhave been like December 4th, I started
working on both of those projects,really kind of diving into them.
Yeah,
the same time.
you've been
retired now, what, seven years?
it was December of 17 or 18,I have to look, I think it
was 17, it's been a while.

(26:37):
That's impressive.
That's
And so you killed the financialelephant and you, you moved
on to these other things.
And, and the funny thing is, Iknow it was a small blog, but I
used to read that blog and I didn'tknow that you wrote that blog.
So you had at least one fan over here.
It's surprising.
I've had a number of people like whenI go to like like economy, I had people
come and say, oh, I read your oldblog and they recognize me from that.

(26:58):
And even one of our advisors at a Bundowas an old can I retire or I'm sorry, an
old eat the financial elephant reader.
And so that's how she followedme to kind of retire yet.
And then that's how sheended up working there.
So yeah, it's weird.
You don't really feellike anybody's reading.
It was relatively small, but yeah,it definitely made some impact.
Exactly.
So with the, can I retire yet blog?
So what does it look like today?
You said you write about an article oncea month, you have a little bit of help.

(27:22):
Because I think it'sstill an awesome blog.
I subscribed to the newsletterand I think, once a week, you send
Monday morning, Monday morning.
Yeah.
So, I decided to clean up my mailbox, myemail box, and now I only want the stuff
that I proactively will read and openup and, Can I retire yet is one of those
I enjoy getting every Monday morning.
So tell us where it's at today, becauseI think a lot of our listeners would

(27:45):
be very interested because we're alwayslooking for good, high quality resources.
And I like some of thetopics that you've chosen.
So, so tell us a little bit more aboutit and what's going on with it now.
Yeah.
So we still publish every Monday.
I was kind of getting to the point whereI was burning out on writing and just all
the stuff that goes into managing a blog.
So last summer, fall, I sent out a thingto my email audience, just saying, like I

(28:08):
was looking for some help on the blog andseeing what I would get expecting, maybe
I would get two or three responses and Igot just Bombarded with just unbelievably
talented people who wanted to help out.
And so after kind of talking to a bunchof them and having some people submit
some things, I ended up choosing aguy named David, who's been a reader
for five years or maybe longer.
I think he was a reader of Darrow'sstuff before I even came on.

(28:30):
And so he's now come on and he'swriting one post a month and then I'm
doing my work with a bundle wealth.
And so it's kind of a, It helps me to giveme some content and really good content
from people who are CFPs writing, andit helps them to publicize a little bit.
So they write a post a month, likeone of the people from the team.
And then I still write one post.
And then I do like today, I justpublished, I call it the best of, so

(28:50):
I'll just just a bunch of like linksto like maybe eight or 10 articles
that I found of things that I'vebeen reading that I find interesting.
So yeah, it's once a week, but forme personally, I'm only writing
like once a month, one new content.
And then one, I.
Aggregate, but I'mreading that stuff anyway.
So that's pretty easy.
So these are things that we wouldencourage our audience to check out
if they haven't found them already.
But in one of your posts, actually yousent to us that I think is very pertinent

(29:15):
to our late starter audience, and youwere titled it, Seven Advantages When
You Start Saving for Retirement Late.
I'd like to go through those, and ifneed prompting, I can certainly prompt
you, because some of them aren'tnecessarily intuitive and are different
from ones that we might have gottenon the board at the economy conference
in our breakout, right, Jackie?
Yeah.
Yeah.
And the stuff that we, hear a lotin our group sometimes some of the

(29:37):
things that are mentioned didn't showup in his list, so it's worth kind
of going through that and let's seewhat we missed and what was the same.
Yeah.
If you want to promptme, I wrote it a bit ago.
But yeah, I,
so the
I, I got him right here.
before we dive into it, like I would justsay like, so kind of going back to the
choose a five book and like kind of whatdrew me into this is I think, again, there
was that perception when I started writingthat Fire was this extreme lifestyle.

(30:01):
You had to get it rightfrom the beginning.
Like, so you, people that just kneweverything magically at age 20, and then
they retired at age 30, and then a lotof them, like you're living in a van
down by the river or living on one ofthe other ones I found early was like
early retirement extreme where I think hewas living on like $10,000 a year in San
Francisco and it was all these storiesthat seemed extreme, but what I wanted to
do is just say okay, if you apply theseprinciples, they really apply to anybody.

(30:22):
And for a late starter All thesethings that fire people are doing.
So if you can do this and achieveindependence, if you start at 20, and
you're, financially independent by 30or 35, if you're starting at 50, that's
how you're going to catch up by 65.
But you have a lot of advantages.
And so I wanted to highlight thatand make this more accessible because
the principles again You've writtenthe book and on this topic also, and,
these principles apply to anybody.
It's just math is math.

(30:43):
So,
Yeah.
I mean, some of the ones that stuckout to me, Bill, was that saving
during your prime earning years.
So Chris what did you mean by that?
yeah.
So, I mean, I shared a little bit aboutmy story, but we started, my wife was
making again, about 35, 40 grand a yearstarting, and I was still in PT school.
So I wasn't even making maybe 10 or12 grand and we started living off

(31:04):
one salary and saving the other.
And then it got progressivelyeasier for us and we were able
to elevate our lifestyles.
We did that as we both grew our income.
Again, I left my job when I was 41.
I never hit $100,000 and neither did she.
And that's because we left beforewe ever hit our peak earning years.
So, It's on one hand, it's easierbecause we started early and we didn't

(31:25):
have to cut anything of real value.
like Bill asked what I changed, wecut a ton of investing fees, which
that doesn't make my life any worse.
I cut a lot of taxes, which thatdidn't make my life any worse.
So it was easy for us to makechanges, but, if you are willing to
consider the things that you haveto do, like if you elevated your
lifestyle, that might be harder.
Cause maybe you have to downsizeyour housing or change your
approach to buying cars.
Are those big things that we were just.

(31:46):
Automatically getting right.
But, if you can do that, you'redoing it then with a higher income
on average, most people, their incometends to go up through their career.
So you're in your peak earning years.
We did it all before we everreally hit what should have
been our peak earning years.
And so we left a lotof money on the table.
So that's definitely an advantage.
Somebody that starts late would have.
Yeah, and I agree with thatbecause I cut out I was like 49.

(32:07):
But, when you look at your social securitystatement, you can see that trajectory.
And it's just almost likea natural progressing.
And, and that's what I tell peoplealso that get a little discouraged if
they're making, let's say $40,000 a year,they're like, I cannot make any traction.
And I'm like, do you think you'll,Always be making $40,000 a year.
And this person is probably like31 and I'm like, at 35, do you

(32:27):
think you'll be making more?
So that's a, that's areally important point.
Yep.
And you mentioneddownsizing is part of it.
you have a couple of levers to pull there.
You increase your savings rate, you'resaving during your prime earning years.
We moved it from like 10 percentto 40 percent almost overnight when
we realized what we were doing.
But then we also downsized,the big rocks we talk about

(32:50):
housing, transportation and food.
When you downsize the house and food.
We paid it off all of a sudden you haveall this money to throw at your fire.
So I completely agree with, but downsizingyour lifestyles we've talked about
before, it's in some ways hard becauseYou have gotten used to things and you

(33:11):
have hedonic adaptation and unwindingthat we found both illuminating and
lightening and lightening the weight onour shoulders, but really hard to do even
just emptying the house and getting ridof half the stuff that wasn't easy either.
Yeah, and I definitely that's why Iacknowledge like we started on the
right foot and so that made it easierfor us, but that being said, the one

(33:35):
thing as you're getting older, if youhave, like, if you're getting to that
point where you're empty nesting andlike your kids are moving out, that's
kind of just a natural transition pointwhere you might want to think about it.
So, If you bought a house, causeyou felt like you needed it cause
you had two or three kids, butnow you, those kids are moving on.
In addition to like, just not havingthose mouths to feed and those
people to clothe anymore just,you don't need that much space.

(33:55):
So that could be a naturaltime to make it a bit easier.
It's just a natural kind of cue to kind ofhelp you to make that transition, I think.
And that's where we kind of woke up was aswe were transitioning to the empty nest.
And as you've mentioned, I think oneof the advantages of an empty nest is
hopefully the kids are off the payroll.
College is paid for or they've taken onthe cost of college and it's their nut.

(34:16):
But then again, that all ofa sudden, those expenses of
raising kids come back to you.
And you can add that to yoursavings pile as long as you're
intentional about doing this.
And don't just let this money slipthrough your fingers into lifestyle again.
So that one is also important.
But things that you talk about here,people don't necessarily remember, and

(34:38):
there's some numbers to this actually.
Then you talk aboutcatch up contributions.
Can you go through a couple ofthose so that people are aware?
This is what you can do when youhave more money to throw at the fire.
Yeah.
So, I mean, one of the big things thatwe write a lot about is just, like one of
the just simple, simple things you can do.
And again, something that Ipersonally didn't do early.
Because our advisor didn't tell us to,but I'm just using all the tax advantage

(35:01):
retirement accounts that you have.
So if you have a 401k at your workthat's a great account to use as
much as you can to defer some taxes.
Or if you have a Roth version to atleast shield that money and let it
grow and then have access to it later.
But, there are limits to thoseaccount to those accounts.
So once you hit age 50, Now you havean extra I think it's $7,500 this year.
for your HSA, again, a great kind ofstealth retirement account doesn't

(35:23):
have quite as high of a contributionlimit, but as you're over, I think
that when it's 55 then you canput another thousand dollars in.
Same thing with your IRA or your Roth IRA.
If you're using one of thosenot as big of a contribution.
It's like $7,000 this year in 24.
But then if you are over 50, again,you have that catch up contribution.
So that's a thousand.
So if you're using all three of thoseaccounts just for one person, the $7,500

(35:43):
on your work account, plus the thousandon your HSA, plus the thousand on your
IRA, you're looking at about an extra$10,000 that you can shield from taxation
that can, work to your advantage.
So that's a substantial boost to youthat a younger person wouldn't have.
And again, combining that with beingin your peak earning years, hopefully
you'll be able to save that muchand actually use all of that space.
So that's a pretty huge advantagethat again, a younger fire Pursuer

(36:04):
would not have at their access.
yeah, agreed with that.
I got to take advantage of it.
I was 49 when I retired, but I wasturning 50 like December 15th of the year.
So I was able to get the catch up for the401k and my IRA for at least one year.
So, those can't be overlooked.
Now, one thing that youknow, we both have our CFP.
So we know that social security, wehit that hard, when we're studying

(36:27):
for the exam and you talk about, howsocial security fills the gap and
that since we're a little bit closerto that, that makes a difference.
So, so talk a little bit about the socialsecurity aspect of it, for later starters.
Yeah.
So I, I think now that we'retalking about this, some of
these points are coming back.
So one of the other just points thatI made in that article was like, if
you're say you're like myself and you'reretiring at 40 you have like basically

(36:50):
a, if you don't want to take socialsecurity, it'll seven, you have 30 years
to get to a traditional retirement.
And then from 72, if you're planningto 90 or a hundred, even maybe, so you
maybe have two whole retirements to plan.
So you just have that.
Much more longevity risk.
And that doesn't mean you need twiceas much because the math of retirement
just doesn't work quite that way.
But you do need to have some moremoney because of that longevity.

(37:11):
And then that first, the kind of thequote first retirement before your
traditional retirement, you have tokind of fill that whole spending need
through your either part time work.
Or your portfolio or rental income orhowever, you're meeting your income
needs, whereas a traditional retiree,if you're retiring at 65 or 70, and
you have access to social security,that's going to at least give you a
floor under your expenses that you'realways going to have that income.

(37:33):
It's always going to adjust up.
And it's, assuming that Ourcountry doesn't completely implode.
It's always guaranteed.
And if it does, then youhave bigger problems than
your social security payment.
So you have that and it's a huge advantageagain, so you don't need to save nearly
as much for a traditional retirementas you would for an early retirement
to particularly if it's a long earlyretirement, like somebody that's retiring
in their thirties or forties, and youhave that 20 to 30 year gap to fill in

(37:54):
before you can claim social security.
Yeah, when you refer to a decreasedlongevity risk, I think that's what
you're referring to with regardsto two retirements working longer
means you're gonna die sooner ina way, and you don't have to worry
about the long runway, right?
Yeah.
I mean, in most aspects of life,thinking about having less life is not
an advantage, but in retirement planning,when you're looking at the math of how

(38:16):
many years you have to support, that isactually an advantage, even if it's not
a one, we definitely want to jump up anddown and celebrate and get excited about.
Yeah, it's a little morbid, but it'sreality and allows you to have to
save less and have less of a multiple.
Another one that you mentioned,which I like too, because we have

(38:36):
yet to talk about this, but you havemore certainty with health care and
health care is one of the items thatreally befuddles earlier retirees.
And in order to.
Pay for it given what is perceived to bean exorbitant cost What advantage do late
starters have with regards to health care?

(38:57):
Well, I mean you can't make the mistakeof thinking medicare is completely free
and you're not going to have any expensesbut there is definitely an advantage of
once you get to medicare you have morecertainty with like so I mentioned my
wife and I both work part time so we havesome income coming and so We still are
able to take advantage of HSA, like thepremium tax credits, but not as much as

(39:18):
we could if we didn't have any income.
So it's always kind of thisbalancing act of how you generate
your income and how you managethat to get the premium credits.
But then the other thing is.
It's just the uncertainty, likethe law changes all the time.
So right now there's the lawis in effect only through, I
believe the end of next year.
So again, people listento this all the time.
So we're in 2024.
So through 2025 but it was a provision ofone of the COVID bills that was passed.

(39:41):
That it eliminated what wascalled the subsidy cliff.
So before that bill if you wentover a certain income limit,
you lost all of your tax credit.
So that was eliminated for aperiod of time, but we don't know
what's going to happen after 2025.
if it expires and it goesback, that cliff comes back.
Who knows that.
What tends to have happened since thislaw went into effect, the Obamacare
or Affordable Care Act is, it's gottenmore generous over time, but it's always

(40:05):
with a lot of wrangling and a lot ofpoliticizing and, and we just don't know.
And, when you have to potentially fillthat gap for, 25 years, 30 years to a
Medicare and you don't even know whatthe rules are three years in advance.
It's, it just adds a ton ofuncertainty and risk to your plan.
So Medicare is a huge advantage.
Even though again, it'snot completely free.
Chris, I, was that theAmerican Rescue Plan?

(40:26):
Was that the AA RP or AA RPP or something?
I think that was the one, because Iremember when they changed that, the
subsidy cliff where it was removed.
But you're right.
I mean, you have the uncertainties oflaw changes that you can never predict.
Those.
Yeah.
And I've written about it on my site.
So the first year they did it, itactually, it was like a retroactive law.

(40:46):
They didn't even pass it till Ithink like February or March for the
year that it was already in effect.
And then I believe it was the inflationreduction act or one of the, I don't
know, all these things have crazynames, but I think that was the one that
Yeah, it's one.
Yeah, it floats around.
I do have like detailed,I've written about it,
but I'll talk about it.
I don't know.
Yeah, yeah, it's just too confusion.
There's a lot of laws that have happened.

(41:07):
And, we studied hard during the CFP exam.
We knew it then, but good Lord, it's outof our head as soon as we passed the exam.
So,
right, so
Good point.

(42:29):
now jackie's a cfp.
You're a cfp we got to let you two talkabout the cfp thing in the fire community
Yeah.
Yes.
We are CFP professionals in thewords of the new commercial that
they have out our CFP board.
They work hard, right?
And getting the CFP name out there.
I would guess that most people, especiallyfinancial savvy people the part of the

(42:52):
five movement, they are familiar with CFP.
So we got to give kudos to the CFP board.
So Chris, We have heard yousay, and I'm quoting you.
Yeah, I pulled the quote.
You hate the financial advice industry.
So what made you go down the CFProute and join the profession?

(43:13):
And I'll see how muchof that I agree with.
Cause I do believe we havevery similar thinking.
Around this.
So tell us a little bit about whysomeone that hates the financial advice
industry became a financial advisor.
Yeah.
So I don't remember what the originalsource that sent me down the kind of

(43:34):
rabbit hole, but again, like I was justfollowing blindly my financial advisors
advice, and once I kind of realized whatadvice we were getting, I realized how
much fees we were paying, I was justcertain that I was getting ripped off.
And as I started to learn and readand study, I realized like what
we got was not being ripped off.
We were getting very standard advice.

(43:54):
It was what.
If you didn't have enough tohave an AUM advisor you were
going to be sold commissionedproducts and that's what we had.
And so, and it made sense fromhis standpoint, why we had
everything we had but it didn'tmake sense from our standpoint.
So I started writing just really, Iwas just so angry and it gave me a
positive outlet to kind of just getthat out and to educate myself more

(44:15):
deeply and kind of pay it forward.
And kind of turn itinto something positive.
So that's why I started writing andI started just being just such a
critic of the financial industry.
And the more I learned, frankly, themore of a critic I became and the
more I did not like that industry.
But then as, again I had thisreally small audience and I was
kind of preaching to the choir.
And as I went over to can I retire yet?
And as I started going to like campfine, I'd meet different people people

(44:37):
that probably are in your audience thatare kind of catching up and that aren't
nerding out on this stuff all the time.
And I think people would have all thesequestions and I felt like my hands were
kind of tied and I realized like, Evenpeople that are starting to read these
blogs and starting to educate themselves.
A lot of them just need help.
And like, I think theinvesting part is pretty easy.
Like indexing is kindof solved that problem.
that is manageable, but there's so manyother aspects to your personal finances

(44:58):
that are not real intuitive and obvious.
And I just kind of feltmy hands were tied.
So I kind of went down this path.
A lot of it was out of boredomduring COVID of like, I need a big
project and I'm going to get the CFP.
And I didn't know really what I wasgoing to do with it but my ultimate
idea was if I could get the experiencehours, I would just answer blog
readers questions and do it like onan hourly, like advice only basis.

(45:19):
And then as I completed the process andI was thinking about that and I thought
like, if I'm advising people, I'd.
I don't take this lightly.
I think this is a very serious thing andI don't want to be like everybody else
in this industry that I'm so critical of.
And so I like wanted to get someexperience working under somebody.
And I reached out to Cody Garrett, who Iknow at least Jack, you're familiar with.
And he introduced me to aBundo and they were trying to
build this advice only model.

(45:40):
And they were one of the only placesthat was actually doing it at scale.
A lot of people getsuccessful with advice only.
But then they get so successful and theyhave so much demand that their price goes
up and I still think it's less conflicted.
So you're going to probably get betteradvice, but it's still very expensive.
And I was attracted towhat a bundle was doing.
And I, offered, I asked if Icould work just part time and they
were willing to have me do that.
So again, kind of justasking for what you want and.

(46:01):
There's really nodownside if they said no.
And so I started doing it there.
So that's kind of how it all evolved.
And I wasn't really sure aboutthe company, honestly, when I
started working there, cause italmost sounded too good to be true.
But after working there for now, about18 months, I just love the company.
I love what we're doing.
We do only offer one model, soit's not perfect for everybody.
Like it's an ongoing relationship.
But it's very low cost compared tothe industry and it's advice only.

(46:24):
So we're not selling anything.
We're not managing investments andyeah, so that's kind of my full
circle evolution, but I would sayI'm still a pretty harsh critic of 98
percent of the industry cause adviceonly in itself is, very limited.
And then low cost adviceonly is very, very limited.
So,
Well, I find the best thing, youmentioned that it's low cost what would
you say is the traditional or mediancost of getting advice only financial

(46:47):
planning versus what Ubundo does,not that we're necessarily promoting
Ubundo, but we'd like to hear just sowe can understand sort of the spectrum.
yeah.
So when I say low cost, I'm firstcomparing it to like traditional.
So if you don't have much assets,you're traditionally would have been
limited before advice only was offered.
You would be limited to, basicallycommissions based salesmen.
And then, so AUM assets undermanagement is Better it's less

(47:10):
conflicted, but typically they don'twant to work with you unless you
have at least a half million dollars.
And at that level, you'reprobably paying at least 1%.
So you're looking atat least 5, 000 a year.
So where advice only steps inis, you don't have to have.
Assets and you're not being sold things.
So you're going to tend to get lessconflicted advice, but the prices
are all over the, all over the map.

(47:31):
And again, I think a lot of people go in.
And they're low price by necessity.
I think traditionally peoplethought this was a very hard model.
Because you actually have to have peopletake out their credit card or their
checkbook and pay you versus having thesehidden fees in the commissions or in this
assets that you're managing that kindof just gets sucked out of your account.
So you have to see the fees.
But I think what people are findingis there is a demand for it.

(47:52):
And unfortunately, there'sstill not many people doing it.
So as far as what you would pay, it'sgoing to vary a lot from person to person.
But again, The people that are able toget the word out and have a little bit
of publicity, they fill up very quickly.
And so they end up raising their prices.
So you're going to probably end up whetheryou're paying 5, 000 for an AUM or 5,
000 directly, you're still paying 5, 000.

(48:13):
So our fees are about it's499 for the first month.
And I believe we're one.
80 a month ongoing.
So you're looking atabout, 2, 500 a month.
So like half of that 5, 000.
And and then after the first year weget cheaper cause that 500 is only
the first month as an initiation fee.
So again the people that are do ityourselfers, they're going to still
say, wow, that's a lot of money.
But for people that understand whattraditional models pay, it's low cost.

(48:37):
So it's all perspective.
Yeah,
I mean, when you talk about the assetsunder management AUM model, I mean,
that could, go as high as you canthink of, depending on, if you've got
a million bucks, your 1 percent iswhat, $10,000 and, just multiply that.
So just doing that quickmath, it, it makes sense.
And advice only is relatively newbecause we know that the financial

(48:59):
planning industry was builton the backbone of investment.
And like you said, The investingpiece that could be the easiest
piece of financial planning.
If you stick with anindex fund, you're good.
You get your allocations right.
But now what about the taxes?
What about the retirement piece of it?
The drawdown strategies, all thosethings that five people look for.

(49:20):
And Cody Garrett was on theshow, he's he's Founder and
owner of measure tries money.
He has a do it yourself financialplan that we absolutely love.
So there are people in the space that isdoing the work and making a difference.
And then you've got, I'd love tohear what you think about Jeremy
from personal finance club.
He could never answer that questionwhen people would say, how do I

(49:40):
find a good financial planner?
And I, I get his frustration.
I know you do too.
And finally he did somethingabout it and he started nectarine
and it's at hello, nectarine.
com I think.
And basically it's 150 flatfee for one hour session.
Now that's obviously not going tobe an ongoing relationship, or I
guess it's supposed it could be,but it's just 150 no matter what.

(50:01):
I think it could be ideal for somekind of personal Project based, let's
say for instance, if you want to rollover your 401k and you want somebody
to hold your hand, that's a CFP.
So I'd love to hear yourthoughts about that.
And in the advice only space,cause right now it is really small.
most advisors are theseassets under management, but
you're making a difference.

(50:21):
hello next to me is making adifference and all this advice only.
So can you, like, make sure that everyonehas a clear understanding of what that is?
Because I think we have an industryand we have to say we now, right?
Because we're part of the industry.
how confusing that is.
And so maybe we can give a littlebit of more clarity around what
exactly is advice only versus anassets under management model.

(50:44):
Yeah.
So advice only means again, Ithink it's clear, but all these,
there's just so many terms.
It gets so confusing.
So advice only means thatyou're paying only for advice.
So like fee only means you'reonly paying a fee, but like
you can be AUM and that's it.
Technically fee only becauseyou're only paying a fee and

(51:04):
they're not selling you anything.
But it's very confusing because there'salso, then there's fee based, which
is, they might charge a fee based onsome things, but then they can also
sell you things and make commissions.
And all these terms are so confusing.
So I like to think, becauseagain, this is what I'm promoting.
I like to think advice only it's moreclear and more straightforward, but
again, it kind of sounds like fee only.

(51:26):
And all these terms are confusing.
Again, It's one of the things I,again, I hate about the industry is
like, they're not doing this stuffto make it easy and transparent for
people for consumers, I should sayto find good advice and to understand
the conflicts that come with each.
So but advice only just meansyou're paying directly again.
Think of it this way.
If you have to take out yourcheckbook or your credit card

(51:46):
to pay, that's advice only.
If you don't quite see where your feesare coming from, then that's not advice
only that's fee only or fee basedor somewhere they're getting paid.
Nobody's doing this for free.
And if you don't really understandhow they're getting paid and how much,
I would encourage you to add it up.
And it's probably more than you think.
right.
Put a dollar amount to it.
1 percent doesn't soundlike much, but $10,000.

(52:07):
Oh shit.
That's a lot.
Yeah, we put their kids tocollege among other things.
There's a topic we want to touch on beforewe close today, because you wrote a great
article on this and we want to get someretirement calculators across to our
audience because they're in need of them,but there's so many and so different.
You, you talk about low fidelity,medium fidelity, and high

(52:29):
fidelity retirement calculators.
Can you give us a couple of examplesof each and then distinguish what
that means and as terms, and thisis not fidelity of the company.
This is fidelity according to sound andquality and degree of difficulty actually.
So take us through a few of those.
Yeah, what you said wasperfect and just a hat tip.

(52:49):
So one of the people that designedone of the calculators that we
affiliate with on can I retire yet?
His name is Chris Matthewswith Pralana or Pralana.
It's P.
R.
A.
L.
A.
N.
A.
This was his concept that when Darawas yeah, Also building a calculator.
He started consulting and workingwith him and he loved this concept.
So he started writing about it and I kindof picked up and ran with it whenever
I did my presentation at economy.

(53:10):
So that's where that came from.
It's not my term, but yeah, it hasnothing to do with like fidelity.
The firm fidelity is just talkingabout the level of sophistication and
Accuracy that you can expect to get.
And also the flip side of that isit comes with a lot more effort.
So a low fidelity calculator maybeonly has three or four things you
put in, like, what is your balance?
How long is your retirement?

(53:30):
And I don't know, maybe,what rate is, maybe it'll ask
you for your rate of return.
It'll ask you maybe three thingsand it'll say like, what is
your percent chance of success?
And what is your ending balance,median balance or something like that?
It'll have very few simpleinputs, very few simple outputs.
And that's it.
And then on the other end of theextreme is high fidelity, which is
essentially like a new retirement,a prolana, a projection lab.

(53:53):
I'm sure there's some other ones thatare skipping my mind right now that
are available to like just consumers.
And I would say like having had theopportunity to work with those and
write about those and now havingworked with I specifically worked with
a program called right capital, butthere's different professional programs.
Financial planning software, I would saythat the software, these high fidelity
programs are really on par with what aprofessional planning software looks like.

(54:15):
But the downside of them isthere's a lot of complexity.
You really have to havea handle on your numbers.
You have to have a handle onwhat assumptions are they using.
And if you're making errors andyou're, especially if you're an
early retiree, and those errors getcompounded out over, 40, 50, 60 years.
I mean, it's, they're going to bemassive as far as like what the
outcome is compared to reality.
So you really have to have a lotmore user competence and confidence

(54:37):
to use a high fidelity calculator.
And then in the middle, there's,Just kind of what it sounds like
more variables that you can enter.
But typically the big thing thatmedium fidelity, they won't do like tax
calculations and tax projections becauseit's kind of just a whole nother level
of coding and, and calculations there.
So that would be medium fidelity.
So you have to kind of match up Theright tool for the job that you want it

(54:59):
to do and the amount of effort and timeyou're willing to put into learning it.
Can you give us a couple of examplesof just, and we'll link this article in
the show notes so people don't have toremember low fidelity and medium fidelity.
You mentioned a few high fidelity, butwhen people are looking for calculators,
which ones might you say touch base here?
Because these are typical lowfidelity or typical medium fidelity.

(55:21):
Yeah.
So I'm trying to think I just so I tookthe presentation I did at economy and
I made it into a couple of blog posts.
So the ones that I included in my blogI tried to just get a representation
of different ways that they calculatereturns and some different inputs.
So the low fidelity, Iknow I used Vanguard.
I think it's called theretirement nest egg calculator.
And I think there was one, I think itwas from Dinky town, like D I N K Y town.

(55:44):
That's one of my favorite.
I love dinkytown.
net.
okay.
Yep.
So I got that.
So those are the ones I used.
And again, if you have the links,people can go to those and link directly
to the calculators and try them out.
But again, those are like threeor four variable inputs and
maybe two to three thing outputs.
The medium, I think I use C fire sim.
And I used Financial mentor.

(56:06):
I think it causes the ultimateretirement calculator.
And again, they have a little bitdifferent features as far as how
they calculate CFIR SIM is like usinghistoric returns, which is a bit
different than a lot of them use.
Monte Carlo and Ultimate financial menmentors, ultimate retirement calculator
actually uses like linear returns.
So there's just different ways ofusing the calculations, you can enter
a number of different variables thatyou couldn't on a low fidelity, you're

(56:29):
not going to get like tax projections.
And that's a pretty big factor dependingon your lifestyle and how you have your
money invested, what accounts you'reusing, that could be a very big factor.
So those are the mediumfidelity ones that I included.
And again, we have If youjust Google, can I retire yet?
I think it's called thebest retirement calculators.
And there's a list of Daryl reviewed,I think 40 different calculators.
He was a software engineer andthat was kind of his thing.

(56:52):
So he could go way down thatrabbit hole more than I could.
So I just picked a couple that I thoughtwere representative and kind of give you a
different examples for people to look at.
Okay.
Well, awesome.
So you dropped a lot of really great.
Good gems around, late starters and thingsthat advantages that we have any other, I
guess, thoughts or tips for our audience.

(57:14):
we have a fast growing Facebook groupand a lot of times it's the psychological
side that comes up and things like that.
So I'm just wondering, with your clientsand the work that you've been doing.
On the blog, the book and all of that.
Any other, little takeaways ortips that might be helpful to
our, our late starter audience.
I think For really for anybody.

(57:34):
And that's kind of where westarted the choose if I book is
the whole initial session was aboutchanging your mindset, but I think
particularly for a late starter,somebody that is behind in the game.
I think there's this idea that, thisis so hard and that you can't do it
and that saving equates with sacrifice.
And so I really think just having amindset shift is where you have to start.
And as far as like a practical,like what's one thing people can

(57:56):
do, I think the first thing isjust step back and like, just.
Start writing down month to month.
And it could be as simple as like penand paper or an Excel spreadsheet.
Or if you want to use like I meant oneout of business, but I think there's
like Monarch money and there's all thesedifferent budgeting tools, but some way or
another, find a way that works for you andjust see where your money goes and try to
be able to step back and without judgment.
And, it doesn't reflect on who you are.

(58:16):
It's just what you have been doing.
And these are behaviorsthat are changeable.
But see where your money's going andjust see how much of that it lines
up with like what you say you value.
And, what things can you start to change?
And then how much impact can they have?
what are the biggest things aregoing to have the most impact?
So, housing, cars, food recurringexpenses, what are those things
where you can make a difference?
and I think that's thebest place to start.

(58:36):
Yeah, speaking of cars and I'vegot to say my car just had a major
issue yesterday and I barely limpedinto the repair shop and I'm like,
Oh no, it has 170, 000 miles on.
So kudos to me for, drivingthe third car I've ever had.
That's been a great experience.
Pay it off.
It's not worth much, but it'sworth a lot to me to get to work.

(58:59):
And I've been saving for a new car and Iwas going to be ready a new use car to me.
I was gonna be ready a year from now,but now I'm like, I'm done with this.
I can't deal with a car that's inthe shop more than I want it to be.
And I'm putting too much moneyfor the new use car into this car
that has a very fast, I was hopingto make it over 200, 000 miles.

(59:20):
Quite honestly, I was like,yeah, that's a milestone.
I want to be able to put thatpicture up on the Facebook group,
but I'm looking at, okay, I'm goingto have to, at this point in time,
pull from one of my sinking funds.
I do have one for the new used car, butit's not quite where I want it to be.
So I've got to find itelsewhere in sinking funds and
shift it just like in YNAB.
So that I can meet this newexpense, which is not insignificant.

(59:43):
And I'm committed to paying cashfor cars because before we were
leasing and on loans and newcars, and I'm so done with it.
I am so into the utility mode with cars.
Although everybody's buyingTesla's in the fire movement,
we talked about this with Mr.
Money mustache and he's like,Oh, a Tesla is only this much.

(01:00:03):
And it's the same as a new car.
I'm like, well.
I'd rather spend 25,000 instead of 42, 000.
It makes a lot of difference to me.
So yeah, cars is a bit of abone to pick with me right now.
And I'll have to let you know howthis works out on the next episode.
bill, I heard that electric carsare at very good prices right now.

(01:00:24):
They are at depressed prices,so it may be a good time.
Just saying.
Yeah, I'm a little bit, I'm adverseto the long trips with them and having
to find places to recharge and stuff.
So, hybrid is where my mind setsout and we'll see where it lands.
But stay tuned.
I'll let you know.
Yeah.
Keep us posted.

(01:00:44):
And Diana in the backgroundsaying she agrees and vroom vroom.
Oh yeah, yeah.
Diana, she's got one thatshe brags about all the time.
Is she at 300, 000 miles on her car?
Yeah, she has a Honda that'sbeen around a very long time.
I cannot imagine that.
That is crazy.
But she keeps us posted on that too.
So yeah, cars is a big thing.

(01:01:06):
Well well, Chris, it was Awesomehaving you on the show today.
Like I know our listenersgot so much value from this.
I can appreciate the factthat you are so transparent.
We know typically in thefinancial planning space, we'll
probably another bone to pick.
They're not showing you their wallet.
They're not telling youtheir numbers or anything.
We both know that, but Ihave this kindred spirit.
we both got our CFP around the same time.

(01:01:27):
We're both not a part of the traditional.
Industry will definitelyconsider ourselves more part of
the five slash fire community.
So, so this has been amazing.
Bill, what do you think?
Oh, I think so too.
I mean, every time we talk to somebodywith so much knowledge in the community
that can share it to our community.
I feel so grateful.
I really do.
So Chris, thanks fortaking the time today.

(01:01:50):
People want to reach out to you and askthem their own individual questions.
How can they do that?
Yeah.
I think the best place to find me onthe internet is canIretireyet.Com.
That's my blog and that's kind ofwhere I link out to everything else.
I'd love to, Always love when peoplecheck out the book, choose a file, your
blueprint to financial independence.
And again, if you do find thatmaybe you need some more help than

(01:02:10):
just educating yourself and doingit yourself again, I love the
work that we're doing at a bundle.
I'm very proud of that.
And always excited to helpto get the word out on that.
So it's a bundle wealth.
com.
Yeah, we'd love to partner with Ubundo.
Maybe we can talk to yourprincipals about supporting the
movement here at Catching Up to FI.
All right, Chris.
It's been great.
We'll bring you back on totalk about other topics in the

(01:02:32):
future, should you have the time.
Thank you again for beingwith us on Catching Up to FI.
We'll see you next week.
Thanks for having me.
I'd be happy to come back.
I always like talking to you guys.

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.css-14f5ked{margin:0;word-break:break-word;display:-webkit-box;-webkit-box-orient:vertical;box-orient:vertical;-webkit-line-clamp:2;overflow:hidden;}The Powers of Starting Late, Retirement Calculators, and More | Chris Mamula | 086