Ep 204: Escape the Clock: How to Retire Early on Your Terms

Ep 204: Escape the Clock: How to Retire Early on Your Terms

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:02):
Hey there, and welcome to Money and You. I'm Michelle Perkins,
your host. My search for more fulfilling work led me
to career in business coaching, where I stumbled upon a
game changing discovery. Money issues often start with our mindset
and habits. You see, our relationship with money is the
key to overcoming those frustrating financial obstacles. As an entrepreneur, coach,

(00:24):
and problem solver, I'm passionate about helping you create a
great relationship with money, because turns out that's the foundation
for a limit free life. Each week on Money in You,
I speak with amazing guests about all things money, mindset,
practical tips, and everything in between. We're here to give
you new insights, education and empowerment. So money can be

(00:45):
one of your favorite relationships. So join us for some
lively conversations and let's transform your financial life together. Hello, Hello,
welcome to another episode of the Money and You Show.
I'm Sheelle Perkins, your host, and I'm super excited about
today's show. I think this is going to get a
you know, a really spark some new ideas for listeners.

(01:07):
And you know, we're talking about retiring early, We're talking
about you know, our guest has a fantastic story to
tell and great insights into what it means to reach
success early and be financially free and then what do
you do with that? So and I love what he's
doing with it. Going to introduce you to today's guest.

(01:29):
Great guest. Daniel C. Rogers is the award winning author
of Escape the Clock, your program Guide for Financial Freedom
and Early Retirement. After a successful twenty year career in
the tech industry, he achieved financial independence and retired early
to pursue his passion for helping others. Driven by a

(01:52):
desire to give back, Daniel road Escape the Clock to
provide a clear roadmap for anyone seeking financial freedom today,
continues to our individuals by volunteer teaching financial literacy in
Washington State, providing free one on one financial coaching, hosting
the Escape the Clock podcast, and continuing to write. His

(02:12):
work for focuses on demystifying personal finance and helping people
build achievable plans to live life on their own terms.

Speaker 2 (02:20):
Welcome Dan, Thank you so much for having me. Michelle,
so happy to be here.

Speaker 1 (02:24):
Welcome. I am so excited that you're here, and you
know you just hit the nail on the head for me,
because living life on your own terms has kind of
been the theme and why I started my originally career
coaching business because I felt like people weren't living their
career on their own terms. So thank you so much.
This is a great topic and what I'm really excited about.

(02:46):
And you know, I hope people listening will stick around
because I think sometimes people hear this and think, you know,
I'll never be able to retire and I'll never be
financially free. It seems like such an unattainable goal for
so many, So I would love for you to tell
us a little about your story and maybe to spell
that myth.

Speaker 2 (03:06):
Yeah, I mean it felt like an impossible goal for
me as well. My family very much was in poverty situation.
We were lower middle class, kind of the situation where
you really don't feel like you have any control in life,
especially when it comes to your financial wellbeing. But I
did the only thing I could do as a younger person,

(03:27):
and that was educate myself. So I did the best
I could at school. I put myself through college. I
remember selecting a job not because it was my passion
it was, but because i'd done some research and saw
that the income could be okay, maybe I could grow
that way. I ended up with, you know, over one
hundred thousand dollars in debt, and this is between school loans,

(03:48):
credit cards, and plus you know, I got married right
out of college and my spouse wanted to go to
graduate school, which you know I had to you know,
support that, and then getting a home and aring a family.
Costs just pile up, and our journey starts with debt
and income can start low, but we have so much
money we're ever going to make in our lives. It's
a finite number. And all I could do was say, okay,

(04:11):
I can feel overwhelmed by this and lit paycheck to
paycheck for the whole life, where maybe I can try
to learn how to get ahead. And I did that,
and I started building this what I call a program
plan for myself because financial independence felt like an impossible goal.
It's just like far off. How do you possibly get
to there in a situation where you're your net worth

(04:33):
is just so negative? But I was able to break
it apart, learn and really start to see measurable results,
and then I could make moves from data to really
start to get ahead, and before I knew it, I
was kind of on this glide path and I passed
the goal and I realized, oh, I'm teaching these kinds

(04:55):
of things at my job. I can help I'm doing
this form some of the biggest companies in the world.
I can teach program management to anybody. And this is
a goal that's relevant to everyone. It doesn't matter how
much money you make where you are in life. Financial
independence is a truely important thing because it's about freedom.
And that's why I ended up writing the book I did,
and I'm trying to help as many people as I can.

Speaker 1 (05:16):
Thank you. That is beautiful, and you know, you set
a good example of somebody who this wasn't easy for you.
But you also the way you talk about it, it
also doesn't sound like you were struggling kind of against yourself,
which I think is what happens to people, you know.
I mean, you did have some kind of a mindset
and some sort of a relationship with money that allowed

(05:37):
you to believe that this was possible if you did
certain things, which I think is very very important, and
sometimes we don't know what those things are. You were
at least able to identify them.

Speaker 2 (05:47):
To a certain degree. I definitely made mistakes. I remember
I didn't know what a four to one K was,
and the option was how much money do you want
to put into this thing? And I remember thinking back then,
I'm not going to put anything into this. I can't
afford to have anything come out of this paycheck. Now. Luckily,
I went and had some conversations, including with my father,
and I said, Hey, what should I do? He said,

(06:08):
just do the match, don't think about it. You'll think
me later. And then I realized, okay, education is the
most valuable thing I can do. Now. I get what
you're talking about. Though. There was a will, there an
intrinsic drive to want this, and it drove me forward.
And I am a structured person. I like to think, Okay,
I don't want to feel like I have no control.

(06:28):
What can I do to get some control here? Maybe
I can do it through planning. And what I found
is with a will, there is a way, and that
way is the plan, and once you know how to
make the plan, you can get there. You do have
to have that drive.

Speaker 1 (06:42):
Though, Oh, I love that. There's so much that you've said.
So the one thing that you mentioned earlier was about
the data. And that's one thing I feel like people
ignore the data. I've done it myself, so it's not
a feeling, it's an actual lived experience. So but you know,
you whether you like it or not, you know you

(07:03):
have to sort of measure and track your money to
have that data that you need to do whatever you
want to do. And I think that's the first thing,
and I think that's something many of us avoid because frankly,
a lot of times looking at the data is depressing.
I hear that a lot from people I work with,
and I'm trying to get them to do things and say,
but I get depressed when I spend time with my

(07:24):
money or I look at things. So did that happen
to you at all?

Speaker 2 (07:28):
I mean, yeah, Look, you can have a healthy and
you can also have an unhealthy relationship with the data.
There are people that will look at their investment portfolio
obsessively throughout the day or their bank account balance, and
they'll feel a lot of emotional response to a downtick.
And those are emotional responses can cause bad outcomes because

(07:51):
you know, if you stay in the stock market, for example,
for a long term horizon, you're going to do six
percent better on average than someone who is doing more
day trading and reacting to those things. So the data
can hurt you if you're not careful about it. But
then there are like you said, there is data avoidance.
I don't want to look at it because it makes
me feel bad. But the truth is, if you don't
know where your money's going, you have no way that

(08:14):
you can possibly make a move. You're blind. You're purposely
blinding yourself. And you don't have to do this by yourself.
You can sit down with somebody, a financial advisor, a partner,
a friend, somebody, say look, I just need some help here.
I know this is going to be hard. I need
to look at this, but I'm hoping you can help
me feel better about what I'm doing well. A good

(08:37):
financial advisor will do that. They won't just shame you
and make you feel bad about it. And once you
do that and you kind of see what you're doing well,
you lean into those things, and when it's not going
so well, you start building an action plan to make improvement.
And it's incremental. It doesn't happen overnight, but you do
have to look at it. But you can't let the
data control you is what I've learned.

Speaker 1 (08:57):
That's great advice. Yes, I think we know when we've
spilled over into obsessively looking at things, just like I
know when I'm obsessively looking at Instagram and I need
to stop. And it can go the same way. But
I feel like a level like I look at my
bank accounts every morning because I didn't used to, and
then I would have problems. And now I can anticipate

(09:19):
problems or fix things ahead of time, or just have
the knowledge of what's happening. But I, you know, I
tend not to. That's it once a day usually there
are You also mentioned a plan, and that's the other
thing that I feel like people don't do. They're waiting.
They're waiting for something, waiting to be making a certain

(09:40):
amount or to you know, get out of debt, or
to you know, something needs to happen to trigger them
to create a plan. And I think that's also problematic.

Speaker 2 (09:51):
Yeah, absolutely, there's reactive plans, the ones forced on us
because we kind of let a problem go too far,
such as what you might be forced to do in
a bank, right that's being forced to put a plan
in action that doesn't feel good, or because you know,
too much credit card debt, and now you have to
go and do a debt elimination plan. What I'm talking
about is proactive planning because you know, if you follow

(10:14):
like prospect theory or any of this kind of like
financial psychologies and understand our dual cells of or we
have our emotional selves and we have our kind of
more rational self. The rational self's the planner, and it's
there and we can leverage it, and it can allow
us to make it so that we're not emotionally reacting
in our worst moments and hurting ourselves because the's truth,
as we can be our own worst enemy a lot

(10:35):
of the time if we let it. But with a
good plan, we can be a little bit more on
rails and we can do things along the line of, hey,
I have a goal. I know what enough is. It's
not chasing infinite network like that doesn't result in anything good.
It's about knowing what's enough for the life you're trying
to fund. Once you know that is the thing I

(10:56):
did getting me closer or not. If it's not, what
else can I do about it? And that's good data.
That's data that's allowing us to learn, improve and make
great moves and review it with somebody and get perspectives
and insights that we might miss on our own. And
now we're planning with intention or planning because we're trying
to win back our time so we can live our

(11:17):
lives the way we want to live. That's only good stuff.
I don't know anyone who wouldn't want that, to say, hey,
let's take money out of the equation. You can kind
of do the things you want. Yeah. Maybe right now
it's sleeping on a beach or something, that's fine, But
ultimately you do have to kind of discover what's your
north star, what are you working for, what are you funding?
And the plan helps you get there.

Speaker 1 (11:36):
Yeah, thank you, that's so good And I love the
way you know, you do have to define what success
is for you. If you just are like I want
to be as rich as I can be, Like, that's
not actually a target. That is I don't know what
that is, but it's just too vague.

Speaker 2 (11:51):
And if you get into a retirement, either forster otherwise,
and your whole life was based on getting richer or
improving worth, you can't really stop that. You're still in
that mindset, but you might feel a lack of agency,
and that's very frustrating, and I think folks in those
situations feel like a lack of control and anxiety building up.

(12:12):
And so when you know that work is not forever
and there is a life that we're trying to build
and we can make the moves to get to that,
then it's about when do you want to start living
that next phase of your life. Is it a standard
retirement at sixty seven, is it an earlier retirement, whatever
you want to call it. But at some point kind

(12:33):
of work will stop and we can start to try
to live that next phase. And I think the plan
is about that your north start of that moment, working back,
demystifying it, making smart goals that are actionable. And I'm
a project manager, so for me, it's all about take
something that sounds impossible and then organize multiple people towards

(12:53):
making it a reality and being honest about contingencies because
things will go wrong and we have to be a
willing to adjust so as we go.

Speaker 1 (13:01):
Wow, I love that. I love the way you sort
of applied that to money, that way of thinking, And
so what happened to you when you were you know,
you were working in the tech industry. What what happened
that allowed you to be done in twenty eight Yeah.

Speaker 2 (13:16):
So a lot of people think, oh, he worked at tech,
he worked at big Tech. He just made a lot
of money and that's why this happened. But that's not
the truth. A lot of people I know at big
Tech made a lot more money than me and are
nowhere near any kind of financial independence. I just want
to first say, like, it's more about your income and
your desired lifestyle. And there's a math formula here, right,
and I put that in my book to help people

(13:37):
understand what enough is enough is because once you understand
you can do this with any level of income earning
power and some level of reasonable lifestyle, you can get
there now. I made moves. I was working in tech
in Ohio in the Midwest, and I kind of hit
a ceiling of my income earning potential. So I said, okay,

(13:58):
if I want to make it, get ahead to my
goal fast, or what do I do? So I said, okay,
I'm going to have to go apply for some of
these bigger companies. And I was able to apply at Microsoft.
I was able to get a job there. I had
to move my wife and two year old son across
the country away from family, and they were amazing and
they we went and made this journey of relocation. But

(14:18):
it's a higher cost, you know, living, Like all the
costs go up all of a sudden, So it's a
trade off. And there's always trade offs. So you might
be making more income, but you have more costs. And
you have to realize there's levers you can control. I
can control income on one spectrum and I can control
expenses on another spectrum. If I don't let my cost
of living completely, you know, inflate to a degree where

(14:42):
it's matching those my neighbors or whatever it is. Well,
now I actually am really getting ahead because I have
this much higher income and I not only have a
little bit higher expenses. And now I sped up my
path to my goal X number of years. And that's
what I did, was making big moves like that to
help me get there faster.

Speaker 1 (15:03):
Yeah, so you are very conscious and intentional about what
you were doing.

Speaker 2 (15:06):
Yeah, because I had data, and I had a goal,
and I had these milestones I had to hit, right,
So debt elimination, I run that as a as a project.
In my program, I run things like our cost of
living or expenses as a project in the program, and
there's things you can do to make hit your number

(15:27):
goals better passive income, how much money am I making
passively without work? That was actually a number I needed
to hit, And I tried bunch of different stuff until
I got there, and that has turned out to be
extremely smart. Does debt be able to have that cash
flow when I no longer have a paycheck because it
brought psychological safety to the thing I did. It feels
good to still get paid when you're not working. So

(15:50):
there's a bunch of things in there. And look, anyone
can learn these. These are tools, But if you don't
know when and how to use the tool, it doesn't
really matter. You know, you can inherit a tool shed
from your grandfather or whatever. And if you don't know
how any of the tools work, it doesn't matter. You
might have all the best tools in the world. For me,
it was about understanding what tools were applical to my
goals in my life and using them effectively and seeing

(16:14):
how much further it got me towards the destination. And
that is the power of a really good program plan
for financial independence.

Speaker 1 (16:20):
Oh yeah, one of the things I'm loving about this
so much is how you're equating it to this program.
You know, this project management sort of approach. It takes
all the emotion out of it, I mean, and I
think that's so important for the world of finance if
you if you can, and you can't totally get rid
of it, but you're putting it in this box of

(16:43):
something that you sort of mechanically can do. It's not
being driven by emotional decision making, which I think is
one of the things that really impacts her.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
And you can even optimize that in your program plan.
So you could say, Okay, where do I struggle. I
know I should be investing ten percent of my paycheck
into some type of investments, but I'm not doing it.
There's a reason you're not doing it, and so if
you realize, yo, you need to do it, then you
can start to automate it. And now all of a sudden,

(17:12):
there's this thing happening in the background. Because what I've
learned is we will adjust our standard of living to
the amount of cash that we have coming in to
our lives. So someone pays you ten thousand dollars in
that month, you can probably find a way to spend
that ten thousand dollars. Now, if it was eighty five
hundred dollars that month, you could probably adjust to the
eighty five hundred dollars. But the rest of it isn't

(17:34):
just thrown away. You know, it's being put somewhere for
your future self because saving and investing is about your
future self and borrowing is about moving money from your
future to your present. So when you understand that life
cycle and you start to make moves to both benefit
yourself today and yourself tomorrow, now you're really living and
you can make that automated to ensure that your rational

(17:58):
self is being optimal, be working for you. And then
you can also use your emotional self. You you have
your these extrinsic motivators you can create, such as having
people in your life that celebrate you for hitting your goals,
going out to a dinner because you had a big milestone.
Maybe you paid off from workage. Go celebrate it. Don't
just go okay, fine, my number went that much higher, whatever,

(18:20):
or go to work now, go celebrate, actually celebrate yourself,
like feel good about the things you're doing, because the
emotional part matters too. And when you do that well,
you do it intentionally, the program can actually feel like
something that you really enjoy doing.

Speaker 1 (18:35):
Oof. I love that, And you know, I think it's
very important to celebrate yourself. I also think it's very
important to sort of track your successes. I mean literally
write them down at the end of the week. I mean,
these things have a way of building momentum and keeping
you from, you know, just falling back into some reactive
emotional lice, which is something wrong with emotions. It's just that,

(19:00):
I mean, there is so much a part of us,
and they're so important actually, but that level of awareness
about them, I think is what a lot of people
are maybe not as well versed on or is this.

Speaker 2 (19:16):
Also there's also the fact that sometimes we don't understand
why we're acting emotionally in the way that we do.
You know, Doctor Bill Klant studied this idea of money
scripts or how we are upbringing our childhood effects. He's
a financial psychologist, how it affects our relationship with money today,

(19:36):
how we value it, why we act or react to money,
and the emotional ways that we do. And you might
find you really understand yourself potentially, but maybe you don't
understand your spouse or your kids or someone else in
your life. Well, it's because we're all. We all process
it differently, we will handle it differently. But when we
want to take the emotional side out and just focus

(19:58):
on the progress side, we can do that. But when
the emotion size is helping us and not hurting us,
then we can lean into that as well, and they
can both be benefits.

Speaker 1 (20:07):
Yeah. Yeah, Can you give people an example of when
it's helping us.

Speaker 2 (20:12):
Yeah, well, let me start with what the hurting. So like,
if you're saying things, if you have this mental dialogue
in your head and you're saying things like my self
worth is based on my net worth, you know, things
like that, these these inner dialogues which are actually somewhat
destructive or at least anti productive, that's when it's hurting you, right,
That's when it's preventing you from spending and enjoying the

(20:35):
all the fruits of your labor. You should spend, even
when you're saving, like, you need to enjoy your life.

Speaker 1 (20:41):
Now.

Speaker 2 (20:41):
It's not about sacrifice and living in scarcity so that
we can have abundance tomorrow. That's not what financial independence
is about. It's about smoothing. It's about smoothing it all
out so that we can enjoy the life we want
for as long as possible. Because we don't know how
long life is. We have to start as soon as
we can to enjoy it. So sacrificing isn't the way

(21:01):
to go. But you can have positive scripts, scripts in
your life, scripts around you know, my happiness is based
on giving, and my happiness is based on family. Or
I save so I can do foo or whatever it
is that your purpose is going to be. Like once
you know why you're saving for your retirement, what you

(21:24):
want to do in that retirement, now you're living a
purpose driven life and you can focus on the positive
scripts that are helping you, you know, live your best
version of that.

Speaker 1 (21:34):
Yeah, I oh, this is so good. And you know,
I've had a lot of people on recently talking about retirement,
and so that word retirement is getting really confusing because
you're not retired, not really are, but you are, So
how do you even define retirement?

Speaker 2 (21:51):
I kind of wish I haven't even put that word
in my book, to be honest, because it's such a
it's such a loaded, confusing word.

Speaker 1 (21:58):
It is.

Speaker 2 (21:58):
Yeah, it's more about finance freedom than it is a retirement.
It's about reclaiming your time so that you can follow
your agenda. And you know, when you take money out
of the money is is it's just a means to
an end when you think of it that way, the
moves you make at work, it's not based on your identity.
It's based on the income that you're collecting towards, you know,

(22:20):
living the life you want to live today and tomorrow. Now,
it's about freedom, and freedom is worth fighting for, it's
worth enjoying, and it's definitely worth paying for if you can,
If you can know if there's a price tag on
freedom and you could just do that, I'm sure most
of us go, Okay, that's worth it. So for me,
it's not about retirement, because you're right. People make fun
of me all the time. They're like, you wrote a book,

(22:43):
you're writing another book, you're podcasting, you're teaching. I'm getting
a wealth management degree for some reason, Like, I don't
know why I'm keeping this busy. It's just you get
excited and your passion gets tapped into, especially when you
do it younger and you feel like you still have
a lot of energy left and stuff to give.

Speaker 1 (23:00):
Yeah, I love that and I do think, well, I've
talked about this multiple times since I'm getting tired of
hearing myself say it, but retirement really is you know,
of your own design, and it isn't about stopping stopping.
I mean, I think some of us have this mindset
that we just we stop and we play all day,
and what the reality is, we stop and we sit

(23:21):
around trying to figure out what to do with ourselves.
And that's not purposeful and actually doesn't feel good at all,
and isn't even good for our health. So I think
this redefining of retirement is super super important. It also
changes the game financially because if your idea is stopping

(23:42):
and then you need money to take you through the
next thirty years while you do no work, I mean,
that's a very different animal than like, you know, kind
of how you're doing it.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
Yeah, for sure. And a lot of people when you
ask them, like why would someone fail out a retirement,
you know, that's a good question. You could ask somebody
and think, oh, well, they ran out of money, and
that's actually the number one fear. That's not always the reality. Actually,
most of the reasons people leave their retirement earlier otherwise
is usually out of a lack of feeling of self worth,

(24:14):
like boredom or like you know, wanting to go back
to work because they find there might be more value
in a working life than in the life that they're
currently living. And it doesn't need to be that way.
That's completely avoidable. Now, it's better to go through that
process before you transition rather than after your transition could
be very painful. If you go ahead and pull the
trigger and leave your job, well, you're going to find

(24:35):
yourself in this kind of emotional journey of soul searching
about like why did you leave your job? Okay, you
had your long, long, long weekend, but now what? And
that now what can be really tough to go do it.
At that point you'll probably maybe you'll find it, maybe
you won't, but you might find yourself going I made
a mistake, I needed to take a sabbatical, or I

(24:56):
needed to take a break or something, and I shouldn't
have left the job, or isul you just switched my job.
But a lot of times, you know, that's just part
life and that's the journey we might take. But you
can go through in a less painful way, especially when
you're following your plan, and you're realizing my plan is
based on a north star, just like creating a business. Right,
we have a north star, we have a vision, we
can have KPIs we used to measure success. All of

(25:18):
those things can be applied to our own financial freedom.
And I've done it successfully and I'm helping lots of
other people do that as well.

Speaker 1 (25:25):
Oh I love this. Yeah, I think it's such a
great conversation because in so many ways it extends your life.
I mean, you know, it really is a great way
to look at your life. I mean, otherwise we're planning
to a certain age and then there's a whole other
few decades that have no plan. And yeah, I love this.

(25:45):
Tell us about the Escape the Clock program.

Speaker 2 (25:49):
Yeah, so you know, as at the end of my career,
I was working at Google and I was working on
building these massive cloud programs, so super complex stuff. Sometimes
these things would be multiple in the future, organizing hundreds
of people or thousands of people. You know, people cause
different parts of our organization towards these things. And you know,
we really leaned into the rigor of program management. So

(26:11):
how do you make it so everyone can figure out
are we being successful? How do we take a step forward?
How do we not take a step forward? You know,
all those things are important, especially when you have leaders
who can feel blind a lot of the time and
are relying on a project manager to come in and say,
this is what happened. Here's the status report, here's our KPI.

(26:32):
Say is how well we're doing. We're this closer to
launch or we're not this, or we're further from launch.
Might end up delaying it, which could hurt us and
cost us this amount of money. All those things are
used for a reason, and the reason is because projects
are two and a half times more successful when you
have a project manager on them, when you're doing actual
program management implementation. Now, all of it's teachable. So I

(26:56):
end up spending a lot of my career teaching my
team like I was highiring and training and teaching and
running programs and helping other people run their programs. All
of it's teachable, and it's not. And look, there's no
degree for product manth their certifications, but it's not people
who are going to school to this. They're learning this
through life. They're learning this through their other job. Maybe

(27:17):
they were software development or maybe a product manager, or
maybe they were you know, an administers. It doesn't matter.
People just go through and they realize, I have a
spreadsheet here what am I doing with this? I'm breaking
stuff down, I'm measuring things. I'm trying to understand and
show people where we are. You learn these things implicitly,
and now, yes, you can go through and get the

(27:38):
proper names of things and how how do you compose
a roadmap? How do you do all that? I teach
all that in my book because I wanted people to
have the proper names and techniques so that when they
build their personalized plan, it's something that looks crisp and
is easy to understand, and when they put it in
front of someone, they go, oh, I see exactly what
you're trying to do. I understand your goals. I understand you,

(28:00):
I know where you are, and I can give you
feedback on how to do better. When we do it
that way, now we're all speaking the same language and
we can really help each other because this doesn't need
to be a solo journey at all. Actually it's a
little harder if you make it a solo journey. So
teaching these things at work and then later now I'm
seeing that these are the kinds of tools of empowerment

(28:22):
and empowering people at project management skills which we already
have in our lives. It doesn't only apply to financial impendence.
You can do a weight loss. You could do it
for whatever it is you're trying to do in your life.
It's just it gives you a rigor and, like you
said before, can take some of the emotion out of it.
It can help increase our likelihood for success. And this
is too important not to take seriously.

Speaker 1 (28:43):
Wow, you really said it. I'm so into this right
now because you're I'm fascinated by people who have more
of a brain like you do than the way I
operate because I am not a programmed person. As a
matter of fact, I can barely stick to a routine,
which I know I need, and I'm much more of

(29:04):
a creative kind of visionary. Implementation and execution are definitely
the weaker points. So this is so good to me
because I know the value of it. It's just my
brain works very differently, and I have to literally lock
myself in a chair and force myself to think this
way and do these things.

Speaker 2 (29:23):
Well, you have strengths that you know others aren't going
to have on when it comes to this, right, You're
going to see angles that maybe others are missing. You're
going to find creative solutions. You're like, there's a lot
of strengths that other people would love to have and
being able to think the way you do. And that's
what's really cool about this is you don't even have
to build the plan yourself. You can actually sit down
with someone. That's what I'm doing. I sit down with

(29:43):
people and I'm like, Okay, I will help you build
your plan. Let's just do it together, and I will,
and you have to ask the questions. It's a conversation
and then the person's defining that's a project, that's a milestone. Okay,
we'll measure it this way, we'll measure it that way,
and boom, you walk out with the plan. Now it's yours.
Now it's up to you and how you want to
run it.

Speaker 1 (30:03):
It does feel good to hit those milestones.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
Oh yeah, definitely.

Speaker 1 (30:06):
However, and how do you how do you motivate people
who are more like me and like they want the
milestone and they get super excited about the idea of
the milestone, but the actually walking through the process is
a little tricker.

Speaker 2 (30:18):
Just making it as easy as possible. That's the that's
the beauty here. There's no like, oh, now you have
to become an expert and like credit score. No, no,
you don't have to know anything about credit scores. Where
here are a list of tasks for your for your
debt elimination project, and you're going to go and do
these things. You're going to go and start making these
payments of this card, and then you're going to go

(30:41):
and do this on this other card. And then what
happens is it's really easy to follow those tasks. Anyone
could follow them, right, And so they're doing that, they're
feeling some level accountability because they're the one taking the action.
But what's happening is then they're seeing the report. They're
seeing how their actions are moving the needle towards the outcome,

(31:01):
which is their their project goal and ultimately their overarching
program goal, which is their financial independence. And that just
feels good. And ultimately you want more tasks when that's done,
because you realize you can get really far if you
have even more things to do.

Speaker 1 (31:16):
Yeah, oh, I like this so much, and you know,
to some extent, and I've learned this from myself. You
have to take your feelings out of it. Your feelings
really don't matter. What matters is some discipline and some
good habits and some systems. So would you agree with.

Speaker 2 (31:30):
That or I would? And then that's why it's important
to listen to people you can trust, right, because if
you have someone leading you a certain way and you
don't really know, and emotionally you want let's say you
like this person, you want to listen to this person, Well,
that doesn't necessarily mean they're going to get you to
your outcome. Your motivation for doing that thing is more

(31:51):
likely tied to that relationship with that individual and less
towards your financial independence. But as long as it's measurable,
you can at least be honest with yourself if regards
of your motivation, if it worked or not. And that's
part of the key. Everything has to be measurable, because
if it's not, then we can't have those armors conversations.
And if you, let's say you go and talk to
a financial advisor, say well, why were you making the

(32:12):
moves you were making? Oh, well, my cousin wanted to
help me and said I should go and invest in
these fringe stocks and I should go do this, and
I should go do that. Like okay, great, well, I'm
glad you have a good relationship with your cousin. Here's
how we're going to do your portfolio. We're going to
change all of it. We're going to move to these things,
and we're going to help you get closer to your goals.
And that's completely fine because you're measuring. They were able

(32:34):
to help you with that quickly.

Speaker 1 (32:36):
Yeah, the measuring is crucial and I usually, I mean
a whole part of a program I have is setting
up these money dates that you do regularly, and that's
part of it, is to be looking at things. And
if we don't, you know, it's very easy to push
that off and say, yeah, you know, I can't do
it today. I meant to do it today, but I
didn't know do it next week and next week and
next week. So you know, having this kind of routine

(33:01):
around that is incredibly important because time is time is
important when it comes to money.

Speaker 2 (33:06):
Absolutely, And like we said earlier, if you have avoidance
behaviors and you're putting it off, it's for a reason,
but eventually you will be forced to react, and it's
so much more costly and painful to put it off.
It's better to just do it and understand that. Yeah,
there's some upfront work to making your plan. There is
because you have to do some deep soul searching about

(33:27):
what you want and like look at your expenses, understand
what your future costs might look like. But you can
go do that. It's mostly math stuff. I actually built
a free smart tool that I have on my website
that anyone can use. It's not paid, completely free, it's
the one I used. I just made it into a template.
You can go and put your numbers in and you
can start to see where you stand and from there

(33:47):
you can build your plan. And when you have your plan,
the effort isn't that much. It's like it's like the
money gates, right. You need to see I have a
task to go look at my monthly expenses. I have
a task to go in and close that credit or
freeze that credit card or whatever. It is. Depends on
what you're trying to go and what your financial profile
looks like.

Speaker 1 (34:08):
Yeah, I love that. And that's a great point too,
because antially, when I first started coaching people, I would say, yeah,
put a money data on your calendar. Every month and
they would put it, but then when they got there,
they didn't know what to do, so because there was
no real plan and you know, associated tasks with it.
So what you're talking about is really flushing that out.

(34:28):
I'd love to know. So, you know, you have these
great jobs in the tech industry, you knew you were
making good money, you knew you could live, you know,
on a certain amount. At what point did you decide
I am going to retire early, Like.

Speaker 2 (34:44):
Yeah, this one's a little bit more of an embarrassing
story for me, to be honest. So I had passed
my goal and that felt really good, and my spouse
knew about what we were doing, and I was supporting,
you know this everything, and I had passed the goal.
And if anyone should follow his tech at all knows.

(35:05):
There's been a lot of layoffs. There's been a lot
of churn, a lot of anxiety, a lot of stress,
and so there's been a lot of conversations I was
having at work where a couple of things were happening.
One layoffs had happened and I lost a bulk of
my reports, and that work didn't go away. They didn't
cancel any of that work. I mostly got absorbed by me,

(35:26):
so I was working way too many hours. It was
actually causing health issues, and I was fully burned out
and burnout. It's it's real, like there was I think,
what was the stat I had read something like seventy
two percent of Americans feel stressed about money and at work.
Thirty five percent of entrepreneurs are now experiencing burnout. So

(35:49):
there's a real cost to this and it's hard to
get over it. Anyways, I knew money wasn't an issue
for me. My motivator was trying to It was the
corporate agenda. It was trying to make sure we were
successful with these programs. It was making sure that my
employees that were still there were okay that you know,
they were really stressed out. I was picking up work

(36:11):
i could. I was trying to rehire. They made a mistake.
They realized that we should have fired all the program managers. Wop,
we don't know what's happening anymore. Can we go hire
them back? I said, yes, of course we can hire
them back, but you know it's going to take time
and I have to retrain them. So that was on
mistake they had made. Anyways, I'm going through all that,
and I ended up going in my twentieth wedding anniversary

(36:32):
with my spouse and We're on an island far away
from my job, and I'm kind of talking about work
a little bit. Why I shouldn't be talking about work
on on my anniversary, but I'm going to help it.
And my spouse is like, Okay, what are you doing well?
What's wrong with you? You passed your goal. You're more

(36:53):
than fine. You had like multiple financial advisors say you
should have already done this a while ago. Even your
physical therapist and actor said you should do this, that
you were super smart and lucky for even having a
program and working towards this. You're the only one that
you know in a position you can walk away from
that environment. Why aren't you doing it? So she kicked

(37:13):
me in the butt and that was great and I
needed that because sometimes we don't make the leap, and
there's fear in there of like, what is our life
going to look like? Even though we know where the
math is. Okay, there's a psychology piece to it, and
it's it can be really hard to work to that burrier.
But you have support like I did both with my

(37:36):
financial advisor and my spouse, I realize, Okay, my job's
kind of go on without me. Eventually they would have
let me go or I would have retired from it.
That that thing wasn't forever. I will go in. I'll
give them a few months to make sure everything is okay.
And it got a lot of ways when I when

(37:56):
I announced an early retirement, a lot of attention and
they create did a lot of conversations with a lot
of really brilliant people who felt very trapped by the
clock there, who felt like they were just going through
the motions on autopilot. They didn't know how to get away.
They weren't doing the kinds of things I had been doing.
And it was financial things. Yeah, Like I mean, I

(38:17):
would talk to people who were making way more money
than me, who would pay two percent three percent to
a financial manager who wasn't really even doing anything. At
least they didn't know what they were doing. I'm like, shouy,
didn't you at least know what they're doing? I mean,
I mean, maybe they're doing wonderful things. I have no idea,
but you should at least know, and you should have
a goal. What's your goal? I don't know I'll retire eventually.

(38:38):
I guess that's not a goal, and that's autopilot. And
so a lot of people were on autopilot and the
climate of what was happening in the industry was like
just it was just like water on their face woke
them up, like, WHOA, I can't just be beholden to
whatever is that. It was good for a while, but

(38:59):
now it's bad. But I'm stuck. And that felt really
scary for a lot of people. And that drove my
purpose because I'm like, hey, I could go do a
thousand different things in my early retirement, but if I
could help people who feel that way, that is a
worthwhile thing to do. And I'll feel very proud for
being able to contribute in that way.

Speaker 1 (39:17):
I love that. And you've really been doing it. So
you've created a lot since then, you know, do you
have new plans, new goals? I mean, yeah, people are otherwise.

Speaker 2 (39:30):
Life is about milestones. I wanted to be present, but
so well, one thing my wife did when she kicked
me in the butt was make sure that I had
that time with my kids. My son moved out, you
went to college, so I got extra time with him
being here with my daughter now in her last two years,
so that's great. So family is always a goal. You know,
you started diversifying in new ways. I'm like expanding my

(39:52):
portfolio and ways I can afford to do now because
my income is low. So you can, by the way,
financial programs, they don't stop just because you hit your number.
They evolve. And so now because I'm in a lower
income life, I can tax, gain, harvest, I can do
different diversification techniques. And I teach about all that stuff
because people should understand that financial literacy is something that

(40:15):
you can always build a muscle for and you can
always feel like you have some level of control. Like
I feel great. I feel like I know how to
hedge a market. I can stay ahead, I can keep
my portfolio doing well. And I make these little moves
and they make me feel like I'm okay. I don't
need to go back to a job. I'll never need
to go back to a job. The freedom is real.

(40:37):
And so now I spend my time writing. I'm writing
a fiction novel. I'm spending time. I have foster dogs.
Actually here you can see the one that we're fostering Hu.
This is Cabo. We're fostering. We are fostering this little guy,
you know, We're doing things like that. And I'm teaching.
I'm getting a wealth management degree because I was like, hey,
I'm helping people. Maybe there's more I can learn. So

(41:00):
I'm halfway through that, and I'm volunteer teaching around my
state because there's teenagers who just have zero financial literacy,
and I worry about the youth feeling.

Speaker 1 (41:09):
Yeah, I'm with you on that. I worry about a
lot of people who you know, we're dependent on money.
I mean, whether you like it or not, that's the
way this world works. And so to not educate kids
coming out of school and people in general around money
is it's becoming more and more like criminal to me.
I mean, I kind of can't believe it. It's like, what

(41:32):
are we doing. You have to live on this and
you have to do well with it, you know, but
nobody is teaching you how So I agree more with that,
I am. And so I think it's, uh, it's just
kind of a wow moment to think about. But that's
great that you're doing that. I mean, you know, it's

(41:53):
life feels really good when when what you're doing has meaning.
I mean, hopefully you can get that in your job,
but if you can't, I really love the idea of
getting it in retirement. And that's why I think the
word retirement is so miss construed.

Speaker 2 (42:07):
Yeah, and you know, if you have meaning your job,
I'm so happy for you. But yet job's not forever.
You still need to find a greater meaning outside of
that job. So you know, that process starts starting in
early is a lot less painful than after the job ends.
So I've met folks who haven't done that well and
my heart goes out to them. And it's hard to

(42:28):
help someone and you know, after something that was their
whole life has gone, you know, it can be really rough.

Speaker 1 (42:35):
Yeah, you're right. I mean I've always been a big
proponent of, you know, find meaning in your work, but
sometimes it doesn't last, and that can be devastating. And
you know, a lot of people a lot of things
that have a termination date, and whether you're an athlete
or a politician or whatever it is, you know, some
of these things don't go on forever. So and today,
you know, you mentioned this thing before you even came

(42:56):
on about helping people feel more in control, which makes
you feel you know, when you don't feel like you
even have any control. You definitely don't feel like you
have freedom, and feeling control in today's world is as
in my opinion, harder than they ever But you know,
do you have a few tips just to kind of

(43:18):
gain that sense of control even if you feel pretty
down and out right now? Yeah?

Speaker 2 (43:23):
I mean, like, there's obviously financial things you can do.
Right if you're feeling a lack of control financially, there's
definitely things you can do. For instance, like if you
feel like you're oversaturated in your portfolio in a certain
way and the market you're seeing a lot, they're twenty
fifteen whatever percent loss and there's a lack of control there, well,
there are probably some some diversification or hedging and other

(43:47):
things you should have been doing to protect those assets
a little more. Same with businesses, right, Like, you know
there's a way we protect our businesses. There's insurances that
we think about having. These are just as a program manager,
I'm also a risk manager, so I'm always thinking about
how do you mitigate with a contingency? Have a plan,
be a plan, see that type of thing. And so

(44:09):
if it's financial stuff, the good news is there is
a solution, and it's one conversation, and you will likely
have the solution to whatever it is that's making you
fill out of control financially. Now, if that thing happens
to not be you, but it's your employer, your spouse,
you're a dependent, that's a lot more complicated. But again,

(44:30):
that just means the conversation's broader. Usually it means your
conversation can't just be with an advisor. It's going to
be with that employer, it's going to be with that spouse,
And they are contingencies to everything. There are the best
contingencies are the proactive ones. Right, it's the pre mortem,
not the post mortem. You know, when you're doing that,
you're really always thinking ahead. And when you're thinking ahead,

(44:51):
you're using your logical brain. When you're thinking in the moment,
you're using your emotional brain. And the emotional brain doesn't
always do the best thing for us that we would
hope it would do. We don't even understand why we
do it half the time, so I would say that,
But ultimately, for me, it always came down to knowing
there was a plan, because I think with a lack
and I'm sure most people listen this probably has a plan,

(45:13):
You have an idea, you care about your financial literacy,
you care about your independence, and I think that's I
love that so much. I would say, though, like, how
much is your plan really tuned to give you mechanisms
of control? That's kind of what I would challenge in
your plan. If you're paying someone else to manage your plan,

(45:34):
that's fine, but you should know that there's certain things
you can do to tweak certain things based on how
you're feeling or what's going on, Like you should feel
like you have access to change things if it's a
plan you're running, you know, having that level of detail
like I was mentioning task level things where you can
have that minutia, you can move things and you know

(45:55):
that there's a smart goal in place that you can
see the impact of what you did. That's real control,
that's control with data. So that's the kind of thing
and knowing you can review it with someone because we
all have blind spots, Like if you're feeling a lack
of control because of something, and it might just because
you don't you're missing information. Collecting it is the first step,

(46:16):
and that's why if I don't know where all my
money is going, Well, when's the last time you looked
at your expenses? You know, you have to go and
just you go and take that step. Now. Of course
it's not always financial. It could just be anxiety about
the market, like about like your job and potential like
that's financial as well. But the anxiety that you might

(46:38):
be feeling might be about your role as a caretaker
or provider. You can be deeper than that. Those are
so important to have too. The best financial viders will
well not just talk about money. They'll talk about that stuff.
It's super important, but you have to talk about life
the whole picture. Money is just a means to what
you're trying to do to live your best life.

Speaker 1 (46:57):
Oh if I love this, And yes I agree. Conversations
are so important. And I think when we find ourselves
in these anxiety you know and do states, we don't
want to talk to people, We want to hike, We
want to hide our situation and not.

Speaker 2 (47:13):
Talk about it and be embarrassing.

Speaker 1 (47:15):
Yeah, and it's the exact opposite of what's going to
help find you know, help you find a solution.

Speaker 2 (47:20):
So yeah, to force that if someone's embarrassed, if someone's
making you feel embarrassed about what you're talking about. You're
probably not talking to the right person about that thing,
is what I've learned. You know, we all make we
all make mistakes, all of us. My mistakes are really
in my face because I can see the measurement of
the impact of them. I'm like, oh, I got a negative,
you know, twenty seven percent return on that thing. That sucks.

(47:43):
But I always think, Okay, what can I do to
not repeat that mistake? And ultimately that's great. That's real control.
When we don't shame ourselves in our mistakes. We use
those as learning opportunities to ensure that we're just always
doing better in the future. That you're really growing and
growing is everything I think.

Speaker 1 (48:02):
Yeah, I couldn't agree more. And most of us do
make mistakes, you know, with money, because we're not educated anyway,
and so we make mistakes and then we learn and
it's a sad system. But you know, as long as
we use that experience to not keep repeating it. But yeah,
this is so good. So you know, I just I

(48:22):
love that you're doing this. You could be doing anything
in you in your free life.

Speaker 2 (48:28):
Yea, I appreciate that, Thank you. I'm only doing it
because I'm enjoying it as soon as I'm If I'm
not enjoying it, I'll stop because right now I feel
like I'm actually giving and helping, and people are telling
me it's helping. If I didn't feel like that was true,
I would probably just be going off and making stories
to help distract people.

Speaker 1 (48:47):
I love that. Well, keep keep that fiction writing going.
That sounds really great. So yeah, tell us a little
about how people can find you engage with you. I mean,
if you want that, you are retired, you want a
million people knocking on your door.

Speaker 2 (49:03):
But Michael's help as many people as I can. So
that's why I'm spending my time. I put everything on
a website because I realized you're gonna hear a thousand
things and it's impossible to keep them all straight. So
if you just go to Escape the Clock dot com,
I try to make it easy. That's the book is
up there. So if you want you want the guide
on how to make that program plan and learn the

(49:23):
program stuff, it's in the book Escape the Clock. I
would definitely pick that up. It's won a few awards.
I'm very humbled by that. I didn't think that that
could happen. That was really cool. You know. I guess
I took a unique approach to the to the picture,
which you know was recognized and I love that I
did put my heart into that book. Yeah, So that

(49:45):
that's at the website. You can also schedule time with
me at the website. Like I said, I do free consultations,
so you know, I'm always I'm trying to help. You
can also find my podcast, but you can also find
it on every platform Spotify, Amazon, Apple, YouTube.

Speaker 1 (50:00):
So that also Escape the Clock.

Speaker 2 (50:02):
It's called Escape the Clock, and it's a weekly podcast.
Haven't missed a week yet. I'm interviewing great people who
have a lot of financial because I didn't want to
just be me talking all the time I've been I
do episodes like that. I actually just finish a two
part series on it people who are new to investing
and how to get into the stock market, not just

(50:23):
in how to invest in the stock market, but how
to build a portfolio that you can actually create cash
flow without selling shares, things like that. So I did
two part series in that, but I have other guests
coming in all the time. And again it's about financial literacy, right,
this is a free podcast. I'm just trying to get
people different mediums that make it easy for them to
get the information, be it with me directly, through a

(50:45):
book or through the media of audio or video. So
that's what you can Escape the clock dot com. You
can find probably what you're looking for.

Speaker 1 (50:53):
Woof. That's great. And I'm definitely reading your book because
I really want to get my head around some of this,
you know, kind of program management ideas.

Speaker 2 (51:02):
Oh you'll get you'll get a lot of that.

Speaker 1 (51:04):
I'm excited. I'm excited. So Okay, Well, Dan, I don't
can't thank you enough. This was a great conversation. You're
a great podcast guest, so I'm sure your podcast is
terrific too, and I encourage everybody to subscribe and go
listen and go to Escape the Clock dot com and
see what else you've got. And very generous of you

(51:24):
to give your time and offer consultations as well, So
thank you. Thank you for all you're doing in your
in your post work life.

Speaker 2 (51:32):
So thank you, Michelle. It's a it's a dream to
be on your show. It's very cool.

Speaker 1 (51:36):
Well, you are a fantastic guest, so thank you so much,
and listeners, thank you, thank you for tuning in. I
hope you love the show, I really encourage you to
share it and let other people know about what's going
on on Escape the Clock dot com. And uh, you know,
Dan's offering his time and expertise and knowledge, so hey

(51:57):
take advantage of it. So thank you so much for listening.
You can find us on all the podcast platforms and
on the limit Free Life YouTube channel. Please continue to
rate and review the show if you liked it, We
love that if you do it, and so thank you again.
Thank you pod Experience Tony so much for handling everything

(52:17):
on the show, and we'll see you next week.