Speaker 1: Heyba fan, Mandra here all right. I know everyone is
Speaker 1: missing Tiffany while she's on this much needed epic vacation,
Speaker 1: but listen, I'm still here, y'all. I got you. I'm
Speaker 1: kicking off this incredible beginning of summer with a special
Speaker 1: series of guest co hosts, starting with the one and
Speaker 1: only Chris Browning from the Popcorn Finance podcast. He's joining
Speaker 1: me next Wednesday, June ninth. Chris is basically someone who
Speaker 1: invented the perfect snackable money podcast with his show, which
Speaker 1: was recently featured on a list of great podcasts from
Speaker 1: none other than The New York Times. Not shabby at all.
Speaker 1: This week, though, I've got a little something special for you. Honestly,
Speaker 1: we've recorded dozens of episodes of this podcast, but if
Speaker 1: we had to choose our favorite episode ever, it could
Speaker 1: very well be this conversation we had with Christina and
Speaker 1: Aman of our Rich Journey last year. Christina and Aman
Speaker 1: are former government employees and parents of two who use
Speaker 1: savvy investing strategies and a whole latta hustle to retire
Speaker 1: before age forty in Portugal. Now they help other people
Speaker 1: pursue fire financial independence early retirement on their YouTube channel,
Speaker 1: Our Rich Journey. They get super candid with us on
Speaker 1: the show, revealing just how much they squirreled away before
Speaker 1: they determined they had enough in the bank to retire forever.
Speaker 1: But look beyond the dollars and cents, really what left.
Speaker 1: The biggest impression on us had to be the insanely
Speaker 1: palpable waves of joy they exuited. It was seriously contagious. Honestly,
Speaker 1: it sent Tiffany on her own journey to find joy
Speaker 1: in her business and success, and it helped me get
Speaker 1: back in touch with that twenty two year old girl
Speaker 1: I used to be the one who turned down a
Speaker 1: job to travel internationally after college. She's someone I honestly
Speaker 1: didn't know I was still allowed to be in my
Speaker 1: thirties with a kid and a husband and a mortgage.
Speaker 1: That was until I spoke with Christina and Aman. Suddenly
Speaker 1: I remembered what all my hard work and passion for
Speaker 1: saving and investing husband for my own ticket, not just
Speaker 1: to wealth, but my own version of a truly rich
Speaker 1: and fulfilled life. Okay, Okay, that's enough rambling for me.
Speaker 1: Here's our conversation with Christina and Amman. I'd love to
Speaker 1: hear from you, guys. Feel free to hit us up.
Speaker 1: We're at Brown Ambition on Instagram, or you can shoot
Speaker 1: us an email directly at brand Ambition Podcast at gmail
Speaker 1: dot com. We are joined today by the fabulous Our
Speaker 1: Rich Journey. The brains behind Our Rich Journey, Christina and
Speaker 1: Amman Browning. Welcome to the show.
Speaker 2: Hey, thanks for having us.
Speaker 3: Yeah, thank you. We have been looking forward to this.
Speaker 3: We were so excited about this call. So we are
Speaker 3: so glad to be speaking with you guys.
Speaker 4: Now we're geek.
Speaker 5: I'm like, ugh, I just don't our audience is going
Speaker 5: to love you.
Speaker 1: Oh money too. Let me brag on y'all for a
Speaker 1: little bit because your story is so inspirational and I
Speaker 1: know that our audience will love you. But as we mentioned,
Speaker 1: the Brownings come from the San Francisco Bay area. You
Speaker 1: guys both worked for the federal government until your late thirties.
Speaker 1: You decided, let's just quit our jobs. Let's just retire. Now,
Speaker 1: how about that? With what a ten and a twelve
Speaker 1: year old at the time.
Speaker 3: Yes, yeah, well so they're eleven and thirteen now, so yeah,
Speaker 3: they were about ten and twelve at the time.
Speaker 2: What better not only quit your job.
Speaker 1: Yeah, very casually. Well, no, I mean, I'm kind of
Speaker 1: making it seem easier than it was. You guys planned
Speaker 1: for this. You joined the Fire movement before you even
Speaker 1: knew there was a Fire movement? Is that right?
Speaker 6: Oh, that is totally right. I love how you said
Speaker 6: that too.
Speaker 3: It's like we didn't even really know what we were
Speaker 3: doing as we were doing it in terms of classifying
Speaker 3: it as a Fire movement, because when we started, it
Speaker 3: wasn't like this huge thing. It's not a huge thing now,
Speaker 3: I would say, but it's much bigger than when we started.
Speaker 3: So Fire is really financial independence retiring early. And the
Speaker 3: concept is really that you save as much money as
Speaker 3: you can, you make as much money as you can,
Speaker 3: and then you invest that money and then that money
Speaker 3: will grow enough to a point where you have enough
Speaker 3: money that you can reach financial independence and retire and
Speaker 3: never have to work again. So that whole sort of
Speaker 3: introduction to Fire was we were sort of working on
Speaker 3: it and doing all these things towards Fire, but there
Speaker 3: wasn't really we didn't know the name of it at
Speaker 3: the time when we started.
Speaker 1: We'll talk about I mean, so take us back to
Speaker 1: eight years ago. Was it eight or nine years ago
Speaker 1: when y'all decided as a couple was it was it
Speaker 1: one big conversation where y'all where you were both like, hey,
Speaker 1: we should retire early? How soon? Eight years? How's eight years?
Speaker 1: And then you put it like, how did that? How
Speaker 1: does it work as a couple? How do you decide
Speaker 1: we are going to both strive for this goal? Get
Speaker 1: on the same page and talk about the steps that
Speaker 1: y'all took in your early thirties to be able to
Speaker 1: retire before.
Speaker 2: Well, you know, it was a AHA moment for me
Speaker 2: at work. I was at work working for the federal government,
Speaker 2: and I was going through the motions every day in
Speaker 2: the rat race. And I was at work one day
Speaker 2: and I received an award for my length of service
Speaker 2: with the federal government for ten years. And at this
Speaker 2: awards assembly, there was another federal employee that had gotten
Speaker 2: an award for thirty years of service. And I just remember,
Speaker 2: at this assembly, my ten years was just insignificant. They
Speaker 2: hurried me off the stage. It was nothing. And at
Speaker 2: that moment, I realized that I didn't want to be
Speaker 2: here thirty years just to get another piece of paper.
Speaker 2: And so I went home. I had this conversation with Christina,
Speaker 2: and you know, there were so many things that we
Speaker 2: wanted to do besides just spend the rest of our
Speaker 2: lives in our cubicle. And so we had this conversation
Speaker 2: and we didn't really know how we were going to
Speaker 2: do it, you know, we had it was just a goal.
Speaker 2: A goal was to be able to develop enough passive income,
Speaker 2: either with real estate or with the stock market, to
Speaker 2: be able to quit our jobs and live off of that.
Speaker 2: And so when I went home and me and Christina
Speaker 2: had this conversation, what Christina did is what she always does.
Speaker 2: She was like all in for she said, let's do it.
Speaker 2: Let's figure out a way to get it done.
Speaker 1: Plus your heart. I mean, my husband and I can't
Speaker 1: even ngram what to order on door Dash. I mean
Speaker 1: that's like a two hour conversation. Well, now, I think
Speaker 1: y'all's relationship, I mean has to be so strong, such
Speaker 1: a foundation of trust, and I just and it comes
Speaker 1: across from me and your YouTube channel and your videos.
Speaker 1: You can really tell that y'all are all in with
Speaker 1: each other, and that's that's beautiful to see. TIF what
Speaker 1: do you want to ask now?
Speaker 5: I just want to know, like what in your I know,
Speaker 5: so you have that initial excitement, but what were there
Speaker 5: things that made you nervous about about this journey that
Speaker 5: you were like, how were we going to handle these things?
Speaker 4: Some because I'm sure there are certain people who were.
Speaker 5: Listening and they're like, I'd love to retire early, but
Speaker 5: I'm nervous about dot dot dot And how did you
Speaker 5: handle those things?
Speaker 2: There was a list. I think the biggest thing on
Speaker 2: our list was the amount of money that it would
Speaker 2: take to retire to do it. You know, we have
Speaker 2: this thing called a fire number, and it's a number
Speaker 2: that you calculate and it's based off of the amount
Speaker 2: of money that you would need in an investment portfolio
Speaker 2: in order to call yourself financially independent. And just calculating
Speaker 2: that number and seeing that number on paper, that was
Speaker 2: very intimidating. So that was one thing for sure.
Speaker 6: Yeah, and I think you know it's for us.
Speaker 3: It's really like, when we have maybe these challenges, are
Speaker 3: we thinking, Okay, how much is it going to take
Speaker 3: in order to retire? Because I think one of the
Speaker 3: things that man forgot to say is when he came
Speaker 3: home and we were talking about it, he said, I
Speaker 3: want to retire before I'm forty, and so for us
Speaker 3: it was like, wow, that's not a huge amount of time,
Speaker 3: So what are the things that we need to do
Speaker 3: in order to make that happen. So I think the
Speaker 3: challenge for us too was at the time, like I said,
Speaker 3: there wasn't a lot of information out there, There wasn't
Speaker 3: a lot of information in general in terms of how
Speaker 3: to pursue fire. And Aman and I also both came
Speaker 3: from backgrounds where we didn't learn about investing or even
Speaker 3: saving money, really making money extra money, how do you
Speaker 3: go about doing that? So we didn't have that type
Speaker 3: of background in terms of learning how to really deal
Speaker 3: with our finances. So that was definitely a struggle. I mean,
Speaker 3: I think part of it is really becoming comfortable in
Speaker 3: how do you make these real estate transactions, how do
Speaker 3: you make these stock market investments, and really becoming financially
Speaker 3: literate and understanding how to try and grow our money.
Speaker 3: So I think a lot of people when they're on
Speaker 3: the fire journey, that can be a struggle because it
Speaker 3: can seem sort of overwhelming.
Speaker 6: You have to make all this money, and then you
Speaker 6: have to figure.
Speaker 3: Out how do you grow your money because you can't
Speaker 3: just allow it to sit in a savings account. It's
Speaker 3: not going to happen. You're not going to get that
Speaker 3: type of money to retire early. So those were some
Speaker 3: of the challenges that I guess the biggest challenges that
Speaker 3: we had when we're pursuing.
Speaker 1: Fire and you had so you're in your early thirties.
Speaker 1: You have two girls at the time.
Speaker 3: They're young, right, yes, so they were I think around
Speaker 3: three and five, probably Christie.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you just completed law school?
Speaker 4: Yeah, I was.
Speaker 6: I actually started law school.
Speaker 3: I went to law school at UCLA, and the girls
Speaker 3: were down in LA with me, and Aman was actually
Speaker 3: working at the time, but he was working in San Francisco,
Speaker 3: and so he was coming back and forth every weekend.
Speaker 3: I mean, I cannot even imagine, you know, I was
Speaker 3: there with the girls at law school, but every single
Speaker 3: weekend a mon was driving down or flying down from
Speaker 3: San Francisco to LA to be with us and support us.
Speaker 3: It's like he didn't even skip a beat. And so
Speaker 3: for us, yeah, that was part of the journey, was
Speaker 3: really trying to manage to get in like two separate households,
Speaker 3: managing little kids on this.
Speaker 6: Journey of fire.
Speaker 3: And really trying to make everything work because at the
Speaker 3: same time we're supposed to be saving money and making money.
Speaker 6: So yeah, that was another challenge.
Speaker 1: Your thirties are like that decade, and I'm right where
Speaker 1: you guys were eight years ago. So I am listening
Speaker 1: with these big olds, like, tell me what to do,
Speaker 1: because this is the time in your life where year
Speaker 1: of responsibilities get bigger. You have the baby, you get
Speaker 1: the house, maybe you get a dog, you get a
Speaker 1: you know, you move to the burbs or whatnot, and
Speaker 1: you start to I feel the pressure of it all,
Speaker 1: you know, the pressure of providing for my child, creating stability.
Speaker 1: And what I love about you guys is that you said, yeah,
Speaker 1: we have it. I'm sure you guys had a decent life,
Speaker 1: I mean comfortable life. You both had great careers. Christina,
Speaker 1: you went to law school. You also worked for the
Speaker 1: federal government, but you chose to like even aim higher
Speaker 1: at the time when you started to think about retiring
Speaker 1: before forty, Where were you at financially? Were you just
Speaker 1: basic four when k investors? Had you guys already bought
Speaker 1: your properties, Had you had experience in the real estate
Speaker 1: or did y'all start from Okay, let's start getting into
Speaker 1: real estate, because I know that was a cornerstone of
Speaker 1: your investing strategy, right, Yes.
Speaker 2: So you know we were doing what most people, well,
Speaker 2: I don't say most people. We had the fundamentals in place,
Speaker 2: so we had an emergency fund and we were putting
Speaker 2: away about ten to fifteen percent of our income into
Speaker 2: our retirement accounts. But a lot of the pressures that
Speaker 2: you talked about. If we were to I guess get
Speaker 2: deeper into some of those pressures, we would have failed
Speaker 2: victim to lifestyle creep. And so what started to happen
Speaker 2: to us in our thirties was that we had to
Speaker 2: make a serious shift. And it was good that we
Speaker 2: had this shift, and I had this moment at work
Speaker 2: when I did, because we were at that point where
Speaker 2: we were going to be starting to make more money.
Speaker 2: A lot of these pressures were going to start to
Speaker 2: pop up with the kids and with our friends, and
Speaker 2: you can really fall victim to those things like getting
Speaker 2: a bigger house, like driving a nicer car, and so
Speaker 2: for us at that moment, breaking loose of this consumer
Speaker 2: culture and deciding to live in a smaller house, to
Speaker 2: drive an older car, and then take whatever extra money
Speaker 2: that we started to make and instead prioritize that money
Speaker 2: into our investments. It was definitely a crossroads for us,
Speaker 2: and we can definitely attribute our success to making that shift.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I love how you say, Mandy, that you
Speaker 3: know you're sort of at the stage that we were
Speaker 3: eight years ago, right, Because when you're in your thirties,
Speaker 3: you start to notice that you're.
Speaker 6: Maybe potentially making more money.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 3: You may have more responsibilities at your job, you may
Speaker 3: be starting a family, you may be buying a house.
Speaker 3: All of these things are sort of coming to fruition.
Speaker 3: Things that you may have wanted in your twenties, you're
Speaker 3: starting to get more and more of them in your thirties.
Speaker 3: And so that is one of the big things I
Speaker 3: think for people pursuing fire is really not getting attached
Speaker 3: to or not falling down that whole of lifestyle creep.
Speaker 6: As you start to get more money.
Speaker 3: It's not this concept that, oh, you have more money
Speaker 3: so that you can spend more money.
Speaker 6: It's this idea that when.
Speaker 3: You're making this more money, you were able to live
Speaker 3: off of less money before. When you make more money,
Speaker 3: it doesn't mean that you have to spend more money.
Speaker 3: The idea is that you can save that money and
Speaker 3: then invest that money, and then that is starting to
Speaker 3: grow during your fire journey. And you don't even have
Speaker 3: to have the goal of retiring early. It could just
Speaker 3: be that you want to be financially independent so that
Speaker 3: when you get older, money is not.
Speaker 6: Going to be an issue for you.
Speaker 3: You can do whatever type of job makes you happy
Speaker 3: and you don't have to think, I can't have this
Speaker 3: job because I'm not going to make enough money to.
Speaker 6: You know, pay all the bills for my family and
Speaker 6: things like that. So if you have this idea when
Speaker 6: you're in the thirties.
Speaker 3: Of not falling down that path of lifestyle creep, then
Speaker 3: you're way ahead of the game in terms of where
Speaker 3: other people are.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I just got to get my husband on board
Speaker 1: with that.
Speaker 5: So there's an African properb that my dad would say
Speaker 5: that you cut your coat according to your size.
Speaker 4: You know, that's so many.
Speaker 5: People they're like, oh, I'm bigger, now I need a
Speaker 5: bigger coat, or like I'm or they you know what
Speaker 5: I mean. You keep increasing and so it just you're
Speaker 5: keeping the pace of the increase, not realizing like, do
Speaker 5: I really need to continue to increase. I mean, I'm
Speaker 5: a cheapo, so I was like living my cheapest life
Speaker 5: when I was thirty. So I also I lost my
Speaker 5: job then. But one thing I really want to know,
Speaker 5: because this is something that I struggled with when I
Speaker 5: was in my early thirties and I was starting my business,
Speaker 5: is like, what do you do for insurance? Because honestly,
Speaker 5: back then my insurance was yoga, water and prayer.
Speaker 4: So what do you do for insurance? What do you
Speaker 4: do for insurance?
Speaker 6: Was it in that order? Tiffany?
Speaker 4: First?
Speaker 6: I think you know that is one of the big
Speaker 6: things too.
Speaker 3: You know, when you are accumulating more things, you have
Speaker 3: to understand that you need insurance in place to protect
Speaker 3: those things. You know that you do not want to
Speaker 3: be in a worst case scenario where something happens and
Speaker 3: you're not insurance. It could be your house, it could
Speaker 3: be health insurance, it could be car insurance, it.
Speaker 6: Could any of these.
Speaker 3: You know, for you, Tipany if you're starting a business
Speaker 3: having business insurance when you were in your thirties.
Speaker 6: But the idea is that insurance is supposed.
Speaker 3: To prevent you from losing all of your assets, because
Speaker 3: how terrible would it be While you're gaining more money,
Speaker 3: you have more assets, and something happens and you're not
Speaker 3: properly insured and then you can lose everything. Like right
Speaker 3: before we fired a mon, we were in the States
Speaker 3: and a mon got just this horrible, horrible food poisoning.
Speaker 3: And I'm not just saying like he was throwing up,
Speaker 3: he didn't feel well. He was hospitalized for a week.
Speaker 6: It was.
Speaker 2: It was awful.
Speaker 6: It was really bad.
Speaker 3: I mean, I don't even want to go to how
Speaker 3: bad it was. But it was worst case scenario. And
Speaker 3: thank god we were insured because the hospital bill was insane.
Speaker 3: It was an insane amount of money, and then we
Speaker 3: still had to pay our portion of it. But if
Speaker 3: we had not been insured, and this was right before
Speaker 3: we were firing too, if we would not have been insured,
Speaker 3: there would have been a huge impact on our wealth.
Speaker 6: And so I think, you.
Speaker 3: Know, a lot of people when they're younger, they want
Speaker 3: to hope for the best. They think they're healthy. You know,
Speaker 3: they don't need to be insured because nothing's going to happen.
Speaker 3: But even here, COVID is a great example of things
Speaker 3: that can happen that are unpredictable, and so you have
Speaker 3: to make sure you're properly insured.
Speaker 1: Have we mentioned the fact that y'all live in Portugal yet?
Speaker 1: Can we just reiterate that y'all didn't just quit your
Speaker 1: jobs and you know, kick back in the US. You
Speaker 1: were like, no, let's take on a whole new country, Portugal.
Speaker 1: Talk to me about especially when it comes to healthcare.
Speaker 1: I've watched this video already on your YouTube channel. I've
Speaker 1: watched them all, so I'm just trying to pretend like
Speaker 1: I haven't been stalking y'all for the past three weeks.
Speaker 1: But anyway, talk about the cost of health care in
Speaker 1: Portugal and do you think that you could like, was
Speaker 1: Portugal the key element of why you were able to
Speaker 1: retire early because of the lower cost of living? I
Speaker 1: don't even know if there is a lower cost of living,
Speaker 1: But do you think you would have been able to
Speaker 1: retire early in the US or do you decide to
Speaker 1: go out of the country for those financial reasons? And yeah,
Speaker 1: to Tiffany's question about health care costs, how are you
Speaker 1: guys covering your healthcare while in Lisbon?
Speaker 2: Yeah, so I'll go back to kind of when we
Speaker 2: were first calculating our financial independence number, we based it
Speaker 2: off of the location that we planned on retiring in.
Speaker 2: And when we did that calculation, we had identified a
Speaker 2: couple of different numbers based off of different areas in
Speaker 2: the world that we were interested in, but we had
Speaker 2: one big number that was based off of retiring in
Speaker 2: the San Francisco Bay Area because that's our hometown and
Speaker 2: we know that our children may eventually want to go
Speaker 2: back to the US, and so we wanted to base
Speaker 2: our number off of the highest number, and as a
Speaker 2: part of that number definitely included healthcare. And I remember
Speaker 2: looking at healthcare plans, and that's one of the things
Speaker 2: that I think holds people back from leaving their jobs,
Speaker 2: especially government employees, is the good healthcare. And so for us,
Speaker 2: we had to break from those golden handcuffs by including
Speaker 2: the cost of health care in the US and our
Speaker 2: fire number. And so we you know, we did that.
Speaker 2: But while we were on our journey, we stayed the course,
Speaker 2: even though we could have left a lot earlier and
Speaker 2: moved to a lower cost of living area. We met
Speaker 2: our San Francisco Bay Area number, but in the end,
Speaker 2: we chose we chose Lisbon, and it has been a
Speaker 2: pleasant surprise as far as the cost of healthcare because
Speaker 2: for our family of four, our health care is less
Speaker 2: than two thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 6: A year, yes, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: In California it would have been a month, right, like.
Speaker 1: A you know families.
Speaker 3: Yeah, hey, let me tell you this though. It's like
Speaker 3: we have been to the hospitals here already too. It's
Speaker 3: like we've gone for the girls have asthma, so they've
Speaker 3: had the minor asthma things that we have to go
Speaker 3: get treated at the hospital. We've even had done to work.
Speaker 3: Actually a moan was at the dentist earlier today. So
Speaker 3: Noah has braces.
Speaker 2: But I might get me some braces just because.
Speaker 3: But you know, we have had such an incredible experience
Speaker 3: with the healthcare here. I mean there's nothing. We don't
Speaker 3: have any language barriers. When we go to speak to
Speaker 3: the doctors, to the nurses, to the staff, everything is
Speaker 3: so smooth and we just show them our card and
Speaker 3: and sometimes we have a very small copey and other
Speaker 3: times it's like, oh, we don't have.
Speaker 6: Anything at all. It's just you walk in and you
Speaker 6: walk out. It is so simple.
Speaker 5: Yes, wow, my husband works for the Mandy your husband
Speaker 5: works for the city, right, and so does mine.
Speaker 1: And that for the federal government. Yeah.
Speaker 5: So, and my husband works for the state. Well he
Speaker 5: works for the city, but his pension and everything is
Speaker 5: through his state. And that's been the thing that's been
Speaker 5: like holding like a pensions us because yes, well it's
Speaker 5: not the pension honestly, because I could get like, you know,
Speaker 5: we make more than enough that I would. I'm not
Speaker 5: worried about that the pension payout. It's more so his
Speaker 5: insurance is so amazing, especially in the United States, especially
Speaker 5: in the East Coast, because I live in Jersey and
Speaker 5: it's like, ah, he would love to leave any day now,
Speaker 5: but he's got about five more years and it's like
Speaker 5: the cost of health insurance in the United States, it's
Speaker 5: so much so that it's like, bruh, wh need to
Speaker 5: take that with us because you could take it with you.
Speaker 5: So I totally get it. And yeah, but you know,
Speaker 5: I don't I wouldn't mind moving to Portugal, but I
Speaker 5: know he wouldn't want to do that.
Speaker 3: But yeah, I know so many people have seen our
Speaker 3: channel and we have videos on Portugal now and.
Speaker 6: Everyone's like, I never even thought about Portugal.
Speaker 3: Now Portugal is at the top of my list and
Speaker 3: we're like man, Portugal is amazing. It's like this hidden secret,
Speaker 3: and it's not so hidden anymore. I think more and
Speaker 3: more people are finding out about it. But just I
Speaker 3: mean the healthcare.
Speaker 6: Alone is something to think about because.
Speaker 3: Just moving here and having the lifestyle or the pace
Speaker 3: that they have here in Portugal, it's just amazing.
Speaker 1: Well, talk to me about the key for me is
Speaker 1: I mean healthcare. And it's fascinating to hear what you
Speaker 1: guys are spending on healthcare in Portugal versus the US.
Speaker 1: But let's go back again to the early days. What
Speaker 1: were some of the and so when you described how
Speaker 1: y'all were saving back then, I think that really resonates
Speaker 1: with me because that's what I had been doing since
Speaker 1: in my early twenties, saving that ten to fifteen percent
Speaker 1: and my four oh one K and feeling very smart
Speaker 1: about it. But what was the first step y'all took
Speaker 1: to ratchet up your investments? How did you start investing?
Speaker 1: Did you just max out your four one ks? When
Speaker 1: you max them out? Where did you go from there?
Speaker 1: Can you walk us through like laddering up your investments
Speaker 1: and build and really what it took to build and
Speaker 1: grow your wealth in your thirties, Oh certainly.
Speaker 2: So you know, it started with having our fire number
Speaker 2: in place, and then so with that number, we were
Speaker 2: able to kind of figure out what we needed to
Speaker 2: get to as far as a savings rate in order
Speaker 2: to retire in ten years based off of the returns
Speaker 2: in the market or our returns in real estate. So
Speaker 2: with that number in mind, we just tried to get
Speaker 2: our savings rate up, and I'll say that our savings
Speaker 2: rate by the end was as high as seventy percent.
Speaker 2: So we went from saving ten to fifteen all the
Speaker 2: way up to seventy percent. But we didn't do it overnight.
Speaker 2: We just got one percent better as much as we
Speaker 2: could and as soon as we could. So, you know,
Speaker 2: if we just were able to lower our bills and
Speaker 2: increase our salary, and then that gap grew our savings rate.
Speaker 2: And so with that additional money that we were saving
Speaker 2: and making, we were prioritizing our investments. And we have
Speaker 2: something called a pay yourself first budget, but it's really
Speaker 2: heavy on paying yourself into your investment accounts, and so
Speaker 2: we started with our tax advantage accounts first and putting
Speaker 2: as much money into those accounts because those are the
Speaker 2: real accounts that you can really see uh wealth growth
Speaker 2: in because of the because of all the tax incentives
Speaker 2: and tax advantages, and so that was a big priority,
Speaker 2: was maxing out our tax advantage accounts.
Speaker 1: Now you're talking about your four oh one K your
Speaker 1: I know you guys use an HSA, what a tax
Speaker 1: advantage accounts?
Speaker 2: So we we talk about the basically the four accounts
Speaker 2: that we call the four pillars of fire for us
Speaker 2: was the four oh one K, the HSA, and the
Speaker 2: roth IRA. So maxing those out at a minimum was
Speaker 2: was really big for us. And then after that we
Speaker 2: moved to basically a regular brokerage account, so just investing
Speaker 2: in Vanguard and investing in low cost ETFs and index
Speaker 2: funds at the same time that we were also investing
Speaker 2: in the stock market. We had read all of these
Speaker 2: books on real estate investing and really type people to
Speaker 2: read something and then to take action with it. So
Speaker 2: we had gotten all the real estate concepts down as
Speaker 2: much as we were going to get them down, and
Speaker 2: then we went to work. So we took an FAHA
Speaker 2: loan and we bought our first house in the San
Speaker 2: Fransco b area with three percent down and it was
Speaker 2: it was it was a fixer upper, and we did
Speaker 2: something called a live and flip where we lived in
Speaker 2: the house, fixed it up, got equity in that home,
Speaker 2: and then use that equity to buy other properties and
Speaker 2: with an FAHA loan. That's the that's the best way
Speaker 2: for someone to get started in real estate is doing
Speaker 2: something like a live and flip because after you've lived
Speaker 2: in that home for three years, you can sell that
Speaker 2: home and keep one hundred percent of your profits up
Speaker 2: to a certain amount depending on if you're married or single.
Speaker 2: And so that was that was a big game changer
Speaker 2: for us as well.
Speaker 3: So I think, really, you know, there's there's different ways
Speaker 3: that you can reach financial independence or financial independence and
Speaker 3: retire early. So you could do it through investing in
Speaker 3: the stock market. So in the stock market, you know,
Speaker 3: if that is someone's plan, then they absolutely want to
Speaker 3: make sure that they're maxing out their tax advantage accounts
Speaker 3: first because then you're protecting more of your money from
Speaker 3: it being taken away by taxes, and by protecting it more,
Speaker 3: then you can allow it to grow more. So the
Speaker 3: idea though is that you have to max out that account,
Speaker 3: but you have to go beyond that. So once you
Speaker 3: max out your tax advantage accounts. Then the idea is
Speaker 3: that you open up a traditional brokerage account and you
Speaker 3: start throwing money there as well. So there's one way
Speaker 3: to reach financial independence. But then the other way is
Speaker 3: also through real estate. If you want to start investing
Speaker 3: in real estate and putting money into different real estate
Speaker 3: real estate properties and creating rentals and creating rental income,
Speaker 3: that is another way. Or you can just invest in
Speaker 3: real estate and do like what a mon said is
Speaker 3: basically flipping the properties and then eventually selling them and
Speaker 3: taking the profit from that. Or you can do a
Speaker 3: combination of real estate and investing in the stock market.
Speaker 3: But it all comes down really to these fundamental pieces.
Speaker 3: When you're pursuing fire, is that the idea is that
Speaker 3: somehow you have to find to try and make more money.
Speaker 3: And it could be through getting ah more money through
Speaker 3: your salary, or it can be doing different side hustles,
Speaker 3: but then it's saving more money and then it's focusing
Speaker 3: on that investment piece as well.
Speaker 1: Y'all. Side hustles. Literally, I get so many giggles out
Speaker 1: of hearing about how you guys found creative ways to
Speaker 1: build wealth. First of all, I'm like where do you
Speaker 1: get the energy with two bait? Like two little girls,
Speaker 1: and y'all are like what building furniture out of wine
Speaker 1: crates and digging through ikeas reduced like returns bins and
Speaker 1: like selling flipping furniture online. Talk about how y'all brought
Speaker 1: in extra money and like what was the most meaningful
Speaker 1: source of extra income y'all created?
Speaker 2: You know, we always talk about this because looking back
Speaker 2: on it, we laugh about some of the things that
Speaker 2: we did. But for us, it's weird. When you're on
Speaker 2: this journey, it's like your mind like produces income out
Speaker 2: of out of nowhere. There's literally money in the streets
Speaker 2: and you just have to go pick it up. So, actually,
Speaker 2: someone sent us a message today because one of our
Speaker 2: side hustles was we had Christina was writing tooth fairy
Speaker 2: letters on Etsy. She created an Etsy store, and my
Speaker 2: favor it was like it was it was so funny
Speaker 2: and when she when she came up with this idea,
Speaker 2: I was like, people really people really buying letters like that.
Speaker 2: They're families that do that.
Speaker 6: Yeah.
Speaker 3: But but someone actually reached out to reached out to
Speaker 3: us today, which is so funny, asking us about you know,
Speaker 3: the details of it.
Speaker 6: How do you do it?
Speaker 3: How are you sending it out? Are you sending it
Speaker 3: out already pre packaged? Do you send it out to
Speaker 3: the parent or to the child? So it was so
Speaker 3: interesting because you know, people are interested in finding these
Speaker 3: new ways to make money, and so I just thought,
Speaker 3: you know, this is a creative thing. But like you said,
Speaker 3: we we uh, we're not too shy to go dumpster diving.
Speaker 6: We did that at one point, and I'll tell you
Speaker 6: the specific specifics of that.
Speaker 3: We were driving around in Oakland, which is in the
Speaker 3: San Francisco Bay area, and we drove past this huge
Speaker 3: dumpster and it had all of these, I don't guess,
Speaker 3: not brand new wine crates, but it had all of
Speaker 3: these wine crates in them, and they were so beautiful.
Speaker 6: It's like these wine boxes wood.
Speaker 3: Yes, And there was a liquor store that had dumped
Speaker 3: them all out into this garb, into this dumpster getting
Speaker 3: rid of them. And we went into the to the
Speaker 3: liquor store and we said, are you dumping these? Are
Speaker 3: you you don't want these? Can we have them?
Speaker 6: And so they said yes, So we filled.
Speaker 3: Up our car with so many wine boxes and then
Speaker 3: we took them home in our garage was just piled
Speaker 3: full of wine boxes and we ended up selling those.
Speaker 3: We got them for free, and we ended up selling
Speaker 3: them on like Facebook and Craigslist, and people were just
Speaker 3: it was so easy to sell because people thought they
Speaker 3: were really beautiful wine boxes and they couldn't find them anywhere,
Speaker 3: and people were willing to pay us for that.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I was like a bougie broke hipster ten years ago
Speaker 1: living in Queens with my boyfriend at the time, my husband. Now,
Speaker 1: we were the dumb dumbs. Not the dumb dumbs. We
Speaker 1: were the ones buying wine, trying to find wine crates
Speaker 1: on Craigslist and begging liquors or was to give them
Speaker 1: to us. Y'all stumbled upon a little jackpot right there.
Speaker 1: I was like, oh, I would love that.
Speaker 2: Yeah, we did that.
Speaker 3: I mean we also, like Aman said, we had flipped
Speaker 3: our properties. So one of the things we found at Ikea,
Speaker 3: which is I feel like Ikeas everywhere, I mean there's
Speaker 3: even an Ikea. There's like five Ikeas in Portugal here,
Speaker 3: but in Ikea they have this as is section. So
Speaker 3: that was another one of our side hustles. We discovered this.
Speaker 3: I'm not saying like we are the only ones who've
Speaker 3: discovered it. But we discovered that you can buy these
Speaker 3: items in the as is section and they're anywhere.
Speaker 6: I mean, you can get things for.
Speaker 3: Ninety percent off of yes, up to ninety percent off,
Speaker 3: or if they're you know, if they're no longer having
Speaker 3: a certain product, like an entire free or entire kitchen display,
Speaker 3: you can get for up to ninety percent off. So
Speaker 3: we started buying these really nice items in Ikea and
Speaker 3: reselling those all sets.
Speaker 2: That's what we had a niche. How our niche was kitchen.
Speaker 2: It was basically like kitchen construction material, so the cabinet's,
Speaker 2: the countertops, refrigerators, hoods, all of these different things. When
Speaker 2: Ikia changes out its kitchens in the showroom, they would
Speaker 2: put their entire kitchen down into the as this section
Speaker 2: and we'd be waiting for it, pick it right up.
Speaker 2: It was ninety percent off, and you can resell this
Speaker 2: stuff and make a lot of money. My kids hate
Speaker 2: Ikea now because I was taking them in there all
Speaker 2: the time. And this is a side thing, but every Wednesday,
Speaker 2: kids eat free at Ikea, so we were there every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: They're probably thinking those meatballs, but I know I lived
Speaker 1: up that if I furnished my whole first apartment was
Speaker 1: the Ikea as a section.
Speaker 5: I was like, oh, no, we will have qute things,
Speaker 5: but cute things on a budget.
Speaker 4: So I feel, you I never thought about this.
Speaker 1: I am a victim of lifestyle creep. I'll fess up
Speaker 1: to it. We bought our house and it was West
Speaker 1: Elm all the way y'all, And I feel foolish, but
Speaker 1: it's true. We did West Elm, And like Creighton Barrel,
Speaker 1: you want to have nice stuff. And I always can
Speaker 1: considered myself to be you know, I mean, I've been
Speaker 1: doing personal finance for over a decade, and I you know,
Speaker 1: I know better, but the allure of just being comfortable
Speaker 1: and having nice things, especially for people who you know,
Speaker 1: for me personally, coming from family, we weren't like super poor,
Speaker 1: but we didn't have like really nice stuff. And you know,
Speaker 1: you want to you want to like enjoy the fruits
Speaker 1: of your your hard work, and that felt like a
Speaker 1: way of acknowledging the hard work and about you know,
Speaker 1: investing in our own comfort. But I'm a little surprised,
Speaker 1: you know, two years out from that renovation, where I'm thinking,
Speaker 1: you know, was that the best way to celebrate our
Speaker 1: you know, our success, like giving another company all this money,
Speaker 1: you know, like there's probably other ways. So I'm I'm
Speaker 1: thinking so much about some of the choices I've made
Speaker 1: and how emotions play into that, you know, especially as
Speaker 1: you're starting to build and build a family and earn
Speaker 1: more in your thirties.
Speaker 3: Like y'all said, yeah, I know, I think definitely there's
Speaker 3: this idea that and Aman and I talk about it
Speaker 3: a lot. Actually, it's like you can make short term
Speaker 3: sacrifices for long term gains. And that's really how we
Speaker 3: thought about it. When we're thinking about or even if
Speaker 3: you're thinking about how much it costs to do X,
Speaker 3: Y or z, converting that into hours of work, right,
Speaker 3: it's like, would you put that many hours of work
Speaker 3: so that you could have this or so that you
Speaker 3: could do something or do that? And so that's an
Speaker 3: interesting way to start to think about it. But also realizing,
Speaker 3: you know, what is in your future, what do you
Speaker 3: look for, what do you look forward to the most
Speaker 3: in the future, and really thinking about it at that way,
Speaker 3: thinking that you know, if I if I maybe don't
Speaker 3: spend my money in this area, or if I cut
Speaker 3: back in this area. It may be a little hard initially,
Speaker 3: but if you're looking at the long term results, what
Speaker 3: you can get in return for maybe not buying the
Speaker 3: big TV or the new car or something like that,
Speaker 3: then you can start really pursuing fire in a meaningful
Speaker 3: way where you're really focused on cutting out expenses, not
Speaker 3: buying big expenses, and really trying to make more in
Speaker 3: funnel towards your investments.
Speaker 1: Y'all didn't just focus on cutting cutting cutting expenses. Y'all
Speaker 1: still took time and you invested in experiences that meant
Speaker 1: a lot to y'all. Could you talk about how you
Speaker 1: balanced experiences and things that you would continue to splurge
Speaker 1: on and then balance that with your mission to save
Speaker 1: as much as you could.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I would say one of our biggest expences in terms
Speaker 3: of what we cut that we really wanted to do
Speaker 3: that we're able to figure it out, was traveling. Like
Speaker 3: we lived in Spain, we lived in Japan, we now
Speaker 3: live in Portugal.
Speaker 6: We traveled to Hawaii a lot. Among's brother lives in Hawaii.
Speaker 3: So we were definitely a huge travel family and that
Speaker 3: was very important to us and we really didn't want
Speaker 3: to give that up. But it can be expensive for
Speaker 3: a family of four traveling abroad all the time or Hawaii.
Speaker 6: And making these trips.
Speaker 3: And so we figured out travel hacking where we would
Speaker 3: take out credit cards and we would use the bonus
Speaker 3: points for the credit cards by taking them out, and
Speaker 3: we would use them for hotel stays and for airfare,
Speaker 3: and we were able to start traveling for free. Now,
Speaker 3: I would say though, that this travel hacking concept is
Speaker 3: absolutely not for everyone. I mean, you have to understand
Speaker 3: how credit works. You have to start off with good
Speaker 3: credit and maintain good credit, and don't go in this
Speaker 3: rabbit hole where you're just trying to spend money on
Speaker 3: your credit card so that you can get the points.
Speaker 3: It doesn't work like that. There's a it's a bit
Speaker 3: more nuanced than that. So it's not for everyone, but
Speaker 3: for us. For Aman and I, we had excellent credit.
Speaker 3: We never had any debt on our credit cards. We
Speaker 3: always paid our credit card off in full every single month,
Speaker 3: and so by figuring out travel hacking, we were able
Speaker 3: to continue to travel the world and still enjoy all
Speaker 3: of the different things we could by traveling, but we
Speaker 3: got to do it for free.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, Tif and I love to talk about what
Speaker 1: how to not you know, fall into that to that
Speaker 1: black hole of credit card spending just to get some points.
Speaker 5: Yeah. Absolutely, So the struggle that I have is not
Speaker 5: it's not the living frugally got that you know. And
Speaker 5: so but did you ever feel like are we over sacrificing,
Speaker 5: because that is something that I struggle with that I
Speaker 5: sometimes struggle with the enjoying on the other side. And
Speaker 5: so do you ever feel like, you know, you were
Speaker 5: oversackled sacrificing And if so, how did you manage that
Speaker 5: or if not, how did you avoid that?
Speaker 3: Yeah? I think that for us, we didn't feel like
Speaker 3: we were over sacrificing because we built in things on
Speaker 3: our journey so that we could enjoy things. So, like
Speaker 3: I said, we did traveling. We traveled quite a lot,
Speaker 3: and we also this is something that we didn't save
Speaker 3: any money on, but we still did it. We were
Speaker 3: from the We're from Oakland, like I said, and we
Speaker 3: went to a lot of warrior games and we didn't
Speaker 3: get the nosebleed seats. We were sitting you know, I
Speaker 3: wouldn't say on the floor, but maybe five rows back
Speaker 3: off of the floor. So that was one of the
Speaker 3: expenses that we splurged on when we were in Oakland.
Speaker 3: But I like to tell people a lot that you
Speaker 3: should you should enjoy the journey. You should enjoy your
Speaker 3: journey towards fire, because sometimes it's not all just about
Speaker 3: that destination of being able to retire. Right If you're
Speaker 3: miserable on your journey, you're not spending a single time
Speaker 3: doing anything. You are are you know, not going out
Speaker 3: with your friends, or you're not doing anything with anyone
Speaker 3: your family members. It's a miserable journey and it's not sustainable.
Speaker 3: So you have to you have to figure out what
Speaker 3: the right balance is for you. So we're not I
Speaker 3: wouldn't encourage everyone to just you know, count every single
Speaker 3: penny and live in a way where they're just not
Speaker 3: able to enjoy anything.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I think this is a this is a
Speaker 2: misconception about the Fire movement, is that the people that
Speaker 2: are on this journey are eating beans and sacrifice and
Speaker 2: they don't have cable or Netflix, you know, they don't
Speaker 2: go anywhere. That's that's absolutely not true. To do this,
Speaker 2: you have to just find creative ways to enjoy yourself
Speaker 2: and you have to figure out a way to make
Speaker 2: more money. That's the other side of the equation, preach
Speaker 2: on it. Say it again that I wish the Fire
Speaker 2: movement talk more about is you have to get out
Speaker 2: there and if you're in your thirties, twenties, if you're forties, fifties,
Speaker 2: you have to get on the grind liked. People would
Speaker 2: say to us, how do you how are you able
Speaker 2: to do this with kids? You're in law school. It's like,
Speaker 2: we don't know anything else but this. So we didn't
Speaker 2: set a low bar. We set a high bar and
Speaker 2: that's all we knew. So for us, we don't define,
Speaker 2: you know, our journey in any particular way. It's just
Speaker 2: it is what it is. That's why we called our
Speaker 2: YouTube channel our Rich Journey, because this is this is
Speaker 2: how we live our life. When people find out what
Speaker 2: our budget is here in Portugal, we live pretty luxuriously.
Speaker 2: You know. We spend four thousand dollars a month here
Speaker 2: in Portugal. And you know, for some people they say,
Speaker 2: oh my god, that's too much, or some people say,
Speaker 2: oh that's not enough. But it's relative and I think
Speaker 2: anyone that's on this journey, they have to figure out
Speaker 2: a way to do it relatively well so that they
Speaker 2: enjoy themselves. Someone reached out to me today and they said,
Speaker 2: you know, we're on this journey and we're wondering whether
Speaker 2: or not we should start to cut some of the
Speaker 2: activities for our children. And I immediately thought, no, why
Speaker 2: would you. No, don't do that. Don't sacrifice your child's childhood.
Speaker 2: You know, for this journey. Figure out different ways to
Speaker 2: approach the problem, you know. So that's what we did
Speaker 2: on our journey. We would we would encounter a problem
Speaker 2: like childcare, like travel, like owning a home, and we
Speaker 2: would just figure out a way to get through the
Speaker 2: challenge or over or around it. But we never we
Speaker 2: never let it stop us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean your girls were in basketball, you said
Speaker 1: they do swimming like you've never You've always encouraged those hobbies.
Speaker 1: I mean, now they're YouTube stars, so it's not going
Speaker 1: to be their new hobby. But before we let y'all go,
Speaker 1: we have I really want to talk to y'all about
Speaker 1: your investing philosophy and how you are weathering because your
Speaker 1: investments are mostly still in the US, right, Yes, so
Speaker 1: talk to us about because I know people listening right now.
Speaker 1: I mean, let's not let's let's not men's words here.
Speaker 1: Like we are. We're the US is being crippled by
Speaker 1: this current pandemic and economic crisis. I mean, we have
Speaker 1: what tens of millions of Americans out of work. My
Speaker 1: own fathers is still laid off. Congress can't get their
Speaker 1: act together with these stimulus checks and federal you know,
Speaker 1: unemployment benefits are in limbo right now. So there's people
Speaker 1: out there who are truly, truly hurting. And even people
Speaker 1: who have been doing it quote unquote the right way
Speaker 1: and investing in their four one k have seen their
Speaker 1: four one ks you know, take dips this year. So y'all,
Speaker 1: y'all have retired. What do you say to people who
Speaker 1: are feeling like, oh shit, like is this the right
Speaker 1: time to be putting money in the market, and how like,
Speaker 1: how can we trust that things will work out? Talk
Speaker 1: to us about your approach to investing right now in
Speaker 1: this moment, you know, how you're weathering what's happening in
Speaker 1: the US, even though you're in Portugal now. And what
Speaker 1: do you say to people who are feeling a little
Speaker 1: gun shy about getting into the market now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, that's that's a great question. And
Speaker 2: I always tell people this, don't invest money that you
Speaker 2: that you need to live off of every day. So
Speaker 2: before you even buy your first investment, you should have
Speaker 2: the fundamentals in place. You should have your credit paid
Speaker 2: down and emergency fund in place, and then you can
Speaker 2: start investing in the stock market. Because when you invest
Speaker 2: in the stock market, you shouldn't need that money in
Speaker 2: the next five to ten years. This is this is
Speaker 2: long term money. You shouldn't want this money for decades.
Speaker 2: So what's happening right now? It is. It is completely awful,
Speaker 2: you know, but if you have a plan in place,
Speaker 2: this should not distract you. If it's not taking away
Speaker 2: from your income. If you still have your income and
Speaker 2: you still have the ability to invest, you should be
Speaker 2: investing that money. Don't get consumed by what's going on
Speaker 2: in the world. Yes you should should you should definitely
Speaker 2: be involved in it socially and politically. But if you
Speaker 2: have your investments on cruise control, then money should be
Speaker 2: the least of your worries right now. You should just
Speaker 2: let that money ride. So I always say that, you know,
Speaker 2: once you have those fundamental things in place, and you
Speaker 2: have your investments on cruise control, then you can focus
Speaker 2: on everyday life.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I would also say, you know, when you
Speaker 3: think about the stock market, it seems so backwards because
Speaker 3: when the stock market plummets, a lot of people are
Speaker 3: pulling their investments out because they're afraid that they're going
Speaker 3: to lose all of their money. So it's like, let
Speaker 3: me get let me get my investments out. I'm going
Speaker 3: to take the loss, but it's better than not having
Speaker 3: any money at all. And then then the stock market
Speaker 3: ultimately goes back up, and then if they would have
Speaker 3: just left their money in, they would have been better
Speaker 3: off in the long run. It's almost like you sort
Speaker 3: of have to go against the herd mentality when it
Speaker 3: comes to the stock market because once you once you
Speaker 3: learn more about the stock market and understand the history
Speaker 3: of the stock market. And this is not to stay
Speaker 3: that the history of the stock market will predict the
Speaker 3: future of the stock market, but historically, since forever, the
Speaker 3: stock market has always ultimately gone up. And so when
Speaker 3: people are thinking, I don't know if I should invest
Speaker 3: right now because the stock market just dropped something like that,
Speaker 3: or maybe I should pull my money out because I'm
Speaker 3: losing money and I don't want to lose it all,
Speaker 3: the idea should really be if the stock market has
Speaker 3: historically always gone up, then when the stock market goes
Speaker 3: down is an excellent time to invest. Is an excellent
Speaker 3: time if you have any money, to throw your money
Speaker 3: into the stock market when it's down, because when it
Speaker 3: ultimately goes up, then you are then you're you're making
Speaker 3: money and you're getting a return on that.
Speaker 6: And the same thing.
Speaker 3: If your money is in there and you keep it
Speaker 3: in there rather than sell it and it ultimately goes up,
Speaker 3: then your portfolio is worth more.
Speaker 2: But I think, Mandy, you want to know what we're
Speaker 2: doing right. You want to know how we're weathering this storm,
Speaker 2: and I think I think a lot of people have
Speaker 2: that question. But when we first started our plan, we
Speaker 2: devised a plan that involved front loading our investments into
Speaker 2: very aggressive index funds, so technology and total stock market
Speaker 2: index funds. And then as we got towards the latter
Speaker 2: half of our journey, we started to build up what's
Speaker 2: called the stock market Emergency Fund for dips like this
Speaker 2: that was over two years worth of living expenses in
Speaker 2: case the stock market were to drop and we would
Speaker 2: have to make that switch from not pulling from the
Speaker 2: stock market, because you don't want to pull from the
Speaker 2: stock market when it drops and instead pull from our
Speaker 2: stock market emergency fund. And so when March hit and
Speaker 2: the stock market crashed, we thought, okay, are we going
Speaker 2: to have to make that switch? But two three months later,
Speaker 2: the stock market has fully recovered. So this is this
Speaker 2: is the the I mean, this is the thing about investing.
Speaker 2: When you have a plan in place, you already know
Speaker 2: what to do before it happens. But what we've found
Speaker 2: is that we haven't had to even rely on some
Speaker 2: of those contingencies because the stock market has always recovered.
Speaker 2: And I always say this on our YouTube channel. You know,
Speaker 2: the stock market's going to go up and down, but
Speaker 2: in the end, it's going to go up. It always has.
Speaker 3: And I will say also, you know, just to piggyback
Speaker 3: off of what Aman said. With that crash in March
Speaker 3: twenty March twenty twenty, there were a lot of people
Speaker 3: at that time they were selling out their portfolios because
Speaker 3: they didn't want to take any more of a loss.
Speaker 3: And on our channel, we actually created a new portfolio,
Speaker 3: just sort of a very many portfolio to show people listen,
Speaker 3: if you invest now, it's a good it's a good thing.
Speaker 3: You can start growing your money by investing now. It
Speaker 3: doesn't matter that they're was a huge crash. You can
Speaker 3: start investing now.
Speaker 6: And so many.
Speaker 3: People were like, why would you invest now, it's a crash,
Speaker 3: it's the worst time to invest, And we're like, no,
Speaker 3: that's the very opposite of how you should be thinking.
Speaker 3: You know, you should continuously be investing whether it's a
Speaker 3: good whether the market's doing well or whether it's doing bad.
Speaker 3: You should just be dollar cost averaging into the market.
Speaker 3: But when the market is doing bad, it is an
Speaker 3: excellent opportunity to.
Speaker 6: Grow your wealth.
Speaker 3: And so that's what we're really demonstrating with this portfolio
Speaker 3: to our followers is like, listen, when people are running
Speaker 3: and trying to cash out their portfolios when there's a
Speaker 3: big crash, don't do that. Do the opposite. Do the
Speaker 3: opposite and start building your wealth.
Speaker 1: I think y'all really illustrate beautifully the power of the
Speaker 1: mindset when it comes to building wealth, Like you've got
Speaker 1: to really you've got to look at your emotions, as
Speaker 1: my lovely therapist always says, look at the thought or
Speaker 1: the feeling and just acknowledge that it exists, and then
Speaker 1: just attack it with reason and logic. And I love that, y'all.
Speaker 1: I've been following that is that, y'all, where you share
Speaker 1: your portfolio and how you invest at the bottom of
Speaker 1: the market or at least you know, you never know
Speaker 1: when it's the bottom, but how you guys invested in
Speaker 1: the spring and I and I love that lesson. I
Speaker 1: just think people have to be ready for it and
Speaker 1: really want to. I want to home in on the
Speaker 1: point that y'all made too about that emergency fund. And
Speaker 1: just to be clear, when you say it's a stock
Speaker 1: stock market emergency fund, you don't have the money in
Speaker 1: the stock market. It's your emergency fund, so that you
Speaker 1: don't touch your money, yes, just cash, right, regular old Yeah.
Speaker 1: So that's key because you know, people think that like
Speaker 1: if you're if you're worried about losing everything when a
Speaker 1: market goes down, then you're probably not investing money that
Speaker 1: you're willing to put away for the long term, like
Speaker 1: your money that you want to hold with your money
Speaker 1: that you want to be able to access if an
Speaker 1: emergency happens. That should be really, it should be liquid,
Speaker 1: it should be available to you. It should be enough
Speaker 1: for the you know, for whatever a period of time
Speaker 1: you feel comfortable with you guys, two years seems reasonable
Speaker 1: because y'all are you know, you're you're entirely without you know, well,
Speaker 1: you have your passive income, but you've left, you've left
Speaker 1: your jobs, and you're living your fire lifestyle. But for
Speaker 1: other people maybe at six months or year's worth of expenses.
Speaker 1: And I love that y'all have that cushion because it
Speaker 1: helps you kind of like stamp down those emotional fears
Speaker 1: around when the market dips, like oh no, I've got
Speaker 1: to take my money out because I don't want to
Speaker 1: lose it, because we need to have food on the
Speaker 1: table with that emergency fund, y'all, you provide a cushion
Speaker 1: for yourself, and you provide the security that you can
Speaker 1: continue with your investing strategy, continue building your wealth, and
Speaker 1: you don't need to sacrifice that when your emotions start
Speaker 1: to take over. I think that's a really important point
Speaker 1: for people, and that's why we're always like, before y'all
Speaker 1: start asking about investing, I'm talking to my dad and
Speaker 1: my uncle Mark. He will call me all the time,
Speaker 1: what about hurts? Should we invest in.
Speaker 4: Bankrupt Yes?
Speaker 1: Oh my god, I'm like, listen if my uncle Mark
Speaker 1: is talking about it. Do not do that. Don't go
Speaker 1: to Hurts. But my dad he still saves money in
Speaker 1: his coat closet. I'm like, you trying to talk about
Speaker 1: investing in Hurts. Can I get you to put some
Speaker 1: money in the bank? First? Is so backwards? Go ahead?
Speaker 4: No, and no shade to the people who listen.
Speaker 5: But if you're willing to do the blessing loom, that's
Speaker 5: not a blessing.
Speaker 4: I think you can try this.
Speaker 5: That's a little shady because so many of my dream
Speaker 5: catchers are like, girl, I want.
Speaker 4: To do a blessing loom. It's not a blessing loom.
Speaker 1: I've never heard enough before.
Speaker 4: You never heard of the blessing loom?
Speaker 1: Quits quick sidebar?
Speaker 4: What is that?
Speaker 3: No?
Speaker 5: We talked about it on the podcast, Remember I said,
Speaker 5: it's it's basically the pyramid scheme, but they keep renaming
Speaker 5: it blessing loom. Pyramid scheme where you bring more people
Speaker 5: in and they bring money, and then you move to
Speaker 5: the center or to the top and they see yeah,
Speaker 5: but they just keep calling it new things. But I
Speaker 5: did want to ask, like what because I want to
Speaker 5: get just a little nitty gritty, like what percentage are
Speaker 5: you living off? Of are you doing it where you're
Speaker 5: anticipating like on average is seven to eight percent return
Speaker 5: and you're living off four percent of your of what
Speaker 5: your investments yield or is it more so you're living
Speaker 5: off you if you have rental properties or is it?
Speaker 5: And then two, like what was your fire number? Because
Speaker 5: I know, like my financial advisor, my financial planner, you know,
Speaker 5: I mean, I guess technically I don't have to work now,
Speaker 5: I guess. I mean, I just like I like doing
Speaker 5: budget Nista, but I my husband and I help out
Speaker 5: a lot of people. So what we spend a month
Speaker 5: is like half of what we spend actually goes to
Speaker 5: us and just the rest goes to helping family and friends.
Speaker 4: But so like, what's that?
Speaker 2: What was that number for you?
Speaker 5: Like, it's we set aside this amount plus with the
Speaker 5: real estate coming in, we should be good.
Speaker 4: I'm curious about that.
Speaker 6: Yeah, so we don't have the real estate anymore.
Speaker 3: Okay, we sold our real estate and then we put
Speaker 3: that in the stock market. But our fire number was
Speaker 3: based off of living in the San Francisco Bay area.
Speaker 3: So I'll caveat with that caveat that that our number
Speaker 3: was over two million, close to two and a half million,
Speaker 3: But again this is because we live in the sand.
Speaker 3: Our fire number was based off of living in the
Speaker 3: San Francisco Bay area. So some people will probably think
Speaker 3: that that can be very very high, or some people
Speaker 3: actually think like, maybe that's low.
Speaker 6: So it's really relative to where.
Speaker 3: You plan on retiring, where you live, what your family
Speaker 3: size is, and what type of stuff you plan on
Speaker 3: doing in retirement, and how much is that stuff going
Speaker 3: to cost. So ours was close to two and a
Speaker 3: half million dollars, but I will say because we moved
Speaker 3: to Portugal, we are living off of obviously not close
Speaker 3: to that, because when you calculate your fire number, the
Speaker 3: ideas that you can live off of four percent of
Speaker 3: your portfolio in order to cover your monthly expenses and
Speaker 3: then in turn your annual expenses. So the idea is
Speaker 3: that you can pull four percent from your portfolio, and
Speaker 3: then your portfolio could continue to grow so that you're
Speaker 3: only pulling from the gains in your portfolio. You're not
Speaker 3: actually pulling from the principal balance, so it continues to
Speaker 3: grow and you're able to continuously pull out four percent.
Speaker 3: And that's based off of there's a study called the
Speaker 3: Trinity Study that really explains this cont of the four
Speaker 3: percent rule, how you can live off of your portfolio
Speaker 3: and the portfolio allocation that you have, whether it's stocks
Speaker 3: and bonds or one hundred percent stocks one hundred percent bonds.
Speaker 3: But the concept is once you get your fire number,
Speaker 3: you're supposed to be able to live off of four
Speaker 3: percent of that and pull money from your portfolio, and
Speaker 3: that pays for all of your expenses.
Speaker 6: But we are here in Portugal and our.
Speaker 3: Expenses are much much lower, like we said, I mean,
Speaker 3: we gave you the example of the healthcare how much
Speaker 3: cheaper it is, or i'd say how much more affordable
Speaker 3: it is here in Portugal. So for us, we don't
Speaker 3: have to pull a full four percent. We pull under
Speaker 3: four percent. And if you ever are in a situation
Speaker 3: where you're pulling less than four percent, then it's even
Speaker 3: better because then your portfolio can continue to grow even more.
Speaker 3: So the idea is if you're able to pull less
Speaker 3: than four percent, it can grow even more.
Speaker 6: And so that's a perfect situation.
Speaker 3: But I would say for people that have different locations
Speaker 3: in mind. For example, like we said, we were thinking
Speaker 3: about the San Francisco Bay area and we were thinking
Speaker 3: about Portugal.
Speaker 6: For us, it was really.
Speaker 3: Important to not retire until we hit the mark for
Speaker 3: the higher cost of living, which is the San Francisco
Speaker 3: Bay Area.
Speaker 6: And again that's because if we come.
Speaker 3: Here to Portugal and we decide, you know, four or
Speaker 3: five years down the road, we want to return to
Speaker 3: the Bay Area, or you know, our girls will be
Speaker 3: going away to school soon, not soon soon to me,
Speaker 3: but you know in another four and six years if
Speaker 3: they returned to the States, maybe at that time we'll think, oh,
Speaker 3: we should return with them, or maybe we want to
Speaker 3: live back in the States. If we would have picked
Speaker 3: a fire number associated with living in Portugal, then we
Speaker 3: would be stuck. We would be limited in terms of
Speaker 3: where we can go after that. So for people that
Speaker 3: have multiple areas in mind, I would recommend picking the
Speaker 3: higher cost of living area, and then when you go
Speaker 3: live in a lower cost of area, you're pulling less
Speaker 3: than that four percent and your portfolio is able to
Speaker 3: grow even more because of it.
Speaker 1: Now I wanted to know, because you guys have your
Speaker 1: YouTube channel, I know you have a course now in
Speaker 1: stock investing. When y'all were planning, you know, sources of
Speaker 1: income or planning your portfolio and hitting your fire number.
Speaker 1: Did y'all think, okay, we'll also bring in income from
Speaker 1: our YouTube and maybe we can teach people and have
Speaker 1: a course. Was that part of your plan or was
Speaker 1: this just like a happenstance, Because it doesn't strike me
Speaker 1: that you guys set out, because that's honestly one of
Speaker 1: the things that kind of annoys me about some fire.
Speaker 1: I'll just be totally frank. Christina knows I can be,
Speaker 1: but like, yeah, I mean I kind of roll my
Speaker 1: eyes sometimes because people are like, oh, yeah, I'm going
Speaker 1: to retire early. Then I'm going to teach people how
Speaker 1: to do it, and that's how I'm going to retire
Speaker 1: early by making money off of the courses. But y'all
Speaker 1: strike me as totally different, whereas it's kind of a
Speaker 1: you know, you did your fire thing and then people
Speaker 1: were asking you to start a channel, and you did it,
Speaker 1: and now you just happened to be YouTube stars.
Speaker 4: Yeah.
Speaker 3: I love that you asked that, because you know, right
Speaker 3: now we have we have almost three hundred thousand subscribers
Speaker 3: on our channel.
Speaker 6: But when we started, we started a little over two years.
Speaker 3: Ago and it was the lowest start ever and when
Speaker 3: when we actually retired. I don't think we had even
Speaker 3: hit fifty thousand subscribers at that point. And so for us,
Speaker 3: when we started the channel, it was more like a
Speaker 3: friend had mentioned it to us because we were talking.
Speaker 3: We were always talking to family members and friends about listen,
Speaker 3: you guys should be doing this, you should save this money.
Speaker 3: I mean, we were sort of getting a little extra
Speaker 3: into people's business, saying hey, why don't you invest in this?
Speaker 6: You should say this, you do it.
Speaker 3: But it just became something that we talked about so
Speaker 3: much that one of our friends said, hey, you should
Speaker 3: start this channel, and we thought, well, that is pretty
Speaker 3: cool because then we could tell people about fire, like.
Speaker 6: Like when we didn't know what fire was when we started.
Speaker 3: If someone was sort of guiding us and telling us
Speaker 3: about all these concepts, that would be really cool. So
Speaker 3: we started the channel, and we we absolutely did not
Speaker 3: think that our channel would grow like it was. So
Speaker 3: it was definitely not something where we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 3: we can we can rely.
Speaker 6: On YouTube and.
Speaker 3: Just retire early and live off of YouTube or something
Speaker 3: like that.
Speaker 6: That was definitely not the case.
Speaker 2: Oh yeah, and it became it became kind of like
Speaker 2: a gift that we couldn't give up. And when I
Speaker 2: say a gift is we have this ability to be
Speaker 2: able to really share and inspire people with our YouTube channel.
Speaker 2: So when we start our YouTube channel, we were doing
Speaker 2: it like two or three times a week, but since
Speaker 2: we retired, really do it once a week. But it's
Speaker 2: something that we want to keep doing because so many
Speaker 2: people are getting getting value out of it. But what
Speaker 2: happened was because we made so many videos, people were
Speaker 2: asking us like questions that were there were very linear
Speaker 2: questions like how to get to a to z and
Speaker 2: we would say, oh, you got to go back to
Speaker 2: video one hundred or video fifty five, and so we
Speaker 2: were like, okay, we need to do like a course
Speaker 2: they walk someone from a to z. And so that's
Speaker 2: when we came up with the idea for the course.
Speaker 2: But it was, you know, all of this was just
Speaker 2: it just it just kind of started to happen because
Speaker 2: we were being asked to do these things.
Speaker 3: Yeah, but I will also say that, you know, people
Speaker 3: have been asking us for a while to do the
Speaker 3: course and we're like, yeah, you know, maybe maybe we'll
Speaker 3: get around to it. But what really prompted us to
Speaker 3: do the course was COVID. Yes, because we were stuck
Speaker 3: in the house for over over and over a month.
Speaker 2: Oh yes, if you see that course, my hair was
Speaker 2: looking raggedy the whole course.
Speaker 3: I know it's not as bad compared to people some
Speaker 3: people in the States, right, but yeah, we were just
Speaker 3: getting fidgety, like, oh my gosh, we cannot.
Speaker 6: Just sit in this house and do nothing.
Speaker 3: And we were telling people, you know, go out and exercise,
Speaker 3: go out and read or exercise in your home, read, write,
Speaker 3: do what you can to stay productive. Don't try and
Speaker 3: be busy, because busy is just sort of taking up time.
Speaker 6: What can you do to be productive?
Speaker 3: And then we thought, you know what, why don't we
Speaker 3: just sit down and really focus on creating this course?
Speaker 3: And I think, you know, because we had that extra time,
Speaker 3: it was it was really a fun project to be
Speaker 3: able to do.
Speaker 1: I mean, y'all are so young, you're clearly incredibly intelligent.
Speaker 1: You guys have so much, so much energy, Like, so,
Speaker 1: what does retirement look like for y'all? Can you kind
Speaker 1: of paint the picture? You know, do you see yourselves
Speaker 1: kicking back on beaches? Like what does your retirement look like?
Speaker 1: Do you think you'll be satisfied, you know, with with
Speaker 1: obviously you you know, sitting back in the house is
Speaker 1: not what you're excited about. I think those of us
Speaker 1: in quarantine are all just like, get us out of here.
Speaker 1: But talk about how do y'all plan on spending your
Speaker 1: retirement with the next fifty years ahead of you.
Speaker 2: Oh, we spend a lot of time at the beach.
Speaker 2: Don't don't don't knock that. That's really nice, sou And
Speaker 2: that's one of the nice things about living here in
Speaker 2: Portugal is that we're near the water. The outdoors are
Speaker 2: really amazing, so we do spend a lot of time
Speaker 2: in the outdoors. We wanted to retire early. A big
Speaker 2: reason was so that we could spend more time with
Speaker 2: our girls. You know, after your children leave your house,
Speaker 2: you have already spent ninety percent of the time you're
Speaker 2: going to spend with them while they're in your house.
Speaker 2: After that, they're gone and they're you know, they're going
Speaker 2: to live their lives. So that's a gift that we
Speaker 2: also have, is that we get to spend more time
Speaker 2: with our kids. We get to coach our daughters in sports.
Speaker 2: Christina swims with Malia, I play basketball with Sona we
Speaker 2: volunteer a lot. Recently, we've been doing calls with underserved
Speaker 2: kids talking about financial independence, talking about talking about money
Speaker 2: and financial literacy. And so what's really great is that
Speaker 2: we get to do whatever we want to do whenever
Speaker 2: we want to on Sunday nights. We don't have that
Speaker 2: anxiety that Monday morning is rolling around. So it's just
Speaker 2: it's really an unexplainable feeling to be able to have
Speaker 2: this freedom. And it goes back to what we talked
Speaker 2: about earlier, making that short term sacrifice for the long
Speaker 2: term gain. And yes, we're we're young, and we have
Speaker 2: you know, we have a lot of things that that
Speaker 2: we're working on, but they're all things that we're passionate about.
Speaker 2: And that's what we didn't have the ability to do
Speaker 2: before when we were working forty hours a week. You know,
Speaker 2: now we have those forty hours back to do whatever
Speaker 2: we want to do with them.
Speaker 3: And I really love that you asked that question too, Mandy,
Speaker 3: because I think when people are thinking about financial independence
Speaker 3: and retiring early, you know, there's a split. You could
Speaker 3: just do financial independence and you can you to do
Speaker 3: the job that you love, or you can actually retire early.
Speaker 3: And so I think when people are on that retire
Speaker 3: early path, if they ultimately want to retire early, they
Speaker 3: really need to envision what they think their life is
Speaker 3: going to be like when they retire, because I'll tell you,
Speaker 3: if you're just sort of running from something, if you're
Speaker 3: running from your job because you don't like your job
Speaker 3: and so that's the reason you want to retire, your
Speaker 3: retirement may not feel very fulfilling because then you're in
Speaker 3: retirement and it's sort of like, well, what do I
Speaker 3: do now? But if you really envision what your life.
Speaker 6: Can be like in retirement.
Speaker 3: If you love to travel, if you love to cook,
Speaker 3: if you love to spend time with your kids and
Speaker 3: your family, if you love to work out, if you
Speaker 3: like to build things, those are all things that people
Speaker 3: can run towards versus running away from something. So they
Speaker 3: really have to think about if they want to pursue fire,
Speaker 3: what's the purpose behind that.
Speaker 1: I love that you guys have inspired me to expand
Speaker 1: my own possibilities for what the next decade and beyond
Speaker 1: can look like. And I love that you guys have
Speaker 1: you've proven to I think so many people like don't
Speaker 1: even know how to imagine a world where they don't
Speaker 1: work for someone else, you know, like or and if
Speaker 1: they don't work for someone then it's like owning their
Speaker 1: own business or whatever. But what about a world where
Speaker 1: you're just free to, you know, work on what you
Speaker 1: find fulfilling, be with your family. Like it's really it's
Speaker 1: it's a little sad to me that this is such
Speaker 1: like an extraordinary mindset to have. But you guys, truly
Speaker 1: are extraordinary because you have You've seen it, and you said,
Speaker 1: this should be the normal, Like this should be the norm.
Speaker 1: This will be our normal. We are going to create
Speaker 1: the life that we want. And I it really resonates
Speaker 1: with me if you can't tell, because I feel like
Speaker 1: I am on this path toward this a good life,
Speaker 1: but a good life according to the you know, what's
Speaker 1: what's considered the norm in America and what's considered a
Speaker 1: good life according to I don't know what the mainstream
Speaker 1: idea of a good life is. And I'm starting to
Speaker 1: even challenge my own expectations and challenge some of the
Speaker 1: own some of my own ways of thinking about the
Speaker 1: next couple of decades in my life. And I mean
Speaker 1: even just being stuck in quarantine with my baby. You
Speaker 1: can probably hear me in the background. He's a very
Speaker 1: vocal eater. He gets really mad, he's very angry. He's
Speaker 1: my child. But even just being in quarantine, I'm like, oh,
Speaker 1: so I could just work at home and be with
Speaker 1: the baby all the time. This isn't that bad anyway.
Speaker 1: I just want to thank y'all because I'm so glad
Speaker 1: that you are sharing your story and and I know
Speaker 1: that forget about you know you can, we can forget
Speaker 1: about race for a second. I mean, the show is
Speaker 1: called Brown Ambition, so it's always there. We acknowledge we
Speaker 1: are two black women speaking to an audience, and first
Speaker 1: and foremost we want to talk to other black women
Speaker 1: and how to build wealth because we understand that, you know,
Speaker 1: there's not a lot of people like us talking to them.
Speaker 1: And I am you guys are like unicorns, you know
Speaker 1: in the Fire movement, a black couple with two daughters
Speaker 1: and your girls seeing them. And I even said this
Speaker 1: to Christina in the email. I really meant it, if
Speaker 1: only I had seen your two girls talking about financial
Speaker 1: financial h What am I thinking? Like? What are we
Speaker 1: talking about investing? Investing in wealth building? At a young
Speaker 1: age when I was you know, twelve or thirteen. Y'all
Speaker 1: are so important and your stories are so important and
Speaker 1: I and thank y'all for using your time when you
Speaker 1: could be doing anything else to educate and pour back
Speaker 1: into communities who may not be getting this kind of knowledge.
Speaker 1: I it just it's I'll shut up now, but it's
Speaker 1: just y'all are the best.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 6: Know it's so nice. It's it's so nice. So you know,
Speaker 6: we wanted to talk to you guys anyway.
Speaker 1: So it was just like, oh, it's your baby that
Speaker 1: this is it right, like.
Speaker 4: A pitome of brown ambition.
Speaker 5: And I think that it's just good for people to
Speaker 5: see that life can be lived differently, you know.
Speaker 1: And one hundred million less words than what I.
Speaker 5: Used now, so just for me, just because Amandy and
Speaker 5: I are the way we live is so different, so
Speaker 5: they get to see different sides of like from both
Speaker 5: of us being bosses in our own right, but via
Speaker 5: the corporate side or owning your own business. So this
Speaker 5: is just a nice we're pree from. This is another
Speaker 5: way to live and people can find themselves in your journey.
Speaker 4: So we do really thank you, thank.
Speaker 6: You, thank you guys. Yeah, I'm so glad we able
Speaker 6: to talk to.
Speaker 1: You well, Thank y'all, and and go live your fabulous life,
Speaker 1: you know on the two folks. Where they can find you,
Speaker 1: your your our Rich Journey on YouTube, on Instagram, anything
Speaker 1: else y'all want to anything you'll want to promote.
Speaker 6: Oh no, you know you mentioned our daughters too.
Speaker 3: They have their channel out so it's called Our Rich
Speaker 3: Journey Junior.
Speaker 2: So we'll show the kids some love.
Speaker 6: Yeah, check the girls out also.
Speaker 2: Yeah, but that's really where you can find us is
Speaker 2: on YouTube or Instagram at Rich Journey and send us
Speaker 2: a message. We eventually get to all of the questions.
Speaker 2: I mean, we are retired, we have nothing else to do.
Speaker 4: I love it.
Speaker 1: Join the journey. That's how you always end your YouTube videos.
Speaker 1: Go join the journey. Thank y'all for sharing your story
Speaker 1: with us. I would love to have y'all on the
Speaker 1: show again sometime in the future. But be well, stay healthy. Yes,
Speaker 1: I mean, honestly, y'all should be wishing us luck. I
Speaker 1: feel like we're the one. I feel like y'all are
Speaker 1: on the right track in Portugal. But yeah, be well,
Speaker 1: stay healthy and thank y'all again for coming on the show.
Speaker 6: Yes, thanks so much, guys,