Speaker 1: Heyba fam, we did it. We're here. We are almost
Speaker 1: done with twenty twenty. But before we say goodbye to
Speaker 1: the Year of the Dumpster Fire, we first wanted to
Speaker 1: take a look back at some of our favorite conversations
Speaker 1: we had with guests this year on Brown Ambition. First up,
Speaker 1: we've got our conversation with Aman and Christina of our
Speaker 1: Rich Journey. First of all, if you guys do not
Speaker 1: subscribe to their YouTube channel and you are interested in
Speaker 1: getting your start in investing, you have got to go
Speaker 1: to YouTube right now and subscribe. Honestly, there's a series
Speaker 1: of videos about wealth building and investing and saving for retirement.
Speaker 1: We're a game changer for the way that I personally
Speaker 1: approached my own retirement before the age of forty. Christina
Speaker 1: and Aman managed to not only retire, but move their
Speaker 1: entire family to Portugal, of all places, and start fresh.
Speaker 1: They are truly living their best damn lives, and in
Speaker 1: this episode, they were here to spill the tea on
Speaker 1: how much they save to retire early, how they're making
Speaker 1: ends meet out there in Portugal right now, and what
Speaker 1: are their expenses really like. We hope you enjoy looking
Speaker 1: back on this episode of Brown ambition. So, without further ado,
Speaker 1: here's our conversation with a Moan and Christina of Our
Speaker 1: Rich Journey. 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.
Speaker 4: We have been looking forward to this. We were so
Speaker 4: excited about this call. So we are so glad to
Speaker 4: be speaking with you guys.
Speaker 5: Now we're geeked. I'm like, ugh, I just know our
Speaker 5: audience is going to love you. Oh money too.
Speaker 1: Let me brag on y'all for a little bit because
Speaker 1: your story is so inspirational and I know that our
Speaker 1: audience will love you. But as we mentioned, the come
Speaker 1: from the San Francisco Bay Area. You guys both worked
Speaker 1: for the federal government until your late thirties. You decided,
Speaker 1: let's just quit our jobs. Let's just retire. Now, how
Speaker 1: about that? With what a ten and a twelve year
Speaker 1: old at the time.
Speaker 4: Yes, yeah, well so they're eleven and thirteen now, so yeah,
Speaker 4: 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 plan
Speaker 1: for this. You joined the Fire movement before you even
Speaker 1: knew there was a Fire movement? Is that right?
Speaker 3: Oh, that is totally right. I love how you said
Speaker 3: that too.
Speaker 4: It's like we didn't even really know what we were
Speaker 4: doing as we were doing it in terms of classifying
Speaker 4: it as a Fire movement, because when we started, it wasn't.
Speaker 3: Like this huge thing. It's not a huge thing now, I.
Speaker 4: Would say, but it's much bigger than when we started.
Speaker 4: So Fire is really financial independence retiring early. And the
Speaker 4: concept is really that you save as much money as
Speaker 4: you can, you make as much money as you can,
Speaker 4: and then you invest that money, and then that money
Speaker 4: will grow enough to a point where you have enough
Speaker 4: money that you can reach financial independence and retire and
Speaker 4: never have.
Speaker 3: To work again.
Speaker 4: So that whole sort of introduction to Fire was we
Speaker 4: were sort of working on it and doing all these
Speaker 4: things towards Fire, but there wasn't really we didn't know
Speaker 4: the name of it at 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 forty.
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 I was going through the motions every
Speaker 2: day in the race. And I was at work one
Speaker 2: day and I received an award for my length of
Speaker 2: service with the federal government for ten years. And at
Speaker 2: this awards assembly, there was another federal employee that had
Speaker 2: gotten an award for thirty years of service. And I
Speaker 2: just remember, at this assembly, my ten years was just insignificant.
Speaker 2: They hurried me off the stage. It was nothing. And
Speaker 2: at that moment, I realized that I didn't want to
Speaker 2: be 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 it. She said, let's
Speaker 2: do it. Let's figure out a way to get it done.
Speaker 1: Well, it's your heart. I mean, my husband and I
Speaker 1: can't even ngram what to order on door Dash. I
Speaker 1: mean that's like a two hour conversation. Well, I think
Speaker 1: y'all's relationship, I mean it has to be so strong,
Speaker 1: such a foundation of trust, and I just and it
Speaker 1: comes across for 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. Tiff, What
Speaker 1: do you want to ask now?
Speaker 6: I just want to know, like what in your note
Speaker 6: so you have that initial excitement, But what were there
Speaker 6: things that made you nervous about about this journey that
Speaker 6: you were like, how were we going to handle these things?
Speaker 6: Because I'm sure there are certain people who are listening
Speaker 6: and they're like, I'd love to retire early, but I'm
Speaker 6: nervous about dot.
Speaker 5: Dot dot, And how did you handle those things?
Speaker 2: There was a list. I think I think the biggest
Speaker 2: thing on our list was the amount of money that
Speaker 2: it would take to retire to do it, you know,
Speaker 2: we we have this thing called a fire number, and
Speaker 2: it's a number that you calculate and it's based off
Speaker 2: of the amount of money that you would need in
Speaker 2: an investment portfolio in order to call yourself financially independent.
Speaker 2: And just calculating that number and seeing that number on paper,
Speaker 2: that was very intimidating. So that was one thing for sure.
Speaker 3: Yeah, and I think you know it's for us.
Speaker 4: It's really like when we have maybe these challenges, are
Speaker 4: we thinking, Okay, how much is it going to take
Speaker 4: in order to retire? Because I think one of the
Speaker 4: things that man forgot to say is when he came
Speaker 4: home and we were talking about it, he said, I
Speaker 4: want to retire before I'm forty and so for us,
Speaker 4: it was like, wow, that's not a huge amount of time,
Speaker 4: So what are the things that we need to do
Speaker 4: in order to make that happen. So I think the
Speaker 4: challenge for us too was at the time, like I said,
Speaker 4: there wasn't a lot of information out there. There wasn't
Speaker 4: a lot of information in general in terms of how
Speaker 4: to pursue fire. And Aman and I also both came
Speaker 4: from backgrounds where we didn't learn about investing or even
Speaker 4: saving money, really making money extra money, how do you
Speaker 4: go about doing that? So we didn't have that type
Speaker 4: of background in terms of learning how to really deal
Speaker 4: with our finances, So that was definitely a struggle. I mean,
Speaker 4: I think part of it is really becoming comfortable in
Speaker 4: how do you make these real estate transactions, how do
Speaker 4: you make these stock market investments, and really becoming financially
Speaker 4: literate and understanding how to try and grow our money.
Speaker 4: So I think a lot of people when they're on
Speaker 4: the fire journey, that can be a struggle because it
Speaker 4: can seem sort of overwhelming. You have to make all
Speaker 4: this money, and then you have to figure out how
Speaker 4: do you grow your money because you can't just allow
Speaker 4: it to sit in a savings account. It's not going
Speaker 4: to happen. You're not going to get that type of
Speaker 4: money to retire early. So those were some of the
Speaker 4: challenges that I guess the biggest challenges that we had
Speaker 4: when we were pursuing fire.
Speaker 1: And you had so you're in your early thirties. You
Speaker 1: have two girls at the time.
Speaker 4: They're young, right, yes, so they were I think around
Speaker 4: three and five.
Speaker 3: I've probably Christine.
Speaker 1: Why didn't you just completed law school?
Speaker 3: Yeah, I was. I actually started law school.
Speaker 4: I went to law school at UCLA, and the girls
Speaker 4: were down in LA with me, and Aman was actually
Speaker 4: working at the time, but he was working in San Francisco,
Speaker 4: and so he was coming back and forth every weekend.
Speaker 4: I mean, I cannot even imagine, you know, I was
Speaker 4: there with the girls at law school, but every single
Speaker 4: weekend a mon was driving down or flying down from
Speaker 4: San Francisco to LA to be with us and support us.
Speaker 4: It's like he didn't even skip a beat. And so
Speaker 4: for us, yeah, that was part of the journey, was
Speaker 4: really trying to manage to get in like two separate households,
Speaker 4: managing little kids on this journey of fire, and really
Speaker 4: trying to make everything work because at the same time
Speaker 4: we're supposed to be saving money and making money.
Speaker 3: 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 old yes, 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 work for the
Speaker 1: federal government, but you chose to like even aim higher
Speaker 1: at the time you when you started to think about
Speaker 1: retiring before forty, where were you at financially? Were you
Speaker 1: just basic four when k investors? Had you guys already
Speaker 1: bought your properties, Had you had experience in the real
Speaker 1: estate or did y'all start from Okay, let's start getting
Speaker 1: into real estate, because I know that was a cornerstone
Speaker 1: of your investing strategy, right, Yeah, So you.
Speaker 2: Know we were doing what most people well I don't
Speaker 2: want to see most people.
Speaker 3: We were.
Speaker 2: We had the fundamentals in place, so we had an
Speaker 2: emergency fund and we were putting away about ten to
Speaker 2: fifteen percent of our our income into our retirement accounts.
Speaker 2: But a lot of the pressures that you talked about,
Speaker 2: if we were to I guess get deeper into some
Speaker 2: of those pressures, we would have failed victim to lifestyle creep.
Speaker 2: And so what started to happen to us in our
Speaker 2: thirties was that we had to make a serious shift.
Speaker 2: And it was good that we had this shift, and
Speaker 2: I had this moment at work when I did, because
Speaker 2: we were at that point where we were going to
Speaker 2: be starting to make more money. A lot of these
Speaker 2: pressures we're going to start to pop up with the
Speaker 2: kids and our with our friends, and you can really
Speaker 2: fall victim to those things like getting a bigger house,
Speaker 2: like driving a nicer car. And so for us at
Speaker 2: that moment, breaking loose of this of this consumer culture
Speaker 2: and deciding to live in a smaller house, to drive
Speaker 2: an older car, and then take whatever extra money that
Speaker 2: we started to make and instead prioritize that money into
Speaker 2: our investments. It was definitely a crossroad for us, and
Speaker 2: we can definitely attribute our success to making that shift.
Speaker 4: Yeah, and I love how you say, Mandy, that you
Speaker 4: know you're sort of at the stage that we were
Speaker 4: eight years ago, right, Because when you're in your thirties,
Speaker 4: you start to notice that you're.
Speaker 3: Maybe potentially making more money.
Speaker 1: Right.
Speaker 4: You may have more responsibilities at your job, you may
Speaker 4: be starting a family, you may be buying a house.
Speaker 4: All of these things are sort of coming to fruition.
Speaker 4: Things that you may have wanted in your twenties, you're
Speaker 4: starting to get more and more of them in your thirties.
Speaker 4: And so that is one of the big things I
Speaker 4: think for people pursuing fire is really not getting attached
Speaker 4: to or not falling down that whole of lifestyle creep.
Speaker 4: As you start to get more money. It's not this
Speaker 4: concept that, oh, you have more money so that you
Speaker 4: can spend more money. It's this idea that when you're
Speaker 4: making this more money, you were able to live off
Speaker 4: of less money before. When you make more money, it
Speaker 4: doesn't mean that you have to spend more money. The
Speaker 4: idea idea is that you can save that money and
Speaker 4: then invest that money, and then that is starting to
Speaker 4: grow during your fire journey. And you don't even have
Speaker 4: to have the goal of retiring early. It could just
Speaker 4: be that you want to be financially independent so that
Speaker 4: when you get older, money is not going to be
Speaker 4: an issue for you. You can do whatever type of
Speaker 4: job makes you happy, and you don't have to think,
Speaker 4: I can't have this job because I'm not going to
Speaker 4: make enough money to.
Speaker 3: You know, pay all the bills for my family and
Speaker 3: things like that. So if you have this idea when
Speaker 3: you're in the thirties.
Speaker 4: Of not falling down that path of lifestyle creep, then
Speaker 4: you're way ahead of the game in terms of where
Speaker 4: other people are.
Speaker 2: Yeah.
Speaker 1: I just got to get my husband on board with that.
Speaker 6: So there's an African proverb that my dad would say
Speaker 6: that you cut your coat according to your size. You know,
Speaker 6: that's so many people they're like, oh, I'm bigger, now
Speaker 6: I need a bigger coat, or.
Speaker 5: Like I'm or they you know what I mean.
Speaker 6: You keep increasing and so it just you're keeping the
Speaker 6: pace of the increase, not realizing like do I really
Speaker 6: need to continue to increase. I mean, I'm a cheapo,
Speaker 6: so I was like living my cheapest life when I
Speaker 6: was thirty.
Speaker 5: So also I lost my job then.
Speaker 6: But one thing I really want to know, because this
Speaker 6: is something that I struggled with when I was in
Speaker 6: my early thirties and I was starting my business, is like,
Speaker 6: what do you do for insurance? Because honestly, back then
Speaker 6: my insurance was yoga, water and prayer.
Speaker 5: So what do you do for insurance? What do you
Speaker 5: do for insurance?
Speaker 3: Was it in that order? Tiffany? First, I think you
Speaker 3: know that is one of the big things too.
Speaker 4: You know, when you are accumulating more things, you have
Speaker 4: to understand that you need insurance in place to protect
Speaker 4: those things.
Speaker 3: You know that you do not want.
Speaker 4: To be in a worst case scenario where something happens
Speaker 4: and you're not insurance. It could be your house, it
Speaker 4: could be health insurance. It could be car insurance, it
Speaker 4: could be any of these. You know, for you, Tiffany,
Speaker 4: if you're starting a business having business insurance when you
Speaker 4: were in your thirties.
Speaker 3: But the idea is that insurance is.
Speaker 4: Supposed to prevent you from losing all of your assets,
Speaker 4: because how terrible would it be while you're gaining more money,
Speaker 4: you have more assets, and something happens and you're not
Speaker 4: properly insured and then you can lose everything. Like right
Speaker 4: before we fired a Mond, we were in the States
Speaker 4: and a mon got just this horrible, horrible food poisoning.
Speaker 4: And I'm not just saying like he was throwing up,
Speaker 4: he didn't feel well. He was hospitalized for a week.
Speaker 2: It was it was awful.
Speaker 3: It was really bad.
Speaker 4: I mean, I don't even want to go to how
Speaker 4: bad it was. But it was worst case scenario. And
Speaker 4: thank god we were insured because the hospital bill was insane.
Speaker 4: It was an insane amount of money, and then we
Speaker 4: still had to pay our portion of it. But if
Speaker 4: we had not been insured, and this was right before
Speaker 4: we were firing too, if we would not have been insured,
Speaker 4: there would have been a huge impact on our wealth.
Speaker 4: And so I think, you know, a lot of people
Speaker 4: when they're younger, they want to hope for the best.
Speaker 4: They think they're healthy. You know, they don't need to
Speaker 4: be insured because nothing's going to happen. But even here,
Speaker 4: COVID is a great example of things that can happen
Speaker 4: that are unpredictable, and so you have to make sure
Speaker 4: you're properly insured.
Speaker 5: We have.
Speaker 1: We mentioned the fact that y'all live in Portugal, yet
Speaker 1: can we just reiterate that a y'all didn't just quit
Speaker 1: your jobs and you know, kick back in the US.
Speaker 1: You 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 stocking 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: 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 healthcare in the US and our fire number.
Speaker 2: And so we you know, we did that. But while
Speaker 2: we were on our journey, we stayed the course, even
Speaker 2: though we could have left a lot earlier and moved
Speaker 2: to a lower cost of living area. We met our
Speaker 2: San Francisco Bay Area number, but in the end, we
Speaker 2: chose we chose Lisbon, and it has been a pleasant
Speaker 2: surprise as far as the cost of healthcare because for
Speaker 2: our family of four, our health care is less than
Speaker 2: two thousand dollars a year.
Speaker 3: A year, yes, isn't that crazy?
Speaker 2: In California it would have been a month, right, like a.
Speaker 1: You know families.
Speaker 4: Yeah, hey, let me tell you this though. It's like
Speaker 4: we have been to the hospitals here already too. It's
Speaker 4: like we've gone for the girls have asthma, so they've
Speaker 4: had the minor asthma things that we have to go
Speaker 4: get treated at the hospital. We've even had dental work.
Speaker 4: Actually a mon was at the dentist earlier. Today Sanoa
Speaker 4: has braces.
Speaker 2: But I might get me some braces just because.
Speaker 4: But you know, we have had such an incredible experience
Speaker 4: with the healthcare here.
Speaker 3: I mean there's nothing. We don't have any language barriers.
Speaker 4: When we go to speak to the doctors, to the nurses,
Speaker 4: to the staff, everything is so smooth and we just
Speaker 4: show them our card and sometimes we have a very
Speaker 4: small copay and other times it's like, oh, we don't
Speaker 4: have anything at all. Just you walk in and you
Speaker 4: walk out. It is so simple.
Speaker 6: Yes, wow, Like my husband works for the Mandy your
Speaker 6: husband works for the city, right, and so does mine
Speaker 6: and that.
Speaker 1: Insurance for the federal government. Yeah.
Speaker 6: So, and my husband works for the state. Well, he
Speaker 6: works for the city, but his pension and everything is
Speaker 6: through his state. And that's been the thing that's been
Speaker 6: like holding like a pension necessarily us because yes, well
Speaker 6: it's not the pension honestly, because I could get like,
Speaker 6: you know, we make more than enough that I'm not
Speaker 6: worried about that the pension payout. It's more so his
Speaker 6: insurance is so amazing, especially in the United States, especially
Speaker 6: in the East Coast, because I live in Jersey and
Speaker 6: it's like, eh, he would love to leave any day now,
Speaker 6: but he's got about five more years. And it's like
Speaker 6: the cost of health insurance the United States, it's so
Speaker 6: much so that it's like, bruh, when.
Speaker 5: Need to take that with us? Because you could take
Speaker 5: it with you. So I totally get it.
Speaker 6: And yeah, but you know, I don't I wouldn't mind
Speaker 6: moving to Portugal, but I know he wouldn't want to
Speaker 6: do that.
Speaker 4: But yeah, I know so many people have seen our
Speaker 4: channel and we have videos on Portugal now and everyone's like,
Speaker 4: I never.
Speaker 3: Even thought about Portugal.
Speaker 4: Now Portugal is at the top of my list and
Speaker 4: we're like man, Portugal is amazing. It's like this hidden
Speaker 4: secret and it's not so hidden anymore. I think more
Speaker 4: and more people are finding out about it. But just
Speaker 4: I mean the healthcare alone is something to think about
Speaker 4: because just moving here and having the lifestyle or the
Speaker 4: pace 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 and 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.
Speaker 2: Oh certainly. So you know, it started with having our
Speaker 2: fire number in place, and then so with that number,
Speaker 2: we were able to kind of figure out what we
Speaker 2: needed to get to as far as a savings rate
Speaker 2: in order to retire in ten years based off of
Speaker 2: the returns in the market or our returns in real estate.
Speaker 2: So with that number in mind, we just tried to
Speaker 2: get our safe rate up, and I'll say that our
Speaker 2: savings 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 wealth growth in
Speaker 2: because of all the tax incentives and tax advantages, and
Speaker 2: so that was a big priority was maxing out our
Speaker 2: tax advantage counts.
Speaker 1: Now you're talking about your four oh one KR. I
Speaker 1: know you guys use an HSA, what have tax advantaged accounts?
Speaker 2: So we talk about the basically the four accounts that
Speaker 2: we call the four pillars of fire. For us was
Speaker 2: the four oh one K, the HSA, and the roth IRA.
Speaker 2: So maxing those out at a minimum was really big
Speaker 2: for us. And then after that we moved to basically
Speaker 2: a regular brokerage account, so just investing in Vanguard and
Speaker 2: investing in low cost ETFs and index funds at the
Speaker 2: same time that we were also investing in the stock market.
Speaker 2: We had read all of these books on real estate
Speaker 2: investing and really type people to read something and then
Speaker 2: to take action with it. So we had gotten all
Speaker 2: the real estate concepts down as much as we were
Speaker 2: going to get them down, and then we went to work.
Speaker 2: So we took an FHA loan and we bought our
Speaker 2: first house in the San Fransco b area with three
Speaker 2: percent down and it was it was it was a
Speaker 2: fixer upper, and we did something called a live and
Speaker 2: flip where we lived in the house, fixed it up,
Speaker 2: got equity in that home, and then use that equity
Speaker 2: to buy other properties and with an FHA loan. That's
Speaker 2: the that's the best way for someone to get started
Speaker 2: in real estate is doing something like a live and
Speaker 2: flip because after you've lived in that home for three years,
Speaker 2: you can sell that home and keep one hundred percent
Speaker 2: of your profits up to a certain amount depending on
Speaker 2: if you're married or single. And so that was that
Speaker 2: was a big game changer for us as well.
Speaker 4: So I think, really, you know, there's there's different ways
Speaker 4: that you can reach financial independence or financial independence and
Speaker 4: retire early.
Speaker 3: So you could do it through investing in the stock market.
Speaker 4: So in the stock market, you know, if that is
Speaker 4: someone's plan, then they absolutely want to make sure that
Speaker 4: they're maxing out their tax advantage accounts first, because then
Speaker 4: you're protecting more of your money from it being taken
Speaker 4: away by taxes, and by protecting it more, then you
Speaker 4: can allow it to grow more. So the idea though
Speaker 4: is that you have to max out that account, but
Speaker 4: you have to go beyond that. So once you max
Speaker 4: out your tax advantage accounts, then the idea is that
Speaker 4: you open up a traditional brokerage account and you start
Speaker 4: throwing money that there as well. So there's one way
Speaker 4: to reach financial independence. But then the other way is
Speaker 4: also through real estate. If you want to start investing
Speaker 4: in real estate and putting money into different real estate
Speaker 4: real estate properties and creating rentals and creating rental income,
Speaker 4: that is another way. Or you can just invest in
Speaker 4: real estate and do like what a mon said is
Speaker 4: basically flipping the properties and then eventually selling them and
Speaker 4: taking the profit from that. Or you can do a
Speaker 4: combination of real estate and investing in the stock market.
Speaker 4: But it all comes down really to these fundamental pieces.
Speaker 4: When you're pursuing fire, is that the idea is that
Speaker 4: somehow you have to find ways to try and make
Speaker 4: more money. And it can be through getting a more
Speaker 4: money through your salary, or it can be doing different
Speaker 4: side hustles, but then it's saving more money and then
Speaker 4: it's focusing 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 ikeias 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: out of nowhere. There's literally money in the streets and
Speaker 2: 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 did an Etsy store.
Speaker 1: And it was my favorite.
Speaker 2: It was like it was it was so funny and
Speaker 2: when she when she came up with this idea, I
Speaker 2: was like, people really people really buying letters like that,
Speaker 2: they're families that do that.
Speaker 1: Yeah.
Speaker 4: But but someone actually reached out to reached out to
Speaker 4: us today, which is so funny, asking us about, you know,
Speaker 4: the details of it, how do you do it? How
Speaker 4: are you sending it out? Are you sending it out
Speaker 4: already pre packaged? Do you send it out to the
Speaker 4: parent or to the child? So it was so interesting
Speaker 4: because you know, people are interested in finding these new
Speaker 4: ways to make money, and so I just thought, you know,
Speaker 4: this is a creative thing. But like you said, we
Speaker 4: we uh, we're not too shy to go dumpster diving.
Speaker 4: We did that at one point, and I'll tell you
Speaker 4: the specific specifics of that. We were driving around in Oakland,
Speaker 4: which is in the San Francisco Bay area, and we
Speaker 4: drove past this huge dumpster and it had all of
Speaker 4: these I don't guess, not brand new wine crates, but
Speaker 4: it had all of these wine crates in them, and
Speaker 4: they were so beautiful.
Speaker 3: It's like these wine boxes.
Speaker 4: Yes, And there was a liquor store that had dumped
Speaker 4: them all out into this garb, into this dumpster getting
Speaker 4: rid of them. And we went into the to the
Speaker 4: liquor store and we said, are you dumping these? Are
Speaker 4: you you don't want these?
Speaker 3: Can we have them? And so they said yes.
Speaker 4: So we filled up our car with so many wine
Speaker 4: boxes and then we took them home. In our garage
Speaker 4: was just piled full of wine boxes and we ended
Speaker 4: up selling those. We got them for free, and we
Speaker 4: ended up selling them on like Facebook and Craigslist, and
Speaker 4: people were just it was so easy to sell because
Speaker 4: people thought they were really beautiful wine boxes and they
Speaker 4: couldn't find them anywhere, and people were willing to pay
Speaker 4: us for that.
Speaker 5: 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 liquor stores to give them to us.
Speaker 1: Y'all stumbled upon a little jackpot right there. I was like, oh,
Speaker 1: I would love that.
Speaker 3: Yeah, we did that.
Speaker 4: I mean we also, like Aman said, we had flipped
Speaker 4: our properties. So one of the things we found at Ikea,
Speaker 4: which is I feel like Ikea is everywhere. I mean
Speaker 4: there's even an Ikea. There's like five Ikeas in Portugal here,
Speaker 4: but in Ikea they have this as is section. So
Speaker 4: that was another one of our side hustles. We discovered this.
Speaker 4: I'm not saying like we're the only ones who've discovered it.
Speaker 4: But we discovered that you can buy these items in
Speaker 4: the as is section and they're anywhere.
Speaker 3: I mean, you can get things for ninety percent off, yes,
Speaker 3: up to ninety percent off, or.
Speaker 4: If they're you know, if they're no longer having a
Speaker 4: certain product, like an entire fridge or entire kitchen display,
Speaker 4: you can get for up to ninety percent off. So
Speaker 4: we started buying these really nice items in Ikea and
Speaker 4: reselling those all set.
Speaker 2: Yes, but we had a niche. How our niche was kitchen.
Speaker 2: It was basically like kitchen construction material, so the cabinets,
Speaker 2: the countertops, refrigerators, hoods, all of these different things. When
Speaker 2: Ikea changes out its kitchens in the showroom, they would
Speaker 2: put their entire kitchen down into the as is 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. Were my kids
Speaker 2: hate Ikea now because I was taking them in there
Speaker 2: all the time. And this is a side thing, but
Speaker 2: every Wednesday, kids eat free at Ikea, so we were
Speaker 2: there every Wednesday.
Speaker 1: They're probably sick of those meatballs, but I know I
Speaker 1: lived up that furnished my whole first apartment was the
Speaker 1: Ikea as a section.
Speaker 6: I was like, oh no, we will have cute things,
Speaker 6: but cute things on a budget.
Speaker 1: So I feel, you I never thought about this. I
Speaker 1: am a victim of lifestyle creep. I'll fess up to it.
Speaker 1: We bought our house and it was West Elm all
Speaker 1: the way y'all, And I feel foolish, but it's true.
Speaker 1: We did West Elm and like Creighton Barrel, you want
Speaker 1: to have nice stuff. And I always considered myself to
Speaker 1: be you know, I mean, I've been doing personal finance
Speaker 1: for over a decade and you know, I know better.
Speaker 1: But the allure of just being comfortable and having nice things,
Speaker 1: especially for Pea people who you know, for me personally,
Speaker 1: coming from family, we weren't like super poor, but we
Speaker 1: didn't have like really nice stuff. And you know, you
Speaker 1: want to, you want to like enjoy the fruits of
Speaker 1: your your hard work, and that felt like a way
Speaker 1: of acknowledging the hard work and about you know, investing
Speaker 1: in our own comfort. But I'm a little surprised, you know,
Speaker 1: two years out from that renovation, where I'm thinking, you know,
Speaker 1: was that the best way to celebrate our you know,
Speaker 1: our success, like giving another company all this money, you know,
Speaker 1: like there's probably other ways. So I'm I'm thinking so
Speaker 1: much about some of the choices I've made and how
Speaker 1: emotions play into that, you know, especially as you're starting
Speaker 1: to build and build a family and earn more in
Speaker 1: your thirties.
Speaker 4: Like y'all said, yeah, I know, I think definitely there's
Speaker 4: this idea that and Aman and I talk about it
Speaker 4: a lot. Actually, it's like you can make short term
Speaker 4: sacrifices for long term gains.
Speaker 3: And that's really how we thought about it.
Speaker 4: When we're thinking about or even if you're thinking about
Speaker 4: how much it.
Speaker 3: Costs to do X, Y or z.
Speaker 4: Converting that into hours of work, right, it's like, would
Speaker 4: you put that many hours of work so that you
Speaker 4: could have this or so that you could do something
Speaker 4: or do that. And so that's an interesting way to
Speaker 4: start to think about it. But also realizing, you know,
Speaker 4: what is in your future, what do you look for,
Speaker 4: what do you look forward to the most in the future,
Speaker 4: and really thinking about it at that way, thinking that
Speaker 4: you know, if I if I maybe don't spend my
Speaker 4: money in this area, or if I cut back in
Speaker 4: this area, it may be a little hard initially, but
Speaker 4: if you're looking at the long term results, what you
Speaker 4: can get in return for maybe not buying the big
Speaker 4: TV or the new car or something like that, then
Speaker 4: you can start really pursuing fire in a meaningful way
Speaker 4: where you're really focused on cutting out expenses, not buying
Speaker 4: big expenses, and really trying to make more in funnel
Speaker 4: it towards your investments.
Speaker 1: Y'all didn't just focus on cutting cutting cutting it expenses.
Speaker 1: Y'all still took time and you invested in experiences that
Speaker 1: meant a lot to y'all. Could you talk about how
Speaker 1: you balanced experiences and things that you would continue to
Speaker 1: splurge on and then balance that with your mission to
Speaker 1: save as much as you could.
Speaker 4: Yeah, I would say one of our biggest expenses in
Speaker 4: terms of what we cut that we really wanted to
Speaker 4: do that we're able to figure it out was traveling.
Speaker 4: Like we lived in Spain, we lived in Japan, we
Speaker 4: now live in Portugal.
Speaker 3: We traveled to Hawaii a lot. Among's brother lives in Hawaii, so.
Speaker 4: We were definitely a huge travel family and that was
Speaker 4: very important to us and we really didn't want to
Speaker 4: give that up. But it can be expensive for a
Speaker 4: family of four traveling abroad all the time or Hawaii.
Speaker 3: And making these trips.
Speaker 4: And so we figured out travel hacking where we would
Speaker 4: take out credit cards and we would use the bonus
Speaker 4: points for the credit cards by taking them out, and
Speaker 4: we would use them for hotel stays and for airfare,
Speaker 4: and we were able to start traveling for free. Now
Speaker 4: I would say though that this this travel hacking concept
Speaker 4: is absolutely not for everyone. I mean, you have to
Speaker 4: understand how credit works. You have to start off with
Speaker 4: good credit and maintain good credit, and don't go in
Speaker 4: this rabbit hole where you're just trying to spend money
Speaker 4: on your credit card so that you can get the points.
Speaker 4: It doesn't work like that. There's a it's a bit
Speaker 4: more nuanced than that. So it's not for everyone, but
Speaker 4: for us. For Aman and I, we had excellent credit.
Speaker 4: We never had any debt on our credit cards. We
Speaker 4: always paid our credit card off in full every single month,
Speaker 4: and so by figuring out travel hacking, we were able
Speaker 4: to continue to travel the world and still enjoy all
Speaker 4: of the different things we could by traveling, but we
Speaker 4: got to do it for free.
Speaker 1: Oh yeah, tip 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.
Speaker 6: Absolutely, So the struggle that I have is not it's
Speaker 6: not the living for got that you know. And so
Speaker 6: but did you ever feel like are we over sacrificing
Speaker 6: because that is something that I struggle with that I
Speaker 6: sometimes struggle with the enjoying on the other side. And
Speaker 6: so do you ever feel like, you know, you were
Speaker 6: over sacrificing And if so, how did you manage that
Speaker 6: or if not, how did you avoid that?
Speaker 5: Yeah?
Speaker 4: I think that for us, we didn't feel like we
Speaker 4: were over sacrificing because we built in things on our
Speaker 4: journey so that we could enjoy things. So, like I said,
Speaker 4: we did traveling. We traveled quite a lot, and we
Speaker 4: also this is something that we didn't save any money on,
Speaker 4: but we still did it. We're from the We're from Oakland,
Speaker 4: like I said, and we went to a lot of
Speaker 4: warrior games and we didn't get the nosebleed seats. We
Speaker 4: were sitting you know, I wouldn't say on the floor,
Speaker 4: but maybe five rows back off of the floor. So
Speaker 4: that was one of the expenses that we splurged on
Speaker 4: when we were in Oakland. But I like to tell
Speaker 4: people a lot that you should you should enjoy the journey.
Speaker 4: You should enjoy your journey towards fire, because sometimes it's
Speaker 4: not all just about that destination of being able to retire.
Speaker 4: Right If you're miserable on your journey, you're not spending
Speaker 4: a single time doing anything. You are are you know,
Speaker 4: not going out with your friends, or you're not doing
Speaker 4: anything with anyone your family members. It's a miserable journey
Speaker 4: and it's not sustainable. So you have to you have
Speaker 4: to figure out what the right balance is for you.
Speaker 3: So we're not I wouldn't.
Speaker 4: Encourage everyone to just you know, count every single penny
Speaker 4: and live in a way where they're just not able
Speaker 4: 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 joy
Speaker 2: yourself and you have to figure out a way to
Speaker 2: make more money. That's the other side of the equation.
Speaker 1: Preach on it.
Speaker 2: Say it again that I wish the Fire movement talk
Speaker 2: more about is you have to get out there and
Speaker 2: if you're in your thirties, twenties, if you're forties, fifties,
Speaker 2: you have to get on the grind like pop would.
Speaker 2: People would say to us, how do you how are
Speaker 2: you able to do this with kids? You're in law school.
Speaker 2: It's like, we don't know anything else but this. So
Speaker 2: we didn't set a low bar. We set a high
Speaker 2: bar and that's all we knew. So for us, we
Speaker 2: don't define, you know, our journey in any particular way.
Speaker 2: It's just it is what it is. That's why we
Speaker 2: called our YouTube channel our Rich Journey, because this is
Speaker 2: this is how we live our life. When people find
Speaker 2: out what our budget is here in Portugal, we live
Speaker 2: pretty luxuriously.
Speaker 6: You know.
Speaker 2: We spend four thousand dollars a month here in Portugal.
Speaker 2: And you know, for some people they say, oh my god,
Speaker 2: that's too much, or some people say, oh that's not enough.
Speaker 2: But it's relative and I think anyone that's on this
Speaker 2: journey they have to figure out a way to do
Speaker 2: it relatively well so that they enjoy themselves. Someone reached
Speaker 2: out to me today and they said, you know, we're
Speaker 2: on this journey and we're wondering whether or not we
Speaker 2: should start to cut some of the activities for our children.
Speaker 2: And I immediately thought, no, why would you. No, don't
Speaker 2: do that. Don't sacrifice your child's childhood. You know, for
Speaker 2: this journey, figure out different ways to approach the problem,
Speaker 2: you know. So that's what we did on our journey.
Speaker 2: We would encounter a problem like childcare, like travel, like
Speaker 2: owning a home, and we would just figure out a
Speaker 2: way to get through the challenge or over or around it.
Speaker 2: But we never we never let it stop us.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean, your girls were in basketball, you said
Speaker 1: they'd do swimming, like you've never You've always encouraged those hobbies.
Speaker 1: I mean, now they're YouTube stars, so can they're too happy.
Speaker 1: But before we let y'all go, we have I really
Speaker 1: want to talk to y'all about your investing philosophy and
Speaker 1: how you are weathering because your investments are mostly still
Speaker 1: in the US, right, yes, so talk to us about
Speaker 1: because I know people listening right now. I mean, let's
Speaker 1: not let's let's not mince words here, like we are
Speaker 1: we're the US is being crippled by this current pandemic
Speaker 1: and economic crisis. I mean, we have what tens of
Speaker 1: millions of Americans out of work. My own father was
Speaker 1: has is still laid off. Congress can't get their act
Speaker 1: together with these stimulus checks and federal uh you know,
Speaker 1: unemployment benefits are are in limbo right now. So there's
Speaker 1: people out there who are truly, truly hurting, and even
Speaker 1: infant people who have been doing it quote unquote the
Speaker 1: right way and investing in their four one k have
Speaker 1: seen their four one ks you know, take dips this year.
Speaker 1: So y'all y'all have retired. What what do you say
Speaker 1: to people who are feeling like, oh shit, like is
Speaker 1: this the right time to be putting money in the market,
Speaker 1: and how like, how can we trust that things will
Speaker 1: work out? Talk to us about your approach to investing
Speaker 1: right now in this moment, you know, how you're weathering
Speaker 1: what's happening in the US, even though you're in Portugal now.
Speaker 1: And what do you say to people who are feeling
Speaker 1: a little gunshy about getting into the market now?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you know, that's a great question. And I
Speaker 2: always tell people this, don't invest money that you that
Speaker 2: you need to live off of. Every day. So before
Speaker 2: you even buy your first investment, you should have the
Speaker 2: fundamentals in place. You should have your credit paid down
Speaker 2: and emergency fund in place, and then you can start
Speaker 2: investing in the stock market. Because when you invest in
Speaker 2: the stock market, you shouldn't need that money in the
Speaker 2: next five to ten years. This is this is long
Speaker 2: term money. You shouldn't want this money for decades. So
Speaker 2: 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 come and
Speaker 2: you still have the ability to invest, you should be
Speaker 2: investing that money. Don't get don't get consumed by what's
Speaker 2: going on in the world. Yes you should should. You
Speaker 2: should definitely be involved in it socially and politically. But
Speaker 2: if you have your investments on cruise control, then money
Speaker 2: should be the least of your worries right now. You
Speaker 2: should just let that money ride. So I always say that,
Speaker 2: you know, once you have those fundamental things in place
Speaker 2: and you have your investments on cruise control, then you
Speaker 2: can focus on everyday life.
Speaker 4: Yeah, And I would also say, you know, when when
Speaker 4: you think about the stock market, it seems so backwards
Speaker 4: because when the stock market plummets, a lot of people
Speaker 4: are pulling their investments out because they're afraid that they're
Speaker 4: going to lose all of their money.
Speaker 3: So it's like, let me get let me get my
Speaker 3: investments out.
Speaker 4: I'm going to take the loss, but it's better than
Speaker 4: not having any money at all.
Speaker 3: And then then the.
Speaker 4: Stock market ultimately goes back up, and then if they
Speaker 4: would have just if their money in, they would have
Speaker 4: been better off in the long run. It's almost like
Speaker 4: you sort of have to go against the herd mentality
Speaker 4: when it comes to the stock market, because once you
Speaker 4: learn more about the stock market and understand the history
Speaker 4: of the stock market, and this is not to stay
Speaker 4: that the history of the stock market will predict the
Speaker 4: future of the stock market, but historically, since forever, the
Speaker 4: stock market has always ultimately gone up.
Speaker 3: And so when people are.
Speaker 4: Thinking, I don't know if I should invest right now
Speaker 4: because the stock market just dropped something like that, or
Speaker 4: maybe I should pull my money out because I'm losing
Speaker 4: money and I don't want to lose it all, the
Speaker 4: idea should really be if the stock market has historically
Speaker 4: always gone up. Then when the stock market goes down
Speaker 4: is an excellent time to invest. Is an excellent time
Speaker 4: if you have any money, to throw your money into
Speaker 4: the stock market when it's down, because when it ultimately
Speaker 4: goes up, then you are Then you're making money and
Speaker 4: you're getting a return on that.
Speaker 3: And the same thing.
Speaker 4: If your money is in there and you keep it
Speaker 4: in there rather than sell it and it ultimately goes up,
Speaker 4: then your stock market, 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 to drop 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 4: And I will say also, you know, just to piggyback
Speaker 4: off of what Aman said. With that crash in March
Speaker 4: twenty March twenty twenty, there were a lot of people
Speaker 4: at that time they were selling out their portfolios because
Speaker 4: they didn't want to take any.
Speaker 3: More of a loss.
Speaker 4: And on our channel, we actually created a new portfolio,
Speaker 4: just sort of a very many portfolio to show people listen,
Speaker 4: if you invest now, it's a good it's a good thing.
Speaker 4: You can start growing your money by investing now. It
Speaker 4: doesn't matter that there was a huge crash. You can
Speaker 4: start investing now. And so many people were like, why
Speaker 4: would you invest now, it's a crash, it's the worst
Speaker 4: time to invest, and we're like, no, that's the very
Speaker 4: opposite of how you should be thinking. You know, you
Speaker 4: should continuously be investing whether it's a good whether the
Speaker 4: market's doing well or whether it's doing bad. You should
Speaker 4: just be dollar cost averaging into the market. But when
Speaker 4: the market is doing bad, it is an excellent opportunity
Speaker 4: to grow your wealth. And so that's what we're really
Speaker 4: demonstrating with this portfolio to our followers is like, listen,
Speaker 4: when people are running and trying to cash out their
Speaker 4: portfolios when there's a big crash, don't do that. Do
Speaker 4: the opposite. Do the opposite and start building your wealth.
Speaker 1: I think y'all really illustrate beautifully the power the mindset
Speaker 1: when it comes to building wealth. Like you've got to
Speaker 1: really you've got to look at your emotions, as my
Speaker 1: lovely therapist always says, look at the thought or the
Speaker 1: feeling and just acknowledge that it exists and then just
Speaker 1: attack it with reason and logic. And I love that, y'all.
Speaker 1: I've been following that series at y'all where you share
Speaker 1: your portfolio and how you invest at the bomb 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: market emergency fund, you don't have the money in the
Speaker 1: stock market. It's your emergency fund, so that you don't
Speaker 1: touch your money, yes, just cash right regular ole. 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, that 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 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 table.
Speaker 1: With that emergency fund, y'all, you provide a cushion for yourself,
Speaker 1: and you provide the security that you can continue with
Speaker 1: your investing strategy, continue building your wealth, and you don't
Speaker 1: need to sacrifice that when your emotions start to take over.
Speaker 1: I think that's a really important point for people, and
Speaker 1: that's why we're always like, before y'all start asking about investing,
Speaker 1: I'm talking to my dad and my uncle Mark. People
Speaker 1: call me all the time, what about hurts? Would we
Speaker 1: invest in her.
Speaker 5: Bankrupt?
Speaker 1: Oh? Yeah, sure, jumping, Oh my god, I'm like, listen,
Speaker 1: if my uncle Mark is talking about it, do not
Speaker 1: just don't go to hurts, but my dad he still
Speaker 1: saves money in his coat closet. I'm like, you're trying
Speaker 1: to talk about investing in hurts. Can I get you
Speaker 1: to like put the money in the bank first? Like,
Speaker 1: what is this so backwards?
Speaker 6: Go ahead, No, and no shade to the people who listen.
Speaker 6: But if you're willing to do the blessing loom, that's
Speaker 6: not a blessing. I think you can try this. That's
Speaker 6: a little shady because so many of my dream catchers
Speaker 6: are like, girl, I want to do a blessing loom.
Speaker 6: It's not a blessing loom.
Speaker 1: No, I've not heard enough before.
Speaker 5: You never heard of the blessing loom?
Speaker 1: Quits quick sidebar?
Speaker 5: What is done? No, we talked about it on the podcast.
Speaker 6: Remember I said it's it's basically the pyramid scheme, but
Speaker 6: they keep renaming it blessing loom. Pyramid scheme when you
Speaker 6: bring more people in and they bring money, and then
Speaker 6: you move to the center or to the top and
Speaker 6: they see yeah, but they just keep calling in new things.
Speaker 6: But I did want to ask, like what because I
Speaker 6: want to get just a little nitty gritty, like what.
Speaker 5: Percentage are you living off of?
Speaker 6: Are you doing it where you're anticipating like on average
Speaker 6: is seven to eight percent return and you're living off
Speaker 6: four percent of your of what your investments yield or
Speaker 6: is it more so you're living off you if you
Speaker 6: have rental properties or is it? And then two, like
Speaker 6: what was your fire number? Because I know, like my
Speaker 6: financial advisor, my financial planner, you know, I mean, I
Speaker 6: guess technically I don't have.
Speaker 5: To work now, I guess.
Speaker 6: I mean, I just like I like doing budget Nista,
Speaker 6: but I my husband and I help out a lot
Speaker 6: of people. So what we spend a month is like
Speaker 6: half of what we spend actually goes to us and
Speaker 6: just the rest goes to helping family and friends.
Speaker 5: But so like, what's that? What was that number for you?
Speaker 6: Like, if we set aside this amount plus with the
Speaker 6: real estate coming in, we should be good.
Speaker 5: I'm curious about that.
Speaker 4: Yeah, so we don't have the real estate anymore. Okay,
Speaker 4: we sold our real estate and then we put that
Speaker 4: in the stock market. But our fire number was based
Speaker 4: off of living in the San Francisco Bay are So
Speaker 4: I'll caveat with that caveat that that our number was
Speaker 4: over two million, close to two and a half million.
Speaker 4: But again this is because we live in the sand Or.
Speaker 4: Our fire number was based off of living in the
Speaker 4: San Francisco Bay area. So some people will probably think
Speaker 4: that that can be very high, or some people actually
Speaker 4: think like, maybe that's low.
Speaker 3: So it's really relative to where.
Speaker 4: You plan on retiring, where you live, what your family
Speaker 4: size is, and what type of stuff you plan on
Speaker 4: doing in retirement, and how much is that stuff going
Speaker 4: to cost. So ours was close to two and a
Speaker 4: half million dollars, but I will say because we moved
Speaker 4: to Portugal, we are living off of obviously not close
Speaker 4: to that. Because when you calculate your fire number, you
Speaker 4: the ideas that you can live off of four percent
Speaker 4: of your portfolio in order to cover your monthly expenses
Speaker 4: and then in turn your annual expenses. So the idea
Speaker 4: is that you can pull four percent from your portfolio,
Speaker 4: and then your portfolio continue to grow so that you're
Speaker 4: only pulling from the gains in your portfolio, You're not
Speaker 4: actually pulling from the principal balance, so it continues to
Speaker 4: grow and you're able to continuously pull out four percent.
Speaker 4: And that's based off of There's a study called the
Speaker 4: Trinity Study that really explains this concept of the four
Speaker 4: percent rule, how you can live off of your portfolio
Speaker 4: and the portfolio allocation that you have, whether it's stocks
Speaker 4: and bonds or one hundred percent stocks one hundred percent bonds.
Speaker 4: But the concept is, once you get your fire number,
Speaker 4: you're supposed to be able to live off of four
Speaker 4: percent of that and pull money from your portfolio, and
Speaker 4: that pays for all of your expenses. But we are
Speaker 4: here in Portugal, and our expenses are much much lower,
Speaker 4: like we said, I mean, we gave you the example
Speaker 4: of the healthcare how much cheaper it is, or i'd
Speaker 4: say how much more affordable it is here in Portugal.
Speaker 4: So for us, we don't have to pull a full
Speaker 4: four percent. We pull under four percent. And if you
Speaker 4: ever are in a situation where you're pulling less than
Speaker 4: four percent, then it's even better because then your portfolio
Speaker 4: can continue to grow even more. So the idea is
Speaker 4: if you're able to pull less than four percent, it
Speaker 4: can grow even more.
Speaker 3: And so that's a perfect situation.
Speaker 4: But I would say for people that have different locations
Speaker 4: in mind, like for example, like we said, we were
Speaker 4: thinking about the San Francisco Bay area and we were
Speaker 4: thinking about Portugal, for us, it was really important to
Speaker 4: not retire until we hit the mark for the higher
Speaker 4: cost of living, which is the San Francisco Bay Area.
Speaker 4: And again that's because if we come here to Portugal
Speaker 4: and we decide, you know, four or five years down
Speaker 4: the road, we want to return to the Bay Area,
Speaker 4: or you know, our girls will be going away to
Speaker 4: school soon, not soon soon to me, but you know
Speaker 4: in another four and six years if they returned to
Speaker 4: the States, maybe at that time we'll think, oh, we
Speaker 4: should return with them, or maybe we want to live
Speaker 4: back in the States.
Speaker 3: If we would have picked a fire.
Speaker 4: Number associated with living in Portugal, then we would be stuck.
Speaker 4: We would be limit in terms of where we can
Speaker 4: go after that. So for people that have multiple areas
Speaker 4: in mind, I would I would recommend picking the higher
Speaker 4: cost of living area and then when you go live
Speaker 4: in a lower cost of area, you're pulling less than
Speaker 4: that four percent and your portfolio is able to grow
Speaker 4: even more because of it.
Speaker 1: And when you're in retire. Did that answer your question? Tif?
Speaker 5: No, it did.
Speaker 1: I just said that was awesome here, Okay, So I
Speaker 1: just have so many questions now. I wanted to know
Speaker 1: because you guys have your YouTube channel. I know you
Speaker 1: have a course now in stock investing. When y'all were planning,
Speaker 1: you know, sources of income or planning your portfolio and
Speaker 1: hitting your fire number, did y'all think, Okay, we'll also
Speaker 1: bring in income from our YouTube and maybe we can
Speaker 1: teach people and have a course. Was that part of
Speaker 1: your plan or was this just like a happenstance, Because
Speaker 1: it doesn't strike me that you guys set out, because
Speaker 1: that's honestly one of the things that kind of annoys
Speaker 1: me about some fire. I'll just be totally frank, as
Speaker 1: Christina knows I can be, but like, yeah, I mean
Speaker 1: I kind of roll my eyes sometimes because people are like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 1: I'm going to retire early and I'm going to teach
Speaker 1: people how to do it, and that's how I'm gonna
Speaker 1: retire early by making money off of the courses. But
Speaker 1: y'all strike me as totally different, whereas it's kind of
Speaker 1: a you know, you did your fire thing and then
Speaker 1: people were asking you to start a channel, and you
Speaker 1: did it, and now you just happened to be YouTube stars.
Speaker 5: Yeah.
Speaker 4: I love that you asked that, because you know, right
Speaker 4: now we have we have almost three hundred thousand subscribers
Speaker 4: on our channel, but when we started, we started a
Speaker 4: little over two years ago and it was the lowest
Speaker 4: start ever and when when we actually retired, I don't
Speaker 4: think we had even hit fifty thousand subscribers at that point.
Speaker 4: And so for us, when we started the channel, it
Speaker 4: was more like a friend had mentioned it to us
Speaker 4: because we were talking. We were always talking to family
Speaker 4: members and friends about listen, you guys should be doing this,
Speaker 4: you should save this money. I mean, we were sort
Speaker 4: of getting a little extra into people's business saying hey,
Speaker 4: why don't you invest in this?
Speaker 3: You should save what are you doing?
Speaker 4: But it just became something that we talked about so
Speaker 4: much that one of our friends said, hey, you should
Speaker 4: start this channel, and we thought, well, that is pretty
Speaker 4: cool because then we could tell people about fire, like
Speaker 4: like when we didn't know what fire was when we started.
Speaker 4: If someone was sort of guiding us and telling us
Speaker 4: about all these concepts, that would be really cool. So
Speaker 4: we started the channel, and we we absolutely did not
Speaker 4: think that our channel.
Speaker 3: Would grow like it was.
Speaker 4: So it was definitely not something where we're like, oh, yeah,
Speaker 4: we can we can rely on.
Speaker 3: YouTube and just retire early and live off of YouTube
Speaker 3: or something like that. 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 4: Yeah, but I will also say that you know, people
Speaker 4: have been asking us for a while to do the course,
Speaker 4: and we're like, yeah, you know, maybe maybe we'll get
Speaker 4: around to it. But what really prompted us to do
Speaker 4: the course was COVID. Yes, because we were stuck in
Speaker 4: 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 4: I know it's not as bad compared to people some
Speaker 4: people in the States, right, but yeah, we were getting fidgety, like,
Speaker 4: oh my gosh, we cannot just sit in this house
Speaker 4: and do nothing. And we were we were telling people,
Speaker 4: you know, go out and exercise, go out and read
Speaker 4: or exercise in your home, read, write, do what you
Speaker 4: can to stay productive. Don't try and be busy, because
Speaker 4: busy is just sort of taking up time.
Speaker 3: What can you do to be productive?
Speaker 4: And then we thought, you know what, why don't we
Speaker 4: just sit down and really focus on creating this course?
Speaker 4: And I think, you know, because we had that extra time,
Speaker 4: it was it was really a fun project to be
Speaker 4: 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 kicking obviously,
Speaker 1: you you know, sitting back in the house is not
Speaker 1: what you're excited about. I think those of us in
Speaker 1: corn or 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. So uh,
Speaker 2: and that's one of the nice things about living here
Speaker 2: in Portugal is that we're near the water. The outdoors
Speaker 2: are really amazing, so we do spend a lot of
Speaker 2: time in the outdoors. We wanted to retire early. A
Speaker 2: big reason was so that we could spend more time
Speaker 2: with 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 we're
Speaker 2: that we're working on, but they're all things that we're
Speaker 2: passionate about and that's what we didn't have the ability
Speaker 2: to do before when we were working forty hours a week.
Speaker 2: You know, now we have those forty hours back to
Speaker 2: do whatever we want to do with them.
Speaker 4: And I really love that you asked that question too, Mandy,
Speaker 4: because I think when people are thinking about financial independence
Speaker 4: and retiring early.
Speaker 3: You know, there's this split.
Speaker 4: You could just do financial independence and you continue to
Speaker 4: do the job that you love, or you can.
Speaker 3: Actually retire early.
Speaker 4: And so I think when people are on that retire
Speaker 4: early path, if they ultimately want to retire early, they
Speaker 4: really need to envision what they think their life is
Speaker 4: going to be like when they retire, because I'll.
Speaker 3: Tell you, if you're just sort of.
Speaker 4: Running from something, if you're running from your job because
Speaker 4: you don't like your job, and so that's the reason
Speaker 4: you want to retire, your retirement may not feel very
Speaker 4: fulfilling because then you're in retirement and it's sort of like, well,
Speaker 4: what do I do now?
Speaker 3: But if you really envision what your life can be
Speaker 3: like in retirement.
Speaker 4: If you love to travel, if you love to cook,
Speaker 4: if you love to spend time with your kids and
Speaker 4: your family, if you love to work out, if you
Speaker 4: like to build things, those are all things that people
Speaker 4: can run towards versus running away from something. So they
Speaker 4: really have to think about if they want to pursue fire,
Speaker 4: 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
Speaker 1: said this should be the normal, Like this should be
Speaker 1: the norm, This will be our normal. We are going
Speaker 1: to create the life that we want. And I it
Speaker 1: really resonates with me, if you can't tell, because I
Speaker 1: feel like I am on this path toward this a
Speaker 1: good life, but a good life according to the you know,
Speaker 1: what's what's considered the norm in America and what's considered
Speaker 1: a good life according to I don't know what the
Speaker 1: mainstream idea of a good life is. And I'm starting
Speaker 1: to even challenge my own expectations and challenge some of
Speaker 1: the own some of my own ways of thinking about
Speaker 1: the 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 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 I know that
Speaker 1: forget about you know you can, we can forget about
Speaker 1: race for a second. I mean, the show is called
Speaker 1: Brown Ambition, so it's always there. We acknowledge we are
Speaker 1: two black women speaking to an audience, and first and
Speaker 1: foremost we want to talk to other black women and
Speaker 1: 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 Uh uh what am I thinking? Like, what are
Speaker 1: we talking about investing investing in all building at a
Speaker 1: young age when I was, you know, twelve or thirteen.
Speaker 1: Y'all are so important and your stories are so important.
Speaker 1: And I and thank y'all for using your time when
Speaker 1: you could be doing anything else to educate and pour
Speaker 1: back into communities who may not be getting this kind
Speaker 1: of knowledge. I it just it's out shut up now.
Speaker 1: But it's just y'all are the best.
Speaker 2: Thank you so much.
Speaker 3: It's so nice. It's it's so nice. So you know,
Speaker 3: we wanted to talk to you guys anyway. So it
Speaker 3: was just like, oh, it's your baby that this is
Speaker 3: it right?
Speaker 5: Like e pitome of brown ambition.
Speaker 6: And I think that it's just good for people to
Speaker 6: see that life can be lived differently, you.
Speaker 1: Know, and one hundred million less words than what I used.
Speaker 6: No, So just just because Amandy and I are, the
Speaker 6: way we live.
Speaker 5: Is so different, so they get to see different sides
Speaker 5: of like.
Speaker 6: From both of us being bosses in our own right,
Speaker 6: but via the corporate side or owning your own business.
Speaker 5: So this is just a nice we're pre from.
Speaker 6: This is another way to live and people can find
Speaker 6: themselves in your journey, so we do really thank you,
Speaker 6: thank you.
Speaker 3: Thank you guys. Yeah, I'm so glad we able to
Speaker 3: talk to you.
Speaker 1: Well. Thank y'all, and and go live your fabulous life.
Speaker 1: You now on folks where they can find you. Your
Speaker 1: your our Rich Journey on YouTube, on Instagram, anything else
Speaker 1: y'all want to anything you'll want to promote.
Speaker 4: Oh no, you know you mentioned our daughters too. They
Speaker 4: have their channel out so it's called Our Rich Journey Junior.
Speaker 2: So the kids some love.
Speaker 3: 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 5: 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 5: Yes, thanks so much guys.
Speaker 1: WHOA Okay, so did I embarrass myself? Was that too
Speaker 1: much of a fan girl? No, they were for Christina.
Speaker 6: And mon Honestly, they were amazing and they I mean
Speaker 6: as much as I think that we're pretty fru gol,
Speaker 6: I mean, yes, I know, you know explorers, but you
Speaker 6: know you and I are pretty like to go with
Speaker 6: our finances and savvy with our finances. It just made
Speaker 6: me look at some of the choices that I'm you know,
Speaker 6: that I'm choosing for myself and my family a little
Speaker 6: bit differently. So it was so amazing. I'm totally going
Speaker 6: to stalk them on YouTube so just so they.
Speaker 1: Know their channel is good. I know that, and it's
Speaker 1: worth a time too. I think I just turned on
Speaker 1: their channel and I just had it on for an
Speaker 1: entire weekend. They're They're truly really knowledgeable and if you
Speaker 1: hear things banging in the background, it's just the babies here.
Speaker 1: Hey see, hey everybody. Yeah, I think it's great to
Speaker 1: hear different perspectives. And they call it our rich journey
Speaker 1: because it's their journey, doesn't mean that it's the right
Speaker 1: journey or the one that you need to take. But
Speaker 1: I think in so many ways, you need to see
Speaker 1: someone else living life by example so that you start
Speaker 1: to think about what's possible for yourself. And I think
Speaker 1: for you know, I've been pretty cynical about the whole
Speaker 1: Fire movement, and they have totally changed the way I
Speaker 1: think about it. And they have shown me that there's
Speaker 1: like if I was going to do fire, this is
Speaker 1: the way to do yes. And it's it's about freedom.
Speaker 1: It's about freedom. It's the freedom that people have who
Speaker 1: are lucky enough to come from wealthy family or you know,
Speaker 1: to have inheritances or you know, things like that. It's
Speaker 1: creating a space for yourself where you can do whatever
Speaker 1: the f you want and you're not trapped in this
Speaker 1: cycle of you know, someone else's version of success just
Speaker 1: so you can get by.
Speaker 5: No. I love that.
Speaker 6: I just yeah, like I said, I'm going to totally
Speaker 6: stalk their page, rethink some of the things choices that
Speaker 6: we're making.
Speaker 1: And do you think Supergirl will check out their junior
Speaker 1: the junior edition?
Speaker 6: Maybe she certainly she's working now and she's making some money,
Speaker 6: and so entrepreneurship is something that she has been really
Speaker 6: interested in, and she's been doing that, Like you know,
Speaker 6: she has her own lip gloss line that's on Etsy,
Speaker 6: and what I know, she don't know, So I don't
Speaker 6: know if remember that she was, you know, like I
Speaker 6: told you, like a little while ago, she was hawking
Speaker 6: these rubber band bracelets that she made from a kit
Speaker 6: someone gave her for Christmas because she remember I told you,
Speaker 6: she wanted my Superman and I to invest in her business.
Speaker 6: And she's like for the low rate of four hundred
Speaker 6: and fifty dollars.
Speaker 3: I was like, oh, you.
Speaker 1: Tried it, so we wait a second, we have not
Speaker 1: talked about So.
Speaker 6: That's what she wanted because she wanted to start the
Speaker 6: lip gloss business. So she did this whole presentation where
Speaker 6: she was like, this is how much it's going to
Speaker 6: cost me to get all the materials and things I
Speaker 6: need And we were like, yeah, no, the most.
Speaker 5: You're getting is fifty.
Speaker 6: And even if you get fifty, that's because you have
Speaker 6: to earn fifty. That's the most you're squeezing out of us.
Speaker 6: So need let's just say she wasn't happy. But what
Speaker 6: she did do is somebody gave her this rubber band
Speaker 6: kit where you can make bracelet and rings out of
Speaker 6: these like cool, like brightly colored rubber bands. So she
Speaker 6: started making them, and she started selling them, and she
Speaker 6: made a few hundred bucks on her own.
Speaker 5: She didn't even need our fifty, thank you very much.
Speaker 6: And then graduation money kicked in and she was able
Speaker 6: to fund her own business. With graduation money and her
Speaker 6: rubber band business, it was like business to fund the business.
Speaker 6: And so now, I mean, she literally spends hours a
Speaker 6: day making her lip gloss kits and like putting them together.
Speaker 6: And I'm honestly really proud of her because I'm.
Speaker 5: Like, look a supergirl, you know who.
Speaker 6: She's trying to be like right as much as she
Speaker 6: tries to act like she don't want to be like me,
Speaker 6: but that's.
Speaker 1: How it goes though, Like she can't let you know
Speaker 1: that you inspire her and that she loves you and
Speaker 1: wants to be just like you when she grows up.
Speaker 6: But she's watching I know, so like no, but honestly
Speaker 6: it's really dope to like watch her navigate.
Speaker 5: Yeah no, and I will say, like will this is
Speaker 5: like a little aside.
Speaker 6: So I signed her up for Black Girls Lead, like
Speaker 6: the Summer the digital kind of like summer Camp, I
Speaker 6: guess for girls. That's hosted by Black Girls Rock and
Speaker 6: Michelle Obama did the opening speech, and then came Missy
Speaker 6: Copeland and then somebody else. So I think I was fourth,
Speaker 6: Like right after Michelle Obama geeked and the next day
Speaker 6: she was like, Tiffy, do you know that your session
Speaker 6: was top rated for yesterday? I'm like, what do you mean?
Speaker 6: She was like, we had to vote who our favorite was,
Speaker 6: and you got twenty eight percent of the votes. I
Speaker 6: was like, not over, miss Michelle.
Speaker 5: Yes, I was like these kids.
Speaker 1: I mean not that I'm surprised, of course, I know
Speaker 1: that you're fabulous, but I was.
Speaker 6: Like, but honestly, I'm like, these kids don't know no better,
Speaker 6: because don't.
Speaker 5: Nobody beat Michelle.
Speaker 3: But I take it.
Speaker 6: She was like super Yeah, she was super excited because
Speaker 6: she was like because in it, I had pre recorded mine,
Speaker 6: I talked about her and used her as an example
Speaker 6: of how you can make money on your own. So
Speaker 6: for the girls to listen and watch, I could tell
Speaker 6: she felt really special, like it's me, she's talking about me,
Speaker 6: so we're friends again for now?
Speaker 1: Right now? Amen to that listen Oh, that's amazing. I
Speaker 1: can't wait to see how Rio grows up. I'm I'm
Speaker 1: kind of obsessed with thinking about what he'll be. And
Speaker 1: I'm just I think as a parent, I'm afraid because
Speaker 1: you know how like your kids will do the opposite
Speaker 1: of what you want sometimes, like I don't want to,
Speaker 1: I don't like how much is too much? And should
Speaker 1: I go like all in on teaching him stuff? She
Speaker 1: let him find it on his own. I don't know.
Speaker 1: That's why I'm so fascinated by Christina and i'm on
Speaker 1: because their girls seem to have such a healthy not
Speaker 1: just not only do they understand the different financial topics
Speaker 1: that their parents talk about, but they're all so curious
Speaker 1: and excited to do it themselves, Like how did they
Speaker 1: do that? I know I'm going to be studying them
Speaker 1: for I know everybody in a really creepy way just
Speaker 1: sending I'm just going to slide into their dms all
Speaker 1: the time. Well, I loved having them on the show.
Speaker 1: And if y'all like, who else are we missing? Who
Speaker 1: else are y'all like? Who's on YouTube? Who's out there
Speaker 1: that who have fabulous stories that are inspiring y'all that
Speaker 1: y'all want to hear more from We'd love to get
Speaker 1: in touch with them and have more folks on the show.
Speaker 5: We certainly would, We certainly would.
Speaker 1: All Right, Well, thank y'all for another beautiful week of
Speaker 1: Brown Ambition.
Speaker 4: We'll see y'all next week, next week,