How to RETIRE BY 30! (With Cody Berman)

Transcript:

You can travel around Thailand for a year for $20,000. Like you don't need a $20 million software exit and to grind at the, you know, expense of your health and your family and your friends. I know this guy was like pushing himself to the limit. So I think a lot of people have this dream life that they idealize, but they don't actually understand how much it costs.

Remember the first $5 I made online? It just feels different. It feels so good to make money yourself without a boss, without having to check in. Like you just make the money. You created the website, maybe you recorded the podcast, you did whatever, you created the digital product. It's just it's a different feeling. It just gets worse and worse. Like even when they do get that next bonus and they go from making 100 to 120 K and they just get a fancier car, then they just get a slightly bigger apartment.

Then they go on an extra vacation and it's just this vicious cycle that never ends until. So, Cody, welcome to the personal finance podcast. I'm. Very sad to be here, it's been a long time coming.

I am so excited to have you here because I want to talk through kind of financial independence and you are someone who is amazing in the financial independence community because you started pretty young and you were able to reach financial independence at a young age as well. So can you kind of talk about your background and your journey to financial independence?

Yeah, cut me off if I'm too long winded here, but basically started back when I was 19 years old. I run The Four Hour Work Week by Tim Ferriss. That book completely shifted my just worldview, my mindset about money. Because up to that point, I always thought you had to trade your time for money on a linear basis.

So like growing up, you know, lawyers made a lot of money, doctors made a lot of money. This person makes $100 per hour. This person makes $200 per hour. But until I read Tim Ferriss, I didn't understand that there were people who also made money regardless of whether or not they're working. There were people who made, you know, $100,000 a year just from real estate or from their stock market investments.

And they didn't trade a single dollar or a single hour for that dollar. So like that whole thing of like, you don't have to trade your time for money on a linear basis completely shifted my worldview. And that's when I kind of went this full bore into financial independence. I started every S hustle you could possibly think of.

I had tried over 30 plus at this point, and so that was like 19. I discovered it. 2021, I start actually making money. I'd graduated college and three years after that point, so 25 years old is when I officially hit financial independence through a combination of real estate, stock market, investing and entrepreneurship, mostly digital products.

And we can talk about all that stuff today. Awesome. And I think that is one of the the cool things is that Cody focused a lot of his time as we'll talk about today on increasing his income. And one of the big pieces as we as we think about this is I think that's one of the, the biggest levers that you can usually pull. But it starts and when you kind of move backwards and you start from the beginning, it's kind of defining what financial freedom is.

I think a lot of people are in the, you know, in the rat race and trying to understand, you know, every single day they're working there 9:00 to 5:00 and they don't really know what financial freedom is. So can you kind of tell us or why do you think that so many people can't define what financial freedom is and what do you think they should do instead?

So the interesting thing is most people think retirement is an age, but it's actually a number. So there's multiple ways you can get to said number. The two main ways though are what I like to call cash flow FI or cash flow financial independence. And this is achieving financial independence through, you guessed it, cash flow.

This is something like a small business or real estate. And basically what that means is that you're generating enough passive cash flow each month to cover your expenses. You never have to work again. Or you can do the nest egg method, meaning that you save up this big nest egg, this huge chunk of money and through this thing called the 4% rule that we can talk about today.

Once you achieve A portfolio where you can withdraw 4% of that every year. And I'm sounding there's a lot of jargon, a lot of math. So let's say you can, you live on, you know, $60,000 a year. If you can accumulate 1.5 million dollars, 4% of $1.5 million is $60,000 a year.

Once you get that 1.5 million nest egg, in theory, you can retire and you never have to work again. So those are kind of the two main ways to reach financial freedom. It's just that these aren't, it's not taught in schools. I mean, corporations don't don't want you to know this. They want you working there. So yeah, that's that's the reason why most people don't know about this stuff.

But it's really just math. It's really just math and working backwards. And that's why I think it's just so important to even one of the things we talk about here, Cody, all the time is actually tracking your retirement number and looking at your retirement number on a yearly basis. Because I think most people don't look at this enough and they don't think about this stuff enough.

And really most people think that financial independence is unrealistic. And I think when you start to to talk to people about this, you talk about savings rates and you talk about all the things that you kind of did during your journey, which we'll talk about. I think this is something where a lot of folks will come and they have this instant reaction that it's unrealistic.

Even though in society a lot of people are saying, hey, we got to work more. We got to work till exhaustion, those types of things. So why do you think people normalize kind of the grind to 9:00 to 5:00, but they feel like financial independence is something that's just unattainable? I think most people succumb to lifestyle inflation and just spending money on things that they don't truly value.

Like so many of my friends and so many people I know, right when they start making real money when they're 2223 years old, they get the fancy apartment, they get the $1000 per month car payment and all of a sudden they're living paycheck to paycheck even if they're making six figures. So I think the reason why financial freedom feels so unattainable to so many people is because there's there's no give.

There's no gap between their income and their expenses. They don't have any money to invest in things like real estate or stock market and they don't have the time because they're so strapped for cash to even think about Assad hustle. And so I think people just they kind of get in this rut and unfortunately it just gets worse and worse. Like even when they do get that next bonus and they go from making 100 to 120 K and they just got a fancier car, then they just got a slightly bigger apartment.

Then they go on an extra vacation and it's just this vicious cycle that never ends until 65 for most people. And it's one of those areas where you you look at this in the psychology behind it, and most people are just kind of trying to impress their peers. I love, you know, if anybody's never read the psychology apology of money, Morgan Housel kind of dives into the psychology behind this.

But one of the cool things in that book that I love is where he says, hey, if there's nobody else in the entire world and you kind of look around and there's nobody else living on earth and you go, and What Car would you choose? Like would you actually choose the car that you're driving if you're driving a luxury car? Or would you go choose just the most, you know, effective or efficient car for your actual lifestyle?

And that's one of the things that I love kind of thinking through and, and talking about because most people are just trying to impress the people that are around them. So one big thing that you talk about, and we kind of just alluded to it slightly, is that lifestyle inflation piece where it is invisible. And are there any common, you know, silent upgrades that you see people have?

Is it the car? Is it the house? Or where do you see people getting tripped up the most when they are increasing their lifestyle over time? It is usually what I call the big three and so that's for most people. The average American spender, Housing, transportation, and food. Those 3 categories make up 67% of the average person spending.

It's insane. Housing is like 33, transportation is 17 and then food is somewhere between like 1516%. So whatever that's 6566%. I can picture the pie chart in my head. That's where most people go wrong. And those are the those are the categories where just like really kills you when you upgrade that apartment, when you upgrade that car, when you start going out to eat way more often than you're used to.

It's really not like I always, I hate to throw shade at David Bach in his latte effect book, but like it's really not the lattes that kill most people. Like you could get a $5 latte every day whenever that is 365 * 5, you're looking at like 1900 bucks like that versus increasing your rent by $500 a month is negligible.

So like it's those big three categories that are really the sneaky ones and someone's like, Oh yeah, what's an extra? I'm going to upgrade to the 2026 version of this car. Like what's an extra $120.00 a month car payment or I'm going to upgrade to this nicer apartment or buy this pic mansion. What's, you know, an extra $400.00 a month on housing.

It doesn't seem like much, but like over the long term and things can compound negatively against you. Those things can really come to bite you. And it doesn't even seem like a huge upgrade. It's not like you're getting a Lambo. You might just be getting the 2026 Nissan Altima instead of the 2019 one that you're driving, but those things add up.

It's for sure. And I think if you can control those big three expenses when you're thinking about this, if you can control those big three, you can spend lavishly on a lot of other things that you truly value. And it comes down to figuring out what you actually value when it comes to spending. And so you look around and you say, hey, there are things that I absolutely love to spend money on.

Maybe you love to travel and you want to spend more on those vacations. Then identifying that is going to be one of the most important things that you could do. Or maybe you love to, you know, spend more on golf. It doesn't matter really what it is, but if there are things that you love to spend money on, identifying those and then spending less on the areas that you don't care about is going to be really, really important.

So lifestyle inflation is obviously a problem. And we've seen this across the board. I see it with people all around me all the time. And it is something that even, you know, some lifestyle inflation, I think is somewhat healthy. And so a lot of us will kind of look at this and say, hey, you know, I have kids or I got married.

And so I want to upgrade my housing situation or I just want to make sure that I'm, you know, spending a little bit more on the things that I actually value. But when people get raises, most of them obviously are going to increase their lifestyle to the level of that raise. So how do you tell people, how do you recommend that they kind of treat raises when they when it, you know, when they get a raise at their job or when they get a raise or a big bonus or something like that?

Is there a rule that you have with raises or is there a way that you think about this? Before I talk about raises, just one caveat, because I think this is where the FIRE, the financial independence retire early community gets a lot of Flack and just frugality in general is that people think I'm or not I'm me being representative of the entire FIRE movement that like we're against luxury.

Like no, you can never drive the nice car. You can never get the nice house. That is the farthest thing from the truth. The, the very important thing is during those early years, during the first a decade or less of your journey, that's when you need to kind of be frugal and hunker down. Like I think there's a time and a place. If you want the Porsche, go for it.

If you want a 5000 square foot house, go for it. But once you've built that financial foundation, because once you have reached financial independence and you have this extra income and you've reached cash flow or nest egg fi like then you can add those luxuries back in. But during those early years, if you do not have the gap between your income and your expenses, that's what's going to kill you.

Back to your race question. So I like to automate everything. So I think where a lot of people go wrong is they're, you know, they're making 100K and then they get the raise. Now they're making 120 and they don't have any rules in place. They're they're not investing a set percentage. They don't have like these rules and automation set up for their IRI RA4O1K real estate brokerage account.

And so I like to invest 1st and then spend after. It's kind of the profit first ideology. So have a set amount, like if you know you're getting a raise, like OK, I'm going to make sure that I invest this amount this year if you want to do that monthly, if you want to do that on a lump sum, if you're getting a bonus, whatever floats your boat. I'm not here to judge and tell you what's right and what's wrong, but I think setting those investing parameters first and then spending whatever's left is the way to do it versus, OK, I'm hopefully I have a little extra left now that I'm making more money.

Usually that doesn't happen. We just kind of fill the void with stuff or another vacation or an upgraded car once we start making more money. I couldn't agree more. And I think a lot of times people will say where do I start? How much should I look at investing if I got a raise or how much should I kind of, you know, start when, you know, if I get a big bonus or whatever else.

And I always tell people and you tell me what you think, but I always tell people to start at the with the 5050 rule, meaning 50% goes towards investments and then 50% can go towards the things that you love. You worked hard for that raise. If you worked hard for that bonus, you can kind of look at it at that starting point. Now for everybody else, if your goal is financial independence and you want to achieve financial independence faster, you probably want to skew a lot of that raise or that bonus towards the investment side.

Maybe you want to go 8020, maybe you want to go 9010. But that's the starting point is to kind of think through, OK, how do I feel about investing 50% of this raise? And how do I feel about say in spending 50% of this raise? If it feels uncomfortable for you to spend that much, then increasing and, and kind of increasing that that wavelength is going to be kind of where I look at that.

What do you think about that? Or is there like a a starting point you think people should look at if they really just want the answer fed to them? I might go more aggressive than you. I think when someone gets an unexpected bonus, especially like if you're happy with what your where your life's at now and you're like cool, the vacations are going on you you like your house, you like your car, whatever, like everything's fine.

Just invest all of it. Like honestly, it sounds crazy and people just when they get more money, when that's why so many lottery winners go broke. They have no system. They just get this huge pile of money and all of a sudden they just like spend like crazy on all these things that they think are going to make them happy. But often times like their life is probably pretty good how it was before.

So if you can, like if you, if you're not in a deprivation situation and like you know that that bonus isn't going to really change or move the needle for you, honestly, invest as much as you possibly can. Like if you want to get one nice thing, if you want to upgrade the phone, if that's really important to you, if you want to go on a vacation that's really important to you, but like really focus and spend on what you value.

Like write down your list of like, okay, these are the things I value and I got this big bonus. I got this inheritance, whatever the lump sum might be. And, and then make sure you are spending in accordance with those values because too many people just spend just because it's there. They like can't think of anything else to spend it on. It's like, oh, I guess I'll, you know, buy this thing.

I have an extra 1000 bucks. Like why? Why not, you know, buy AB or C thing I don't really care about. I think that's the trap that a lot of people fall into. I couldn't agree more. And I think when you look at this, especially when I was in my 20s, I was really, really frugal in my 20s. And I am so happy I was that frugal in my 20s because it set up this financial foundation.

My wife's probably not as happy as I am that we set up in our 20s, but this is the area where I think it just set up the financial foundation. And I would be in that same exact camp. When I would get raises or bonuses, I would just invest the entire amount because I had nothing else I really wanted to spend money on.

And so that's where personal finance becomes very personal for a lot of folks. And if your overall goal is that financial independence, I think it's going to skew, you know, as much as possible to investing those raises and bonuses. But like Cody says, you have to have a plan. And if you don't have that plan in place, this is going to be where it's going to get commingled in your checking account.

You're just going to spend it on random frivolous stuff and it's just going to disappear. Most people who get to the end of the month and real, you know, wonder where their money went or all their money just disappeared, that is going to be where, you know, a lot of people just don't have these systems in place. And so I kind of want to talk about systems because you emphasize systems over just discipline.

And a lot of us, if we have to rely on our willpower, it's not going to happen over the long period of time. So why does discipline always fail long term? So this is where I like to draw analogies between finance and fitness all the time. This is where finance kind of shines. So imagine you could automate your body just going to the gym without having the motivation or the discipline.

Like imagine that could just happen in the background. You actually can do that with money, like if you have systems set up in the background or just auto investing every month into like index funds stuff just growing. Like you actually don't have to do anything like with the gym. You do have to have the discipline. You do have to have the motivation. You have to show up every day in person, lift the weights, do the cardio, whatever.

The thing is with money, like you can click a button and have it set up for 20 years or you literally don't have to do anything else. It's funny, I think it was a Fidelity study that found that the people with like the best returns, their portfolio were the people who completely forgot about their portfolio in the 1st place because they weren't going in there making like, you know, buy, sell, let me try options.

We do all this stuff. They just had this thing set up on autopilot and over the course of decades that thing just took off, just went to the moon in that compound interest that hockey stick growth. So I think that is that's a key piece and of automation is just like you literally can set this up once you can set up auto invest at, you know, your vanguards, your Schwabs, your Fidelity, whatever floats your boat, Pick whatever one and just auto invest a certain percentage of your paycheck every single month.

Or, you know, auto invest a certain percentage of your bonus or however you want to set it up. Again, you people have different lives. Some people make freelance income, some people have regular W2 jobs. I'm sure there is a system you can figure out because I, I some people be like, I can't auto invest my, my income's lumpy. It's like, OK, well there's some way that you can systematize this where your auto investing like a certain percentage of your income, however you earn it.

Exactly. And I think that was the one, one thing that once I started to automate my entire financial life, I just spent so much less time doing it. I just talked to somebody the other day and I had this conversation with them where they're in our, our community and mastermind Academy and they learned we have this whole system on like how to automate all your finances.

And they are always, always, always in the weeds on their finances. So they spent so much time just kind of thinking about their money and they automated their finances and like, I don't know what to do with myself because I don't have to do anything anymore. And like, everything's just kind of happening on autopilot. And it kind of just made them freak out at 1st and we had to kind of talk through that process of like, hey, you don't have to be so optimized.

This is actually optimizing, you know, for your entire situation. So for those of you out there who are thinking through this, like, hey, I don't want to budget. I don't want to spend a ton of time on the, you know, some of my dollars and thinking through where do I, you know, transfer all this money? Where do I think about this? This is one of the most important things that you can do, I think is automating your money because it just reduces your time spent in the weeds.

And that is where most people, if they automate their money, they're going to be so much better off. And the way that I think about this for a lot folks is in the corporate world, I've had friends who, you know, sign up for their four O 1K and when they sign up for their four O 1K, they don't look at it.

And then like 3 years down the line, all of a sudden they look in their account. They're like, I can't believe how much money I have in this account. It's because it's automation working for you. And so you can do this with anything like Cody said with Vanguard, with Fidelity, you can automate your money into these different accounts. And now the beautiful thing is you can also auto invest.

You don't even have to like back in the day, you had to go and log in and still invest those dollars. And now you can actually auto invest in all those different places, which is why I love this so much. So there's a lot of financial decisions we have to make day in and day out. And so when it comes to automating, which financial decisions should people not be thinking about every single day?

I think the amount you invest, I even think where you invest for the most part, if you're not someone who likes analyzing stocks and 10K reports and earnings reports and all this stuff. Like I have most of my money quite honestly. And just like broad based index funds and I have it auto investing for me every single month.

It's not a decision I actively make. I'm like, what stock do I think is going to do really good this year? Like these, you know, reading this macro trend report, I think this AB and C stocks going to do awesome. Like 99%, maybe like 95% of my finances are just on like complete autopilot.

So that's one. It's just like the amount you invest if you have again, a steady paycheck or somewhat regular freelance income, just like decide a dollar amount or percentage and just auto invest that all the big platforms now you literally don't even have to login. It'll auto invest. You can just pick like a broad based index fund.

You can say I want to invest in, you know, Vanguard VTSAX, like the total stock market index fund that will literally just take the money out of your bank account, put it in that index fund, invest it. So you're not one of those people, unfortunately, who ends up with a bunch of money in like a Roth IRA or a Traditional IRA, but it never got invested.

So make sure that you're like, like you said before and the old golden days, even back when I first started investing, like I had to go in and manually invest that money. But now it's easier than ever. It's one click, set it up and you can have that thing running for decades. So I think that's that's probably the most important one to automate in my opinion. 100% And I think that's the one where again, if you, you have to set that up first and you set it up in a way because it allows you to pay yourself first.

It allows you to actually get those dollars invested because too many people will like skip months if they're manually doing it. So it for sure is one of the the biggest things that you can do. One thing I want to add, Andrew, though, because I think we're giving people a bad Rep, just humanity in general, right? I'm like, you know, if you are making 100K and all of a sudden you make 120, you're just going to spend it.

We're actually pretty adaptive in the other way too. Like if you're making 100K and all of a sudden you're making 80 because you're just forcing $20,000 of investments, you'll learn to live on 80. Yep. Like humans are super adaptive. So like if you can do the invest first methodology we talked about before, most people are pretty adaptable.

Maybe they're just like automatically spend less money because less money is available. It's kind of like that. I forget the exact name of the thing where it's like you, the amount of time that you set yourself to like do a task, That's how much time it takes. I forgot the exact name of the paradox that Elon Musk made it pretty famous. But it's like if you have one week to do this thing, it's going to take you one week.

If you have one hour, it's going to take you one hour. It's kind of the same thing with the budget like you have. If you have 50K to spend, you'll spend 50K. If you have 150K to spend, you'll spend 150 K unless you have these systems in place. Exactly. It gets it out of your hands, gets it into that spot, especially if you want to hit these goals.

Like if you have a savings rate goal and let's say, for example, you want to save 35% of your income, if you want to go ahead and do that, automating it to the right places upfront is going to allow you to just have whatever's leftover, then you're going to go ahead and spend that. So I think that's really, really important for most people. And so if you were going to build One Financial system this year, if you were going to set up 1 automation this year outside of just investing, we kind of talk through investing there.

What would be another one that you would set up? Would it be kind of automating your bills? I think that's a simple one that a lot of people do. Or is there anything else that you would do there? Yeah, I mean, automating your bills is a Gimme. Like if you don't have that stuff on auto pay, please do that. It's just like mental bandwidth you don't have to deal with. I oh, it's yeah. Once I put everything on auto pay, it's just like it's such a relief.

And you just know exactly how much is kind of coming out every single month. The other one I would say, and this isn't exactly an automation, but it does become an automation over time is building passive income in some way shape or form that doesn't have like some something outside of investing. So whether that's, you know, starting some kind of a little mini business or maybe it's real estate, just something we're going back to the beginning of this conversation where your time is not linearly related to that money, right?

So like, I'm, I'm such a huge proponent of starting a side hustle, even if you're someone who like has a really high-powered corporate job, just because like you gain so many skills and making 5 bucks, like your first $5, I don't know if you remember the first money you made online, remember the first $5 I made online. It just feels different.

It feels so good to make money yourself without the, a boss, without having to check in. Like you just, you just make the money. You know, you created the website, you maybe you recorded the podcast, you did whatever, you created the digital product. It's just it's a different feeling. Well, that's probably 1 exactly a system.

That's something I would encourage a lot of people to do. Even if you're someone with a really high-powered job, even if you're making hundreds of $1000 a year, it just flex that muscle. Doing something different is a growth is good. So trying something different, getting that new skill, it might benefit you later on in ways you'd never realize. I want to talk about this because income is a big thing that you did on your financial independence journey.

And I want to kind of spend some time here because I think this is something where you are really an expert in is increasing your income overtime. And you've done it kind of over and over and over again in a bunch of different ways. And for a lot of people out there and a lot of people that we talk to all the time in our community and everything else, they are looking for ways to increase their income and they are looking for ways to kind of find, you know, side hustles and orways.

We have this series that we talk about all the time called side businesses that could turn into a full time income. And what I'm trying to achieve in those episodes is to show you, hey, these are businesses that you could start on the side nights and weekends, whatever else that can turn into a full time income. So I kind of want to think of this early on as income is overall an accelerator to get to financial independence.

So first, let's talk about this when it comes to income. Why is that the ultimate lever that you can pull when it comes to trying to achieve financial independence? And do you believe that? 100% believe it. And because income is infinitely scalable whereas expenses can only drop to the floor, like you can only get to 0 expenses, you can't unfortunately get to negative expenses and all of a sudden that becomes income.

Income if you're making $40,000, like yes, it would be difficult, but there's no reason you can go from $40,000 to like $4 million. That's a crazy example, but like that's 100 XI think it's 100 X don't don't math check me here. That's like 100 X increase in your income. It's very hard to 100 X decrease your expenses.

It's just it's way more difficult. So I think most people should tackle expenses first, but then income is that lever that you should just hammer like get the big, you know, the big three out of the way. Like if you can kind of get your housing, your transportation and food in check, and especially those who are like living paycheck to paycheck, it's going to be much easier, especially if you're working a corporate job, to get those expenses in check and then turn back toward income.

Once you get the expenses to a level where you're like, if I cut anymore, I'm going to feel super deprived, then it's time to like really hit the income accelerator. And whether that's at your day job, maybe you're in sales and you just want to like really put the pedal to the metal and make way more money in sales. Or maybe that's jumping to a different industry and doing a similar role in the industry, or it's starting a side hustle, or it's investing in real estate.

Like there's so many ways to do this. But if you are, if you don't pull that income lever, if your income isn't already super high, it's going to be really hard to hit financial independence on a super early timeline. Like for me, the reason I was able to, on a quote, retire, hit financial freedom in three years was because I just went ballistic on the income front.

And that is where I think if, if anybody is kind of listening right now, you're going to see this all coming together because what we're talking about here is we want you to cut back and as far as you can and before you feel deprived. And so once you cut back, that's only going to take you a little bit of time. Like once you start to cut back, you have that set up, then we want you automating obviously your finances as well.

So automating your money into your investments. Now you have this kind of system set up where you or optimize in terms of getting started to focus on your income. Then you can spend all of your time and your energy focusing on the thing that's going to give you the the ultimate leverage towards financial independence.

So talk about your income journey for a second. Let's talk through kind of how people can think about this because I'll tell you, for me specifically, my first job, I was making $30,000 a year as an entry level person, as a financial analyst. And back then I realized very quickly, I'm going to be living paycheck to paycheck for a long time if I don't increase my income.

So I did a bunch of things. I went into Amazon arbitrage, I started a blog, I had a side of the road Christmas tree stand. Like I did all these different things to try to increase my income over time. So kind of talk about your income journey and then I want to kind of talk through some of the ways that people can think about income or increase in their income.

Yeah. So I have all of my numbers like income and expenses I tracked meticulously. That's a benefit of being a personal finance podcaster and Blogger over all these years. But so back in 2019 when this journey kind of first started for me, I had worked half the year. I was a in commercial real estate lending. I think I made $44,000.

Actually, I'm going to pull up my phone here just so I can have the exact numbers. I think I made $44,000 and at the time I was living on it's like $1500 a month. Wow. It was super frugal. I was sharing an apartment in Boston. I was like sharing a room. My room was so small. I could literally touch my buddy Lou's hand while we're like sleeping over.

Our beds are that close. Wow. But you know, I was spending $450 a month on rent in Boston. A big. That's a huge metal. It's. Usually expensive city. I was driving a paid off car. I was like eating out very rarely, you know, going out pretty rarely. And so but yeah, my expenses were super low.

I had made like $44,000 that year, but I was able, I was still able to save like 60 or 70% of my income making $44,000. So as my income started to increase and I'm pulling up the exact numbers here so people can Fact Check me, here we go. OK, so yeah, that was 2019.

My income was 44,000 and I was spending like 18,000 total that year. The next year I went full into entrepreneurship and I ended up quitting that corporate job. I was just like, I feel like I just had a calling to like try to just build businesses and kind of go out at my own. So that next year, 2019, my income jumped from 44,000.

It doubled to 96,000. My expenses went up a little bit, but it was like about $2000 a month called like $24,000 a year. The year after that, 2020, my income doubled again to 198,000. I was still spending $24,000 a year. And the year after that, 2021, my income more than doubled again to 403,000.

I was still spending $24,000 a year. So like that's what I'm saying. Like I cut my expenses to the bone and then I just wailed on the income level. So what? I was making $403,000 in 2021 spending $24,000. I had 300 and whatever that is, $1000 to invest for my future.

And so like the compound interest that that that has paid me to this day is just like, like that money is more than doubled. It's insane. So just getting it right for those couple of years is what just kind of catapulted this whole financial independence journey and allowed me at financial freedom. Such a short timeline. And that's where I think most people need to understand is look at Cody.

Cody kept his expenses at the level where he was comfortable, but it was kind of like he was still making sacrifices without the, it was at the level that you were comfortable kind of keeping it there and then took the extra and started to put it towards financial independence. So first, I want to talk through kind of what did you do to increase your income over that time frame?

What were some of the businesses that you were creating or what was your thought process there? Did you try other things that failed or did you just kind of keep going going on from there? Good question. Yeah, this is when I tried like 30 different businesses and at one point, so I tried 30 over the span of this couple year time frame. But at one point I had 19 different income streams.

And I used to brag about it, but now I'm like, that was so dumb. Like some of these things I would make $50.00 a month and I would be making like, you know, $2.00 an hour. Like I was doing like online surveys for money. Like some of these income changes were just so silly. But, but honestly, looking back, like I learned so many skills.

I learned what I liked. I learned what I didn't like. I became, you know, I had like I was doing copywriting. I was like doing e-mail marketing campaigns. I was editing podcasts, I was editing video. All these skills I now use today or if I don't use them today, at least when I hire people, I like kind of know what to look for and I can kind of guide them. So like I gained so many skills during that time frame.

That's one thing I don't want people to be like, well, I don't want to try 30 side hustles. It's like even if you don't do the sod hustle in the future, you're going to gain a valuable skill. That's why, like I was saying before, even if you're in a high-powered corporate job and you don't want to do a sod hustle 'cause it doesn't make financial sense, it might make sense just to better you like to give you a new skill that you don't have.

And you never know when that skill might come in handy down the road. So yeah, back to answer your question about all my sod hustles and how has increased my income, the ones I eventually kind of paired my sod hustling down to was digital products. So it was creating a whole bunch of digital products to sell on Etsy, to sell on Shopify.

That then became a whole community and chorus and template shop. And this whole thing called Gold City Ventures. That's like my main Business Today. Real estate was another one that has stuck. And I've done pretty much everything under the sun in real estate. I, I dabbled in flips, wholesaling, syndications, long term rentals, short term rentals.

Is that it? Yeah. Some I might have missed one or two, but dabbled on that. And then podcasting I'll still do to this day. And a little bit of like, kind of just like personal finance influencer, for lack of a better term, creating content online. And that's kind of what over the last couple years I've really pared it down to. And those are the things that really catapulted my income over those couple of years.

And every single person that I know who has a business, especially online that has a all my business that's big, they've tried so many different things, the same thing. I would try everything from, you know, I had a blog originally and then I had a second blog that was about like fitness. And then I would just try all these different things.

I did retail arbitrage. I would sell things on eBay. And it was just like, I would fail over and over and over again. And then finally you find the things that work and it's really just to trying a bunch of and testing out a bunch of these different things before you find something that works. So if someone was looking at maybe they have a nine to five right now and they're listening and they're like, I want to try something on the side.

If you were starting over right now in 2026, what would you start to to look for? What would you start on the side? Would you do an online business? Would you do some sort of, you know, physical business? Or how would you kind of think about that for a side hustle? The way I like to think about it, I definitely don't like be prescriptive.

I hate when people are like real estate's the only way or like digital products is the only way. Not the case. What I like to think about though is kind of back to the first thing I was talking about, that passive income. If you can do something where you can either put in a bunch of time or a bunch of money or a bunch of effort at the beginning and then that thing is going to pay you in perpetuity.

That is the type of side hustle that I look for. So like with digital products, with real estate, even with something like podcasting or YouTube, like you're spending a lot of time creating this really valuable asset that then lives on for. However, I know some podcasters who like discontinued their podcast and they're still making money. They're still making affiliate income.

Maybe they still have people join their membership like from this asset that they created that still lives on. So like something that has longevity versus just trading your dollars for hours. Like I've done all the dollars for hours stuff. I was, I delivered Uber Eats on a bicycle in Australia. I lived there for six months.

I was in this hilly region. I got a bicycle again, this is one for reality goes too far. I got a bicycle for $25 off of the Australian equivalent to eBay called Gumtree and one gear and I'm going up like these 45°, you know, steep hills. This is like the most brutal trade time for money's hot hustle ever.

Like I got a couple one star reviews because I sweat on people's food. It was brutal that those are the types of hot hustles I would stay away from. Now there are a time and a place for those like if you just want to go straight trade your hours for dollars, that's totally cool. If you want to drive for Uber, if you want to deliver Instacart, like that's if you really got to bridge the gap and like that's all you can do right now.

You don't have the mental bandwidth to wait for a podcast or YouTube or a course or a digital product. So you don't have the time to kind of wait for those to bring you enough money to make a difference. That's fine. You can trade your dollars for hours. I'm really not like trying to hate too hard on those. But if you do have, if you're in a pretty comfortable position right now, if you're like, my financial life's pretty good.

I'm making all right money. I would definitely learn more towards something that is more scalable and more passive in the future. And when you look at a lot of the, the online landscape now, so a big question that we get for a lot of folks out there is they'll say, well, what should I do online?

Because I don't want to do something, you know, that is like what you're saying, like Uber Eats or whatever else. Maybe they're in that good position. Are there any online businesses that you like or that you've seen in the past that have worked really well for people, that maybe someone who's working in nine to five could start as creating some of those little assets that can, you know, earn income in perpetuity?

It really depends on your skill set. Again, I don't like being prescriptive. I think people have to lean into their strengths. Like if you're, if you're just in a regular corporate job, but you really like fitness, like maybe leaning into fitness is the way to go. Maybe you should create like some kind of, you know, PDFs would like some nutrition, like some keto diet or some like special workouts that you do or I don't know, or build a community.

Or maybe you're really into nature and then you lean into nature and like you're doing, maybe you're doing guided tours in the weekend. Like there's no like right or wrong answer, I don't think when it comes to building AS hustle, you know, on online SI guess the guided tours wasn't a good example there. But honestly, just I think friction is the enemy here.

So like just lean into what you're interested in because if you're just going after the thing that's going to make you the most money, that's, that's when people start to give up. And like, that's what I learned really fast early on. I'm like, I hate doing XY or Z sad hustle. I just picked this up because like Johnny over there said I was going to make a bunch of money from doing it, but like, I'm not really excited about it.

So like, if it's something that you're moderately excited about, like maybe you're really interested in AI, maybe you're really interested in video. Maybe you're really interested in digital products. Like follow that passion a little bit. I, I don't like to follow your passion advice, but like, I am a big believer that friction is the enemy when it comes to sad hustles.

Because you know, the best side hustle isn't the one that's going to make you the most money the fastest. The best side hustle is the one you're going to keep up with over years and decades. Exactly, because really it does take a ton of time and that was the big thing for me too, is I've tried to find those side hustles that you could focus on the actual skill set that you have.

For example, if you're someone out there, let's say you're a teacher, and if you're a teacher, maybe your biggest skill is like you could do tutoring on the side online or you could do, you know, just all these different things is look, focusing on your skill set because that's going to allow you to make the most money. A but also it's going to allow you to just like like Cody said, you're not going to quit.

Like it's going to be one of those things where you're going to enjoy it a little bit more because you're good at it and it's not going to be as hard. There's not going to be as much friction. So you focus a lot on the income lever. And so you went and doubled your income multiple years in a row. What did you do with that income? Did you take it and kind of put it towards, obviously, we've talked about investments and index funds and we talked about real estate.

How did you kind of split that up and did you invest it anywhere else? Most of it was in index funds, in real estate. Good question. I had a little bit in crypto, nothing right home, about like 3% of my net worth maybe. But honestly, the lion share was, yeah, just regular old plain index funds like total stock market index fund and then real estate.

So when I hit financial independence in 2020, again, the year right here, 20 early 20/22, it was like right before my 26th birthday. So I say I hit it when I was 25. That's awesome. I had about $500,000 invested in the stock market and mostly just like the total stock market next fund and I had 11 real estate units that I had bought using a total of $200,000 in down payments.

So we're kind of like house hacking. We had like to two other triplexes and a duplex and we were making like between 3000 and $3500 a month in cash flow after everything was said and done, after all the mortgages were paid, after we set aside money for reserves. So at that point, like we were spending probably 2500 to $3000.

We're like, hey, we don't have to work anymore. Like we're making just from the real estate. We didn't have to work. And then we also had this $500,000 chunk of money sitting in the market that was just compounding year over year over year. So that was kind of the split like at this point, I think slightly more index fund heavy than real estate heavy in terms of my total net worth.

But it's been a pretty even split the whole way. I don't like being too into one thing. Like I like having my my assets diversified a little bit just for protection. Talk about the, the journey with real estate. So you, you have these 11 units that you utilize 200,000 of your own money.

How did you do that? What were kind of the steps that you took in order to do that? Because I know a lot of our audience here is really interested in real estate. We get a lot of questions on that. So what was your journey with that? What how did you kind of think about that? Was it house hacking? Did you start there? And then how did that kind of expand? So we hit the ground running with real estate, and this isn't that year where I'd made $403,000 and spent 24.

We had a lot of gunpowder to work with. So like we had so much money to just like invest. I know it sounds like cocky, but we just like honestly the, the amount, the delta between the income and the expenses was getting so big that I'm like, what, what do we do with this? We, we started looking at real estate and we bought 11 units in one year.

So in that calendar year. So that's when all the 11 units happened in like 11 months. So the first one was a house hack. We lived in the basement unit. There was a split, a split level duplex above us. So it's a 3 unit total and we lived in the basement unit. And so we went from paying, well, I went from paying as I was living in Boston, that $450 a month.

I went from paying $450 a month in rent to now making $800 a month from this house hack because the amount we're bringing in from those two units was like $800. And you know, minus all expenses, minus mortgage, everything was about $800 more. That's incredible the cost.

So like we were actually instead of most 99% of people are spending money on housing, we were making money on housing. That was a huge shift. And then after that we bought a duplex like a mile down the road. It was an off market deal for the same seller and and then after that we bought a three family two months after that and then we bought another three family four months after that.

So yeah. And it's plan of 11 months, we had 11. Units that is incredible. That's like a overall is is just so amazing what you can do. And again, I want to remind everybody, think about this as this is the reason why you increase your income, because you can take these extra dollars and you can absolutely change your life in a single year if you can increase your income enough, which is why this is so powerful overall.

And I'm with you, Cody, because real estate is a big part of my strategy too. It's it's having, you know, investing in the market and real estate, having that diversification I think is a really important thing for most people. And overall, I think that just diversifying in these other areas is just, it just helps tremendously for me.

So you talk a lot about financial independence as a spectrum, and I'm gonna tell you right now my biggest overall struggle, and everybody, all my listeners know this 'cause I talk about it a lot, is figuring out how much is enough. And I still struggle with that to this day. It is one of those things where my every time something changes in my life, I feel like I just keep increasing the amount that I want to have to become financially independent.

So my first initial goal was to become lean Phi. And So what I did that because I was really into Mr. Money mustaches. I'm sure you probably were too. I told my wife, I'm going to bike around town and she's like, we're by an Interstate. You're not going to go bike around town. And so this was this whole ordeal where that's how I was in my 20s.

And so once we got to that point in time where we could hit that, then I was like, all right, I just want to have a little bit more and I want to have a little bit more. Now my goal honestly is fat fire and for a lot of different reasons. And it's because I had kids and there's a lot of causes I want to give to and those types of things. But I just feel like the goal post is always moving for me.

So can you kind of talk about why you why you think financial independence is a spectrum and the danger we'll talk about what enough is at some point in time here, but the danger of people not understanding what their enough number is? Yeah, I'll talk about the spectrum part first. I think you kind of.

Laid the groundwork perfectly. Like there are different levels to financial freedom. There's like lean Phi where it's like I'm going to live extremely frugally. Let's say, you know, use that example from earlier where you have to save up $1.5 million to live on 60K. Be like, actually I think I could live on 40 KA year. All I need is $1,000,000 invested using the nest egg approach.

That's cool. That's like lean Phi. If that's like a little less comfortable than you'd like to be, but like you can make it work. Lean Phi, the traditional Phi is like the $60,000 a year. You're like, I like spending $60,000. It feels pretty good. 1.5 million done. Fat Phi is when you're like, OK, I kind of want to increase my lifestyle. Like I'm, I'm actually leaning into lifestyle inflation because I know that, you know, this XY or Z thing is going to make me happier.

Maybe in that case you need what's like in public math stocks. Let's say you're, you need $80,000 a year to spend. So then you're, it's like $2,000,000 is your Phi number. So it's just understanding that. And that's why Phi is a spectrum. Like there's different levels to Phi. There's different types of Phi. Some people like Coast Phi where they'll like try to get, you know, call it $500,000 invested by age 35.

And then through compound interest, there's this like math thing called the rule of 72. It's basically like divide 72 by your expected rate of return and that's how long it takes for your money to double. So I'm just using this as a preface for this public math I'm probably going to embarrass myself doing. But like, let's say you have 500K invested and you expect a 10% return.

It's going to double about every seven years. So like at 35 you have 500K, at 42 you're going to have a million. And then at 49 you're going to have like 2,000,000. And then at 50, God 56, you're going to have it. Won't hold you to it, don't worry. 4 million, yeah. So like a lot of people will just kind of get that initial number and then they'll just let it ride.

Like you don't have to add any more to your investment pile. Once you hit this Coast fine number, you can essentially live paycheck to paycheck. I mean, it's a little bit better because you have this like silent $500,000 nest egg working for you in the background. But a lot of people do the Coast 5 strategy. So like there's just so many different ways to do it. Or Barista 5 is another one where people will, they'll get pretty close to Coast 5, but then they'll like work at Starbucks or like some other place with healthcare.

So they're like making a little bit of money still to live. But they have again, this like silent giant working in the background, compounding slowly year over year, decade over decade. So like there's just so many flavors to fire. There's so many different ways to hit fire. That's why I like to say financial independence is a spectrum. It's not just like this one number. It really depends on you and your preferences.

And that's why personal finance is personal, right? I know Morgan Helzer, you mentioned earlier, he says that he's like personal finance is more personal than it is finance. I love that quote. It's, that's the thing I think is, is most people need to know because for me specifically, like if you look at the, the spectrum of what kind of happened, my mind turned into a, a spectrum just as I, you know, went on in life where like I got married and all the sudden I started to spend a little bit more.

And then after I got married, then we had our first kid and we started to spend more. There's daycare costs, there's all these extra costs you have. Then I spent a little bit more at the second than the third. And then now I just, there's think there's more things I want to do. Like for example, this summer, we're going, you know, to, to travel a lot in Europe and that's like one of our big goals to spend time with kids.

So we can we can do that. And there's like, I'm going to see if that works. If I like that a lot, then my increase, you know, I'm going to spend more as I get, you know, later on down the line. So this is just something where I'm trying to, to get that goal post to stop moving. I don't know if you know, I ever will, but I also don't think I'm ever going to stop working.

That's just one of those areas that I'm that I'm kind of sitting at right now. So if someone's listening to this right now and they're thinking through, well, how do I figure out what my enough number is? A lot of our audience knows like in a 4% rule and, and what that is, but how can they kind of work backwards, especially when it comes to thinking about the future.

We talked about a little bit about inflation and we talked about the future in terms of thinking about what your financial independence number is. How can they kind of think about or start to work towards that number? Is it just utilizing the 4% rule of working backwards or how do you actually think about that? I think one of the biggest misconceptions is how much your dream lifestyle costs and going back to the four hour work week, the book that really changed my life.

I remember Tim Ferriss telling the story about one of his buddies who was a founder and I think he had like a $50 million exit. You know, he, he grinded for 20 years building some software company, had a $50 million exit. And Tim was like, why are you working so hard? The guy's like, so I can do whatever I want. He's like, he's like, like what? He's like travel around Thailand for a year.

Tim's like, you can travel around Thailand for a year for $20,000. Like you don't need a $20 million software exit and to grind at the, you know, expense of your health and your family and your friends. I know this guy was like pushing himself to the limit. So I think a lot of people have this dream life that they idealize, but they don't actually understand how much it costs.

And so when I ask people like, like, what's your financial freedom number? How much you need for your financial independence? So like $10 million, I'm like, OK, why? And then they, like go through the things they want and they're like, well, I really want, I want a private chef. I'm like, OK, like a private chef sounds fancy. You can get a private chef in some places for $1000 a month.

We'll make all your meals. Like they'll come to your house, cook your stuff twice a week, put it in your fridge. Like that's a private chef. And some of them I've seen them as cheap as $1000 a month using the 4% roll. That's what $12,000 a year times 25. That's like an extra 180 K or whatever that you need for your 5 numbers.

So like not that expensive. Some people like I want to fly private. There is like semi private companies now like JSX that are operating on the West Coast. You can get a private, you can literally get in a private jet with 20 other people from like Vegas to LA for like 300 bucks. You don't need $50 million. Or it's some people.

There's just like all these circumstances or travelling is another big one. Like I want to be able to travel the world. It's like I personally have travelled for six months and while I was super frugal at this time, this is back before I hit 5, I spent $9500 in six months of travelling.

And I was like, I mean, I was, yeah, I was, that's incredible. I was slumming it a little bit, but like I did it and I had a lot of fun and we were going out every weekend. Like it wasn't like I just went there and just sat in my room the whole time. I had a great time. It was in Australia. So there's just like, I think there's a lot of misconceptions about what a dream life actually cost. So like something me and my wife did was we just sat down like backs facing each other so that you can't see what the other person is writing.

We just wrote down like our top ten list of the things we value. And we actually redid that pretty recently. And just to make sure that we're still aligned. And it was at the top. It was like travel, it was like fitness. It was like spending time with each other. It was family and so like, if fancy house, if fancy car isn't on there, like then you shouldn't be spending money on it.

Like do this with your spouse. If you're a single, do this by yourself. And if what you write down on that list is not aligned with what your credit card statement or what your bank statement shows, then you going to make some changes. You're going to really figure out what the things are that you value and spend in accordance with those values. So I just did all my like tax work for 2025 and what do you know, it was all like travel and experience stuff at the top of the list.

That's what we spend the most money on. Like, OK, good. We are very aligned. We, we say, we like these things. We say that these are prior priorities and our money is matching that, but I see so many people that are like, you know, this is these are the things I prioritize. But if you look at their calendar, if you look at their bank account, it is. It's very different. How often do you look at that priority list?

Do you kind of re evaluate on a yearly basis and you know, doing it with with your partner? Is that something like you guys kind of sit down once a year and do it or is it something where you kind of done it once and you're just sticking to it now? So doing that exercise, we hadn't done it in a decade, that one specifically, but what we do do every month, we have these like monthly money meetings.

It's kind of nerdy, but we'll sit down and basically we have this. It's not just money meeting, actually, it's like every, everything meeting. I'll, I'll pull up the, the prompts for people who want to copy exactly what we do. We do this every single month. And then we have a big one at the end of the year. We actually just recorded like last week or two weeks ago, our annual video to kind of recap all of 2025.

But at the end of every single month, we kind of just go over a quick little laundry list. So our monthly review meeting, we go over money, real estate, health and fitness, travel, relationships, random and then goals for the next month. So we do that every single month at the end of the month. And it's just so eye opening.

Like if there's something that we're not aligned on or maybe there's like a money or real estate thing that I forgot to tell Lauren and like I'm this is the time where I can fill in that gap. Or if there's something that the other person's doing that's bothering us, whether that's now in our relationship or with money or whatever, it's just it kind of opens the door to conversation.

And that has been incredibly helpful. We've been doing that for a couple years now and that just kind of helps us stay on track with everything. And it's so important. My wife and I do the same thing where we kind of have these conversations in a big kind of goal meeting at the end of the year. But I do like some of your prompts. Some of those I'm going to steal because I think some of those are really especially the goals the next month and kind of going in there because that's, I really like that.

I think that's awesome. If you are trying to get someone on board with financial independence. Maybe it's your spouse. It's my wife and I had a lot of conversations to even kind of think through this process. Do you have any tips for getting somebody on board or is it kind of showing, hey, we can have whatever we want in this life and we have this kind of set up?

How do you kind of think about that and having that conversation with someone? If you're the type of person who's listening to this podcast or watching this interview, you're probably the money nerd in your relationship. And that's exactly who I was. It sounds like that's who you were, Andrew. And so I went spreadsheet first at my wife and I'm like, look, we can retire by the time we're 30.

And she's like, I don't even understand what I'm looking at. So that was the wrong approach. So I think the approach is kind of how luxury vacation companies do it, like sell the destination, not the journey. Don't be like, yeah, we're going to cut down our expenses. We're going to start these hot hustles like be like, imagine if we could just on in random Tuesday, go to the beach.

How awesome would that be? Like sell the destination. That's how you got the other person on board. And then you can kind of, you know, build the plane as, as you start to sell them on the on the experience on the destination. I wouldn't lead with the journey because that's usually boring and people don't want to hear spreadsheets and numbers and compound interest if they're not interested in this stuff, but they might be interested in, Hey, what if we, you know, didn't have to have a boss?

Hey, what if we could spend more time with the kids? Hey, what if we could travel for a month out of the year? And often times that's what gets the person on board. That's exactly what worked with Lauren and And yeah, the spreadsheet first approach unfortunately didn't cut it. It's sales 101, just sell the outcome, not what the actual features are because that's overall what the big thing is.

And I think you have to do that. That's what I did do. I didn't have the same exact mistake where I kind of just threw it all at my wife and I was like, why are we spending on these random things? That's not the way to do it. So make sure you are selling out the outcome overall. So after financial independence, what kind of surprised you most about that life?

Like, I know you have your businesses now and you're able to do what you want, but what kind of surprised you most after you reach financial independence? Were there any surprises that you had in place or you just kind of loving life after that? I think a scary realization. So up until I hit FI, all of my decisions, most of my decisions were guided by money.

Like I'm going to choose this accommodation because it's the most economical. I'm going to choose these sneakers because they're the most economical. I'm going to choose this profession. Like I literally went into finance because I googled how to make a lot of money out of college. That was like everything was just driven by money and guided by money. But now that I have enough money to spend and live comfortably, it's kind of a scary thing where now you can like do anything.

Like if you don't do the thing that you say you're going to do, that is on you. It is nothing to do with money. Like so if you know, if I'm not in the shape I want to be in, if I don't speak the language I want to speak, if I don't play the instrument that I want to play, that's on me. It's not because I don't have time, because I don't because of this job. It's not because I don't want the money.

Like it's kind of scary, but like everything just becomes a you problem and no longer money problem. It's no longer a tie problem. It's a Cody problems. Like if I'm not where I want to be in any fast of my life, I have to really look at myself in the mirror and be like, is this actually a priority? Like, and if I'm saying it's a priority, I need to build the system to like make that happen.

I think that was a huge change. And just like it was kind of a crazy realization, kind of like when you had a first launch, a new adulthood, like you, you know, you leave your house, you maybe go to college, you're like, wait, I can eat whatever I want. I can do whatever I want with my day and I have my parents breathing down my neck. It's kind of like the next level of that. I remember that was such a crazy feeling like that first day going to UMass Amherst and I was like, I can just basically do whatever I want.

Like I don't know, I want to get good grades and I want to, you know, stay focused on my health and relationships and stuff. But like I could just go and do whatever I wanted. It's kind of the same thing when you hit five, like there's there's just no guard rails anymore. So it's kind of all on you. That's a great comparison because that feeling, I think most people will remember that feeling of, you know, the first day of college when you just you're there and all of a sudden it feels like, wow, I could, I could kind of just I'm free.

I could do it. Yeah, exactly, exactly. That's what it feels like. So that's all. That's a great comparison. So before we wrap this up, I want to kind of just ask a bunch of rapid fire questions. We ask a lot of guests these and these are just kind of fun to to kind of think through. So first one is what is the best Money Advice you've ever received?

Let's. See if I can just pick one piece of Money Advice. I'm going to not call it advice because I, I didn't get it wasn't advice, but it wasn't a book. I, I think I'm going to go back to the your time and your money don't have to be linearly related like that.

Just one foundation of principle completely changed my life. I like owe everything to that book and just that whole ideology. If not, I might still be working in corporate finance making $75.00 an hour, but like I'm still trading all of my hours for dollars and I was able to escape that because this one mantra.

It'll change your life once you realize that the second one is what is the best book you've read over the last year? Over the last year, can I count a reread? Sure. OK, because I am the type of person I know you do a book a week. Yep. I am more the type of person who will kind of I'll love a book and then I'll reread it a couple years later to see if it like changed me or see if I receive it differently.

You know, because you're like I'm in different points in my life like I I reread the four hour work week. That's not my answer, but like I there was so many things that I picked up on 10 years later that I didn't pick up on the first time I read it. So it's just like super eye opening. But the one for me actually, you mentioned earlier was psychology and money. Another really good one was Sahil Bloom's five types of wealth.

Both of those are kind of similar ish and like the the things that you learn about money and just like psychology and ideology and all that stuff. And yeah, those, those two books were really good. I'm, I'm less inclined to read like a tactics driven finance book nowadays and more like a psychology driven finance book.

Like I said, personal finance is more the personal than the finance. So that type of stuff, especially as the numbers start to get bigger and like these things start to compound and the goal posts keep moving, sometimes farther than I want them to. I'm in the same boat as you. I'm like, OK, I got to ground myself and be like, OK, as you know, it's pretty good. Like I got to, I got to work on the psychology piece, not the money piece.

A. 100% I think that's the the big thing too is for, for those out there, if there are books that have, because I do this too, if there are books out there that have had a huge impact on you, I go back and read like that. One of my favorites originally was The Millionaire Next Door. And I went back and read it like later on down the line. And I just keep like finding stuff that I like in there.

The same thing for business books and everything else too. You'll be in a different place in your business, for example, and you can kind of go back and read those books and there's a lot more things that maybe apply now than they didn't, you know, they maybe they didn't apply back in the day. So it's a really cool way to kind of think about that. So if you could change one thing or One Financial decision that you ever made throughout your entire timeline, would there be one that you would change or would you kind of just have your journey exactly the same as it was?

I was very fortunate. My journey was pretty smooth because I learned these things so early on. The one thing I probably wouldn't do when I was in my junior year of high school, I spent all of my money to buy this like Volvo S40 with the sports package. I like a spoiler on my car.

I literally spent every dollar I had. I probably wouldn't. I didn't need that car and I would go back and just get like some crappy car that gets me from point A to point B. It was only $12,000, but like $12,000 to a 17 year old. Like that was all my money. I'd spent years working to get that. So that's probably the one.

Again, it's not like a huge financial mistake because I was so fortunate to learn this stuff when I was like 19 years old. But yeah, I'd probably to something a little more economical. Absolutely. That's, that's one. I think a lot of us probably have some stuff when we were younger. I, I remember like one of the things that I did is when I was 19, I, I read this like investment newsletter and it was talking about this penny stock was going to go to the moon.

And I, this is before I understood index funds and I went and bought this penny stock and lost all my money in one day. And it was a whole ordeal. So, so awesome. And then the last question I have, and this is my favorite question, is what does wealth mean to you? Wealth to me is spending my days doing what I want, when I want, with who I want.

Like that's the ultimate form of. Wealth. It absolutely is. Well, Cody, thank you so much for coming here today and I truly, truly appreciate you being here. Tell us all about South. Cody has a new book coming out, which we'll talk on the intro too. But Cody has a new book coming out. So talk about your book and talk about where people can listen to your podcast and everything else you have going on.

Yeah, so book is called retire by 30 fitting title. And so I want even if you're not, if you, if you're 50 years old watching this, like this, this doesn't exclude include you from it's basically, if I had to name it something less flat flashy would be hit financial independence as soon as humanly possible and then do whatever you want. But that doesn't have quite the same ring to it.

So retired by 30 is the name of the book you can get at retired by 30 book.com or wherever you buy your books. Financial independence show is the name of my podcast. Been running that since 2018. We have hundreds of episodes with different guests covering a whole sorts of different topics, all about how you can reach financial independence in a whole bunch of different ways.

And yeah, Cody D Berman everywhere on social media is where you can find me and follow me and give me a shout out. Let me know if you enjoyed this episode. If you met me through Andrew, that'll be really cool. And yeah, thank you for having me man. This is awesome. Absolutely. Thank you so much for being here. And Cody's going to come back in town next year, so we're going to have him back again.

So we'll definitely do that. And really, really excited for that. So thank you again for being here. We really appreciate it.