Why you NEED a Financial Independence Bucket List With Justin Peters

Transcript:

On this episode of the Personal Finance Podcast, how to create a Financial Independence bucket List and take many retirements.

What's up everybody, and welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. I'm your host Andrew, founder of a Master Money Co, and today on the Personal Finance Podcast. We're joined by Justin Peters to talk about financial independence. If you guys have any questions, make sure you join that Master Money newsletter by going to master money.co/newsletter, and also follow us on Spotify, apple Podcast, YouTube, or whatever your favorite podcast player is.

And if you're getting value out of the show, consider leaving a five star rating and review on Apple Podcast, Spotify, or your favorite podcast player. So today we have Justin Peters on the show, and Justin is the host of the Phi Minded Podcast, a podcast that I have been on a few times already. So if you haven't checked out those episodes, I highly encourage you to do so.

But Justin is coming on today and is one of my favorite people in the podcasting industry. Justin and I are gonna be talking. Through things like a financial bucket list and how you can create a bucket list and still achieve things that you want to be doing while on the path to financial independence.

We're gonna talk through how to take many retirements and why, if you feel like you're getting burned out, how you can plan yourself a mini retirement to give yourself a break. We're gonna talk through how you can do that. We're gonna go through how to gamify savings in some ways that you can trick yourself into saving more and or just.

Gamify the process of savings. In addition, we're gonna talk about how to create a financial independence Flex Schedule, a five flex schedule allows you to create flexibility in your schedule so that you can do the things that you love. And this is gonna be an episode. I am really, really excited for you guys to hear.

We're gonna have Justin on this podcast more because we love to talk about financial independence here. So without further ado, I want you to welcome Justin to the Personal Finance Podcast. So Justin, welcome to the Personal Finance Podcast. Andrew, man, I am so stoked to be here. Thanks for inviting me on.

I'm excited to talk about what we're gonna talk about today. Absolutely. We are really pumped to have you here as well, and we're gonna be talking about financial independence today, and I know a lot of our audience members are really, really interested in this topic, so I'm excited to dive into some of this.

But before we do that, can you tell us a little bit about yourself and what you do? Yeah. Uh, I talk about personal finance and money all day long. I have a podcast called Phi Minded. I just rebranded it and you're actually gonna be the very first episode of the new rebranded show, which is awesome. Um, but long story short, I essentially found financial independence maybe seven or eight years ago.

Uh, slipped into it mostly from the sense of like, I recognized I didn't wanna be working, or at least. Being forced to work the rest of my life. And slowly over time got better and better at this. And then I saw the power of financial independence for myself and I wanted to start helping other people with it.

And that's when I got into, uh, podcasting. It's so fun when you kind of have that moment in time where you realize how cool financial independence is and how you go back and you can start to buy your time. And I think that realization is. That light bulb moment is what I always call it, is one of those things that you just always remember kind of that point in time and where you were and kind of what you were doing at that time.

Um, and I think that was huge for me as well. But you have this really cool system and the way that you approach financial independence is also very cool. And one thing that you have is called the financial independence bucket list. So can you tell me about that bucket list and kind of some specific items that you've included in that?

Yeah, and taking a step back from that too, I should have put a preface on this. I love financial independence, but I also want to enjoy my life now too, and I definitely fell into the victim trap early on of just depleting everything, being super frugal and recognizing that after a couple of years of really pursuing financial independence and this kind of mentality, it wasn't gotta be sustainable for me.

So slowly over time, I decided how can I insert a lot of fun into financial independence and not just like. Post reaching my fire number, but also like throughout the entire journey too. And one of the concepts that came about while I was doing some brainstorming on that is this financial independence bucket list or five bucket list.

It's very similar to a, a normal bucket list, you know, coming from the. The phrase, you know, kicking the bucket, what do you wanna do before you kick the bucket? And people make these like really cool list of all the different things they wanna do. And I wanted to take that concept, but put it into the PHI world and essentially how does this apply to my PHI journey?

And not only like what do I wanna do post reaching financial independence, but whatever some of these things on this list that I can start applying. To my everyday as well. You know, a lot of things on my list personally don't cost a lot of money. I mean, there are some things, of course there are places I wanna go and things that I wanna buy and and whatnot, but like so much of what was on my list or what I was un uncovering on my list was attainable without any additional money, but more so just some flexibility and freedom.

I think that is, uh, one of the most refreshing parts about kind of your approach to financial independence is I was the same way in my twenties. A lot of times I was really frugal once I discovered financial independence, I was a huge proponent of like Mr. Money mustache way back in the day. And I'd read every single one of his blog posts.

I'm like, yeah, I'm gonna live on $25,000 a year too. Uh, and it was one of those. Things where I got so excited about it, then I brought it to my wife and she was not so excited to live that frugally. Uh, and so it was one of those things that we had to kind of find a balance. And over time my expenses had kind of grown over time and I realized pretty quickly that instead I wanna spend more on the things that I love and make sure that I help and prioritize that as well.

And so the five bucket list is definitely something I think that a lot of people can look at and take that approach on as well. So what are some of the must have items to include in your five bucket list? Or what are some things that you add to that? Yeah. And uh, I created the five bucket list because I was so tired of people asking me, you know, whenever you get into the financial independence movement and you start telling people that aren't in this movement, um, that you're gonna maybe retire in your thirties or your forties, the question I always get is like, well, what do you gotta do with your time?

And the first couple of times I heard that, I kind of dismissed it. I was like, don't worry. I'm too Type A, I will figure out things that I wanna do. But then I was like. Actually, that's a really great question. What do I want to do with my time? And I started creating this bucket list. I have a couple of different broad categories, um, places I want to go.

That one's really obvious. I like to travel. Uh, my girlfriend really loves to travel, so she definitely boosters, uh, this category for me. And we have a lot of different things. I actually got to cross out one last year, which was Tokyo. Tokyo was on my short list. I really wanted to go and, uh, we actually ended up.

Putting the money aside and making the trip out to Tokyo, which was great. So places I wanna go, then there are things that I wanna do. These are your more typical bucket list type things. Uh, it could be like run a marathon or see Machu Picchu, whatever. One that is on my list, uh, that I'm really excited to eventually do is read all seven Harry Potter books.

I don't know why I have read a half of the fourth one like that is all I've read. I like the movies, I enjoy them and I, for some reason it just like landed on my Phi bucket list at some point in time. I was like, you know what, I'm gonna read the Harry Potter books. Like whenever I get time to read now it's usually personal finance or, or business related books.

But I wanna, I, as I get closer and closer to financial independence, start just reading for fun. And for some reason I think the Harry Potter series would really jumpstart that. So that's another big one that's out there. And the last, um, kind of general category that I have is habits or just like the, I have in parentheses every day.

And this one came through a lot of conversations and it wasn't as tangible as like, go to Tokyo or read the Harry Potter books, but more so like, how do I want to embody and live every single day? So one thing that has been on that list for a little while is I wanna be outside more and in front of a computer screen less, and.

Over time, I have started to really focus on a couple of these habits. These are the things that usually don't cost me a whole lot of money, but I just want like my life to be centered around them. So like now I have a rule where if it's 70 or 80 degrees outside and sunny, I wanna be off work by three 30.

Like, that's just like a hard rule for me. Like I can always come back to work at seven 30 or eight whenever it starts getting dark. Don't worry, but like I'm gonna go enjoy four or five hours of the, the awesome weather if that's the case. And luckily, Austin has been giving me tons of that recently, and I've been benefiting a lot from it.

I love that. I think that is such a cool idea, is to kind of have all these different types of things on your bucket list. Now, first of all, I think a lot of us listening wanna travel. We have a ton of audience members who love traveling. We talk about travel hacking a lot and some cool things that you can do there.

And I think for me, that's a big one for me specifically as well is kind of thinking through, um, some of the things that I want on my bucket list is to travel a lot more. And I think that's gonna be a big one, um, coming up for sure. But I love the idea of kind of how you integrate some of these other different areas.

Things like habits for example. That's a, an amazing thing to go out and do a, you're gonna, you know, feel so much more refreshed to, you know, go outside and, and spend more time in sunlight. Like, for example, that's something I need to do more. I'm sitting in a studio right now with all the windows blocked off and I'm like in darkness half the time.

Uh, and so it's one of those things that I think is just so incredibly powerful and I love how you kind of balance that now. When you have all these things on your list or when you have these items on your list, how do you balance being able to chase after some of those things? And then how do you balance also saving for financial independence in the future?

So obviously some of the things on your list are free, like the last example. But outside of that, if you wanted to go travel more, how do you balance those two things? Yeah, I think that's the million dollar question right there, or the crux of a lot of what I, I like to talk about and I think it can be challenging, but prioritizing, like right, last year we knew Tokyo was gonna be expensive, at least the flights, although it was way cheaper than we were expecting, um, the US dollar versus the Japanese Yen right now has saved us a whole lot, but.

At the beginning of the year, we knew that we wanted to allocate a certain amount of money to crossing this bucket list item off of our list, and we set that aside and we knew. Outside of that, we were maxing out our 4 0 1 Ks, our IRAs, we were doing all the things so that we wanted to give ourselves the permission to spend some money now and enjoy the current moments, but also we were taking care of ourself.

And I think we can get into the habit, especially the super srs out there of recognizing that it isn't necessarily always about just how do I max out all of my accounts and get as much money as I can into some of my investments. But if you intentionally take a step back at the beginning of the year, look at your list and be like, what are some of the.

Monetary items on this list that I really wanna prioritize. I think that helps me at least kind of relieve or get relieved with the fact that, okay, I'm gonna be spending a little bit of money, but they're intentionally spending this money on the things that I've been wanting to do for a very long time Now.

Absolutely. And I think it's almost one of those things. A lot of times when I create these lists, I will prioritize them from like most important to least important when I have most important up there. Sometimes the most important thing is actually a pretty expensive item. Yeah. And if it's one of those things where like say you wanna travel to multiple countries all in one big trip, if you wanna do something like that and it's gonna cost you, I don't know, seven, $10,000, 'cause you're gonna go for multiple months or weeks, whatever else, if you wanna do something like that, it's worth the time and the energy to start saving for it now, even if it's a.

Big, huge goal, just start putting dollars towards that big, huge goal. 'cause you're gonna be so surprised at how fast you can actually achieve that goal, even if you just automate it over time. Uh, that's one of my favorite things to do. And then outside of that, uh, you can start to go, you know, check other things off your list as well.

So is this something that you kind of keep, uh, in a, like a Google doc or how do you kind of organize all of this? It's a note in my phone. Um, so anytime an idea comes to me, I just quickly open up my note and throw it into the sheet. And then once again, at the beginning of the year, I typically open that up and I highlight a couple of things or bring some things to the top and I'm like, these are the ones that I really wanna focus on or prioritize this year.

Awesome. What advice would you give someone who is just starting to create their own financial independence bucket list? Is there any way or thought process you have for this or frameworks that you can kind of give as tips for that? Yeah, I think, uh, I mean, I loved how I started, which was just opening up a note in my phone.

And over the course of the year as ideas came by, I just added them. I didn't really try to scrutinize them at all. Like I wasn't saying no. I was really just like creating the list and getting the master list put together. And then over time, you know, categories started to emerge, priorities started to take place.

And some years I just crossed things off. I'm like, ah. I thought I wanted to do that. Like I was, I really wanted to brew my own beer at some point in time, but now I hardly drink anymore, so I'm like, ah, I, I don't know, it doesn't like resonate the same for me, which I think is totally fine. So you can move and shift things as your own life changes.

Um, but yeah, I think just don't overthink it and, um, figure out whatever method makes sense for you to capture ideas and put a, you know, quarterly or annual reminder on your calendar just to check the list and start to prioritize a couple of things on your list. I love that. And I actually, before, you know, I, I don't drink much anymore either, but when I used to drink a little more, when I was younger, I used to try to brew beer.

Yeah. And uh, when I did that, the first couple of times I messed up like five batches in a row. I just completely quit. So I was like, I'm done this after that. But that's one of those things for sure. It's supposed to be super easy and for some reason I couldn't figure it out. But it's one of those things, uh, I love those ideas.

It's just kind of coming up with some really cool activities that you're interested in. Um, and then just kind of going after it is, is the best way to do this. Now I wanna shift gears slightly here because you have a really cool. Concept that I absolutely love for a lot of people, which is taking many retirements.

And I think many retirements are something that most people probably have never even thought of. Uh, if you've never heard of this before, and it's something where you did this, you took a seven month mini retirement, and so what kind of inspired you to do that? And then what did you do during that time and how did it change your perspective of financial independence as well?

I would love to sit here and tell you that the inspiration was positive inspiration, but if I'm being honest with you, I took a sabbatical at the end of 2019 and mostly through just being burnt out. I was 27 at the time. I'd been working, I. Pretty much full time since I was 15, like even through, uh, high school and college, spring break, summer breaks, weekends, I was trying to fill as much time as I could towards working, and I recognized going into my mid twenties, I was feeling burnt out and on top of.

Just being overworked from hours. I wasn't doing work that really felt purposeful or aligned either, but I wasn't sure, like I was so exhausted every day coming home and I just like wasn't sure what I wanted to change into. And the thought of like having to start applying for jobs and looking for new jobs at this time felt overwhelming and I was having an amazing conversation with somebody.

I was doing some career exploration. I thought I might wanna do career coaching, so I called up a career coach and he actually flipped the script on me and just started like actually being a career coach to me. And it was like, Hey Justin, you've been telling me about this money that you saved and that you're unsure what you wanna do.

Like why don't you just. Take some time off. And that felt like such a novel idea. Uh, especially someone in their mid twenties, but definitely somebody that has grown up in a frugal household where his father was always telling him like, you gotta work, you gotta provide, you gotta be a sense of society, whatever.

And I was like, wow. It took me about three months to really act on some of that, um, advice that he gave me, and I was like, you know what? That's actually a really great idea. So I ended up leaving my job, creating a self-made sabbatical for myself, and I had a ton of things planned. This started January, 2020 and of course, you can tell how a seven month sabbatical has got a turn out in, in 2020.

Covid kind of wrecked havoc on a lot of it and canceled a bunch of plans for me, but. It was the best decision I ever had. I reentered the workforce with way more clarity. I started a passion project, which was a podcast, which turned into now a business and a career of mine. Uh, it was the best thing that I ever did, and I highly encourage people to do it in their own life too.

This is why I love talking about money so much, and this is why personal finance is so powerful, is because you were in a job, you were getting burned out, you were working really, really hard, and then all of a sudden you had this tool that was sitting there that you could actually go out and utilize to buy back your freedom.

Take that break, refresh and figure out exactly what you want to do. And this is why I love talking about personal finance so much. 'cause it is so incredibly powerful what you can do with your money and it gives you so many cool options and optionality and flexibility is why. We talk about financial independence so much and why you can do some of this stuff.

If someone is considering doing a mini retirement, maybe they're working right now and they're getting burned out, or maybe they just want some time to themselves to kind of focus on doing something interesting, or maybe they wanna go travel or whatever else it could be, what would you recommend to them to make it somewhat of a fulfilling experience?

Yeah, I'll definitely answer that question, but just to add on to what you were just saying there too, I wanna remind people that all the investing, the savings for your retirement, for your future self can also be applied to your future self tomorrow, not your future self at 65. Um, for me personally, looking back on it now, I'm so glad that I took that break.

I. And I wasn't saving and investing for my future self during that sabbatical. I just didn't have income coming in, so I wasn't prioritizing that. But I would much rather have taken those seven months off now than take those seven months in addition to whatever I'm gonna be doing in full retirement, you know, in my sixties, seventies, and eighties.

I think it's really important to remind people that all that work that you're doing with your money now, you can deploy that at any point in time. And of course, you need to set yourself up financially in order to do that. But if you're feeling burnt out, if you're feeling overwhelmed. Don't be afraid to take a mini retirement of any capacity at minimum.

Like maybe going and asking your employer for two or three or four weeks off and truly taking just a little retirement or a sabbatical, I think is super important. But if I were to kind of walk it back and. Talk about the practical, the how. Um, first, I mean, I'm so focused on money and so type A that I didn't wanna set myself up or sabotage myself and like be forced to like come back into work, uh, early because I ran outta money.

So I would be looking at your finances and putting aside a certain amount of money for that time. I actually spent way less money than I was expecting to spend. Part of that was Covid, uh, and I just wasn't able to do all the things that I wanted to do. But part of that was also just like. The things you recognize that you spend money on, like convenience, food or terrible times to take a flight, but you have to get back on a Sunday night in order to start working again on a Monday.

A lot of those things like kind of came off my plate whenever I was taking my sabbatical and I could take the cheap Tuesday afternoon flight instead of the expensive Sunday flight. So actually I ended up spending $11,000 total throughout this sabbatical in terms of how much money I made versus how much money that I spent.

And I did make a little extra money just 'cause. I was available and like random projects came up, like a speaker was in town and they needed a live audience and they were paying like $500 for you to go to this and be a, a participant in the live audience for a day. That I would've never said yes to that whenever I was working full-time, but I was kind of bored 'cause it was, you know, coming outta Covid and I was like, sure, I'll go sit in an audience.

And it was a speaker that I really liked. So. First thing, first, take care of the money side. Make sure that you have enough set aside that you feel really comfortable with that. And then second, really be thinking about what's my intention behind this mini retirement? Is it to take a step back and just.

Decompress and live a little bit slower and get rejuvenated, or is it to explore a new interest or hobby? Like for me, podcasting was super important. I've always wanted to start a podcast, but I was just too tired to do it after work hours. So starting my, my sabbatical with a project in mind and knowing I wanted to put a lot of focus into that was really important.

It could be travel or it could be some of the things on your five bucket list too. Maybe your intention is to set work aside entirely and start crossing off a couple of things that you really wanna focus on, because maybe you are soon to be a parent and you wanna make sure that you can spend six months prior to becoming a parent, doing some traveling, because it's gotta be a little bit harder.

So I think setting some intentionality before you go into your mini retirement will be really important. So you don't just. Flounder and waste your time, and then six months later you're like, oh shoot. Like I had all this time off, but it wasn't really how I wanted to spend my time off. And when it comes to the, the tactical side of this, so when you're thinking about, you know, taking a mini retirement, you wanna go through this process and you kind of mapped out some of the things that you wanna do, how would you recommend people kind of work backwards when they're looking at the financial side?

So would you say, Hey, just save X amount of dollars, um, that you, you know, whatever you spend every single month, would you save. That amount of money for the amount of months that you wanna work, would you give yourself an extra cushion or how would you personally think about that? I personally would give myself an extra cushion.

I, I think you never know. I was looking for employment in late summer of 2020, and that is when there was a ton of layoffs and everybody was looking for a job. So I was really taking a six month sabbatical and ended up being seven just because it took me a little bit longer to find a job. So I'd definitely add a little bit of cushion just for that reason.

Or if things are just going great and you wanna extend to have that option there I think is great. I would definitely think about what's my monthly expenses currently, and then what are some of the big ticket items. If you're gonna do some traveling, just add that in from a a tactical standpoint, add that into your budget for your menu retirement.

And then on top of that, maybe you're saving some money leading up to your menu retirement, but you can do some other things like turn off your auto dividend reinvestments, and then you can have some dividend income coming in from your taxable accounts throughout your mini retirement that will kind of pad or cushion some of the money that you've already set aside.

Absolutely. I love those ideas, and I think there's a lot of really, really cool things you could do even while you're taking your mini retirement. If there's stuff in your house, you got a little time, if there's stuff in your house that you don't utilize anymore, start selling that stuff and you can kind of get it outta your house declutter, especially if you're looking to kind of minimize some of the possessions that you have in your house and those types of things as well.

Now. Are there any creative mini retirement ideas that you have? Like, have you ever, ever seen anybody kind of doing this consistently every couple of years, or have you seen this be something where people will kind of do this, you know, on a yearly basis? Or what are some of your thought processes on that?

Yes. Um, actually whenever I was taking my sabbatical, I was truly calling it a sabbatical. At that time, I didn't have the concept of many retirement in my head yet until I interviewed Jillian Johns Redd, and she was the one that kind of. Put these words into my mouth around mini retirements, and she's a great poster child.

I think she's like maybe in her forties or something, been pursuing financial independence for like 20 years and she's taken 12 mini retirements throughout that time. Like every year or two, she's like intentionally taking retirement and they've. Been for completely different reasons. I think her most recent, if I'm remembering right, is she really wanted to redesign her backyard and she lives on a couple of acres, so she wanted to have an orage back there and some gardening and a bunch of different things, and she just wanted to like take a couple of months off to really prioritize on building out that entire backyard.

She's also wanted to do. National Park tour and go to all the national parks with her and her family. So she did a mini retirement on that. And then I know her husband took a mini retirement because I think he wanted to get into like automotive repair, but he needed to go back to school to learn some of those skills.

So he just took some time off, went back to school. He could a hundred percent. Focus on getting the certificate or this degree that he needed in order to step into this new career. So it's like three totally different concepts around a mini retirement and she's done them all, which is super cool. And that's the other cool thing about being able to do some of this kind of stuff.

If you have, you know, someone who you're married to or you have a spouse. In your life or someone you live with and you kind of share the bills. Like one of you can take a mini retirement while the other one's still working and there's income coming in, and kind of reverse it if you want to, if you're not doing specific activities where you both need to take that mini retirement.

So there's a lot of cool options here that I think a lot of people have if they want to kind of branch out and get creative with this. The cool thing about personal finance, this is why I love financial independence, is it's really creative. And so there's so many people out there who kind of create flexibility in their life and they can do so many great things, uh, with their money, buying back their time.

Even geo arbitrage comes in a lot with many retirements. Like maybe you do like traveling is your focus, your intention for your many retirement, and you going to stay over in Asia for six months. Probably gotta drastically reduce your cost or your expenses on a monthly basis too. So I almost see people like pairing up really cool, like personal finance tactics, like geo arbitrage with something like a mini retirement.

And then maybe they only need to save like 50% of what they were expecting to save versus like a hundred percent if they were to take that time off in the us. I love that and I think that's another great idea. I remember like back, you know, 10 or so years ago, a lot of people would go to Thailand for example.

'cause the exchange rate was such a drastic exchange rate between the dollar. And so you could live on so much cheaper there than you could, you know, in the us. And so people would go there, they would start, you know, online businesses or things like that as well, uh, just to see if it would work. And it was a really cool concept I think that a lot of people, uh, would be able to go out and do.

So. I love the thought process there, and I think there's so many cool things that you can do. Uh, it gives you flexibility now. There's another concept that you talk about called basically gamifying savings. And I love thinking through this a little bit too, because I think a lot of people kind of think of savings as something boring.

They're just putting money into, you know, their retirement accounts or their saving and their emergency fund, but they don't think of a way to kind of make this motivating and interesting to them. So how can people kind of a reward themselves along the way when they're trying to reach their financial independence goals?

This has been a huge one, a powerful one in Androgen Cola's words for really making financial independence achievable and fun is gamifying the process. Like who doesn't love a game? And I think this one really stuck with me whenever I interviewed Justin Brown Woods from price of Avocado Toast. He is a former teacher and he uses a lot of gamification in his classroom to teach ideas.

And that really stuck with me and I started figuring out how do I gamify my. Own financial independence journey and to make this more fun and exciting. I mean, the concept's simple. I think, uh, figure out what are you trying to get to? Is it a debt payoff number? Is it a financial independence number?

Whatever it may be. It could be even like saving for a down payment or a new car or something and break that up. I like to break it up in like 10 different. Milestones. And then throughout that process, reward yourself whenever you're hitting each of those milestones. So maybe you're trying to reach financial independence, you wanna get to a million dollars and every a hundred thousand you reward yourself and you dictate the reward.

Maybe you look at your five bucket list and you pick. 10 things off that list and you're gonna say, okay, every time I hit a new a hundred thousand dollars mark in my net worth, I'm gonna cross off one of these big bucket list items. I'm gonna go take that vacation over to Tokyo, or I'm gonna invest in this course that I've always wanted to take, et cetera.

So I think there are tons of different ways that you can gamify it. And I'm one that I'm doing currently, which I find really fine, is I force myself for every $10 that I save, intentionally spending one of those dollars too. So like, if. This month I'm netting a thousand dollars and you know, 900 of that has gotta go into my IRA, I have to spend a hundred of it on something else.

And right now I, like a true nineties boy, I am back into collecting Pokemon cards. So I just essentially go and blow it on, buy new Pokemon cards. But it's been so fun at the end of every month to like start to reconcile all my expenses and be like, Ooh, how much do I get to spend this month? I love that.

And I think that's one of those things, if you're someone like how Justin and I probably are when we were, you know, early twenties and we are really frugal and you have a hard time spending money, that's a great way to kind of look at that too, um, is to kind of force yourself to spend money so you get more comfortable with it.

'cause spending money is a skill and if you can start to develop that skill over time and start to spend those dollars on things that you value, it'll absolutely change the way that you see money going forward, which I love. So that's absolutely amazing. Now you have another game called the Save and Match game.

What is that about? Tell me about that more. Yeah, I think that was a little bit of what I was talking about, um, from the, the spending piece to it. Okay. But you could flip it too, like you kinda have to know or recognize who you are. Are you the frugal light, the super saver? Are you the spender? And whichever you are, kind of apply the opposite or the inverse.

So for me, once again, like you were saying, I. Grew up really frugal. I really have a hard time spending money on things that I find are more like once than they are needs. So I did this forced like, okay, for every $9 that I save, the next dollar has to be spent. You could do the opposite though. You know, do a save and match.

So for every $50 that you spend, maybe you are the spender. So you go out, you go shopping, you spend $50, take another $50 and put it into investing or saving for your future. I love that. I think that's the, that's the absolute way to kind of look at this. And we even talk about this all the time where we want you kind of spending in a certain range for your things that are your necessities.

And we want you to save and invest at least 20% plus on your income, but then we want the rest of those dollars to be spent on things that you absolutely love. And if you can get your income high enough and get your, you know, necessities low enough, you can really spend a lot of money on things that you absolutely love.

And it's just figuring out that game and kind of that adjustment based on your budget and how much you spend every single month. So. How does pairing rewards with your FI bucket list kind of, is that something that you do is when you're, say for example, you wanna save that million dollars and you hit your first a hundred thousand, would you kind of take something off your FI bucket list and look at that and say, Hey, I want to go on the vacation that's at the top of my list, or how would you kind of think about pairing those two together?

A hundred percent. This is why I think all three of these concepts that we talked about around mini retirement, gamification and the five bucket list, they can kind of work interchangeably, and I think it's super powerful in that sense. But yeah, I think your five bucket list can be your reward system. I think you should be prioritizing the things that you're adding to that five bucket list.

So if you're doing the Save and Match program, then maybe you are like for every dollar that you spend on eating out or for clothes or whatever, you put a dollar. Into your Tokyo bucket, and whenever you start, you finally reach that number, go and spend or go and actually take that trip. So I definitely think you should be pairing up the five bucket list with your gamification process.

I love that. Now I wanna shift gears here to another thing that you talk about, which is the five flex schedule. And I think this is one, it's along the same exact lines of what we've been talking about thus far, but I think this is something else where people probably have not thought about this a ton, where it can kind of creatively create gaps in space within your schedule, so you don't feel like you're just burning yourself out all the time.

So can you kind of explain what the five flex schedule is and how people can build more freedom in their work week before reaching full financial independence? Yeah. Whenever I ask people like the reason why they wanna hit a certain net worth number, or why they're so focused on saving and investing for their future self, I hear two F words and it's not Ferrari like Ferrari never comes up.

They don't wanna buy a nice, expensive car. I almost always hear freedom. And flexibility. Those are the two things that I hear people are, they want to accumulate enough money so that optionality becomes super apparent to them and they're not forced into a certain job. They're not forced into a certain work schedule, et cetera.

So. I think as you are getting closer and closer to financial independence, you should start to adopt a five flex schedule. And what I mean by this is, once again, that habit section on my five bucket list, those things should start to become more and more clear and more and more evident. In your daily life, and that's why I put this like three 30, uh, rule on my calendar where I have to go outside at three 30 if it's a nice day out, is because one of the habits that I wanted to do was spend more time outside and I love going outside when it's a nice sunny day out, and I'm like, why do I need a wait?

Until post financial independence, how can I start to embed some of that into my current schedule? Like there's nothing holding me back. I very rarely have meetings after three 30 most days, unless I'm working with someone on the East Coast or somewhere else. So what's holding me back from like doing that last hour or two of work right now versus I.

Eight or nine o'clock or just tomorrow, in all honesty. Um, so I like to be thinking through like what is your ideal day look like If money wasn't an issue, like if you didn't have to work, if you didn't need to show up to that nine to five, now let's start to reverse engineer that and figure out throughout this process, how can we start to add more of that into your day to day.

So it could be a silly rule like mine where you're off at three 30 if it's a nice day. Uh, maybe you're somebody that. Doesn't like to do meetings a lot. So you do no meetings before 10:00 AM or Meetingless Mondays, like that could be something that you try to add in or like you don't have to work full time, but you still wanna work a little bit.

Can you negotiate from a five day to a four day or three day, like I think starting to think through what your ideal day or week or month looks like whenever you are in your retirement stage. How can you start to add some of those things right now as you're pursuing financial independence? I completely agree, and I do this exercise quarterly, so I go every single quarter and I will go back and look at what is my ideal day, what exactly would I do if I had a perfect day?

Maybe it's being productive and sometimes I'll do it on a workday, and I'll do it on a weekend and I'll pull out a piece of paper and I will go through and actually map out my exact perfect day. And then I will go back because I do my goals quarterly. I do 'em every 12 weeks. And I'll go back and look at my goals every single month and I will say, how can I make sure that my goals are going towards this perfect day?

And so I go and I will look at that every single quarter. 'cause this is so incredibly important, I think, is to create that flexibility. And so a lot of rules have come out of just doing this exercise. For example, like what you were just talking about, I take zero meetings typically, except for on Mondays before noon.

And the reason I do that is because that's my most productive time. And so for me specifically, I wanna make sure I can do all of my deep work before that timeframe. A lot of other things came outta that as well, like making sure that when I am done with work later on in the day and that gap where I'm spending time with my kids, I just do not have any, you know, electronics or anything around me during that timeframe because I wanna be present.

And there's a lot of different things that kind of, uh, have developed over that timeframe even when it comes to health and fitness. I wanted to prioritize health and fitness and make sure it is. One of my top priorities. So what does that look like? When can I do that? What are some timeframes? I can do that?

And so I try to integrate all of that into this to make sure you have the time available for this. And that's what I love about flex scheduling. As well is because if you wanna take time for yourself or you wanna have some flexibility, you can do that, you can map it out. Uh, but it's just kind of being intentional when it comes to this.

So what are some boundaries that you set? Are there specific boundaries that you set for yourself when it comes to flex scheduling? And what are some thoughts or things that you have, uh, surrounding that, and how has it impacted your productivity as well? Yeah, I mentioned the no meetings before 10:00 AM That's definitely something I do My best deep work is before 10:00 AM I usually about seven to 10 ish.

I like to be focused on that one or two important projects that I really gotta move the needle. Um, so that's an important boundary for me. The three 30 nice day rule is a big boundary of mine. I try. Not to do anything on Sunday that I wouldn't wanna do, like just for fun. So if there's like a project, I'm really exci and I've just been itching to get into it, I'll work on it on on a Sunday.

But I do nothing. I don't schedule any meetings. I don't really even schedule anything with friends on Sunday. Like I just wanna like wake up on a Sunday and whatever I'm feeling like doing is what I wanna do that day. And sometimes it is hang out with friends. It's sometimes it is a project that I've like really been itching to do, but I.

Couldn't make time for it, uh, this week. But yeah, my Sunday free day is a huge goal of mine and it just helps level set and get me right for Monday morning. And then I, I go hard again on Monday morning 'cause I'm like usually ready to, to start working again. Now, if somebody wants more flexibility in their schedule, maybe they wanna just have more time for themselves or maybe they want a day where they can focus on productivity or maybe it's a side hustle or something else.

How can they negotiate this? What are some things they could do? Could they negotiate a four day work week with their boss? Could they negotiate working from home, or what are your thoughts on that, on how they could maybe create more flexibility in their schedule if they're working a hard nine to five right now?

I think both of those suggestions that you just mentioned there, the four day work week or a work from home day, if that's important to you. Um, it could be the, the no meetings before 10 and you know, I, whenever I was working, I let my boss know this and she's like, yeah, that totally makes sense for me.

I'd much rather you like focus on the needle moving projects than be at meetings. So if you wanna block your calendar. Prior to 10. Cool. As long as like if anything urgent comes up, I can reach out to you during that time. That's great. So I think most bosses would be pretty receptive to this. If you have a logical, um, argument for it and you're a top performer, and it probably goes hand in hand with your plan for negotiating a raise, you can negotiate other things, not just monetary things, but negotiate other things.

So if they pair that with your process for negotiating a raise, but instead they negotiate. A work from home policy or a four day work week, you know, proving that you're a top performer and that you can still get your things done in the boundaries that you set, and demonstrating why these new boundaries that you are setting are going to improve your productivity.

It's an easy yes for me as a manager, I. Absolutely. And I think that's one of those things that a lot of managers will look at that and be able to kind of see that outcome, and especially if they're, they're looking at this in a logical way, um, and be able to do that. I have a, a very close friend who's a very high performer at a really large national bank, and here's a great example of this and he's.

A pickleball addict, like he's, he's obsessed with pickleball and he figured out a way to block off his calendar in the morning where from like 7:00 AM to 10:00 AM they allow him to go play pickleball if he wants to go play pickleball. And he does that every single day. And then he's a really high performer the rest of the day, but he created this flexibility into his schedule.

Even though he works a standard nine to five, he figured out how to create flexibility in his schedule because he's such a high performer. So there's so many different examples of that where you can kind of do some pretty cool things as well. So I think I love. Having a flexible schedule and it just creates more fulfillment and it kind of reduces stress and anxiety and everything else around your job.

This is the fun part of being a part of the financial independence movement. So many people think differently about work, like they're kind of prioritizing their life, and then they're fitting work into their life versus the reverse. So many people. Have to like fit their life around work. And the nine to five schedule is just not optimal for everybody.

Like if you're, if you're a parent, you might need a different kind of flexibility or someone I was at, uh, economy Conference, which is a financial independence conference. I was just there and it was so fun talking to all these nomads or van lifers or RV living type people and. How they're doing work, but they're like doing work on their own terms or their own schedule and they've negotiated I'm gonna work outta my camper van for a month, um, and not be in the office.

And I love that money that f you money that you build over time kind of gives you the opportunity to be like, this is my proposition. And if you can't fit into that, it totally makes sense. That's fair. That's fine if you guys got rules at this company, but like. I'm willing to walk away in order to get this five flexibility that I want and find a different job that might fit.

How do you see things like when people will kind of create some of this flexibility? Do you think there are seasons and times where you need to kind of put your foot on the gas and really, really work hard? And then are there times where maybe you take your foot off the gas and you kind of have a little more time?

For example, maybe you're working on a huge project at your company and you're working 12 hour days for three days in a row or something like that. Crazy. And then do you see that there's times where you can kind of figure out and map this out throughout the year where maybe there are times where you go really, really hard and become that high performer, and then there are other times where you could take your foot off the gas.

Maybe it's seasonality or something else, or how do you look at things like that? Yeah, I, I think that was really well said. And I don't even think five flex schedules. Have to be like a permanent or ongoing thing. It could be a seasonality thing too, like tax prep people. I am guessing they are super busy from January to May, June-ish, and they can probably have a lot more flexibility to negotiate a five flex schedule July till the end of the year.

Like they might have to take client meetings, they might have to do some extended tech stuff or do some coaching with clients, but they probably have a lot of opportunity to build in some of these things, knowing that they're probably gonna be. A little overworked coming out of the tax season too, and I think that would totally make sense.

And so many other jobs, it's the same way. A lot of things shut down after Thanksgiving, like that. Thanksgiving to New Year's timeframe. People are doing like business critical or BAU type stuff, but like everything else, projects, they kind of like fall by the wayside. So that might be a good time, like maybe from.

Christmas to New Year's, you can take off and you can build in some flexibility or you can drop down to four days a week during that five or six day period or through the summer if you're, I, I mean, there are so many opportunities dependent on your occupation and career path that you might be able to strategically think through.

Where can I add or make this ask? That wouldn't even be a hard ask because of my. Occupation, our industry recognizes that there needs to be a little flexibility here. Absolutely. And I even think, you know, I know guys that were in sales, for example, who, you know, the first six months outta the year they have to hit these quotas, but once they hit that quota, they can kind of take their foot off the gas and almost kind of do nothing for the second half of the year.

And I think there's just so many jobs like that, uh, where people can look at, you know, ways to, to develop these systems and put this together where you can figure out, Hey, I put my foot on the gas for a couple of months, then I take it off, then I put my foot on the gas for a couple months and take it off.

And there's some. Fulfillment with that as well. I think achieving things is one of those things, especially if you're type A, like Justin and I are achieving, some of those things are really, really impactful in your life, but then you also want to make sure that you give yourself time to recharge, rest, relax, those types of things for sure.

So I think that's a big, big difference. I wanna shift gears here to questions that we ask a lot of our guests, and these are some of my. Favorite questions to ask our guests. Sometimes we mix 'em up, uh, at times as well, but I just wanted to kind of get some of your answers on this as we go through this.

So, what part of your work or life makes you come alive? Ooh, podcasting. I absolutely love podcasting. I've interviewed you twice, and I hope it comes across whenever I'm, I'm interviewing you, but. Doing prep research for my interviews and then having the conversation, I'm usually so stoked to finally have that conversation.

'cause I've done eight, 10 hours of prep leading up to this. I've learned so much from this guest that I'm like super stoked to have the conversation. So yeah, I, I light up anytime I get to do stuff with podcasting. Absolutely. And Justin is one of the most prepared podcast folks I've ever seen, so it is absolutely amazing when you do that, which I absolutely love.

What is your biggest fear when it comes to money? Oh. Probably running out of it. Uh, that might be cliche, but I think I am slowly trying to overcome a scarcity mindset. I think so many people that grew up frugal probably have to overcome this and just running out of money. I'm that dude that's like every month I rerun the numbers, although they didn't change that much, and I'm just like.

You know what Justin? Just like let let it go. Like you. You're gonna be fine. You're super smart. You know how to make money. You can always retreat back and live probably 30, 40, $50,000 lifestyle if you need to. Like it is okay. You are so smart and adaptable. You don't need to be worrying about money anymore.

I struggle with this same exact thing and I still even today, like still just think about that all the time. What if I run out? What if it all disappeared? So it's just one of those things. I think a lot of people have that same kind of thought process when it comes to. One of their biggest fears for sure.

How do you plan to level up your finances this year? Ooh, the big thing that I've been doing this year is simplifying, like, I'm trying not to optimize too much with like, uh, credit cards here and here and my high yield savings account over there. Like, I was like, Ugh, I really just wanna like, log into one place, kind of get.

The most optimal but simple approach. So like, I've been consolidating a lot of things into one or two or three providers, and not necessarily card chasing or doing anything like that. Like I love interviewing travel hackers. Chris Hutchinson's coming on the show next week, and I'm super stoked to pick his brain about some of these things.

But also as I'm approaching financial independence, I'm like, uh, it, it just matters less to me and I'd rather just have some peace of mind and simplicity whenever it comes to my finances. Absolutely. And that that is the number one thing that I try to tell people as well is try to simplify, reduce the amount of amount of accounts that you have.

Put them all in one place. Just make it easier on your life because just, you know, rate chasing on high yield savings accounts or whatever else is just really, really something that less, some people love it. Like if you absolutely love it, then go for it. You know, more power to you. Yeah. Uh, but for me, I'm not one of those people either.

So like I just kind of. Hey, I've had the same high yield savings account for years now, and it's just one of those things, uh, that I'm not willing to rate Chase anymore. Now, if it's a big drastic difference, obviously I would, but I agree with you. Simplification is a definite way to level up your finances and make it much, much easier.

So what legacy, at some point in time when you have kids, what legacy do you wanna leave your kids if you had them?

I. I'm very appreciative of my dad and everything he did for me. Setting me up for personal finance, like I'm 31 here, I probably don't really have to worry about money too much the rest of my life. And I almost give a hundred percent of that credit to my dad. He instilled a hardworking mindset into me, uh, a super saver mentality.

I. But the one thing that I'd really like to encourage my kids too, is to find some balance between setting up your future self and really, really enjoying the current moments. And I don't regret a ton in my life, but there are moments that I wish I would've gotten a push from a different direction. The other side of the pendulum that said, Hey, you know, let go study abroad.

Like you don't have to worry about working this semester. Like, that's totally fine. Or. Even the push into my sabbatical, like it kind of took me a little bit longer, although I probably knew it three months prior. Like I wish someone kind of just shoved me straight into it. And I think a lot of that was just stemmed from, from a little bit of scarcity and mindset that I was talking about and not wanting to disappoint my parents.

So I just wanna find a good balance with my kids of like taking care of your future self and being able to be independent, but also like enjoying the life because tomorrow's not a for certain. I love that. What is the best money advice you've ever received? Probably a recent one is you can always make more money, but you can't get more time back.

And I've been trying to instill a little bit more of that. I mean, I have so much great wisdom throughout the entire year or throughout the last couple of decades that at that moment was really, really important. But for the piece of advice that's really resonating right now, that was given to me and that's really had me rethinking a lot of stuff right now.

I think about that a lot too, and I think it's one of those things that. Time is something that I think most people don't think enough about. And for the most part, if you look at everybody who is on their deathbed, the biggest thing they regret, it's always time related. Yes. And a lot of times, um, I think most of us probably need to either, you know, think through our time.

It almost keep like a time budget type of thing. Uh, 'cause it's so important, it's so precious and it goes by so fast. I even like see, you know, my kids' lives and how, you know, they're, my oldest is almost seven now, and it's just one of those things where I. Felt like we just had him. And it's crazy 'cause he is like almost 50% of the way, you know, out of our house.

So it's, it's just a, it's just a crazy process. Um, and it's so interesting that if we don't value our time, it's gonna be something we all regret. So I think that that's a huge one for sure. The last one is my favorite, and this is one we've gotten some cool answers on, but what does wealth mean to you?

Ooh. Freedom. Freedom, optionality, flexibility. All three of those words are super important to me. Whenever I think about wealth, it's not necessarily the person with the most amount of commas in their net worth, but the person that has the most amount of flexibility, freedom, and optionality whenever it comes to how they're spending their time day to day.

I love that, and I think you embody this throughout this entire episode, I think for sure. Just showing, you know, how much freedom that you can kind of develop just by building wealth over time. Well, Justin, this has been absolutely amazing. Thank you so much for coming on here. Where can people find out more about you, your podcast and everything else?

Yeah, fine minded on any of the podcast players. Whatever you're listening to right now. I'd love it if you came and checked it out. Uh, the most recent episode is probably with Andrew. Uh, we talked about how to double your income in one year. He gave some really good tips and tactics on how to do that. Uh, but.

For all the things around achieving financial independence and having fun while you're doing it, come check out fine minded. Absolutely. And I highly, highly recommend that. It is an amazing show, so everybody, please go check it out. Thank you Justin, again, so much for being here and I, we can't wait to have you back.