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YFP 365: Millionaire Theme Hour: From $0 to 7 Figure Pharmacist with Mike Byers

Posted on by YFP Media

Mike Byers, PharmD shares how he was able to achieve financial freedom and replace his retail pharmacist income through savings and real estate investments.

Episode Summary

In this episode, Michael Byers, PharmD shares how he was able to achieve financial freedom and step away from his job as a retail pharmacist at age 42. Mike outlines how he went from a position of financial weakness to a position of financial strength through frugality and real estate investing. A father of two young boys, Mike talks about the importance of having options and flexibility in this season as he and his wife raise their family.

About Today’s Guest

Mike Byers is a 2008 graduate of the University of Pittsburgh School of Pharmacy. He spent 16 years as a retail pharmacist for Giant Eagle where he worked as a staff pharmacist, a pharmacy team leader and a floater. After successfully investing in real estate for over 10 years, Mike decided to take a break from pharmacy in 2023 to spend time with his wife and two young boys. He loves his family, houses, outdoor adventure, and trying to find the right balance between YOLO and delayed gratification. He can be found on Instagram @DIYrentalGuy.

Key Points from the Episode

Pharmacist’s financial journey to seven figures, early retirement, and mindset shifts. [0:00]
Financial journey after graduation, including materialism, divorce, and saving for retirement. [5:59]
Saving money, investing, and finding balance in life. [13:58]
Real estate investing, personal growth, and overcoming setbacks. [23:17]
Building wealth through real estate investing and managing cash flow. [28:54]
Financial independence, real estate investing, and career development. [33:12]

Episode Highlights

“You have to be honest with yourself and say, what am I doing now? What is the result going to be? If I’m saving so much that it’s driving me crazy, the result is you’re going to go crazy. But for me, the end result was adventure.” – Mike Byers [20:51]

“I mean, just because you go down a path of a certain savings rate doesn’t mean you have to stay there, you can make adjustments.” – Mike Byers [21:41]

“What I’m looking at is that I have this money saved because I was diligent in being able to save, what does the next 10 years look like? Am I going to sacrifice weekends with my family and nights in order to have one or two extra million dollars?” – Mike Byers [32:07]

“And that’s something that you think about when you turn a certain age and you start wondering how much more do I really need to be comfortable after 65. I don’t want to be self-insuring myself if there’s an insurance product or an annuity that you can buy that would serve that same purpose.” – Mike Byers [32:52]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This episode we have a millionaire theme hour featuring Mike a 42 year old retired work optional pharmacist living in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. We discuss the highs and lows of his journey as he looks back, including how he felt trapped by big fixed expenses as a new graduate, why his early savings paid off big 20 years later, how his mindset shifted over time, why his real estate investing played an important role in his journey, ultimately replacing his pharmacist income, and why patience and short term frugality and sacrifice were key ingredients to his success.

Tim Ulbrich 00:41

Now, before we jump into today’s episode, I have a hard truth for you to hear. Making a six figure income is not a financial plan. And we’ll hear that on today’s episode. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are, yes, you’re earning to get income. But if you ever wondered, Am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all of these competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes like moving, having a child, changing jobs, getting married, or retiring? And perhaps why am I not as far along financially at this point in my career, as I thought I would be? The answer may be that your six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, as a pharmacist, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox and that’s your salary. But without a vision and an intentional plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started your financial pharmacists back in 2015. At YFP we support pharmacists at every stage of their career to take control their finances, reach their financial goals and build wealth through comprehensive fee only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of certified financial planners and tax professionals work with pharmacists all across the United States and helps our clients set their future selves up for success. While living a rich life today. You can learn more and book a free discovery call by visiting yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Alright, let’s jump into my interview with Mike.

Tim Ulbrich 02:11

Mike, welcome to the show.

Mike Byers 02:13

Hey, I’m happy to be here.

Tim Ulbrich 02:14

Before we jump into your financial journey and the path of becoming a seven figure pharmacist, tell us more about your career in pharmacy. What led you into the profession? Where do you go to school? When did you graduate and the type that you have work you’ve been doing since?

Mike Byers 02:28

I think I started off like most folks going from high school to college, I went to the University of Pittsburgh. I started there. And of course, I was thinking about medicine, dentistry, pharmacy as my options and I was thinking about the path to get there. I don’t quite know what I wanted to do. My life kind of hit a roadblock sophomore year, I have a condition called ulcerative colitis. And I had to drop out of school at that time. And for a semester I was in the hospital for 16 days. And after the end of it and being in the hospital and experiencing things firsthand, I said, I think being a doctor is too hard for me. I think it’s it’s just not in the cards for what I have going on. And I didn’t know at the time that this disease wouldn’t be a huge part of my life. I found medicines over the years to control things. But I was also still dating my high school sweetheart at the time. And oddly enough, her father was a pharmacist. He owned an independent pharmacy. And I thought why not. So I finished my undergrad, I got a degree in economics and also a minor in engineering. And I went to pharmacy school from there.

Tim Ulbrich 03:54

And after graduation, those that are native to your area or where I lived for 10 plus years in Northeast Ohio, they’ll recognize the name Giant Eagle, but others will not. So tell us more about the work that you’ve been doing with Giant Eagle after graduation.

Mike Byers 04:09

Sure. So that was an exciting time to be in pharmacy school. I mean, you were going to school, you were learning things that were helping people and developing these skills and it was very fulfilling and the whole time, salaries were going up and you hear you would hear interesting things like the Alaska deal and all the things you’ve probably heard about it that time. But I did graduate and I worked for Giant Eagle. I was an intern there and stayed on as a staff pharmacist. I had some experience leading three different stores, which I learned a ton from and I was also floater and then staff again. So it was about 20 years from the time that I signed on as an intern to last year when I did resign.

Tim Ulbrich 04:59

Mike is a fellow 2008 grad. I graduated from Ohio Northern, I remember those times, right? It was the sign-on bonuses with the cars and classmates showing up with new cars in the parking lot and the Alaska deal, which I never saw on paper, but I heard of it as well. So we’ll share with our listeners, what is that all about? What I remember if it was, it was a big retail pharmacy chain that was offering a three year deal in Alaska for a million dollars. That’s what I remember the deal.

Mike Byers 05:28

The only thing I remember is sitting in class and hearing somebody turn around in their seat and say, I heard this. I heard a million dollars, three years. I’m gonna do it. And then I’m going to retire. Yeah, so maybe that planted the seed for some kind of early retirement financial independence at that point.

Tim Ulbrich 05:46

Nonetheless, it’s a very different time right here in 2024. So we’re going to dig into your current state of being a seven figure pharmacist achievement, financial independence, getting to this point of being work optional. We’ll talk about how you did that, and how real estate and traditional investments played into that. But I want to go all the way back to 2008 when you graduated with a net worth of zero, clean slate, no mounds of student loan debt, right, our listeners today are graduating $150k, $200k, you know, smaller debt loads, some might look at that and say, Hey, net worth, is your graduation, smooth sailing, but not so fast. Right? Tell us more.

Mike Byers 06:23

Yeah, before you throw tomatoes at the podcast, I did have a little bit of student debt. Which it was I mean, the difference between what I was making what I was spending, I can’t even remember how I paid it off. It was about $20,000. But I did go through a divorce, which cost some money, and I did have a real estate deal go south where I lost a lot of money. So I have had to dig myself out several times since 2008. But yes, I did. I did graduate with roughly a clean slate. And worked my way up to now where my passive income through real estate pretty much replaces my salary at 30 hours a week as a pharmacist.

Tim Ulbrich 07:13

What were some of the decisions, and we’ll dig deeper as we go throughout. But what were some of the decisions that you made early on as a new practitioner, you know, as it relates to car purchases and other things. You know, one of the things you shared with me prior to recording was that quote, “I became obnoxiously materialistic, which I partly blame for my marriage falling apart.” What do you mean by that? And how did this ultimately, you know, play into not only the financial plan, obviously the relationship but what would be the beginning of of, you know, that trench that you would eventually dig yourself out of.

Mike Byers 07:44

So like, like we mentioned, it was exciting times to graduate with bonuses. And we I graduated and I was married, we got married the last year of school during rotations. And we were living in her parent’s basement, not because we needed to financially, but because we weren’t sure where we were going to end up for her job. But I bought an Audi. A luxurious Audi. While it wasn’t even three months after I graduated, still living in my in-laws basement, bought this fancy new car. And it just seemed like the thing I was supposed to do. Long story short, I mean, we eventually moved. She got a job north of the city, we moved into a nice townhome rental. Not much longer after that, I’m on Zillow shopping for a nice, big, fancy house. So the fancy house came not much long after that. And I did become obnoxiously materialistic. And it wasn’t long after I moved into that house where I saw the house on the next street. He said, Gee, I wonder when or what it would take to get that bigger house. And that was just the way I was operating and had we not gotten divorced, I could still be operating that way. But it was just a mindset where I blame being really materialistic 10%. 90% we were young and ultimately not right for each other. But it wasn’t much longer after living in that house a couple of years where the bomb went off and divorced, trying to pick up the pieces again.

Tim Ulbrich 09:34

So you don’t go from that point to becoming a seven figure pharmacist by continuing that mindset and continuing those behaviors. So something shifted, something happened from a mindset and a behavior perspective. It sounds like that was the divorce. Tell us more about that.

Mike Byers 09:50

It absolutely was. I realized that I didn’t need a big house and a fancy car to be happy. I said the exact opposite – how little can I survive on? Or how little can I have material wise in order to live a happy life and I somehow found a studio apartment in the city, it was 350ish square feet. When my mom first saw it the first time, took her breath away, because it was just that small – the bedroom was in the kitchen. Yeah. And those were those were happy times. I lived that way for a couple years. And it felt really comfortable. But I still wasn’t saving. A couple years goes by and I’m like, well, kind of on this path where my rent is relatively cheap, my salary is relatively high. Why don’t I have a savings goal? Because I didn’t feel like I was doing the right thing at the time. So my goal that year, I think this was about 2012. So a couple years after divorce four years after graduating, I decided I wanted to save in addition to 401k, I wanted to save $2,000 a month. And each month I would play the game, if I wanted to buy something I worked extra. If it looked like I wasn’t going to hit my goal I cut back. And that’s what I did for that year to in addition to maxing out 401k to build up some cash savings.

Tim Ulbrich 10:11

So if I’m following correctly from jump street, you’re maxing out your 401k. So you’re leveraging the tax advantage account. And then you hit this point, shortly after the divorce four years into your pharmacy career. You’re in this studio apartment 350 square feet, and you realize, Hey, I’ve got an opportunity to more aggressively save. And so you set this target, which you know, to be on, I mean, $2,000 as a percentage of one’s take home pay, that’s a big chunk of money. And you see this a lot in the financial independence, retire early the FIRE community where there’s very aggressive savings rates, right, you’re in your early 40s. So to get to a net worth of seven figure plus, it’s going to take a substantial amount of savings to do that at an early age. So did your savings rate stay there? What did the trajectory look like as you were building that over time?

Mike Byers 12:21

So I hit that number, okay. And I was able to save about $25,000 that year. So I built up my cash savings. When I after going through the divorce, I didn’t have that cash savings. And I built that up and again, I kind of felt comfortable like, Hey, I hit that goal for that year, and I got a new apartment, that apartment had one bedroom. Not necessarily more happy in that apartment, but it was more expensive. And it seemed nicer. So at that point, it was a little more rent, and I wasn’t saving money and about a year had gone by and I said to myself, What am I what am I doing now? I mean, I had this surplus, and I was on a good path. So I for whatever reason started Googling. I figured it was taxes. I said I typed into Google, “single high earner how to save on taxes.” Okay, so real estate comes up. And I’d always been interested in homes. I love home remodeling and you know, watching a little bit too much HGTV at the time. But the next day, my friend came over to watch a football game. Oddly enough, he says my mom was thinking about selling the duplex. I had known him in college. And my ears perked up because why not? So, long story short, I fell ass backwards into owning a duplex.

Tim Ulbrich 13:58

Little house hack.

Mike Byers 13:59

Yeah. House hack. Yeah.

Tim Ulbrich 14:01

How did that one work out? Tell us about that is an investment property?

Mike Byers 14:06

I mean, it was it was a huge learning curve. So I said yes. I said I contacted his mom. We did the whole thing without an agent. It needed a lot of repairs and the whole thing flooded while we were in escrow. The pipes burst it was during winter the heat wasn’t on. So I had to jump into renovating and immediately kind of learning how to increase the value of the property. So I did that. And you know, I went from a studio apartment to half of a duplex even though it didn’t have air conditioning. It felt I mean, I felt amazing. I renovated it. It was nice. And I was just living in the duplex I was charging downstairs rent that mostly covered my mortgage. And it was shortly after that time when I discovered Mister Money Mustache. I’m sure a lot of people that you’ve talked to have started that or had that at some point in their journey. But that’s when things really started to go pretty quickly and I’d love to talk about that experience.

Tim Ulbrich 15:25

Yeah, and we’ll dive into that deeper and we’ll link in the show notes and Mister Money Mustache. For those that aren’t already familiar, I suspect many people are, great resource great blog will also link to other episodes, we talked about house hacking for those that that’s a new term. The idea is that you typically lots of different ways to house hack but you know, the most common we live in a duplex triplex or quad, you live in one unit, and you rent out the remaining units, obviously trying to generate income streams and hopefully cover a portion or majority of your mortgage payment in turn your what you think of often separately, your primary residence and then investment properties, bundle those together. And there’s some creative financing strategies of ways that you can, you can do that. And I want to come back in a little bit to talk more about real estate because I know it’s been such a big part of your plan. I do want to go back to the savings rate piece because I know you started with that $2,000 month goal. You shared with me in advance that eventually you’re pushing that up closer to $4000 to $5,000 a month. A lot of pharmacists hear these aggressive savings rates. And they’re like, how? Right, how? You know, you think of a typical pharmacists income, take home pay $7000 to $7500, maybe $8,000 a month, depending on what they do. You look at large fixed costs, like house, cars, student loan payments, daycare, childcare, other expenses. And we work with many pharmacists where there’s just not a whole lot of margin, at least in current expenses. So give us a little bit more of the behind the scenes of how you were able to actually allocate a large percentage of your income? What sacrifices did that require? And then where were you putting that money? I heard early on it was cash savings beyond the 401k. But was that in IRAs? Was that brokerage accounts? Where were you putting that money?

Mike Byers 17:13

As far as stocks and retirement accounts, it’s just 401k. The Roth and the traditional just, I was saving so much at the time, the income limits, and then the limit that you could put in just seem too small for me. So how do you save? I mean, you mentioned that the three biggest things housing, transportation, and whether or not you have kids, I guess your third one would be food? If you don’t have kids, that third one, if you do is day care. Yeah. So house hacking. That’s the big way to save on your housing costs. So at one point, my housing costs were zero, because the rent went up. And I was saving at that time, I had paid off the loan on my car, and I kept it. So a lot of folks will pay off one vehicle and buy in the next or keep buying new vehicles that are pretty, pretty frequent pace, but if you keep your vehicle eight, nine, ten years, when you get to that point, it’s paid off. You can save a lot of money. So I was saving probably in the realm of $5,000 a month. So that included a paid off vehicle. It included rent from downstairs, a little bit of overtime manager salary. And saving on food. I mean, just not going out to eat a lot. That was a big thing for me. I mean, you can play the game where you get pretty extreme. And it was too much for me. I mean, there was one point where I was calculating the cost of the extra food I would have to consume to walk to work versus the cost per mile of gas if I had driven so what I was doing with that $5,000 a month, I was putting it all in my checking account. Okay, fine. It was just building out pretty quickly. I called the mortgage company and I said, hey, this PMI insurance. I have, you know, a certain amount of equity at this point. Can we make that go away? And they said no. I said why? And they said, Well, this is an FHA loan.

Tim Ulbrich 19:26

Yeah, right. Did it. On my first home. Didn’t know that.

Mike Byers 19:30

Yeah, blame myself. I blame the mortgage seller, whatever. I was so angry by that. And I was saving so much money that I paid off. I think it was $100,000 loan balance relatively quickly, like within a year and a half. Just because I was mad about that. And I wanted to make $120 a month go away. So I was putting it back into the real estate.

Tim Ulbrich 19:55

Got it. Okay. You mentioned something really interesting. You talked about of extremes, right? And you see this sometimes in the FIRE community and and let’s, let’s say out there and everyone’s on their own journey, everyone’s situation is different. You know, everyone’s cost a living expenses are different family situation is different. So everyone has to figure out what is the journey and pathway that allows them to achieve the goals that they want to achieve. But those that are on this financial independence, retire early or retire optional journey, you know, there is what you call the potential for this frugal fatigue. Right. And I love that term, because it’s real. And there’s a time and season for it, for that grind. And there’s a fatigue that comes with that as well. And so, my question for you is, how did you combat this? When you recognize that? What did you do to say, Hey, this is real, and I’m achieving all these great goals, and I’m saving a lot per month. But this fatigue is real. How did you combat that fatigue?

Mike Byers 20:51

I mean, you have to be honest with yourself and say, What am I doing now? What is the result gonna be? I mean, if I’m saving so much that it’s driving me crazy. The result is you’re gonna go crazy. But for me, I would. For me, it was adventure. So when I got pretty fatigued with the daily saving, and it wasn’t like I was living this life where I was, you know, things were relatively scarce and I wasn’t having fun. But at time, like I bought an Airstream when you’re holding back so much, and you’re just kind of yearning for adventure, you see a commercial for the new Airstream. You just buy it. And you can adjust. I mean, just because you go down a path of a certain savings rate doesn’t mean you have to stay there, you can make adjustments. I ended up selling it a few years, a few years later. And the money that I lost, I guess you could say last was a great experience. So you just keep adjusting yourself and you have honest conversations with you or with your spouse if you’re married on okay. What are we saving? What experiences aren’t we having? Right? What is that going to result in in the future? Because you could have two different ends of the spectrum. You could have YOLO. And I know people like this and they’re happy. You only live once, they’re spending their whole paycheck. They’re not thinking too much about the future and holding back on some things. They’re just living life now. But there’s the other end of the spectrum, which is deferred gratification. Yep, either one of those two, seems a little extreme. And you could get screwed either way. So if you’re YOLO, and not saving anything, and leveraging all your salary and income to have fun today and you live to 100. I mean, you could be screwed. Sixty-five When you start to not have energy and ability to work, I mean, yep. But if you defer everything and you die at 50, you’re screwed as well. So you have to find your balance in the middle and continually be honest with yourself and have the conversations with your spouse on what the right balance is.

Tim Ulbrich 23:17

Ton of wisdom there, Mike. And there are several resources that are coming to mind that I feel like of what you shared. You’re kind of pulling from, you know, some different philosophies and putting it together. What we often say is, hey, we’ve got to figure out how we can save and invest for the future to take care of our future selves, but also live a rich life today. Both of those things can happen and be true. While that looks different for everyone. And, you know, I’m thinking of some of the resources that have influenced my journey. Rich Dad, Poor Dad, The Millionaire Next Door or Die with Zero by Bill Perkins.

Mike Byers 23:45

I just read that.

Tim Ulbrich 23:47

Bigger Pockets. Like, I kind of hear a little bit of pieces of these. And what I love is you’ve taken these teachings, and probably many others, and said, Hey, this is what is ideal for me and my journey. And I think the way you articulated that is beautiful, and I want to talk more about the real estate. So 2012 You buy the duplex sounds like that was a good move in the house hack. You weren’t a one and done real estate investor. 2019, you decide to do a deep dive deeper dive into real estate beyond that initial house hack, which ultimately, when we talk about current state would allow you to cut cut back your work altogether to replace that income, but initially go from that full time to less or full time 30 hours a week. Where did that motivation and drive come from? Do that deeper dive in real estate and tell us more about that second investment, the one that you you kicked off in 2019.

Mike Byers 24:41

So I had lived in the duplex for about five years 2013 to 2018. I had gotten out of a four year relationship at the time and I’m driving to visit my brother in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. It’s pretty long drive so I’m doing a lot of podcasts listening and I discover some things was about real estate. So again, I was kind of on the path. But I listened to some information on podcasts that said, well, you have another opportunity to continue down this path. I mean, I was sit still saving a bunch of money living there and earning a good salary. By the end of that trip, I decided that I wanted to buy another property. I wanted to continue, there was no, there was no reason not to grow this. And at that time, I felt like I had a little more tools and resources and experience to go down that road. So I bought another house, I was able to pay cash without a loan because of my savings rate over those last five years. And I lived in it, renovated it. I rented it out for a decent price. And I hit a certain number that I wanted to hit. And I thought I was the King of Real Estate in Pittsburgh. I bought another one. And before I was finished with that one, and ultimately ended up in another low point in my life where I just had too much going on. And I ended up selling that for a loss because it was just too overwhelming. But I, you know, these are the things you think about long car rides and long bike rides. It’s like what is the purpose of what I’m doing? And I had said to myself, I have this duplex, it has the opportunity to give me two rents. And I have the opportunity, because nothing’s really tying me down, to buy more real estate. And I think in order to do that, I need to cut back hours. So eventually, I asked to be cut down to 30. I got a really great store where I work three days a week, every fifth weekend. So that gave me the time and the freedom to eventually build more real estate. And the salary that I’ve lost over that amount of time, it’s, it’s really not a big deal. Because what you’re able to build with your time, or the freedom that you’re able to have is worth the cost.

Tim Ulbrich 27:17

In terms of your portfolio, you started with the duplex, you buy another one in 2019. Sounds like that goes well. The one after that not so much. You mentioned a low point, what what did you do to kind of pick yourself back up and say, Hey, maybe I’m not the king of real estate in Pittsburgh, but I also have something here to offer. And I think I’m on to something in terms of building some real assets here. How did you get out of that trough and really get yourself back in the game?

Tim Ulbrich 27:46

And then that portfolio, the current day portfolio you just mentioned, has gotten to the point where work is optional. So you went from 40 hours a week to 30 hours a week. And now that portfolio is generating income such that if you need to, want to work in the future great, you can or if you want to pick up extra hours, but you’re not in a position of needing that income.

Mike Byers 27:46

I mean, thank God, I met my wife at that time. Because she gave me the confidence and believed in me. And I’m the type of person that if someone believes I can do something I could, I could climb a mountain pretty easily. Amazing, amazing luck that I found such an amazing person. And she believed. She knew what I had done in the past with the single family home and the duplex and the skills that I have built and the knowledge that I had built during this time. And sometimes all you need is a partner that can believe in you and do it with you. So we basically went on a buying spree and use the equity in those two homes to buy four more homes and rent those out. And that’s what our portfolio looks like today. Four single families and a duplex plus our primary house.

Mike Byers 29:14

Exactly.

Tim Ulbrich 29:15

Okay. Yeah, man. That’s awesome. Congratulations on the journey all the work.

Mike Byers 29:20

Yeah. So that was a goal. And things change when you have kids. And we had two children born pretty close together. And we were coming towards the end of my wife’s maternity leave for our second child and we were deciding what to do and it was a decision for me to stay home and not work. And the investing in assets and growing those assets and having those assets give you a return to buy more is what allowed us to have a one income family.

Tim Ulbrich 29:58

And your boys are how old now?

Mike Byers 30:00

They’re one and two.

Tim Ulbrich 30:01

All right. All right. So you’ve got options for time and flexibility schedule with them. That’s cool. If we zoom out for a moment, and look at your pathway to becoming a seven figure pharmacist, and now looking at your asset base as a whole, not specific numbers, but just general percentages, if you were to break that down between, you know, more traditional, right 401k types of dollars versus the assets that you have in real estate, or potentially others that I’m not yet aware of, like, how is that net worth broken down?

Mike Byers 30:36

I would say 60 to 70% real estate. Probably 60% of real estate. And then the rest is in 401k.

Tim Ulbrich 30:46

Okay. Okay. And we haven’t even touched on obviously, a whole nother aspect of the real estate, you know, you’ve got your cash flow you’re generating now there’s future appreciation, there’s tax advantages, if anyone wants to dive into that deeper, Tax Free Wealth by Tom Wheelwright, great resource to kind of just open your eyes a little bit if, if that’s not something you’ve you’ve considered before.

Mike Byers 31:08

I mean, for our real estate specifically, I mean, if you think about it, there’s three, three or four different ways where you make money. So there’s cash flow, there’s appreciation, and there’s loan pay down. So what we shoot for with our properties is $1,500 a month. $500 is $400 or $500 is cash flow. $500 is being paid down by the tenant and then above $500, is appreciating, and when you multiply that by several properties, you get that automatic savings in those two parts, you get the automatic savings where the tenant is paying it down, and it’s appreciating in value. And then you can use the cash flow to reinvest or if it’s a different season of your life where you need to live on cash flow, you can do that you can take a break from work, you can take a sabbatical. And it’s it just provides you options. Right now, what I’m looking at is, what kind of options has what I’ve built in the past, giving me to live a great life with like I, like you mentioned the book Die with Zero, you get to 40 years old, and you start thinking, Okay, I have this money saved because I was diligent and being able to save, what does the next 10 years look like? Am I going to sacrifice weekends with my family and nights in order to have one or two extra million dollars? You know, maybe your kids and your spouse they want you home? So that you know you can you can live a different life with experiences. And that’s something that you think about when you turn a certain age and you start wondering how much more do I really need to be comfortable after 65. I don’t want to be self insuring myself if there’s a maybe there’s an insurance product or an annuity that you can buy, that would serve that same purpose.

Tim Ulbrich 33:11

And options is the word I hear. Flexibility is the word I hear. And it’s interesting when I polled our community about the idea of financial independence, whether or not they want to retire early. You know, some people love what they’re doing. Some people don’t like what they’re doing. Some people might want part time or to pivot. But the goal of financial independence, I think, is one that resonates with people as a whole. And when I asked that question, you know, what excites you? What motivates you around that concept of financial independence? It’s options. It’s flexibility. It’s being able to choose and to have choice in those things along the way, which I think your story is such a good example of that as well. Mike, when you look back on this journey, and one of the things I appreciate is in the transparency and the vulnerability. You know, we could look at the current state and say Mike is crushing it, and you’ve done incredibly well. But there’s been highs and there’s been lows along the way. And there’s been a lot of learning that’s happened. As you look back on that journey from net worth of zero to becoming, you know, well into a seven figure pharmacist, what lessons do you take away as you reflect back on that, that you can share with our listeners?

Mike Byers 34:20

I think a good lesson to learn is have honest conversations with yourself about the alternatives. So if you’re on the path, and you’re making and not saving, if you’re making a certain amount and you’re not saving a whole lot and you get to the point where maybe you’re thinking there’s something more I can do. Maybe I can save a little bit more or maybe I can make investments outside of my 401k, they’re gonna be a good return and give me cash. flow like real estate. Just have honest conversation about what the alternative is. Because sometimes the alternative is you get stuck for a long period of time in what you’re doing because you didn’t take those five years to save diligently, or to pursue something that you’re interested in as far as a side hustle or take that job. So I sit down, evaluate what you’re doing and what path you’re on. And where that’s gonna lead to 10, 20, 30 years down the road. Five or 10? Whatever.

Tim Ulbrich 35:44

Yeah, and I hear a lot of patience in your story. I hear a lot of, you know, seasons of sacrifice, but also seasons of perspective, and kind of reevaluating where am I going? What are we trying to do? I’m curious, as you look out, you mentioned this time window into the future, as you look out, where do you see your real estate portfolio going? You know, now that it’s gotten to a point of replacing your income, do you see yourself kind of staying put in this model where you’ve got a duplex and several single family homes? Do you see an expansion within that same investment category? Are you interested in, you know, commercial or short term rentals? Like, what? Where are you envisioning the future of the real estate portfolio?

Mike Byers 36:23

So I’m envisioning, I mean, my, my vision is to work on it three to four hours a day, from a coffee shop and manage the investments. So I wish I could give you a better answer. And part of stepping back from the pharmacy job and trying new things is this level of uncertainty and really uncomfortability like, things aren’t amazingly comfortable right now. I mean, I’ve really had to unwind some of the programming that 20 years of retail pharmacy put in me, so it’s tough, and I can’t tell you exactly where I want to be in this is a period where I am. But I mentioned the word sabbatical. So it’s, it’s a period of time where you’re not forced to work, where, you know, thank God, my wife is just so amazing and understanding. You can take the time to figure out your next path. And instead of working nights and weekends for the next 10 years to figure out how to have your kids experience and watch you live an amazing life. So that’s an evolving thing. And maybe we’ll catch up in five years, and I can tell you what it evolved to. I you really have to think about what your passion and purpose is. And sometimes you look at 100 jobs on on LinkedIn or Indeed, pharmacy/medical related and you just can’t see yourself doing that. So I’m trying to find my passion and purpose right now. And I really think it is in real estate, whether it’s rental real estate, commercial, vacation rental or flipping. I’m trying to figure that out.

Tim Ulbrich 38:19

And what excites me about that is I sense this is a season of, you know, some of that deep reflection and figuring out the next steps. You use the word sabbatical as well. But you know, another tip of the cap to the work that you’ve done, you’ve put yourself in a financial position, with the support of your family to be able to take the space to think and think strategically, right? And that’s an amazing opportunity, but it didn’t fall in your lap. You worked incredibly hard for that to happen. So congratulations, Mike on on the journey. I do look forward to following up and following your journey. Along the way. I know it’s been an inspiration to me, I’m sure it will to our listeners as well. So thank you so much for taking time to come on the show.

Tim Ulbrich 39:01

As we conclude this week’s podcast, an mportant reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please Is yourfinancialpharmacist.com/ disclaimer Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 362: Fatherhood, Family, and FIRE with Author Cory Jenks, PharmD

Posted on by YFP Media

Cory Jenks, PharmD, author, speaker and comedian talks about his newest book on fatherhood titled, “So I Guess I’m a Dad Now.”

Episode Summary

On this episode, Tim talks with Cory Jenks, PharmD, a comedian, pharmacist, author, and speaker who helps create more adaptable, empathetic, and humanizing healthcare experiences. Cory shares his journey of writing his second book ‘I Guess I’m a Dad Now’, why he chose to write a book on fatherhood, the strategies he has employed in his journey of being a dad to three kids ages six and under, and why he and his wife Cassie used a Coast FIRE approach for their financial plan.

About Today’s Guest

Cory Jenks is a convention breaking pharmacist, comedian, author, speaker, and dad from Tucson Arizona. Since earning his Doctor of Pharmacy degree in 2011 from the University of South Carolina, he has been on a mission to help people get off medications through lifestyle. Since 2013, he has taught, coached and performed improv comedy for thousands of people. And since 2022 when his 1st book Permission to Care: Building a Healthcare Culture that Thrives in Chaos, came out, he has been making readers laugh out loud while reading. His newest book, I Guess I’m a Dad Now, provides practical and hilarious tips, tricks, and stories to help new dads earn that “#1 Dad” shirt they will inevitably be gifted on Father’s Day. With the little spare time he has, Cory enjoys harvesting rainwater, raising chickens, and attempting to play various sports with variable success. He is currently earning his Master’s Degree in Dad Jokes with the help of his daughter and two sons.

Key Points from the Episode

Fatherhood and new book release with comedian pharmacist. [0:00]
Fatherhood, healthcare, and intentional living as a pharmacist. [3:42]
Fatherhood, self-deprecation, and humor. [7:39]
The importance of being physically fit for dads, using examples from the speaker’s personal experience. [11:51]
Daily routines for physical and mental well-being as a busy dad. [17:43]
Parenting challenges and finding balance between work and family life. [21:56]
Balancing work and family life, prioritizing presence and play with children. [25:59]
Community and support for dads, emphasizing the importance of having a tribe for mental health and personal growth. [31:40]
Fatherhood, finances, and intentional spending. [35:01]
Financial planning and saving for a couple with different saving mindsets. [39:05]
Parenting, financial planning, and work-life balance. [42:20]

Episode Highlights

“And I think that with what I’m doing with this fatherhood book, and what I do with my other speaking, it’s, it’s not just healthcare in comedy, it’s it’s being willing, able, and I’ll use the word brave enough, to break the conventions to live that for life, too.” – Cory Jenks [6:13]

“Humans are humans regardless of their credentials or degree and you can go a long way just living those simple tenets. So a lot more showing than telling, which is great. Set a great example and your kids will do what you do as well.” -Cory Jenks [14:30]

“My vision as a dad is to help my kids fulfill their full potential being physically fit, in addition to mentally fit. Is this an important part and being financially fit as well.” – Cory Jenks [17:26]

“Playing with your kids is just so much fun. And I think the simplicity of that wins out over almost every complicated vacation, app, toy, tool, tech thing you want to do.” – Cory Jenks [31:14]

“I think for a lot of dads who I’ve talked to, they had these like relief moments of like I’m not feeling who feels like this. I’m not alone in this. And guys are not known for our open communication. So if you can find a real life tribe, if it’s an online community, but it’s really supportive and productive, that’s great too. And then sometimes reading a book that makes you laugh and realize okay, I’m not the only idiot dad that does dumb stuff sometimes like okay, if Cory did that, then you don’t feel so bad if you made that mistake, too.” – Cory Jenks [34:18]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome Cory Jenks on to the show a comedian pharmacist, author and speaker who helps create more adaptable, empathetic and humanizing healthcare experiences. During the show Cory and I dig into his journey of writing his second book, I Guess I’m a Dad Now, why he chose to write a book on fatherhood, the strategies he has employed in his journey of being a dad to three kids six and under, and why he and his wife Cassie, used a Coast FIRE approach to their financial plan.

Tim Ulbrich 00:36

Now, before we jump into my interview with Cory, I have a hard truth for you to hear. Making a six figure income is not a financial plan. Yes, you’ve worked hard to get where you are today. Yes, you’re earning a good income. But have you ever wondered, Am I on track to retire? How do I prioritize and fund all these competing financial goals that I have? How do I plan financially for big upcoming life events and changes? Whether that be moving, having a child, changing jobs, getting married or retiring? Or perhaps why am I not as far along financially at this point in my career, as I think I should be? One of the answers may be that your six figure income, while good is not a financial plan. As a pharmacist, you have an incredible tool in your toolbox. And that’s your salary. But without a vision and a plan that good income will only go so far. That’s in part why we started Your Financial Pharmacist back in 2015. At YFP, we support pharmacists at every stage of their careers to take control their finances, reach their financial goals, and build wealth through comprehensive fee only financial planning and tax planning. Our team of professionals, including our Certified Financial Planners and our CPA, works with pharmacists all across the US to help our clients set their future selves up for success while living a rich life today. If you’re ready to see how YFP can support you on your financial journey, you can learn more by visiting yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/learn.

Tim Ulbrich 02:09

Cory. Glad to have you here. Glad to have this time together.

Cory Jenks 02:12

It’s always special with you, Tim. I was just saying before we went live, you’re super generous, super helpful, super supportive. And as a pharmacist and a dad and anyone in this community, you really lift up a lot of us. So thank you. You have been buttered up. Let’s go.

Tim Ulbrich 02:30

Well, I have been looking forward to this. Fatherhood is one of my favorite topics to talk about. We’ve got a couple neat interviews lined up, including yours. My dad’s coming on the show to do an interview next week leading up to Father’s Day, you released a brand new book, I guess I’m a dad. Now we’re going to talk extensively about that. I got my copy, which I feel super special to get a copy of this. I had a chance to read it. I think it was in the near final draft. It was really darn close several months ago and you just did a awesome job. We’ll talk more about that here in a little bit. And we’ve had you on the podcast as interviewed previously, Episode 134. You and your better half Cassie came on the show to talk about your journey as a FIRE enthusiast Financial Independence Retire Early. We had you back on episode 196. You talked about how to use improv comedy. We’ll talk about your role as a comedian to create a better healthcare system. This episode, this interview, we’re gonna take a little bit of a different angle centered around fatherhood. And again, your new book, I Guess. I’m a Dad Now. And before we get too far into the book and the discussion around fatherhood, which I’m confident is going to be rich, give us a brief overview for those that don’t know who you are in the work that you’ve been doing. What has Cory Jenks been up to over the last several decades? Who is this guy?

Cory Jenks 03:52

Oh my gosh, yeah, I don’t make sense. I’ll preface it with that. I get a lot of introductions. And I’ve literally can, I’ll keep this PG but I am a pharmacist. I live in Tucson, Arizona. So logically, I went to the pharmacy school at the University of South Carolina, go Gamecocks. And I moved back to Tucson in 2011 did a residency here at the VA, worked there for a decade plus. And I’ve done everything in pharmacy – inpatient, outpatient ambulatory care. Kind of kind of love the ambulatory care world 2022, I left the VA and worked for another company now doing ambulatory care, but going part time, and if you go back to the Coast FIRE episode with Cassie and I and my wife kind of explaining why we did that, because part of that is I’m a dad of 3- six and under: 6, 4, 1 basically. So drinking from the firehose, the life there. And beyond that I’ve been doing improv comedy and comedy in general for over a decade, which is not a normal pharmacist combination, but there are a lot of us out there. And so I do that and have been really working on reaching out to healthcare organizations about applying these skills, which are not just being funny, that are listening, empathy, communication You wrote a paper in 2019 kind of talking about pharmacy residencies, deficiencies or how our GPA is not measuring everything we need to be successful and it really dovetailed nicely with the start of what I was trying to do. Because I realized that was never going to be on a Saturday Night Live so I can go, please. Yet. Yeah, maybe I will get really famous. And I will then host who knows, I will not limit myself. So yeah, so now I, you know, I’m basically a convention breaking pharmacist, I get people off medicines when I work. In my practice. I do a lot of diet/nutrition counseling. I applied comedy to health care, which is not a normal thing. And now I’m a two time author. So that’s my other book is over my shoulder here, Permission to Care Building a Healthcare Culture that Thrives in Chaos came out in 2022. So if you’re not a dad, and you work in healthcare, and you’re like, I don’t need a dad book. You can get that book too. So, yeah, I think that I get uncomfortable talking about all the stuff I love. Not all, but the stuff I do because I don’t love the narcissistic view Millennials often have of like, I’m doing all these things! But it’s just, I like doing lots of stuff. And if we get into fatherhood, my dad is always someone who’s couldn’t sit still, my grandfather was always someone who couldn’t sit still. And I think Jenk’s men just like doing stuff. So I do lots of stuff that doesn’t always fit into one category. And I think that with what I’m doing with this fatherhood book, and what I do with my other speaking, it’s, it’s not just healthcare in comedy, it’s it’s being willing, able, and I’ll use the word brave enough, to break the conventions to live that for life too.

Tim Ulbrich 06:27

It’s interesting, Cory, you often say, break the conventions, which I see you very much as that person. I also see you as a very intentional person. That’s the theme, the word that keeps coming to mind for me, whether it’s as a father or husband, in your financial journey. Obviously, we’re going to talk about fatherhood today and your physical fitness. We’ll talk about the tie between that and fatherhood as well today, but I see a thread of intentionality and really encouraging motivating inspire in other people in their own journey. And speaking of intentionality, it takes intention, it takes work to write a book, this being your second one. And you and I both know that when you’re self publishing a book, there’s a big investment of time and money and it ain’t about the money. And so my first question is, why write the book? What were you hoping to accomplish when you sat down to write, I Guess I’m a Dad, Now.

Cory Jenks 07:18

I had too much time, money and sanity, it was like I need to throw…. So part of the part of the inspiration for the book came when I when I cut my hours to help watch the kids a couple days a week, hanging out with them at the park and watching other parents and dads interact, or in my case, like not interact with them. Like being on their phones being distracted. And I’m not going to pretend I’m a perfect dad. And then the audio version of this book, my brother-in-law’s an audio. He’s a musician that has a studio so he helped engineer it. And he said, you know, Cory, you know, this is a parenting book, I would expect to have a lot less like self deprecation. I’m like, No, I don’t want to be someone who thinks they know it all because I know they’re lying. So I’m not going to say I’ve never been on my phone around my kids. But seeing a lot of the checkouted dad’s just sort of started sparked an interest and perspective in me of like, there’s a joke there. And I literally wrote a joke in notes phone of like, you know, first idea for the book was, when you’re at the park, make sure you’re not looking at your phone. Yes, I wrote this as I was on my phone. So if you don’t heed this you have you will have wasted the fact that I ignored my kids for five minutes like writing this down. And then from there, it just sort of snowballed into other observations about fatherhood, like my own, our own struggles as parents because I do this along with Cassie, my wife, and observing other dads good, bad, my own shortcomings, my own wins. And basically then trying to turn everything into like a joke so that it’s more easily digestible. Because I think the other impetus for the book was reading, you know, talking about intentionality, like we read some parenting books, and that can be heavy that can be boring. With the acknowledgement that, you know, if dads don’t do our job, like society kind of collapses. So it’s really important job. And I start the book off with some statistics that show that, but also like, if it’s not fun, funny, dudes aren’t gonna want to read it. So how can I turn this message into something that’s easily digestible, realizing that…I don’t know if you’re a Seinfeld fan, but I have a friend that’s like, we could just talk in Seinfeld quotes for the next hour. Yeah, like we could try to give me like two steps of the Krebs cycle, which we had to learn like seven times, we couldn’t do it. But we could go through Seinfeld quotes because when it’s funny, you’re going to remember it. And so that’s kind of the other goal with this book is using that comedy side to turn it to funny, but also using that pharmacist analytical brain to analyze something and sort of flip it in a way that’s like, okay, yeah, that’s true. It’s funny. He made fun of himself or some other unfortunate dad that I observed, and I will not make that same mistake.

Tim Ulbrich 09:43

Yeah, it’s interesting. You mentioned that self deprecation. I thought the humility was there throughout you know, the acknowledgement. You gave the phone example but many others throughout the book where you’re in it, right, six, four, and one. It’s not like you’re waiting until a far off date in the future when you can look back with the glossy version of what was reality, right? You are in the thick of it. And I think as you’re writing in the thick of it, in the moment, it allows for it to be very real, very authentic. And I think it’s just natural, the farther we get removed from it, I know I feel this way with my oldest who’s about to be 13. Like, those memories become fuzzy right over time. And I love the authenticity. I love the realness of it as you wrote it.

Cory Jenks 10:27

Yeah. One is, as you get further from it, the hardness kind of fades, which I think is our nature designs it. Your youngest is what six?

Tim Ulbrich 10:27

Going to be five soon.

Cory Jenks 10:33

Yeah, so if you, if you really remember how hard it was with your first three, you’d be like, I’m never gonna do this again. But nature is like, you know, we need more people. So I think it’s the same with anything like you look back into pharmacy school wasn’t that bad or high school wasn’t that uncomfortable? Like, no, it was terrible. It felt terrible at the time. And so the subtitle of this is: A Humorous Handbook for Newish Dads Who Don’t Want to Suck. So it really is for that thinking about kids up to about age five, which is when I finished writing the initial draft. And so and I say it in the book, like, if you want advice for raising a teen, I couldn’t tell you because I’ve never raised the teen. Tim, you could write that book in a couple of years, but I’ve not been in it. So you know, the good joke is like the next volume will be like how to raise from like six to 11, which is like, from what I hear is like a really golden age of kids, because they’re not quite angry teens, but they’re, like, have enough skills, mental and physical to really make the most of those moments that teens won’t be great. And not that having little kids isn’t great, but like a newborn can’t play catch with you. And the other day, like yesterday, we actually played catch with my oldest kid, like he’s able to catch and throw. Like, I was like, Oh my gosh, I was expecting way too much when he was three. Yeah, but it’s kind of a cool moment. Not that you don’t love them when they’re younger. But like when you if they’re able to do more stuff with you, as a dad, you know, I don’t I don’t grow it, I didn’t birth it. Now I can kind of help shape and shape them, he, my kids. ,

Tim Ulbrich 11:57

You know, I was thinking about especially as we we get ready to celebrate Father’s Day here in a couple of weeks that you know how we show up as a dad. And this can be the good, the bad, the ugly, but how we show up as a dad so often stems from how our dad showed up. And you know, they did the best that they could and obviously how they showed up was largely from how their dad showed up. And you know, based on the dedication, where you give a shout out to your dad, I suspect that he’s had a big influence on you and your journey of fatherhood. So tell us about Papa Jenks.

Cory Jenks 12:29

Mark. Mark, was, I don’t know if he’s, he’s, he’s here. Like we’re doing this live as we record it on LinkedIn. He’s on LinkedIn. He likes to comment on my posts, but he still teaches he’s a PE teacher. He teaches at the University of Arizona now in the College of Ed, but he’s, you know, I think he was someone that really showed by example. He’s from a small upstate New York town. You know a few things about upstate New York. His parents, my grandparents were like, when that generation was called the silent generation. I think they named it after Harry and June, like not that they didn’t love you. But they just dinner was very quiet because we’re eating and that’s in my a lot of feelings talk not a lot of like warmth, I love you love us, but a lot of showing love by you know, all the memories I have with my grandfather – building things, having those memories together. And then my dad, like he loved me, he was always there to support me. And unfortunately for him, like he was a great athlete, played college football. I was not that good. But he still supported me, helped coach me. And I think that the big things I got out of it from him were how to work hard. How and we talked about finances like he would teach, he was a teacher. So in the summer he was off but he would teach swimming lessons, he would coach to earn extra money. And I remember going with him to the place he taught swim lessons because they had a place where I could play and he’s like, alright, well, this is our vacation this summer. Like those little things stuck with me. And he tells tells me about how grandpa would change the oil in their own car instead of taking it he’s like, Well, that’s a dinner instead of paying someone the money to do it. So I think he really showed me the value of hard work and utilizing those skills to support yourself and not being afraid to you know, we say side hustle now. Millennials and Gen Z is all about the side hustle like my dad and grandfather were the original side hustlers. They just didn’t call it that. So, taught me the value of hard work and then the message I write about in the book is he was very supportive in a pragmatic way. Like I would be you know, I’m going to pharmacy school, Dad, this is healthcare. This isn’t just teaching kids dodgeball. Okay, this is big time stuff. He’s like just show up on time, work hard and be pleasant. It’ll be fine. But it’s healthcare, Dad! And then every step of the way through undergrad pharmacy school, residency, I was like, oh, yeah, you’re right. Humans are humans regardless of their credentials or degree and you can go a long way just living those simple tenets. So a lot more showing than telling, which is great. So set a great example of your kids will do what you do as well because you know, he played racquetball golf, like doing all the same activities as him too. so inspires me to try to make sure that instead of telling my kids stuff, I’m showing them.

Tim Ulbrich 14:55

Cory, when I think of you, you know the words that come to mind if we do word association with Cory, right I think pharmacist, I think FIRE enthusiast, I think comedian, author, speaker, I think fitness guru as well. I know that’s an important part of your life journey. And you brought that into the book and chapter two, you talk about the connection between your passion for fitness and health and why that’s important, as soon to be, although I would, I would argue whether it’s someone who’s expecting or thinking about having kids or, you know, your 10 plus years into it, it’s a priority, and they’re very much is a connection. Tell us more about what that connection is, and why you felt like that was important bring into the book.

Cory Jenks 15:35

There’s sort of the celebration of DadBod, which is sort of like, Oh, I’m, you know, my wife’s pregnant, and I’m gonna, you know, look like her too. You kind of let yourself go. And I don’t think that body shaming is great, I think they’re a little shame might be good. Like, because kids are energetic. They’re, they want to keep going. And I just see, so often, kids with fathers who are out of shape that are just like play with me, play with me that they’re just like, oh, I can’t, I can’t. And if you if you don’t have like, I there are, if you play the comparison game, there’s always gonna be someone who’s way fitter than you and way less fit than you. But if you are able to keep up with your kids have some muscle like, like every night that kids fall asleep in a different room, and I have to carry them to the other room, like my four year old is 40 pounds, and he’s on the other side of this full size bed, like, there’s some functional fitness picking up 40 pounds and lugging it across the hall. So if you really want to be there for your kids, as a dad, I think it’s non-negotiable to be in shape for to be there for them. And also to set the example because I can’t tell you the number of kids I grew up playing league or soccer or whatever, that their parents are very out of shape. And they’re like, you will play sports and the kids like, well, you’re not doing anything, right. Like, you know what your words are hollow with your actions or not. So and setting the example like my dad was a PE teacher, so he was always active, he hit me, he’s, he’s such a, I’ll use the term like adorable nerd about this stuff. So send me articles about like, you know, if you get 10,000 steps a day, you look five extra years, or like what you know, and it’s great. Like, that’s what a great example, the set and then we see that with our kids that for my six year olds birthday, he got a pull up bar for the door. So he looks like climbs and hangs and we play, you know, we’re active. And it doesn’t mean that you have to play sports or be in the sports. But I think that being physically active is non-negotiable. And I think that if you want to help your kids fulfill their greatest potential, which is sort of I got asked this on a podcast the other day, like what’s your like, kind of vision as a dad is to help my kids fulfill their full potential being physically fit, in addition to mentally fit. Is this an important part and financially fit as well. Yeah. Yeah, getting getting getting your gear in shape. And ignoring the siren song of the dad bod is is important to, in my opinion.

Tim Ulbrich 17:43

Yeah, the connection you just made is interesting. And we often talk about helping our kids to be the best version of themselves, which requires a ton of time, attention and understanding who they are. And each one of them is very unique. And I think that becomes a little bit more evident. Like as I think about where my boys are at in age, I’m seeing it more and more with my older three. And it takes time and patience. But what’s underneath that is interesting what you’re saying, right? Someone’s physical health, mental health, we know that as adults that how critical those things are. When those are humming, we are more likely to be bringing the best version of ourselves, right? We feel better, we feel more engaged. We’re better in relationships. I mean, there’s such a stemming effect from that, which is a good segue. I’d like to kind of peek into the author’s brain here. Like for you, physical health, obviously a priority. I know emotional health, spiritual health, financial health other things. What are the routines that you have employed in your day? Or your week, however, you want to frame this that have allowed you to bring the best version of Cory every day? What are those habits?

Cory Jenks 18:45

Yeah, this is this is the part where you’re, you might not want to hear all this because it’s hard for some to hear, but I get up early. Like so with kids, they’re either gonna get up early, or they’re gonna stay up late. So you so adjusting around my kids schedule, and I get up around most days between like four and five o’clock in the morning. And that first 15 minutes is usually some version of like brushing teeth, my eyes half opened and like getting chores done around the house, like prepping the day like getting getting lunches ready, like my wife and I make these like collagen gelatin beverages. So like getting those all teed up so that when she wakes up, we can just hit the button and we’re going. So taking care of my spouse, that’s a big part of it. I tried to sit quietly for like, even just like two to two to five minutes, just to have a few moments of just trying to like breathe a little bit. And then two days a week, I’m doing a 15 minute quick, quick and dirty fitness routine, which if you’re listening or watching this, if you buy the book, I’ll send you my my routine. It’s part of my preorder bonus, but it’s already out so I’m just gonna send it to you if you want it. It’s just a very simple short routine because with three kids I don’t have time to hit the gym a ton, and then two days a week it’s it’s like going for a run or doing some some HIIT like some sort of like, I don’t know what interval interval training or something like that and I have a father in my neighborhood that we go for a run once a week. So helping, you know, helping bring another dad into this fold, you know, he says I hate getting up in the morning. And that’s why I do it. So do that, if I’m able to, you know, a couple days a week, it’ll be some writing in the morning, because I write a newsletter and then trying to promote myself on Twitter or LinkedIn trying to come up with something there. And then a couple days a week, I’m at work. And then the other days, I’m with my kids, and just try and be with them. And then in the evening, it’s winding down, get them to bed, if I’m, if I’m humming real good, I just go out and read a book or strum a guitar or, or do something like that. And if it’s not, then I’ll try to check it up notification, I’m turning 30 minutes into warmholing. So I’m just like you, everybody gets stuck on the computer. So and then I mean, foodwise, if you want that part, too, I mean, from fitness side, I eat a lot of protein, a lot of veggies, not a lot of carbs, and fats, and don’t overthink it. So that’s, that’s the main thing. And then just always checking in from a from a from a relationship side of it, checking in with my wife, making sure she’s taken care of, her needs are taken care of. Because she bears the brunt of our baby at night. So she’s, you know, and on top of all this, I’m Cassie jokes that there’s a Laundry Fairy and a Dinner fairy. Because Dishwasher Fairy because I’m the one that does all that. So fathers are not off the hook there. Started doing a lot of the chores around the house, because she does a lot of the other stuff that I can’t do. And then usually at the end of the day, our joke is we say good morning, and we’re trying to lay down a bed at night because we’re so so busy. So it’s going to probably depending where you’re at in life, if you’re a dad or not, or even if you’re not a dad, I think having some of these routines is good. And I a big part of it for me is simplicity. And I know just spent three minutes rambling about stuff, but you know, there’s people are like you get up you do 15 minutes of journaling, you just seven minutes of breath work, you’d look at the sun with your eyes closed, you look at it without like, Yeah, but then your kid wakes up at 5:15 with a bloody nose and all that’s out the window. So how can you maintain that good day without having all these things that are locked in place.

Tim Ulbrich 21:56

That’s exactly where my mind was going. I’m so glad you said it. Because as I think about my own journey here in Utah, I have found the morning routine is a non negotiable for me. And granted, I’m a morning person, I’m not a four or 4:30 morning person, but I’m a morning person. And I’m grateful for the flexibility to really start the first couple hours of the day. And as my boys would be gotten gotten older, it’s more predictable, right. But it wasn’t always predictable. And there are seasons where it is not predictable. And I think my encouragement to those listening is to find the system and the routine that works for you. That gives you enough structure that really helps move the needle on the things that matter the most but also enough flexibility that, hey, one season looks very different than another and you can be humming. And then a month later, it’s like why aren’t my kid ever sleeping, I’m not getting up at 4am. And I got to shift some of this. I’m a morning person, but I gotta shift this. And I think sometimes if there’s too much rigidity, especially for those with young kids, sleep is variable kids get sick, we know this happens, right? That’s when we feel defeated, all of a sudden the guilt comes in. And that’s not productive, you know, in any way, shape or form. So I’m a big fan of like, hey, find, the system and the routine, but especially for those with young kids, like give yourself some grace and some flexibility that things are gonna change. It’s gonna happen.

Cory Jenks 23:13

Yeah, I liked the things you said there, the seasons. I think that’s something that Cassie and I talk a lot about us that, season X where we I mean, we had a newborn, a five year old, a three year old and it’s just chaos. What we found works is what is the minimum we both need, like we talked about, you know, you and I have talked about, like filling your bucket every time like, what’s the minimum you need, and Cassie knows that I need like 15 minutes to lift weights and like a 30 minute walk. And I’m like in a much better like she’ll say you need to go for your walk or you need to go for your run. And I know that if I get that she knows if I get that like I’m good to go for the day I like I just need physical movement. I mean I’m a pharmacist, I work at a job where I sit like hunched over all day, so I need some of that movement. But for everyone’s going to be different. And like you say that the rigidity and there’s you don’t have to feel guilty about taking care of yourself as a parent. Your kids are pretty resilient. Like that doesn’t mean you ignore them for eight hours while you watch Netflix. But it does mean that if you need to like they watch a show for 30 minutes while you walk or do you just even if it’s clean the dishes and or whatever in your house. It clears your mind so much so and then also to stay off Instagram because every father Instagram account that I was trying to use to like promote my book just makes you feel like the worst dad ever. So just ignore those and you’ll be good to go.

Tim Ulbrich 24:31

Yeah, one of the greatest challenges great, I think a parenthood is being present, truly present in the moment and the experience that’s in front of you, you know, not cut up in analyzing the past worrying about what may or may not come in the future. Easier said than done, off course and we’re not going to get this perfect. But you talk about this in the book in chapter six. All it takes is being president let me read the first couple paragraphs and then I’ve got a question for you. You say, “A lot of newish dads wonder if they will be ‘enough’ for their kids. Will they make enough money to support their family? Will they provide enough emotional support? Will they be enough for their kids to love them, or at least tolerate them? To make this happen, dads can sometimes go overboard working, trying to pry the feelings out of their kids and smothering their kids with so much love that the kids will actually push away. I shared those feelings of needing to be enough. While more money is nice, it’s important to be a loving and emotional pillar. There’s just one trick to success as a father, be present.” Be present. Now, this if you had to say, Hey, Tim, what’s probably one of the greatest challenges you’ve had, as a father, I would say it’s really honing in on this. And again, there’s permission and grace that needs to come in here as well. What, for you, has been the secret or has allowed you to be as present as possible as a father? You just talked about in the book how important it is.

Cory Jenks 25:52

Well, I don’t know if it’s a secret so much as a lot of self reflection and being called out for not being present. I think having having a having if you’re there, if you’re raising them with you, with your spouse, with your wife, and she’s like, Hey, you’re on your phone, that like that’s a dagger to be like, Okay, I’m not there. But like going through the different pillars of like, what would take you out of the moment with your kids. So there’s, there’s work and so I, the longer I’ve worked, the better I’ve been at leaving work home when I come home. That being said, like in a world of entrepreneurship, like the work typically, I mean, literally never ends. So there’s always like a notification, you could check, there’s always something you can do there, so trying to block time to be like, okay, when they’re at school, like for this hour, I’m working on it, and then like letting it go. So just letting stuff wait. And it could wait. I do comedy, there’s never a comedic emergency. So like, there’s no, there’s no need to get to that. I think that the other pillar’s of presence. So like trying to earn a ton of money for your kids, like my kids. It’s like the trope of like, they’ll play with a box or like a stick in dirt, or a balloon. And this is something that’s probably one of the biggest conflicts with the grandparents, it’s like you stop getting them stuff, like they’re so happy with the balloon like imagine a world where you could be entertained with a balloon for an hour, we would all be so much happier if we didn’t have to feel like we’ve spent money on stuff. So if I’m not taking myself literally, physically away trying to earn money to buy stuff I don’t need that I’m going to be more present. And fortunately, again, I’m married to someone who’s not a huge like checking phone person. So I kind of take cues from Cassie and we have a spot where we charge it in our laundry room. And we’re pretty good about just ignoring that and just not trying to kind of piggybacking off that, like there’s a chapter in the book, like don’t try to like make memories. Like you let the memories happen. So if you’re not in this is a sort of pet peeve of mine, like we don’t try to document everything with like every, we don’t do a picture of video of like every little cute thing, because you literally can’t. Because if you’ve tried to do that, you’re going to take yourself out of the moment of taking a picture, is it good enough, we’ll take another picture. Well, now the kids want to look at the picture. And then if you’re someone who posts stuff publicly, then you’re posting it, then you’re checking on the comments of those things. And so we don’t, we don’t put anything with our kids on the internet, short of like the backs of my kids heads, which just hit the back of my baby’s head spoiler alert, you can see the back of my baby’s head at the end of the book, if you make it through. I think that’s been a big part of it is just living within our house instead of worrying about what other strangers on the internet or, you know, acquaintances might think of what we might post. So we, we we like we’d go on vacation, we have a policy, like we take one picture at the beginning, we put the phones away, and then we just play, we’re gonna like we accept that we’re gonna miss stuff. But we were telling our kids last night about the good old days when you had 25 count disposable cameras and that’s all you got. So trying trying to live a little bit less fast, I guess.

Tim Ulbrich 28:40

And what I heard throughout all that Cory was: we. You know, we we, we, right? There’s tactical strategy you talked about where you put your phone and how you handle vacation, the posts and all that stuff. But it’s we. It’s, hey, we’re on the same page with this and through the “we.” There’s accountability, you know, in that process as well. So great, great insights to share there. I want to ask you about play. I have found for me, when I am truly involved in play with my boys, like those are the moments that really are rich memories. But those are the moments where I am all in present. I’m talking about like rollerblade hockey on the driveway, like epic games of soccer in the basement. You know, freeze tag. Not we’re like I’m kind of having like a yeah, I’ll play, or I’m watching, but like I’m actually in on the play. And I’m curious to hear for you, like is that a similar experience? or what have you found in terms of how important play is when it comes to engaging and be involved present as father.

Cory Jenks 29:39

I’m glad you said that because it was a great reminder for me that it’s probably one of the most if not most important ways to be present. I can’t you know, yes, we all have presence. I’d even say play. My goodness. Read my own book. Yeah, I think and this is just to use that improv comedy side of my brain. Improv is adult play and kids we play we live in the moment. We grow up, we have responsibilities, we have jobs. So like when I’m doing an improv scene, like you have to totally be in that moment, it’s you talked about the like moments of flow and creativity and being all present, like improv forces you to do that and playing with your kids. If you’re doing it right, if you’re not trying to record everything to put on YouTube, if you’re not trying to document every little thing, you’re just playing, those are the moments that you’re going to be totally in it with your kids, you’re having fun, you’re and the time like slip like it’s a combination of it, like slows down and it speeds up because you’re like, oh my gosh, that was an hour of playing. But it was so much fun. And for kids development, I this is you know, not an expert writing a book. But it’s everything that I’ve been reading and I just read a great book called The Anxious Generation by Jonathan Haidt talking about all the issues that screens potentially could be having on our kids. Like play builds resilience, it builds it builds neuroplasticity. So for all you pharmacy leaders out there who want to have another PowerPoint on resiliency, just like let your staff go out and play tag or something. Like you’re literally better off than trying to like cram down more information. That’s a little side pet peeve of mine, but yeah, the place where they’re gonna like they’re gonna learn like right and wrong, what boundaries to push. And yeah, for us, it’s a lot of a lot of wrestling to the point of you talking about being physically fit, like, like, kids beat me up. There’s strong. But yeah, we were just they just learned the great game of Three Flies Up the other day. So and it’s just it’s it’s so much fun with like, let’s play Three Fies Up. Let’s play this. And you’re just playing. And and that is I think the the simplicity, the simplicity of that wins out almost over every complicated vacation, app, toy, tool, tech thing you want to do. And yeah, yeah, you’re right. I won’t ramble anymore on that, because you actually made the point better than I have in the last two minutes.

Tim Ulbrich 31:40

No, it’s great. And it really is a good reminder and challenge for me, I wish I get there more often, when I really let myself into those moments like, again, were really rich memories. But as you alluded to the time really does kind of fly and pass away. And I think it’s important that they see Dad, in a very different environment, you know, I can get into a very structured, everything so serious, we got things to do, places to go, right life’s busy, and like to really have a space where we can play and engage without that type of structure. I think it’s so rich, to really see me in a different light right than they probably do. And other other moments and other seasons. I want to ask you about community. You mentioned this a little bit when you’re talking about a neighbor. I sense that there’s maybe some community there and the influence there. But I have found for me, you know, I’ve got a core group of men that are absolutely critical. When I think about having a safe place, a truly safe place where there is vulnerability that is allowed. There’s accountability, that is key to that group. And I’m curious for you, whether it’s a group, a guy, some friends, like as a father, as a husband, when you think about bringing your best self, like, what does the role of community play for you?

Cory Jenks 32:56

Oh, it’s huge. I think you got to have your tribe and I think we’ve evolved as tribal creatures and we’ve now found these like weird online tribes that don’t actually mean anything and support us in fact, actually probably hurt our mental health. But for me, I have there’s four or five other families in our neighborhood around the same age, kids around the same age and we joke because all the the wives and moms are older than the dads so they’re the Cougar Club. We call ourselves the Manthers. I mean, it’s silly. Like you’re talking about play, like it’s ridiculous. So we’ll go on, like yesterday I went I went on a run with one of the guys. Like everyone has their own little like strength like there’s one that’s like a phenomenal engineer that helped me design and build my chicken coop. There’s one that I go run with. There’s the one that’s like the more like feelings guy, so when I need to talk about something like that, we go for a walk and it’s it’s really great there. And then I have friends that are across the country that it’s just a text. I text my buddy Kendrick more than I text my wife so we go back and forth with the wins the losses and just there to share and listen. And that’s one thing that and even like yesterday at this Memorial Day party we were at as we record this, like was talking to the dads and the moms too like sharing our struggles with our own families and issues and just being having just, sometimes just talking about it you feel so much better. It doesn’t solve the problem but it helps to feel like you’re not alone. And I you know as selfishly, like this book I think for a lot of dads who have read it and I’ve talked to, they had these like relief moments of like I’m not feeling who feels like this. I’m not alone in this. And guys are not known for our open communication. So if you can find a real life tribe, if it’s if it’s an online community, but it’s really supportive and productive. That’s great too. And then sometimes reading a book that makes you laugh and realize okay, I’m not the only idiot dad that does dumb sometimes like okay, if Cory did that, then you don’t feel so bad if you made that mistake, too. So and then having your group of people that are have skills you don’t have mostly because I’m not handy. So I talked about the importance of that, too.

Tim Ulbrich 35:02

My experience has been, you know, in the absence of community, or present in isolation, I think the challenges that we inevitably will face can start to bleed with our identity. And we get those two things confused. And I think really having a group of people around us, you know, you mentioned your book, right? The people that read that and say, hey, wow, like, I’m not alone, I have these feelings, it’s okay to have these feelings. I don’t have to be defined by these feelings like, these are to be expected on some level. And there’s other people that are going through this journey. And again, it’s going to have highs, it’s gonna have lows, that is a roller coaster. That’s the reality of fatherhood. And so I think whatever that community looks like neighbors, you know, people across the country, friends, whatever be – so important, you know, and for me, at least, as I think about my own journey of fatherhood. I do want to talk a little bit about finances as a finance platform afterall. You talked about finance in the book as well, chapter 15, titled Money, Money, Money. And I think you scratch the surface on some important topics, you know, life insurance, estate planning and building a strong financial foundation. Obviously, you didn’t, you didn’t set out to write a personal finance book, so I wouldn’t have expected you to go a lot deeper. But I want to go a little bit deeper with you. As I know, this is an important part of your financial plan and journey. And as we’ve already established, I think there is a connection, when we think about this to fatherhood as well. We’re not going to re live your entire financial journey. We talked about a lot of that on episode 134, with you and Cassie talking about your FIRE pathway. But I do want to start there FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early. I know that’s been a key pathway for you and Cassie, as you think about your own financial journey and success, why has the FIRE ourney been important, continue to be important for the two of you?

Cory Jenks 36:45

Well, I will say I will disclose that we are not at the FIRE level. So it is a journey. But I think what we found in 2017, when we kind of found this idea of FIRE was it forced us to re examine our finances. It forced us to look at how we were spending money and you you mentioned the word intentionality at the beginning of the recording, that we realized a lot of our money was going places we weren’t really being intentional with and because we were blessed with big shovels. She’s a nurse practitioner, I was working full time as a pharmacist, you paper over a lot of your mistakes. And you the 401k is growing pretty good things are looking good. You’re living a happy life or taking vacations. And then realizing that there’s there’s this point like 1000s of dollars a month that we can be reallocating to more efficient and effective ways of establishing our future in a more secure way, then you become intentional with that. And while we haven’t hit full FIRE, we talked about this idea of Coast FIRE where we stayed really despite our mistakes. Because we are we are blessed to have jobs that have the big larger incomes, compared to the average American, we hit a place with the idea of Coast FIRE, you save a lot in retirement and get to a place where at that point like time and competition will get you get you to the finish line. And so we’ve more or less hit that place. It doesn’t mean we’ve totally stopped saving, but it’ll allocates more funds for inevitable kid expenses. It allowed me to cut part time. Gives me a little breathing room when I invest in a another self published book. Because, by the way, if you want to write a book get really famous first so they give you a big advance. If you have a huge audience to start, it really helps. Just a little insider tip there. But it’s been an important part of us to be intentional with how we spend money and like, it’s a mindset, like we just bought a new, like a new vehicle to us. It’s an eight year old vehicle. But we spent two years figuring out what we wanted. Like it was a two year process. Our family was so tired of us talking about it. But when you think about I could spend $70,000 on a new vehicle or I could spend $25,000 on a vehicle like what’s the delta of that money? What could it be used for? What’s the opportunity cost? What’s the time I’m going to spend and I we talk a lot about like the life energy to buy something, your money or your life concept. And so it really affects us when we decide do we really need to buy that thing for the kids, we really need to buy that other thing, or with going out with three little kids to a restaurant really bring us much joy? No. Save the money and cook at home and, you know, watch a Netflix movie or something instead.

Tim Ulbrich 39:04

Yeah, and I think it’s a Coast FI is an interesting pathway. You know, not everyone obviously is able to do it, everyone comes out with a different income level, different debt position, other goals that they’re working on. But when I think about the journey that you and Cassie are on now that you’ve got six, four, and one, you know, essentially, as you mentioned, you’re not not saving anymore, but you’ve largely checked that box because time value money is going to do its thing, right? And so you’re entering into the ages were experiences and time to get those experiences is going to be more readily available, right? I mean, there’s only so much you can do with a one year old, obviously. But as they get older, like the opportunity to travel, the flexibility that you guys have in your schedule to do whatever it means for you guys to be living your rich life that’s going to become more available and to have the opportunity to invest in those experiences to a greater degree I think is exciting. And you know, perhaps a reason for aggressive saving early is great. I am curious. I know one of the most common questions I get, Cory, when people are thinking about really FIRE any part of the financial plan, is how to me and my spouse get on the same page. You know, one person may be an aggressive saver one is not or there’s different philosophies, different mindsets, different ways that they grew up with money. So for you and Cassie, as you’ve been on this journey, I sense you’re very much on the same page. But what allowed you the two of you? Is that where you started? Or was this a process that you guys developed over time.v

Cory Jenks 40:31

I was definitely much more like the saver mindset, not that she was like a frivolous spender. But I think what we did was a lot of shared, like we did podcasts and book clubs. I would literally listened to an episode of YFP. And be like, hey, what do you think of this idea of an HSA account? And you know, the various financial podcasts, but I’m gonna plug you guys because you’re the best, and your pharmacists. If you Google other resources, you can find them. But YFP is a great place to start, so you listen to a podcast. And we do book clubs together, like we would read a book or because she’s kids, I read a book, take notes and go through the highlights with her. And it just it provokes questions. It provokes discussions. And it’s never a, you’ve spent this, I can’t believe that you didn’t spend this, I can’t believe it. I don’t know, I’m just I’m very blessed to be married to someone who’s like we’re both when it comes to finances pretty reasonable people who want to meet in the middle and have not had a lot of, I can’t remember a money fight honestly, we’ve ever had. Because maybe the only one being like Cory, we can spend more like okay, fine, save less. And that was that was the hardest thing was to take the break off the savings. But I think like turning it into an activity versus a chore. If it means you have a nice dinner and talk about it, if it means you’re on a walk together. And you each have a Bluetooth pod, like your air pod, and you’re listening to Tim and Tim and talk about something. You pause it and say that was good, or I don’t understand that. That’s where we started. And it really hasn’t been a huge conflict for us.

Tim Ulbrich 42:04

Yeah, and I love the concept of the book club and just getting thoughts moving, right, conversation starters, we did an episode not too long ago, around 25 Financial discussions that couples should have, and it really wasn’t about like, Hey, you should do X, Y, and Z. It was about start talking about, you know, these areas. And there’s, of course more questions in that and figure out for the two of you what what does it mean to be living that rich life? What does it mean to have that balance between today and tomorrow? And, you know, the back of the back of your book, you referenced several books, one of which, you know, I know has been transformational on my journey Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. But even reading books that have different philosophies, different perspectives, just to get things moving. Conversation wise and figure out, hey, for the two of you, what does success look like? And I often share that we get in the weeds with the X’s and O’s. All of those are important. But we often have to start at a higher level, which is what what is the vision? What does success look like for the two of us? What do we want this to look like for our family? And then from there, the X’s and O’s have to support that vision?

Cory Jenks 43:07

Yeah, I think I skipped over the strategic vision and goal setting and skipped right to the tactical stuff that we would do. But yeah, I think yeah, you nailed it. Having the, I think I think what helped us get on the same page was, what do we want our life to look like? What are the what’s the one year goal, five year goal, 10 year goal? What’s retirement goal look like and then working backwards from there, you can decide what that how that fits into your day to day. And I think having that ultimate vision of how we want our life to be is important. And for both of us, the biggest thing we care about is options. We want to have options to manage, to own as much of our own time. And we were not 100% there yet, but it’s been a very useful journey in helping us get to where we, you know, it’s we’re recording this on a Tuesday morning and she’s home. She’s not working today, and I’m not working today. And our kids are, you know, in a perfect world, they’d be home with us and we you know, making memories but they’re exploring. We get a little bit of adult freedom and don’t feel guilty about that when you do need it, by the way.

Tim Ulbrich 44:05

Yeah, options and flexibility. When I poll a group of pharmacists, I serve a group of pharmacists and say, hey, what, what’s most important to you, right? That those are the two things I hear over and over and over again. And sometimes we get lost in the weeds of hey, do we need 2 million or two and a half or three or three and a half million and those are good conversations, but really, it’s often the emotion behind that. What are we trying to achieve? What does that vision look like? Cory, this has been great. So I Guess I’m a Dad Now: A Humorous Handbook for Newish Dads Who Don’t Want to Suck. If I can make one gentle amendment to your subtitle, I appreciate the focus for new-ish but I found this as a father of four soon to be teenager. I don’t consider myself a new or new-ish dad. But I found this to be incredibly insightful and helpful. So I would say for dads everywhere at any stage, adult children, soon-to-be, expecting, planning kids, could make a great Father’s Day gift. So where’s the best place that people can go to get a copy of the book and follow your work?

Cory Jenks 45:03

It’s on Amazon. So you could look you could just look the title up there on Amazon. If you go to my website Coryjenks.com C-O-R-Y-J-E-N-K-S.com. My parents were cheap, didn’t but the “E” in Cory, although I should probably buy that domain and just send people to my website. You can, you can get some information on like, I still have my pre order stuff up so you can see what if you if you order the book, just email me I’ll send you all the pre order stuff. We’re dads we’re busy. We didn’t get we didn’t get there in time. It’s okay. You can kind of see the other stuff I’m up to and you can connect all my different socials from from my website.

Tim Ulbrich 45:35

Awesome, Cory thanks so much for doing the interview. Appreciate it.

Cory Jenks 45:38

Anytime this is you know, you talked about playing time flying by I can’t believe it’s almost been 50 minutes, Tim. It always happens. So that’s a sign of a great a great time. So thanks again and anytime you want to chat, happy to. Thanks.

Tim Ulbrich 45:50

Thank you so much. Take care.

Tim Ulbrich 45:53

As we conclude this week’s podcast an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacists podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 354: From PharmD to Debt Free to FIRE with Derek Schwartz, PharmD

Posted on by YFP Media

Derek Schwartz, PharmD, returns to talk about his debt free journey and his path toward FIRE: Financial Independence, Retire Early.

Episode Summary

On this episode, we check back in with Derek Schwartz, PharmD, on his debt free to FIRE journey. Derek was an early guest on the podcast back in 2017 when he was working toward becoming debt free by ambitiously paying off $180,000 in student loan debt.

Today, Derek returns to share a life update after successfully eliminating his student loan debt – from getting married to owning a home to becoming a father of two – Derek explains how he continues to save and view spending and how his journey toward an early retirement evolves as he pursues FIRE. Derek shares encouraging advice for new grads and anyone looking to pay down debt and what it can mean when you are truly financially free.

About Today’s Guest

Derek Schwartz, PharmD, RPh is a 2014 graduate of Ohio Northern University Raabe College of Pharmacy who currently works with the Kroger Company in the Cincinnati, OH area. After graduating in 2014 with over $180,000 in debt, he paid it off in March 2018. Derek and his wife, Jessica, married in October 2020, and have two children: Julia, age 2, and Calvin, 8 months old. The family of four have a happy and busy life in Cincinnati, Ohio.

Key Points from the Episode

Financial independence and retiring early with a guest from 2017. [0:00]
Debt repayment and financial independence with a young family. [2:04]
Budgeting and financial goals with a focus on breathing room and flexibility. [8:46]
Financial Independence and Retire Early (FIRE) journey with Derek Schwartz. [13:13]
Financial independence, debt management, and retirement planning. [17:20]
Retirement planning and debt management. [20:49]
FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early) journey and determining the FI number. [27:44]
Paying off student loans and saving for the future. [31:49]
Investment advice and updates from a guest. [37:49]

Episode Highlights

“So my debt repayment that it finished was March 30 of 2018. So just in a couple of days, it’s been six years, which is just crazy. Because it’s been so long, it was such a big part of my life. And it’s so far in the distant past, I hardly think about it anymore. And that was always the goal for paying off that debt because it sets up everything else so nicely.” -Derek Schwartz [3:07]

“When you have that much debt, it stops you from saving, it stops you from investing, it stops you from using your income to benefit future savings, having fun, just doing anything.” -Derek Schwartz [5:40]

“Having that much debt and trying to do other things, is like trying to run a marathon without stretching. You’re not gonna get far, you’re not going, you’re gonna get hurt, you’re gonna have to restart, and then you get to go back to square one.” – Derek Schwartz [5:58]

“And once you are completely out of debt, it’s like shutting a book and just tossing out the window. It’s done. You don’t have to go back.” -Derek Schwartz [6:20]

“And that was the motivation for such a rigid budget is I knew exactly when those loans would be paid off. And now it’s completely changed. Because when you’re talking about no debt, what are you saving for? What’s your goal? You can be so much more flexible, when there’s not some restraint of I’m budgeting to get over this, instead of I’m budgeting to get to this.” Derek Schwartz [11:06]

“But it’s just always been a passion for both of us because we have so many more interests that aren’t tied to our jobs. We both love our jobs, we love our work. But, we love other things, too.” -Derek Schwartz [18:28]

“So we’re planning for those to just not be there. And so that’s kind of a, a different way to look at it. Because most people will assume that Social Security will be there, they’ll have some some kind of health insurance. We’re looking at it as, hey, if we retire at 50, on our own, can we do it?” -Derek Schwartz [22:50]

“And that’s, that’s such the nice thing about being in the FIRE mindset of, first of all, being in the FIRE mindset, you’re out of debt. And then secondly, how can we use factors around us to benefit us. And that’s something you can’t do when you have when you have a lot of debt, and you don’t have the the FIRE mindset if you’ve already been saving.” -Derek Schwartz [26:45]

“So, and we couldn’t do that without being out of debt. I keep going back to getting out of debt. But that’s just so important because it just allows you to be on that platform to just do so many different things with what you want to do with your money.” – Derek Schwartz [34:22]

“Paying off debt is not fun. It is not glamorous, it is not full of constant rewards. You’re not doing a lot of things; you’re just watching a number go down. And that’s all it’s doing. But once you get out and pass through that, your options just expand so much.” – Derek Schwartz [36:18]

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich 00:00

Hey everybody, Tim Ulbrich here and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast where each week we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom. This week I welcome back Derek Schwartz, a guest from episode 14 way back in 2017 to share his journey from PharmD to debt free to pursuing financial independence/retire early. We discuss why he and his family are on the fire path, how his financial decisions, post-graduation helped put them on a path towards building wealth, the biggest challenges that they’re facing in pursuit of fire, and how he striking the balance between living a rich life today and saving for the future.

Now, before we jump into the show, I have a question for you. Have you ever wondered how to evaluate the benefits package and offer you receive once you’ve landed the job? If so, our upcoming webinar supported by APHA is for you. On Wednesday, April 17, at 8:30pm. Eastern my partner in crime YFP, Co-Founder and Director of Financial Planning, Tim Baker is hosting a free webinar titled: Money Moves: How to Evaluate Benefits Packages and Job Offers. During this webinar, Tim will dig into the valuable connection between career and finance and the ins and outs of benefit packages and offers. He’ll teach you how to navigate components of employer benefits, including insurance, FSA, HSAs, employer sponsored retirement accounts, as well as help you understand components of a job offer and how to evaluate one. Plus, Tim is going to do a live walkthrough and evaluation of real pharmacist job offers from you, the YFP community. So send us your pharmacist job offer current or past to [email protected] with the subject line: job offer. Don’t worry, we’ll keep these anonymous. And if you attend live, you’ll have the chance to win a $50 Amazon gift card or YFP bundle which includes a YFP t-shirt and our four books published at YFP. To save your seat and to register visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/offer. Again, that’s yourfinancialpharmacist.com/offer.

Alright, let’s jump in my interview with Derek Schwartz.

Tim Ulbrich 02:02

Derek, welcome back to the show.

Derek Schwartz 02:04

Great to see you again.

Tim Ulbrich 02:06

So excited to have you back. This has been a while in the making. For our community to know we had Derek on way back when, nearly seven years ago at this point, Episode 14, September 2017. We talked about your journey – graduated from Ohio Northern University in 2014. Go Polar Bears!

Tim Ulbrich 02:23

You were paying off $180,000 of debt in just about four years. That was 2018 when you guys finished that debt repayment journey. We’ll link to that episode in the show notes so folks can go back. And we’re going to talk a little bit more about that. But really focus on your journey now and where you’re at present day and how you and your family are on this path towards financial independence. So Derek, since it’s been such a while, 2017 what what’s changed since since we last spoke?

Derek Schwartz 02:23

Go Polar Bears!

Derek Schwartz 02:51

Man, what hasn’t changed? So when we recorded the podcast, and I begrudgingly listened to it. So I think I join everyone that they don’t like to hear themselves talk. So I, I struggled through that I had not paid off my debt when I recorded that. So my debt repayment that it finished was March 30 of 2018. So just in a couple of days, it’s been six years, which is just crazy. Because it’s it’s been so long, it was such a big part of my life. And it’s so far in the distant past, I hardly think about it anymore. And that was always the goal for paying off that debt because it sets up everything else so nicely. So you know, it’s a typical story, you know, you, you meet someone, you get engaged, and my wife and I got engaged in January of 2020. And I was like, you know, this is gonna be a great year. Nothing bad’s gonna happen in 2020. It’s gonna be smooth sailing from here, as everyone knows, wasn’t the case. But it was an opportunity for us to buy our future home, we moved into a good part of town where we wanted to raise kids, and then we started the family. So we have two kids. I have a two year old daughter and an almost an eight month old son. So things have been great so far.

Tim Ulbrich 04:13

That’s a lot in a short period of time, as we often see, with new practitioners coming out, you know, you’ve been out now a decade coming up here, right this spring, but you know, you graduate, start your first job, get married, you’ve got a couple of kids, pay off your loans. I mean, just a lot that happens and one of the things I was sharing with you before we hit record, which I think is a great example here, Derek and the work that you and your family have done is you know the decisions we make in that first five to seven years is the window I often talk about this transition right from student to new practitioner, really is so critical to setting the foundation upon which we can build and we’re going to talk about how now you guys are on this path towards financial independence, which I presume is probably not possible or possible to the degree that it is. If you didn’t work hard to put some of those rocks in place some of the foundational pieces in place early on in your journey. And so, you know, again, we’ll link back to that episode so people can hear the details of that debt free journey, but just remind us of the motivation, the why behind a pretty aggressive debt repayment $180,000, about four years. Everyone’s on their own journey, everyone feels different about their debt. But for you guys, obviously, it was in a decision to be intentional about paying it off in a short period of time, which again, has led to the place that you’re in today, why why was that such an important piece of the plan for you guys to get out of that debt as quickly as possible?

Derek Schwartz 05:40

I think it was, because there was no other option. When you have that much debt, it stops you from saving, it stops you from investing, it stops you from using your income to benefit future savings, having fun, just doing anything. Having that much debt and trying to do other things, is like trying to run a marathon without stretching. You’re not gonna get far, you’re not going, you’re gonna get hurt, you’re gonna have to restart, and then you get to go back to square one. So the goal of getting out of debt was just to get past that. So that options, were actually on the table that were available. And once you are completely out of debt, it’s like shutting a book and just tossing out the window. It’s done. You don’t have to go back.

Tim Ulbrich 06:27

Yeah, and I think, you know, I often shared Derek that when I think back to my journey, Jess, and I have paid off a couple $100,000 of debt and making every mistake you can make along the way. You know, it was really when our kid most of that journey was before we had kids and the end of that journey. Our kids were very young. But I now think about that monthly payment, right that we were making, which was pretty aggressive at the time. And basically, as I now see the expenses with kids rising, right, which is natural, you know, I’ve got some older, older boys that are starting to eat us out of the house. But you know, for other people, it’s daycare, right? It’s other costs, it’s saving for kids college. But the point being that, you know, that payment that I think of that we’re making towards their student loans, you can pretty much just put that money over to expenses, right, that are associated now with having young children that weren’t there before. And for us, I know, personally, it would be a burden currently if we were still trying to work through those payments, while other expenses were rising. Does that resonate as you guys are, you know, obviously, growing a young family, you know, having that margin through having that debt paid off has allowed you to really have have some more flexibility as naturally expenses will rise as you have young children.

Derek Schwartz 07:37

Yeah, for sure. And we we started with our daughter in daycare. And we quickly learned that wasn’t for us. We were getting a lot of sick calls, we had to go in, bring her home, my wife and I both worked full time. And we were seemed to be a some of us, one of us is going to have to work part time to have to get around daycare. So we’ve hired a nanny, which was the best decision that we made. And, you know, we couldn’t afford that with student loan payments, we couldn’t afford that with a credit card payment or a car loan, or anything that, you know, requires a monthly payment like that. So it’s the setup to getting flexible with the budget has to start with being in a position where you can be flexible. And without any, like debt that’s just holding you down. That flexibility is just gone. So it limits your options. And we don’t want to have to, you know, talk about every single transaction that we do, where we buy something. Like hey, can we afford to have a date night? We don’t have to have that discussion because we don’t have, you know, all these loans and like this massive budget that we have to worry about. We still budget, but that’s in the budget, so you don’t have to think about it.

Tim Ulbrich 08:52

Yeah, yeah, what I hear there, Derek, is breathing room, right? You’ve used the word options, flexibility a couple of times already. But when you have breathing room, we underestimate the mental space and clarity that can come from that. And, you know, I think you can probably appreciate this working on this topic together with your spouse, like a lack of breathing room, a lack of margin is a recipe for stress and arguments. And you know, not not being on the same page financially. Right. So creating that breathing room, which we know is easier said than done. We look at today’s graduates are coming out with $150- $200,000 of debt. You know, you and I were fortunate to not necessarily be buying a home where home prices are in 2024 and interest rates. There are headwinds, right that today’s graduates are facing that are real. And unfortunately, those eat into that breathing room, they eat into that margin, but we know when we can create that breathing room and space. We have options. We have flexibility, you know, we’re able to really progress and move forward with the financial plan and play offense instead of constantly being on our heels playing defense. I do want to poke for a moment on the budget because I think that’s something that, you know, when I talk about budgeting, you know, to a group of pharmacists, you know everyone again is on their own journey, but I often see the look of like, like, do I have to right? Do I have to track? Do I have to do these things? And I tried to reframe the budget as being the really the mechanism by which we’re achieving our financial goals. Now, how detailed do you want to get is up to you. Whatever works for you, and everyone, again, is going to be different. But if we reframe it, that the budget, the spending plan, the system, whatever you want to call it, is simply the execution plan for achieving our goals, I think we can get behind that a little bit more. And you made a comment that, hey, we’re, we’re budgeting, but we’re maybe not tracking things at the granular level of hey, can we go on a date night tonight or not? And is the budget $20 or $30, or whatever that number is. So tell us about what your budgeting system looks like right now. And maybe how that’s evolved over time.

Derek Schwartz 10:46

Yeah, the budget before when I had debt was so rigid, because I knew exactly how much I was making. I knew exactly how much was going to, at the time was living in an apartment. So rent utilities. And it was a very locked in number. And that’s what it was going to be every month. And that was the number that would, that would knock down that debt. And that was the motivation for such a rigid budget is I knew exactly when those loans would be paid off. And now it’s completely changed. Because when you’re talking about no debt, what are you saving for? What’s your goal? You can be so much more flexible, when there’s not some restraint of I’m budgeting to get over this, instead of I’m budgeting to get to this. And when you’re budgeting to just have that independence that you want in your life financially, you can be so flexible with it. And my wife and I, before we had kids, we were saving a ton of money, I want to say at least 40 to 50% of our income, we were saving that. Because we were in a position where we’re like, hey, we want to have kids. So we know the timeline that we want to be on, we wanted to have a couple of kids we wanted to family, we knew it was going to be in a couple years. So we’re like, you know what, let’s just save for the next couple years, and then put ourselves in a position. So we just saved super aggressively. And then when the kids came and expenses come up, and you you dial that budget back, it doesn’t hurt as much because you’re still saving. And when you’re so aggressive to start, it’s so much easier to for it to be malleable, just mold it what you needed to be. And then we then look forward to having goals of hey, we can we can get that back to where we want it once kids are in school. And once you have less expenses, because they’re both we had two under two for quite a long time and not only was financially stressful, just in general stressful. And it we we see where it can get back to and that’s the motivation now.

Tim Ulbrich 12:46

Yeah, and I think Derek, one things you share that resonates with me is because of your early aggressive savings, we’ll talk about more of that here in a little bit with your FIRE journey. You know, that gives you some permission to say, Hey, this is a season we’re in. This is a season of expenses, you know, may not be forever, it’s gonna look different in a few years. You mentioned that already. But let’s say the opposite was true. Let’s say you guys didn’t save it all in the first five, seven, now 10 years, a decade coming up on graduation. That’s another layer of stress, right? Because, hey, we’ve now got rising expenses. And we feel like we need to play catch up. And because you saved early in the journey, there probably isn’t that nagging feeling of hey, we’ve got to catch up. Right. So again, breathing room, and margin. So our theme for today is PharmD to Debt Free to FIRE. So again, graduated 2014 Debt free journey – paid off those student loans in 2018. Now you’re really on this path and evolution towards building wealth and towards financial independence. We’ve talked about FIRE on the podcast many times, we’ve got a lot of resources on their website, if that term is new to those listening: Financial Independence, Retire Early. So we’re going to spend a bulk of our interview talking through that with Derek what what does that mean to him? Where is he at? And the journey? Why are they on the fire journey? And what has that looked like practically for them and their family? So, Derek, let me start there. It seems that the the term FIRE while there’s formulas, calculations, all these things about how we can determine what our FI number is, I recognize that can mean something different to everyone. So what does FIRE mean to you and to your family?

Derek Schwartz 14:18

For us, it just means that we retire on our own terms. We both had the goal of retiring when we were 50. That’s the goal. And because I love my wife, I will not say how old she is on a podcast. I am 34. That means I want to retire in 16 years. By the time I’m 50, we are done working and we want to pursue other interests. The nice thing about being on this FIRE journey and being aggressive with saving when we did is with two kids, we looked at each other we’re like, hey, this might be 55 now. that’s still really early. Hey, we might push it back to like, you know, 57-58. Maybe 60, we work part time that’s still early. The the financial independence side of the FIRE to us just means, hey, we’re on our own terms. If we want to pursue other interests, we can do that if we want to, you know, scale back how much we’re working, we can do that. If we want to explore other interests that can make us money, we can do that and just leave our professions that we have behind. But once we get to that point, we’ll know that we’re covered financially. And then you know, the sky, the sky’s the limit from there where we can, you know, instead of diversifying your your money, where it’s going, diversify your interests and see what you know, what calls for you.

Tim Ulbrich 15:40

Yeah, what I really hear there, Derek is options and opportunities that you could pursue, and it might be one of many different pathways. Maybe you decide to work part time, maybe you don’t, maybe decide to travel a bunch, you know, maybe there’s grandkids at that point in the future, and you want to have the flexibility of time, like, you know, maybe it’s something that you’re not even thinking about at this point, whether it’s volunteering, and you know, there’s a ton of different things that could be, but having the option to, right, that that is what really resonates with me when people talk about financial independence, regardless of what the number is, or what the age is, is, you know, maybe it’s retire early, maybe it’s not. But there’s options to pursue A, B, C, D E. I talked with somebody recently on the FIRE journey, I guess, we’ve had on the podcast before Corey Jenks. And he gave an example of, you know, I think he referenced like walking into a sporting goods store or another type of business. And he was like, Oh, that’s interesting. Like, maybe someday I just would want to try to work at one of these and kind of see what it’s like. And when you’re on an FI pathway, like, those are the kinds of things that you can, quote, take a risk on or roll the dice and say, oh, this would be interesting to do for, you know, six or 12 months, whatever that might be. So I love what you’re sharing there. One of the barriers I often see, Derek is two individuals getting on the same page, not just in general with their finance. But here’s we’re talking about with FIRE. And you know, often you might have one person who’s gung ho, let’s go. And maybe they even started the FIRE journey before they met their significant other, spouse or partner. So my question for you is, have you guys always been on the same page? Has this been an evolution, it sounds like you’re very much in the shared vision of 50, or 55-57. Whatever that age is. Tell us more about how you’ve been able to work together and get on the same page.

Derek Schwartz 17:25

Yeah, I’m, I am so blessed to have my wife. Because on our first date, we talked about just being financially independent, that was just such a goal for both of us. Probably weirded out a lot of people were sitting by at the restaurant we were at. But that was just a goal for both of us. She was debt free when I met her, she owned her own home, she wanted to get into real estate, she was already on that path I had, you know, my path is so much different from hers, because I had all this debt I had to pay off that she still had some, but she had paid it off years before I met her. So we were on the same journey of getting to financial independence. But we started completely different areas, and we just happen to meet at the time where, you know, I was ready to start saving at the level that we wanted to. So at the time we met, I was talking about, you know, buying my first home, eventually, we as we dated, I kind of weaseled my way into her house, decided to just live there and pay her rent and then we got married from there. But it’s just always been a passion for both of us because we have so many more interests that aren’t tied to our jobs. We both love our jobs, we love our work. But, we love other things, too. And part of that is with our kids, we want them to be also financially independent. And that’s you can’t do you can’t preach that you’re not doing it. And that’s just that’s really that’s a hard place to be in of you know, teaching discipline with your kids and teaching, you know, financial independence and you know, being your own person and not you just you know, having so much debt that you can’t, you know, do the goals that you want to do.

Tim Ulbrich 19:10

Yeah, and I appreciate the perspective you have on that Derek and I know you’ve got young ones you mentioned the the ages a little while ago. One of the things I’m appreciate with my boys, my oldest now going to be 13 in the summer, as they are observing and picking up on things way younger, you know, then you would think. Sure, they might not be able to articulate it. But there is definitely a culture in the house around money. They become very aware of how individuals are talking about money. Is it you know, fearful? Is it stressful? Is it an open conversation? Is it a closed conversation? And we’re gonna be talking more about that on the podcast here in the future about kids and money. It’s a really, really important topic. But you know, I think just a note of encouragement to parents out there like hey, we’re not going to get it right all the time. I haven’t gotten it right. Jess and I haven’t gotten it right all the time. But, you know, really being cognizant and aware of the dialogue, the culture, the tenor, the tone of what’s happening financially in the household. I think it’s so important. Derek, you mentioned 50. And I heard that evolve 53, 55, 57. You know, when I hear that age, often an objection that will come up is, well, how are we actually going to be able to fund that, right? You know, we’re not yet at Social Security age, you know, maybe we’ve got dollars that are tied up predominantly in traditional retirement accounts, 401k, 403B’s, IRAs can’t access those to 59 and a half without penalty. You know, so then becomes this question of, well, how do we actually produce a paycheck when we’re at an early retirement age, and of course, all the fears that may come of hey, we’re gonna run out of money too early, and where we need health insurance benefits. Talk to us about how you guys are thinking about that, while still a ways away. I’m sure it’s something that’s been on your mind.

Derek Schwartz 20:49

Yeah, that’s, that’s something that we, that one of the first things we talked about as, hey, if we retire at 50, what do we do? So we have different accounts that, you know, you can’t touch certain retirement accounts until a certain age, we also have taxable accounts that we can dip into. We have money that’s set aside just in savings that we can get to at anytime. By that time, we we have a 15 year mortgage, so our house would be paid for. So it’s kind of just like leveling with what do we have to anticipate paying for? What to what accounts can we get into what can’t we get into? What does that mean for hey, if we retire at 50, are we actually retired? Can we do all the things we want? Or do we have to kind of like, play it slow a little bit until we can get into into some more taxable accounts that we’re holding on to? And, you know, it’s flexible. And we’d rather have that conversation to 50, than than 70, or 75. So it’s kind of a non answer, it’s almost a we’ll see when we get to it. And that’s why it’s so nice, just for it to be so flexible, because we don’t know, you know, what that looks like at 50. And then, you know, if, like, we have to say, hey, we’re gonna work till 55 now, that’s not a big deal. And that might not even be a full time at that point. That might just be like, you know, hey, we’re both working part time both our kids are, you know, 18, maybe out of the house and college, maybe they’re doing their own thing, you know, and we can downsize our house, there’s a lot of options that you can have. So, another thing that we look at is, instead of saying, hey, at 50, what do we do? We’d rather do that and say, hey, we’re, we got to 65, Social Security is not there. Hey, we’re not getting the health insurance we thought we’d get because you don’t know what things are going to be. And with all those variables that are so many are out of your control that you don’t know. So we’re planning for those to just not be there. And so that’s kind of a, a different way to look at it. Because most people will assume that Social Security will be there, they’ll have some some kind of health insurance. We’re looking at it as, hey, if we retire at 50, on our own, can we do it? And we think we’re on track to do that. But if we have to push it, we can push it.

Tim Ulbrich 23:12

Yeah. And what I hear there, Derek, is being comfortable with the uncomfortable and the unknowns, but not necessarily just kind of put your hands up and saying, hey, there’s not planning that can be done, right. You mentioned several variables, assumptions that any one of those can change, some of them will change, some of them may be better than you thought, worse than you thought. So there’s planning that needs to be done. And we so often talk about the accumulation phase. Right. But we don’t often talk about the de-cumulation phase. Whether that’s early retirement or not, you’re gonna have several of these buckets of assets, right? You mentioned brokerage accounts, you mentioned traditional accounts, you’ve obviously got your home, that will be an asset, perhaps there’s real estate now or in the future. I mean, you’re gonna have all these different buckets, maybe there’s social security involved. And it’s a matter and function of okay, well, for 55. Where are we drawing from those? And how do we do that in a tax efficient way? And how do we make sure that we’re optimizing which buckets we’re drawing from, and essentially, what we have to do is, you know, our working career, we work and we get a paycheck, right? Well, when we’re not working, or working part time, and we need to fill up the rest of that income bucket, we have to produce our own paycheck in retirement, whether that’s early or not. And I think there’s so many nuances and planning opportunities there that we just don’t talk enough about how do we actually produce that retirement paycheck? You mentioned 15 year mortgage. I want to talk about that for a moment. Because, you know, obviously, you’re, you’re a math guy, you’re on the FI journey. And, you know, there’s this debate that’s always ongoing of 15 versus 30. Year and what’s the opportunity cost and, you know, getting out of debt and versus carrying a low interest rate debt for a longer term. As you’re someone who’s looking at an aggressive savings rate, you know, an argument could be made potentially that hey, anything you’re paying on a 15 year that you could, you know, have paid on a 30 year or lesser amount than you could have invested the difference. You know, obviously there’s an opportunity there to way of paying down the debt versus investing for the for future, the most common question we get, hey, should I be paying down my debt? Should I be investing? How did you think through that process of, hey, let’s make a higher monthly mortgage payment. And therefore, you know that that is money that could have potentially been invested versus maybe you did decide to take out a 30 year, and it’s a lower amount, but you’re able to invest more talk us through that.

Derek Schwartz 25:20

Yeah, that’s an interesting story, because we bought her home in the summer of 2020. And taking, taking some time to look back on that time in the mortgage arena, we got a 3% fixed interest rate. You’re not getting that anytime soon, anywhere else. So we made the decision of hey, like, this is an interest rate that it’s basically non-existent. 3% it’s is absurd, and especially in today’s market. So a 15 year mortgage, that’s not really that much of a difference between a 30 year and then you also you still have something like wiggle room to, you know, take some money on the home, and do that sort of things. And it’s funny, what do we do that now, probably not. It would probably be a 30 year, if we were to move and buy a new home. It would probably be a 30 year mortgage. And it’s just interesting, because when you’re out of debt, you look at different ways to I don’t want to say manipulate what you’re doing with your money, but to just kind of be flexible with it, is that instead of saying, Hey, we have to, you know, think of a different way we’re paying on our home, we might have to think of a different differently. We think of it in a way of, you know, how can we take advantage of the situation that we put ourselves in, we were both out of debt, we bought our home? How can we make this situation benefit us? And that’s, that’s such the nice thing about being in the FIRE mindset of, first of all, being in the FIRE mindset, you’re out of debt. And then secondly, how can we use factors around us to benefit us. And that’s something you can’t do when you have when you have a lot of debt, and you don’t have the the FIRE mindset if you’ve already been saving. And that’s not a realistic expectation for people right now. But if you set yourself up to be in a position where you want to be FIRE, and you want to be really aggressive retiring, that is a situation that anyone can easily be in.

Tim Ulbrich 27:24

Yeah, I appreciate that. And I presented the question as a dichotomous variable of hey, you could have either taken out debt longer invest that, of course, it’s not that simple. And one of the variables that’s unique to you guys, is you did aggressively save early on. So there already was that that base of savings. You know, if someone isn’t in that position, and they’re weighing, you know, should I be taken out a longer term mortgage or shorter term? And where am I investing? The question they have to factor in, among many others is, am I on track? Am I ahead? Am I behind? And, you know, certainly that will, will change the equation, how we look at that, as well. When you guys came up with your FI number, I’m curious to hear more about how you determine what this is and how you evaluate this on an ongoing basis, you know, in the FI community, which you’re more plugged in than I am, but there’s everything from back of napkin, you know, rule 25: take your total annual expenses, including taxes multiplied by 25. That’s based on the 4% rule. We’ve talked about that on the show before. And then there’s, you know, much more nuanced calculators that are out there and available. So tell us more about how you guys have evaluated what your FI number is?

Derek Schwartz 28:28

Yeah, we’re much less we’re not even that nuanced. We just, we pick a number, hey, 50, what do we need to do to get there? And that wasn’t a let’s calculate what we have what we’re saving it, plug it into something. And that’s what the number comes up. We started our FIRe journey being like, it’s going to be 50. What do we need to do to get there? And I think, looking at that way, it simplifies it a lot more, because you look at it from a perspective of, if that’s the goal, all right, um, when we started, that was a couple years ago, so it was like 18 years to 50. What are we doing in the next 18 years to get there? And at that point, we didn’t have kids, and then kids come, and we’re like, alright, 50 might not be possible. We went to push it, but 50 it still could be possible. What can we what can we cut back on a little bit to get there? So I think that’s such a nice thing about FIRE is that, you know, it, it’s so adaptable to what you want to do. You can it can be 55, it can be 60. It can just be an unknown age, where you just you have your, your budget, you look at it, you look at what you’re saving, and you’re like, yeah, we can just do it now. And then just start your, you know, FIRE journey from there. Yeah, an important thing and for those that are new on this FIRE journey, what you’ll quickly realize is you start to run numbers is your annual expenses is, is really the factor that’s going to drive this equation the most both in terms of what you need, right? Because your projected need is based off of what you’re going to have to potentially draw. So if you have two pharmacists, let’s say both making $125,000, one is able to live off of 50% of their income, one’s able to live off of 80% of their income, their FI numbers are going to be very, very different. And thus, their savings rates are going to be very different because of the percentage of their income, right, that’s available and able to say, so easier said than done. You know, we know that pharmacists cost of living, individual situations, but you see this on the regular where you know, someone who’s able to really drive down cost of living expenses. And there’s a balance here that we have to factor in, versus someone that is not able to for whatever reason, those numbers of what that FI number is going to be in the timeline to get there are going to be drastically different for sure. Derek, one of things we talk a lot about on this show is we firmly believe from personal experience and working with hundreds of pharmacists, one-on-one on this topic that a good financial plan, it’s a marathon, it’s not a sprint, we really have to be striking this balance between, yes, we have to be ready for the future. Yes, we have to take care of our future selves. But we also have to be making sure we’re prioritizing living a rich life today. And we tend to think about these on one end of the spectrum or the other. Right, there’s some that we see are very, very aggressive savers. But aren’t necessarily comfortable with spending in any capacity. And then there, of course, is the opposite end of the equation as well. How have you guys been able to, especially with a young family, strike this balance between, hey, we need to continue to push forward with getting our FI number. And whatever that age and goal is, but also like, hey, this is a season in a phase of life, that we also want to make sure that we’re living a rich life, we know that eventually this season will pass as well.

Derek Schwartz 31:49

Yeah, that’s, it’s always something when you have kids, everything changes. And you know, everyone’s gonna tell you that you don’t believe it until you’re in it. And that’s something that, you know, you want to enrich your kids lives with different experiences and do things. And, you know, we’ve talked about, hey, we could take them to Disney World, we can take them on a nice vacation, we could also go to a national park. There’s a different cost difference with those, especially if you can like drive to one. We live in Cincinnati so we’re close to Mammoth Cave systems, Red River Gorge in Kentucky, it’s a really nice places that you know, the kids will enjoy. And that’s a big cost savings as opposed to like a more expensive vacation like Disney. Nothing against Disney, my daughter loves frozen, she will eventually go. But that’s something that right now with, we have more expenses, because we have two very young kids, we have a nanny that we’re paying for. Once they’re older, and they’re in school, we don’t have the the nanny costs, some of that costs goes towards maybe a new car fund, maybe that goes to vacation funds. So we can do like a yearly vacation somewhere nice. That goes back into retirements, and it just kind of like just kind of morphs, it’s kind of like a primordial soup of just the funds are there. They’re being used for this, they’re being used for that. What can we do now to make sure that, hey, when the time is right, we can afford that vacation, we can afford to take them on, like really, you know, fun, like family trips to like Disney. And right now that looks like you know, more affordable options, we take them to the Cincinnati kids museum, which is a great place for kids, we take them the national parks. And those are so much more affordable and fit within our current FIRE budget without, you know, just sitting at home and not doing anything. So it’s, it’s in terms of what you do with family enrichment, it depends on what you want to do, how much you’re paying now for expenses that won’t be there. And for us, we have expenses of a nanny that won’t be there for too long. It’s going to be here for a couple of years. But then after that, it’s like okay, we’re gonna go back to saving more aggressively. How about we also save aggressively for a nice trip, How about we save aggressively for, you know, programs that we want our kids in? So, and we couldn’t do that without being out of debt. I keep going back to getting out of debt. But that’s just so important because it just allows you to be on that platform to just do so many different things with what you want to do with your money.

Tim Ulbrich 34:37

Great stuff. My last question for you, Derek, is you know, for the for the students or new grads that might be listening. They’re saying, Derek, this is great. But dot dot, dot, I’ve got $175,000 of debt. I’m trying to purchase a house in this housing environment where costs are crazy. Interest rates are crazy. And I feel like there’s not a whole lot of margin and sure, maybe I’d like to pursue a FIRE journey. But at a minimum, I’d like to just build a good foundation and make sure that I’ve got a solid plan. What advice would you have for new grads coming out today in 2024? As you look back now 10 years ago, just a different space that we’re in. What are your thoughts for those new grads coming out today?

Derek Schwartz 35:17

Yeah, it’s, you have to realize what goals you want to accomplish first. Some people want to own a home. I’m not going to tell people to not buy a house. Some people want to start a family and never going to tell people to not have a family. When you have a lot of debt, and unfortunately, with a lot of pharmacists, pharmacy students coming out, the grads and some people do residencies, where they’re not making their like full salary yet. It’s hard to say to someone, hey, you know, you got to really get on that debt and get that down. From what I saw, when I started my journey of paying off my debt, I was working with a lot of older pharmacists, that when I was in my like, early 20s, and a lot of them were like, hey, if I was, if I could go back 30 years be in your shoes, I would do exactly what you’re doing. And that’s the affirmation that I needed that I was on the right path, because it wasn’t fun. Paying off debt is not fun. It is it is not glamorous, it is not full of constant rewards, you’re not doing a lot of things, you’re just watching a number go down. And that’s all it’s doing. But once you get out and pass through that, your options just expanded so much. And there are some people that you know, graduate, they already have a family, they already have a house. That requires you know, a sit down with your spouse, your partner, and talking about a budget of hey, you know, how can we get this down? How can we get to where we need to go? Yeah, and the first step that I would encourage is to budget and figure out a number of like, when is the realistic goal we can pay it off? And I think figuring that number out, for some people might be longer than they thought it would. And that’s a really important step is to figure out, look at all of our expenses, maybe you have a mortgage, you have the expense of kids, you’re thinking, hey, you know, we can knock this student loan down in a couple of years. It’s actually like 10. Do you want to wait 10 years to pay that off? Or what can you do now to like, chip that number down to five? What can you do to chip it down to six? And then those you know, four or five years you save of not being you know, chained down with your student loans, it can be really reassuring, kind of a kick to get into gear, to get some stuff done.

Tim Ulbrich 37:49

Great stuff there. This has been a joy to reconnect and hear your story. Hear where you’re at seven years later. Hear how the foundation you built early. You’re seeing the fruit of that now and I think there’s only more fruit to come. So thank you so much for taking time to come on the show and to give us an update where you’re at.

Derek Schwartz 38:06

Great to be back.

Tim Ulbrich 38:07

[DISCLAIMER] As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacists unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

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YFP 340: YFP Podcast Replay – How to Teach Your Kids About Money and Investing

Posted on by YFP Media

Dylin Redling and Allison Tom discuss their journey to FIRE and their book for kids on investing and personal finance, sharing practical advice and tips.

Episode Summary

On this episode Tim Ulbrich welcomes Dylin Redling and Allison Tom, creators of Retireby45.com and authors of two books, Start Your F.I.R.E. (Financial Independence Retire Early): A Modern Guide to Early Retirement and Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest and Grow Money. Dylin and Allison achieved ‘financial independence retire early’ status in 2015 when they were in their early 40’s. Have you ever thought to yourself, I wish I had learned more about the topic of personal finance sooner? If so, that’s exactly what today’s show is all about as Tim interviews Dylin and Allison about their work with their book, Investing for Kids. They discuss practical advice and meaningful activities to help with teaching kids about money and investing.

About Today’s Guests

Dylin Redling and Allison Tom are a married couple living in Oakland, California. After working for 17 years in the tech industry in San Francisco, they left the workforce in January 2015 and never went back.

They own and operate the website RetireBy45.com, which provides inspiration, tips, and resources for achieving FIRE (Financial Independence / Retiring Early) and making the most of the FIRE lifestyle. In 2020, they wrote and published two books: “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement” and the best-selling “Investing for Kids.”

They love food, fitness, and travel. Their goal of “60 by 60” is to visit 60 countries by the age of 60.

Key Points from the Episode

Learn about Dylin and Allison’s book for kids ages 8-12 called, “Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest, and Grow Money”
Dylin and Allison’s first book was “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement”
Their book for kids is easy to understand with lots of activities and lead by the colorful characters called the Dollar Duo: Mr. Finance and Investing Woman
Career paths and choices led Allison and Dylin to live in the Bay Area of California
When Dylin had pneumonia and was in the ICU for many days, the couple began to ask themselves, “Do we want to work for 25 more year?”
Dylin’s pneumonia experience along with changes in their careers led them to pursue with FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early) journey
Because they are passionate about learning about personal finance, they felt inspired to reach a younger audience
Dylin and Allison believe it is important to have a healthy respect for money, even in the age of digital currency
They hope their book can be read with an adult so that it can lead to good conversations about personal finance
Good finances early on can put you in a good position to be in control of future opportunities

Episode Highlights

“So there are plenty of ways to cut costs in your life that are relatively painless, that we’ve talked about all the time, so there are just different ways to do it to achieve FIRE. And some people don’t even choose to do the early retiring like my father is the example. So retirement is really more of the optional part. We’re not saying you have to retire, you have to leave your job and just sit around drinking mojitos all day long, although it’s certainly not a bad lifestyle. But you know, the retiring part is up to the individual. “ – Allison Tom

“So we love our FIRE lifestyle and the fact that we left our W2 jobs in our 40s, but we know it’s not for everybody. But what we do also know is that the concepts of Financial Independence are good for anybody, no matter when you might want to retire. And those concepts are really about doing the right thing with your money. So it starts with saving, it starts with being somewhat frugal — and when we say frugal, we don’t mean living a spartan lifestyle. We just mean not going crazy with money with spending on things that you don’t want or that you don’t need or you feel like you have to keep up with the Joneses and get a brand new SUV every two years.” – Dylin Redling

“I got to college, and then I had my first credit card that I just — oof. It was bad. I did not understand the concept of paying credit cards and interest rates and late fees and minimum payments. And so, you know, I got in trouble with credit cards after I graduated. And it wasn’t until after that that I thought, oh, I really need to learn more about what’s going on here. And so I started watching some shows on PBS, but by then, you know, I’m in my early 20s at that point. My learning took a lot longer for the habits to become engrained in me. So you know, I really do think that if kids could see this stuff earlier, it would be so much more impactful.” –Allison Tom

“That’s the beauty of the time being yours is you can make it whatever you want to do. We also do a lot more work with our community that we never had time to do when we were working. So we’re a lot more invested in our neighborhood, and we spend more time working with businesses in our neighborhood to bring in more business. So having that luxury of time means you can go explore whatever interests pop up.” – Allison Tom

“And so as the educators come up with their curriculum, I think honestly, a lot of adults are really intimidated by personal finance. And so it’s something that seems easy enough for them to cut out of the education system as an elective because well, if they don’t understand it, then kids aren’t going to understand it. And if they’re intimidated by it, then kids are definitely going to not understand it and be intimidated by it, so let’s not even talk about it, which actually is one of the reasons why we thought it was important to write the book.” – Allison Tom

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

(INTRO)

Tim Ulbrich: Dylin and Allison, welcome to the show.

Allison Tom: Thanks for having us.

Dylin Redling: Thank you very much. Great to be here.

Tim Ulbrich: I’ve very much been looking forward to this interview to talk more about your story achieving financial independence and early retirement and more specifically, the work that the two of you did in writing “Investing for Kids: How to Save, Invest, and Grow Money.” And Dylin, let’s start with you only because we share an Ohio State connection since you’re an alum so go Bucks. Why write a book specifically designed for kids about investing? What was the motivation behind your work?

Dylin Redling: Yeah, well, first of all, go Buckeyes. Yes, a great connection there. It’s interesting because I’ll start off with the interesting fact that Allison and I actually don’t have kids. And so you would think that the impetus would have been we had our own kids and we taught them financial literacy and it inspired us to teach more kids. But in fact, we sort of stumbled into this book. This is our second book. Our first book is called, “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement.” And it’s all about early retirement and financial independence, which that book just poured right out of us because it’s something that we live and we know very well. And what happened was the publisher who we worked with on that book came back to us a couple months after that book was published and said, “Hey, we have an idea for this other book. And it’s investing for kids ages 8-12. And what do you guys think because you know about investing and financial concepts, and we think you guys might be able to pull this off.” And we thought, wow, we don’t have kids, we’re not teachers, we don’t hang out with kids. We have a few friends with kids, but we don’t spend a lot of time with them. And so we thought, man, this sounds really challenging and daunting. But it was during the 2020 year of COVID, so we had a lot of time on our hands. So we thought, let’s just go for it. And we dove into it, and it was very challenging because we wanted it to be interesting for kids and informative and fun but somehow, we put our heads together and we had a really good editing team that helped us with some of the concepts to relate to kids. And that’s — and we just dove into it and we just made it happen.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think you guys did an awesome job. You know, one of the things that stood out to me as my wife and I were looking through this book as parents of four young kids trying to teach this topic of money is that’s it’s very hands-on, it’s relatable, it’s digestible, lots of activities, really cool ideas. You know, I often find myself, especially writing, talking about this topic regularly, presenting on this topic, you take for granted how you learned some of this information along the way. You know, I often think, OK, take a concept like compound interest or, you know, mutual funds or index funds or ultimately trying to determine what your retirement savings goals, any of those concepts, and it’s very easy to get lost in the weeds. And I think it’s often hard to figure out, how am I going to break this down and teach this with my children and really work through this? And so I found myself looking through this, not only learning myself of oh, that’s a really neat way to teach a different concept or a very visual way or a nice activity to apply that information. So I think as I looked through this, whether someone is more advanced in their own knowledge and understanding of personal finance or whether they feel like they could also learn from these concepts, either one I think this book could be a really good guide for them alongside of working with their child. So great work in the work that you put together with the book. And Allison, knowing your background is a technical project manager, I’m curious, I mean, how and why did you catch FIRE — pun intended here — with this topic, not only as an individual pursuit for financial independence but also in wanting to help guide others to the work that you’re doing with RetireBy45.com and with the book “Investing for Kids.” Where does the interest come from?

Allison Tom: Part of it is that my college degree is actually psychology and education. So I had all these grand ideas of becoming a teacher, an elementary school teacher, after I graduated from college. But you know, after a couple of years, it dawned on me that frankly, our teachers are woefully underpaid. And there was pretty much there was no clear financial path for me to continue being a teacher making the salary I was making, so I was living in Boston at the time and I moved back to New York where we eventually met waiting tables, of all things. And we came out to San Francisco on a whim, we were on vacation, we were in our mid-20s, we thought, alright, let’s check out San Francisco. And so I bounced around from career to career and ended up on a consulting company that eventually brought me into the technical world of the Bay Area. But you know, so being a project manager is basically being a glorified teacher. So it’s dropping people, wrangling people to do things that you want them to do but do it in a way that makes them want to be — work as a team and learn from each other. So in a way, it was being a project manager was — it had very similar tendencies as it was being a teacher. And so we had always thought, oh, it would be great to retire early, but we didn’t really know what retiring early meant. We thought, oh, 55, that seems like a really good age to retire. It’s earlier than 65, but it seems so far in the future. And living in the Bay Area, our expenses were so high that we were like, there’s no way, even if we’re making decent salaries between the two of us that we’re ever going to retire. But about 11 years or so ago, Dylin came down with double pneumonia and was in the ICU for about 10 days and in the hospital altogether for almost two weeks. And that for us was a light bulb moment because he was within a 50/50 chance that he would make it. And so you know, after that, we kind of thought, OK, do we really want to keep working for the next 25 years or so? And so we kind of like made it our goal to get out of the rat race as soon as we could. And so we kind of fell into by accident. We can talk about that later, but it just — it kind of was a natural progression from all of the things that we’ve been doing over time.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, that makes sense. And I appreciate you sharing some of the background and story. We’ll come back to how you got to that point of early retirement, obviously as I mentioned in the introduction, early 40s to be able to accomplish that goal, and we’ll talk a little bit about how you got to that path, why that was possible as well. And so let’s first dig into some of the book of “Investing for Kids.” Let’s start with the main characters of the book, the Dollar Duo: Mr. Finance and Investing Woman. Allison, tell us more about these two characters, how you came up with the idea, why it was important to the overall text, and how those characters can really help the learner, again, 8- to 12-year-old is the target group here, engage with the material throughout the book.

Allison Tom: Well, first of all, it was kind of funny, today is actually Superheroes Day, so –

Tim Ulbrich: There we go.

Allison Tom: It’s a perfect segue into the topic. We were actually taking a walk one day as we were writing the book, and we were talking about politics, of all things. And we were trying to figure out in the administration, whichever administration, whoever won the presidency, what each president could do to make their administration better. And so we kind of were talking and talking about of all things, the Justice League of America and who we would think would be a good fit for making this country a better country. And so the whole idea of the Justice League, kind of thought, we thought, oh, superheroes. Kids love superheroes. Let’s talk to our publisher about bringing in some superheroes. And we were like, well, I don’t know if they’ll go for that, there’s some extra graphics involved and it could be expensive, but we felt that it would really be a good way for kids to relate to finances. And so we kind of pushed hard for this idea of having superheroes teach kids finance.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and that stood out to me in addition to how visual it is. This does not — especially for a topic like investing, right, can be weighty at times, it can be overwhelming, I often find myself when I’m giving a talk on this topic, starts with excitement often when we think about what the — and then you get into the weeds and you see the eyes gloss over, right, and other things. And this does not read like a textbook in any way, shape, or form. And I’m grateful for that. So thank you for the illustrations, the activities, the superheroes, but I think it very much reads like an interactive, applicable, nuts-and-bolts, important information, but how do I actually apply it and hopefully get excited about this information. Again, we’re thinking about an 8- to 12-year-old of wanting to really hopefully empower them to be excited with this for the rest of their own financial journey. And I very much read this book, as I mentioned, being a father of four boys who also lives and breathes personal finance, I really do often find myself in conversation with my boys about money. And honestly, I struggle at times with making the topic of money tangible and meaningful. And it can feel abstract, especially when I find myself trying to say and teach a principle that I very much understand but it feels more abstract as I talk it out loud and especially when you start to view it through the lens of a child. And so I like how you start the book with Chapter 1 on Money 101. You cover important topics like money doesn’t grow on trees, ways to earn money, a little bit of entrepreneurship in there, which is really cool, the history of money, where to keep money. And so Dylin, here’s the challenge that I’m seeing with my boys. In the age of credit cards, debit cards, direct deposit, online banking, digital currency, electronic payment methods, it can feel difficult to teach a child about money when you don’t see it. Right? There’s very little actual, physical cash and therefore, it can be hard to connect work and I think the opportunities from work with earning money and therefore, the opportunity to then save and see it grow. So what are some tips and strategies as you put this book together as well as the other teaching you’ve done on this topic about how can we teach kids about money in a way that it can be relatable, it can be tangible, and then hopefully it becomes memorable for them.

Dylin Redling: Yeah, you know, that’s a really good point about money being very digital in this day and age. I remember when I was a kid, one of the coolest things was my grandmother would give me and my cousins 50 single dollars for Christmas and for our birthdays. They would come in a little box just big enough to hold those 50 $1 bills.

Tim Ulbrich: I love that.

Dylin Redling: And — yeah, it was really cool. And you know, $50 back then for a kid was a lot of money. And those 50 $1 bills would last a really long time. I would take them into the arcade, into the pizza parlor, whatever. And so maybe one way to do it is to actually bring back physical money. And I don’t think the amount really matters that much. But like you said, I mean, being able to tangibly feel it, see it, and understand it, it helps a lot more if you’re using physical money. And I’ll actually give an example of that we used on our blog and in actually “Start Your FIRE” book. I don’t think we mentioned it in “Investing for Kids,” but it’s a little story I like to tell about a money lesson that I actually learned from Allison when we were waiting tables in New York. So we met in a big restaurant in Times Square, and Allison grew up with a little bit of a better financial education in her household than I did. My single mother was wonderful, but it was all paycheck-to-paycheck, there wasn’t a lot of saving or investing. So I came into our initial relationship not very good at dealing with money. So anyway, we were waiting tables. So all of our money pretty much was in tips. So we would have tons of cash. And I remember just putting the money — I would wad it up into balls, I would stuff it into all four of my pockets because I was busy. And then we would go out afterwards and Allison saw how I was treating my money, and she was like, “What are you doing? How do you even keep track of that? That’s awful.” And so she taught me this little lesson. And she doesn’t even remember this because this was 25 years ago, but it stuck out in my head. And basically, I call it the Wallet Lesson. When you take all of your bills and you put them nicely, neatly in order from small to big or big to small, whatever works, fold it neatly into your wallet. And it’s really simple, but the reason it was impactful for me is because it just got me to think about how to respect and treat money. You know, you work really hard for money –

Tim Ulbrich: That’s right.

Dylin Redling: And if you don’t treat it well, you don’t respect it, you know, that $50 might not seem like a big deal. But when it gets to $100,000 or $500,000 and you don’t have that same respect and feel for what that money represents and how hard it was to earn it, you’re not going to put it and treat it and save it and protect it as well as you could.

Tim Ulbrich: Such a good example of a behavioral move, right? The number of dollars didn’t change, but how you treated them, how you respected them, how you viewed them, and I think many of our listeners, we talk on this show often that I believe personal finance, it’s about the math and it’s about the behavior, and both of those are very important and some of those types of moves or here, teaching kids in that way, I think can be very powerful as well. Allison, Chapter 2, save your money, you have an activity titled “Be an Interest Rate Detective.” I love this. I thought this was a really cool interactive activity where you challenge the reader to work with an adult to research interest rates for a local bank savings account, a CD, so a Certificate of Deposit, and an online savings account. So again, this was just one of many example activities you have throughout the book, but why is an activity like this so important in terms of someone being an interest rate detective to experience and go through as they begin their journey of understanding some of the basics of investing?

Allison Tom: So part of it is we wanted all the activities to be something that kids could do with the adult in their life. And we didn’t assume that every child has a parent because we know in this modern day and age that families are different nowadays, and you might have two moms or two dads or a grandmother or grandfather or a guardian of some sort. So we wanted something that people could do together with — kids could do together with someone else. And we thought, oh, it’s going to be interesting because banks are closed during COVID. When we were writing the book, it was right in the heart of shelter in place. But we thought, well, you know, kids have access to — most kids have access to a computer, they can at least walk around to a local bank and banks always have their advertisements on their windows with their interest rates. But we thought it would be an interesting way for kids to see what is in their environment and practice some good behaviors like oh, what does interest rate mean? What is APR? Those are, they’re jumbled letters and so you actually learn what the acronym stands for. And so we want to make sure that kids could kind of connect their physical world to their these abstract ideas about money. So all these activities are kind of a way to get kids to start thinking about it, and we were like, oh, kids aren’t really going to want to do activities, it’s extra homework. So we tried to make them fun and things that they could actually do and feel like they were learning something.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think this was a good example where the activity really, to me, is a rabbit hole of other learning, right? So if you go to the bank and do this activity, just like you suggested, Allison, it leads to other conversations and questions like, what is the federal reserve? And what is an insured account? What does that mean? You talk about that in the book, you know, how do you explain the federal reserve? What is compound interest? Why is that so important? What is principle? What’s interest? What do terms mean? And I think it, again, leads to further conversations, which obviously hopefully spark some motivation and curiosity to learn more on this topic. Dylin, in Chapter 3, Introduction to Investing, you cover very important topics, you know, why to invest, risk v. reward — and I love the Risk-o-meter throughout the book, that was really neat — liquidity, the importance of conducting research, and connecting back to my previous comment about the difficulties teaching a child about money when it may not be tangible, you can’t see it, can’t feel it type of a mindset, I think this is another area where parents may feel challenged to teach a child the importance of investing when again, it might feel somewhat abstract and here, we’re talking about delayed gratification, right? So not spending money on something today that has an instant reward. I think back to my childhood, it was driving to the corner store, buying baseball cards, buying candy, you earn the money, you spent the money, you saw the reward instantly. So here, the activity on investing, which I thought helped to really drive this concept further, you talk about an activity of picking a stock and really going through that process of understanding what’s involved there. So talk us through that type of an activity, what’s involved in that, and why that’s important to help a child relate to the concepts of investing.

Dylin Redling: Yeah, sure. It’s interesting because I can also relate it to how Allison and I do our own investing. And most of what we do, to be honest, are buying mutual funds and index funds. We don’t do a lot of single stock buying. However, there are some advantages to just helping a child or anybody, really, think about, well, if you were to buy a single stock, what would the thought process be when you do that? We actually just wrote an interesting post on our blog just about a week ago where we had $10,000 that we wanted to experiment with. And what we did is we selected five different stocks to invest that $10,000. So $2,000 per stock. And I went through the process in that blog post of why we would do this. And it wasn’t to get rich quick or to see what would happen in a week or a month. This particular blog post talked about a one-year time frame. And it’s the same with the activity for the child. I think we used a shorter — a relatively short time frame so they could at least measure their success. At the end of the day, investing, as you know, as your listeners know, it’s very much a long-term process where you’re investing over years and decades. But again, to get the child to think about some of the things that you might want to think about with whether you’re investing in stocks or any sort of investment, what are the things that go into that thought process? And so getting back to that blog post I wrote, some of the stocks that I suggested that we test out, one was a blockchain ETF. So now that bitcoin and other coin-based just went public, those are things that we wouldn’t necessarily invest in directly. But a blockchain ETF is an example of a way you could dip your toe into that technology. So that was the thought process there. Another example was a cruise company, NCL, Norwegian Cruise Line. Now that COVID is starting to disappear and everyone’s getting vaccinated, people, there’s this pent-up demand to start traveling again. So we thought, hey, in the next year, NCL may actually start to do really good. And they even have a program where if you have 100 shares, you get extra bonus points. And so the idea is to think about all the different aspects to that investment, like how does it relate to what’s going on in the world right now? And what other pros and cons are there to that investment?

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think we share your philosophy. What I heard there is our planning team often says a good investing plan should probably be as about boring as watching paint dry.

Dylin Redling: Right.

Tim Ulbrich: At the end of the day, it’s about a long-term play. But I like this activity as a concept. You know, I remember I had a great Econ101 teacher that had us do a similar activity. And it’s very memorable because it also leads to many other conversations like well, what type of influence does my marketing have? Or I thought this was going to go this way, and it didn’t go this way. Maybe I had some overconfidence in my selection of things. So why is diversification important? So I think, again, reading it and doing it, two very, very different things. And I think people experiencing this firsthand, especially you think of an 8- to 12-year-old, a very kinesthetic learner, right, hands-on experience that moment, be able to learn through that experience. Allison, as I went through the book, many times I thought to myself, man, what if I would have had some of this information earlier? What if I would have had this in middle school or high school or perhaps even earlier? And shoutout to my parents, who did an awesome job of the foundations, grew up in a small business, felt like I had a little bit of a head start. But outside of some K-12 programs and in higher education, I would say it’s largely absent, maybe some elective courses or some opportunities. And so I can’t help but think like, why aren’t we doing more of this? Why aren’t we covering more of this in a K-12 education? I mean, this type of book, this type of experience, these types of activities would be a home run in teaching kids about money. Here, we’re taking 8-12 investing, but obviously we all know it’s broader than that as well. So question here, I’m not asking you to solve the personal finance educational system woes, but why do you think this is not more foundational to our educational system in terms of personal finance education?

Allison Tom: Right. So I think part of it is that our generation didn’t really learn this either. And so as the educators come up with their curriculum, I think honestly, a lot of adults are really intimidated by personal finance. And so it’s something that seems easy enough for them to cut out of the education system as an elective because well, if they don’t understand it, then kids aren’t going to understand it. And if they’re intimidated by it, then kids are definitely going to not understand it and be intimidated by it, so let’s not even talk about it, which actually is one of the reasons why we thought it was important to write the book. We didn’t get this education when we were growing up. I know my parents are second-generation immigrants. And so the money lessons that they learned were from their parents, who grew up during the Great Depression. And as immigrants coming over to this country, they just pooled their money and they saved and they saved and they worked 20 hours a day to make money and then they would maybe invest it in the bank, although plenty of my relatives didn’t even bother with that. So my lessons growing up were save and save and save and save. I had a little piggy bank, and I would put all my coins in from the piggy bank, but that was the only thing that I learned. And so it wasn’t until I got to college, and then I had my first credit card that I just — oof. It was bad. I did not understand the concept of paying credit cards and interest rates and late fees and minimum payments. And so, you know, I got in trouble with credit cards after I graduated. And it wasn’t until after that that I thought, oh, I really need to learn more about what’s going on here. And so I started watching some shows on PBS, but by then, you know, I’m in my early 20s at that point. My learning took a lot longer for the habits to become engrained in me. So you know, I really do think that if kids could see this stuff earlier, it would be so much more impactful. You know, I’ve talked to a girlfriend of mine, her daughter is 17 and she read the book and she was like, “Yeah, you know, I’m going to start doing the savings plan when I get a job.” My friend was laughing because she’s like, my daughter doesn’t have a job. But she was just like, she got inspired by it, and I thought, oh, if we could just get kids to learn this stuff sooner –

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Allison Tom: All the great things we could do with them. So hopefully. Hopefully.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I love that, to that point, Allison. I think it was early in the book, you have the reader go through an activity where they identify problems, things that could be improved upon, right? And one of the things I often say is that any business is a solution to a problem, and that solution is one that people care about and are willing to pay for. And you know, I love that because I think for a child, like if they can think about, what are some things that could be done better? You know, one of them you proposed in the book, which was really cool because we recently just bought this — or actually we got it as a gift for our kids from our family — is you mention like chess. Really hard game for kids to play, kids to learn. Why isn’t there a solution out there that can make chess easier to play? Sure enough, there is. There’s a card game where you draw cards, you learn the basic moves of chess. So things like that, I think you’re inspiring some of the creative thinking, the problem solving, and laying some of the seeds of entrepreneurship or even for those that don’t own their own company, which would be the vast majority of folks, intrepreneurship, how can you be a problem solver within your organization? And how can you create solutions that make you a valuable asset within that organization? I want to shift gears a bit to connect some of the work that you have in “Investing for Kids” with what you cover in your site, Retireby45.com. You mentioned your other FIRE book as well. And I got the impression that you both, you believe that everyone could put together — especially an 8- to 12-year-old reading the “Investing for Kids” book — put together a plan for FIRE, again Financial Independence Retire Early — by the age of 45. So Dylin, our listeners know firsthand that time in the market equals success, and that compound interest, as you mentioned in the book, is the eighth wonder of the world. So we know the math is possible if someone starts at an early age. But why do you think it’s important that someone plans for FIRE by the age of 45?

Dylin Redling: Whether you’re able to retire in your 40s or your 50s or you do a traditional retirement in your 60s or even beyond, Allison’s dad, for example, is 70 now — or slightly older — and has no intentions of stopping working even though Allison suggests that he stop and enjoy life. But he’s got a job that he really loves. And so there’s a lot of people out there that are like that. So we love our FIRE lifestyle and the fact that we left our W2 jobs in our 40s, but we know it’s not for everybody. But what we do also know is that the concepts of Financial Independence are good for anybody, no matter when you might want to retire. And those concepts are really about doing the right thing with your money. So it starts with saving, it starts with being somewhat frugal — and when we say frugal, we don’t mean living a spartan lifestyle. We just mean not going crazy with money with spending on things that you don’t want or that you don’t need or you feel like you have to keep up with the Joneses and get a brand new SUV every two years. So there’s that, and of course investing wisely. And you know, we have another story that we write out on our blog, which kind of I think can be somewhat inspiring to people who are in their 20s and maybe haven’t really done anything with their finances yet. We, as Allison alluded to earlier, kind of our story is we met in New York and then we moved to San Francisco. And we were in our mid-20s at the time. And we still hadn’t invested a dollar yet. And it wasn’t until our late 20s that we got “real jobs” with a 401k plan and that sort of thing. And so it wasn’t until our late 20s that we really started investing. And our entire investment life cycle, if you will, was about 17 years from our late 20s to our early 40s. And in that time, we just were so diligent about dollar cost averaging, we did — we invested into both our 401k, our IRA, and a taxable account once we got some extra income literally on a weekly basis for years and years and years, no matter what the market was doing. Through the 2001 .com crash because we’re both working in that industry and of course through the ‘08-’09 recession. Never stopped. And so those kind of habits, again, are good for anybody no matter what your retirement goals are, just really those financial habits are going to put you in a great position.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I’m glad you shared that, Dylin. One of the questions I had for you was I read your story of not really late 20s, early 30s getting serious about investing, but retired or achieving FIRE by 43, 44, so short window of time, right? We tend to think of a very long trajectory of savings. You mentioned 17 years. So my question was what was the secret sauce? And if I heard you correctly, it was tax-advantaged accounts, 401k’s, IRAs, some taxable accounts and dollar cost averaging and being consistent. Is that fair?

Dylin Redling: Yeah. You know, a couple other things we did — we did the phrase “side hustle” is really popular now. But when we did it, we just called it a side business. This was in the mid-2000s. I came up with an affiliate marketing business that I ran on the weekends. And it ended up being a third income for us. So there’s things like maximizing your income. And then another concept — I’ll shoot it over to Allison to talk about — is geographic arbitrage. And that helped us kind of move about nine years ahead of schedule. Do you want to talk about how we did that?

Allison Tom: Sure. So geographic arbitrage has a lot of different meanings in the — for people. And the gist of it is that you leverage your current salary and move to a lower cost location. And so most people think that is oh, I’m going to make my United States salary and move to Thailand or Costa Rica, where the cost of living is exceedingly low. We did it by moving from San Francisco to Oakland, California, which geographically is a 10-mile difference but at the time, we were able to save about 50% on our housing costs.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Allison Tom: So yeah, it was pretty insane. For being 10 miles away, two or three train stops away on our BART system, we were able to pay off our condo in Oakland in cash by selling our place in San Francisco, which alleviated all the mortgage payments, the increase in property payments and our insurance went down as well. So that, Dylin calculated later, saved us probably about nine years of working because our mortgage in San Francisco was so astronomical that just cutting 50% off just pushed us into the financial independence sphere that much sooner. So it’s things like that. Obviously not everybody is going to be able to save 50% of their housing by moving 10 miles away, but there are other ways to do it. You can do things like house hacking where if you have space on your property, you could build an extra unit and rent it out or if you have an extra bedroom, you could rent it out and have a roommate or Airbnb it. So there are ways tod do it without going through the extreme example that we had. So there are plenty of ways to cut costs in your life that are relatively painless, that we’ve talked about all the time, so there are just different ways to do it to achieve FIRE. And some people don’t even choose to do the early retiring like my father is the example. So retirement is really more of the optional part. We’re not saying you have to retire, you have to leave your job and just sit around drinking mojitos all day long, although it’s certainly not a bad lifestyle. But you know, the retiring part is up to the individual.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, I’m glad you said that, Allison, because I know many of our listeners love what they’re doing as pharmacists and they worked hard, and they got a doctorate degree and they have student loan debt and they invested in that education. And so my read is that many pharmacists are captivated by the idea and the power of financial independence. And you know, I believe that’s a goal we all should strive for for a variety of reasons with RE, Retire Early, being one of those perhaps reasons, but other things as well in terms of why that financial independence may be important. So nine years, nine years was estimated from that one decision, which I’m coming full-circle, Allison, about what you shared at the beginning of Dylin being in the hospital with double pneumonia. And when you start to think about the value of time, I mean, nine years and doing some of those calculations and what does that mean for one’s personal situation, I think that’s a really powerful example of taking something that can be mathematical or objective and looking at it in a different mindset. If we were to make this move or this move, what does that mean for us in terms of timeline to retirement, working part-time, pursuing another opportunity, what does that mean for one’s goals towards financial independence? I’m glad you discussed geographic arbitrage because one of the things we see in our profession in pharmacy is that unfortunately, a pharmacist’s income usually does not translate with cost of living. So here I am in the Midwest and that income for a pharmacist in the Bay Area might be a little bit more for a similar role but nowhere near the cost of living difference between Columbus, Ohio and San Francisco, California. So I think this is a move, especially for many of our listeners that might be saying, you know, ‘I’m making a decent income, but I’ve got a lot of work to do on student loans, I want to invest, I want to buy a home, I want to do this or that. And at the end of the day, there’s only so much income.’ So is a move, whether it’s near, within 10 miles, or something a little bit more significant, is that an option that somebody may be able to pursue? Allison, what have you guys been doing since achieving FIRE? You know, what’s been the goals, what’s been the priority, how have you been spending time? I think that’s one of the other common objections that comes up is like, if I retire at 45, like I don’t even know what I would do with my time. Tell us a little bit about that journey since you guys have achieve FIRE.

Allison Tom: So it’s funny, we — so we FIREd quite by accident. We were both working in tech startups, and Dylin got laid off and then I got laid off about five weeks afterwards. And so we kind of took the time after we were both laid off to travel a little bit. That was one of the things that two people who are working can’t always schedule, coordinate their schedules, to take some time off. And so we thought, alright, this is the perfect time. We went to Europe for two weeks and did a cruise around the Mediterranean and had a blast and then came back and thought, alright, we’ve got to get back to work. So we went about — we went on interviews and we just saw just how miserable people were at their jobs. Just so stressed out, and I interviewed with this one guy who was like, “You need to tell me who said this about us so I can go talk to them.” I’m like, I don’t want to work for you. You’re scary. And so you know, the three months turned into six months and then nine months and then Dylin figured out kind of like back of the envelope math, figured out that we could actually retire without having to go back to work anymore. He stumbled into the 4% Rule, which we still hadn’t at that point heard the term FIRE before. You know, the first few years we did a fair amount of traveling domestically. Like we would go back to visit his mother and my father, who both live on the East Coast, which is one of the things you just don’t get time to do when you’re working is spending time with family. And so you know, if we would go back East, we would maybe spend two days with each parent because they don’t live that close to each other. And now, we can actually go and spend a week with each parental unit. And that makes a big difference because, you know, they’re getting older and living across the country, it’s harder to connect with them. So we do a lot more slow travel where we don’t have to feel rushed between people. And then it’s funny because we — our retirement has changed as time goes by. So for people who are concerned that oh, what am I going to do with my time? Your time is yours. You can now make your own schedule. And that, to me, is the beauty of not just financial independence, it’s financial freedom because you can choose what you want to do. And so you know, the first two years were traveling domestically, the second two years were more about traveling internationally. And we had two cats that passed away at 19. So for us, they were like our kids. And so we did not do a lot of traveling away from them until they passed on. And so once they did, we’re like, alright, we’re going to go crazy and go travel around the globe. And so the last — and then the last two years have been focused on writing books and going to financial conferences and kind of learning from others and then applying that and communicating out to audiences like yours. That’s the beauty of the time being yours is you can make it whatever you want to do. We also do a lot more work with our community that we never had time to do when we were working. So we’re a lot more invested in our neighborhood, and we spend more time working with businesses in our neighborhood to bring in more business. So having that luxury of time means you can go explore whatever interests pop up. So you know, did we ever think that we would be working with small businesses two years ago? Probably not. But now we are, and we’re advocates for small businesses in our neighborhood, and that’s something we would never have thought we would have done when we first retired.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s very cool. And I read as well your goal of 60 by 60. Sixty countries to visit by the age of 60. If I understand it, you’re about halfway through. Looking forward to following your journey. I’m hopeful you’ll be blogging about it along the way as well. Dylin, I’m going to throw the last question I have over for you. And one of the things I think about when it comes to early retirement and achieving financial independence or the FIRE movement is that it really does require delayed gratification and at times, you mentioned the word frugality earlier. And that frugality can be at various levels. As you mentioned, we’re not necessarily talking spartan type of frugality. My question here though is how do we strike the balance? You know, whether it’s for ourselves or teaching our kids about saving and investing to take care of our future selves but also valuing and making sure we understand that it’s important that we enjoy some of the money along the way as well. I find myself often struggling with this individually of, OK, I know I need to take care of my future self and probably sometimes I do that at the expense of the experiences and the enjoyment today. And I think striking this balance is really important. What are your thoughts on that?

Dylin Redling: You know, I’ll actually plug a couple of other books besides ours that I really like. One is “A Simple Path to Wealth” by Janelle Collins, which I highly recommend. And another one is actually one of Allison’s favorites. It has a funny title, it’s “I Will Teach You to Be Rich” by —

Allison Tom: Ramit Sethi.

Dylin Redling: Ramit Sethi. And we saw him speak. He was a keynote speaker at FinCon a couple years ago. And one of the things that he said, which really resonated with me and it goes to your question, is spend liberally on things that you enjoy. But hold back aggressively on things that are not important to you. And it’s a very simple concept. But again, it goes directly to your question, and it’s really — maybe you or your kids or whoever’s thinking about this makes a list. Here are the things I’m passionate about. Here are the things that I really enjoy. I love travel, I like eating out at restaurants, I like entertainment, sports, whatever it is. And I’m going to set my budget to focus on those things. I’m going to be OK — maybe I’ll go to a World Series game because I’m a huge baseball fan. Or I’m going to set a goal to go to every baseball park in America. You know, whatever that goal might be. Conversely, think about the things that aren’t that important to you like maybe a brand new car is not important to you, so you drive your car for 10-20 years and you really just never focus on spending a lot of money on that. And so those are the concepts that I think are something to really think about. And for us, that’s what we’ve always done. When people look at our lifestyle from the outside or even some of our friends, you know, they may think, wow, we’ve always lived in pretty expensive apartments — or condos or houses, so they might think, wow, they spend a lot of money. But if you look a little deeper, like we had a car for almost 20 years. We had a Volkswagen Jetta. We just recently got a new-to-us couple years old Toyota Corolla. So there’s an example where we just — you know, having a brand new car wasn’t that important to us. But again, we have the 60 by 60 goal. So travel is really important to us. And we have no problem spending that extra money to go travel for a few months and really try to see the world because that’s something that we’re passionate about. That being said, when we do travel, we try to — we don’t stay at four-star hotels because part of our kind of nature is to also find some deals here and there and to just spend consciously, to just spend our money kind of wisely.

Allison Tom: We prefer to spend money on the experiences rather than the hotel room that we’re putting our suitcase in.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah. And I was at that keynote that you were at, and with Ramit, and I’ll never forget it. I mean, the concept that he talks about in “I Will Teach You to Be Rich,” money dials, right, is find the things that are of value to you and dial it up. And find the things that are not and dial them down. And you know, I remember hearing that, and I was like, heck yeah. It just makes so much sense. And you know, to the comment of experiences and even the literature really showing happiness related to money, it’s experience and giving typically are the areas where we see that biggest connection. So Allison and Dylin, I really appreciate you guys taking time to come on the show. Kudos on the work here with “Investing for Kids,” I really enjoyed it, as well as the work that you’re doing at Retireby45.com and your other book, “Start Your FIRE: A Modern Guide to Early Retirement.” As it relates to the book “Investing for Kids,” I hope our audience will pick up a copy of this, available at Amazon, Barnes & Noble, many other online vendors as well. I really did find it engaging, it was rich with relevant information, practical exercises to apply the information, as I mentioned, certainly does not look, feel, or read like a textbook. And so I think many in our community are going to find it helpful. What’s the best place for our audience to go to follow the work that the two of you are doing?

Dylin Redling: Well, our — I’ll plug our website, and I’ll have Allison plug our Instagram account. Retireby45.com is our website, and we blog there on a once or twice a month with a fresh new blog post, and we have a bunch of stuff on there, courses and other things. And then Allison’s been working on really putting together a pretty cool Instagram account.

Allison Tom: So we have Instagram and Twitter both @retire_by_45. Yeah, it’s been an interesting challenge trying to get into the social media, the social media space.

Tim Ulbrich: Very good. We will link to both of those in the show notes as well as the Retireby45.com as well as the books that we’ve mentioned, not only your books but the others that you referenced as well. So the two of you, thank you again very much for your time. I really appreciate it.

Allison Tom: Thanks, Tim. It’s great.

Dylin Redling: Thanks.

Allison Tom: O-H

Dylin Redling: I-O

Tim Ulbrich: I-O!

Dylin Redling: Thanks, Tim. Great talking to you.

Tim Ulbrich: As we conclude this week’s podcast and important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and is not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding materials should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment. Furthermore, the information contained in our archived newsletters, blog posts and podcasts is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of Your Financial Pharmacist unless otherwise noted, and constitute judgments as of the dates published. Such information may contain forward looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward looking statements. For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist Podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 301: On FIRE with Riley Protz, PharmD

Posted on by Caitlin Boyle

Riley Protz, PharmD, MBA, a pharmacist on the FIRE journey since completing pharmacy administration residency training, discusses his career journey, student loan philosophy, and pathway to financial independence while living a rich and fulfilling life.

About Today’s Guest

Riley Protz, PharmD, MBA is a pharmacy leader and an industry expert on the 340B drug pricing program. He is the Director of Optimization at SpendMend Pharmacy. He consults with clients on opportunities to decrease their pharmaceutical drug spending and increase revenue-generating services through the 340B program. Prior to his current role, Riley was the Pharmacy Inventory Manager and 340B Program Manager of a health system in Salem, Oregon.

Riley earned his Doctor of Pharmacy degree and Masters of Business Administration from Oregon State University. He then completed a PGY1/PGY2 Health System Pharmacy Administration & Leadership (HSPAL) residency with Providence Health & Services.

Episode Summary

This week on the YFP Podcast, YFP Co-Founder & CEO, Tim Ulbrich, PharmD, discusses FIRE and the pathway to financial independence with Riley Protz, PharmD. Riley is a pharmacist on a FIRE journey since completing pharmacy administration residency training. During this episode, Tim and Riley delve into Riley’s career journey and what drew him into the profession of pharmacy, his student loan philosophy and strategy to tackle $80,000 in student loans given the climate with the pandemic and PSLF extensions, and how he is planning out his pathway toward financial independence. Riley speaks on his motivations for pursuing FIRE as a new practitioner with competing financial priorities, the various FIRE subcommunities, why he doesn’t identify with any specific group, the challenges of working towards FIRE, and how Riley manages to balance the importance of financial freedom with living a rich and fulfilling life now. Listeners will hear the strategies Riley has employed to reach FIRE, including having a financial plan, continuing to live like a resident, using high-yield savings accounts, not carrying a car payment, renting over buying a home, and mitigating early retirement risks through flexibility in investing. Stay tuned until the end of a library of FIRE resources, blogs, podcasts, and books that Riley recommends for those beginning their FIRE journey.

Links Mentioned in Today’s Episode

Episode Transcript

[INTRODUCTION]

[00:00:00] TU: Hey, everybody. Tim Ulbrich here, and thank you for listening to the YFP Podcast, where each week, we strive to inspire and encourage you on your path towards achieving financial freedom.

Today, I welcome Riley Protz, a pharmacist who has been on the FIRE journey since completing his pharmacy administration residency training. In this episode, we’ll delve into Riley’s career journey, his student loan philosophy, and repayment strategy, and his pathway towards achieving financial independence. We’ll also discuss the challenges of pursuing FIRE and how Riley balances his desire for financial independence with living a rich and fulfilling life today.

If you’re new to the concept of FIRE, Riley will explain what it means and why he has chosen to pursue it. We’ll also hear from Riley about the resources that have been most helpful for him on his journey including books, websites, and podcasts. Whether you’re on the FIRE journey or taking a long, steady approach saving for retirement, at YFP Planning, we’re here to support you along the way. YFP Planning is a fee-only financial planning firm that is customized to the pharmacy professional.

The team at YFP Planning includes five certified financial planners serving over 280 households in 40-plus states. If you’re interested in learning more about working one on one with a certified financial planner, may help you achieve your financial goals, you can book a free discovery call by visiting yfpplanning.com. Again, that’s yfpplanning.com. Okay. Let’s jump into my interview with Riley Protz.

[INTERVIEW]

[0:01:29] TU: Riley, thanks for joining the show.

[0:01:31] RP: Yes. Hey, Tim. Thanks for having me.

[0:01:33] TU: Before we jump into your FIRE journey, which is going to be the topic at hand for today, tell us about your career journey in pharmacy, where you went to pharmacy school, and what ultimately drew you into the profession.

[0:01:46] RP: Sure, yes. I mean, I honestly wish I had a better way pharmacy story. but I went to Oregon State University for undergrad, enjoyed the science classes. When it was time to choose a major, I had a friend that was doing pre-pharmacy and I thought, “Hey, Oregon State has an advanced degree program, maybe I’ll go and do an advanced degree. That kind of makes sense.” I chose pre-pharmacy as a major and thought, “You know what, something will come up that I want to do more, something more compelling.” Really nothing ever, you know, piqued my interest more than pharmacy did. I liked those pre-pharmacy classes I took. I got into pharmacy school on the first try at Oregon State University. It was a very easy transition.

I kind of stuck with it ever since. I didn’t really have any experience prior to choosing pharmacy, and kind of navigated those waters as I got into school. It luckily worked because I kind of didn’t have a great plan going into the process.

[0:02:34] TU: You and me both, Riley. I think sometimes, we have people on the show that have very motivational, very inspiring stories around how they entered the profession. I’ve shared before on the show that I liked science, I like math, I was undecided. From a major standpoint, I had a guidance counselor said, “Hey, why not think about pharmacy.” I did one shadowing experience. I think it was an independent pharmacy and made a commitment for six years and a whole lot of money from that advice. Sometimes that’s how the story goes.

But you decided, Riley, “Hey, I’m going to get the PharmD, but I’m going to go as well and do a PGY1, PGY2 MBA combined program.” For many of our listeners, they may be familiar with these as a PGY1, PGY2 MS. Some do an MBA program, where you’re doing all that two-year period. Why did you choose that pathway? Then what is the work that you’ve been doing since completing that?

[0:03:26] RP: Yes, I chose to do – around P3 year, I had an internship in community pharmacy. I worked in hospital pharmacy a little bit and I kind of decided that I wanted to do something around leadership and administration. Then the career trajectory and platform, there’s a lot less opportunities in community pharmacy than there is in health systems and hospitals. There’s just a lot more opportunities to be a manager director, whatever it may be in the administration realm. When I kind of looked okay, I have to go towards hospital. Residency just made sense and if I want to fast forward that pathway. The dual PGY1, PGY2, it’s HSPAL now, which is too many letters, but Health System Pharmacy Administration and Leadership residency seemed like the correct option for me. I was very fortunate to match with that, and it had a dual MBA tagged onto the residency, so I completed the MBA in the middle of residency.

Ideally, you’re supposed to have a lot of good opportunities, completion of residency, especially doing administration residency, getting that additional MBA. I graduated in the summer of 2020. Very early on in the pandemic, when everyone’s pulling back. There were almost zero job opportunities. But I had a great mentor who had left the organization I was at for residency, became a chief pharmacy officer somewhere else, and was able to create a position that I was lucky to have.

I was a pharmacy manager for a couple of years at a health system focusing on their 340B program, as well as their hospital purchasing. Then the last year, I’ve switched to the consulting realm, which has been super exciting. Still around 340B, so I kind of consider myself a subject matter expert around optimizing 340 programs for clinics and hospitals. The company is called SpendMend Pharmacy. My clients now are our hospitals and we help them around finding more savings, and helping with their possible purchasing in general, NDC optimization, really anywhere around decreasing their huge drug expense in hospitals. That’s usually one of your top three expenses for health system.

[0:05:21] TU: Riley, let’s talk about your student loans before we jump into the FIRE journey in more detail. Since 2018, so you graduate 2018, $80,000 when you came out. For those that have graduated since 2018, it’s really been a whirlwind, right? We’ve had the pandemic pause that’s now been going on for more than three years. We’ve had the expansion of PSLF eligibility. We’ve talked about that on the show. Then right now, this week, at the time of recording, the supreme court is deciding what they’re going to do related to the Biden administration debt cancellation program. Not looking too favorable in the moment for that program going through, but we’ll obviously provide updates as we get some final news there.

My question is, $80,000, that is substantially less than what we see as the national average today for pharmacy grads, right around 160. What was your philosophy and strategy related to your student loans, especially knowing some of the wrinkles that have come in over the last couple of years with the pandemic and with some of the PSLF extensions and waivers?

[0:06:24] RP: Yes. I was lucky to have graduated with $80,000. I went to in-state tuition. I lived at home for two of the four years of pharmacy school, worked every summer and I think that helped with getting that number low at the very end. But once I graduated pharmacy school, I was like, “Okay.” Well, there’s a lot of decisions to make, right? Do you want to go through income-based repayment, there’s repay, there’s PSLF, which in 2018, people were less likely to see that it would go through, but now it looks like it’s a great strategy. There’s refinancing loans as well. I think I probably pulled up multiple calculators, maybe the YFP calculator o your guys’ website. And said, “Hey, what makes sense with my five, five and a half percent interest rate to do?”

Financially, it made sense to pay it off sooner rather than later, and not to go through the income-based repayment method. That’s what I started doing. I was paying off my loans throughout residency. I was about to refinance my loans when I completed residency when the pause took place. I was like, “Hey, 0% interest rates are a lot better than what I could have gotten, maybe three and a half percent.”

I just took that as an opportunity to pay them as fast as I could. My strategy completing residency was, live like I’m still resident, right? That’s what we tell people. Don’t let lifestyle creep come into play, and so I just paid those off as quickly as I could. I did end up stopping a little bit and saying, “Let’s just hold on to the money. I don’t really need to pay it off. There’s 0% interest.” Once I think I had around, maybe $30,000, $35,000 left, I did refinance it just to get that cash bonus, and then paid it off.

I didn’t told you this last time we chatted, Tim. I had tried to do this student loan forgiveness, get a refund back. Not [inaudible 0:07:52].

[0:07:52] TU: I remember that. Yes. Yes.

[0:07:54] RP: Yes. I think it was back in October, I tried to get a $10,000 refund back because my loans are at zero percent now, but I would have qualified for the student loan forgiveness. Because my income in 2020, I was a resident for half of it, so I didn’t reach that income limit. Literally yesterday, I got the check in the mail about $10,000. You know what, who knows if it’s ever going to come into play, but now I have a student loan balance of $10,000, which if forgiveness happens, that’s great. If not, I’ll take a zero percent free-interest loan, and I’ll put that in my savings account for a little bit of time. Literally, I didn’t even think it was going to come. It was a request I put in. Four to five months later, literally yesterday, I had the check.

[0:08:34] TU: I say, what timing, right, with us recording the episode here today. I think your story is a really good. One thing I’m sensing, which I love Riley, and I hope other listeners will take from it is just the intentionality around understanding the nuances of student loans. There’s lots of different pathways that go. You mentioned some of those – whether it’s forgiveness, non-forgiveness, refinancing. It’s more complicated of a system than it probably needs to be, but that’s the hand we’ve been dealt, whether we like it or not. It’s really up to the borrower to take the time to understand the nuances, and really get into the optimization, which is what you’re doing, right? You’re putting yourself in a position to optimize, obviously, see what comes to be of the Supreme Court decision when payments are going to kick back in. I love the intentionality behind the strategy.

I’m sensing that’s going to be a good segue here as we talk about FIRE because that also relies on the strategy of one being intentional. Let’s go there. Riley, when you and I talked last year, what really excited me was talking to a new practitioner who is really on the front end of their journey towards financial independence. I think sometimes, it’s new practitioners. I just talked with a new practitioner this week. He’s been out about seven, eight years. They’ve been working through student loans, they got married, they started a family. That concept of retirement planning. It’s like, yes, it’ll be there, something I’ll worry about a little bit later. I think for some folks that are planning a very traditional timeline to retirement, that pathway of savings may certainly work. Obviously, we’ll talk here today more aggressive, early investing in your career type of a strategy.

I think for many new practitioners, it’s hard to reconcile this idea that I can accelerate and optimize the wealth-building part of my financial plan, while I’m being saddled by student loan debt, getting started with my career and all these other competing priorities. I’m really excited to dive in with you, as you’re on the front end of the journey of the FIRE, why did you go this pathway? How are you employing strategies on the FIRE journey? What are some of the resources that have helped you along the way?

Before we get too deep, though, for folks that have not heard us talk about FIRE on this show before, and we’ll link to some of those episodes in the show notes as well. What is FIRE? From your perspective, what does it stands for or what does it mean? What’s the purpose? What’s the goal?

[0:10:57] RP: I don’t think there’s a true definition of FIRE. I think it’s whatever individual to each person, what they think it means. I think of it as a maybe a money philosophy or a life strategy. It stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. At the heart of that, I really think it’s, if you hit a point, there’s really a threshold where your passive income supersedes your living expenses. Passive income can include a lot of different things. Traditionally, people are thinking their retirement accounts, the 401(k). But you’ve got potentially rental income, you have Social Security, you have maybe a side hustle. I even put in PRN and part-time work. It’s definitely more passive than thinking about your classic W2 jobs.

If you hit a point where let’s say, it cost you $40,000 to live each year, and you have a point where your investments, and all of your other passive income, supersedes that number, then you really don’t have to work at your job anymore. That’s where that second half of retire early comes into play.

[0:11:54] TU: Let’s give an example, Riley. I’d love for you to chime in here about what you do and don’t like about this example. To your point, there’s no uniform, accepted definition of what it means to be financially independent. But as you’re alluding to, you get to this point of either assets diversifying your income, other sources of income, such that you really reach financial independence. Meaning that you no longer rely on your W2 income, but you can build essentially a retirement paycheck or an early retirement paycheck, however, you define that based on these other revenue streams or savings that you’ve built up.

The rule of 25 suggests that, hey, if you take your annual household expenses, we can talk about whether or not you include taxes and that. You multiply by 25. Once you get to that point in terms of savings, you’re able to get to that point of financial dependence. If our annual expenses are $100,000, multiply that by 25, $2.5 million. Really, this comes from the research on the 4% rule, which two and a half million dollars, if I safely withdraw, we can debate that 4%. I can replace that $100,000 and that becomes the source. Now, you start to get a little bit more wrinkles in that when you talk about, okay, is it coming from only your savings? Is it coming from rental income? Is it incoming from Social Security? But without getting too far in the details there, what do you and don’t you like about kind of that back-of-napkin math?

[0:13:22] RP: Yes. I think if someone’s going to Google FIRE financial independence today, at least in the first three paragraphs, they’re going to mention rule 25 or 4% rule because it’s simple, it makes sense. First things, people are like, “I don’t know if that’s true if I trust it. It almost seems too simple, right? But you know, the numbers don’t lie is a great point to make. Truly, we’ve seen people do it, it does work.

But as you mentioned, someone – I’m sure a lot of listeners have yearly expenses around $100,000. They plug that real 25 in, they say, “There’s no way I’ll ever get to $2.5 million.” They immediately dismiss the idea and say, there’s just no possible chance that I’m ever going to hit that point. They say, forget about it, I’m going to retire when I’m 65 years old. That’s my real hiccup with the 4% rule, is I think it dissuades people who might be interested in the idea. Of course, I’m not trying to push this this idea on folks, but I think it quickly dissuades people because they think there’s no way that’s ever going to occur for them.

But this rule puts a lot of assumptions in place, like number one, is they assume that you’ll never make another dollar again. Which, let’s say you’re retiring 10,15, 20 years early. The odds of you never making another dollar is probably pretty – I don’t think that’s going to happen. They assume that your nest egg, your 401(k), your Roth, everything, that meets at $2.5 million is all you have. But you could have a side gig, a side hustle. Let’s say your, for example, your expenses are $100,000 per year, but you’re still making – you’re working a little bit, you’ve got a side hustle going on, you’re doing maybe PRN work. That’s the benefit of being a pharmacist, is we can work one day a week, right? That’s a great aspect of our job.

You’re making $40,000 per year, much less than the average pharmacist makes. But then that decreases your yearly expenses to 60k. So your actual real 25 number becomes $1.5 million, so much more easily ingestible number to take. Another assumption, your expenses are going to remain constant throughout your entire life. But data shows that the older you get, especially at your 70s and 80s, you’re not going to be spending as much as you are in your 40s, 50s, and 60s. You take that in consideration as well. I think my last one is, compound interest is just really hard to visualize, and the amount of time and how it actually works.

If you’re telling somebody, “Hey, really, you should see that extra $2,000 because it’s going to grow to whatever it may be in 20 years.” I don’t know if that’s actually going to work. I can’t see it, but I can see a TV today, or I can see a new car today, and I can get those benefits now. I think it’s a great initial, just quick back-of-the-napkin math on how this works. But I think, too many people are just waiting and say, “Oh, there’s no way I’m going to get there.” A lot of those factors I just described, all of them would lead to a lower number. Potentially, if you can shave off five years of retirement, that’s great as well, right, because you can enjoy those years while you can.

[0:16:02] TU: Yes. I think that’s such a great point, Riley because you’ve highlighted well already that everyone’s plan is going to be different. I think that’s where we need to make sure we’re not falling into the trap of, that there’s one way to do FIRE. Are we talking about a retirement age of 40 or 55, or just a little bit earlier? Late 50s or 60? Is it more of an aggressive timeline, or just a little bit earlier than more of a traditional retirement? Might there be some side additional income? Are we interested in looking at real estate investment? Obviously, post-retirement. What about Social Security? What about health risks and health care. I mean, there’s so many layers to consider. But your point of the rule of 25, I think, often being overwhelming, especially to folks earlier in the journey is a really good one.

I can tell you the number of sessions or presentations I’ve done with folks where, when you talk about saving or investing for the future and compound interest, eyes gloss over. I mean big numbers, $3, $4, $5 million. One of things we really try to do at YFP, is how do we discount that back to today to make that a meaningful number, right? We can run an estate calculation and show that FIRE or not, you need three point, whatever million dollars. Okay. That’s scary. That’s overwhelming. I’m more depressed now about achieving long-term financial independence.

But what does that mean today, in terms of how much I need to be able to save, and what assumptions go into place. That number is probably still going to be big, maybe bigger than we want in terms of, maybe it’s going to take 800, 1,200, 1,500, 1,800 month, whatever, but we can start to put our arms around that. I think these big, huge numbers are like, “All right. Might as well just give up. I’m early in the journey. I’m just going to kind of focus on the here now. Point well taken. I think that can be a challenge.

Riley, let’s take a step back to your FIRE journey. What was the motivating factor or factors in terms of why you wanted to go down this pathway?

[0:17:56] RP: Yeah. I think I reflected on this a little bit recently on why I was so hooked on it when I when I first found FIRE. I think my reasoning has actually changed in the short years since I found it. I’ll take you back to, let’s see, I think it’s 2019 now when I was a PGY1. We have a big cohort of co-residents. There were 16 of us. I think we were talking about what to do with our 403B. As you can probably tell, I have a passion for personal finance, so I knew a little bit more than everyone else, and just trying to provide a little bit of guidance, but didn’t feel super confident, especially talking about that topic.

In residency, we spend so much time talking about certain disease states, and we had antimicrobial stewardship conferences, and ethics conferences, and professionalism. We didn’t spend a single second on personal finance, I remember going to my RPD and asking, “Hey. Can we have someone come in and just talk to us for an hour or two?” There really wasn’t an option for doing that. I thought, you know, why don’t I do it? It was during that, I was trying to treat it like a topic discussion and doing – trying to find empirical and objective data, which I’m sure, you know, it’s very hard to find on the internet.

But I did stumble upon the concept of FIRE and was immediately hooked. I think in the midst of PGY1, I probably should have been spending a lot more time on residency and MBA classes. But all I wanted to do was read about this concept, and like, it doesn’t make sense. There’s no way it’s actually real. Does the numbers line up? There’s a lot of blogs online, that I just kind of took up as much as I could. I think the reasons why – I think there were two main reasons why there were motivating factors for me to pursue. Number one being, I’ve always been a natural saver but didn’t really have a reason for why I was saving, ever since I was a child. I filled a piggy bank up when I got money for my birthday but didn’t know what I was doing. I just felt like, “Yes, I’ll just save it.”

Financial independence was kind of became a Northstar. Whenever I’m making a decision, being very intentional with every dollar. If I’m not going to spend it on one thing, I’m not just saving it, actually. I have another reason. I’m putting it towards another purpose, which was a big idea. Then the second reason, which I think is a big pushback of people who pursue FIRE is, I was once again in the midst of PGY1, probably not loving life at the moment. It’s not sustainable way to live and work. The idea of not working, I think, I was probably drawn to. That’s what a big pushback is. You shouldn’t be pursuing this idea because you want to escape your job and retire early. But you know, now, I absolute love what I’m doing. You think that my desire for financial independence would wane, right? But I’m still – I have a different reason, I guess for pursuing it. Bear with me as I make this point.

I have kind of a strategy now of maximizing overall life happiness, and fulfillment, and meaning, whatever that may be. If I’m trying to solve for maximum happiness, then treating, bringing that down into like every day, what would that look like in different buckets on things that would make me happy, so that’d be a strong social life. Today, there’s spending time with parents and friends, but let’s fast forward 15 years, we’ve got a plan for the future, right? Probably spending time with future children. I don’t think I’m going to have five boys, – sorry, four boys like you do. But if I do, then that’s going to be a higher percentage of my time is me spending with children. That’s one bucket.

Second bucket being health. If I work out today, there’s benefits. But main reason I’m working out is for future me. I want to have as many healthy days as possible, maybe two more buckets here. One of them being philanthropy, giving back in some way, whether that be resources or money. That’s going to skew much more later in life. The last one here, curiosity or learning. I love to travel internationally, read, whatever it may be. I stick with my current W2 job. That satisfies probably three of those four buckets. I got to get sense of social life. Definitely, a sense of philanthropy. It’s a great thing about being a pharmacist, is we have very fulfilling jobs.

Then definitely fulfilling that, that learning bucket. But I spend 45, around 45 hours of my waking life per week on this job. So it’s not filling everything, every single bucket. There’s plenty of other buckets that I’m not going to go into. If I’m trying to solve for maximum fulfillment, and happiness, I’ve just got a pretty high degree of confidence that in 15 years, or 20 years, or 10 years, I’m not going to want to spend 45 hours per week on this one job. I’m going to have a lot more other pursuits that are going to help me lead fulfilling and happy life. Let’s fast forward, let’s say 15 years. Maybe I want to spend 20 hours per week at my job, maybe at zero. If I’m lucky, maybe it’s 60, maybe I absolutely love what I’m doing, then that’s great.

I want to give myself the ability, and flexibility to make that decision when the time comes. That’s where financial independence comes in. If you save a little bit more now, that gives you the ability to make that decision down the line.

[0:22:24] TU: Riley, that’s beautiful. I’m glad you address this equation of solving for maximum fulfillment, maximum happiness. Actually, the research on this topic is fascinating, around deriving happiness from money, and how we connect the two. I think that it’s a natural evolution to be thinking about that, especially when you build a strong financial foundation. It’s hard to see that when you’re in the thick of all these decisions when you’re, obviously, you work through the student loans, you’re making a good income, you’re working full time, you’ve got a lot of places you can optimize a plan. I think that’s when you can really start to have some of that peace of mind, and be worried about things like solving for maximum happiness and fulfillment. Because you’ve got a strong foundation of what you’re growing from. I think that, too often, when we talk about investing, or savings goals, we leave out the so what. What’s the purpose? What’s the point? What’s the why? I think pharmacists, especially very analytical folks, I think we can get all excited sometimes about the spreadsheets. Hey, I’m on path to save $2.4 million. What’s the purpose?

If we ask that question of what are we trying to accomplish, what are we trying to achieve, and how do we reconcile taking care of our future selves while also living a rich life today? Both are important. I think one of the knocks, and I’d love to hear your thoughts on. I think one of the knocks of the FIRE community would be, typically we’re looking at very aggressive saving rates, right? There’s all different types of FIRE and we’ll talk about that here in a moment. But usually, we’re defining FIRE, and aggressive pursuit of financial independence by fairly high savings rates, more than the typical 10% to 20%.

So one of the knocks may be, well, are you giving up living a rich life today for a future point, that may or may not be what we envision that to be, right? I’m thinking about this, because I just finished the book, Die with Zero by Bill Perkins. He talks beautifully in a very non-traditional, non-financial planner way about ultimately, the goal being that we die with zero. He makes a strong case, I think that in your 20s, and 30s, and 40s, there is spending that needs to be done towards what you’re talking about this maximum fulfillment.

How have you reconciled this poll between aggressive saving? I can punch that in the calculator. I see the compound interest growing, but I’m also at an age where I can and should experience some of these beautiful things in life. I’d love to hear your thoughts.

[0:24:50] RP: Well, you beat me to it. I actually also did – I also finished Die with Zero recently within the last couple months. I’ll be honest, has shifted my mentality a little bit as I was someone that can delay gratification, right? That was kind of my philosophy. If I want to do something today, let’s wait. I can double it in 10 years. It’s going to be just as much benefit or more benefit when I’m so saving for my 40s, is kind of a mentality I’d had.

But what Bill Perkins says in that book is very good idea, and something I’ve taken into consideration is, let’s think about, “Yeah, think about our life as a whole. If my goal is to maximize happiness today, but also in the future, there’s a balancing act because you need to spend more money today. You need to spend some money today in order to enjoy your life today. I was, let’s say, for the last couple of years, I was probably a little low on that end. I was saving a lot more money, and decreasing my expenses, and focusing on student loans, and maybe sacrificing a little bit. I will shift and have shifted a little bit in that regard towards enjoying life today.

I will say, a benefit for myself and maybe other listeners is, we have above-average income. When you’re looking at financial independence, and decreasing your expenses, and having that difference in what you’re able to save, because you’re spending less than what you’re earning, it’s a lot harder for somebody with an income of $60,000 per year. But as a pharmacist, I really don’t even feel like we have to sacrifice as much as others, because we just – as long as you’re intentional with your spending, and you’re cutting out unnecessary things, then, you’ll be able to achieve some sort of savings goal. You’re not depriving yourself and eating rice, and beans every day.

For myself, as I mentioned, being early on, I’ve been able to reduce lifestyle as much as possible, so I don’t live a lavish life. If someone else has an expensive $100,000 per year, it’s going to be a lot harder to cut out. Let’s say $40,000 out of that budget, or $20,000. But I never allowed myself to reach that level. I’ve never really felt that I’ve been sacrificing anything on this journey.

[0:26:46] TU: Let me prod a little bit more here, Riley, because this to me is a fascinating topic where I can talk with two pharmacists making the same exact income. Let’s assume they’re living in the same cost-of-living unit type of situation. But one can be living 95% to 100% of their income as their expenses, and a lot of that even being fixed expenses. Someone else maybe has find a way for that to be, I don’t know, 25%, 35%, 45%, or even, let’s say 50% or 60%.

I think often, what you see is, the home, or the car, those are probably two of the biggest things that you see that might be contributing to that. Sometimes private education would be a big contributor, as well. Saving for kids college, things like that. But two pharmacists, same income, same position in terms of cost-of-living area, but very different in terms of cash flow margin that they created. I think it would be helpful for our listeners to hear, for you and your situation as much as you’re willing to share, what has the strategy been. You mentioned before, continuing to try to live like a resident while you’re paying on your student loans. I sense you’ve probably have pulled off of that a little bit. But have you intentionally kept down on house, or you’ve decided to continue to rent, not carry carpet? What has been the strategy that has allowed you to keep those fixed costs low?

[0:28:05] RP: I think first and foremost, financial confidence is important, knowing reasonable – knowing why you’re investing something, you’re saving in the correct location. For example, high-yield savings account. Just making sure that you know you’re doing correctly with where your money is going, has been important for myself. I’m not scared to look at my checking account, right? I think there’s a lot of people who say, “I don’t want to look at it.” If you can spend a little bit of time to just be confident in what you’re doing, and have some sort of strategy in place, and be intentional with – you don’t need to track every single dollar, but just the big things.

I think low-hanging fruit, is what I tell clients. Let’s not make 100 little decisions, let’s make two or three big decisions. For myself, yes, I don’t carry a car payment. I did actually upgrade from a beater of a car that probably I could – I did sell for $1,000, so I’ve upgraded in that realm, but I had drove that car throughout pharmacy school. I do still rent for housing. I live in the Pacific Northwest. So yes, housing a little bit more expensive, but it makes sense financially. I looked into purchasing. I was actually going – shout out to the real estate podcast with David and Nate. I was with the first cohort of the None to One Program. I was looking at actually purchasing a condo and house hacking didn’t make financial sense. It made sense for me to continue renting there.

[0:29:16] TU: Riley, let me just interject here because I hear weekly if not daily, that, Tim, what do you mean like equity and homeownership? It’s always better to own than it is to rent. I think this is one of the stories that we’ve just accepted without running the numbers. Don’t get me wrong, there are scenarios where certain parts of the country, owning based on the market, based on what’s happening, based on interest rates, based on cash you have, based on appreciation. That makes sense, but I think we blindly accept this, especially higher cost of living areas. We tend to vastly underestimate the cost of homeownership on an ongoing basis. So we look at rent value, we look at mortgage payment, and we stop there. I would just love for you to help me make this case, that sometimes, renting makes sense over homeownership, and I think we really got to run the numbers.

[0:30:11] RP: The problem is, it’s the numbers. Humans are humans, right? They feel – you take into consideration, “Oh, I’m much more safe. I’ve been told by my parents, and my parent’s parents that buying is, you have to go as soon as you can. That’s the way to go. Once again, it’s a lot easier to see a house value go up in five to 10 years, rather than really knowing exactly how much would I have put in if I’d invested in it. You can run those numbers as well, right? The numbers, once again, numbers aren’t lying to you. I think it’s just tough because yes, that’s what we’ve been told to do. It doesn’t make sense everywhere. Sometimes, that’s the caveat, as well, as you know, it does make sense maybe in the Midwest. But for other folks, it’s not the case. If we’re all robots, then I think a lot more people would be renting, but it’s just unfortunately not the case.

[0:30:56] TU: That’s good. Now, you can get the hate mail as well as me.

[0:30:57] RP: Exactly.

[0:31:00] TU: Hey, I want to ask you a question. Actually, I hadn’t planned on asking you, which is interesting. Something I’m picking up on as we’re talking here, is I sense that you’ve used some words around the emotional side of money. Confidence, I can tell you have a confidence around your money. I can tell that there’s not a fear associated with money. You obviously have more of an analytical mindset, but you’re also considering – we talked about living a rich life, and kind of balancing the two of those out. So often, myself included, and it’s true for everyone listening. How we approach our money today, is a conscious or subconscious reflection of how we grew up around money.

In some cases, we grew up in an environment where it’s a very open conversation, it’s one that’s not only talked about, but it may not be a stressful, relatively even emotions, more of an abundance type of mindset. Other situation, I talked with folks where it was a very hostile environment or an environment where you just don’t talk about money, whatsoever, and you see those patterns carry out. So I would love for you to just give us a sneak peek as I pick up on the themes of confidence and security around money and more of a positive emotional approach towards money. Can you attribute? Did you raise up in an environment where it was a safe emotional landscape for learning about and growing your knowledge around personal finance?

[0:32:22] RP: I would say it was definitely a safe environment, but it was not – I did not grow up with parents telling me how much money they made. Oh, you need to – I did – I mean, for example, I chose a state school, I knew enough to know about the cost of private school versus public school, and what that would be down the line. That wasn’t – told, “Hey, it makes a lot more sense for you to make a decision by peers, or my parents, or anything. I don’t really attribute a lot of it to them being extremely open. But for example, I did have a Roth IRA, I think when I was 18 years old, so my mom helped me with that. I’ll give her credit there.

[0:32:55] TU: [Inaudible 0:32:55] a tuner.

[0:32:57] RP: Exactly. That was all her, so I’ll give her all the credit there. But anyway, I also had a financial advisor that she put me in touch with who had me investing in a taxable brokerage account when I clearly could have put more money in my Roth and stuff that didn’t make any sense. So I had to pull away once I felt more confident in myself a few years after that. We weren’t experts, but I definitely – I think it’s rare for somebody to have a financial advisor in a Roth account in their teams. It will attribute some of it to that. Yes.

[0:33:22] TU: It’s something I’m thinking a lot about Riley with my four boys, and I would encourage the listeners. I’m fumbling through it, I don’t have the answers. I’ve read books on teaching kids about money. I’m convinced, I think, and maybe I’ll tell you otherwise in three years if I screw it all up. But I’m convinced that 80% of it is just what they are experiencing, they’re hearing. It’s not the intentional teaching. I think there’s a place for that, like, “Hey, let me sit down. We can talk about compound interest and investing in Roth IRAs. But I think it’s more of what they’re picking up on around the emotional cues, the stress or lack thereof, whether or not it’s an open conversation. I think that is so foundational to their relationship with money.

What’s so hard about that, I guess it can be encouraging or discouraging depending on how you approach money is like, that stuff tends to come out. We’re, again, carrying that on generationally. Often, the stress or the positive environment, if it’s the opposite around money, that just is the undertone of the house, and you’ve got to be really intentional to shift it. Another topic for another day, but I think around emotional relationships, how we grew up with money. Even hearing you talk about your mom, and a Roth, and experience with an advisor clearly had an impact on you and your journey.

Let me shift gears and talk about the types of FIRE. Again, I think for folks that are just learning about FIRE for the first time, they may read a few blog articles, look at very aggressive saving rates without realizing there’s a wide range of how you may approach this. Whether it’s more of a traditional FIRE, a lean FIRE, a fat FIRE. Tell us about that these different terms and the path that you are choosing as it relates to your own FIRE journey.

[0:35:05] RP: In my mind retirement is a number of value, not a date, or an age, right? But everybody’s going to be different, and your FIRE calculation takes into consideration mainly how much you’re going to spend each year. So someone who spends $40,000 in a year versus someone who spends $150,000, in a year is going to lead completely different lifestyles, and probably take different actions to hit that point of financial dependence throughout their lives. That’s where these different names come from is, you know, FIRE’s become big enough that there’s been subcommunities of people, lean FIRE. I don’t know the definition. It’s maybe less than $40,000. Fat FIRE is, people got five plus million dollars.

I’m happy that that makes sense because people can be like – like-minded folks can learn from each other in that realm. I’ll be honest with you, I don’t really look at – consider myself in any of those categories. I’m early enough along the pathway that I don’t really spend time stressing over it, because I know enough that I know that things are going to change on the future. We’re great at acknowledging how much we’ve changed in the last five years, but we still think we’re going to be the same person in the next five years, which doesn’t make any sense. I know I’m going to be different enough in ten years. I’m going to change a little bit enough to know that my expenses can change, my family situation is going to change.

But for myself, I kind of have just general numbers. I’m probably going to spend more than $40,000 in a year. I know myself well enough that I’m probably going to spend less than $120,000 per year. Do that rule of 25. I’ve got a pretty big wide margin, but there’s enough time that’s going to pass. There’s really just no point in stressing over and running the numbers, and some people love running these calculators and saying, “Oh, this is exactly. That’s my point.” That’s going to change so many times. There’s going to be so many factors that I don’t really bother myself with it.

[0:36:41] TU: Let’s shift and talk more about the strategy of getting to that number. You mentioned early on in the episode that often, people run a rule 25, or some type of FIRE calculator. They see a big number, they get overwhelmed, they shut down the computer, and they say, “All right, let’s move on. I think, even if folks can work through that, the next step can be just as overwhelming, which is, “Well, how do I get to that number, right? I mean, when I get the chance to talk with groups about investing, what I often say is, yes, we’ve got to know where we’re going, but then we’ve got to know how we’re going to get there. Then we’ve got lots of wrinkles to consider, 401(k), 403(b), Roth IRAs, brokerage accounts, HSAs, all types of vehicles to achieve that. Then within those accounts, we’ve got to choose how we’re going to allocate that. That would be the asset allocation part of the plan.

Again, eyes gloss over at that point of, “Wow, this is a lot to consider.” Tell us about, not advice for everyone listening, but tell us about how you approach your investing strategy as it relates to not just identifying that number, but how you’re going to get there.

[0:37:47] RP: Yes. Tim, we’ve used the word optimize quite a bit, but I’m definitely not – I’m not going to optimize as much as possible in this category, I like to keep things pretty simple. Yes, my strategy myself is, I’m actually currently 100% stocks, all broad-based index funds, keep the expense ratio as low as possible. That’s every account. All my 401(k)s, or HSAs, or my Roth IRA, everything is – different custodian will have a different five-letter or three-letter process, but as long as it’s US stock market or international stock market, that’s the process.

I know that numbers-wise if my investing timeline is, let’s say, 50-plus years, but the time to actually sell a stock is more than 10 years. To me, just the numbers, I just kind of try to pretend I’m a robot and don’t look at the stock market in the last year because I know that odds are, it’s going to go up in the next 10 years. And you want to hit the point where, let’s say, within five years of cutting back or selling any of stocks, and switching add bonds. You can do bond 10 to whatever it may be. But I keep things pretty simple now, just a handful of different low-cost, broad-based index funds.

Then the strategy around what accounts to put them in. Of course, prioritizing your tax-advantaged accounts. Kind of have a mental, financial order of operations, I guess what I would call it that I’ve been using, as I’ve gone through the process. For example, student loans is pretty high up on the list, and I’ve been able to cut that out. But first and foremost, think about this as an emergency fund, and then getting your 401(k) match. Then I put HSA up there at the top, because it’s your dual tax-advantaged account and my student loans filled in that slot there, and pulling that out, then it’s to a Roth IRA.

With my income now, very fortunate that doing the backdoor Roth IRA option. Then it’s back to the 401(k), and maxing out the 401(k). Those are pretty much all your tax-advantaged accounts. If someone’s gotten to that point, and they’re still able to invest in money, which I’m fortunate to be able to do it now is pretty – I think, if you look online, there’s a lot of people who say, yes, those are probably your top five categories, and list to go through in different orders, depending on each person. Especially if you have student loans, and you’re doing PSLF, it’s going to be completely different. You might prioritize your 401(k) first because you want to reduce your adjusted gross income.

But once you’ve hit all those tax-advantaged accounts, that’s why I did the None to One Program with the YFP Real Estate with David and Nate. Because you know, I was thinking, “Okay. Let’s look into real estate.” Since that didn’t pan out currently, and it probably will in the future, I just put the rest into a taxable brokerage account in the same low-cost, broad-based index funds. So keeping it simple once again.

[0:40:22] TU: Riley, address for me a common objection, which people have is, “Hey, I want to retire early.” I don’t know exactly when that will be, but let’s say late 40s, early 50s. Kind of a moderate to aggressive timeline versus a traditional retirement age. I’ve got all these assets tied up in retirement accounts, where I’m going to take on a penalty if I take it out before the age of 59 and a half. Insert brokerage account is one way to mitigate that. You astutely mentioned that you’re obviously optimizing your tax accounts before you get to that point. How have you thought through a reconciled what you may need from a point of retirement, which is unknown until you get to that age where you can draw from those accounts, and how you might mitigate some of that risk?

[0:41:05] RP: Yes. I think of them in these three different categories, your pre-tax, your post-tax, and then your tax brokerage accounts. I think there’s – I’m sure there’s an ideal percentage where if you’re going to retire at age 45, for example, you want to have a good amount in your taxable brokerage account, right? Because you can’t get to your tax-advantaged accounts earlier on. But there’s, for example, currently, a Roth IRA conversion ladder is one process that people take in place, and they’re able to do that.

I think a simple strategy is make sure that all of those buckets have someone in there, so then you have the flexibility to do what kind of, whatever you want to do, whatever makes sense to you at the time. In that time, luckily, since I’ve been able to, I started the Roth IRA early on. I think that’s the one that people are going to have less on in life since I had that at age 18. But at times, I’m at a point where I want to scale back, I’ll have enough in the three buckets, and I’ve learned enough about the different strategies in place that I’ll figure it out when the time comes, is kind of my philosophy.

[0:42:01] TU: Awesome, one thing you mentioned Riley as we wrap up here, I think you mentioned during your residency year, you’re out learning about FIRE, you’re on various websites. There’s some great resources out there, blogs, podcasts, books. Anything you’d recommend to our listeners that you found to be especially helpful and insightful in your FIRE journey at least on the beginning as you’re learning more about this topic.

[0:42:23] RP: I quickly moved from – I think that the most resources out there are going to be in the blog space. If you look up different blogs, there’s probably plenty of them. The first one I would recommend is called the mad scientist. That’s where you get into the numbers of it. Of course, Mr, Money Mustache is probably the next one that people are going to find. He’s probably the most well-known and – if anyone’s going to find FIRE, first, they’ll probably going to find him.

Then for podcasts, the first 100 episodes of podcasts called Choose FYI. One of the co-hosts there was a pharmacist. It might be a little bit outdated now since those first 100 episodes are pretty old. Other podcasts I like listening to, Earn & Invest by – he’s called Doc G, Afford Anything by Paula Pant. Then books-wise, there’s some great ones out there, some classic like your money and your life. It’s just great, because it’s learning about the concept of your trading, your life hours to make money, and then you’re spending that money to get more of your life hours back.

Touched a little bit on Die with Zero. I’ll definitely be promoting that. That’s for folks that are maybe learning to, like myself, to maybe spend a little bit more, and enjoy more of life today. If you want to have a stress-free confidence on index funds, Simple Path to Wealth by J. L. Collins is a great book as well.

[0:43:30] TU: Great stuff. Library of information that you recommended. We will link all of those in the show notes. For folks that are listening, trying to write that down, don’t worry, go to the show notes. We’ll link those out. Great recommendations. Riley, really appreciate your time, your insights, your perspective. I love your intentionality around this topic. I love your financial IQ. I appreciate you sharing your journey, especially on the front end of this, and look forward to seeing, and track you along the way.

[0:43:52] RP: Yes. Thank you. This was an absolute blast. I love talking about this topic. Thanks for having me.

[OUTRO]

[0:43:56] TU: As we conclude this week’s podcast, an important reminder that the content on this show is provided to you for informational purposes only and it’s not intended to provide and should not be relied on for investment or any other advice. Information in the podcast and corresponding material should not be construed as a solicitation or offer to buy or sell any investment or related financial products. We urge listeners to consult with a financial advisor with respect to any investment.

Furthermore, the information contained in our archive, newsletters, blog post, and podcast is not updated and may not be accurate at the time you listen to it on the podcast. Opinions and analyses expressed herein are solely those of your financial pharmacist unless otherwise noted and constitute judgments as of the dates publish. Such information may contain forward-looking statements, which are not intended to be guarantees of future events. Actual results could differ materially from those anticipated in the forward-looking statements.

For more information, please visit yourfinancialpharmacist.com/disclaimer. Thank you again for your support of the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast. Have a great rest of your week.

[END]

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YFP 223: How First-Time Home Buyers Navigated the Current Housing Market

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How First-Time Home Buyers Navigated the Current Housing Market

On this episode, sponsored by APhA, Jacob and Michaela Soppe discuss their home buying journey in the current real estate market.

About Today’s Guests

Jacob and Michaela are graduates of Ohio Northern University who moved to eastern Ohio in 2018 so that Jacob could pursue his dream of starting a pharmacy with Southeast Healthcare. Since then, he has successfully grown his pharmacy and offers clinical services including diabetes and hepatitis C clinics. Michaela works at East Ohio Regional Hospital where she collaborates with doctors and patients in the inpatient, outpatient, and long-term care settings. In their spare time, they love to stay active and travel the world. They recently bought their first home and are excited to continue to serve God and their patients in their community.

Summary

In this episode, Tim Ulbrich turns the microphone over to Nate Hedrick, The Real Estate RPh and co-host of the YFP Real Estate Investing Podcast, as he interviews two pharmacists, Michaela and Jacob Soppe, about their home buying journey. Michaela and Jacob share their experience working with YFP’s Real Estate Concierge, their home search, how they determined their home buying budget, and the realities of buying a home in the current real estate market.

Jacob and Michaela weren’t necessarily looking for a home after pharmacy school and focused their energy and funds on paying down student loans and investing. When they were ready to start the home buying process, they didn’t know what to do or how to start, so they contacted Nate Hedrick and started working with the Real Estate Concierge Service. Nate paired the couple with a real estate agent in their area who worked with them diligently until they found a home that met their budget requirements and exceeded their expectations on must-have items like room for a family and plentiful parking.

The couple shares their experience receiving regular emails with listings and changes to the housing market, a day with nine house viewings, their experience with their home inspection, and how their experience at closing differs from what many folks will see in the current market.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Nate Hedrick: Hey, Michaela, Jacob, welcome to the show.

Jacob Soppe: Thanks for having us.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, thank you for having us.

Nate Hedrick: Absolutely. Excited to chat today. We are talking all things real estate. I’m taking over the Tim and Tim show here on the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast so we can talk a little bit more about real estate today. So again, appreciate you guys joining us.

Michaela Soppe: Absolutely.

Nate Hedrick: So we are here to talk a little bit about navigating the current housing market, right? So you guys are first-time home buyers, just closed about two months ago on your first house, and what we thought we would do is kind of sit down and talk a little bit about that, talk about what it’s like to buy a house in the current market, what it’s like to be a first-time home buyer, how you guys navigated that, and just kind of get that information in front of people. So before we dive too deeply into the real estate side of things, maybe give us a little bit of background on your pharmacy journey so far and kind of what you guys are up to.

Jacob Soppe: I graduated in 2018, and I immediately got a job on rotations. I met with one of my preceptors and they wanted to open a pharmacy, and they wanted me to open it for them, and that’s something I’m interested in, and so I opened it. That was three years ago. And we’re continuing to grow, and I’m very happy with it. We’re a clinic pharmacy, but we also do long-term care, we also do diabetes clinics, and we’re just starting up Hepatitis C clinics.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great.

Michaela Soppe: So I graduated in 2019. We both graduated from Ohio Northern. And we actually got married while I was on rotations, so he’d basically said, “Hey, how do you feel about moving an hour and a half away from Columbus?” I’m like, “OK, that’s great. But I have rotations in Columbus.” So I started working with Rite Aid after I graduated as a pharmacist and kind of floated all over the place because we didn’t really know where we’d be living for sure. And then worked with them for a couple years and at the end of that, in January, I got a job working at a local hospital. So I do mostly inpatient, but I also have a mix of some outpatient stuff and long-term care in there with that as well. So I’m kind of running all over the place. But I love it.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great.

Michaela Soppe: And we finally made it out closer to where Jacob works. So.

Nate Hedrick: That’s nice, especially when, you know, you’ve already got long days at the hospital or at the pharmacy, you don’t want to add an extra long commute to that. So that’s great.

Michaela Soppe: Exactly.

Nate Hedrick: And when you guys graduated from pharmacy school, I know it was different years, but when you graduated, was buying a house kind of always in that mix? Was it always part of the “next step?” Or was this something that came along later?

Jacob Soppe: We knew we wanted to buy a house eventually, but there was student loans in the way that kept me up at night.

Nate Hedrick: Sure.

Jacob Soppe: And I was like, I can’t buy a house until I pay off these, we pay off these loans. And so after about two years, we paid off the loans and that’s when we started looking for a home.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, it was definitely student loans first and then, you know, it all worked out around the same time where my job brought us instead of an hour and a half away for Jacob, it’s now five minutes away. And at that point, we were like, OK, like we’re ready to find a house because we’re going to be out here for a while.

Nate Hedrick: Wow, yeah. So I know I’ve talked to others who have that feeling of like, man, I cannot buy until these are gone. And so you guys took that and said, yeah, let’s make sure that’s the case. Let’s go all in on the loans and then once that’s done, then we’ll go ahead and buy a house. Do you feel like that was crippling at all? Was it just like, this is what we have to do to get it done?

Jacob Soppe: It was definitely the second one there. We just felt like we had to do it and felt like it was the right way to go for us.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, it was kind of like, let’s still act like we’re college kids for a couple years, you know, not buy a bunch of brand new stuff. Like most of our stuff came from our families or stuff I had from college. And so until the loans were gone, we didn’t really spend much money on anything else. Like we’d go traveling, but other than that, it was just loans completely. Like our entire paychecks went to it, basically.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, avoiding that lifestyle creep can be a really great way to get ahead and make sure that those loans could be knocked out first. So that’s awesome. Were there any other factors that were holding you guys back? I mean, was the market something that scared you? Or talk to me a little about that too. Was it just the student loans and once those were gone, you were ready to move?

Jacob Soppe: The other thing that was holding us back was, like I said earlier, I was driving an hour and a half one way to work each day, so a total of three hours when we started and Michaela was still in school. We wanted to see where she was going to end up working and then when she ended up moving closer to my work, it worked out because it was like just after we paid off our loans. So we didn’t end up looking for a house at our old employer where I was still driving 45 minutes, and I really liked the idea of living like right next to work and the gym and church — and we’ll get into that later.

Michaela Soppe: I guess something I should say is that we moved four times in three years.

Jacob Soppe: Yeah.

Michaela Soppe: And progressively each time, every time my position changed, basically, going from rotation student to floater at Rite Aid to actually having a store at Rite Aid to getting the job at the hospital. Basically every single time, we moved closer and closer to where Jacob was working. And now, it definitely just where are we going to be settled was kind of like a factor that was holding us back slightly too because like my goal was always to get a job closer to where Jacob was working but just we didn’t know when that would happen. And it ended up being at a really convenient time for us.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great. And that actually, that’s a good segue because one of the things I want to talk about today is choosing the location and some of the steps that go into that kind of getting ready phase of buying a home. And that’s actually Step No. 1 of six steps that we’re going to talk about today. So we put together a video series — and actually, there’s a guide out there, we can link to that in the show notes. But if you head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com, we have the “Six Steps to Home Buying.” And what I’d like to do is actually walk through each one of those steps and kind of get your take and your experience as first-time home buyers and see what information we can share with our audience. There’s a lot of people that are probably in your shoes or who are about to be in those shoes here pretty soon where they’re graduating, they’ve got a lot of student loan debt, or they’re ready to buy a home, and now it’s time to figure out, OK, what does that actually look like? And more importantly, how do I do that in this kind of market? Because it is quite the seller’s market. It’s very competitive out there. And so trying to get a home today is more difficult than it’s been before. So we’ll start with the first step, which is making sure you’re ready. A lot of this step includes things like choosing a location, determining what is important to you guys, and also setting a budget and not letting the bank set the budget necessarily, not just going out and asking for the biggest loan we can get but setting our own budget. And so when you guys sat down and said, “OK, we need to figure out if we’re ready,” what did that look like? Was it a formal process for you or was this like, I don’t know, I’ve been on Zillow, let’s go take a look. You know, what was that like for you guys?

Michaele Soppe: There was definitely a lot of Zillow involved. So before we made our final move here closer to work, the apartment we were at, we were initially looking for houses there because it seemed like a good, you know, central location at the time when I was with Rite Aid still. So I think Jacob was on Zillow every single day, just you know, browsing houses for probably half a year or so at least and then continuing once we did move a little bit closer into another apartment, like OK, now we’re getting serious. What are we looking at? It wasn’t like a formal, let’s sit down and talk about this. It was just something we talked about almost every day probably for months just casually like, OK, you know, what do we want out of this? And everything kind of grew from there.

Nate Hedrick: And did you sit down and figure out, again, like not a formalized but at least like a budget for what you wanted to spend? And how did you go about doing that?

Jacob Soppe: One thing that we talked about even before we got married, we decided together that we both definitely wanted to live way below our means, less than 50% of our income, just because that’s what made us feel safe. Just in case one of us lost our jobs.

Nate Hedrick: Sure.

Jacob Soppe: It’s getting harder to find a job, especially with the growing concern of the pharmacist job market. Then also we want to have a family. We’re big givers as well. And so it just takes a lot of that stress off having a big cushion to make all those fit potentially with Michaela either decreasing work hours or going to 0 in the pharmacy in the future.

Nate Hedrick: Sure.

Jacob Soppe: But as far as budget goes, we decided that we wanted to really find a house for $200,000 or less. And I know like especially in Columbus, Ohio, where we’re from, that is very difficult to do in a nice place for a nice home.

Nate Hedrick: Sure.

Jacob Soppe: But the nice thing about where we moved is that the rural Ohio is much lower cost of living, and we were able to meet that goal of finding a home in that budget.

Michaela Soppe: Yes.

Jacob Soppe: Actually, way under budget.

Michaela Soppe: When we started looking at homes, there were a lot of homes we found that we liked that were more like $250,000-300,000. So like I’d say our upper limit kind of became $300,000 with the understanding of we’d much rather not spend $300,000 on the house. So we actually did find a couple that we liked, which we didn’t get a chance to put an offer in on. I mean, the market out here isn’t quite as crazy as it is in Columbus, but stuff still sells fairly quickly. So it ended up being a good thing because our realtor could kind of point us towards the house that we’re in now, which was like half of that but way big enough for both of us and even for a growing family. And yeah, so that — like we had that budget in mind the whole time. And it did shift a little bit as we were looking, but then it all ended up going back to what we were originally thinking.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, I love that. And I think there’s two things that I think are really, really important. One is intentionality, right? You guys stepped back and said like, ‘This is important to us to live slightly below the typical means,’ right? Or ‘We can live at 50% of our income. And here’s why we’re doing that,’ right? The intention behind that is that if we want to cut back on hours, we lose a job, we’re not stressing about this home purchase. And I love that. I think that’s super important. The other thing that you said that I think is interesting because I advise my clients of this all the time is that it’s super easy to fall in love up to whatever amount, right? If I start looking at $500,000 homes, I’m going to love $500,000 homes. The trick is not to exceed that budget if it’s reasonable for your market. And so you guys took a step back and said, “Yeah, you know what? It’s possible to find a nice place under this $200,000 in our market.” And again, I know the West Coasters out there are probably like screaming at their radios right now. But the idea is that, you know, you guys took a look at your market and said, “This is feasible, and so I’m not going to push it beyond my means because I’ve set this budget, and this is realistic for where I’m looking. I think that’s a really great way to set yourselves up for success. So I admire that a lot. The other thing you mentioned is that you leveraged your realtor, and that actually leads us to Step No. 2 or point No. 2 here, which is assembling a team. And this is actually where you and I got connected back in May of this past year. And you know, you guys came to us, the Real Estate Concierge service, which is a service that we offer to pretty much anyone that if you want to get connected with a real estate agent, we will actually help you do that. And so again, if you head on over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com and head over to “Buy a Home,” you can check out the Real Estate Concierge service there, a free way to get connected with an awesome local agent. And again, that’s actually how Jacob and Michaela and I got connected. We got you connected with Sean, and I guess tell us a little bit about that process and what it was like to work with an agent.

Jacob Soppe: Yeah, I want to thank you guys, thank you again for finding Sean, our realtor.

Nate Hedrick: Sure.

Jacob Soppe: We had no clue on like what realtor, who should we go to, and we heard about your service through YFP, and so we reached out to you, you found us a great realtor. Sean has over 10 years of experience as a realtor, he’s also a broker. And he was amazing, mainly because one, he was super responsive, two, he found us homes, including the one we ended up buying, that we would like. And we didn’t think we would like this home, so we didn’t put it on our list of liked homes and must-see homes. But he’s like, “I think you guys will like it anyway. Let’s go.” And we looked at like, I don’t know how many homes.

Michaela Soppe: Well, the one day, I think it was a Saturday, we did nine homes on that Saturday. And he had it all set up like perfectly. And then honestly, the whole process only took a week or two for us. He was just on top of it. And you know, ultimately, we looked at 14 or 15, and this was one of the last ones. And we basically knew going into it like, this is something that we’re definitely open to buying because it was a great price, like great location, can’t really get any better. And I’m just really glad that Sean figured out what we liked so easily and you know, pointed us to this house because it wasn’t really on our radar initially.

Jacob Soppe: And one other thing I want to give him praise for too is every house we went to, he pointed out anything that he thought was a potential problem. And so like he was super honest, he wasn’t in a rush to sell us a home.

Michaela Soppe: Yes.

Jacob Soppe: And so I really trusted him and I think that you’ve really found a great realtor.

Nate Hedrick: Good, I’m so glad. That’s awesome. And that’s exactly what we want to hear, right? I mean, the agents you work with, it has to be somebody you can trust. And it’s so funny, that’s exactly what I try to do for my clients is point out the scary, right? My job is to walk around and look for things that you don’t recognize as bad while you just figure out if you’re going to like the house. That’s awesome that Sean was able to do that for you guys. Were there other members of the team along the way that were important as well? I know obviously the real estate agent is big, but were there other players that jumped in here as well that you found a lot of value in?

Jacob Soppe: Not really.

Michaela Soppe: Honestly, it all happened very fast.

Jacob Soppe: We weren’t even really seriously looking for a home.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, this was just to get our feet wet.

Jacob Soppe: We were actually in the middle of a lease.

Nate Hedrick: Ok.

Jacob Soppe: We were just like looking at homes, we’re like, ‘Oh, well, it takes about a month or two to start closing on a home, so maybe we should just start looking at homes for a couple months and then –’

Michaela Soppe: See what’s out there.

Jacob Soppe: See what’s out there. And so we started looking at homes and we found one that we really liked, and we’re like, ‘We kind of want to put in an offer. But I still have like six months left on my lease.’ And so I was just like, you know what? Let me call up the landlord tomorrow and see if they’d be OK if we put an offer on a home and moved out early. And we talked to them and we ended up having an agreement, and we were able to leave early. And so we’re like, ‘Oh, great.’ Well, the home that we really liked, apparently some other people really liked it too. So it was already gone by the next day. But that really opened the door for us to seriously look.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, and I guess that’s something else I’d say is don’t be afraid to break your lease because we lived in three apartments before buying this house, and we broke our lease every time, which obviously —

Jacob Soppe: But it was with the —

Michaela Soppe: With their permission. Like obviously, it’s not ideal. But like, I mean, definitely talk it through with them and see what you can do if you’re ready to buy a house. That shouldn’t be something holding you back because usually, they will work with you and figure out a deal that way.

Nate Hedrick: It’s a great tip, and it’s something that I’ve done with tenants of mine. You know, if I can fill that vacancy quickly, it doesn’t bother me who’s in that house as long as they’re a great tenant. So that makes a lot of sense. That’s a good tip. That also leads me to you talked about putting in an offer and looking for a house, but what about the paying for it, right? So there’s dollars there, so talk to me a little bit about financing and did you guys have an idea of how you wanted to finance the home ahead of time? Or what did that look like?

Jacob Soppe: I mean, I’m really adverse to debt. I really don’t like debt. And Michaela really let me spearhead this. And so we went in — I don’t know, I was like, “You know what, I want to do” — how much down was it? I don’t remember anymore.

Nate Hedrick: 15% down?

Jacob Soppe: Not 15%, 20%.

Michaela Soppe: He would have rather paid cash, but reasonably, he wanted to do 20% down.

Jacob Soppe: Yeah, 20% down at 15-year fixed mortgage. But I kept, you know, I listen to YFP, I listen to a lot of other podcasts as well. And I looked at the offer that IBERIABANK has that you guys work with. And I felt like I really couldn’t pass up taking advantage of the low interest rates going on right now. And I was thinking to myself, ‘Well, if I’m going to pay it off early, I can still do that.’ We didn’t necessarily need to do a lower amount, but we ended up doing 5% down on a 30-year fixed. And we do a lot of investing as well, so we are putting every single dollar that we’re not spending on a mortgage into investments.

Nate Hedrick: I love that.

Michaela Soppe: So like when you have a 3% mortgage with IBERIABANK, we’re like, well, we can make more investing that money, you know, in the meantime than we would if we just kind of threw it at the house.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah.

Michaela Soppe: So that kind of changed his mind over a month or two.

Nate Hedrick: I definitely get that debt aversion, but it also makes a lot of sense if you break down the numbers, does it preserve your capital in a way that allows you to do other things, like you said, travel more, invest better, pay down student debt if you hadn’t already done that? Those are the things that that flexibility can allow. So I love that you guys took a look at that and even though you went in with one notion, you evaluated your options and made kind of the best financial move for you guys. That’s huge. And for those that want to learn more about that, definitely head over to YourFinancialPharmacist.com, and again, head over to the Financing section of the “Buy a Home” section, and you can find out more information about IBERIABANK and some of the pharmacist loan options that are out there. Great way to get a low down payment loan without having to get hit with PMI or things like that. So definitely a good option. So then Step No. 4 would be the search, so actually looking for the property itself. And we’ve alluded to this a little bit, but talk to us about that process. What were things that you guys were looking for? Or what were things that you learned after seeing a couple of houses or on that nine-house day, what were things that you learned along that process?

Michaela Soppe: We learned that house hunting is tiring on that nine-house day.

Nate Hedrick: I imagine.

Michaela Soppe: It was a lot of Zillow, a lot of probably other online websites too for houses. And honestly, Jacob looked at most of that because I got a little overwhelmed with all the options.

Nate Hedrick: Sure.

Michaela Soppe: But something we really wanted, which actually kind of excluded this house initially was we wanted a two-car garage was one of our main things because we’ve kind of done it all. We’ve done garage, no garage, all of that. So this house we ended up buying only has a one-car garage, but it has tons of parking, like a carport. You can have everyone over, and they don’t need to park in the street.

Nate Hedrick: Nice.

Michaela Soppe: So that’s kind of why we initially didn’t look at this house. And Sean was like, ‘Well, let’s go look at it.’ So we started out with Zillow. Once we got hooked up with Sean, he created basically an account for us on — was it MLS? On MLS, and basically every day, he would push emails to us of like, here’s any changes in the housing near you, like new houses, price drops, houses going under contract, coming back on the market, being sold. That was super helpful. You know, he’d send it to us after work each day so that he wasn’t interrupting our day and we could look at it, like them, communicate with him what we wanted to see, what we weren’t interested in, stuff like that. And then from there, he would call Jacob up and be like, “Hey, I have a list of these houses. Let’s go see them tomorrow if you’re free or whatever the next day you were free was.” And I mean, really, he just kind of led the way and was like, here’s houses you liked, here’s houses I think you would like, and kind of all over our price range too. We saw stuff under our budget, over our — not over our budget, but on the higher end of our budget — and kind of just pieced together from there what we really wanted and what was important to us.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and sometimes just getting out there and seeing it in person can make all the difference. You know, you might think there’s one thing that’s super important or not realize something that is important to you until you get out and see a house that has that particular feature and recognize that. So that’s great. And I also love the tip about the auto-emails. That’s something I recommend for a lot of my clients is get that auto-email so that you are getting daily alerts. It helps us really learn that market so that you can move quickly. If you’re just looking at everything on Friday afternoon and then scrambling to try to react to the properties that have come up in the week, it’s going to be tricky. But if you can get that daily, just take 20 or 30 minutes out of your day to really learn that market, see what properties are coming available, you’ll have a lot more chance at the good properties, and you’ll know what the right price point is because you’re starting to learn that market and see what’s becoming available. So great tips. And then once you actually found the property, again, I know we’ve talked a little bit about this, but talk to me about that negotiation process because Step No. 5 is all about putting that deal together. And so I know negotiations are hard in the current market, there’s not a lot of wiggle room, but what did that look like? What was the putting together the offer process look like?

Michaela Soppe: So Sean was really great with this too because the house that we really liked, ended up buying that we’re living in now, we actually were able to get for asking price.

Nate Hedrick: Nice.

Michaela Soppe: So out here in Eastern rural Ohio, it’s a little different than Columbus, obviously. We knew when we were here he was in contact with the seller’s realtor, and she told him like, “Hey, there’s another offer on the table today. Do they want it or not?” So basically, we were sitting in his house at 8 p.m. like kind of putting together our offer. We knew that this is a house that we would really like, that it could be the house that we’re buying, you know? And we’re like, ‘Well, let’s offer them asking price.’ They’d already dropped the price $5,000 I think. This particular house was on the market for —

Jacob Soppe: Over 30 days.

Michaela Soppe: It was. Some houses go within a week out here, some of them are on the market for months, depending on the houses. You know, there’s not that many people in rural Ohio. But you know, so completely different from the big cities. So basically, we did asking price but we also really wanted this house, so we added an escalation clause just in case, which went I think like $8,000 over maybe.

Nate Hedrick: And could you enlighten our audience about what an escalation clause actually means?

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, so basically if you have an escalation clause on your offer, it means that you’re willing to go up so much more money if the other person bid higher than your or offered higher than you on the house. So like if you’re offering $200,000, the other person offered $205,000, but if you have an escalation clause going up to $210,000, they could take your $210,000 — or I guess $206,000 at that point. You know, something slightly higher than what the other person offered if your clause goes above that.

Nate Hedrick: Yep, that’s spot on. And it’s a great way to protect you from pitting you against yourself, right? Because then you can put in $200,000 and you pay $200,000 if that’s the final price. But if there are other offers, you can still protect yourself by getting higher than — just slightly higher than those next offers. So thank you.
Michaela Soppe: So hopefully it keeps you out of a bidding war.

Nate Hedrick: Exactly.

Michaela Soppe: So yeah, I mean, putting the offer in, I think the deadline was given to us by the seller’s realtor was like 9 p.m. or something. And he faxed over all the papers by 8:55 p.m. and called like, “They’re on their way,” you know?

Nate Hedrick: Nice.

Michaela Soppe: Basically, we knew an hour after that they were —

Jacob Soppe: They verbally accepted our offer.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, they verbally accepted an hour after that.

Nate Hedrick: Great. Yeah.

Michaela Soppe: It was a very fast process, I feel like, and probably a little less stressful than it is in the big cities for us. But at least putting the offer down was really simple.

Nate Hedrick: Still, yeah, it sounded like crunch time decisions, though, and faxing it then at 0 hours.

Michaela Soppe: It happened really fast.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great. And did you have inspection contingencies on the home as well? I know some people are out there waiving inspection contingencies. What did that look like?

Michaela Soppe: We did have an inspection. I guess something I should mention is we also offered to cover closing costs. I know that’s a big deal-maker or -breaker anymore. But we did have an inspection, and Jacob can talk more about that process.

Jacob Soppe: OK. So

Michaela Soppe: I set it up.

Jacob Soppe: Yeah, so I scheduled an inspection with one of the six recommended inspectors that our realtor gave us contact info for. And so I did some price shopping with them and got to know the guys who did it. And I picked one,s scheduled a time before our closing date, and they came in and they agreed to meet them at the house while they did the inspection and kind of showed me what they were looking at. And then they gave me a full report, photos, and descriptions of the inspection about two days later. So it’s like 80 pages. And we got to look through them, and they highlighted the things that they thought were a big concern and that what we should look at before closing. So what that led to is that we talked — we showed our realtor that report too, and most of the things we’re like, ‘Ah, don’t worry about it. We’ll just fix those problems.’ And our realtor was like, ‘No, no, no, no. The sellers are going to fix those for you. And so we’re going to use this contingency and try to barter for to see what we can get them to fix before we close.’ And we went back and forth probably like four times with the sellers.

Michaela Soppe: That sounds about right.

Jacob Soppe: And our realtor ended up saving us like $5,000 in repairs.

Michaela Soppe: And just like little — some of the stuff was bigger, but some was just little stuff that we’re literally like, it’s fine, you know. And some of the bigger stuff the sellers were like, ‘Well, we’ll split it 50/50 with you guys,’ and Jacob and I are like, ‘OK, that’s fine.’ Sean was like, ‘No. You’re not paying for it.’

Nate Hedrick: I love it.

Michaela Soppe: He’s like, ‘You guys offered asking price. They’re going to pay for it.’ And we’re like, ‘OK, sure, we’ll see what happens.’ And like Jacob said, I mean, they basically agreed to everything except tightening a railing outside. Like literally $5,000 worth of stuff, they got done for us before we closed. Can’t thank Sean enough for that.

Nate Hedrick: That’s great.

Michaela Soppe: Because we had no idea. We’re like, ‘Oh, this is fine. They’re never going to agree to that.’ But they did.

Nate Hedrick: And that’s exactly why you have a good real estate agent to lean on, right? Because again, without that experience, without that know-how, you would have lost out. So that’s a big, important point. The other thing I think is great there is that you guys went into it with this idea of I’m going to offer full asking, and so because of that, like there’s a renegotiation process that may occur. And so there’s two — I think a lot of people assume as soon as you put that offer in, that’s it, you’re done, that’s what you’re buying the house for. But the reality is you get to go back to them, and there’s renegotiations that can occur if you have the right contingencies in place. And again, lean on your agent for that. But that’s a really important factor to making sure you’re getting a good deal. So that’s awesome. Well, that leads to our last step, which is Step No. 6, all about closing. So you’ve gone through, found a house, put the offer in, renegotiated on the fixes and everything, and now you’re ready to actually sign the paperwork. So talk to us a little bit about the closing process. Anything that surprised you or things that you learned during that?

Michaela Soppe: I’d say it was pretty straightforward for us. I mean, basically with all of the negotiations that happened ahead of time, we knew exactly what we were getting, exactly what to expect. We did come walk through the house before we closed, I think the morning that we closed.

Jacob Soppe: The same morning that we closed.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, just to make sure everything was done, everything was what they said they would do. From there, everything was good. You know, Sean was there at closing with us for the first part. And then once you actually get into the more financial stuff with the bank, your realtor leaves and says, “See you later.” So I guess that was kind of surprising. I’m like, ‘Oh, OK, so he’s not here.’ But it makes sense too just that he would come for a little bit of it.

Nate Hedrick: I remember my first — when I bought my first house, I thought that like my agent was going to be there waiting with the keys as soon as I signed and he was going to drop them in my hand, but then there’s a whole — like title had to actually transfer, and there was the — like you’re working with the bank first and finishing the deal. Was that your experience as well?

Michaela Soppe: So we got the keys at closing.

Nate Hedrick: Nice. That’s pretty rare these days. That’s awesome.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, we didn’t have to wait until after for it in our case, at least. So I mean, that was kind of what I expected and I guess what I assumed was the norm. But I also wouldn’t be surprised if it does take awhile.

Nate Hedrick: No, that’s good. And again, that is — it’s more rare these days. And again, some states even require you to have different levels of closing with a lawyer present and things like that. So it’s nice when you can actually do it all in one fell swoop like that. That’s excellent.

Michaela Soppe: And we had kind of asked Sean like, do we need an attorney to be there with us? Are we good? He’s like, ‘Well, unless you have any questions about the stuff that’s already been fixed or gone over,’ like everything he basically had already gone over everything with us and there wasn’t any surprises.

Jacob Soppe: And there’s a lawyer at the title company.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, and depending on your state, that may vary, right? Some states will actually require that you have a lawyer present or that they’re actually the one doing the closing with you. But again, in Ohio where we are, that’s not the case. So good to lean on your agent there for the local guidelines. Well, great. Well Jacob and Michaela, I really appreciate you guys sharing your story. I think, again, it’s a tricky time to be a first-time home buyer, but you guys are proof that it can be quite easily done. And again, YFP is here to help you guys if there’s something to make the process easier. We’re along for that same ride. Any final thoughts or other tips you can share with our listeners?

Jacob Soppe: Well, I can share one thing that we did not include in our search talk, but we were actually looking at a home that we could potentially rent out in the future.

Michaela Soppe: Oh, yes.

Jacob Soppe: Once we outgrow it. It might be awhile before we outgrow it because there’s plenty of space here, but we were looking for a home that we potentially could rent out or even hack out. And we found this home, and the offer we put in fits the 1% Rule that a lot of landlords like to follow when they’re looking for a good home but also I wanted to make sure we bought a home that we could increase the value on. And there’s a lot of opportunity to do that in this home. But we also found that this was — in the neighborhood of like 20 homes, this was like the second lowest valued home in the neighborhood. So we feel like we can really use that to help increase the value of this home if we end up selling it.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, and part of the plan with this home too — and we’ll be here for awhile — but eventually, it’s something that we could easily rent out in the future because it’s a great size for a rental home, and it’s actually really close to the highway. Like you can see the highway, you can’t necessarily hear it all the time. But it’s in its own little neighborhood but in a really good location for people just passing through. So that was something that was always in the back of our mind that we knew we kind of wanted, our realtor knew we wanted it, you knew we were looking for it. So that was something that just kind of like fit together well with the home we ended up getting as well.

Nate Hedrick: Yeah, that’s awesome. I think that, you know, your shameless plug for our other show, the YFP Real Estate Investing podcast with David Bright and I as cohosts, if you haven’t checked that out, definitely do so. And maybe we’ll have Jacob and Michaela on that show once they turn this property over and start renting it out. I love it. Well again, guys, really appreciate you guys being with us today and sharing your story. Where can people reach out if they want to get in touch with you?

Jacob Soppe: They can reach me at my email, [email protected]. Soppe is spelled S-o-p-p-e.

Nate Hedrick: Perfect. Well, I’ll make sure to put that in the show notes. And again, thank you guys so much for being here.

Michaela Soppe: Yeah, thank you, Nate.

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YFP 222: Why Estate Planning is Such an Important Part of the Financial Plan

Posted on by yfpadmin

Why Estate Planning is Such an Important Part of the Financial Plan

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, estate planning attorneys, Notesong Thomson and Nathan Kavlie, discuss estate planning and its importance in the financial plan.

About Today’s Guests

Notesong and Nathan, Co-Founders, Approachable Attorneys, Thoughtful Wills

Notesong and Nathan met in junior high in Jamestown, North Dakota – a friendship forged in orchestra concerts and speech meets – much laughter in hallways and early-90s nerdiness.

They both started law school in 2001, bonding over the exciting concepts they were learning, the intense 1L reading requirements, and Legally Blonde (released that summer).

Years later, Nathan asked Notesong to help create a law firm that would emulate the automation of LegalZoom but pair it with actual attorneys to create custom, lawyer-drafted Wills at an affordable price point. Thankfully, Notesong said yes!

This friendship is our firm’s foundation – and with each passing year, both grow stronger.

Notesong Srisopark Thompson, Co-Founder | Attorney, Thoughtful Wills

Caring for so many ill and injured children led Nurse Notesong to law school – she wanted to advocate for children from multiple avenues beyond the hospital bedside. After practicing as a pediatric emergency/trauma nurse for over 18 years, Notesong took a break from paid work to be a full time mom to her three sweet and spunky kids – one of her most challenging and rewarding roles. Along the way, she and her husband caved, and their family also welcomed two fluffy sheepdogs who are constantly at her side as she helps translate estate planning into terms and concepts that are understandable – echoing her signature nursing style when she explained painful procedures (such as IV starts) to her tearful and terrified patients as they clung to their parents.

Having dealt with the yuck of creating her own estate plan, Notesong ensures the Thoughtful Will experience respects and addresses the anxieties of parents and non-parents alike, helping make the process as pleasant as possible. She infuses TLC into every aspect of our brand of approachable lawyering. Attention to detail is crucial in both nursing and law – Notesong doesn’t miss a beat.

Nathan Jay Kavlie, Co-Founder | Attorney, Thoughtful Wills

In high school, Nathan knew his science fair presentation was ready when he could explain the enzyme pathways to his grandmother. That ability to translate concepts was rewarded when he won awards at the international science fair, three years in a row.

Many years later after repeated nagging by his Uncle David, Nathan turned his attention to wills and discovered this whole new area of law that desperately needed translation for normal people. He took a year to learn and study wills & trusts law – rewriting the standard “legalese” will into something elegant and understandable. The Thoughtful Will is one of his proudest accomplishments to date (it’s a three-way tie with his marriage and rehabilitating two rescued terriers).

Summary

This week, Tim Ulbrich taps into a topic not yet explored on the YFP Podcast, estate planning. Estate planning attorneys and co-founders of Thoughtful wills, Nathan Kavlie and Notesong Thompson, discuss what an estate plan is, who needs one, the value of a living trust, and why estate planning is an important part of the financial plan.

Thoughtful Wills solves the issue of unpleasant experiences with attorneys, delaying the start of estate planning. Nathan and Notesong have worked to make death planning and lawyering approachable for everyone.

Nathan explains that estate planning is not just about your estate, but everything you own, even non-physical items, when you die. Estate planning is death planning, using our system of laws to make decisions, spreading goodness even after your death. Anyone who has children, people who have pets, married couples, anyone with some assets, and people who have family members that they care about should consider estate planning as a set of directives in the event of your death. Notesong explains that because circumstances in life change, revisiting the estate plan annually is a good idea.

Nathan and Notesong give a general overview of the estate planning documents, including the will, the revocable living trust, other relevant documents of estate planning, and how they work together to protect your estate after your death. Nathan details what probate is and how it affects a person’s assets when they die without a will, versus with an estate plan. Notesong provides an overview of the healthcare directive and the durable power of attorney, which authorize someone to make decisions on your behalf if you are incapacitated.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Notesong and Nathan, thank you so much for coming on the show.

Notesong Thompson: Thanks for having us, Tim.

Nathan Kavlie: Thank you.

Tim Ulbrich: So before we dive into all things estate planning, a topic that we surprisingly haven’t covered in detail on this show before, I’d love for you both to introduce yourselves and give us an overview of the work that you do with Thoughtful Wills. So Notesong, why don’t you kick us off? And then I’ll have Nathan follow.

Notesong Thompson: Sure. Well, it’s nice to meet everybody on the podcast. I am based in Madison, Wisconsin, and I am mom of three young kids — young, spunky kids. We have two sheepdogs who are very needy and wife of a really busy corporate attorney. But yeah, I’m a lawyer and I previously practiced as an emergency trauma nurse for 20 years, so I bring a lot of different perspectives to estate planning.

Tim Ulbrich: And we’re going to tap into some of your healthcare background a little bit later when we get into some of the healthcare directive pieces of the estate planning process. So very good. Nathan, go for it.

Nathan Kavlie: Yeah, so my name is Nathan Kavlie. I live in Minneapolis. Notesong and I, actually, we met in high school in Jamestown, North Dakota, back in the early ‘90s. But I am a lawyer. I was not a nurse, but I did work in a video store for several years, which, you know, oddly, I think was really I think formative, as much as probably anything else in how I sort of approach the world and my work, which is just sort of — we’re all customer service agents I think in the past. And if you aren’t, thinking that way I think you really are kind of missing the boat because I feel like especially in this new world where with masks and distancing, I think if you’re not spending time thinking about how to be friendly and approachable, you are not being friendly and approachable. I think you’re just missing a chance to sort of make people feel welcome and taken care of. But yeah, I live in Minneapolis with my husband, our two rescue dogs, yeah. Life is good.

Tim Ulbrich: Great comment, Nathan, about the importance of customer service and a priority. I actually — you made me think of the book by the founder of Zappos, “Delivering Happiness,” and great story about just that perspective and how important it is no matter what industry that one is in. So before we get into the weeds of estate planning — we’re going to try to make it as lively and fun to really highlight the importance of estate planning as a part of the broader financial plan — but before we get into that, tell us a little bit more about Thoughtful Wills. What is Thoughtful Wills? What’s the problem that you’re trying to solve? And what is the offering that you have, Nathan?

Nathan Kavlie: Yeah, so I think the problem we’re trying to solve is most lawyers are not very friendly or approachable. They kind of suck to work with. And people know that, right? There’s a reason why people — I’m sure you guys at YFP have heard of how often do you ever get clients that come in and they say, “Well, we’ve got all of our estate planning documents ready.”

Tim Ulbrich: Rarely.

Nathan Kavlie: Rarely, because they know that it’s like, you know, you have to take time off from work and go meet with this lawyer who’s probably going to make you feel like an idiot and charge a lot of money. And that’s the experience that I kept running into over and over again amongst my friends. And so you know, it was sort of an epiphany, like why does it have to be that way? And it doesn’t. We can just work online with people all over the country. We can — instead of sitting down and having this meeting, which is long and frankly then becomes expensive because we’re lawyers, right? We sell our time. We don’t do bookshelves, we don’t sell electric cars. We sell our time. And so you know, we can use technology efficiently to sort of save time, reduce expenses, and hopefully then if we’re being really sort of thoughtful about all of this process, we can sort of create kind of an experience for you that is sort of shockingly friendly and approachable. And that’s really what we’ve sort of done is sort of looked at every piece of our process to sort of ask ourselves, like is this understandable to normal people? Does it feel welcoming? Is somebody going to read this and feel supported? And if it doesn’t, then we work on it and frankly, we keep working on it over and over again just because when are you ever like perfect, right? So we’re sort of on a quest to really make lawyering approachable is I think really the crux of what we do.

Tim Ulbrich: So making lawyering approachable is really a big part of what you guys do. And folks can go to ThoughtfulWills.com/YFP and learn more. And we’ll reference that link again later in the show. I was telling my wife about this interview last night, and the way I was describing it, based on our experiences with a young family, going through the estate planning process, we really delayed ourselves in that process probably longer than we should because No. 1, it wasn’t exciting. It’s pretty boring, right? In my mind, it was going to be somewhat painful. And I felt like the industry wasn’t very transparent. As I look at what you guys have built, you really have addressed all three of those. And excited about what that means for not only pharmacists but also other professionals that want to do this part of the financial plan and do it well. Notesong, tell me about your background as an emergency — if I heard correctly, emergency care nurse. What about that experience led you to want to go back to law school and then specifically do the work that you’re doing now with Thoughtful Wills?

Notesong Thompson: Well, it’s funny you say that because Nathan and I reconnected after several years. And ironically, we were actually in law school at the same time. Started in 2001 and then we graduated in — did we graduate in 2004?

Nathan Kavlie: Uh huh.

Notesong Thompson: And I practiced law for a little bit in the juvenile defense world. I did some public defender work, guardian at litem, and pediatric nursing really drove me to the law because I saw so many things at the bedside that really, really troubled me. It just — it had me just wondering going home at night thinking, why is it like this? Why is this child with this abuser? Why is this informed consent issue an issue at all? So I will admit, nursing is my favorite love. And Nathan had to do a little bit of convincing to get me to practice law again, right, Nathan? And largely it was because of what Nathan talked about before is the traditional legal process is in many ways really miserable. And I practiced at a big law firm, and like I said, I did some more public defender work. But ugh. It was just yucky. And I went through the — I went through the estate planning process at my husband’s fancy law firm, and I just want to be clear that there is a place for attorneys and fancy law firms and for big estate planning too. And I’ve got to tell you, the only thing I remember going through that process myself was how much it was filled with yuck. And it was so anxiety-provoking, emotionally challenging, and we were doing this with a friend who took care of us. But it just was yucky, all of it. And so when Nathan finally convinced me to join in, it was after he heard me on a show called “Moms Every Day,” and he recognized that moms make a lot of decisions and keep the ball rolling forward with things that keep getting back-burnered. And as a mom of three young kids, you know, I — and having worked in healthcare in the nursing, I was faced with life-and-death issues every day. And even with that, at the bedside during a code, working with pharmacists who are handing me syringes of epinephrine and just on the ready — I love pharmacists, by the way. Can I just say? They’re the calm in the storm. And no matter what chaos is going on, the pharmacists were there, they just showed up in their cape and quietly handed us the meds we needed. It was like a miracle. But you know, that’s the thing. It’s the best part that I’ve found about being an estate planning lawyer now with the nursing background is that I still get to give TLC to our clients. And I think they are a little bit shocked when I say, “We’re going to take really good care of you and your family.” So yeah, that’s where I’m tying in nursing into estate planning. And it’s been really wonderful.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great. And as I mentioned, estate planning isn’t a topic we’ve covered a lot in detail on this show before but certainly an important piece of life and one’s financial plan. And we’re not going to be able to get into all the nooks and crannies and aspects of estate planning, but I do think we’ll be able to lay a good foundation and hopefully get folks somewhat excited about learning more about this topic and some next steps that they can take in their own journey. So Nathan, as I was doing research on Thoughtful Wills and your background, one of your claims to fame that’s listed on the website is having a lifelong obsession with making the complex understandable. And so I want to tap into that a little bit here as we just start the conversation of what exactly is estate plan? What do we mean by an estate plan? Who might need one? Why is it important? And what are some of the various documents at a high level that make up the estate plan?

Nathan Kavlie: Yeah. Let’s emulate — I think let’s start with just the word, right? So we’re talking about estate plan, and estate — so this is the weird part. Estate planning is not just about your estate. Estate really just means like all of your stuff when you die. So when you die, all of your cars, your dirty laundry, your CDs, your art, it’s all — everything you own. And not just physical possessions but if you sort of owned patents or if you wrote some music, all of those pieces of property are your estate. And so we’re planning for that. But the problem is it’s like sanitation engineers, right? You know, like garbage truck people? And it’s like, they’re like, “Now we’re going to be sanitation engineers.” Really, what we do is death planning. But nobody likes to say that. And so they’re like, “Well, let’s call it estate planning.” But the thing is that it’s bigger and more important than just your stuff. Right? Because that’s the thing, it’s like, how many people as they’re lying in the hospital bed dying are thinking about like, ‘Wow, I wonder who’s going to get my couch?’ Right? ‘I wonder who’s going to take care of my silverware collection?’ No one cares about that. You care about your family. And your family is not part of your estate because you don’t own your children, right, as much as people might want to. So we’re planning for death. The problem — and this is why people don’t think about it and I think probably at some level why you haven’t done this as a podcast is because it’s morbid. We’re talking about when you die or we’re talking about when you’re in a coma and can’t communicate. Like these are not fun topics. But they’re important topics because you care about the people in your life. And this is the law’s mechanism for how to do that. Our system of laws, it’s kind of amazing. And I feel like — and that’s the thing I try to sort of impress upon people. It’s like, these documents are frankly like superhero documents because they allow you after you’re dead — I mean, you’re gone. But you are still making effect — you’re having effects in the world. You are actually still spreading goodness and care in the world because of these documents that you’ve created. And that’s kind of amazing I think. And you know, our legal system wouldn’t necessarily have to operate that way. There’s no reason why we would sort of say like, Jim died, and he left this fancy house. And we’re going to let Jim decide who gets the house, right? We could say, “Everybody gets a piece of the house,” right? We’ll sell it and put it into the tax coffers. Or Jim’s oldest son would get it. Right? But no, we give people a lot of control to affect these changes if they choose to. And that’s the thing, that’s what estate planning is. It’s you are making affirmative choices to sort of change the world in the ways that you can by using these documents. So the bad news is we’re talking about death, but the good news is we’re talking about this amazing set of documents that can really change the world for the better for the people that you love and your pets because I don’t have kids so I’m always thinking about my pets. So that’s what we’re talking about. We’re talking about death. And I think just put it out there. You know, we don’t introduce ourselves as death lawyers, but that is what we do. And it’s really important. And that’s the thing, it’s like why should people do this? Well, you know, I guess the thing is like you have people in your life that you love. Do you have young children that you care about? Do you? Right? If you have young children that you care about, probably you care about who would raise them if you and your partner were in an automobile accident or something and you both died unexpectedly, right? And I get why people don’t want to think about it. I mean, I think about one of — my oldest dog is almost 18, and the thought of her passing kind of makes me want to curl up in a ball. So I get why parents, it’s like, it’s a huge hurdle to actually say like, let’s affirmatively think through all of those gory scenarios. But the fact is, it’s like, if you want to really take care of your kids, you have to do this. Right? That’s just point blank. If you care about your kids, you should do this. So who should do this? Who should do an estate plan? People with kids, people with pets they care about, people who care about their family. You know, the thing is is that our system of laws also does have a set of default plans. Every state has a system of default plans. So if you don’t do your will, it’s not like all of your property just goes to the state. There’s sort of a mechanism in place for who should get things. And you know, for a lot of people, that system works great. If you both die in a car crash, it’s not like your children are just wandering the streets, begging for money. There is a system in place to sort of decide who should care for your children, right? So I mean, there are these default plans in place. So just to be clear, the “if you don’t do this,” it’s not catastrophic. But yet if you don’t decide who should take care of your kids, most often all of your relatives fight about it in the courts. You know? I don’t know. But there are default plans. The default plans are not the end of the world, but they are not your choices. And there’s chaos and trouble involved with it because there are lawyers and there are custody hearings and it’s all kinds of yuck. And the way that you opt out of the default plan is by creating these estate planning documents.

Tim Ulbrich: And I appreciate, Nathan, what you said about — and I’ve never heard this perspective before, and I like it a lot, which is that we have a system, which has given folks a lot of opportunity to make decisions that might otherwise be made for them. And so I think if we take that perspective and apply it to the estate plan, it’s not as morbid — still a morbid topic — but you know, now we’re in that conversation of, OK, I’ve got some decisions to make. I’ve got some autonomy. I’ve got some choice. And you know, you’re touching on that concept of probate, essentially that process where if folks don’t make these decisions, yeah, there is a net that’s in place but it might not be the desired state that one has, whether it be related to those that are loved ones and their family or even resources that they have. One follow-up question I have here, Nathan, because I think we probably have many folks listening that maybe this is very obvious that they need these documents or have to update them, maybe there’s young children or just children altogether involved, maybe there’s substantial or growing assets, and I think that tends to be fairly obvious. But often, I’ll get the question from folks that maybe someone who’s more of a recent graduate, perhaps doesn’t have a partner or significant other, there’s no kids involved. So is there a point when it’s a clear like, someone should have an estate plan in process? Or is there a period in time where some folks it might be not now, but we need to look at this in the future?

Nathan Kavlie: Yeah, I mean, if you’re single and don’t have any kids and you get along with your family, you’re probably good to go. I can’t be certain, right? I mean, to be absolutely certain, I’d need to do an analysis of your actual circumstances, but if you’re single and get along with your family, you’re probably fine. If you’re single and you don’t get along with your family, you should definitely create an estate plan. One of my best friends from law school is totally estranged from his mom and his sister, and it’s like, well, you need to do an estate plan then because otherwise they’ll get all of the stuff. And that’s not what he wants to have happen. So when you have children, you know, when you’re pregnant or when you’re thinking about kids — and actually, the thing is when you’re thinking about kids is when you should do this ideally. But anytime in that process is great. We get a lot of clients that sort of say like, our due date is x months away, should we do this now? Or should we wait until the baby is born? And the answer always is, do it now. Because when the baby gets here, you will not have any time. You won’t even have time to sleep. So do it now. Do it when you’re thinking about having kids. We can write the documents to basically sort of already account — a lot of what we do as estate planning is we sort of create documents that anticipate many different futures. Because we don’t know what the future will hold. But we know there are some things that might happen. You might have children. You might not have children. And so we can sort of draft the documents as an either-or situation. So when you’ve got kids, when you get married is a good time as well. Yeah. And if you have some assets, that’s always good. I mean, it’s one of those things, I think people think of it sort of like senior photos, right, where it’s like, it’s going to be expensive and you just do it once. And I think it’s a real disservice. I think it’s driven, of course, by awful lawyers that are really expensive and really unpleasant. But I think it’s sort of weird that we think that like you should only do this once because you will know exactly what your life is going to be like. And circumstances change.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and that’s true, right, with the rest of the financial plan. You know, we always say when you’re looking at investing or retirement or insurance or whatever it may be, it’s an evolution. It’s a journey, right? And that was, Notesong, a question I have for you before we come back and talk with Nathan about the living trust and then some of the other documents. This concept of OK, it’s a lot of work to get it done but is it something I should be looking at annually or every five years or as life events change? And I’m looking at the site where you’ve got a two-step process, which is evaluating the plan and then wanting to avoid probate and you know, a couple different options where one is you’re creating your plan in that Phases 1 and 2 where you’re then updating that or having some ongoing support, so talk to us a little bit more about what you typically do or recommend with folks in terms of OK, yes, we do this upfront work, but then how often we should be evaluating this.

Notesong Thompson: Sure, absolutely. That’s actually a very common question that we get all the time. We’ve reorganized the way to think about this because the whole process is yucky and it’s overwhelming. So Nathan and I really strive to break it down into nuts and bolts. And so on the ThoughtfulWills.com/YFP page, we’ve created two boxes that talk about Phase 1 and Phase 2. Phase 1 is essentially creating your plan. This is where all of the drafting happens and we can customize it as much as our clients want. And then we also ensure that the document is signed correctly and questions can be asked without, you know, worry of the clock ticking because we also want to try to avoid that because that’s always a fear is how much am I going to get charged for this email exchange? Like we try to avoid that. And then Phase 2 is really equally important because if you get a revocable living trust, it’s important that you actually fund that trust. And there are certain mechanisms that have to — that are in place that need to happen in order to put stuff into that trust. And so that is all under the umbrella of Phase 2. And so as far as like reviewing your estate plan, for example, my husband and I drafted our estate plan — gosh, 14 years ago. And we haven’t had a lot of major life changes. A lot of our — we’re still close to the people we’ve named as legal guardians and backups, my sisters and my sister’s mom, and so luckily, if nobody’s developed a gambling habit where we need to change up who’s going to be the trustee or durable power of attorney. That being said, it’s always — we think it’s always a good idea to review your plan every year, just to make sure your wishes are still reflected. And then also, the revocable living trust, it takes a little bit more work, a little bit more follow-up with that every year. But making sure that you fund your trust, make sure that you are updating your non-probate assets too — and I’ll let Nathan go into that later — but you want to make sure that all of your beneficiaries are up-to-date. So it really drives me crazy when all these online will-making services have really now come onto the scene in light of the pandemic, and everybody facing life-and-death issues, they talk about like all these unlimited amendments and things like that. But what they are not talking about is all of the legal requirements that are required in order to make sure that they’re valid, they’re actually valid. So every time you change your plan or you do a formal amendment, if it’s required, you also have to make sure that it’s re-executed, meaning signed and notarized where necessary. And that’s all based on your state. Each state has really super specific nuances and that’s where we rely on our local counsel attorneys in each state to help us ensure that we’re following their state’s laws exactly to a T.

Tim Ulbrich: And Nathan, Notesong mentioned the revocable living trust, the importance that document can play and I heard you guys talk about this on another podcast as really a magical and powerful document that when utilized and funded correctly can sidestep the high cost and hassle of probate and how important that is for professionals, especially professionals who have a higher income potential. So talk to us more about what is the living trust and the importance and the value that that plays.

Nathan Kavlie: Yeah. So I want to sort of back up before I get to that if that’s OK.

Tim Ulbrich: Sure.

Nathan Kavlie: So I think we should first talk about the will, which is really sort of the foundational document to estate planning. I think most people know what a will is. It’s in TV, right? They all gather when somebody dies and reads the will and then people are all pissed off. But the will is the key, right? The will is sort of the foundational document where everybody sort of — where you create essentially your last testimony about what you want to have happen. And so that sort of superhero document that I talk about — I mean, the set of superhero documents. The will is the first one that people do. In like the 1960s, lawyers starting using what are called revocable living trusts. It was sort of a newer concept back then, but now it’s very subtle but it sort of was a little bit kind of cutting-edge back then, but now it is not cutting-edge because, you know, frankly, who wants to have — when you’re talking about your babies and protecting their assets, people don’t want to be experimental in the law. Right? You want settled law.

Tim Ulbrich: Not the place to be cutting-edge.

Nathan Kavlie: Yeah, exactly. So it was cutting-edge in the 1960s. It is not cutting-edge in the 2020s. Basically, so when you create a will or if you don’t have a will, basically, everything goes through probate. And I think it’s first important to say, what is probate? Because I think everybody sort of hears — if you listen to enough or really any sort of financial wellness sort of podcasts, everybody knows that probate is awful, but I don’t know that people necessarily know what probate is. And probate is our legal system’s sort of mechanism to wind up the affairs of people after they die. So it’s important to understand it’s a judicial process. And that’s why it’s expensive and a hassle because you have lawyers involved and you have a judge involved and then they have to send notice to the interested parties and there are hearings and it takes a long time. We probably all know somebody who is like, “Yeah, my grandfather’s estate took 15 years to probate.” That’s what it is. It’s — but it’s an important process because, you know, since we give the dead a lot of control over their assets, we need to make sure that we know what they really wanted. And if they didn’t make a will, then we need to make sure that the process, the sort of default plans, are followed correctly. And so that’s what probate does. So it’s an important thing, but it’s an expensive hassle. And especially — just somebody has to deal with it, right? You don’t just get to turn it over to the lawyers. Like somebody has to manage the process. And so there are ways that you can avoid probate. One of them is called non-probate assets. And I think people are becoming more and more familiar with these. These are things like life insurance and retirement accounts. Life insurance and retirement accounts, when you open them, you choose a beneficiary. So you say, you know, “When I die, this asset will go to my spouse or to my kids,” or something. And because the asset has a built-in beneficiary mechanism, it doesn’t go through the probate process because our system of laws honors life insurance’s own mechanism.

Tim Ulbrich: Makes sense.

Nathan Kavlie: Assets that are inside of a trust are non-probate. It’s like a $10 legal sentence, but it doesn’t really make sense without context. But the idea here is like your goal — because your house is not a non-probate asset. Your house is a probatable asset. So are your cars. Your cars are a probatable asset. So are your rights to music you wrote and your clothes and all of those things — some bank accounts — all of those things go through probate automatically. But if you move them into a trust, they can avoid probate. And so then the grand idea is well, let’s create a trust that will house these assets and then they can skip probate. Caveat: If you live in Connecticut, you don’t get to skip probate entirely. But this still is a very — it minimizes the hassle and the cost. So just a little caveat there. So the goal here, you create your own trust. Trusts are about as old as wills. They sort of hearken back to like the crusades in England. When the lord was taking up the holy cause and going out to the Middle East, you know, what happens to their assets? And so that’s where trusts came about. They were like, well, you can hold my assets, but you hold them for my benefit. You don’t own these lands. You’re just going to hold them for me because I’m going to be gone for like 12 years or something. So trusts — and trusts are used in many different contexts, not just in estate planning because like some charities are structured as trusts. But estate planning uses a lot of trusts. We can set up trusts for your children to protect their inheritance. We also use these living trusts. So it’s lots of different trusts, but this is the revocable living trust that we’re talking about here. And what it ends up doing is it becomes sort of a companion piece to a will so that together your will and your trust take care of all of your stuff together. But the will ends up becoming a much less important piece of this process. The will ends up acting like a backstop so that if you forget to move any of your assets into the trust, the will says, “Throw all these assets into your trust.” So if you forget to — or you know, if you sign all of your documents and you have like a Beetlejuice car accident on your way home and everybody dies, right, it’s like you won’t have had time to move your assets into the trust. So the will acts as a backstop. The will still is important because the will is still going to contain who should take care of your children, who should be the legal guardians, who should be the guardians of your pets. So the will is still an important document, but when we talk about like where your money should go, setting up trusts for your kids, or if you have somebody who has special needs, all of that goes into the revocable living trust. And we’ve described it as sort of a magic law box. Right? It’s like you create this account that you put your assets into, but it really only works if you put your assets in. Otherwise it’s just sort of really expensive paper. And so that’s when we talk about like Phase 1 versus Phase 2, Phase 1 is when we talk through how many kids do you have? Who should take care of your kids? Where should your stuff go? When we’re talking about Phase 1 and creating your plan, I don’t actually care about any of your assets, which is weird because a lot of people come and they’re like, “Well, I want to tell you all about my assets.” And it’s like, I don’t — it’s sort of jarring for them, their, essentially their death lawyer to be like, “We don’t actually care about your assets right now.” Right? And the reason I don’t care about them at this stage is because I don’t know what you’re going to own when you die.

Tim Ulbrich: Yep.

Nathan Kavlie: No one does, right? So right now, we’re creating a plan that really is just sort of broad strokes. And so we talk more in percentages, right? Like half goes to my spouse and half is divided amongst my kids.

Tim Ulbrich: Right.

Nathan Kavlie: And whatever you own, you know, that’s the key because we just don’t know, right? So yeah, during Phase 1, I don’t care about your assets at all. At all. That’s where Phase 2 comes in because once we create your plan and we talk about who should take care of your kids and who should get your stuff, then it’s time to actually talk through your assets. Do you have some retirement accounts? Do you have an LLC? You know, maybe you have an investment property as well as your primary residence. Maybe you have a cabin in a different state. Maybe you have some expensive cars. All of those assets, then we start talking about the actual assets because we need to move them inside of your magic law box.

Tim Ulbrich: I mean this honestly, Nathan, I think that is the best explanation I’ve heard of the will and the revocable living trust in about a five or so minute period. So thank you. You’ve lived up to —

Nathan Kavlie: Well thank you.

Tim Ulbrich: — the obsession of making the complex understandable. It was really, really good, and I hope folks will hit rewind and listen to that as well because I think it can feel overwhelming, and that was very digestible. So thank you for that.

Nathan Kavlie: Thank you. Well, I appreciate it.

Tim Ulbrich: Notesong, pressure’s on now. So we talked about the will and the living trust. But that’s not it. We can’t stop there. There are other estate planning documents that we need to be thinking about. So talk us through some of those other documents and what they mean and why they’re important.

Notesong Thompson: Yes. Well, I mean, it’s the world we’re living in right now. Tim, you and I were talking about this before, but everybody is facing life and death right now with the pandemic in our face and its ever-evolving whatever it is. And so the phrase “accidents and illness happen without warning; there are no guarantees in life,” it just has so much more meaning today. And the healthcare directive and durable power of attorney are equally two magical estate planning documents that operate while you’re still alive. And the magic about them is that they both authorize somebody to act on your behalf if you’re not able to, if you’re incapacitated, if you’re in a coma. And we used to previously refer to these initially as coma documents because we tried to talk to people about them as incapacity documents and nobody got it. And they’d be like, ‘Oh, I’m fine. I’m young. I run every day. I do this. I’m so healthy. I’ll come back to you after when I’m older.’ And you know, we never want to pressure people, but at the same time, in that kind of blunt, very candid way, we just say, “OK. Quick question, do you drive a car?” You know? And it is, these are miserable topics. But we have to also consider that these things happen without warning. So both documents authorize someone to act on your behalf if you’re not able to. They authorize someone to act as a power of attorney. And so with the durable power of attorney document, they act as your durable power of attorney as it relates to finances and property. In your healthcare directive, you’re also a power of attorney, but it’s all related to your healthcare. They can make decisions for you. And the healthcare directive actually has two parts to it. The first part is power of attorney for healthcare. The second part is what a lot of people know as the living will. And that’s where you can get really specific as it relates to whether or not you want a feeding tube or assisted breathing, CPR, if you want altered CPR. I really have taken on the healthcare directive as my baby because I was my dad’s backup backup backup healthcare agent when he took his last breath. And as awful as it was, the saving grace there was that — you know, and he was a physician and he knew the importance of identifying exactly what he didn’t want — as awful as it was to be at the bedside, I was able to also give the poor resident who had to show up at 3:30 in the morning with a crying daughter at the bedside, I was able to tell her, “No compressions, just morphine, oxygen.” You know? And honestly, I think one of the greatest gifts that you can give your loved ones is that healthcare directive because otherwise, as Nathan mentioned before, estate planning is just rife with chaos and emotion. And in that moment, you don’t want somebody fighting over what your loved one wanted at the end of their life. So you can get really, really specific about that and also like organ donation as well. And so I think it’s a really powerful document that way. The durable power of attorney, you know, equally too. It seems like a no-brainer to have this in place, but the thing is you mentioned Zappos and wow, I mean, I know that — is it Tony Hsieh?

Tim Ulbrich: Tony Hsieh, yep.

Notesong Thompson: I’m not sure if I’m pronouncing — Tony Hsieh. I mean, the last I read, sadly, tragically, is that he died without an estate plan and that his dad and brother are in court, fighting to be able to take control of his finances, which are in the billions. And so not only is that a hassle, but they have to go through so many court proceedings, it’s expensive, and they’re trying to grieve the loss of their son and brother. So having this simple durable power of attorney in place lets your person of choosing and their backup, and you’re going to choose to have them as co-agents in case you want to have like a checks and balances. That could be a whole show in and of itself is choosing a durable power of attorney. That is equally important because you want to make sure that you’re choosing somebody who’s going to manage your finances while you’re not able to — or equally like if you’re out of the country and you want to move on a property that’s come available and you’ve been looking at it for 20 years, that person can also step in and act on your behalf in that capacity too. And that’s the durable part of it.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great. And we’ve scratched the surface on these documents but really important points. We’ve talked about the will, we’ve talked about the revocable living trust briefly, the healthcare directive, durable power of attorney, and as I mentioned at the beginning, the goal is not that folks hear this and say, “OK, I’ve got the textbook on estate planning,” but rather hopefully is stimulating some interest and a conversation among folks about where am I at in this process? What do I need? What do I not have? And what steps do I need to take? And I hope folks will check out ThoughtfulWills.com/YFP, where they can learn more about the work that you guys are doing as well as the services that you offer. I also suspect that we might have some folks listening that are saying, “You know what, I’ve done this or I’m going to do this, but perhaps Mom or Dad or Mom and Dad, it isn’t something they have done. And how do I initiate that conversation?” And it reminds me back to Episode 108 where I talked with Cameron Huddleston about how to effectively talk with Mom and Dad about their finances and this obviously being one of those very important conversations. So Nathan and Notesong, thank you so much for your time, for your expertise, for the collaboration. And looking forward to having you back on in the future so we can dig deeper on this topic.

Nathan Kavlie: Thanks. This was fun.

Notesong Thompson: Thank you, Tim.

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YFP 221: One Pharmacy Entrepreneur’s Journey to FIRE

Posted on by yfpadmin

One Pharmacy Entrepreneur’s Journey to FIRE

On this episode, sponsored by Thoughtful Wills, Michelle Lamb discusses her journey towards achieving FIRE (Financial Independence, Retire Early).

About Today’s Guest

Michelle Lamb currently works in two very different areas of pharmacy and feels she has found the perfect balance of creativity, flexibility, and job satisfaction. She works in a 1099 contractor position as a Senior Care/Pharmacy Consultant providing pharmacy inspection services for long-term care facilities. She supplements this income with a part-time W2 position (25 hours per week) providing weekly inspection services for hospital drug rooms with a small group of surgical centers. Each job entails some driving but allows her to set her schedule. She has the tax advantages of a small business owner with her nursing home consulting but also receives a full benefits package with her part-time W2 position.

In addition, Michelle is the Founder of LTC Pharmacist Connection, a networking group of over 4000 current (and future) pharmacists in long-term care dispensing and consulting. She plans to release a review book this fall for pharmacists wanting to specialize in geriatrics or studying for their board certification in Geriatric Pharmacy. In addition, Michelle also provides resume reviews for pharmacists planning to enter the field of long-term care pharmacy and writes and helps with an occasional CE program or speaking engagement. She has also partnered with the local university and their student engineers to redesign a product currently used in the drug disposal process.

Michelle’s passions include listening to podcasts, particularly about personal finance. She is a member of the FIRE movement and plans to have the option to retire at 55 with a FIRE number of 1 million supplemented by a small pension from the teachers retirement system. She obtained a savings rate of almost 40% last year and is on track for 25% this year. Her ultimate goal is to reach FI the year her younger son graduates from high school. He has special needs (Down syndrome), and Michelle would like to celebrate his graduation by obtaining a “work is optional” status.

Summary

Michelle Lamb discusses her journey towards achieving FIRE (Financial Independence Retire Early). She shares her motivation to pursue FIRE, how she is on the FIRE path despite graduating with student loan debt, and her timeline to achieve FIRE. Michelle also explains how her business, LTC Pharmacist Connection, intersects with her FIRE journey.

Many pharmacists with student loan debt hear about FIRE and the FIRE movement and think the goal is unreachable. Michelle is one pharmacist who has managed to tackle her student loan debt while committing to FIRE. After watching a video from Mr. Money Mustache about FIRE, Michelle was skeptical but inspired. Following the advice of her tax professional, she discovered that her financial independence was within reach – about ten years from now! Michelle has done this by intentionally contributing funds to her retirement accounts and investments annually while making strategic decisions regarding her student loans, making additional payments rather than simply paying the minimum.

After achieving FIRE, which includes paying off her home, Michelle plans on having time to take care of her family, as her timeline links up with the high school graduation of her son. Michelle’s plans include travel, a rental in Colorado with a lake view, and spending time enjoying live music.

Mentioned on the Show

Episode Transcript

Tim Ulbrich: Michelle, welcome to the Your Financial Pharmacist podcast.

Michelle Lamb: Hi, Tim. Thanks for having me.

Tim Ulbrich: Well, many of those that are listening know that this past spring, we launched our latest book, “FIRE Rx: The Pharmacist’s Guide to Financial Independence,” written by Dr. Jeff Keimer. And therefore, excited to feature you and other upcoming guests to share real-life pharmacist FIRE stories. And for folks that are listening that want to pick up a copy of that book, “FIRE Rx,” they can do so by visiting YourFinancialPharmacist.com/FIRE. Coupon code INVESTRX will be good for 10% off. Michelle, before we jump into your FIRE journey, share a little bit about your pharmacy background, where you went to school, when you graduated, and the work that you’ve been doing as a pharmacist since.

Michelle Lamb: Sure, Tim. I would be happy to. So before I went to pharmacy school, I graduated with a degree in mechanical engineering from the Colorado School of Minds in Golden, Colorado. My part-time job while I was in engineering school was at a small family pharmacy and really enjoyed that. And kind of at one point decided that I wanted to go to pharmacy school and maybe go back and buy that pharmacy someday. Things didn’t quite work out that way. When I went to pharmacy school, my eyes got quite opened to a lot of different areas, many niches and the clinical roles and so forth that are available. So started pharmacy school in Tulsa, Oklahoma, at the University of Oklahoma in 2004, graduated in 2008, and then completed a residency in community pharmacy, followed by about five years in academia with a focus on ambulatory care. After that, I did a small stint part-time as a hospital pharmacy manager in pediatric inpatient behavioral health. Did that for about a year, really enjoyed the hours and the flexibility. It was Monday-Friday from 10-2. Doesn’t get much better than that. My kids were young. But after a year, I decided that I wanted to work full-time and really try to make a dent in those student loans. At that point, that’s when my career really took a pretty big change. I found a job for long-term care consulting on a ListServ and looked into it, and it was really quite different than anything I had ever done. Primarily in the sense it was pure contract, a 1099 job. I was a little bit nervous about not having benefits and having to navigate health insurance and retirement all on my own, but when I looked at the compensation and the flexibility, I thought, you know, I’m going to give this a shot. So that’s sort of how I entered the world of long-term care consulting and did that for about five years. And then COVID hit. I imagine like you, my world really turned upside down, especially as an employee entering nursing homes. I went from going to about 20 facilities and driving 5,000 miles a month to overnight not driving at all.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Michelle Lamb: My work went completely remote in a matter of just a few hours. So of course that was last spring, and after a few months of working remote and being able to knock those chart reviews out from the comfort of my own home, I thought to myself, you know, I really think I can get a second job. And a little bit scary, but looking at student loans and some of my long-term goals, which included FIRE as I’m really excited to talk about, I picked up a second part-time job providing hospital inspections of their drug rooms. In Oklahoma, this is a niche area of pharmacy where hospitals able to open up a small drug room without a pharmacist but it does need to be inspected once a week by a pharmacist. And we help monitor their policies and procedures, training, and so forth. So now I’m balancing really that 1099 contract work with a W2 job with benefits and feel that really, that’s the sweet spot. It’s going pretty well.

Tim Ulbrich: And we’re going to come back to that and talk about why that combination of 1099 and W2 has allowed you to progress and advance your financial goals. It’s interesting, Michelle, I don’t think I knew this about you before, but we share a lot in common. While I don’t have a background of being a mechanical engineer, I too graduated in 2008, I did a community residency, I spent time in academia, spent some time in the pharmacy administration world, and we share an interest, of course, and a passion for personal finance. So pretty cool to see those connections. So thank you for sharing your background there. One of the things I want to get right out in the gates on when we talk about FIRE is FIRE, Financial Independence Retire Early, we’ve talked about it on the show before. We had Scott Rickins, author of “Playing with FIRE” on Episode 188, we’ve had a couple blog posts that we’ll link to in the show notes as well. But I think Michelle, when folks hear Financial Independence Retire Early, I think sometimes there’s an assumption of you’re trying to escape or get away from your work because perhaps folks may not enjoy what they’re doing. But as you’re sharing your career story, I can’t help but hear the energy and the enthusiasm that you have for the work that you do. So what is the motivation for you? What’s the why behind your FIRE pursuit?

Michelle Lamb: Gosh, that is a big question. And there’s probably several answers. I’d like to just — you know, you’ve commented on the FIRE movement, Financial Independence Retire Early. I would like to say I am a pharmacist that loves not just my job but I love both of my jobs. So I have no real intention for the retire early part. You know, I may cut back here and there, but I feel blessed to have found a part of pharmacy that I honestly think that I could do for many, many years. I’m completely happy with the work that I do, and it’s really, really satisfying. So for me, I’d like to really focus more on the FI part, which is the financial independence. There are so many reasons that I think that it’s important to just really be able to take some time away from work where in my mind, financial independence that you’ve saved enough money where you could live off some of the proceeds from your investments and not have to work for a few months or even years if you want. I got started late on this journey, so my FI path is probably about 10 years from now. On a personal note, that really corresponds with when my son graduates from high school. He does have special needs, and that puts an extra financial and really emotional burden on a family and finances. So my plan is to really have our house in order so that when he finishes high school that I’m not having to worry about what’s the next step in his journey because my financial journey may be just really, you know, watching out for him and taking care of our family.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, and I think that’s a really important comment, Michelle, and I appreciate you sharing that, is I think the motivation for the FI or for that whole FIRE can be very different, is very different, you know, for everyone. And I think for folks that are listening and hear your story and get energized and excited — and we’re going to dig into that here in a few moments — is really taking some time to reflect on what’s the purpose? Right? What’s the vision for you? You know, sometimes I think we hear that concept of becoming financially free or becoming financially independent, retire early, and it’s exciting. But taking the time to dig a couple more levels deep and peel back the onion of what’s the purpose? What’s the vision? Why are we going to do this? Because I think that folks will really uncover and perhaps folks that are doing this together with someone else on their financial journey, those motivations might be different. I think being able to articulate that is really valuable as one is going throughout the plan. Michelle, you mentioned student loans in your introduction. And so I want to ask and start there in that I think sometimes, pharmacists, especially if they’re carrying around significant student loan debts, we’ve chronicled that to detail on this show, median debt load of a pharmacy graduate in 2021 is $170,000. That number has gone up significantly over the last decade since you and I graduated in 2008. But I think sometimes we hear student loans and we hear FIRE and we think, eh, do these two things really grow and go together? And so tell us about your situation and graduating with student loan debt, what that position looked like, and then how you’ve been able to navigate that student loan repayment while also having FIRE and that journey towards FIRE be possible.

Michelle Lamb: Yeah, that’s a great question, Tim. It really does seem to be a reality of becoming a pharmacist that so many times, student loans are part of that journey. And not just, you know, a few thousand. Often six figures of student loans, which I also had myself as well. I was fortunate that I went to an in-state school, but even despite that, I had well over $100,000 in student loans when I graduated. What was really interesting to me is for a few years, I didn’t really know how much I had, you know? They were in a few different places, and I was just sort of making the minimum payment. As a resident, I didn’t pay anything. I was told I could keep them in deferment, so I did. Just sort of made sense at the time. Then in academia, when I went over and finally had my first full-time job at the university, I would make the payments, but I wasn’t very strategic about the amount that I would pay or how much I would pay, what type of payment plan. You know, it was the first time I’d worked full-time before and I had the money to make the payment they told me to, so I did. You know? I think things really changed for me when I took that 1099 contract job. I realized that I was essentially financially — I had to kind of figure it out myself. I didn’t have an HR department to help me, you know, understand deductions or again, health insurance, you know, things like long-term disability and so forth. So I really sat down and thought, if I’m going to essentially work for myself as a contractor and own my own LLC, I really want to be sharp about how I’ll be able to do this. And so that’s when I really, really started to try to make a dent in those loans, making some extra payments as well. My job took me away from my family some, and so it was an extra layer of responsibility where I wanted to be very clear and intentional with my money. And so I started tracking all of my expenses and started really with Dave Ramsey, which I think is a good place for some people to start, listened to all his podcasts, but then just wanted to learn more, you know, kind of take it a step beyond that. So even despite still having some student loans, I started working very hard to avoid any new debt and pay the loans I have aggressively, avoid consumer debt, and become savvy about what is the interest rate on my loans v. what’s the interest rate on my mortgage v. how is the market returning? You know, do I want to play in crypto a little bit? I don’t know. ANd so I just think really that you can certainly do both. So I still have student loans, but I sort of use just extra or side hustle money to kind of throw that at that and I’m now on track to have them paid off by the end of next year.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s awesome. That’s great. And I think it’s a good reminder that often when you’re doing financial planning, you’re doing more than one thing at a time. And so you know, that could be home purchasing and student loans, here we’re talking about aggressive savings and student loans, but you know, certainly an opportunity for others that I suspect — many listeners are listening with a student loan position that is significant and might feel like a barrier to them achieving their long-term savings goals. In terms of your initial interest in FIRE, Michelle, was there a particular “Aha!” moment when you realized that you wanted to jump on the FIRE train? Was there a resource or a talk? Or where did that initial spark come from?

Michelle Lamb: Initial spark came from Mr. Money Mustache. And he has a very interesting and pretty entertaining TED Talk-style video of what exactly does it mean to be able to FIRE. And he often uses I believe it’s the number of tracking your expenses and saving 25x that amount. And the first time I saw that, I just thought to myself, there is no way. It’s absolutely impossible. In fact, the first couple years as a contractor, I didn’t put anything into retirement. You know? I just — no one had taught me how to set up a SEP IRA or how to save money on your own. And after a couple years, I think maybe my second year into it, my tax guy said, “You know, if you would put a little money into retirement, it could really reduce your tax burden.” And I think at that time, he had suggested $18,000. And the way that the timing with the tax worked, I actually was able to save that by the end of that fiscal year. When I realized that it could be done, started to do it, and then after a year or two just watched that compound and really get excited about index funds and just kind of learning about compound interest and watching it grow. So kind of then looking at that in combination with the money I was able to save working for someone else in a W2 position, combining all of that, starting to track it and graph it and project that out about 10-12 years, that’s when it started to get really fun. And now I just kind of throw as much money at it as I can.

Tim Ulbrich: Let’s dig into that a little bit further. I think often the FIRE movement, while there’s many flavors of the FIRE movement, folks may associate very aggressive savings with the idea, again, even though here we talked more about financial independence, less about the retire early, but to get to that point of financial independence, however you’re calculating it, that it may take very, very aggressive saving. So tell us about for you, you know, what is approximately the savings rate that you’re targeting to do? And how are you achieving this among other competing priorities, one of which we already talked about, you know, being student loan debt?

Michelle Lamb: Right. So with the unusual situation of working for myself last year and then most of 2020 being able to work remote and getting paid the same amount in my contract position but having no expenses, picking up that second job made all the difference in the world. In fact, I think I saved so much last year that my accountant said, “You know, you’ve got to be careful. Kind of worried you’re putting these to really maximize your deductions.” So I was able in 2020 to have almost a 50% savings rate.

Tim Ulbrich: Wow.

Michelle Lamb: I completely recognize this will never happen again. It was just sort of a fluke of the times, again, working from home, no travel. You know, when COVID hit, I had refunds come in for trips and concerts and, you know, just subscriptions, gym subscriptions. Money kind of flowed back in and I was making more and had no expenses. So for 2020, I was able to achieve that really high savings rate. Not only that, I’m not scared of investing. I’m really in it for the long haul. So I think when you kind of saw that stock market going down, I look at my investments and I thought, March or April, I was putting extra in. So that really helped for my returns. It’s kind of fun now to look at that yearly return with index funds and kind of see a hit — I think almost a 40% return.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah.

Michelle Lamb: Which that will never happen again. When COVID kind of settled down and the nursing homes opened back up, I had to cut back down on the consulting. And that’s when I picked up also the W2 work. I sort of think of it as a pendulum, you know, that kind of swings some to the left, some to the right, depending on what are the obligations at each role. It’s nice. They balance each other. Now, I would say that my consulting is probably, you know, 10 business days, 8-10 business days a month.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Michelle Lamb: And my W2 position is about 25 hours a week.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Michelle Lamb: So through that W2 role, I maximize my percentage savings rate. I kind of watch it and try to hit I think it’s $18,000 a year now in my 401k. And then I’ll also put in — anything extra from the consulting, I’ll put into my SEP IRA.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Michelle Lamb: So probably looking more 20-25% this year. But again, that just varies with contract obligations and how many hours I’m picking up.

Tim Ulbrich: And I appreciate the comment, you know, Michelle, about the flexibility. Pandemic aside, especially for folks that have young children or even for anyone regardless that things change from any given year, and I think that’s where some of the stress can come from sometimes. If you put a very stringent goal out there, whether it’s 40%, 50% savings rate, you know, things are going to happen. And maybe sometimes it’s higher than that, maybe sometimes it’s lower than that, but that really is the target that you’re trying to shoot for and will require some flexibility to make sure you’re in it for the long run. Michelle, whether that number is 20% or 25% or 30% or 50%, it’s significant, right? And I think that by having the diligence and by having the discipline to put away such a significant savings, that means you are intentionally choosing to not spend that money on other things that could be priorities and goals today. And so there’s a little bit of this delayed gratification to be able to achieve this financial independence. And one of the things we talk about often with our clients at YFP Planning is, you know, we’ve got to be developing a plan that yes, takes care of our future self, but also ensures we’re living a rich life today. And so how have you reconciled that where when you’re saving at a 40% or 50% savings rate, that means that there’s other things that you aren’t doing today. Talk to us a little bit about that.

Michelle Lamb: Yeah, so you know, some of the things that I’m not doing today that I wish I could, I’m probably like a lot of your listeners and a lot of the world that works from home, you know, I office out of my living room. And I’m barely with COVID retreating a little bit. I’m able to have friends over and share time with other people in my home and we’re walking around my desk and my bookcase and my printer. And so you know, kind of putting a big move like that on pause, that’s kind of part of our journey right now. But that’s not to say that you can’t have a high savings rate and just really work hard to save and have a great time too. So one thing I did last year — probably before it got real popular — is I bought a little motor home. It’s a 1978 GMC Midas. In fact, it’s so old, it has a CB radio.

Tim Ulbrich: Oh, wow. Yeah.

Michelle Lamb: Which is super cool, I know. It’s really fun. So you know, I love to take that out to the lake on weekends. And so it could be instead of taking a trip across the country, we maybe go camping at the state park in our little motor home and get outside and enjoy nature. Also, you know, travel mostly in the summer. I love to go see concerts. I went to Colorado last year and fall hits, and now I’m going to be home for awhile.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s neat. And you mentioned a couple mechanisms for saving. I heard you say 401k, I heard you say SEP IRA. And again, that’s because of your split income with the W2 and the 1099 and obviously having your own business with that 1099 income opens up some other savings opportunities. But one of the well-known challenges with Financial Independence Retire Early, especially if folks are planning to start withdrawing that money before the age of 59.5 where we think of traditional accounts being accessible without a 10% penalty, is we’ve got to think a little bit differently about where we’re putting this money. So certainly this is not meant to be investment advice, so I don’t want folks to hear what your investing strategy or plan or where you’re putting in and hear that and say, “OK, that’s what I’m going to do,” right? That may or may not be appropriate, depending on their plan. But tell us a little bit about your strategy for where you’re saving, how you’re saving, I think I heard you talk a little bit more about a passive investing approach, probably an approach you’re keeping the fees low. Tell us a little bit more about the saving strategy.

Michelle Lamb: Yeah, so this is something that it’s taken me a couple years to really even wrap my mind around some of the vocabulary involved. And Tim, you mentioned that you have financial planner services. I would really recommend to anyone that’s looking at saving and investing, considering the FIRE movement, definitely get the help of a professional because there’s just — there’s so much to learn. As a 1099 contractor, again, I didn’t put anything away for the first couple years. And I really, really regret that. But once I got on board with that, I did establish an account with Vanguard. I’m a big fan of their index funds and BTSAX, which is basically just buying a little slice of the market. And I put that money in there and don’t plan to touch it for quite some time. I also am able to put money into my 401k with my part-time employer, and they’ve started matching that, which is fantastic. That’s through a Fidelity retirement target date fund, so it’s kind of fun to watch the performance of those two kind of bounce against each other. I have a small teacher’s retirement from the University of Oklahoma, which is wonderful. That I believe I could actually access a little bit earlier than 59.5. Of course, if you wait longer, you can get out a little bit more. But for me, that would be an option at age 55.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Michelle Lamb: If I choose to need a bucket of money to take out of before then. I also put just a little bit kind of what I’d call the playing-in-the-sandbox money, just a few percentage points of my investment, into ethereum. I don’t know. You know, if Mark Cuban says it’s a good thing, maybe it is. I don’t know. So but anything I put money into, even that play-in-the-sandbox money, I have no intentions to touch it until probably, again, when my kids finish high school, so 8 or 10 years. So I’m really in it for the long haul. You know, I think having a good emergency fund, the 3-6 months of expenses, helps kind of buffer that as well.

Tim Ulbrich: Yeah, that makes sense. And again, a variety of different options it sounds like. And you have some unique tax considerations as well I suspect as a 1099 employee as well as having W2 income. So I think this is an example, without going down the tax rabbithole, of where good tax planning can supplement good financial planning as well and making sure you’re considering that not only on the accrual phase but also on the withdrawal phase, whenever that would be at a later point in time. Michelle, some of the common objections to the FIRE movement, you know, we talked about one of them already, which I think you addressed nicely, which is hey, you can love your career — and I’m glad to hear that you do, and I think many of our listeners do — you can love your career and still pursue financial independence. I personally think that’s a goal we should all strive towards with the retire early being optional. Other objections are things like hey, if I don’t have my employer, what about things like health care? What about being able to purchase disability? You know, other types of considerations like that. What are we going to do with our time and money? So talk to us about how those objections really have any impact, if any impact, as you think about your FIRE journey over the next 10 or 20 years.

Michelle Lamb: One point I’d like to make is people have this wrong assumption that they should or just have to work until age 60, 65, 70, or higher. And you know, I think the first thing to do is just take a step back and challenge that assumption. You know, what do you honestly — what do you want to be doing in your 50s? And for me, I don’t want to be clocking in somewhere and standing on my feet for a 10-hour shift or I don’t want to be driving across the state in bad weather, dodging tornadoes here in Oklahoma to do my inspections. So I think that’s the first step is kind of to really challenge these expectations. And if you look at the numbers and play with some of the retirement calculators, which I’m sure you’ve got some ideas on, just putting a few percentage points more into your retirement early can make such a difference down the road. So you know, I think that’s a good place to start. There’s so much to be done outside of work for me. It’s travel and camping, being outside, being with my kids, that I want to be able to enjoy that when I’m still young. Now, could there be some problems? Sure. You know, the health insurance one is really tricky. But I think the FIRE movement is getting so strong. There’s lots of great resources to try to even battle that one. One tip I’ve heard — and honestly, I don’t know if this would work or not, but I’ve heard of some people taking a few college classes and trying to get student health insurance. Now, is it going to be the best plan on earth? Or how many hours do you have to take? I don’t know. I’m not in that boat now. But I know there’s some really creative ways to try to tackle that. You know? I think both you and I having taught at a university, even teaching a class at a community college, you know, something where it may be a significant drop in salary, but it could be something that the value of the benefits that come with it could be huge.

Tim Ulbrich: And I love what you said, Michelle, about just challenging the assumption of “traditional retirement age,” right? It’s one of the questions I like to ask pharmacists just to get them thinking. And I can tell sometimes it’s the first time someone’s asked the question is hey, have you thought about what retirement looks like for you, what it means for you? Like what does living a rich life mean to you? You know, if we fast forward 30 years and you look backwards, what needs to happen that you would say, ‘This has been a success’?” And I think sometimes we ask a question of when are you going to retire? And it’s 65, and then we get out our fancy calculators and model out savings rates and all of that. And that has a role or value. But these questions are really important about what matters most to you and what is the value of achieving financial independence? And I remember for me, Michelle, reading several years ago “Four-Hour Workweek” by Tim Ferriss, and I think he talks about the concept of like what if we re-thought of retirement as more of like mini retirements kind of throughout our career and not necessarily in this phase where we work for 30 years then we just all of a sudden stop working. And that resonates with me because I love the work that I do, but I also like to have breaks and I like to have points in time where you can pursue interests, other hobbies, other opportunities. And so I think that integration of work and life will resonate for many folks as well. What is the plan to celebrate, Michelle? So when you reach this FIRE number, you get to that magic FI number, like have you thought about the celebration plan? What’s going to happen?

Michelle Lamb: Oh gosh, well, part of our FI journey involves having a paid-off house.

Tim Ulbrich: OK.

Michelle Lamb: And so we’re getting pretty close on our home now. And so I think part of that may involve travel as well. I’m a big fan of Colorado, so I have my eye on some senior apartments that are right downtown in Golden, Colorado, for age 55 and up, which is about 10 years for me from now. So you know, maybe renting a cool unit where I could walk along the creek and go see concerts at Red Rocks is pretty appealing to me. Oklahoma has a lot of lakes too though, so I think — you know, travel is different now where you can even do like Tim Ferriss says and take a few months off and work perhaps remotely in different places. But definitely there will be a lake view involved somewhere.

Tim Ulbrich: And I think the pandemic accelerated that, right? I think we’re going to see more creativity and employers being comfortable with some of those more nontraditional models that might be more in line with what folks are desiring today. Michelle, one of the things you mentioned earlier, I think if I heard you correctly, your anticipated FI date is somewhere at about the point where your children will be graduating from high school. And as I hear that, I can’t help but think that this really has been a family journey. And so tell me about as you’ve gone through this journey, obviously there’s decisions that the family is making, one of which I mentioned earlier, if you’re aggressively saving, that means there’s other things that you may not be doing or doing differently. And so how has this impacted the family, both in terms of whether that’s sacrifices or opportunities for the family to have and be on this experience together?

Michelle Lamb: Gosh, Tim, that’s such a great point. My husband is extremely supportive of our journey as well. You know, I’m one of these that I made him sit down and watch Mr. Money Mustache on YouTube, and I made him watch the documentary that came out on the FIRE movement. And he kind of might snooze a little bit, but he’s definitely on board. He owns his own small business as well. And so we definitely work as a team to make that work. Some sacrifices that we’ve made: I think living in a smaller home. We’ve chosen to kind of have our family in a home where maybe not more than one person can go in the kitchen at one time, but that’s not going to necessarily be the case forever. If we move, we’ll have a paid-off home first, probably rent it out for whatever would cover a new mortgage, also with a down payment, and then maybe kind of move on from there.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s great. And I want to wrap up by asking you about part of how I got to know you and your journey is I followed some of the work that you’ve done with the long-term care pharmacist connection. So in addition to your W2 and your 1099 work, you also have started a community of long-term care pharmacists. Tell us a little bit more about that group, why you started that group, and really the goals you’re hoping to accomplish.

Michelle Lamb: Thanks, Tim. So for me, I entered long-term care about five years ago, and my role specifically is nursing home consultation where I go in, I’ll do chart reviews, check the med rooms, check the med carts, and help with med destruction. I absolutely love long-term care. I never thought when I was in pharmacy school that I would enjoy working with the geriatric patient population as much as I do, but I just really love it. I am a member of the Pharmacist Mom’s Group, so shout out to another really cool Facebook group, and my heart would just break when I would see good, hardworking pharmacists and moms just really struggle with some of the expectations that are involved these days in community pharmacy. And it’s probably, gosh, even more so these days with COVID boosters and just ever-increasing expectations. So I would comment every now and then, you know, “Hey, don’t forget about long-term care. I’m genuinely happy. I set my own schedule. I make as much money now as I ever have or did in any other setting.” So just really trying to spread the optimism of this niche that I never learned about in pharmacy school. And I started answering the same question over and over again of, what is long-term care? How do I get in it? And you know, just how do I meet people? So I created a Facebook group called LTC Pharmacist Connection, really just for that purpose where I’d say like, “Gosh, come over to the Facebook group. There’s lots of people with questions about how to make a career change, and let’s bounce ideas off of each other.” That was about three years ago, and I’ve tried to keep the Facebook group just really focused in on pharmacists and interns that want to go in that niche. I think because there’s just a lot of pressure in other types of pharmacy right now, there’s a really growing interest in that. At this point, we’ve got about 4,000 members.

Tim Ulbrich: That’s awesome.

Michelle Lamb: Yeah. And I just am so pleased to see the positivity in long-term care and just the growing opportunities that are really coming up. So it’s a — come check out the group, lots of good networking, some job postings, and I think it’s really helpful.

Tim Ulbrich: And that group is LTC Pharmacist Connection. We’ll link to that in the show notes. Michelle, for you and your journey, resources that have been really helpful in the FIRE journey as well as engaging with the rest of the community. So you mentioned one, Mr. Money Mustache and some of the resources that they’ve had. And I think probably many of our listeners are familiar with some of that work, which is really great readings that he’s been putting out for several years now. What other resources have been really helpful to you on your FIRE journey?

Michelle Lamb: So Tim, kudos to you and your podcast. I will say especially driving 5,000 or 6,000 a month in my car, podcasts have been a great resource to me. I started with Dave Ramsey, and as I learned about the FIRE movement, I found a few others that I really enjoy: Stacking Benjamins is fantastic, also Afford Anything has been a great source of information. Also reading, I would highly recommend a book called “The Simple Path to Wealth.” It really just spells out what do I do when I’ve got debt but I’ve got goals and I don’t know where to start and how do I invest? It really does break it down and is just a great place to start. Excel spreadsheets, you know, track your expenses, track your net worth, track your savings. And also, I really like some of the retirement calculators. You know, I kind of play with my budget and I think, OK, if I put $750 in this month, what would that look like 20 years from now? What if I bumped it to $1,000? What if I took a year off? So just playing with projections has been a big help.

Tim Ulbrich: Great recommendations. We’ll link to those in the show notes. You mentioned the Afford Anything podcast, Stacking Benjamins podcast, the book “Simple Path to Wealth.” I mentioned another resource earlier, “Playing with FIRE” by Scott Rickens, great book, great documentary as well. We had him on Episode 188. And then a shout out to Jeff Keimer, who wrote “The FIRE Rx: How to Retire Early as a Pharmacist Achieving Financial Independence.” And as a reminder, you can pick up a copy of that book at YourFinancialPharmacist.com/FIRE, and you can use the coupon code INVESTRX for 10% off. Michelle, beyond the LTC Pharmacist Connection Facebook group, if someone wants to connect with you, learn more about your story, ask you a question, where is the best place they can do that?

Michelle Lamb: I would have them come over and see me on LinkedIn. Michelle M. Lamb or just look for LTC Pharmacist, and you’ll find me.

Tim Ulbrich: Great. Thank you so much for your time coming on the show, for sharing your journey, and looking forward to following the rest of your FI journey here over the next several years. Thank you, Michelle.

Michelle Lamb: Thanks, Tim.

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