Ramit Sethi Revisited: Spend Like Your Life Depends on It

Mindy:
Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast, where Scott grills Carl and me about why it’s so hard for us to spend money. Hello. Hello. Hello. My name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my beach bum co-host Scott Trench.

Scott:
See that, Mindy, that’s me giving you a wave.

Mindy:
It’s nice to know you’re working hard, Scott. Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, to introduce you to every money story because we truly believe financial freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you are starting.

Scott:
That’s right. Whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big time investments in assets like real estate, start your own business or simply start spending of the fortune that you have already amassed. We’ll help you reach your financial goals and get money out of the way so you can launch yourself towards your dreams.

Mindy:
Scott, before we jump into today’s show about spending, we’re going to talk about a new segment we have called The Money Moment, where we share a money hack tip or trick to help you on your financial journey. And today’s Money Moment is actually quite counter to what we’re going to talk about today. Try a no spending day. I’m super good at that. Prepare ahead of time to not touch your wallet. This may be more convenient on a workday versus a weekend bike to work. Pack your lunch, block your Amazon account. If you can learn to do this a couple of times a week, you should be saving more money in no time. And if you have a money tip for us, email us at [email protected].
Okay, that’s all fun to talk about, but that’s not really what we’re going to talk about. Today, we’re going to talk about spending a little bit more and how Carl and I actually have a real big problem with that. So, today, we are going to talk about how Carl and I have kind of a hard time spending money. And you may or may not know we were recently on Ramit Sethi’s podcast, I Will Teach You To Be Rich, Episode 108. And in that episode, Ramit referenced the time that he joined us on our show, Episode 243, to talk about his new book and his new podcast. And also at the end of that show, he challenged me to 10x my spending. Here’s a little clip from that episode where we were talking about me going on a bicycle trip. So, let’s go take a listen.

Ramit:
Mindy, what would you do if you had to quadruple or 10x your spending on bikes? Tell me.

Mindy:
Ooh, I would go on long-distance bicycle trips.

Ramit:
How would you plan this trip? Again, 10x spending on this. Look at this discomfort on your face, Mindy. Why?

Mindy:
Because, first of all, I didn’t have any time. It would have to be in the summer because the kids are in school. And-

Ramit:
Forget about that. Mindy, the vision. Stick with the vision. Stop thinking about the dollar amount. You have the dollars.

Mindy:
I do have the dollars.

Ramit:
How long would your rich life bike trip be?

Mindy:
Probably two months.

Ramit:
Whoa. Okay, love it. That’s amazing.

Mindy:
Do cross country.

Ramit:
And do you want to have any photos of this trip?

Mindy:
Yes.

Ramit:
Wouldn’t it be nice to have a beautiful professional photo of your family with the sunset behind you?

Mindy:
Yes.

Ramit:
Probably with your family forever.

Mindy:
But we can just set up a tripod, too.

Ramit:
What was that?

Mindy:
We could just set up a tripod, too.

Ramit:
Mindy, you could do a lot of things. I can visually see you shrinking outside of the camera range. Can you tell me what’s going on with you?

Mindy:
This is uncomfortable.

Ramit:
Why?

Mindy:
Because I don’t think about things like this.

Ramit:
Yeah. And what do you think about instead, Mindy?

Mindy:
Saving.

Ramit:
Mindy, you save. You already won. You have enough.

Mindy:
I know.

Ramit:
It’s time to shift into learning how to spend it. And this skill, you can see it. By the way, I hope everybody can see this because I think you have a lot of courage to do this with me. This is really hard stuff. So, Mindy, thank you. You’re being very courageous. You’re changing not just your own way of thinking, but what was passed down to you from your parents and possibly their parents. And here we are, look at this. We’re talking about maybe hiring a photographer. It would cost $500, it would cost nothing. It would be a memory in your family for generations. Mindy, you’re having the courage to discuss this. Do you think you’d have the courage to do it?

Scott:
So, Mindy, I remember that conversation very vividly. And I would love to know, for those who haven’t listened to the episode on I Will Teach You To Be Rich, could you tell us what happened with the bike trip and then why you decided to go back on to Ramit’s show to get more coaching?

Mindy:
The bike trip actually turned into a trip to Germany. My older daughter had a trip scheduled with her school, and that was in a weird time in the middle of summer. So, we decided instead to go to Germany with her. She went to Germany and then we flew and met her at the end of her trip and extended her trip and joined her. So, that’s what we did instead last summer. But Ramit, at the end of that clip, he says, “You have the courage to discuss this. Do you have the courage to do it?” And it’s not so much about the courage to do it. It’s time. I don’t have a lot of… I don’t have two months to do a frivolous bike trip.
I’ve got two kids who are in school for nine months, and to take two months out of those nine seems super selfish. And then to take them over the summer, there’s just so many things you’re trying to cram into a summer. I will do the bike trip. What was really so wonderful is that, Scott, after that show was like, “Hey Mindy, we’ll figure out a way to get you to go on that bike trip. We’ll record in advance so you don’t have to worry about the show and all of that.” And I was like, “Wow, that’s really great.” But I’m thinking that’s so much time. It wasn’t so much the money, it’s the time commitment and life is just so busy all the time, but I’ve got a million reasons why I can’t do something.

Scott:
I’d love to dig into that. So, has that line of thinking changed around the “I don’t have time to do that” after that episode with Ramit where I think he challenged that point, right? And there was, “Hey, here are the things that are keeping you busy.” Is that going to change there? How do you think about that response around “I don’t have time to do that in a summer going forward?”

Mindy:
Yeah. That’s one of the things that we had discussed on the Episode 2, we are working to free up our life. We are actively not committing to things that are huge time sucks, and we are wrapping up the things that we have committed to.

Scott:
So, Mindy and Carl, you guys were on the Ramit’s podcast, an episode that released in June, less than a month ago. And you talked to him about a lot of coaching points. Could you give us a little bit more of context around what that show was, what you guys discussed and kind of what the outcomes were?

Carl:
Yes, Scott, I’ll go first here. And I actually wanted to be on Ramit because I don’t think I’ve ever had a healthy relationship with money. Growing up there was some chaos in my childhood. My dad struggled with alcohol and mental disease. And yeah, I’ve got some really bad memories. And I think my reaction to this was to save money. Money was a security blanket. After the Ramit episode aired, I was looking at… someone left a nasty Facebook comment on somewhere and they’re like, “Oh, these people have a lot of money. I can’t relate to these people.” And my thought was, “I think you’re absolutely right. I can’t really relate to myself.” This money that we have isn’t necessarily representative of a great thing. It’s representative of trauma and I can’t even… it’s there because of the trauma and I need to have a better relationship with it and perhaps figure out a way to change my relationship with money. So, that’s why I wanted to talk to Ramit.

Scott:
So, Carl, I think that that message really came through on the podcast, and I think perhaps, harshly, that’s described as in this… you used to this word called cheap. And so, I’d like to play a clip from the podcast where that’s talked about and then discuss a little bit of that.

Ramit:
So, what’s up with this dynamic here? The two of you both acknowledge you’re cheap, the two of you talk about money constantly focusing on cost. The two of you then tell each other, “We should be better. We should spend something,” but then you don’t.

Scott:
So, why do you think that this dynamic is being called out by Ramit, and why is it so difficult? Why do you guys find it so difficult to spend money and splurge a little bit on more of these experiences?

Carl:
Yeah, I think we’ve been doing this for the past, geez, how long? We’ve been married for 20 years and I was like this before I met you.

Mindy:
21.

Carl:
Yeah, 21 years. Time goes by quickly. This is how we’ve been living our life. This is how I’ve lived my life. I’m almost 50. And the first four or five years don’t count. But anything after that, I was a saver. And it was never in my blood. It was never in my person to be a spender. And it’s really hard to flip the switch on that I think. I appreciated Ramit’s external nudge and I think we’ve made improvements since we talked to him. But, yeah, 45, 50 years of experience is hard to change.

Scott:
Were you guys aware of this dynamic coming into the show or was it exposed as you said, or did you guys become more aware of it after recording with Ramit?

Mindy:
I think we were aware of it. I mean, we reached out to him. We were on his show on purpose. It’s not like he called us up and was like, “Hey, can I ambush you?” We applied to be on the show. And we did that because we had heard him on the Mad Fientist Podcast pushing Brandon and we thought we should probably have a conversation with him, too. I think it would be good to talk to him. Were we aware of this dynamic? I think more of peripherally, oh, yeah, we know we need some help. I think he brought it up to the forefront of you’re hoarding this resource, you aren’t using it to make your life better. What’s the point of having it if you’re not going to use it to make your life better?
And this conversation, we actually recorded this show in April, and it didn’t air until June, but we have been having conversations with people around us regarding this topic since April. And a really great conversation that I had was with Waffles On Wednesday and they said, we sat down when we made our last move and said, “What could we add to our life that would make it better? Or what could we take away from our life that would make it better?” And they said, “We want to get a house cleaner that would make our life better, and it wouldn’t affect our net worth.” So, I don’t know what it was about hearing that, I don’t know. It gave me permission to start thinking about spending in a different way.

Scott:
At around the same time, Mindy, in the last couple of months, you and I have both read and talked about the book Die With Zero, which I think has a similar theme to this and really ties in some of the things that you talked about on Ramit’s podcast. How impactful has that been? And has that kind of changed this notion of spending less as a virtue and thinking about the goal being to spend financially free attend to these habits that are conducive to building wealth and maybe flip the rules of the game a little bit?

Mindy:
Spending less as a virtue came up during the show, too. And I never really thought of it as a virtue. Like Carl, I just didn’t grow up spending money. My dad’s one of seven, my mom’s one of eight. They never had money growing up. And then when my parents got married, they continued to spend like they didn’t have any money, and in the beginning they didn’t. And then my dad got better and better jobs and they continued to spend like they had no money and they invested wisely. I mean, they continue to spend like they have no money.
It’s something that just gets ingrained in you. And when you see your parents not spending money and… I mean, I remember a conversation with my dad, we were at a garage sale and somebody was selling one of those giant pencils. I’m like, “Oh, I want this.” And the guy’s like, “Just take it.” And then later I was buying a gift for my mom and I barely had enough money and my dad was pointing out, “Oh, well, if you would’ve had to buy that pencil instead of that guy giving it to you, then you wouldn’t have enough money for this gift for your mom.” And that’s kind of stuck with me my whole life. If you spend like here’s a dollar, you can only spend it once. So if you spend it, then you can’t buy something else. Oh, my goodness. This is that Sweet Pickles book. Quail.

Scott:
Was this?

Mindy:
This is a book series from the ’70s called The Sweet Pickles. And there’s a book about a quail and she doesn’t know how she can spend her money. So, she’s trying to decide between this and that. Oh my god, I’m quail.

Carl:
Does she buy a Lamborghini at the end though?

Mindy:
No, she buys a bracelet and a sugar bowl. But I mean, sometimes you don’t think about it until it’s thrown in your face. That was really what was so helpful from this episode is that it was thrown in our faces. I mean, honestly, I went into that recording with Ramit thinking that he was going to be like, “Oh, here’s some tips for how to loosen up the purse strings. I don’t know why. I thought he was going to be all nice. Like, “Oh, we’re all in the same financial education space. So, I’ll just give you some tips and everything will be great. And he starts off with, “No, here’s some uncomfortable questions and some really pointed discussions.” And “Oh, you don’t want to answer. I’ll wait.”

Scott:
We run the EOS system at work and one of the things they describe is they say there’s a difference between being nice and being kind. And nice is “Oh, it’s okay.” And kind is direct tough feedback that actually helps people improve and get better here. And I want to go and play that clip now where Ramit gives you, we’ll call it “kind” feedback here.

Mindy:
I don’t know how to change. I mean, you just spend money. That’s how you change. But that’s not what I’m-

Ramit:
No, no. It’s not even about how, Mindy, because we talked about how last time and you didn’t do it. And again, I don’t mind that you didn’t take the bike trip, you took another trip, great, but the how is… you’re not even at the how yet. You don’t even know why you would want to spend more money. In your minds and the dynamic you’ve created between yourselves and with the relationships around you, spending less is a virtue and spending more is wasteful.

Scott:
So, let’s react to that. Was that a kind of wake-up moment? What changed as a result of that particular challenge from Ramit there? That kindness, if we want to call it that.

Carl:
His kindness, you’re much more kind than Ramit, Scott.

Scott:
Tough love.

Carl:
I think if anything makes you uncomfortable in life, that’s exactly what you should do because that’s where your growth comes from. So, if you don’t like to do something, you should force yourself to do it. And that’s how spending is for me. And, Scott, I’d like to give you a example of something I just did this past weekend. My kid had a ticket to Taylor Swift. She had one ticket and I got there to drop her off. And when I dropped her off, I’m like, “Man, this seems like it would be pretty cool to go to. I’m a casual fan, but tickets are so expensive.” And then I’m walking back to the hotel and I’m like, “You know what? What would Ramit say?” I’m picturing Ramit sitting on my shoulder, like the good angel. Ramit would say, “Buy the ticket. Buy the ticket.” So, I went back and I bought the ticket for $1,000, and it was a little bit uncomfortable putting in my credit card number, but after I did it and went to the show, it was great. No regrets whatsoever.
So now, I’m trying to challenge myself. If there’s the slightest hint in my mind that I want to do something, I’m going to go ahead and do it. As long as it’s not crazy, I’m not going to go buy a helicopter or something like that. But I’m so thankful, I feel a little bit foolish for saying this, but like $1,000, I’m just going to go ahead and do it. And there’s not a whole ton of opportunities in our life to just blow $1,000. But when I can, I will. I also rented a Corvette for an upcoming trip, which will be great, too.

Scott:
How long do you think you’ll remember that Taylor Swift concert for?

Carl:
I’m going to remember it forever. It was great. I’m not even a huge fan, casual fan, but it was fantastic. Well worth it. No regrets. I would’ve paid. Now that I did it, I would’ve paid five times as much for it, which sounds a little bit ridiculous, but it was spectacular.

Scott:
This sounds wonderful, but there was another W word that came up over and over and over again in Ramit’s podcast and that word is wasteful. Mindy and Carl, I’d like us to listen to a quick montage of the number of times that Mindy uses this word in this podcast. Let’s go ahead and play that.

Mindy:
I am a grandchild of the Depression and you did not waste anything back then because you didn’t have anything. I don’t want to be wasteful. I mean that’s a good thing to be not wasteful with your money. I can’t be wasteful. Well, I had some notes up here, and my top thing was I don’t want to be wasteful. So, I’m crossing that off kind of wasteful.

Scott:
Why is spending money, in some cases, equated with being wasteful, Mindy, and what’s the history behind that? And I also want to get your reaction to, I think, a really telling point that Ramit made on this podcast, which is that any complex system, which a multimillionaire net worth like yours is certainly a complex system has waste. And how that’s kind of informed or made you think about things on a go-forward basis? How do you react to that?

Mindy:
Yeah, so I never thought about it being a complex system and complex systems having waste. I just thought about that pencil story from my dad and that would’ve been wasteful if I spent money on a big pencil that I didn’t really need. I don’t currently own this pencil. If I had known then, that it was going to come up so many times, I’d have kept that stupid thing. But I have always wanted to have everything that we spend money on be worth it and not everything that we spend money on will be worth it. And Carl just mentioned that he’s renting a Corvette for an upcoming trip. He sends me a picture, he’s like, “Look at this car I just rented for this next trip that I’m taking.” And I looked at it, I’m like, “You’re renting a lime green Corvette? Yeah, right?” He’s like, “No, for real, I’m renting a Corvette.” Why? He’s like, “I need to rent a car. And I was looking, and it’s slightly more to rent the Corvette, but I have always wanted to drive a Corvette. This way I get to drive the Corvette and get it out of my system or drive the Corvette, discover that I love it. And then I can start thinking about buying a Corvette.” But you don’t want to buy a Corvette and then discover that you hate driving a Corvette.

Scott:
So, I love this. This is a reframing of it, right? Maybe there’s a risk of a significant amount of wastefulness in buying the Corvette, but it’s not a waste to spend $50 extra or whatever it is, even if it’s that much per day to rent it and try it. And if you love it, then all of a sudden there’s not waste. There’s a trade of money for this experience in this wonderful situation. So, Carl, where are you taking this Corvette and why’d you pick it? Why’d you pick that color, too?

Carl:
Yeah, it is Southern California in October, which I think will be an epic time to drive a car that does not have a top. I went on this website to rent a car and every other car was like 500. The Corvette was like 800. I’m like, “Oh, this will be great.” I don’t like this about myself, but I’m a car person. We owned a fancy car at one time, an Acura NSX, and this will just be a fun experiment. And I want to dig into something you said, Scott, a moment ago. I do want to spend more, and a conversation I had with Mindy actually this morning is I don’t think all of our spending will be successful. I think some of it will be failures. And I think that’s a great thing because then we won’t have regrets. We’ll have spent money on whatever we tried to spend money on and we’ll have decided we don’t like the experience a helicopter, maybe throw up or who knows what went wrong. But we won’t have regrets about not spending the money and we’ll know failure doesn’t necessarily have to be a bad thing.

Mindy:
Ask Carl where he’s taking this Corvette.

Scott:
So, you’re starting in Southern California, where is it going?

Carl:
Yeah, I have a friend who works for SpaceX, who very kindly offered to give me a tour of the SpaceX facility, which is a bucket list item for me. I love rockets and aerospace. And then I’m going to CampFI, we’ve been there together, Scott, actually. It’s a financial independence retreat, which I guess I don’t know my crowd. I’m renting a Corvette to take to a crowd of a bunch of frugal people. I might get banned from CampFI’s after that. But if I’m going to get banned, that’s better than getting banned from throwing a TV out the window or something like that. He showed up in a Corvette, he’s banned no more Carl at CampFI’s.

Scott:
I think you’re perfect in that crowd because I’ve been to a couple of the CampFI’s great events. Strongly, encourage people to look into them. Very, very affordable. This is not going to break the bank and you’re going to meet a lot of like-minded folks at these things. But I will say that there’s a lot of folks at these events that have gone through, I think, very similar challenges to what you guys went through on Ramit’s podcast. I think that’s probably the most emphasized topic is most of the time these are multimillionaire, financially independent, self-made people, who are really struggling to change the dynamic and actually move away from, for example, that job after reaching well past the point of financial independence, really struggling to do the things that you guys are now doing and are really embracing following your appearance on Ramit’s podcast. So, I think you showing up in a lime green Corvette after touring SpaceX is absolutely perfect and is something that will help a lot of people at that event.

Carl:
Yeah, Scott. There’s one other thing I want to say about this. You had talked about Die With Zero a little bit before, and these conversations make me deeply uncomfortable because we’re talking about these crazy things like Taylor Swift tickets and renting Corvettes, and we also bought U2 tickets for this big spherical venue that’s now in Las Vegas. And what else I thought there? Oh, I guess the helicopter ride, and we’ll do one in Alaska soon, too.
But all this spending doesn’t have to be about us. One of the things I really liked about Die With Zero is he talks about giving your money away before you die too. And I think that’s so cool because why would you want to give all your money away after you croak? You can’t see it in action. And to be clear here, Scott, I don’t want my name on a building or anything else like that. I’ll probably have some silly strings attached, like the building will have to be named after some dinosaur or something like that. Not after me, but how cool would it be to give my money away, give our money away before we die, and see the library get a new edition or some other great things happen with it before we croak. So, not that giving it away is any easier than renting Corvettes or anything else, it’s parting ways with your money. Yeah.

Scott:
So, let’s play one more clip here about this concept of wastefulness from Ramit. And then I want to reframe how I’m viewing the spending you guys have just articulated on the show so far.

Mindy:
But letting go is hard. I don’t want to be wasteful.

Ramit:
Because wasteful means?

Mindy:
What if we run out of money?

Ramit:
Mathematically you know that’s impossible. So, wasteful means what?

Mindy:
I don’t want to spend and not get any joy out of it. I don’t want to do something stupid with my money. I don’t want to spend it and have a bad experience or spend it and have a bad time or spend it and say that wasn’t worth it.

Scott:
So, what I’m hearing from Ramit say in this clip and what I’m hearing, the reframing of the way you guys are spending money on yourselves, in particular, with this and on the experiences is a parallel to the concept in business of research and development, right? R&D, you’re trying out new things, experiences, and really opening up and experimenting. It opens the idea that some of them, you’re not going to like and not want to try again. And some of them, you’re going to love and want to invest more and more time in and experiences there. And that’s what I feel like the lime green Corvette trip is here. Is that a good analogy? Is that how you guys are viewing it now?

Mindy:
I do think that’s a good analogy. We’re testing the waters and we’re testing with relatively small dollars for the most part, or larger dollars that we kind of know are a sure thing. One of the things that we have done that was a direct result of that recording with Ramit is Carl’s mom has always wanted to go on an Alaskan cruise. So, we decided we would take her and Carl’s sisters and their partners and our family on a cruise and we would pay for it. And we know that we like cruises. So, it’s not a test. We know that everybody’s going to have a good time. So, it’s not such a big deal, but Carl’s going to spend an extra $300 renting a Corvette to see if he likes that kind of car. So, small dollar testing, large-dollar proven things that we like. Does that make sense?

Scott:
Absolutely.

Carl:
Yeah. And we have some big dollar ideas, too, Scott, that we can talk about if you’d like.

Scott:
Yeah. What are a couple of those?

Carl:
Yeah, it’s one big one. And I think this idea actually came from Mr. Money Mustache, Pete. Someone had asked him, “What would you do if you had $20,000 or $30,000 that you had to spend?” And he said, “Well, I would rent a castle in some exotic place and invite all my friends over for two weeks.” And I think that’s a spectacular idea and we have the means to do it. There’s lots of people in my life I like to spend time with, so I think we’ll do it. Scott, you’re invited, too. If you have any ideas as to where we should host this thing, let me know. I’m thinking Scotland, personally. Maybe Ireland, but yeah, maybe #2024.

Scott:
Okay. This is awesome. We’ve had a great discussion with Ramit. We’ve heard some of the really most powerful moments with it. It seems like there’s really a new… and I think it was a really helpful catalyst, that episode, to spur on a lot of these bigger discussions. I think you got what you were hoping to get from Ramit, and I think you did a tough but really good job of pushing you guys to make these changes in your life.
I want to flip the conversation now a little bit to the FI community at large. Do you think that this is happening among a lot of financially independent people? Do you think there’s a lot of folks that are kind of quietly going through maybe the same struggles. Some people may listen and say, “Hey, these are first world problems.” Maybe they are, but they’re real struggles. These are problems that we hope many people, not hope many people have, but hope that many people have the options in life to really open up and invest more. When should they do that? How should they do that? Do we think we have a problem here? Answer all those questions at once, please.

Mindy:
Yes, there you go. Let me elaborate now. Yes, I know that a lot of people have this same struggle because I was inundated with text messages, phone calls, DMs, emails from people saying, “Thank you so much for doing this episode, thank you for being so vulnerable. Thank you for going on and sharing this because I have the same problem and I don’t know what to do, I didn’t know how to handle it. And I got a lot of tips from hearing Ramit talk to you.” I continued to get messages from people who are discovering the show and reaching out and saying, “This was so helpful to hear you going through it, too. And how do you change?”
I think that when we first started down this journey to financial independence, the entire financial independence space was all about frugality, all about spending less and investing more. And that was kind of a badge of honor. And now, I think people have branched out. I mean, you have an article on your blog about the death march to FI and how we just stomped towards it and then once we got there we’re like, “Wow, we could have taken a little bit longer and had a more enjoyable life.”

Scott:
So, this is perfect. Let’s pick this up one second. I just want to quickly have Ramit come in and contextualize this. He calls what you just described a virtue and paints it in a negative light, the virtue of spending less. Let’s play that clip right now.

Mindy:
I definitely live in a FI bubble. It’s a thing in the FI community is to be optimizing your money so you can stretch it further.

Ramit:
That alarmed look on your face, Mindy, the realization that maybe that is actually not the best goal to have.

Mindy:
I think when you’re in the accumulation phase, I mean that’s a good thing to be not wasteful with your money and why spend actual dollars when you can spend points on a hotel instead?

Ramit:
This is one of the biggest critiques I have of the financial independence movement. If your value is defined by what you don’t want to do, which for many people in that community, is spend money, then number one, that’s not an effective cohesive value system because values are about what you do want to do, not simply what you don’t want to do. And second, what if you actually achieve financial independence? Now, the only way that you can spend money is, what Mindy, as it relates to the FI community that you are so deeply embedded in?

Mindy:
It has to be an intelligent way, it has to be frugally.

Ramit:
Keep going.

Mindy:
It can’t be wasteful.

Scott:
Mindy, you and I have spent close to a decade now talking about personal finances and real estate investing and this kind of concept of financial freedom. And really we both, I think, have stressed the importance of frugality and savings as a critical first part of that journey and endorsed, I think, a grind for a period of years to get over the hump here. Does this clip change that or reframe parts of that for you?

Mindy:
I still think that if you are going to reach financial independence, you can’t spend every dime that comes in. You do need to spend less than you earn, but you don’t have to be so tightfisted. And as I continue in this community, I have started to really value the concept of Coast FI, where you get yourself to a point where you can now coast into traditional retirement. And as the years go on, as you continue to invest and save your retirement date gets a little shorter and a little shorter and a little shorter. But it isn’t this all out frugality tightfistedness, how little can I spend? Why spend money when you can save it kind of mentality. It was more like enjoy the journey as well. That was the message that I got from the Coast FI sub community, if you will, and the Fioneers specifically. And I really liked that message, and I wish I would’ve seen that 10 years ago. I don’t know if I would’ve followed it, but it would’ve been nice to have considered that, too.

Carl:
Yeah, Scott, I think the whole point of financial independence, when you get deep down into it, it’s not really about money. It’s about increasing your happiness and bettering your life. So, if you think about it that way, why are we postponing things that make us happy and postponing things that make our life better until we get to this point at the end, which is exactly what I did, and I did it exactly the wrong way. So, I think Ramit’s exactly right. If something is going to bring you happiness or improve your life or make things better for you, don’t wait until you’re financially independent. I’ve got a friend who’s like he’s got $1 million. He’s like, “I just can’t spend this money because I’m not FI yet.” I’m like, “Take it from me. You’re waiting to cross the line. Why are you waiting another second to do this? Even if you have to work another year, your kids are all going to be young ones. You’re getting older. Do it now. Don’t postpone your happiness for some silly number, for some silly dollar amount.”

Scott:
Yeah. I mean, this clip made me challenge what I’m all about here and what I endorse. I wrote a book on set for life called Set for Life that endorses, going pretty much all out on it in the early days. Where I’ve kind of concluded on this is alignment with you guys, except at the very beginning of this journey, if you want to build wealth, you have to start somewhere and you have to, I think, embrace this concept of being pretty frugal to get that first couple thousand, couple 10,000, maybe even first 100 grand of investible assets. And once that begins kicking in, yeah, don’t just grind for the next 20 years and wait for an endpoint that may never come right at the end of the FI journey. Begin to relax and use the wealth that has been accumulating over time to make your life better in the current situation and still progress towards the future.
I mean, there’s ways to do this and have these great experiences along the journey to financial independence without maybe, and I’m going to use this word, wasting money on things that maybe are not as important to you like maybe exactly where you lay your head at night or the car you drive or the eating out wastefully, too often, in those early days. And then, one of the other things that I think has come up with a lot of folks in the FI community is the idea of spending less and being very frugal and the skill of spending becomes a part of the identity of the individual. And that needs to be… maybe that’s even useful in the early stages, but it needs to be shed over time as one approaches that point of financial independence. Otherwise, you’re not going to maximize the enjoyment of your life, which is why we set out to do this in the first place, I think.

Mindy:
Exactly. And to go back to the Waffles on Wednesday couple, what can you use your money for that will make your life better? If you’re in a position where you have enough or you have almost enough, or you have your first X number of dollars invested and now you’re looking for ways to better your life, what can you add to or subtract from your life that would make it better? What can you buy or pay somebody to do so you don’t have to, that would make it better? I have struggled with clutter in my life, and I have never hired a professional organizer because I could just do that myself. Well, but I’m not, and I still struggle with clutter. So, on Friday, I have my very first appointment with the professional organizer, and we’re going to do kind of a hybrid solution because I’m still me deep down inside. So, she’s going to come over and we’re going to work for four hours, and then she’s going to give me a homework assignment. So, we’re going to work together and I’m going to do some DIY stuff. And then she’s going to come over again and we’re going to work together and I’m going to do some DIY stuff, and hopefully over the course of the year, the remainder of 2023, we’re going to get rid of all the crap in my house.

Scott:
Well, let me ask another framework here that I think was really interesting that I’ll bring in and tie together. We had Mr. Money Mustache on the podcast a few months ago, and he said something really interesting where he said, “If I wasn’t financially independent, I’d probably be a middle manager director of engineering at a software shop. And my brain would be hardwired or optimized for getting up in the morning, having a cup of coffee, having a couple meetings, coding a little bit, going home at 5:30 in the commute” and so on and so forth. And it’s really hard to change that, and it’s almost like a work in process here. Do you think that the same dynamic happens to some folks, perhaps, yourself, on the spending front where for years and years and years or decades, there has been an optimization on the spending front and to unwind it requires this kind of very conscious effort and breakthrough experience? If you agree with that, how do we prepare for this? How do we get years ahead of the retirement point or wind this in along the journey so that we’re optimizing for the end state that we desire?

Carl:
Yeah, I think it’s absolutely right. I think that’s a good comparison, but I think it’s even worse and more difficult because one thing you’ll notice with Mindy and I, it didn’t start when we had our jobs, it started from our youth. I was always this way. So, we’ve always not spent money. So, it’s very hard to flip the switch. At this time, Scott, I think I’d like to coin yet another new version of FI. I know there’s many of them, but I’m going to coin Swift FI, and Swift, not a speed, but Taylor Swift FI. I say that because if there’s an experience, if there’s even a hint that you think this thing is going to make you happy, you should force yourself to do it as long as it’s not going to be crazy, within reason, and you’ll have to set your own boundaries there. But that might be uncomfortable, but you should definitely do that. I can think of lots of things I should have done in the past getting the hotel in Yosemite, which would’ve cost a little bit more instead of driving hours and hours to get in and out of the park, and-

Mindy:
Oh, God, yeah.

Carl:
Yeah, plane tickets flying out at silly times and all these things. So, Taylor Swift FI, maybe we can get her on BiggerPockets Money. Probably not.

Mindy:
Yeah, Taylor, come on, join us.

Carl:
So, I think you have to do experiments with yourself and be willing to have Ramit on your shoulder and have him yelling in your ear when there’s something you think you might want to do and to defy your frugal ways.

Scott:
Is there anything else you’d like to share with us on this topic before we get out of here?

Carl:
Yeah, I think there is, Scott. I’ve got one final thought. I’ve been thinking almost nonstop, probably hours, every day, about this whole Ramit thing. And what I’ve come to is I think our daily lives are great, and I’ll let Mindy comment after me. We could if we really cut down… we don’t have car payments, we do have a mortgage, but we could probably get by on $40,000. But even if we had 10x our net worth, I don’t think I’d change anything about our daily life. It’s pretty great and I’m so thankful for that. So, the question becomes what do we spend money on? And the first thing is things that make our life easier and more efficient. And here we get into the waste thing again. But there’s things I resist, like TSA PreCheck or really good plane tickets that don’t leave at 6:00 AM. That don’t cost that much more. They won’t change anything for us financially, but will make our life a lot better. But that stuff doesn’t even cost that much either. I’ve got a nice computer and a nice phone, but that stuff isn’t a big deal.
So then, my final thought was what can we really do? What could we spend money on for happiness? And that is, God, this sounds so cliche, but the experiences, but I’m going to change it around a little bit. And it’s experiences with friends. So, when we travel, we do stuff, like go to Edinburgh, but we don’t go there necessarily because we want to see that we go there because we have friends there. And we just went to Hawaii and the main reason we did that was because we had really good friends there. And like this renting a castle experience, it’s going to be in a cool place. It’s going to be near a beach or some other neat stuff. Maybe those big hairy cows they have up there on the Scottish Highlands, those would be cool to see. But it’s going to be about experiences with people, I think, because I think those are the most memorable to me. Like the cruise, you think a lot of the stuff we’re doing, it’s stuff we’re doing with our kids. And I think life is better when you can share it with really good people who you care about. What do you think about all that?

Mindy:
Yes, I agree with all of that. It’s a process. I think that we are still going to be discussing this forever. I mean, it’s been 50 years that we have been living like this. We’re not just going to change like that. But having the conversation and reframing it in little ways. What is something you can add to or remove from your life that makes it better? What’s the point of having money if you’re not going to use it to make your life better? I don’t need 57 pairs of jeans to make my life better, but having a clean house makes my life better. So, I’m going to focus on things that make my life better.

Carl:
Yeah. And I’ll close. I’m so thankful that Ramit had us on. People talked about how harsh he was with us, and I’m thankful that you aren’t is harsh, Scott, because I think I cried a little bit after Ramit, but we are in a better place now as a result of that. And I’m so thankful. I couldn’t have asked for anything more. It did what it was supposed to do.

Mindy:
Yeah. I’m glad he did his version instead of my version of him just saying, “Hey, here’s some nice ways to open up the purse string.” That wouldn’t have been as helpful to me.

Scott:
And I’ll just kind of chime in. I think when I… Mindy and Carl, you guys have one of the best… from I see, it looks like your life is absolutely wonderful. You have two beautiful daughters, a wonderful home. You have more community in your lives than anybody else that I know. More friends, more people constantly coming through to come visit you and hang out. And it just seems like you’ve built an amazing life. And the issue of spending your well-earned wealth to optimize that happiness is one of degree and not one of black and white. It seems like you’ve built a wonderful situation in life that you can be proud of and enjoy on a day-to-day basis. And it’s almost a challenge. It is a challenge. It is a hard one for you guys to figure out, “How do I now take this big pile of wealth and use it to engineer even more happiness?” And I think that a part of your problem is because you have such a happy and strong foundational base. And maybe that’s the one piece that maybe didn’t come quite through on Ramit’s podcast there.

Carl:
Yeah, Scott, that’s right. I think someone wrote a semi-nasty article, like, “These people have money and they’re unhappy.” Our life is a 10. And in the famous words of Spinal Tap, we’re just trying to figure out how to turn it up to an 11 if we can. And how great is that that we can say that? It’s freaking awesome.

Scott:
Absolutely. Well, thank you so much for coming on and discussing a tough topic here and being so open and vulnerable with everybody and in public on this. I think it’s a really important message. I think a lot of people have struggled with it, and we hope that other people go on to build wealth and challenge themselves to optimize their happiness from a 10 to 11, just like you guys are trying to.

Carl:
Thank you.

Mindy:
Thanks, Scott. All right. That wraps up this episode of the BiggerPockets Money Podcast. He is Scott Trench. He is Carl Jensen. I am Mindy Jensen saying, got to scoot, little newt.

Scott:
If you enjoyed today’s episode, please give us a five star review on Spotify or Apple. And if you’re looking for even more money content, feel free to visit our YouTube channel at youtube.com/biggerpocketsmoney.

Mindy:
BiggerPockets Money was created by Mindy Jensen and Scott Trench, produced by Kailyn Bennett, editing by Exodus Media, copywriting by Nate Weintraub. Lastly, a big thank you to the BiggerPockets team for making this show possible.