FIRE at 50: The 4-Year Journey That Made Early Retirement a Reality
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Erwin hole built an architectural design business over the past ten years. He's the face of the brand. He built the core products, and he makes all the content. His business would be hard for him to sell, but he was able to leverage the business to achieve fire anyway, and is now set to travel the world in twenty five, at the age of fifty.

Today we are going to hear his story, how he pivoted to achieve fire, build a portfolio that comfortable ly sustains chubby fire and now runs his business on ten hours a week or less. A very nice carrion top. Hello hello hello. And welcome to the bigger markets money podcast. My name is midi Jenny and with me as always, is my five like arrogant y but not yet fifty cohoes at .

be here and love the stream way that you and I achieve. I different than earth, are bigger pockets as a goal of creating one million millionaire. You are in the right place if you want to get your financial house in order because we truly believe any inner freedom is attainable for everyone, no matter when or where you're starting, including if you want to build a so called lifestyle business. To help you dramatically accelerate that path, fire this episode brought to you by connect, invest, real state investing.

simplified and within your reach. Now let's get into the show.

We welcome to the bio to be with you and i've listened you guys for years. So it's it's super funded to here.

I love when we talk to people who have listened to us before that you know all the jokes and all the questions we're gonna. So let's jump right into IT. Eric, how did you first discover the financial independence movement?

So I I was on a phone call catching up with A A lifelong high school friend of mind um and he mentioned we were four to six at the time and he mentioned that he was getting ready to was higher a few months so when he was forty seven and I was like my jaw hit the floor I was like I can't believe this um because you know for four six year old retirement seemed like this far off destination you know wasn't even on my my radar screen um and so when I learned that fire might actually be an option, you know I was all in and my wife can to test this because it's kind of all I could talk IT out for the next kind of three or four months and then I just started kind of running some rough numbers.

And I think this is probably similar to you in the U. N. Carl, where, you know, we kind of looked at what we had accumulated the time, which I think was, know our liquid that worth at the time was kind of like a little under a million dollars and we start bring some numbers and set like two and half million as our fine number and um so I thought, okay, well, this isn't like twenty years in the future.

Um maybe we could pull that in quite a bit and so over time, like you, we adjust to that number up, president ficano. Um so that's not where we landed on, but you know I think what we generally agreed on, my wife and I was kind of A A number in the chubby fire range, which is kind of like between two and a half and five million dollars for our five number, which kind of set IT in context of, you know we can do almost anything that we want, but we can do everything that we want. So once I made up my mind that like five was the goal and early could be an option, I just treated IT like you guys did like death march to fy.

Here's here's the date that I want to to reach five by and know here's the number that I want. And you know if you guys remember that kind of long slide down in the markets in twenty, twenty two, I was like, I was getting pretty miserable. You know, I could see the date coming and I could see the portfolio even I was investing religiously.

IT was just dropping and dropping. And so i've finally I just kind of had to step back and accept the fact that and I really needed to just focus on fundamentals and that was just keep investing um be mindful of our expenses and then just try and continue to grow my income where I could and eventually we did hit our fine number in june of this year. So twenty twenty four. So I actually worked out in spite of all my anxiety and hand ringing.

So you just dropped I love all those uh, five community, the easter eggs that you drop there. Uh, thank you. I think I got most of them.

Um you seem to be saving for something before you reach financial before even heard of financial dependence, which is a very similar to Caroli. We were saving for the future. What were you saving for?

I mean, retirement was felt important, like but at some very far future date. And I think you know maybe a lot of people can relate to this. Um you get you're in the messy middle.

You have you know we have two boys and at the time I found the fire movement, they are teenagers. So I just come out of the missing middle. You've just you're done with the daycare costs, you done with all the of sports things and camps and all that kind of stuff, and you are finally earning more.

And we you know we saved retirement and we loaded up our pretax accounts every year. But beyond that, we were spending, you know, whatever we were earning more. We were just spending that.

We ve got more spending with vacations. Um we started, no, we bought vehicles and like this was a little bit of lifestyle creep, but we weren't saving with the express intent to retire early. So I was just like retirement important but also have some .

fun now so so you used a bunch of um fun phrases earlier um like death march defy um which we've covered in previous uh uh shows here. But what I want to understand is there's this pivot point in your journey where you discovered the fire movement from your friend and what changed like how did your lifestyle change in a more tangible way that we can understand before and after that?

Ahh, I think what we were doing, you know, we were smart, always saving for retirement. So I think we were pretty good with finances. We are making smart financial decisions.

We didn't Carry a lot of death um and you know we had been saving since our first jobs out of college. Um and so I don't want to pretend like I hit our fine number this this march to fy IT didn't happening in like four years necessarily. I did take a lot of time and accumulation over those other years.

But um you know we did make some pretty aggressive changes once we found the fire movement. Um and you know I would to say knowing that most of our network in twenty twenty when we found IT was in pretax savings account, um I I had a solar four N K through the business. He had my wife had a four three b but we weren't saving outside to those.

So um we made too much to contribute to a rough directly. So that was kind of a mistake. We didn't know we weren't have enough to know about the back to or off.

So that was an option that we weren't taking advantage of and we didn't even have a taxable brokers account for savings. You know, we just got, like I said, max, out our retirement accounts every year, and we just tend to spend the rest on our life. So once five became the goal, we really started about what IT would look like, none, only to just reach five, but maybe retire early.

That was more my idea than my wife's idea. So the first change we made was just recognizing we need a bridge account to cover expenses between, you know, when our earlier timing date was and we could access our our pretext pretext funds. So um we just ended up using a taxable broken age for that because at the time you know our income just didn't make sense to do raw conversions, we weren't going even consider that. Second thing we did was my wife had access to a 407b plan， which is basically deferred compensation plan um and that made sense for us to take advantage that because of the tax bracket we were in. So we started taking advance of that next thing we did, which you know a lot of people criticized as we paid off our mortgage um and I know that wasn't really an optimal financial move necessarily, but for us just made made IT possible for us to be really aggressive savers um from twenty twenty to twenty twenty four, which is when we hit our fire number.

you mentioned the fire chubby fire range of two and half to five million dollars, which I think is a great definition of tobi on there. Do you include your home equity, your paid off home in that number?

No, I don't know. Because we need a place to live. And so now we do not. So two and half .

to five million and assets that are a liquid investable assets, not your homework.

AI home is in addition to that, that we consider that in our total, just like our vehicles and things like that. Now assets that we're not going to liquid at our home to fund our lifestyle because we need a place.

We need to take a quick ad break while we're away. We went to hear from you. Do you either already have or have an interest in starting a business answer in the spotify or youtube? APP, hey.

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or IT will come back to the show. Not a lot of people pull the trigger on fire. A in a situation like you is my experience without paying off the mortgage.

The folks who have the mortgage usually way beyond what they need for their fire number. Um so i'm not surprised to hear that even though you said it's not a controversial point. If I community, I think you're going to find that.

that's very common. Nice not to have to include that fixed expense in your fine number. So that kind of why we did IT.

And then from there, we looked at the delta and we just set up some monthly saving schools like pretty aggressive, uh, saving schools. We spread shit out what I would take to reach our number. Um we looked at our current expenses and you know that was our investment target each month. And this was we have talked about this, but I started to business back in two thousand thirteen and that's really where um we took most of the earnings from the business and use that to kind of supercharge our savings. We ended up just kind of living off my wife salary because we could do that.

Um but then we just you know we have the discipline to say, okay, every year, the beginning of the year, we're gonna do our back door rough and then we're going to work through and fully fund our pretax accounts and then everything else we're going to put into a taxi ble brokerage account um and just keep building that bridge so that will you know last lger longer. And then the last thing that we did, the last kind of aggressive changes that we made was I was sitting on a lot of cash for the business in twenty and and I was doing that because I was just, you know, I was fearful of having to go back to work, foreign employer, I didn't want to do that. And so I built this kind of excessively long runway that just was not serving us.

And so, you know, part of this kind of financial awakening and learning about personal finance was like, hey, cashes. If you want to have a forty or fifty year retirement, cash is not your friend. You really want to be an equities. And so you know, we started moving cash into the market on a regular kid's and just having a monthly financial check in, my wife and I would say, okay, how are the savings target this month and and we just have that as .

a regular part of our discipline. Were your savings targets a percentage of your income?

Or were they a dollar figure, a dollar gure o .

and would you say you hit IT most months or exceeded IT? We did.

Yeah but you know that long slide down in twenty twenty two and I described as a long slide down. I know in terms of market corrections, it's not IT wasn't that long, obviously. But um you know just looking at that those numbers, the further you get away from that number and the close of the time horizon is the bigger those numbers get.

So it's it's a really unhealthy way to do IT. I think because what I ended up doing was you know the death march defy aspect was I was probably acrisius things um in service of getting to a five number like every dollar that didn't go into an investment account. I looked at you as is taking me further and further away from five. And IT is a pretty toxic mindset and I think it's easy to fall into when your extreme focuses just on a number and a date. Um and so I I wouldn't recommend doing that.

I second that not recommended doing that and that's exactly how we did IT. You get there but you don't enjoy the journey. So you said this was a really unhealthy way to do IT knowing what you know.

Now, what would you do differently? Starting four years ago, you discover the five movement. What would you do differently so that somebody who's listening, who wish t quite fy yet can learn from your .

mistakes mean like coming up with the aggressive savings target. And I like giving I think one of the healthy things we did was giving every dollar a job. Um but I think what was unhealthy was I didn't plan for spending in the same way that I planned for saving.

I think a lot of people don't consider that in the fire. Fire movement is very easy to save, but then you reach this fine number. And now i'm facing this myself. You know another couple of months i'm going to potentially drawing down the portfolio.

And if you haven't built the spending muscle um IT puts you in at a disadventure ge, I would design the kind of life that I want to have between now and the future. And you know that you have to make space for all of those things. There has to be room for saving, but there also has to be room for a life that you're designing, that you're excited about.

And that is fun for you and your family at the time that you're living IT. Because that space, and i'll talk about the mess middle again because I found that hard for myself was the space between here and your fine number is that is your life. It's it's not just like it's not the death march define that's the most important thing. It's designing a life that you care to live um with your friends and family and enjoying the time that you have now because we're not promised that future friday necessarily um and that that's a hard thing to come to gripes with if you are someone who's a really aggressive saver and you get into the habit of IT. But I would encourage spending as a muscle to .

flex to absolutely agree with you. So IT took you approximately four years from the time you learned about financial dependence, and we're intentional about reaching IT to the time you actually reached IT. How long do you think IT would have taken you if you would have exercised your spending muscle and loosen up a little bit instead of this death mark?

Oh, man, I haven't thought about that really. You know, certainly if I could have if I could win the clock and started investing more aggressively when I first started my business, you know, back in twenty thirteen, even even if I was like a quarter of what I was was doing, you know between twenty twenty and twenty twenty four, that would have been a much longer lever. You know so time is really, really the lever that I wish I could go back and and change um but you know I would probably stretch IT out um maybe eight years because the got pretty aggressive there um for a while and I develops some pretty unhealthy habits. So it's hard to go back you know with hindsight, easy to look back and say, yeah, i'd started investing, you know, seven or twelve years earlier, but you just don't get that that luxury.

I get two questions on this. So there's death march to fight concept this this ground. What i'm gathering that this was couple this this coupled a large amount of income that required an intense amount of work to dive and a very modest level of spending intend them for a very prolonged period time, which results in tons of work and no enjoyment around this. Can you confirm what if that's true? And then give me some details, if so, on what your lifestyle actually looked like during this type period from an expense dam point and what your business income look like.

I would say yeah IT probably look like that at the outset um to someone on the outside. But my wife was running her own research science lab. Um SHE had nh funding. SHE was so I would say she's highly compensated um so that about us freedom um to to be able to have a lifestyle that we are comfortable with.

We we agreed and I think part of her um getting bored in on financial independence retire early that as a concept was that we were gonna change our lifestyle a lot um we still we knew we had a limited time with our boys in the house so they retreat both teens at the time you know our all this was getting ready to go off to college in two years and our Youngest in four years. So we knew we had you know a limited window of time that we could make memories with them. And prior to that, we had we had always spent on vacations and experiences.

We prioritize that. So that was important to us enough to preserve um but I will say no, we didn't at a time when our friends we're looking at expanding their house and you know going on even spending your vacations than we were um we we didn't do some of those things. Um and now that we have an empty nest, become kind of glad we didn't do those things.

But we're still in our same starter home. We still have a lot of the same furniture that we had when we first built IT in two thousand and seven. So um I think you to an outsider, our lifestyle doesn't look like expanded that um but to us IT doesn't feel like we we script on a lot.

Um so you know our living expenses are between you know ten to twelve thousand a month in terms of just Operating a basic lifestyle. Um and during covet, we haven't talked about me starting my business yet, but during covet, the course side of my business, which ended up kind of really taking off in twenty twenty, was making about fifty K A month. So that's a pretty big travel to to be able to, to save. That was just one .

component of your business. You had other components that are generally on top of that till.

yes, exactly had a client services side of the business. And I had a whole product side. And the bulk of the product side was the course and digital products business. Um and we're .

talking six hundred thousand to a million dollars, at least an income from the business that you that during this period.

Yeah, so it's significant. You know that's a big travel. So um you can do a lot with that .

was the business and also be creating an asset. Did you sell the business?

No, no, we're going to continue to to run the business um into retirement and that's of that's another kind of control virtual thing were going to be recreationally employed. Uh is is the idea. But um you know my wife will be stepping away from her job in january of twenty twenty five.

And um we're going to change the way I run the business right now. You know the business used to take clients and build products and services on top of that client work. and.

We are no longer taking clients in the business. It's it's purely a products business. So we're going to change the number of hours.

You know, like you said, IT does take a huge time investment to build up all the content for the youtube general and make the products and courses and also work with clients. And I didn't want that kind of life style heading into a retirement or post file. At least I wanted to redefine what work was going to look like. And so you know, all of that investment is going to pay hopefully for many years, and we're going to continue to ride on the back of those investments for you know, at least five years is is my hope.

So how much time do you spend in the business currently? And how much time will you be spending once you like change and vivid?

Yeah the current business, I would say I probably can run in thirty hours a week. Uh, it's i've stopped working with clients individually um and i've just really I heard an agency last year to help me kind of a reinvent and design marketing and automation systems so that in preparation for us entering early retirement and wanting to be able to travel around the world yet still Operate this business, I hire them to say, okay, let's let's turn this business from an active time investment into something that we can run in, let's say, ten hours a week so my wife and I would be combined total working on this, you know each working ten hours a week um which is which feels like such a change from the fifty, sixty, seventy hours a week that we might have been running IT like from twenty twenty to twenty twenty three. Um it's been quite a dial back so i'm trying to a transition um so it's not falling off a Cliff here. But you know ten hours a week is going to feel that's definitely to .

feel retired to me open the conversation talking about chubby fire. But you also have an asset that like you have to be fire just in your stock portfolio. You've got another asset here that's worth hundreds of thousands or millions or maybe even eight figures.

We have no idea because we don't have the income numbers here on top of that. So you're really in this way into this fat fire or obese fire range. When you really think about IT in that context.

we weird think about that though because the the business itself is a personal brand. So it's not it's you can't sell a personal brand in the same way. I mean, you can certainly value that even know on a neutered ed basis, right? Is that kind of what you're talking like? If you are thinking this thing is staring off six hundred thousand dollars a in passive income a year, you put a multiple on that and say, okay, this is part of your network.

What do you mean? I guess there's the the component of it's not actually worth a multiple income if if the business is truly valuable without you behind IT. Um but that's like but that's another component here. I think like how do we how do we define that? Like but like I think most people who are thinking I want to be chubby or fat five, I think most of her chubby fire probably like thinking on my higher in common going I ss assets pay off the house, do a lot of the things you talked about.

But then there's this kind of fat fire world or obese world that's more around the the concept of of of voting a business like this or selling a very large business, for example, and getting into that, like I I would imagine, like let's using six hundred thousand dollar market. Sounds like there's there's a different number there around that. But six hundred thousand plus a two and a half billion dollar portfolio is going to generate seven hundred thousand dollars in ability to spend on annual basis.

And so I just want to think about like how do you how do you bridge you? You are obviously approaching your spending in your situation from the concept of thinking about chubby fire. And you have a huge other asset at place. So how do you bridge that mentally and think about your position?

I think it's important to say that we never included the business cash flow in our projections. So like if this business shut down january first of twenty twenty five, our fight plan still works. So we always wanted to design a plan that wasn't contingent on me working in the future or my wife working in the future.

And so um is IT is IT great uh is IT a great buffer to have passive income that is going to um you know help minimize sequence of return risk? Yeah it's it's an amazing thing. Can we let the portfolio season more if we are not drawing down on any of those assets and we have some kind of asset which is producing cash flow to fund our life style in the present?

Yeah, that's and to me, I look at the business as a buffer. I never looked at IT as an asset that I was gonna ll because you know, it's connected to a youtube channel where I make videos and it's me, it's my name connected to IT. So I think that you as an asset is not the kind of thing that you look at us and say this is an easy thing to sell. But in terms of a cash law, you know buffing our cash low, yes, it's huge, gives a lot of security and um confidence to the the number that we set, but is not reliant on that cash flow to make those our retirement work.

We got to take one final break and they will will be back with eric.

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Rocket money. Don't com slash B P money. Let's go back. And do you consider yourself retired if you're still working ten hours a week?

Yeah this is a big A I on my youtube chat all too satisfy when I mentioned that I was going to be making this transition into retirement um but or we had a fine number but I was not going to be stepping away closing the business. You know people gave me a real hard time about there's a lot of push back and I knew I never retired, you know um and you know for me, reaching five is just it's I get to decide what retirement looks like for me.

And you know if you transition from working fifty hours a week and you have all these demands from clients and outside actors on your time and then you move into a space where you're making all of the decisions and you have all the agency for what the next business moves are and IT doesn't have to be about money that, that feels a lot like retirement for me. And you know retirement doesn't just have to be about not working. It's it's about choosing the things that you want to work on that you know excite you most and bring you the most joy.

And I expect that to change. I I don't think anyone is gona step in a retirement that has one singular definition. I could see if you know for certain people who want to get away from a job and it's a true grind and you just know it's it's boring and you're not decided by the work.

But I don't have that. I I built myself. I designed myself a job that i'm prey happy with. And I think the chAllenge me is just kind of transitioning that away from having to earn into, you know, other creative endeavors.

And yeah, okay, so I asked that on behalf of the internet retirement police, who can stuff suck in IT? Uh, but I think you hit that right on the head like you're not doing things you don't. Anna do IT is really rewarding to create something that people comment on and say, hey, this was so helpful.

This changed my life. This was I learned something new, great. And all I did open up my computer and talking to my company, my camera.

So how hard is that? If you stop making videos, your channel will continue to go on for a long time. You can even release if you decide i'm gonna go travel at and not going to Green thing for a month.

You can rerelease some these older videos that your newer viewers haven't seen yet. I've seen that that and that works great. But retirement isn't just about networking. I don't think that the majority of people who get themselves to the point of financial dependence can be comfortable just their personality can be comfortable not doing anything.

And you know, way back in twenty eighteen, when we started this podcast, Scott said, when I finally retired, I am going to play video games for six months straight. And unlike well, maybe, but I but he doesn't and I think he's uh, altered that comment now i'm sure he'll play video games more than he does now. But I think that Scott rend would be bored silly sitting in of a computer and playing video games for six months and maybe i'm just projecting my own self because that would really be my definition of pol.

I know a lot of good games come out last six years.

apparently.

So not according to be. Yeah, especially if I lived in in where's .

the main eric?

They live in land? yes. yeah. So I know I like a good net connection. There are the four months of winter or six month of winter or whatever.

long, cold winter.

Maybe I would get invested in video games if I had a six month winter. Probably not though. There's all these things to do.

Yeah, the retirement place is just an interesting discussion because you know even when you tell people you're thinking about retiring early, everyone wants to project onto you what their vision of their own retirement is. And you know IT doesn't have to be mine and i'm i'm really comfortable with however he wanted define IT for you. And if that involves a little bit of work and a lot of play, cool.

And you know it's going to change over time. I don't know. I've seen my cohoes who retired five years ago. He's changed a lot and what what he's done and he's been able to just kind of follow the threats of interest that he has that aren't beholding to the work schedule, which is what most of us you know have to live the majority of our lives doing.

So let's talk about what you're investing in. You discovered financial dependence in twenty twenty. You were already investing in some things, did you what are you investing in? Um i'm not looking for stocks tips, although if you've got a hot one.

no where we're boring investors here. Um you know we we had always we've been hundred percent equities up until about twenty twenty one. And then you know what is doing our research thinking, uh, prime makes sense to get maybe a little bit more conservative.

Um and I know there's lots of differ opinions on that, but for us, we just thought that who made sense to kind of a dialed back a little bit presently he was in turned out IT was the worst time to get into the bond market in probably in history. Our current asset allocation is just uh eighty percent uh equities, fifteen percent bonds and five percent cash and that's just for no, the cash is just in a money market fund. The bonds are split between V G I T and B N D.

And the equalities are all in vt. I so she's like boring bogo head investing stuff. Um but you know that having the business here, I can't ignore that in this old equation because having the business income helps us just manage our cash flow here, allows us to be a little more aggressive with our asset allocation.

Then you know if you read like kids this or something, you know he would say, you know make a bonton and we didn't make a bontang. And there is a reason that we didn't do that because we can use some of the cash ful that's coming out of the business to help mitigate some of this sequence of returns risk that you face an early retirement. So yeah that's that's all I like.

So we don't have credit ard debt. Um we had a little bit student loan debt for my wife and our mortgage which we paid off in twenty twenty. Um and yeah, we kind of talk about that.

I think um it's nice not having the mortgage the additional benefit not having the mortgage in early retirement is if you ever wanted to kind of game, you know, you're magii for qualifying for A C A premium tax credit. You could do that where that can be hard for us to do. I think given what the business is earning right now, um but that's another advantage to having that taxable account that you can control income that way.

Awesome and do withdraw anything from the the portfolio at this points IT all just allowed to continue compounding because of business income.

Yeah we work as long as the business income supports our lifestyle, that's how we're going to approach IT. Um and we do have I didn't I don't think I mentioned this what we have kind of a sixty forty split between pretax and taxable assets. So we do have some flexibility in there. And at some point, we will probably do roth conversions in, in the far future, but that.

that won't be for a while. And nearly all of the after tax position has been built in last four years.

You IT what about cash?

How do you think about cash in terms of annual or monthly spending in like .

how much .

cash how much cash relative to monthly annual spending do you keep on hand as party portfolio?

We keep five percent of the total 4 in cash。 So and we just do that. So it's just kind of dry powder.

It's take take care of. You know we can have some opportunity if there's an opportunity there. We can do IT, but were not like stock pecking or anything like that are not big into cypher.

We have a small Crystal position. But it's not um it's not really even an emergency fund and and print. Maybe you'll tell me, got that, that's kind of a dumb idea. If the business is is my cash position, I should have the rest of that in the market.

Well, there's no dumb right wrong answer for cash. I I have found that entrepreneurs and focus on businesses tend to have a very large cash position in a relative sense, and often there's this completely yet. So I me just make sure is that five percent of your portfolio is in cash and how much .

is in the business in cash that it's it's one of the same for me because i'm a sole prop.

Yeah okay. One of the a of work to separate the two in their minds. So i'm glad you are on many entrepreneurs to have a lot of cash relative to other investors. If you're .

buying facebook ads, for example, or you're paying an agency, you really need that um and you've got taxes that you're saving for. So that's just something i've always held.

Yes, I got you just said there's no right or wrong answer for cash. I want to clarify or ask you to clarify, if I consider cash, then it's not in the market. It's IT can be in a like a ohio's savings account.

I might even say, you know, I could be in bonds, but I don't consider money in the stock market to be my cash because let's say that I put money in there and I don't know it's twenty twenty two and every time I put money in the next day, it's worth less. That's not that's not what i'm thinking. Cashes for, cashes for.

I need to pay something now and I could you know being, uh, I can't get IT for a month account, but I don't think I should be in an account. This expansion ib like that. What's your definition of cash?

Cash is, is, is for me money in a savings count, a checking account or in a money market account, something like that that that is truly intended to be a cash position. Um and to be clear, a five percent cash position for eric is a pretty conservative position. Let's use that two and half to five million dollar range.

You're talking one hundred and twenty five thousand to two hundred fifty thousand dollars in cash, uh, in in this particular portfolio depending on how that range shakes out. So that's a big cash position, but it's not that's not incongruent with what i've seen from a lot of entrepreneurs. R it's about one, but it's from one to two years expenses, two thousand thousand dollars expenses there. That's right on the money for what I what I would expect um for someone that based on what we ve talked about from based on on previous interactions with entrepreneurs like eric in the past. So but that I I think that's what you mean by cash, right.

eric? Yeah, I keep in money market and in my taxable broker. And it's it's I have IT in one one or two days and you know just all the spent for the business goes on just a business credit cards so we can get all more game in the points there. But um yeah the cash sits in a federal money market fund.

You don't mean a lot of people who have more than about two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in cash ah because start time to go and def D C limits. So that's another other reason folks start moving that into more, more illiquid investments at that point come of forcing mechanism there because you like okay. So eric, thanks for sharing.

All this has been a really fascinating window into your journey and congratulations and all the success in the retirement. Do you have any kind of can you can give us a preview of some of the things that you're gonna on that journey to? What do you think you're going to be doing next? Or what is the next year look for?

Yeah, the next year, my wife, I have. I mean, I was just talking about this with my cohoes to my show that um i've kind of taken work out of my schedule and I filled in in with travel. So I don't know if that's a good thing or not, but we have a very aggressive travel schedule for the next twelve months.

And you know my wife can refer to this as the period of hedonism. So we're going to have just we're gonna pray bloat out for the next twelve f once and uh and see where we land. We have we have a lot of big trips.

We have a twenty fifth wedding university coming up. So we're we have a big trip to japan that we're planning and lots of other fun things that, you know, we've been delayed because, I mean, we came back from this trip from europe in the fall here. And this typically for my wife would have been I wouldn't seen for for the next four months.

And because she's doing the opp from her job, i'm able that you'll spend time with and we're able to go hiking together and biking and all these and traveling. And so that's kind of what fill in my time with. I'm looking for the next project that i'm ably going to continue you, the podcast that i'm doing and continue making some videos for my own business without all the financial strings attached to IT and kind of .

see where that leads me. There's IT a high synergy between knowing a business and traveling a lot given the amount of money that goes through a business on a credit card, for example, have you felt that that is eating in your travel plans for two thousand twenty five at all?

absolutely. yeah. I mean, it's it's one of the great things about, you know, the government incentivises running a business. There are all kinds of tax advantages are running a business.

And so if we can run this from anywhere in the world, you know, i'm probably on not going to choose to stay in main for the next six months where it's going to be snowing hard. I'm going to prefer being on a beach in southeast dasia. So we'll see where that leads us. But yeah that's um you know that's a great benefit to having a business and being able to have your wife be your copilot.

Or how frequently are you checking in on your investments in your network and your position? A A less than I used to.

So I I think I I developed, as I said, some unhealthy habits on the death march defy there and um you know I was like a daily thing and I think probably a lot of people do that and I felt like I could control what was happening just by checking more and what I what I realized, I know I have zero control over that.

And so what we try to do is just put a really solid plan in place and just focus the things that we could control um which was you know learning more and investing um what we could and so now I just I try to resist that urge. honestly. Do I do a monthly checking with my wife? Not as much as we used to.

I would do IT probably more regularly than you would want to. But as you get to to that point where you're gonna make the transition and you know, my wife leaves her job and the health insurance there goes away and we have some things to figure out, amply checking in maybe more than than I have for the past years. So but it's it's not a daily occurrence like I used to be oh.

daily because you are just like my husband.

I know it's to say you you can relate to this, right?

I can I he still kind does, but he also enjoys IT. So I think think it's little different. If you don't enjoy check in in on IT.

then I mean when the is up, it's a lot of when it's taken a slide, it's you're Better just you're Better off just going out for a hike. That's what i've found.

Yes, that is a two statement.

We can people find out .

more about h two sides of five. That com is where I share my journey on the path to financial independence and retiring early. Um yeah it's been great speaking to you guys.

You have been part of um you probably know this but you ve been part of my virtual personal finance MBA that i've gotten. So I appreciate all the content over the years. And this is this can be a little thankless job and you you don't get to hear from people all the time, especially in a positive way.

And so I just appreciate, you know you guys sharing your experiences and all the detail you have and and the advice over the years. IT helps me get to wear i'm at now. So thank you.

Thank you so much for sharing your story. Congratulations on the success. I hope you enjoy the next couple of years and make the most of IT. It's a awesome, awesome situation you put yourself in and yeah, look forward to hearing .

about your adventures to your site.

Thank you. Thank you so much.

eric.

and we will talk to you. Suit sounds. It's got that was a, and that was a really, really fun story. I wouldn't call his story a repeated story, but it's definitely worth listening to. I think a lot of us have this idea that we want to create or start our own business. And you have this this pie in this guy dream that is going to generate all of this income for you. And eric actually did IT so he kind of one life yeah I mean.

he got a onderstand seems largely automated you back he didn't like, you know, a business like that. I I have a little bit scepticism that is as dependent on him as he said IT is. And I think that he might have a very big payday coming in a couple of years if he truly is able to be the business and he keeps the growing in this way.

So I think that he's going to have a huge Cherry on top and that this guy in juba, he is way past that into the world of fat fire. And I think that he's going to have a wonderful, wonderful situation bring over next couple years. And I think that is just another vote in favor of thinking about that business component, especially if you if you have like one, if you can do what he did, have one spouse generating income that you can live off of and the other spouse can focus on building a business.

I mean, it's just it's just a chea code on the path of wealth. If if IT works because it's producing income that whole time and it's producing this enormous equity value um that can be coming up unity that can be built so super powerful and there's a whole bunch other vantages besides the ability to set up your retirement plans, that credit card points. I mean, imagine amount money that that I spend on credit cards, an amount of travel miles that that racks up to allow to a probably travel the world for a freeze.

But I going to have money pilot up, and he's gna be spending nothing because he's got all these create points raking up. So just a wonderful situation, hopefully Sparks some ideas for folks. Although of course not everyone is going to be able to build a business like that um even if they do go out IT for ten years like eric. Um there's a there's A A lot a little bit of school, um a lot of luck and a really good on opportunity that needs to be combined.

A little bit of skill, a lot of luck, the opportunity and also the taking action he could have just said there at his daytime b and never decided to go out on a limb and see if this online thing works. I know so many people who are making so much money online, there is absolutely a ton of stuff to be, a ton of money to be made online, providing information about the stuff you already know.

So if you're thinking about starting your online business and this is your money, mom min dy saying, do IT and to the internet retirement, please please email me your thoughts that tell someone else that I don't care. Should we get out of here? We should, Scott, that rap up the episode of the bigger pockets money podcast. Of course he is the scotch ch, and I am I Johnson thing we can't linger human singer.