FI + Choose | Clint Murphy | Episode 518
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Hello, and welcome to choose vi today on the show, we have my good friend clint Murphy back for another episode here on choose of five. He joined us previously in a bookshop episode, and him and I have become really great friends in the innovating time. And we just have these amazing conversations in real life offline.

And I wanted to bring one of those conversations here to the podcast. He's recently undergone some significant changes in his real life, and he termed IT five plus pivot. That was originally what we were going to talk about.

But interestingly, we coined a new phrase on this podcast, which is five and choose or five plus choose. And I think that is going to be an enduring legacy of this podcast episode. I think not only are we choosing if I, but when you get to some degree of I, you have choice and you have almost some limited choice.

And yeah, we talk about that, we talk about simplicity. We talk about whether you actually retire or not and what a life looks like. This is really, really a wonderful in debt conversation. I think you're going to enjoy this. And with that, welcome to choose a by.

Then IT is so good to see you. It's been a couple months, so we spent a five post days together in break age colorado at a retreat which was just an absolutely amazing time. And I was just so cool that, like, I knew you from the online world, and you flew in from british columbia, I fly in from richmond. I think we bought that. Maybe struggle a little bit with the altitude, but now I was a darn good time.

amazing trip, good people, the conversations, the activities, that was all an absolute last to be able to follow that up and job on a recording with you today and really excited to have this conversation.

Yeah, friend. And yeah, I think for everybody out there why we've talked about five events, and this wasn't a five event, obviously, this was a group of friends getting together, but he was all people who knew each other through, in essence, through me and through financial dependence. And what's cool about five years generally, is when you have this one big thing in common, you have so many little things in common.

And I think that's what i've found from going to camp fires and chaocheng z and economy and going to the five freedom of treat and boy and weaving in twelve days from when we're recording this. And there's no trepidation for me when I go to these things because I know these are my people. And here, I mean, I was your first time ever really hanging out at the group of five people.

Yeah, IT immediately puts you at. So, you know, right away, I have things in common with the people that are in the room. What jumped out at me quickly was largely tear point.

How many other things we had in common. And IT makes sense that if you pursue F I, you're probably a person whose curious and a person who wants to improve in multiple areas of your life. So to hear point like we really didn't talk F I.

The entire time. no. But we talked about personal growth. We talked about self development. We talked about being a Better husband, being a Better father, being a Better man.

And all of that was so interesting to see how many people around the table had been through those journeys. And we're even running groups in silver to personal finance more along the lines of being a Better person and being a Better man in creating mense communities. There were at least two people there who had groups who did that or were involving groups who did that. So that really jumped out at me, and IT felt like that became a bit of bonding point on the journey.

Yeah, agree. And I think that's what really wonderful about not just our community, but communities like ours where people are trying to improve. And I think there's this round swell, right? Like IT doesn't feel like that.

Obviously, you sometimes can look at the world and say things are going poorly, especially if you watch the news or spend too much time, twitter or the like and the sky is falling. But then you see millions of people in these little niche communities all across the world who are trying to get Better in little way that, and it's amazing how many commonalities they have. And IT just IT feels like something special is going on. And I just love being part of IT.

yeah. In the example I would give, you know, at night, we're sitting in the hot tub and we're just having conversations in certain of those conversations Normally when and you're with a group of people that you don't really know that well, you don't steer into religion. You don't steer in the politics.

And not only did we steer into them, we made the central elements of the conversation. yeah. And so you have, what if we probably had to eight to ten people in that hot tub in rosana.

In the conversations we had in those areas were nuanced. They were reasonable, they were open, and to some extent, you'd even say vulnerable. And people were willing to have open and candid conversations on topics that would Normally be outside. Let's not venture here, but because of the level of curiosity with the people around that circle, we were able to explore them in a nuances way, coming at IT from both sides of the isle and pRobing and asking the hard questions in a way where I think everybody probably laugh with a bit of a HMM. You know, I haven't maybe thought of that that way or I I learned some things about that topic that I didn't know coming into the trip.

Yeah, totally agreed. And I think a word you used there was vulnerable. I think to me, this is a key word just for all of us in our inner personal communication and our relationships because I think so many of us are worried about being weird.

Yeah, and I use that word very specifically like, I knew I grew up like not wanting to be. I don't know, different or strange or weird. That was always the word.

And I know that who knows? Maybe that's not like a PC where I I don't get to care, Frankly, but that's the word that's always resonate with me. weird. And I think it's so interesting as you get older and as you see the world is IT those little accent tricity that make people interesting, right? Like those are the good things, yes, and we all hide them for so long, and we just want to be seen.

You want to be able to show up as you are, who you are, and be respected for IT and brad, this is a fun one for a number reasons in the company that I did work for, the word that we always used as party, right? I think you and I would say, corky, weird. Like there's a bit change ability there.

Like what are your corks? Because those are what stand out and what a lot of people loved. On my finance team, there is about thirty three of us, you know, in a company that probably had eighty people that had office. We are on a separate floor. IT was almost an entirely different culture between the two floors.

And I think on our floor, we celebrated the quirks and maybe not celebrated, but we didn't admonish or we didn't make you feel less than for being corky because we all have courts and we let people show them, be them, live them to the point where in our new shop, it's a bit of one of our values. We sort to say, hey, like it's not about what you wear. It's not about your hobby.

It's not you're out wear appearance like you're here because you live these values. You're here because you do these things. And if you have your courts, do you have your differences? Welcome home. Yes, we're okay with that because we all have us and we want you to come here and celebrate them and be a part of A A team that's going to win and not feel like you have to hide who you are.

I love that. Welcome home when you said that, I was like, oh, this energy shot through and that's what he feels like when people find fine and find our community is IT feels you're being welcomed home to a home that maybe you didn't even know existed or that IT was the right run for you but then you found your people. And yeah, what's so cool? Again, just the little things.

We had those amazing conversation. We had this whole, like when I initially thought of this trip, was like this outdoor venture trip. And we were going to do all these grand things every single day. And IT was so beautiful was IT turned into two hours at the coffee shop and then two hours in the evening in the hot. Yeah, we played as as you were the sphere head for. We played pick of all for hours every day, and we played them a owly deal board game, which became a favorite of all of eyes and was just like, who could have a vision that we would have so much fun playing monopoly deal.

But IT was, IT was awesome, was also some. The newsletter I wrote immediately after IT was was my realization on the trip was just, I called IT, a simple life in a realization that came out of that trip. And in the eye is how simple life can be and still be enjoyable.

We don't need all this money to do all these things, like how much does this cost to go play? Pick ball for six hours. You know, you and I were chatting before we started recording in. My son, now loves city, sixteen, will go to the court for six hours together.

IT took a month of him showing me that he really wanted to play before I bought him his first paddle, right? And that maybe two hundred box in the kids playing ten hours a week with me. Like, what's the advertizing on that idea? It's gonna cost like twenty five cents or use or a dime by the time the kids is done with that paddle in all of received hundreds of hours of hanging out with my son for for practically free because the court costs nothing.

We go there, we buy a certain number of balls a year and we buy a certain number of battles a year. And maybe running shoes, like the cost of that is almost zero. And yet we're going to a get hundreds, hundreds of hours of enjoyment.

And that's the simple life is like where can we maximize utility or maximize enjoyment for as little spend as possible? And that trip was an example, and I don't think any of us set out to do with that way. We were more than willing to say, let's rent mountain bikes, let's rent other boards, let's rent this.

Let's do that to your point, like let's go on these adventures. And somehow we just settled in to these activities that cost us almost nothing and gave us maximum utility. I don't know about you, but I left feeling very to borrow the the terms at the Young enz use nowadays. I left with my cup feeling very for.

I didn't know there was a Young.

and go here I might, I, I, I bodeful that I hearing in .

my friend, I hearing about IT, same, same thing. I felt like we integrated. I just, I felt wonderful. And like you said, yeah, we didn't intend to do that any means.

I thought we can spend many, many hundreds of dollars more per person doing fly fishing and ropes courses. And that would have been great. I would have been fine, you know.

But what we did was special and wonderful. And because IT evolved that way, and that was what was so cool about IT. And yeah, you talk about that time with your son. Yeah, let me think about many decades from now when you look back on your life and you're going to say, wow, my sixteen year old son spent hundreds of hours with me playing pickle on his own volition yeah and like. We got to spend that time together.

How many six hundred years old want anything to do with their parents? You know, I mean, there are a lot, many, but have a lot that don't want anything to do with their parents and your son. You tell me get somebody six or seven A M on a saturday and goes to the courts and played fig ball for hours.

That's why yeah you know he doesn't text me. There's no rent messages saying you data I love you or hey, dad, as your day on, there is a text to once or twice a week that says, hey dad, i'm getting at a football actio early today. Do you want to play pick ball? And you know, brad, because your kids in my kids are similar ages, your similar age to me.

And we both have this realization. We only have so many years left. And one of the benefits of being an attribute or being an owner run is you have the ability to say yes.

So, you know, not onna, cancel the meeting that afternoon. But if i've got an open block, I can say yes to him. IT gets dark by seven. I can come home and work after that so I can say yes and jump in my car, head home, grab the gear, minimum school, go straight to the pick ball court and beyond there at four o'clock.

Patil, seven, go home and have the night with the family and do some more work from the couch or work late the next night to make up for the the time I miss. But that is the only time he fired me. The tax.

It's never, hey, how's day it's do you want to play? Pick ball and I immediately look at my calendar and hopefully I can say yes. And then I go play.

Yeah, that's incredible. And you know, something else you mention there was about simplicity, right? And I know this is a throw line for both of us and how we think about the evolving nature of fire.

And I think as you get more financially stable and as you maybe get a little bit older, you start thinking about how can I simplify, not necessarily optimize. And well, that's not true for everybody. Of course, there are people who just love to optimize.

I am in a massive simple fiction time period. I'm just trying to I let complexity get the Better of me in a lot of aspects of life. I mean, with choose of I specifically is is the most obvious one.

I think JoNathan and i've for years tried to IT was so easy to say yes to things and really amazing things. And I think we've realized like that wasn't what we wanted to build. And maybe we took our eye off the ball a little bit on what we actually love doing, which for me is this is the podcasting.

And while doing this when I love, you know and when you start building out this massive thing, again, it's easy to say yes to things. And I know this is kind of invoke term these days, and I don't mean an and like the tech road sense, I mean the exact opposite sense. But like founders mode is something that i've heard of.

IT was fascinated, is like JoNathan and I are at this point, getting back to founders mode, where truth I is mean him specific just through kind of african eta. Over the years, we used to have a bigger team and it's kind of whistle down to more, more or less. Just mean, JoNathan, and we are having so much fun, clean like I can't even tell you like you know, he's not on the podcast right now, but he might be coming back in the near future for a little bit at least then and we're just having fun together.

IT feels like twenty seventeen and like when we founded this and he was just so exciting and like that's what IT feels like. And I think what's interesting is it's because of that getting back to simplicity and just him and I and we have an idea and he can build IT and like he's an amazing computer coder now that he's like self pot is a crazy saying in the world and like he can just build IT and like twenty four hours, we have an idea and he just build something and just it's just so much fun. I think that's what i'm i'm loving. So i'm having dad. I'm having simplicity in my personal finance world like my own life and it's just i'm on this quest to just stop doing so many things and just trying to get down to what I love.

The path to simplicity can often be complicated, but as we age, what I tend to see from people who are wealthy is as they age, they seek more and more simplicity. You know, i'd always be, and we can debate this one at nosie bread because, you know, I pursue like fat fire, like the fats fire.

That's the goal, fire time.

you know, to get there. I've always been focused on network accumulation. And what that meant is I was always pursuing higher and higher earnings and investing in a way that had higher reward, which was real estate but had heavy cash flow requirements. And my wife was always in charge of I was in charge of networks accumulation and the earnings to support IT. SHE was in charge of managing the cash, alas.

And what I never thought to ask was, did that create complexity in a way that was a stress for her? And what i've learned in the last six to twelve months in creating my job, buying a house, selling our dream house, in which Marks was how much stress i've been putting on her in the last five to ten years with the accumulation. And so part of the promise I made to her tie dissemblers ity was, listen from here on, the only investing I do is the business that will be my path to wealth, is the business i'm starting once I start paying myself salary or we mean my partners once we start paying ourselves a salary.

And then we get to the point where we're getting bonuses and distributions because we're closing homes, all of the cash that comes to me like it's years for our life paid down that do what you want to do. My investment will be the business you up to a certain number and will agree with that number is. And beyond that, lets not get crazy.

Let's just maybe we're reinvesting in the business, but that will be how we grow reinvesting in the business. And that's simple. Like I just keep putting money into that. The business grows, our net worth grows. Outside of that, you can spend like i'm not gona tell you, hey, we're buying another rental condo or we're buying a vacation cottage like you use all that money for us to live life in an uncomplicated way.

And that could include because i've always been such a fan of leverage right up until, you know, prime rate went to seven point three five percent and then all of a sudden, floating rate debt wasn't as sexy. I used to think IT became complex. And for the first time in my life, I thought I would be really nice to have our home. And all of these rental properties have no debt on them.

How nice would that be? Never, never until now that what I have told you, i'd even have thought of that I have always thought, how do I get another homework line of credit? How do I get like a line of credit on top of all these evil ocs? And how do I maximize every ounce of dead I can to get to that fatter fire faster? And now am like, hey, let's concentrate and grow in the business together.

And outside of that, let's pay down as much of this dead over time as possible so that we can live a simpler life. And it's the last two years, or even the last year, through having that conversation with her and realizing the pressure and stress he felt, which, you know, SHE just bottled up and probably went away, shed some tears that I didn't see until I really pushed IT with doing so many things in such a short window of time that IT kind of crack the name and IT all came out. And maybe there was a little resentment that maybe he felt a little little anger, a little resented towards me, and IT took me really being another for heard to let IT all out at one, and IT let me to the same path as you. Maybe I should simplify life.

Yeah, a man, there is so much that kind of and yeah, I mean, like lesson upon lesson upon lesson for people listening first. I don't know if you ever listen to this episode or or thanks for listening to choose a vy. And for all your support of our mission here, the absolute best way to support choose I is when you sign up for your next rewards credit card to use our cards pitch, I choose about a such cards.

I keep this page constantly updated, so we should always be the top resource for you. Thanks for being part of our community and for your support. Read a book, but chat.

Carson, he's a great friend of the show. He was on episode four forty six, he read a book called small and mighty reality, a mester how to reach financial freedom with fewer rental properties. And IT was just the most aligned real state and financial independence message and podcast that i've ever heard that was absolutely wonderful.

Y highly recommend that 就是 anyone who's even thinking about real city investing just as a different point of view because like you said， I think most real city of visitors think leverage is their absolute best friend and it's the only way to go. And i'm not even saying it's a terrible decisions. I'm kind of acoustic because i'm not in that world.

But I think what's fascinating hearing some of our really good friends who are high level real investors and it's Scottroswell the C E, O, bigger pockets, polar pants and child carson. These are big names in the world, and all three of them have expressed on the show a sentiment of simplicity. And yes, what is enough not? How many doors can I get? Can I have a billion dollars on paper and fair market value? Who knows how much you have in leverage? Right, right? I mean, a lot of people is just how much how much how much instead of what is enough, right?

Yeah, I think it's just an interesting we think so again, just is kind of like another aspect of your mental framework. So highly recommend that. And yeah you know you and your life in that incident is fascinating because I think clearly during those years, you were growing your network.

That's right. That's what so interesting about this journey is that it's not just this lining your thing. It's not as my net worth goes up, my stress goes down in the same fashion IT doesn't work that way because we're human beings you described and .

yeah and so ly, by then .

they went up the whole hack of a lot and I was totally unbeknown to you. That's right. Because probably from your perspective.

Things were going great, but maybe you never had that over conversation. Maybe you never realized precisely that there was even stress on her part, not less. How much exactly? right?

Yeah, I thought life is great. You know, I aren't a lot of money. We have a high network.

Life's great. What I didn't think in part of IT is right. I live in a high cost of living city. And so if we're buying homes, even if are buying a town home, right, your town home nowadays would cost to eight hundred thousand to a million dollars for a town home.

And if it's a million dollars and you're putting twenty percent down at two hundred thousand and cash, I pay fifty percent tax. So to get that two hundred thousand, I need to earn four hundred thousand. And if i'm trying to buy a property a year, that's a lot of come up with, she's the one who manages the cash loo. So all the son she's saying like like how I coming up with two hundred thousand dollars in cash a year to feed your plan.

And I just thought, well, I learning a lot like, you know, you're figured out and never thought to say, hey, like, are you okay? Are we okay? You know, should I slow down my ambitions? That that word right there is vision like, what for? What am I chasing? What am I driving at? What am I going for? Do we need IT you raise that point? Like, what is enough?

Yeah, it's hard because, right? Like, do I slow down my ambition when you said that phrase? I have like a natural little revulsion to IT. Yeah, interesting.

Ly enough because IT sounds very pointed when you say that that way, but then you immediately followed IT with but what am I doing this for? right? Like if i'm making my wife unhappy, if i'm adding stress to the household, yeah who am I doing this for? Am I trying to prove IT to somebody? I'm not putting words in my family, and I trying to prove IT to myself, and I trying to prove IT to somebody else.

I trying to be court and, quote, successful. Do I care what other people think about me? Or do I care what my wife and kids think? And the ambient stress level in my house, when the upshot of all of this is if you stop the ambition or slow the ambition down, you would still have a wonderful income and an amazing network, and you have dramatically stress, and you wouldn't need to keep doing this right?

Yeah, one hundred percent. There is elements of all of that. And i've started this habit of writing these letters to my boys, and eventually I want to record them and published them online, in video, in red word.

In part of one of the questions was, like, well, you know, like i've been on this tripped colorado with friends, and i've experiences this simple life, so why am I doing all this? In a large part of IT, I think, does come down to there is a certain of vehicle, there is a certain mental games manship, because at some point it's just fun. It's just point in a game which is scary because like, I mean, this is real life, these are real dollars, but it's like playing a real life game of monopoly to some.

And then there's also the element of my network would support a very good lifestyle in certain cities. IT won't support a very good lifestyle in the city. I'm in, in the way my wife and kids probably .

want to live.

And so we're close to family and and that's important to my life. okay. So we're saying we can use G O arbitrage, right? I can't move to the prayers or I can't move to our version of the midwest, right?

I can't move to the rust belt and take a lot of money off the table and buy a home for a very affordable Price. That immediately means what what if we rented SHE would never conceive of renting. okay?

So now I need to own a home, and I need to own IT in this city. Well, right away. That requires a certain of network just to do that. So I think part of IT is saying, okay, well, if we're going to live in this city is a family and we're going to make that decision to be here long term, then I do need a certain base level of network to afford that.

And do I think I need more because I need to set you and your brother up to eventually be able to afford IT? Because it's the same thing here is you will see in all the headlines across the us. Like if you're in california, let's compare IT to that, right? Let's compared to california, york and your kid ever want to home.

Wow, it's almost out of reach without you or me helping them. And to some extent I I think the thought exercise says, hey, it's not all you go in games manship like there's a certain level of my wonderful partner and in my kids, you all want to live here. And if we want to live here, then I need to provide a certain level of income and wealth in order for us to be able to do that.

And so I didn't feel as bad after I went through the whole thought exercise. Yeah, I was saying, hey, like this is all for a reason. Otherwise I would if I didn't build the worst because we can see that it's stressful today.

But twenty years from now, when we're in mid sixties and forty six today, twenty years from now, we should be close to mortgage free across the portfolio. And now all those properties are spitting out cash low. And you can say, hey, we've got a great life, but we wouldn't be able to afford that without the properties unless I kept work in china, the agal, they're basically working till you die.

And that seems entity al, to what we're doing in the F. I movement. So IT, let's bear the stress for a period of time so that in the future we don't have to bear the stress. And you can still live in this high cost of living city that you want to live in.

Yeah, I hear you, man. you. There were party seven things I wanted to instantly responds.

You were tagged. No, no, it's great. It's good. Somebody, it's food for thought. And I think what's fun about the conversation like this, and that's recording IT. This is a conversation we've having if we .

were on what's up or or .

sitting around in yeah as a made thing for six hours in the tender um but yeah I mean, I think this is the age old sad 5 thing and helping your kids is a decision， right? Let's be clear and there's so many assumptions built in IT like as you were talking about, obviously, I don't think this was meant to as a bad thing. I am not implying that is a bad thing.

But like you know, my wife and kids wouldn't want to live that lifestyle this so use something paraphrase that and it's like I was thinking, like the intersection of a, your son playing peg ball with you and b like the old thing of, like when our kids were like two years old and you'd get them this big fancy gift present and all that would want to do you was play with the cardboard box like some weird connection was made with me as you are saying that i've like a hundred percent right like I I wonder what your kids actually one yeah ah what's interesting is I think at the end of the day, they want you and your time. And like I think your son and am that thing, you're not providing that because this sounds like you're certainly are, which is wonder. But I think your son is showing you that by those text after a football practice yeah he's not sending IT to his bodies or or a girl that he md, he's sending a text to his dad like, hey, let's go play pack ball .

together yeah that's sure.

Like it's sure that's the stuff clean.

That's what matters. Yeah for them for the two boys, I don't think IT comes down to like lifestyle. You're you're absolutely right. It's not lifestyle for them. It's my oldest is in great to eleven now, my Youngest in grade eight. They're now in the same high school together and the oldest is like, hey, I want to graduate from this high school OK.

And the Youngest.

by the time the oldest graduates will be in great ten and he'll be like, hey, I want to graduate so the way i've looked at IT is okay. I hear you both because, you know, I brought up the idea of moving to vancouver island, which is where we're doing our real estate development on the island and homes are more affordable there. We're downsizing.

We've sold our home. We're downsizing into a towns. I could probably spend seventy five percent of what I spent on the townhouse or will when we move in and buy a single family home on vancouver island, that would be a great home for the family, but then they would have to leave this high school that they're really bought into.

And that's what I think as a family, we've agreed. You guys been in school and my mom a figure out, you know, do we live in vancouver, or do we live on the island door? Or do we live in both? You know, we have an apartment here and we have a home there. And so we can, we can be in both places at a more affordable way.

right? And what's so fascine about about what you ve been up to and and you kind of related to this very much and is and you've made some wholesale changes in your life in just the last x number of months and you've made tough decisions he like, yeah, you were a CFO very successful making a really nice income.

You viera built your dream home and now you like in this, as you call five plus vivid and I I want to hear your guide to, I want you I mean you you left the very stable job. You are now an entrepreneur along with business partners. You sold your dream home.

I mean this I don't know that you give yourself credit, Frankly, enough credit because that's not easy whether you did the G O ara. Charge to the praia. As you know you know in canada, like you downside significant, you made a choice.

There would be really, really tough for a lot of people. And I don't think you gave yourself anywhere near enough credit for IT. And and that's hard, but that's part of I mean, honestly, I think that's part of the fun of life and how you view IT up like this is something you want to do.

Your sort would like to hear you talk about your your business and all the possibilities and the different development you're going do. Like I got bit into IT. Like I want to learn more. You could tell we talk .

to Better for hours. Yeah, that's true. And I give my wife a lot of credit for coming on the journey, right?

Because it's not easy for her to say, yeah, I believe in what you're doing. I believe they'll be successful. Let sellar house. And for those who are, are listening, like when we say dream house, you know of course, if IT was dream like IT would probably be slightly .

to the .

west and IT would be in a different IT was tty close and i'd say a dream because we actually designed IT, right? We designed IT in partnership with A A design firm. But like our hand and fingerprint was like on every light, every door handle.

So, so take us. And so, yeah, I was a dream home. And the decision, I probably did IT all in the wrong order, bread.

And I learned that in a hindsight, but I IT worked out the decision was in IT was a hard decision at the firm I was at. I mean, I was getting close to seven figures in pay and bonus. And so that's hard to thrown away. But I was a bit miserable.

In part of that is when we talked about at the start of the show, like the curiosity, the personal growth, the self development, that is who I am at my core, like learning and growth are my number one value is all about learning and growth. And when you're in the same role for eleven years that learning and growth can to disappears. That's right.

It's ground hog. I referred to IT is like ground hog weeks or ground hog months, right? It's like weak one.

I do this. We do. I do. This week three, I reviewed the casual. Week four, I have the casual meeting. Week five, you know, you kind of rinsing, repeat the days, months, weeks, quarters, years. And so that became hard to do.

And so the the journey to entrepreneurship was to say, hey, what is F I epithet look like? F I epithet is the concept that all hit a certain number that will afford me freedom. But a debate a lot of people have in a big believer in us having this conversation in the fire community is purpose, meaning and how that is into retirement.

Because for so many of us, we don't actually want to retire, but we do believe were part of the fire movement. We do believe that we're part of F I. We just don't want to retire for various reasons. And for me, one of the main reasons is I look a lot at a lot of people in retirement, and I would say the majority of people I see in retirement seem a bit miserable, and they seem like they're on that slow path to death.

Is that standard retirement .

necessarily in the fire community? Because I think we probably approach life a little differently. But like you look at, sorry, moment and dad, but you know, you look at mom and dad and you are like, well, you kind of just watch T V day.

You like, your excitement is coming to watch your grandkid play. Foobar, like, where's the living? And I look at someone like charlie monger or warm buffet.

Charlie passing a way just shy of his hundredth birthday, warn, I think, is close to his hundreds birthday. And I look at that and say, well, what are they doing differently? I don't think you'd say either is retired. I also don't think you'd say they're both working full time, but they're working in a way that gives them enough meaning and purpose that IT keeps their brain engaged. And so what is that path that allows me, in my sixty seventies eighties to work a certain number of hours a week with partners who I enjoy being around?

That chAllenges me intellectually, allows me to maybe meet with Young people in my my industry and have those, you know, I have my lunch spot in a restaurant where i'm meaning with a Young person for couple hours a day, just a talk shop, help them on their career. And i'm integrated by doing IT and I designed my dream building. And it's like we sell the residential or we have rental residential above and you have commercial at grade and that commercial at grade includes a restaurant, our office.

Uh jim with you know, sam is a nice bus. So it's like you spend a half a day there, have a day working, you get your work out in, you have lunch with Young people and then the rest of the day is with your family. And it's like, I think if I had that in, the amount of fiction you could take is kind of unlimited cause you're at that stage in life or you're more of an active shareholder than an active manager.

I think if I had that life that could feel me into my hundreds, if I retired and I had to come up with like, what is my day look like every day from retirement on, I don't think I could last as long. And so I want to to build a business that affords me that. And so that's why I say, if I am pivot, yeah like we could geo arbiters go somewhere and be fine for the rest of our lives.

Or I could pip IT to entrepreneur ship by selling the house in downsizing into the townhouse. What that allowed me to do, brad, the decision there was, I didn't want to approach entrepreneur ship from a place of fear. So by selling the house and downsizing to the townhouse, we take a significant amount of debt off the table.

For simplicity, say, a million dollars in debt gone. It's a lot of payment sitting year that I don't need to make now. And we take a significant amount of cash and put IT in our genes that cash will afford me not to have to work for you. So I have at least one year to build up runway to get income from the business to support lifestyle. And then I probably have a further two to three years in my retirement savings account that I could draw down if I had to till allow the business to succeed.

right? So I will give you some one way i'm .

giving myself runway. I think i've built three years of runway with zero salary to grow the business. That's what I wanted to do with all those decisions.

And that's why i'm not becoming an entrepreneur of forty five. I wanted to reach a level where I could say i've got three to five years, and I think I could stretch IT to five. I have three to five years where I don't need turning come from the business and I will be OK and that's kind of where we're at. yeah.

I mean, I love the framework. You can certainly know that. And I think I think the vivid I mean, I did a pivot is a similar I will be yeah slightly nuance, but similar in the sense that when I left my corporate job, I was not technical financial dependence.

We were well down the path, certainly, but I was I was not a burn the boats moment where I said i'm going all in on entrepreneurship. I'm just starting a business from scratch and i'm gonna figure IT out right for me. IT was okay.

I started to build a little personal finance side on the side. I realized, oh, I can help people with travel rewards using credit points to travel. And, oh, I can make a little bit of money from this.

And h, what would happen if I had, instead of four hours a week to do this? So ten hours a week, if I had forty to sixty hours a week? yes.

So I believed in myself, I bet on myself. So I mean, to me, that is, in essence, this five post bible and IT gave myself options. I knew the worst case scenario was I could always go back to being a CPI, right? Like that was literally the worst case scenario.

And you and I both worked at similar firms. It's amazing how many similarities we have in our lives. But you know, I think sorry, I think full agreement on that.

I think there's a semantic argument when IT comes to like retirement. And I think this is why I think people are not you and I certainly, but people get entuned in their little camps of not understanding. And this goes back to like what you said about when we were in the hot to and we're having these really deep conversations, and that's cool.

When people actually talk, you can find common ground. And I think there's what I get frustrated with these arguments on the internet is we agree ninety nine percent. I had an an argument about this recently robber ger who's the friend of show had uh youtube video seven reasons that never ever retire and you know, Frankly, I even look at IT because he just seemed a little cookbook, even even though he's a very legit guy.

But I responded in the faceless person. He said, with the entire universe of available options, you ify, I suspect you can run down to approximate zero percent of people who would pick their current job over every other thing they could possibly do with their time. IT just defies all logic to think otherwise. No, I don't think you're sit and be unproductive. But to think that of the billions of options for what you could do with your time that you pitching, hold yourself to the one job for forty waking hours a week out of hundred and twelve waking hours seems lapham and right, like that's spute on.

Almost no one would do that.

And I think this is one of my most first things that I haven't come up with. The right messaging for quin is people like to argue in anecdo and he bothers the hacker of me. And again, I haven't come up with the right way that people understand this, but like to almost anything in life.

There's a half, a percent or one percent of things that that go against the other ninety nine percent. So in my mind, if ninety nine point x percent of things are true, then it's always true in esson. Like I ran down to zero for that because there is always another for every every single .

warn buffet would say, well, no, continue doing what i'm doing and you're like, well, like, okay, like fifth Richard guy in the world who does whatever the hockey wants and he might .

love IT and that's great. And there might be a teacher, like a teacher, actually, when I was finding to me, I was like, it's amazing that you love teaching. IT is amazing that of the billions of jobs you found, the one that you are not uniquely suited for, and that just light you up.

That is wonderful. But please understand how wear that is because for the rest of us, we didn't just fall backwards into the perfect job at twenty three years old and stayed in IT for our entire working career. Like sure doesn't work that way, right? So I think people are deluding themselves.

Is my actual issue that like you might like your job, you might really like your co workers? That's wonderful. I'm not arguing that every job is that. I've never argued that never, ever, ever.

But I think if you are intellectually honest and if you have any degree of introspection, that of the other billions of things you can do with your hundred and twelve waking hours, that if you were to not work at that job, you know, if you win in and White your slay clean, there is no way that you would pick of those hundred and twelve waking hours to pick forty plus of them to work at that job. I find IT laughed ably silly to even imagine that more than one out of a thousand people would would fit that bill. And that again, rounds to zero for me.

But IT doesn't. They were being unproductive, like exactly what you describe, that even your your little slm there and that you i'm going to build this thing. I'm going to have Younger people that I can mentor.

I'm going to work out and i'm going to go like that's anta tic that's not sitting around. It's this picture we have in our head of retirement being waste away on a couch. Nobody wants to waste away on a couch.

nobody. He's arguing for that. If you think you got he's arguing for that.

You're an idio. Nobody is arguing for that, right? Let's be clear one hundred percent.

You maybe we can get some research on this from someone. If you look at anyone who want to lottery over, let's pick an artsy number, ten million dollars. How many of them are still in the job today that they were in when they won the lottery? I would argue you're probably, to your point, close to zero. And IT just tells you right there, people win life changing money. And not surprisingly, we call IT life changing money because they change their lives.

And so for most of us, if we had life changing money in our bank account and for everyone, life changing money to different number, right? And that's part what you've talked about probably over the years so many times is like, what's your number? But a simple one would be to say, if you had ten million dollars, would you be viewing tomorrow what you're doing today? And I think for the vast majority of people, the answer would be no one hundred percent of line with you on that one.

And to me, that's OK like it's not it's not giving up. It's not capital. It's not saying your life is bad. Listen, we're all working as a means to an end.

And this, for most of us is financial dependence is to get to the point where you can do what you want with your time. And that's great. And listen, I think, clint, what a lot of people are worried about in a deep seated lizard part of their brain is they're worry about being bored.

They're worried about being, quote and quote, unproductive, right? Like they're worried about what are other people going to think they're worried about having that backslide into sitting on a couch for sixteen hours a day? Like and I understand that, but to mean that because you're so worried that you're just going to keep working in a job that you're tolerating or maybe even like to some degree, it's fundamentally misunderstanding the amount of choice you have in life. There are so many things to do, and by pursuing five, you have the option to do those things and 可能 you see IT in little ways， right? Like, yeah, you can go play quick ball with your time totally.

Yeah like when I designed my perfect day. Like that's a big part of IT. I'm gna do a little bit of a play on the name of the podcast in the idea of F I.

pivot. Because what IT really comes down to bread is F, I and choose. So we choose F I, so that eventually when we hit F I, we have choice.

And so people can F, I and choose, and they can choose how they want to live their life on a daily basis. And IT can be full retirement. IT can be not full retirement.

IT can be bis. A IT can be coastal. IT can be fat. IT can be lean. It's all about getting to a number to give you choice and then choosing. And I I think an important concept to you and me is this idea of intentionality.

IT is doing the introspection, doing the deep thought, to say, what does a perfect life look like to me? And i've realized for me its intellectual stimulation. So I want to have my podcast, I want to be writing my newsletter.

I want to be going on trips with you in in people like you, like we did to denver to have deep conversations to spur my thinking to do athletics like we hiked to figure colorado fourteen year. That was a like. It's not we didn't do any athletic like that was an venture.

And and I want to do that stuff. And I want to travel the world with my wife, and I want to see so many different countries, and I want to learn their languages and live their culture. And I want to make sure that when i'm home, I do not choose to do that coach lifestyle, which is why i've designed this idea of this half day adventure in this office that I ve built.

And then outside of that, i'm playing pickle and i'm hanging out with my family and i'm reading books and i'm talking the interesting people. That's all I want to do in life. And if I can do that for the rest of my life and I can build a wealth that allows me to choose that, that's the goal. That's the pitt is F. I. And choose.

do I love that? I think I want to remain the podcast. That's what IT is.

yes. Choose if I to give you maxim choice .

yeah you're both choosing F, I. And then when you are F, I or whatever you define IT as IT gives you this amount of choice that you have never had in your life before, ever, ever, ever.

And you may choose, to your point, there may be that few percent of people out there who choose to do what they're do, right?

And that's fine. Wonderful ones.

Already in the right spot.

you hit the jackpot already. So if you're sitting out there and you're for some weird reason grumbling and you want to write me him, I like i'm a person and I love my wonderful nobody y's arguing about that. You are so thrilled for you, right? Like think about a world where you really essentially looked into this job that you truly love.

You're adding value. It's adding value to you. That's amazing. Never give that up. Nobody's arguing. You have to ever no matter how many millions of dollars you have in the bank due as much as you want of that like you we've reference so and a monger like they obviously weren't going to stop. There were more billions.

And you could possible imagine why would they ever stop what they're doing? They've built a life that they love. You would be .

insane to exactly. yeah.

And you know, in a good natured way, I want to kind of push back. And you and as like I thought, exercise maybe for outside of the post is like you both described this, I think there's an intersection here of of how you're describing like this ultra fat file that you want. But the life that you actually want doesn't cost very much.

I'm i'm really battling that a lot lately. Part of IT is I know that like when we go to lost vegas and we're walking by the clothing stores and I mean, it's gonna ound, so potentially right? And so, like, I walk into like genia and i'm like, oh my god, these suits are so beautiful.

And H, I would love down on one of these. It's like, what? How many of them do I really need? I'm only gna wear so many clothes.

Like, what if I bought two of them? Yeah, I only like to wear navy. So what if I bought two navy or a navy suit in a nice navy sports at?

Okay, that would set me back a lot of money. But i'm gonna do that every year. So again, even if I had these indulgences, do I need all this money? And the answer for sure is no.

The answer for sure is no. So somewhere in there, I probably will hit a number, and I may start the journey with my shareholders to go from active manager to active shareholder sooner. Somewhere in that fifty five to sixty.

So I need to, with my partners, build a very, very successful real estate development company over the next decade. And in fairness, it's okay to do that because I actually enjoy IT like building a company, building a culture, building homes. There is no issue with that. I enjoy IT, but from a network perspective, I can probably get to the number that affords me the life style I want to live for the rest of my life faster than I think, and it's probably a lower number than I anticipate. And if that's the case, maybe I stop solar.

Or to our point, if i've designed and this is the fun part, if i've designed IT in a way where I love what i'm doing and I love going into the office and I love being involved in the business, the way i'm involved and as a shareholder, as an owner, as a partner with my partners, I talk about this intentionality with them a lot. I talk about as we grow the business, we need to design our rules in a way that we're doing the aspect of the business eighty percent of the time we're focused on what we love in, twenty percent of the time will deal with ship we don't want to deal with like that's life. But eighty percent of the time we're doing what we love enough, we can design our roles in that way.

None of us will not want to do what we're doing. And then we hire around us to support the other stuff, right? And so perhaps I get there sooner.

But ideally, what i've done bread is i've designed IT in a way intentionally coming back to our intention. I've designed in a way where i'm not rare person who emAiling you and saying, well, brad, actually a guy, I love what i'm doing. And I built IT in a way where I can go play, pick and I can travel. And I love IT in the office.

right? And I would love, obviously, I get emails and message from you more optimistic. I would love to get that email from you.

I have email a decade from now saying, hey, remember, that was reporting. We did that twenty, twenty four. I did IT like, how cold would that be? But I think I think it's the intention that matters.

And at its essence is what we're talking about here because you are with ice wide open, trying to build this framework of a job where you and your partners can each work on, a, what you love, and b, presumably your zones of genius, like the area where you add, why would you to leave a job, is not A, B, build something that's a passion of yours that you add value to, that you are earning a nice income from, obviously. And you're building something. So you're getting. Significant equity family like what would ever poseuse you to stop that if it's not infringing ing on your life, it's just part of a holistic life that you built over a fifteen and twenty year year per hit like IT would be beautiful to walk away from that .

and you do in a way that's fairly each partner so you say, hey, like how do our hours tie to our pay? How do we set IT up so that we can each do IT by a certain age like, hey, I be the oldest, but i'm not going to be the last, right? So what is that age where we all want to do? And and I learned this from a shareholder in my class shop where he called IT, you maybe not retiring, but I want to work differently.

And i'll hit an age where I want to work less hours and he's almost describing what i'm describing and i'm getting that from seeing him do IT. And i'm learning that there's a path like i'm having these conversations with my partners now to say, hey, guys, like when I hit sixty somewhere in that fifty five to sixty, that don't mean i've been pushing hard with you guys for ten to fifteen years and pushing hard at this level for ten to fifteen years. In fairness, i've kind of already been doing this for a decade as a CFO of one of the larger development shops.

When you push that hard for twenty to twenty five years, you get tired and you guys are going to get tired when you're there. So how do we set ourselves up so that we can do this? Because if i'm the first, then you will benefit from the path i'm taking.

If we set that path up in a fair and reasonable way, we're not only setting up a path for me. We're setting up a path for you and for you. And so let's have these conversations along the way so that when we get there, no one surprised. And let's start with the end in mind because that's the only way we've got to be intentional about the future so that we can work back to what we need to do today .

to get there right. Start at the end of mine is so important. And I think what a lot of people don't realize is, like when you do at any type of arrangement or contract like this, if you will, Operating agreement among the partners or even as people sometimes talk about with the precipice, al agreements like and that kind of a site tangent, but this specifically with the Operating agreement. So our partnerships is you're trying to understand eventualities, how you want them to be, but also realizing things can go self and go bad and in a lot of senses.

And and we from this very sober and positive same point today are trying to think through like things can work out different ways here and we need to think about this because we're all like, in your case, we're all not going to just merely work forty to sixty hours a week for the rest of our lives like, yeah, why would you build a business to do that IT doesn't your shackling yourself for no reasons and you it's funny. Friends of hours built a dental practice with this is years ago and and i'm not sure hopefully this this abram agreement didn't actually come to pass. But Laura and I were a gas when we learned that I was like they basically went off on their own to build this gentle practice with two other partners.

And they put into the agreement, the partnership agreement, that they had to be actively involved until they were sixty four years old. And at that point they were in their thirties. And I was like, are you out of your mind like if you build this amazing dental practice and you're saying, like, you could hire a dentist to actually do your job for fraction of IT, and you wanna just stop working at forty eight, fifty, fifty five, even like you are literally when you in your mid thirties writing into an agreement, you have to work until you're sixty four.

Like client, i've never I had to bite my tongue, obviously, because you can't tell people there acting emotionally, but like from my five sensibilities and like this is crazy. You have to rip this this ever angry. Now this makes a sense.

It's common. And I mean, in fairness, the agreement I have doesn't even have an age IT just has a requirement that as a shareholder, you have to be actively involved as an employee in the business or is affiliated companies. Now i'm OK with that language because everything in agreement in any agreement has the idea of attaka and say unless agreed otherwise, it's implicit in any agreement you ever sign.

It's not in writing, but everything in any agreement ever isn't less agreed otherwise unless mutually agreed, others st. So what what does that mean? That means that one don't be an right to add tremendous value to your partners personally, professionally and financially help them become Better people, help the company become a Better company and help everybody get rich.

If you do those two things, when you start to approach those periods in life, you can have those to say, hey, here's where a mad in life. Here's what i'm thinking. Let's come up with something reasonable and let's negotiate what the future looks like.

And if your partners are wealthy and you've been a bit contributor to that in ideally, they've been a big contributor, you being wealthy and you've all made each other Better people and you've all built a company together, that's amazing generally, if they're the right people, which ideally you sourced in creating your partnership, you're going to have that conversation that says, hey, let's be fair and reasonable people. What does a good future look like for you recognizing that I want same good future for me when I get there? So in my agreements with my partners that I have today, that language isn't necessarily there, but the conversations are happening.

You know, let's say i'm forty six. The next Young gest is forty forty one. The Young gest is thirty six. So we're all in a different stage in that path will get to the same spot. So those conversations will happen over time.

And I think hopefully in a way that allows everybody to F I N choose and we choose to be together in various capacity. For example, maybe somewhere along the way, the developing business is kicking off, taking names and we fired great people. And then I say, hey, as we approach or later years, it'd be great for the three of us, four of us, to have an income portfolio that pays us dividends.

So if we do stop being in the day to day business, we have cash allow because part of moving from active management attack of shareholder or maybe there is four hours a day of management. Well, it's fair that you're paid a lot less than the guy who is there every day. okay.

Well, now my cash for is gone. So what if I go build an income portfolio that replaces that cash low? Now my job becomes managing an income potfuls lio and building out that world, which will be labor intensive for the decade that I build IT.

But once it's built, that world is a lot less labor intensive than a development world. So how about I built that with and for you guys, and then I managed that in a fifty percent capacity, still involved touching the development world. I'm more active in the income world, but IT requires a lot less activity. What does that look like for all of us? So there are ways to do IT in a way .

that everybody wins. Yeah, i've loved that. And while everyone listening obviously is not in the real city development world, but the the lessons that you just pass along are the critical ones, right? So it's a build relationships. Just be a good person.

a person help .

people out look to like build those relations of over years, but then also understand the way that incentives work. And you're both doing things for you but you're then setting the stage for, hey, this is going to help you out as well when IT comes time for that to be your stage of lives. So you're helping them in a stage of their lives where they don't even realize they're going to want that potentially.

But you know it's coming quickly. Yeah, I think that you have five plus shoes and claim that is pretty, pretty. Don't go.

Yes, I love IT. You've coined a new phrase. So are my friend. I think to me that feels like the perfect stopping point.

I think that just what about on IT? This was an amazing conversation, was I would love to have you back on as many times you gone. And yeah, that was so cool about five, about conversations like this is they can go any which way. And I mean, we have topics for for many future days. So again, my friend.

thank you for me here. Yeah, I love having conversations with you, like talking with you like we just did, to your point, is like one more sitting in the airport. And we did that for, what? Four, five, six hours together. And we just did this, know we chat for most of that time, and I felt just like this. So this is a really fun and wonderful experience and definitely look forward to doing this .

morality in the future. Okay, big shot out to the capital one lounge in denver airport. Spent multiple meals there.

Super value. Get that card. I think there is a deal on IT at the time we were in IT. If I was american, I would have got the card in a minute.

Yeah, I use my capital one venture eh. You get get the capital one launch. It's awesome. So anyway, clint, where can people find you? So we talk before twitter is your X I suppose now your big thing.

access the biggest, the number one spot is the growth dot guide. The growth dot guide, that's the website. And that gives access to the podcast, the newsletter, the social media.

The algorithm is, you know is pretty crazy on x right now. Linked in seems to be a spot that's growing at a faster rate then twitter and it's a lot less crazy over there. But we are on x and linked dinner to biggest platforms.

wonderful. And yeah, I can vouch certainly for your podcast and the news letter, those are chemist for me every week. So yeah, the growth that guide you'll have that in the in the shown that certainly yes.

I am my friend .

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