Navigating Finances in Relationships
Episode 167

00:00:00 Jonathan: You're listening to ChooseFI. The blueprint for financial independence lives here. If you're looking to unlock the secrets to financial independence and early retirement, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and join a community of like-minded people who are getting off the hamster wheel and taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial independence. ChooseFI, your home for financial independence online.

00:00:43 Jonathan: All right, welcome to the show on today's episode. What does it look like when you are maybe trying to repair or clean up a decade plus worth of financial baggage and you're actually entering into a relationship where your spouse is not totally on the same page and you need to come towards a common goal together? I think this episode has so much value for us and for our audience, and I think today what we're getting the opportunity to do is really learn how Rob and Rayshawn, how they implemented this plan, Learn, Hustle, Grow. Very excited about the episode. To help me with this, I have my co-host Brad here with me today. How you doing, buddy?

00:01:25 Brad: Hey, Jonathan. I'm doing quite well. Yeah, we had the good fortune of meeting them at FinCon and I got to see some amazing travel rewards pictures and my curiosity was piqued right there. I knew I wanted to have Rob and Rayshawn on just because of that, but then I dove into their story and it is extraordinary. So this is going to be a fun one, everyone, for sure. So with that, Rob and Rayshawn, welcome to ChooseFI. What's up, guys?

00:01:48 Rob: Thanks for having us.

00:01:49 Rayshawn: Great job pronouncing my name, Brad. I appreciate that.

00:01:50 Brad: How about me? No credit?

00:01:54 Rob: I was off?

00:01:55 Rayshawn: You were off slightly.

00:01:56 Brad: Oh, okay. That was my subtle way of saying it.

00:01:59 Jonathan: I hear you. Best version. Give me a free pass here because I w...

00:00:00 Jonathan: You're listening to ChooseFI. The blueprint for financial independence lives here. If you're looking to unlock the secrets to financial independence and early retirement, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and join a community of like-minded people who are getting off the hamster wheel and taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial independence. ChooseFI, your home for financial independence online.

00:00:43 Jonathan: All right, welcome to the show on today's episode. What does it look like when you are maybe trying to repair or clean up a decade plus worth of financial baggage and you're actually entering into a relationship where your spouse is not totally on the same page and you need to come towards a common goal together? I think this episode has so much value for us and for our audience, and I think today what we're getting the opportunity to do is really learn how Rob and Rayshawn, how they implemented this plan, Learn, Hustle, Grow. Very excited about the episode. To help me with this, I have my co-host Brad here with me today. How you doing, buddy?

00:01:25 Brad: Hey, Jonathan. I'm doing quite well. Yeah, we had the good fortune of meeting them at FinCon and I got to see some amazing travel rewards pictures and my curiosity was piqued right there. I knew I wanted to have Rob and Rayshawn on just because of that, but then I dove into their story and it is extraordinary. So this is going to be a fun one, everyone, for sure. So with that, Rob and Rayshawn, welcome to ChooseFI. What's up, guys?

00:01:48 Rob: Thanks for having us.

00:01:49 Rayshawn: Great job pronouncing my name, Brad. I appreciate that.

00:01:50 Brad: How about me? No credit?

00:01:54 Rob: I was off?

00:01:55 Rayshawn: You were off slightly.

00:01:56 Brad: Oh, okay. That was my subtle way of saying it.

00:01:59 Jonathan: I hear you. Best version. Give me a free pass here because I was trying really hard. Where did I go off the rails?

00:02:05 Rayshawn: Re.

00:02:06 Rob: Re.

00:02:07 Rayshawn: Re.

00:02:08 Rob: Did I say Re?

00:02:09 Rayshawn: No, no.

00:02:10 Rayshawn: Did I say Ray?

00:02:11 Jonathan: Play the tape.

00:02:12 Rob: Yeah, you said it, Ray. We even practiced before we went on Skype.

00:02:19 Rayshawn: I got my own way.

00:02:20 Jonathan: There it is. Okay. So, first off, it's not perfection. That's our motto.

00:02:25 Rayshawn: That's right, Ray. You guys are coming from slightly different places, and at the same point, as you're getting into a relationship, you realize that you've got to find common cause. Rob, I'd love to start with your story, your money story before this marriage. Where were you coming from financially?

00:02:40 Rob: Wow. How far do you want me to go back? Grew up extremely poor. I ended up trying to find my way out of a bad situation from a child, as far as money. I knew I was always poor, just looking at other kids around at school and stuff like that. So, first chance I got, I said I was going to join the military. I was kind of proud of the Marines. I used to see the commercials. I went into the delayed entry program, joined the Marines, and I said, you know, if anyone can teach me how to be a man, help change my life, it'll be these guys. That's how it started.

00:03:12 Rob: When you join the military, I mean, obviously, that's an incredible level of personal sacrifice that's involved. But at the same point, the military does offer incredible compensation, especially if you're going in younger as an 18-year-old. You have no expenses, and you have a lot of income. If you have a plan, it should be very easy to set aside a significant amount of money. But I know for most individuals, that's not the case.

00:03:36 Rob: No, sir. I had no plan. My plan was only to get away from Portsmouth, Virginia, and just try to change the life that I saw around me every day. It was just a bad time, drug time, and all that stuff, and I was living right in the middle of that. I was like, I can't live like this. I know this is not for me. I know there's a better life out there somewhere. I joined the Marines, and I said, just take me wherever you guys want me to go, and that's what I did. A money situation, that's a whole different thing, but I didn't get on board with that at all. I was just blowing everything I had when I was 18, 19 years old.

00:04:11 Brad: He was making it rain, guys. It was the summer of George.

00:04:13 Jonathan: Rob, you mentioned the delayed entry program. Tell me a little bit about that. We're always looking for these actionable tips.

00:04:23 Rob: Okay. So the first Marine guy I saw come to the school, I saw him in the cafeteria. I mean, he just looked up his nails, and I was like, man, now that's what a real man looks like is what I thought at the time, and I kind of still think that, but he was there. I was in the 11th grade, so he couldn't technically talk to me. He was saying, hey, man. I was like, hey, how can I get into the Marines, and he was like, well, kid, are you a senior? I said, no. He said, okay, well, you would have to go through a situation called the delayed entry program.

00:04:55 Rob: I said, oh, okay. How do I do that? He said, you have to sign up now. You have to get your parent to sign or whatever, and then when you're done, when you graduate, then you can come in, and then I said, okay, so I set it up, talked to my mom. She was all for it, and I signed up early, so he was just waiting. They know who to send in. They can split test that.

00:05:19 Jonathan: All right. I'm actually curious here if we were going to take a look at your story in comparison. Your money story, I know you said that you were a little bit farther ahead of Rob on this path. What's a little bit of compare and contrast there?

00:05:36 Rayshawn: Rob and I actually have extremely similar backgrounds. We both grew up poor. We were both born to single moms, teenage single moms, in fact, but in completely different places in the country. I am originally from Chicago, Illinois. Like Rob, I wanted to have a better life, but my initial path was just knowing that I would go to college. I was a really good student and had great teachers who encouraged me, but my mom couldn't afford to pay for school. There was no way. By the time she was 19, she already had two kids.

00:06:10 Rayshawn: When I decided I wanted to go to college, I saw the commercial, Be All You Can Be, join the United States Army. We do more before 9 a.m. than most people do all day. I was on board with that, went in, took the ASVAB. I was 17. They said, okay, you are too young. You're going to need your mom's permission. My mom said, oh, I don't think you should do this. I said, well, if you don't sign now, then I'll go after my 18th birthday. I was pretty independent at that age, I suppose, and she agreed to sign. I was off to basic training.

00:06:45 Rayshawn: I turned 18 during training, so imagine that for a birthday.

00:06:51 Jonathan: Yeah, wow. How long were each of you in the military for?

00:06:54 Rayshawn: I was in the U.S. Army Reserves, so that is six years, what they call active status. The reserves is two weeks in the summer and one weekend per month, but you go through the same basic training as the active duty team does.

00:07:10 Rob: I went through active duty, basic training, then I came home and began college. I did four years.

00:07:15 Rayshawn: I was four years, and they sent me immediately to Japan, so I did that and then bounced around a little bit.

00:07:23 Jonathan: Yeah, yeah. He was full-time.

00:07:25 Rayshawn: Yeah, I was active the whole time, the whole four years. Yeah, so I'm curious about your financial picture actually coming out of the military and maybe as you're thinking about that, because you both kind of stated you didn't have this money plan at that particular point. What could it have been if you had some of the information you have now?

00:07:43 Rob: Oh, God. It's just like that thing they say, hey, the worst thing you've ever done in your life that you think about, you should have, this is my biggest one. I went to the military. After I got out of the military, I knew by the time my four years was up what I wanted to do with my life. At first, I had no clue, but by the time I was getting out, I knew I wanted to get into IT. IT was really blowing up, and that was 98. I was like, okay, when I get out, I'm going to be a computer guy. I didn't know how many computer types of people there were, but I said, I'm going to get into computers. That's where the money is.

00:08:11 Rob: I got out. I could not find a job immediately. I struggled because I had a communications background in the military. It was called a field radio operator, so I was the guy with the radio on his back, the one that they say has three seconds to live on the battlefield because everybody's going for me. Anyway, I got out. I thought I was going to be in IT. I struggled to get a good job. I worked at Costco, UPS, all these odd jobs. Then I finally got into school, but I blew it, guys, because I got the GI Bill, signed up for the GI Bill. I was living in San Diego, by the way. I ended up after the military in San Diego, and it's very, very expensive there.

00:09:09 Rob: I blew the money by living lavishly, I guess if you want to call it lavish, not lavish in San Diego, but nicer than the average person, getting a bigger apartment, living closer to the water, all that, with the GI Bill money because they gave it to me cash. They would just give it direct deposit instead of using it towards school. I was going to school, but I wasn't using the money. I was deferring the payments until I graduated. I graduated, and then I had all this money that I owed when I could have just been paying this off along the way if I would have had the mindset back then, which I did not, early 20s.

00:09:31 Brad: You were getting this money from the GI Bill, but yet taking out student loans? What was the money that you owed at that point?

00:09:39 Rob: Yes, exactly. I was taking ... They were sending me a check every month, and it was supposed to be covering ... You get the school student loans, and then the GI Bill is supposed to cover the loans, but instead, I was acquiring the loans, and I was using the money on my daily expenses.

00:09:59 Rayshawn: Right. You got a 23-year-old, you know, he'd get all this money every month and, and working. I was working and getting, I was just kind of just living life in San Diego, you know, making it rain, right. Got me a new car, you know, going out saying hi to girls and hanging out with my boys every, you know, other Marines or, or former Marines. And like I said, I blew it.

00:10:21 Jonathan: Yeah, I know. And I think that kind of sets us up because I mean that your story where you're kind of on this path towards financial independence and freedom really begins, you know, as a couple, but you, from a financial perspective, it seems like both of you, although you made like some really awesome big decisions, the small stuff didn't fall in place and you kind of lost that decade. And as you're approaching your early thirties, you're more or less in a process of cleanup. And I'm just curious, you know, you guys meeting as a couple, what were you bringing into it? And from a mindset perspective, what did it take to get on the same page?

00:10:53 Rayshawn: So Rob told you about how he acquired his student loan debt. I joined the Army Reserve to help pay for college. Then I took out student loans that were necessary during that course of that time. And I graduated from college seven months pregnant. So the student loans...

00:11:07 Jonathan: Podcast Extro: You've been listening to ChooseFI Podcast, where we help middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.

00:00:00 Podcast Intro: You're listening to ChooseFI. The blueprint for financial independence lives here. If you're looking to unlock the secrets to financial independence and early retirement, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and join a community of like-minded people who are getting off the Instagram and taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial independence. ChooseFI, your home for financial independence online.

00:11:15 Speaker 1: Probably wouldn't have been that big a deal. It was about $11,000. I took 10 years to pay it off as required. I graduated with my son and relocated to Texas for a lower cost of living. So I began working in Chicago. It was really expensive to raise a child there and to live in a decent neighborhood. I was given the opportunity to relocate to Texas. And here in Texas is where Rob and I met. He's from Virginia. I'm from the Chicago area. And coming here allowed us both to start over and to have a better cost of living. That was a big portion of the process.

00:11:55 Jonathan: So Rishona, I'm curious what that looks like when you graduate college. You're trying to get your first job. You're trying to make your way in the world. And you have this young son. There are so many people out there listening who are single moms who are in similar positions. And I'd love, with the benefit of hindsight, if you could look back and give some advice to those people.

00:12:18 Speaker 1: So I went through the interview process. So I was graduating. I was still a good student in college. I was graduating and going through the interview process on campus. I would say, you know, go to those job fairs that they offer on campus. And I was getting bigger through the interview process. So if you've ever interviewed for a corporate job, you know, there are multiple phases of the interview. So I'm doing great. I'm back for the second interview, the third interview. By the fourth interview, I'm pretty big.

00:12:46 Jonathan: You mean pregnant?

00:12:47 Speaker 1: Yeah. In case you didn't know.

00:12:48 Jonathan: In case you didn't know.

00:12:51 Speaker 1: So my body is changing. My face is changing. But the interviewer cannot address the elephant in the room. They cannot say, so it looks like you're expecting. So what they do instead is they stop communicating with me. I get no communication whatsoever regarding whether or not I am hired or fired, you know, hired or not. Usually you get a pass fail letter when you go through this many phases of an interview. Nothing. Communication just stops altogether. I knew that I needed to go home to my family, give myself some time to heal and have the baby, give my body some time to heal and then go back out to interview. And I did. I was interviewing for a job by the time my son was six weeks and I was working by the time he was four months. So I would say still move forward with your life as though you were doing what you plan to do. Becoming a mom, it is a big thing. And I think when you, when it happens, when you're younger, you're so resilient that you have this incredible opportunity to just keep moving forward because your mindset, or at least my mindset at the time was I have to get a job. I have to take care of my son. So there wasn't any hesitation on my part to simply continue to move forward with the process of finding a job that would take care of us and so that we could live a better life.

00:14:20 Jonathan: So when you two meet in Texas and you're starting to kind of assemble your financial picture, I know that one thing that you guys both talked about was being on the same page with your money and the fact that maybe on day one, you weren't. And I'm curious what conversations needed to be had because we have had individuals that have gotten divorced because of financial infidelity and have had really bad relationship problems with someone that they may have married or were on the path to marriage with. And because of the lack of these conversations, it just couldn't work out. And we're then kind of scrambling and post to figure out, well, what would it have looked like to have done a better job on the front end? I know you two did that. I mean, that was the process that you went through. There were a lot of money conversations. Where did the idea for that come from? Because so many people simply don't.

00:15:05 Speaker 2: First of all, we did premarital counseling. That was the key to everything. That was huge because you need a third party coming into this thing in general because it's a lot of things you just don't think about. You know, everybody sees the guy or the girl they’re attracted to and they fall for him. And that's all you think about in the beginning. And then you have to get to the good, you know, the hard stuff, right? Like the money and where we're going to live and who's going to do the chores and all this stuff. So that was like the foundation that we did. We went to our church. Well, your church, right? At the time.

00:15:38 Speaker 1: I wasn't really in church. I was a heathen. But anyway, so we went to the church and we did the premarital counseling and they asked a lot of hard questions. You know, we were on page with a lot of it, but not everything. And, you know, that's what helped us out, helped us get going.

00:15:54 Jonathan: What were you not on the same page about? Like, I mean, if you really dial in there, what were those pain points that you had to work through?

00:16:01 Speaker 2: We had when we went through the premarital counseling, we knew we had to talk about money. So what we did was we came up with a convoluted plan of percentages.

00:16:09 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's all coming back up.

00:16:14 Speaker 2: Yeah. So, you know, it's rare that in any relationship, both parties come in earning the same money. We had two very different careers. His career was in I.T. My career was in sales. You asked about tips for single moms, tips for anyone who's really focused on an opportunity to impact your income or to earn more money than you may have initially planned out of school. Sales, sales.

00:16:37 Speaker 1: Absolutely.

00:16:38 Speaker 2: Rishon, actually, I want to get through this, but I want to come back to that point. I really think there's something there and I know you've crushed it in this industry. So I want to come back to that after we talk a little bit more about you two coming together with this money plan.

00:16:50 Speaker 2: So we now have these two different incomes because of our two different careers. And we also have two different mindsets about money where I'm like, I will never go into debt again. I hadn't yet saved anything significantly outside of my retirement when we met. But my whole position was I will never go back into debt. And Babe was more like, I'm good with paying these credit cards down. Listen, I've never had anything. I need that new car. I need that new house. I need these new suits. You know, we'll figure it out down the line. We're making money together. It's going to be around for a while. We're going to make this money for a while. We're going to double our income.

00:17:26 Speaker 1: Right. Triple.

00:17:28 Speaker 2: Right. Triple.

00:17:30 Speaker 1: Right. We're a dual income family.

00:17:32 Speaker 2: I mean, I thought I was making money until the secret came out. The books were opened. I thought I was doing well in IT until she showed me what she was making in sales. And I was like, what the hell, right? So I was like, oh, yeah, we got this. We're going to be doing this. We're young. We can buy whatever we want and you know.

00:17:48 Speaker 1: And I was immediately made nervous.

00:17:51 Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:17:52 Speaker 1: She was terrified.

00:17:53 Speaker 2: She was terrified.

00:17:54 Speaker 1: You're not going to take them all, are you?

00:17:55 Speaker 2: She saw your eyes light up and she said, uh-uh. Uh-uh. Nope. That's not what this is.

00:18:00 Speaker 1: So I just thought, there's no way we're joining our finances.

00:18:05 Speaker 2: She was always checking the accounts.

00:18:07 Speaker 1: I was like, there's no way we're joining our finances. As a matter of fact, what we're going to do is I'll take a percentage of my money. You'll take a percentage of your money and we'll put that in an account where we'll pay our bills and then we'll just keep the rest separate.

00:18:23 Speaker 2: That was our initial plan.

00:18:24 Speaker 1: It could never work.

00:18:25 Speaker 2: Hang on. But it was a plan and it was a logical plan based on what you knew about each other's own characteristics, right?

00:18:32 Speaker 1: Right.

00:18:33 Speaker 2: Like to maybe go all in would have enabled this aspect of you early on. And so possibly, I'm not saying it was the plan and it didn't, but it was a place to start and it started a conversation. How did it evolve?

00:18:44 Speaker 2: So after we were married, we came home and continued to attend church.

00:18:49 Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:18:50 Speaker 2: That was a big part for us as far as understanding marriage and the covenant of marriage as a whole and being able to get the wisdom from our pastoral team and the leaders at the church. If there are any discussions about marriage from a biblical perspective, it's always two shall become one. Now, a husband who was new to church definitely picked up on this.

00:19:03 Speaker 1: I was listening, guys.

00:19:07 Speaker 2: You saw that tripling of the income.

00:19:21 Speaker 1: Church or no church. Come on.

00:19:24 Speaker 2: That new Jaguar F type in my future.

00:19:29 Speaker 1: That sounds terrible, baby.

00:19:33 Speaker 2: He was new to church, but he did understand two shall become one. I was immersed in myself in the situation, guys. I was trying to be serious about this marriage thing.

00:19:42 Speaker 1: So he brings to my attention, he says, you know, our financial plan looks a little more like a roommate situation than what a husband and wife would do.

00:19:56 Jonathan: And I think we should reconsider it.

00:19:58 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's awesome. This is this point of continuing growth.

00:20:01 Jonathan: And honestly, it's probably also trust as well. And I want to point out, especially, I want to stay here on what these individual, these incremental improvements were, but I want to point out that while maybe in the early days, you were a spender, you were also in many, in different areas, you guys have brought significant stuff to the table, different ideas. Like part of your story, you know, involves real estate and Rishon, you would have never gotten into this without this guy.

00:20:27 Speaker 2: That's maybe a little bit more aggressive.

00:20:28 Speaker 1: It has these big ideas and that sort of thing. I mean, the evolution of your money story and your money story together is I think what makes this so compelling.

00:20:36 Speaker 2: Absolutely.

00:20:37 Speaker 2: So we decide that we are going to join our finances after we listen to Dave Ramsey.

00:20:43 Speaker 1: Well, oh, so, so what I said was, okay, I would be willing to join our finances if you would be willing to, you know, go through some financial education.

00:20:52 Speaker 2: And he said, absolutely.

00:20:55 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's super reasonable and he's the type of guy he's always willing to learn something new.

00:20:58 Speaker 2: He was open.

00:20:59 Speaker 1: She didn't know that at the time though.

00:21:00 Speaker 2: No, but I prayed about it. Honestly, I was terrified, guys.

00:21:04 Speaker 1: So for those couples who are out there having those conversations and it seems hard, it can happen.

00:21:11 Speaker 2: Oh, by the way, we did not date long. I knew when I met her and I asked her to marry me in six months. FYI.

00:21:18 Speaker 1: So that's why she was so, you know, didn't know me well enough. She was terrified.

00:21:22 Speaker 2: Clearly I said, yeah.

00:21:24 Speaker 1: We're both happy about that.

00:21:26 Speaker 2: Yes.

00:21:26 Speaker 1: Congratulations.

00:21:28 Speaker 2: We are still here.

00:21:30 Jonathan: I'm curious about this initial roommate's decision, right? With the percentages and such. This is interesting because to me, like my wife and I, we combine our finances from the very first, but I, in discussions with, and I don't want to paint a broad brush here, but with friends of mine who are millennials and you know, a decent bit younger than me, it seems like people are keeping their finances separate or maybe it's a slightly higher percentage than let's say people, my generation, not to date me here.

00:21:59 Speaker 2: But I'm curious if you've seen both sides of it, which is really interesting. I'd love like a compare and contrast for your actual relationship after combining.

00:22:08 Speaker 2: Is there, and I don't want to put words in your mouth. Talk me through just that little compare and contrast.

00:22:17 Speaker 2: So we actually didn't make it very far. We had a destination wedding in Mexico. You know, we were not married long before we were starting to argue about money because now you're looking at percentages and you have individuals...

00:00:00 Podcast Extro: You've been listening to ChooseFI Podcast, where we help middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.

00:22:29 Brad: With different incomes, there's no way it's going to be fair. Somebody's not going to feel appreciated. You know, it just, it didn't last long at all. We were married April 26. We started Dave Ramsey and joined our finances June 1st. So we didn't make it very long down the path. I personally just, uh, I was thinking, you know, honestly, we were both, I'm sure we both were thinking it, but I was thinking, man, did I make a mistake here by marrying this chick, man? Come on, right. This is really interesting.

00:23:01 Brad: So there's something here that I wanted to point out. And also, I'm curious the iterations of that. So I can totally see how this complicated percentage of what about this bill? What about that bill? Well, I had a bonus. What does that mean? Like I can see how that's broken, but the other iteration, a slightly simpler version of this would be the years, mine and ours, you know, and so you have this collective pot and then you have this discretionary amount, I think.

00:23:26 Brad: At the heart of it though, what you did was genius, uh, Rishon, especially with, I am comfortable moving to this one as we are with each other longer. And I see the type of person that you are, but I think if we're going to make this big move, I need to know that you're invested with doing better with your money. I want to take a financial literacy class or curriculum like that. That's brilliant. And it shows buy-in like you're working toward a common cause. As long as we're on the same page with our plan, then yes, let's do this together as one entity. But if we're not, then, then I, how could I, right?

00:24:03 Brad: How could I, that's too big of a risk. Um, and I'm curious, we talked about Dave Ramsey. Like, I mean, I think most of our audience is at some level comfortable with either the basics of financial literacy or the basics of more specifically the baby steps, but I know you guys did a modified version of the baby steps, what did that modification look like for you?

00:24:20 Rishon: So mostly what we changed, uh, Dave Ramsey doesn't talk about what you get. And the thing is that was still important. What do we get out of this? As far as, because people still want to spend, even if they're on the Dave Ramsey plan, right. And you know, it's like Dave Ramsey says, Hey, you gotta go cold turkey, for example, and everybody can't do that. And I know I couldn't do it because I was a spender, right. And I was telling my wife, Hey, you know, wait, what about my, my shoes? If I go and get a new pair of Nikes or if I want to get a new Xbox game or whatever, Dave Ramsey doesn't mention that stuff, so we mainly added an allowance to the Dave Ramsey plan.

00:24:54 Rishon: That was our first modification is that we knew that going into this in our thirties, we could not just say, Hey, we're going to discuss every single transaction, right? So we had a joint household account, which all of our finances went into. And then we each got an allowance with each, with every pay period. And that allowance is you're spending money to do with it as you see fit without a discussion. Now, then we decided that everything out of the household account or anything out of the household account that exceeded $100 needed to be discussed, right? This was us getting to know each other, getting to better understand how we manage money.

00:25:39 Rishon: We were also at the point where we were not comfortable with the idea of stopping our retirement contributions. So part of the Dave Ramsey baby steps is that you stop everything in order to pay down debt and we never, we did not do that. We continue to invest at least the match. At least the match. Yeah. We continue to invest in our retirement 401(k) accounts first starting at the match and then increasing, even though, you know, we were still paying down some debt increasing because we were high-income earners together, filing our taxes jointly, we were owing for the first time as a single mom, I had never owed on taxes before, so being married.

00:26:16 Brad: Yeah. The government like penalized us for making so much money.

00:26:18 Rishon: Yeah. Even though I, yeah, I may get money, but yeah. Once we joined our finances, um, what do we call the IRS? When, yeah, so anyway, yeah. So the IRS decided they wanted some more of that money now that we were joining our finances. So we never stopped the 401(k). We had an allowance for spending money and what else was significant in our changes?

00:26:39 Rishon: Credit cards.

00:26:43 Brad: Oh, we still use credit cards.

00:26:45 Rishon: Yeah. Yes. We still use credit cards. We did not use the envelope system. What we did was we used our credit cards and just paid the full balance, um, every month. We wanted to earn the points, right? We got, we like, we, yeah, we got the rewards point credit cards and we still love the credit card game today. At signing the five community, we've started to use credit cards more. Hey, wait a minute. Somebody's got 50,000 points. Let's just sign up for that. And then, you know, get off of it. But we would never have done that as part of the Dave Ramsey community.

00:27:13 Brad: We were like, no, no credit cards. But yeah, we still use them, but we never owe at the end of the month. Nice. And I think those are two common sense adjustments. As long as you're going to pay that credit card balance on time and in full every single month to pass up these miles and potentially hundreds of thousands of miles, it makes no sense.

00:27:32 Brad: And for me, while I clearly Dave Ramsey does an amazing job for many millions of people to pass up the 401(k) match, I mean, that is a free 100% return. It's like basically your employer saying here, I want to give you part of your salary and you just say, no, thanks. I'm not interested.

00:27:48 Rishon: So I wanted to talk about that allowance though, for another minute. So it's easy to say, here's your money. I'm not going to look at it. You can make whatever purchases you want, but in practice, do you find that it caused any issues or did you guys really stick to that? Like, okay, that's your money. Just blow it on X back in.

00:28:05 Brad: I was thrilled to see that he was using his allowance for that. That meant that we were never going to discuss that out of the house. Maybe I'm naive, but I didn't think anything about it. I was like, oh wow. I got my allowance. I just didn't even look at the accounts anymore. Really?

00:28:24 Rishon: Yeah, we had the allowance. They go to separate. We had a separate account for each person. So I have my own personal checking. She had her own personal check. And then we had the, what we call the company account. We label it company.

00:28:33 Brad: Right. And I barely touched the company account being that my allowance money, that's all I cared about. She just had to figure out what I cared about. Right. And vice versa. And I just cared about having my own small piece of money. And honestly, I hardly ever looked at the company account because she manages the bills.

00:29:06 Rishon: And then she would send me a sheet every month and say, hey, this is what I'm paying. I'm like, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah. I'd look at it, you know, and then I'm back to my own personal account, as long as I was managing that little small account of mine with my PlayStation or my Xbox or whatever, or my hobby membership, you know, whatever was good.

00:29:22 Brad: This is Rishon's an accountant. So, I mean, you're speaking to his soul right here, but thinking of your, thinking of your finances, like the, if you treat your own personal finances the way you would, if this were a business, you know, and you need a business to be profitable, you're on the same page.

00:29:38 Rishon: I mean, you guys are about learn, hustle, grow. And I want to talk now about how new information was coming from the other side. The other, you know, you're a team, you're working on this together. Reshawn early on is driving you to be better with your personal finances, but now you're starting to bring in other ideas to bring in regular income, you know, that are outside of what you guys are doing. Talk about that iteration on your plan.

00:29:57 Brad: You mean like the real estate part?

00:29:58 Rishon: I always wanted to get into real estate.

00:30:00 Brad: Mogul.

00:30:01 Rishon: Yeah. As soon as he says he wants to get into real estate, that's the first thing that comes to mind. I moved from California back to Virginia in hopes of getting into real estate and it didn't work out. Me and my best friend. Then I left there and came here because I saw that the prices were so low and cheap compared to everywhere else and I thought I didn't understand. I thought it was something wrong with the Texas market. You know, it was so cheap compared to California and even Virginia.

00:30:34 Rishon: So then of course, like I said when we got together, first of all that big crash happened what in 2008 2009 and everybody was terrified and we were yeah, we got married during the recession. Yeah, we got married during a recession and we thought that hey, we're probably gonna lose our jobs this and that. But we had done so much we had already kind of done a lot to our personal house as far as renovating and all this. But then a few years went by because we had to make the decision actually whether or not to buy a new house. Remember, that's how we ended up in the renovation space.

00:31:16 Rishon: So that was one of the things that we decided as a new couple instead of doing what a lot of couples do as far as now that we're married. We need our new house our own house. Yeah, that was a conversation that we had as to whether or not financially that made sense. She had her own little small starter house and I did not want to move in because I was like, you know, this is her house and I don't want to be involved and whatever past might come knocking on the door or whatever.

00:31:47 Rishon: Right, and then we were we thought that I thought that we were going to get our own house together and leave that house. But then she kind of talked me down and we just did a renovation and she tried to, you know, she let me choose all the parts and floors or whatever.

00:32:05 Rishon: Supposedly here here's a choice of three options pick which one you want. Spoken like a married man. I was like, oh wow, I can choose any of these. What if I choose this one? Wait, no. No, I changed my mind this one. Whatever you want, whatever you want, whatever you want.

00:32:42 Rishon: So we stayed in the house and we felt it felt like a new house and everything and so I was good with staying there, but then of course the market change and everything, you know fast forward to 2013 and I said hey man, you know it was like four houses on our block in a very nice neighborhood near schools and I said man with foreclosure signs on them the mogul thing started kind of creeping up on me again, you know.

00:33:07 Rishon: And I was like man, you know what we should buy one of these houses for 150 grand on the street here. At first our plan was this we were making good money pay down our house, pay it off eventually just travel the world and just let's work at Starbucks, right is what we used to say. Actually in our 1500 square foot house that would have been plenty of room. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, and we thought that hey that's our dream our dream is to pay off the house pay off everything and just...

00:00:00 Podcast Intro: You're listening to ChooseFI. The blueprint for financial independence lives here. If you're looking to unlock the secrets to financial independence and early retirement, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and join a community of like-minded people who are getting off the Instagram and taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial independence. ChooseFI, your home for financial independence online.
00:32:28 Speaker 1: You know not have to work for anyone and just do whatever we want, you know Starbucks because they have benefits.
00:32:34 Speaker 1: And we didn't do it much right?
00:32:37 Speaker 1: So yeah, uh, but then we saw the houses on the street and I started getting interested in going back.
00:32:42 Speaker 1: You know thinking about the real estate thing again in Texas was man if I'd have known what I know now, you know, we would have got all of them, but we were terrified because.
00:32:49 Speaker 1: The market was just we didn't know how the market we had never seen a recession, right?
00:32:53 Speaker 1: And we didn't know how well it was going to recover especially here in Texas where the, you know real estate market's already low and then.
00:33:00 Speaker 1: That's how we started. So he was a big fan of Bigger Pockets.
00:33:04 Speaker 1: And so at this time he's listening to Bigger Pockets, but I'm not.
00:33:07 Speaker 1: And I know you guys are familiar with the Bigger Pockets team.
00:33:10 Speaker 1: But they are a fantastic resource for anybody interested in investing in real estate.
00:33:16 Speaker 1: At this time he's listening and I'm not.
00:33:18 Speaker 1: But I am on board with the idea of going out to look for this one investment property because I'm down with the idea of.
00:33:25 Speaker 1: One so we go out start looking and as of 2013 the market had already begun to recover.
00:33:32 Speaker 1: So these houses that he had seen over the past five years had been foreclosures and other opportunities we had missed those.
00:33:40 Speaker 1: So now we are out looking in our.
00:33:43 Speaker 1: Idea of 150 for a house like ours that we were turning to a rental. It wasn't realistic.
00:33:49 Speaker 1: It was now two hundred thousand dollars that everybody had purchased the homes had already rehabbed them.
00:33:56 Speaker 1: And basically they were doing flips.
00:33:58 Speaker 1: So the interest rates are incredible at this time, which is one of the reasons why I was down with you know getting our first rentals like let's do it.
00:34:05 Speaker 1: But now we're at two hundred thousand dollars on a rental and I'm thinking that really isn't where I want to be. But at this time our neighborhood is kind of our perspective of.
00:34:18 Speaker 1: Where we should buy we know our neighborhood and this is where we want to buy. So now I say hey, babe instead of buying a rental.
00:34:26 Speaker 1: Why don't we go ahead and buy our house?
00:34:28 Speaker 1: Why don't we purchase our first house together?
00:34:32 Speaker 1: If we're looking at a two hundred thousand dollar house, surely we can find the house that we want for 50 thousand more.
00:34:39 Speaker 2: Yeah 250. I was like no and I was like we'll just turn our existing home into a rental.
00:34:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, by this time guys, my mindset was starting to change.
00:34:48 Speaker 1: I didn't want to spend any more than what we had already paid for that house.
00:34:52 Speaker 1: So see the big difference I was a spender then I was like, wait, wait 250. Wait a minute.
00:34:56 Speaker 1: That's gonna put us back in more debt. We're trying to go to Starbucks. You remember?
00:35:01 Speaker 1: But and eventually we looked for the 250 and we could not find what we wanted.
00:35:06 Speaker 1: You know, it was like it was like HGTV is what I tell everybody wants more than they can afford right and that's what or more than what's in the budget and we were like I was like I'm not moving unless I can get a man cave.
00:35:18 Speaker 1: Wood floors, whatever.
00:35:20 Speaker 1: So eventually, you know we had to go up 50 more grand now technically we had it but I didn't feel good about it.
00:35:26 Speaker 1: You know what I'm saying?
00:35:28 Speaker 1: And then we found this house. We walked in this house one day and fell in love instantly.
00:35:33 Speaker 1: Actually found this house on his birthday on my birthday.
00:35:35 Speaker 2: Yeah, and she was like, oh we don't have to go and look on your birthday. I said no I love looking at houses.
00:35:38 Speaker 2: I love houses on their birthday. We would not have done that on my birthday.
00:35:42 Speaker 1: No, that's one thing that I absolutely love. I love checking out new houses and molding and all this stuff that's just what I you know, I can't fix anything as far as you know molding, but.
00:35:51 Speaker 1: I love looking at I love beautiful houses and then we came on my birthday and sure enough luckily we did because we walked in the door and right away.
00:35:58 Speaker 1: You could see this long walkway and it was open floor plan and we were just in love.
00:36:03 Speaker 2: Yeah open floor.
00:36:05 Speaker 1: This is the guy who did not want to buy a new house.
00:36:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, and I was in love she was she was in like I could see in her eyes, you know, she was all glossy eyed.
00:36:10 Speaker 1: And that was it, but she put an offer on it and they were all they're on vacation, right?
00:36:14 Speaker 1: They're on vacation and boom we got the place and we turned our old house into a rental.
00:36:20 Speaker 1: We refinanced our old house, by the way.
00:36:23 Speaker 1: And then from a 30 year down to a 15 year.
00:36:25 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:36:25 Speaker 1: We had already paid it down to like 70 like 70 75.
00:36:28 Speaker 1: We already paid it from 150 to 70 75. Oh because we were doubling down by the way.
00:36:32 Speaker 1: Forgot to mention that we're doubling down when I moved in over there.
00:36:35 Speaker 1: I was like we should put more on it since I'm.
00:36:37 Speaker 1: I was paying for an apartment down in Fort Worth or whatever.
00:36:40 Speaker 1: We should try to put more money on this so we can pay it off faster.
00:36:44 Speaker 1: And then, uh, so then we refinanced that and we got the financing for this one and then boom.
00:36:50 Speaker 1: No, so we have 50.
00:36:53 Speaker 1: Yeah, so then we had 15 year mortgages on both.
00:36:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, we had 15 on both of them and the payment was much lower on that one.
00:37:03 Speaker 1: That's what worked out big time because when the people moved in over there, they were all cash.
00:37:05 Speaker 1: Yeah, they were paying us a big chunk compared to, you know.
00:37:08 Speaker 1: Uh what we were paying at for the monthly payment.
00:37:08 Speaker 2: So Rob, it sounds like internally you're navigating these, uh, the Starbucks plan, but also the mogul plan.
00:37:15 Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:37:17 Speaker 2: And I'm curious where this falls in this is your first rental albeit it's it's the place you've lived previously.
00:37:23 Speaker 2: But still let's just look at it as a rental.
00:37:25 Speaker 2: What was the plan going forward?
00:37:27 Speaker 2: Was it hey, we can get two three five twenty of these things and I can fulfill this mogul desire.
00:37:33 Speaker 2: Was it hey, let's pay it off and then we can do Starbucks like talk me through where you guys were at that point that.
00:37:39 Speaker 1: Well, my mind was changed at that point after making such a successful change of us moving here and then our payment going down to like I don't know it was something like 937 or something there, but we could charge like 15 1600 and I saw that cash flow coming in.
00:37:56 Speaker 1: I was like, wait a minute. Let's do this again.
00:38:00 Speaker 1: And now of course it wouldn't be as easy because I.
00:38:02 Speaker 1: Couldn't see it right because it wouldn't be as easy because we didn't live in the next place we were thinking about getting so it's not going to be as much cash flow, but I still wanted to do it.
00:38:11 Speaker 1: So I was like, you know what we should do about 15 of these things instantly.
00:38:15 Speaker 1: I went from from one right back to mobile.
00:38:22 Speaker 1: I went. Yeah, I went from one to 15 guys.
00:38:28 Speaker 1: So then he said we need one a year for the next 15 years, that was my goal.
00:38:34 Speaker 2: He said, you know your job is really stressful.
00:38:34 Speaker 1: Yes, and I would love to see you not have to work so hard, babe.
00:38:36 Speaker 1: That was his appealing to me.
00:38:41 Speaker 2: Um why we needed to do more so let's play this out what the plan is to get to 15 doors.
00:38:41 Speaker 2: Like how do you go about doing this?
00:38:48 Speaker 2: So you're both pretty highly compensated. I guess collectively combined you're making over six figures.
00:38:48 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah, okay.
00:38:49 Speaker 2: And so you're saving I are you paying for these cash or you saving up for a down payment now?
00:38:54 Speaker 2: You're no longer because of the volume. You're no longer the primary resident.
00:38:59 Speaker 2: So you're not getting the preferred interest rate that you might get if you were going to be living there yourselves. What was the strategy to go from 1 to 15?
00:39:06 Speaker 1: So the strategy was we took our emergency savings.
00:39:13 Speaker 1: So we were still doing an emergency savings, but now our emergency savings instead of being the initial $1,000 in three months.
00:39:20 Speaker 1: It was now we had six months of living expenses and we were sitting on it for a few years.
00:39:25 Speaker 1: So our six months of living expenses now became our down payment for our next purchase.
00:39:30 Speaker 1: Yes. So every time we would beef up our emergency fund we would end up finding a new rental and taking 20% out.
00:39:42 Speaker 1: We would go shopping.
00:39:42 Speaker 1: The 20% down payment was essentially the six months living expenses or about thirty thousand dollars.
00:39:49 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:39:49 Speaker 1: So if we were looking for 150 20% down payment we needed 30,000 and that just so happened to match exactly what we had in the emergency.
00:39:58 Speaker 1: Every time Rob hits 30 K is like Rishon, we're going shopping.
00:40:03 Speaker 2: Hey, but at least it was, you know, an asset, right?
00:40:05 Speaker 2: Not new Jordans.
00:40:07 Speaker 1: Rishon said, we've got these company financials, right?
00:40:10 Speaker 1: That's how you're thinking of it.
00:40:11 Speaker 1: So you're saving this amount of money.
00:40:14 Speaker 1: Obviously there's a savings rate here because you're making a nice salary.
00:40:18 Speaker 1: You're beefing up this six months of emergency fund, but are you then literally cutting it down to almost zero?
00:40:24 Speaker 1: Like, is that how tight it was when you're buying these things?
00:40:26 Speaker 1: So we did have, so going back to the, going back to being a salesperson, we did have the, we were blessed that we knew that based on how I performed in sales, we would receive a large chunk of money on a quarterly basis.
00:40:41 Speaker 1: So I always had a base salary, but I always had bonuses as well, based on my performance.
00:40:44 Speaker 1: So we knew that if we take in this chunk of money, that we could replenish it with the bonuses that would come up.
00:40:52 Speaker 1: So basically we would create a plan for the month and then we would create a plan for the bonus payment.
00:40:58 Speaker 1: Hey, this bonus, we need to take it and put it towards the emergency or we need to, you know, look at X, Y, Z.
00:41:04 Speaker 1: So we had our spreadsheet for our regular expenses.
00:41:07 Speaker 1: And then we had a spreadsheet that outlined where bonus money would go.
00:41:11 Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:41:11 Speaker 2: I have a question for you here, because I know that you made the choice to pay off your house.
00:41:15 Speaker 2: So on the one end, you're taking out lots of loans, right?
00:41:20 Speaker 2: To purchase the, you got these 20% down payments and you're taking, you're trying to acquire 15 doors.
00:41:25 Speaker 2: But on the other end, you make the decision to pay off your personal home.
00:41:28 Speaker 1: How did you do that?
00:41:29 Speaker 1: You know, and what, what was the logic there as opposed to just keeping a payment on that as well?
00:41:34 Speaker 1: We didn't make it to the 15 doors as of yet, but after buying it, you would.
00:41:38 Speaker 2: Rob, yeah, yeah, we bought, so we ended up with five single family homes, including our primary.
00:41:46 Speaker 2: Oh yeah.
00:41:46 Speaker 2: So then I would be six, right?
00:41:47 Speaker 2: So, uh, wait, oh, five, oh, four, four rentals in our house.
00:41:51 Speaker 2: Yeah, right.
00:41:52 Speaker 2: So what happened was we were trying to do more doors.
00:41:56 Speaker 2: And then we ended up saying, Hey, this one place is not moving too well or whatever we were trying to.
00:42:00 Speaker 2: Now this, so I changed jobs.
00:42:05 Speaker 1: And when I transitioned jobs, I had an opportunity to finally listen to the Bigger Pockets podcast.
00:42:10 Speaker 1: So that's kind of where that comes in with me getting on board.
00:42:14 Speaker 1: So once I listened to the Bigger Pockets podcast, we learned about the 1031 exchange.
00:42:18 Speaker 2: Yes.
00:42:18 Speaker 2: That's what drove us to make a change.
00:42:22 Speaker 2: We had a property that we knew was not our favorite, but it had appreciated greatly because of the neighborhood.
00:42:27 Speaker 2: It was in the location was really good.
00:42:31 Speaker 2: And we wanted to, we said, we'll take this opportunity to get rid of this one, get more doors, get more doors.
00:42:38 Speaker 2: Okay.
00:42:38 Speaker 1: Yeah.
00:42:38 Speaker 1: So then we ended up doing the 1031 exchange on that one, getting rid of that and then getting like a six unit.
00:42:45 Speaker 1: And we were happy with that.
00:42:46 Speaker 1: Uh, I've got, we also sold another property at the time, a pretty small house we had that we thought, okay, we won't be able to increase the rental potential on this as much as we would like.
00:42:58 Speaker 1: So let's go ahead and sell this.
00:42:59 Speaker 1: So in 2018, we sold two properties, 1031 exchange to a six flex.
00:43:04 Speaker 1: So now we have, even though we sold two property, two properties, we have doubled our doors.
00:43:08 Speaker 1: You're right.
00:43:09 Speaker 1: We have gone from four to eight.
00:43:10 Speaker 1: Right.
00:43:11 Speaker 1: And maintained our primary residence.
00:43:13 Speaker 2: And then we, I guess he asked about the selling.
00:43:15 Speaker 2: About paying off the house.
00:43:17 Speaker 2: Yeah.
00:43:17 Speaker 2: So we're looking at this.
00:43:19 Speaker 2: And at the same time, our boys are graduating.
00:43:21 Speaker 2: Yes.
00:43:22 Podcast Extro: You've been listening to ChooseFI Podcast, where we help middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.

00:00:00 Podcast Intro: You're listening to ChooseFI. The blueprint for financial independence lives here. If you're looking to unlock the secrets to financial independence and early retirement, you're in the right place. Stay tuned and join a community of like-minded people who are getting off the Instagram and taking control of their lives in the pursuit of financial independence. ChooseFI, your home for financial independence online.

00:43:27 Speaker 1: Yeah. Right. Thank God. So we are the proud parents of a 24-year-old and a 19-year-old today.

00:43:35 Speaker 1: And the 19-year-old graduated high school in 2018 and the 24-year-old graduated college. So now we're looking at each other going, wow, things are changing. And our minds even more is evolving because we're thinking, wait, the main thing that kept us here was the kids. Right. They kept us in our full-time job. Yes. It's all about making sure that we covered everything they needed.

00:44:04 Speaker 1: So our youngest son is an artist. He lives in California. He's still trying to figure out his path as far as what he wants to do regarding education. But our oldest son has now graduated college debt-free. We were able to put him through college with a 529 plan.

00:44:20 Speaker 1: So we did save for college during the course of all our investing as well. And now we're looking at each other and we're empty nesters. We're like, what do you do when you are empty nesters? We have no consumer debt. Outside of the mortgage is the only thing we owe. You know, we're done paying for college for the oldest. The rentals are paying for themselves and making a profit. Not a big profit, but profit.

00:44:43 Speaker 1: Enough profit where we don't owe anything monthly. Our rentals cover property management, maintenance, you name it, taxes and fees. We don't actually put any money into them. Everything comes out of what the tenants pay. So now this is a situation we didn't expect to be in.

00:45:00 Speaker 1: So then we decided, hey, I would like for her to get out of the stressful job. You know, it was taking a toll on her health and stuff. And I was like, you know, it's nice to make all the money, but if you're not around to enjoy it with me, then it doesn't matter, right?

00:45:12 Speaker 1: So my wheels are always turning because she got sick a couple of years ago. And I was like, this is my game goal. And then we decided, hey.

00:45:20 Speaker 1: So we had a nice chunk of money still left on the house, but like we said, everything changed with the boys. So we just kind of started thinking about how can we get rid of the house? And plus we always wanted to travel. I mean, we were back at the beginning saying, we're going to go to Starbucks and travel the world. And that's what we did.

00:45:34 Speaker 1: So we decided we're going to just travel the world. I love that Starbucks is tied to this.

00:45:41 Speaker 1: We never made it to Starbucks. That's not totally out of the question. I like the idea of being a barista.

00:45:49 Speaker 1: Hey, you know, Bill Murray just got hired. He got a job offer from PF Changs. I saw it on my newsfeed the other day.

00:45:56 Speaker 1: So, yeah, so we decided, okay, well, the house is the only thing that's keeping us from picking up and going wherever we want. So let's take a look at that and see what we can do to pay it off.

00:46:06 Speaker 1: So we've been in this house now for five years. Remember we only had a 15-year mortgage on it. We had, we put down a 10% down payment and because of the down payment we had and the equity already in the home, our mortgage lender waived PMI.

00:46:23 Speaker 1: So now we are putting in, we had an interest rate of like 2.85%, which means some more of our payment is going towards the principal. So at the end of five years, it was a $300,000 house and we had actually paid off a hundred thousand. Most people don't see that in the first five years of the mortgage.

00:46:39 Speaker 1: You think of it as being divided in three, but because there's so much interest to pay up front, a lot of people never actually see a third of their mortgage get paid off in the first five years. So we were like, oh, a hundred grand paid down already. How could we get rid of this other 200 grand? Right.

00:47:00 Speaker 1: And not pay that payment. Even though a lot of people we know in the ChooseFI group would chew us up and spit us out.

00:47:05 Speaker 2: No, they would not.

00:47:06 Speaker 1: No, they would not. I would be the first 2.8%, you know, some of them would, some of them.

00:47:14 Speaker 1: We know you understand because you had, you chose to pay off your student loans, right?

00:47:18 Speaker 2: That's right.

00:47:19 Speaker 1: A lot of people also say, don't do it. Right. So we saw that we had this 200 grand that we could pay off, but we also saw that we had essentially over time paid off our first house too. It was down to nothing; there was a very small amount left owed on that house and the value of that home had increased.

00:47:37 Speaker 1: I purchased it for 150 back in 2003. By last, as of 2018 or last time we looked at it, it was worth 250. So now it's worth 250. We owe something like 35,000 to 40,000 on it. Maybe it was really low.

00:47:54 Speaker 1: We decided, huh. After listening to BiggerPockets, we could do a cash-out refinance on our first home, pull the cash out and pay off our primary residence. But we wanted to make sure that we still didn't owe anything per month.

00:48:10 Speaker 1: We were like, hey, how much can we pull out of this house? And the lender was saying, oh, you can pull whatever amount, right? You can pull this amount. It's usually 80, 75, 25 or 80, 20.

00:48:21 Speaker 1: I really, this is the heart of what I wanted to capture with this, because what you effectively did, you know, if you treat your life kind of like a business, you reduced your actual cost of living, what it costs you to have a roof over your head dramatically.

00:48:35 Speaker 2: We could talk about your numbers.

00:48:36 Speaker 1: And at the same time, all these other leverage vehicles that you have, these assets that you've purchased, right? Don't purchase stuff, purchase assets. All of them are cash flow and covering everything, plus bringing something back to you. You've de-risked your life so incredibly, and you still have a blue and it gives you a lot of freedom with the choices that you make as you guys go into this next chapter.

00:48:57 Speaker 1: That freedom, I think, allowed you, you know, talk to your plan, you were trying to figure out how to help you reach on, get out of what she was doing. If it was in this kind of distressful state, I want to talk about with that being the frame. What is your life actually costs now? Like you're at, what is your life costs now with this mortgage paid off?

00:49:13 Speaker 1: And then with that in mind, what lifestyle choices did you make for the next chapter?

00:49:17 Speaker 1: So our cost of living now, uh, total for the year, 35 grand.

00:49:22 Speaker 2: Wow.

00:49:24 Speaker 1: And that's only because our medical insurance and because of our home taxes, it would be lower than that, but we want to hold onto the house since it's paid off. You know, and state taxes are pretty high here in Texas, but it's so even our, so our taxes and insurance come out to about $8,000 for the year.

00:49:41 Speaker 1: But even if we divided that up and so, you know, about $700 a month, we couldn't live anywhere that we want to live for $700 on rent. Not even an apartment, not even one bedroom here in this area.

00:49:54 Speaker 1: And the other follow-up that I had for you is actually regarding the cash with these other properties.

00:50:00 Speaker 1: So you have six or more properties, six or more doors at this point on the path to 15. You know, they're all covering their own expenses and there's cash flow. I know that's something that you said up front. Is that coming towards your cost of living? What are you doing with that cash flow?

00:50:14 Speaker 1: We keep that cash flow in a separate savings account specifically for that business. So that anytime there are any major expenses that come up, we recently had a $5,000 plumbing incident at one of our properties.

00:50:26 Speaker 1: Now there's no stress when we need to make repairs. We don't touch it, yeah. We don't touch that money.

00:50:34 Speaker 1: Wow, so that is really a completely self-sustaining business as far as you see it.

00:50:39 Speaker 1: And when you get to this 15-year point on each respective property where the mortgage is gone, this is gonna be a bonanza for you guys, right?

00:50:48 Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:50:49 Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:50:50 Speaker 1: Local status, engage. And you know, over the course of time, we also invested in the stock market.

00:50:56 Speaker 1: Yes. So sometimes we end up leaving that out because we're too weak and we talk a lot about the real estate.

00:51:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, and that's how we got paid off the house. That was part of the reason why we paid off the house.

00:51:05 Speaker 1: We used some of that from the cash-out refinance and then we pulled some of it out of the stock market and we put those together.

00:51:10 Speaker 1: We didn't wanna take the total out of either one of them. We took a piece and a piece and then we paid off our primary residence and we still kept some on both ends.

00:51:19 Speaker 1: So using the tactics that were talked about, you reached financial independence in your early 40s. I mean, what does that example look like for your kids?

00:51:24 Speaker 1: I mean, what's the reaction that you get from them when they realize that working is completely optional for you?

00:51:32 Speaker 1: Yeah, I don't know what they're thinking. So our oldest, because he's located in Texas, we hear from him a lot more about what he used to be. He actually has now started his career and relocated to Georgia.

00:51:44 Speaker 1: Atlanta, yeah.

00:51:45 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's gone. Oh God.

00:51:50 Speaker 1: So anyway, the oldest one and his best friend, who we deem our nephew, they've been kids forever. They've been friends since they were kids. They told us we were going through a midlife crisis.

00:51:56 Speaker 1: Yeah, yeah. When we say we're gonna travel the world, they say, oh God, they're going through a midlife crisis. They think, oh, they hit 40, they're going through a midlife crisis.

00:52:07 Speaker 1: So they don't really, they get it, but they don't. They think we just kind of losing it and that's why we're constantly trying to get out of work and whatever.

00:52:13 Speaker 1: Because they thought that you're supposed to do this, right? But we're trying to show them different, right?

00:52:19 Speaker 2: Yeah.

00:52:19 Speaker 1: Yeah, you're like, this was the plan the entire time. This is not a deviation. This is the plan.

00:52:25 Speaker 1: Right, right, this is the new plan. This is the, yeah. We are not, we're not following the old, you know, industrial day plan.

00:52:30 Speaker 1: This is 2020, so.

00:52:32 Speaker 1: So I get that your son looks at you guys a little bit crazy and askew, right? But is there anything that does get through to him?

00:52:39 Speaker 1: Are there any aspects of financial literacy that you found really have sunk in with him?

00:52:42 Speaker 1: Oh yeah. Yeah, he loves Mr. Money Mustache. So he's kind of been following that thing. And we give him a lot of books and he loves to read. So I think it's sinking in.

00:52:53 Speaker 1: He's just acting like, you know.

00:52:54 Speaker 1: Yeah, I think he just, initially he was just surprised.

00:52:57 Speaker 1: Yeah, he was shocked. Now that he sees the possibility.

00:53:00 Speaker 1: He's like, wait a minute.

00:53:01 Speaker 1: Yeah.

00:53:02 Speaker 1: Yeah, he's getting on board. He's like, in 10 years, I'm gonna retire in 10 years. So he's like, you know, he's gonna be a high earner if this job goes well.

00:53:08 Speaker 1: And I believe he can do it. That's what I tell him, you know?

00:53:11 Speaker 1: Yeah, he started in a sales career. He's now saving in his 401k. He's at 15% 401k, 10% savings in an individual account.

00:53:21 Speaker 1: And we are looking at getting him his first property within a year. Wow, okay.

00:53:26 Speaker 1: But yeah, we definitely plan,

00:53:27 Podcast Extro: You've been listening to ChooseFI Podcast, where we help middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.

00:53:27 Speaker 1: Our goal is always to make it a generational thing and to get him ready so that he can be ready for his kids.

00:53:34 Speaker 2: That is incredible. That's incredible.

00:53:36 Speaker 1: So just to catch our audience up as well, Reshan, you were working in sales and Rob, you were working in IT. That carried you to your number, but in both of those cases, you know, in your case, Reshan, it was the stress. It was high, you know, you had to go out and kill it every single day. And you did, you were awesome at it and it worked. But when you don't need to, you know, it is, it's high stress, right? And Rob, in your case, there's so much more that you wanted to run to. Now, increasingly, maybe this is something that's holding you back. You don't need it, but it doesn't mean that neither of you are going to work. It's just more, what do we want to do?

00:54:10 Speaker 1: And so I'm curious for you, like with the fundamentals that we have in place, your life costs very little. You have this aspirational goal of being location independent. So you wanna be able to do what you're gonna do from wherever you wanna do it. You know, what does this next chapter look like for each of you?

00:54:24 Speaker 3: Wow, so as you guys probably already know, we've been traveling all this year. We've been to 22 countries. We took the whole year off. We left at the 30th of last year and started, we wanted to end up in Buenos Aires for the first of the year. We did that and we've been jumping all around, documenting that on YouTube and stuff.

00:54:42 Speaker 3: So I've been in real estate while I was in IT the last few years. And now I've decided that I'm gonna go ahead and just try to, I'm not gonna go back to IT. I was doing that 19 years. I'm trying to get into my entrepreneurial thing now. And I'm gonna go ahead and just sell real estate and invest and see how that goes. Just do that full-time or if you wanna call it full-time, part-time, right?

00:55:05 Speaker 3: And really what we'd like to do is see more people get into real estate as an opportunity to build wealth. So our goal is to help other people to achieve their goals through real estate and investing, yeah.

00:55:20 Speaker 3: And everybody doesn't have to have the same goals. I mean, we're definitely small when it comes to the real estate investing game. There are people who do hundreds of doors. We don't see the need for that today. Do we, babe?

00:55:28 Speaker 4: No, no. I'm good. I've gotta clarify, guys. I'm good with 15. If I can do 15 and pay them off and then just have that cashflow, I'm good.

00:55:42 Speaker 4: I might replay this for you when you get to 15. I have a feeling things are fluid there.

00:55:49 Speaker 3: Yeah. We would certainly like to see those who we know and love at least have one. Just the benefits of one to be able to have that additional income stream.

00:55:54 Speaker 4: Yeah, yeah. It's helped us so much. We don't see why everybody's not doing one form or another, you know, like the stock market or real estate. And that's our goal. Our goal is that anybody who's trying to get into this, I wanna help them get into it. It can help change their lives.

00:56:12 Speaker 3: I know there's gotta be kids out there that were like us when we were young and just didn't know their way out. If I'd have had YouTube when I was young, man, I'd have been much further ahead, you know?

00:56:22 Speaker 4: Yeah, absolutely.

00:56:23 Speaker 1: And Reshan, I wanted to circle back to something we talked about earlier, just because I know part of your story is that you're high income, you're earning very high incomes, but your story, I mean, a big part of your story was I'm coming out of college and I'm about to have my first child. And as I'm applying for these first jobs, effectively, like they're not even returning my calls at this point in time.

00:56:43 Speaker 1: And you made this kind of call out there that we didn't have time to touch on. I would just encourage, if there's single moms out there, if there's people that wanna be able to take control of their own income, to really look at sales. And I don't wanna bypass that because I think that that is a massive point.

00:57:07 Speaker 1: I'd like to actually spend just a few minutes here and pull out from you, like, what would you want? Like, we just talked about how this first home could maybe change someone's life. But let's talk about sales here because what enabled you to really feel confident about that first home was your ability to crush it on the income side, and that was sales. Tell us, just give us a framework for thinking through that and what you might impart to someone that's getting started on their path.

00:57:19 Speaker 3: So when people aren't familiar with sales as a career, they think of it or they relate it to something like a used car salesman. You see things on television where they give you all of these negative perceptions of what salespeople are. When you work a corporate sales job, a salesperson's responsibility, their whole job is to educate. You are educating your client on the products and services that could help them to solve a business problem.

00:57:55 Speaker 3: That is what people really need to understand, that when you are working for a corporation, corporations have to generate revenue. Salespeople are revenue generators. So you are generally the last person to be fired when there's time for layoffs. So you have the opportunity to leverage your income because you decide how hard you want to work in order to achieve your goals.

00:58:20 Speaker 3: For me, it was a huge blessing as a single mom to know, hey, I've got to pay this daycare. I've got to be able to put food on the table and clothes on our backs. And I can do that by myself, knowing that all I have to do is go out and succeed these sales goals.

00:58:41 Speaker 3: If people are open to the idea of being an educator and helping businesses solve problems, then you might be a fit for a sales job. I would not shy away from that under any circumstance. It definitely does help to be comfortable talking to people, but there are some introverted salespeople. They just work in a different mode than someone like myself would. As an extrovert, then the first thing I'm doing is introducing myself to someone.

00:59:10 Speaker 3: But an introvert, they can still do this. It's just a matter of then they are probably leaning more on their knowledge of the product and services than they are on relationship building. But there are all different kinds of sales jobs. Every company has sales. You can't own a business without a sales team of some kind unless you are the entrepreneur that is wearing every hat yourself.

00:59:36 Speaker 3: And if your goal is to be an entrepreneur, you have to know how to sell. It is part of every business. I wanna spend a little bit more time here because as you said, there's this perception of what sales is, and then there's the reality. And then there's kind of like the replicable outliers. Not all sales jobs are created equally.

01:00:05 Speaker 1: So you, if you were gonna go back into sales, having done so well in this profession, what type of industries would you look at? What would you pick like, you know, from someone that doesn't have this experience, doesn't have the benefits of 20 years of hindsight, what is the lane that you would position yourself in if you were going to start over again?

01:00:28 Speaker 3: So my career was in technical sales coming out of college in 1995. Technology was all the rage. And I've worked for some incredible technology companies. I still think technology is a great place to start. If you have an opportunity to start with a company that has a training program, some of the larger companies definitely have training programs for college new hires, if not, then I would look at something based on whatever your specific passion or experiences.

01:00:59 Speaker 3: For example, Jonathan, you were in pharmacy at some point, right?

01:01:03 Speaker 1: Yes.

01:01:04 Speaker 3: Yes, I was. Pharmaceutical sales is a very high earning sales career. So next to technology for those people who have any comfort level with knowledge of healthcare. If you are a pharmacy student who's coming out and you have discovered that there isn't as much of a demand for your career as you thought there might be, or if you went through some form of education and found that you just didn't like it, the sales side is extremely lucrative for pharmacy.

01:01:41 Speaker 3: So technology, pharmacy, those are the ones that I am most familiar with as far as the earning potential is concerned, but even a software education or educational software, anything that relates to children in our society and culture, we are always focused on educating our children and improving their lives. We are spending tons and tons of money on things we want to do for our kids.

01:02:10 Speaker 3: So there are companies who have picked up on that and they have created software programs and different training programs. Those salespeople also do quite well. Rishon, when you're actually going to apply for one of these sales jobs, how would you set yourself apart? What would you tell someone that you're mentoring on how to go about getting one of these jobs that can ultimately be very lucrative?

01:02:30 Speaker 4: I would say, do your homework on the company, spend the time to understand exactly what the company's goals are, what it is they do, you know, where they're doing well, if you can absolutely try out their products, what always worked for me was that because I worked for large tech companies, their products were always something that I had used or was very familiar with.

01:02:55 Speaker 4: So being able to give your experience on that product, being able to speak about it passionately will help them to embrace you during the interview process. The fact that they know that you've done your homework.

01:03:04 Speaker 1: Right. And I want to talk about just range for just a second here and not, and just kind of as a way of putting it out there. I think people may not understand what highly paid actually looks like. And I know there really is no range when it comes to sales, depending on the industry, there is no upper limit.

01:03:16 Speaker 1: I know sales, I know business owners that have sales jobs. And for those sales jobs, their employees, their salespeople are making upwards of $750,000 a year. And then on the, maybe on the other, I mean, that's just, that's crazy. Right. And I mean, but there's also businesses where maybe it's a hundred thousand, 200,000, 300, but there is really no upper limit.

01:03:36 Speaker 1: And the cool thing is if you know how much revenue you're generating for the company and you are, because you're the one selling these products, you really control your own salary. And, and I said 750,000 really just to kind of blow it up, whatever you think the upper limit is, just say that there probably really is no upper limit, but I'm curious. Rishon with what you saw, you know, as a range that if you knew what you were doing and you could get in with a company that has a great product that is in demand that you are expertly familiar with, and you can cultivate.

01:03:45 Speaker 1: These relationships, you know, what sort of ranges are in your mind for the types of these sales jobs that are available?

01:03:51 Speaker 1: Okay. I would absolutely. So I've always had a base salary. That's something that I personally needed as a single mom. I needed to know that I at least had a base salary that would cover my living expenses.

01:04:03 Speaker 1: And I would say, depending on the company, again, working for larger companies, base salaries generally start at, you know, $50,000. So I've had a, now, at least they do. When I first started out, it was much lower, maybe in the thirties, but I've had a job where I've had a base salary of $50,000 and I still earned double that.

01:04:26 Speaker 1: I still earned a hundred thousand. Then I've had a job where I've had a base salary that was much higher and pushed me into the multiple low six figures. So you can go anywhere from a $50,000 base up to a hundred and $50,000 base.

01:04:48 Speaker 1: And you can earn anywhere from starting out. Some people may do like $75,000 all the way up to a half million dollars. I personally never had a half million dollar year for myself.

01:05:03 Speaker 2: Me either. But I do know, but I do know people who have done that, who have achieved that. So I know it's doable that I wasn't as great as they are.

01:05:14 Speaker 1: I think you guys are doing okay. So I was very happy. I was very happy with what I did.

01:05:19 Speaker 1: You two have been so generous with your time and on most shows that would be the end of the episode. But, uh, on this show, Robin Rishon, we would love to give you the chance to tackle the hot seat. Are you ready for this?

01:05:31 Speaker 1: All right, let's do it.

01:05:34 Speaker 1: In a world drowning in debt and rampant consumption, trapped by the chains of lifestyle inflation, these questions highlight the secrets of those who have broken free. Welcome to the ChooseFI hot seat.

01:06:04 Speaker 1: Question number one. What is your favorite blog, podcast, or book of all time?

01:06:09 Speaker 2: I'll let Rob answer cause he's excited about what he's going through right now. Think and Grow Rich, uh, Napoleon Hill.

01:06:15 Speaker 1: Yes.

01:06:17 Speaker 2: You know, I read it like five years ago. My mindset was just starting to come around. Now I'm reading it again on audiobook.

01:06:24 Speaker 1: Really?

01:06:25 Speaker 2: I hate really reading, but I love audio. I'm seeing it like it's brand new again. I almost don't remember most of it.

01:06:33 Speaker 2: I thought I did until I started listening to it again. And it's great. It just keeps my mind flowing and keeps my juices going. Keeps me creative, you know, and I love it.

01:06:43 Speaker 1: I love it. So awesome. I'm going to say The Millionaire Real Estate Investor, because that is a great first book to read if you are exploring the idea of investing in real estate.

01:06:54 Speaker 2: Is that Gary Keller?

01:06:56 Speaker 1: Yes.

01:06:57 Speaker 2: Fantastic. After that book, I did our first deal.

01:07:00 Speaker 1: That is amazing. Okay. Well, question number two, an inflection point in your life that was especially memorable or meaningful.

01:07:05 Speaker 2: I would say it was joining our finances, making the decision to put everything together so that we could see the bigger picture so that we could begin to plan for our future together as a team. That was huge for us.

01:07:21 Speaker 1: Yeah. Mine is different though.

01:07:22 Speaker 2: Okay.

01:07:23 Speaker 1: This year after traveling and seeing the world and seeing how much you really don't need by seeing other cultures and other people, it's great. And I feel like I'm more content now.

01:07:35 Speaker 1: I think the path that we're on is it's even better now and we need less because of the way I feel after this year.

01:07:41 Speaker 2: Oh, I love that. That's fantastic.

01:07:42 Speaker 1: Yeah, absolutely. And anchoring yourself, it's a big world out there.

01:07:45 Speaker 2: It is a big world out there.

01:07:47 Speaker 1: All right. Question number three, your favorite life hack.

01:07:51 Speaker 2: I don't know if you and your spouse always have the same answer, but it's so funny. We have a lot of similarities, but we generally are experiencing things quite differently.

01:08:00 Speaker 1: And that's a whole nother story for travel. We'll have to tell you about you guys about one day. But I would probably say our favorite life hack has been, or my favorite life hack has been buying used cars.

01:08:12 Speaker 2: So I buy the cars for our family because I am dispassionate about cars.

01:08:19 Speaker 1: Yeah. I really don't care what it is, if it passes the inspection and gets us from A to B.

01:08:24 Speaker 2: So I buy cars via email. I put together the description of what I want, what I'm looking for and what I'm willing to spend.

01:08:32 Speaker 2: And I email that to 10 to 20 dealers or sellers, whomever it might be. Then based on what I get back from them, I determine whether or not I'm going to go forward with the next step.

01:08:46 Speaker 2: I meet them. I take the car to our personal mechanic who gives it a lemon check and the green light. Then I negotiate. At this point, I've already negotiated the price.

01:09:02 Speaker 2: I mean, so for me, buying a car is a fun experience because I always feel like I have the upper hand based on how I approach it. So definitely my favorite life hack.

01:09:07 Speaker 2: And I do that for my sister, my mom, and anybody in the family when it's time for them to buy a car.

01:09:13 Speaker 1: Wow. I love this. I mean, this is actually something I talked about probably, Jonathan, 250 plus episodes ago that I wish I had the courage to do.

01:09:20 Speaker 2: And I haven't actually done it yet, but you could extend that.

01:09:27 Speaker 1: That's amazing. So you could really do that on just about anything, right? I think the example that I gave was my air conditioner was probably going to need to be replaced, the whole HVAC system in my house in the next year or so.

01:09:39 Speaker 2: I was going to draft up an email copying basically all of the reputable companies in town, basically saying, all right, here's what I need on your slowest day. Whenever you want to make a sale, here's what I'll pay.

01:09:49 Speaker 2: The first person that says yes, they can do it anytime in the next 18 months. And I mean, really it's a similar concept to this car.

01:10:00 Speaker 2: Here's what I'm willing to pay. Here's what I want. Have fun, guys.

01:10:03 Speaker 2: I don't put them all on the same email so that they fight it out. I do email them separately.

01:10:08 Speaker 2: And some of them say, hey, what are you smoking? Some of them have, yeah, I've gotten the response, oh, are you a dealer yourself? Because what you're asking for is dealer level pricing.

01:10:15 Speaker 2: And then there are always two or three that come back and say, yes, I think we can make a deal.

01:10:23 Speaker 1: What I love about that, yes, I'm the exact same thing. I'm not trying to pit people against each other to their face, but I like that you said, I always have the upper hand, right?

01:10:31 Speaker 1: You go to that dealership and you don't know if you found the one dealer that doesn't negotiate, quote unquote, right? So why waste your time?

01:10:37 Speaker 1: You have a price that you want to spend. You're in a dispassionate place. You know the car, you know the number, whatever. Can you do this?

01:10:41 Speaker 2: If not, this is a form template that you're using, right?

01:10:49 Speaker 2: Would you mind sharing that template with us?

01:10:51 Speaker 1: Oh yeah, no problem. I'll dig it up. It's clearly in my sent folder somewhere.

01:10:57 Speaker 2: I think I could save people a lot of money on their next car, I really do. That system is, that's replicable right there.

01:11:03 Speaker 1: It's a huge life hack. Love it.

01:11:06 Speaker 1: All right, question number four, paired onto that, the biggest financial mistake you've made.

01:11:11 Speaker 2: I think I talked about mine already, right? Blowing that GI Bill money. Instead of using it towards school and having no school debt, that was mine, so.

01:11:19 Speaker 2: Live and learn.

01:11:20 Speaker 1: Or live, hustle, grow.

01:11:22 Speaker 2: Learn, hustle, grow.

01:11:23 Speaker 1: Oh, so close. But you got it, you understand.

01:11:28 Speaker 1: You probably know how we came to that name based on our story, right?

01:11:31 Speaker 2: Absolutely, absolutely.

01:11:33 Speaker 1: Let's see, biggest financial, biggest financial mistake?

01:11:37 Speaker 2: Car or anything? My first car was a Saturn, guy.

01:11:40 Speaker 1: Oh God.

01:11:42 Speaker 2: They had to put that car down, it would never die on its own.

01:11:45 Speaker 2: I love that car.

01:11:47 Speaker 1: Let's see, so one thing, oh, credit cards, definitely.

01:11:51 Speaker 2: Oh, yeah.

01:11:51 Speaker 2: So the whole, the way I got into debt was credit cards. And student loans were not, like I said, were not horrible in my experience, and I did have them for sure.

01:12:02 Speaker 2: But I was on a campus where they had tables set up and they were handing out credit cards like candy. Essentially, they were handing them out with candy, two liter bottles of soda, free T-shirts.

01:12:14 Speaker 2: And we had never discussed credit in my home. I knew that my mom had credit cards because she used them to buy things.

01:12:21 Speaker 2: And I just thought, oh, now I get a credit card. And I was just signing up for them randomly on campus.

01:12:27 Speaker 2: They have these very low numbers as far as your credit limits, but I was blowing them all. Every time I would sign up for one, I would just max it out.

01:12:35 Speaker 2: And that's how I got into debt. It was all about credit cards on campus.

01:12:39 Speaker 1: It's amazing how those deals made it on campus and how bad they really were, that that was just, that was fine to market that.

01:12:45 Speaker 2: Yeah, that's ridiculous.

01:12:46 Speaker 1: I certainly remember those tables and our student commons giving, yeah, it was one T-shirt. That was what you'd get to sign up.

01:12:51 Speaker 2: It's crazy.

01:12:53 Speaker 1: Or the giant Twix, the giant Kit-Kats.

01:12:55 Speaker 2: Or the Reese's Cups. Crazy, crazy.

01:13:00 Speaker 1: You know what, I just thought about a random life hack that is so out of the box, we can come back to it.

01:13:04 Speaker 2: No, lay it on us.

01:13:05 Speaker 1: All right, Rob, what do you got, your favorite life hack?

01:13:07 Speaker 2: This might sound crazy, but my favorite life hack is GTA.

01:13:12 Speaker 2: Grand Theft Auto. I play Grand Theft Auto, right? You can build anything you want in this game, like a new Mustang or a new Ferrari, without paying a dollar after you bought the game.

01:13:26 Speaker 2: If I want a new house, I go live downtown in a high-rise building with a 10 car garage and I just build it on GTA.

01:13:34 Speaker 2: And that kind of keeps me content, a small bit of contentment in my life.

01:13:39 Speaker 2: If I feel like I can't buy something huge, like a big car or, I mean, you can get a super car on GTA.

01:13:45 Speaker 1: I don't know if you guys are gamers.

01:13:47 Speaker 2: I hear you, man, I'm with you. Aspiring moguls, you can just have that in this sandbox and then just keep that credit card balance super low.

01:13:54 Speaker 1: Yep, and I could see, like I saw a guy with a white Mustang down the street with a blue stripe across it.

01:14:00 Speaker 1: I said, man, I would love to have one of those. But you know what I did?

01:14:03 Speaker 1: I went home on GTA, robbed a couple of people, and then bought the car. I did a heist with some guys. We got a big bag of money, I bought the car and put it in my 10 car garage.

01:14:15 Speaker 1: And man, and now I got 10 cars and I live downtown and I bought a helicopter, guy.

01:14:20 Speaker 2: See, Jay Leno has nothing on you, nothing.

01:14:26 Speaker 2: The best life hack I've ever heard on the show. That game keeps me content, man.

01:14:32 Speaker 1: That is awesome.

01:14:33 Speaker 1: All right, question number five, the advice you would give your younger self.

01:14:37 Speaker 2: Ooh, buy real estate as soon as humanly possible.

01:14:43 Speaker 2: If I could go back, I would say, Rob, pay your bills. Don't accumulate any extra debt. Live as frugal as possible. Even get a roommate and start saving your first 20%.

01:14:51 Podcast Extro: You've been listening to ChooseFI Podcast, where we help middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.

01:14:54 Brad: To put on a place in San Diego since I lived there when I was like 20 years old. That's fantastic advice. I love it, I love it. And it's cool that your kids are gonna be on this path. And so to your point, you said, what advice would I give my younger self? And then earlier in this episode, what did you say? I say, we're gonna help our son get that house, get that first property. We're gonna help mentor him through that process. And what does it look like for him to now be able to live this out? Thinking about this in terms of the next generation is a fantastic approach. Absolutely. My advice to my younger self would be to stay in the Army Reserves for that 20 years so that I could have walked away with net, we would now have pensions. If we had stayed in for the 20, and you can do the 20 in the Reserve, yeah. That's another one, yeah. At the time that we signed up, it was possible. And then that way we would have had additional retirement income coming in. Even if you're not gonna be active duty and be there full time, just stay in the Reserves, do the full 20, and just stay attached to the military. Go in when they need you to go in, and you'll still get the full benefits when you're done after 20 years. You can still work your corporate job. The corporations actually give you the time off to go and do what you do as a Reserve. Nobody can fire you, yep. Oh, wow, that's really cool, great advice.

01:16:07 Brad: We do have a bonus question for you. What purchase have you made over the past 12 months that has added the most value to your life? And Reshawn, I feel like we should just get Rob like one of those steering wheels, like the fully immersive experience for GTA. That might bring a lot of value. A purchase we've made last year? Our primary spending this year has been on travel. On travel and? So I'm trying to think, what else have we? And travel works, travel works, guys. Yeah, yeah, our equipment, like a microphone and video editing software. That's really helped. Awesome, guys. Instead of using the cheap, lazy stuff. You guys know, audio is everything, right? Audio is everything. It's not as good of experience if we didn't have a decent mic. Yeah, and yeah, we had a crappy mic and now I think people can hear us. They can, I verify, and in fact, I hope that people actually check this out on the YouTube channel because I think they're gonna get a lot of fun actually watching this episode.

01:17:06 Jonathan: You both brought it and it was so much fun to join you as you shared your story with us. Thank you for being here with us and for people listening to this, they wanna connect with you. What is the best way for people to find out more about what you're doing? So our YouTube channel is Learn, Hustle, Grow. So YouTube.com, Learn, Hustle, Grow. The Instagram is also Learn, Hustle, Grow. And we actually have a web presence under learnhustlegrow.com.

01:17:28 Brad: Robyn Reshawn, thank you so much for joining us on the show today. Thanks, guys. Thanks for having us.

01:17:31 Jonathan: All right, my friends, if you got value from today's episode and if you've been getting value from the episodes up to this point, just take one second and press the subscribe button on the platform you're listening to this on. Just let the provider know you wanna be there when we produce additional content. If you wanna support us and what we're doing here at ChooseFI, here are four easy ways. One, leave us an iTunes review. To do that, just go to choosefi.com slash iTunes. Two, use our page to sign up for travel credit cards. If you wanna travel the world with miles and points instead of your hard-earned dollars, then just go to choosefi.com slash cards and get started today. Three, if you're working on the milestones of FI, set up a personal capital account to track your progress and use our affiliate link. It's completely free. And just go to choosefi.com slash PC. P as in Paul, C as in cat. And four, and most importantly, find your friends, coworkers, and family members who might be open to this message and tell them about the podcast. Have them start with episode 100. It is a fantastic starting place. All right, my friends, the fire is spreading. We'll see you next time as we continue to go down the road less traveled.

01:18:31 Jonathan: You've been listening to ChooseFI Podcast, where we help middle-class America build wealth one life hack at a time.