Grant: 38:51  And there was just kind of an ease and there’s, you know, life’s going to have a lot of rhythms and you’re right, some days those rhythms are going to be crazy and it’s just, there’s gonna be so much going on and you know you’re going to be stressed and you know, life is life. I really struggled to sleep the first few months after leaving my job. So I actually hired a guy to do it and it was great and he saved me a bunch of money on taxes even though I’m super into this stuff, he was able to still make some suggestions to save a bunch of money on taxes. And that led to a period of probably two years at least of just like really quite dark times. And I think a lot of people think about money, you know, and they’re like budgeting or oh my gosh, I can’t imagine it just, it just seems kind of daunting and stressful and the finance industry sells this idea that, hey, you need to save up a ton of money and here’s the exact number and we’re going to help you get there. Grant: 17:11 Thanks for being open and sharing that because I feel like we’re at a really similar position and it’s really fun for me to talk to you and hear your reflection on it. 161: Backdoor Roths, Mega Backdoor Roths, and Roth Conversion Ladders with The Mad Fientist | Listen Notes Grant: 46:12  All right, have a good day. Why spend a lot of money to get a Mac when you could get a perfectly good PC for half the price? Notify me of new posts by email. And I think it sets a, it creates stress and I think a lot of budgeting reinforces kind of a scarcity mindset. It shouldn’t have been focusing on a certain number in the bank. And I’ve talked a lot about some of the downsides of it, but I just want to reiterate like overall it is just so amazing to be able to wake up and choose what you do that day. So like I have an article called how to access retirement accounts early and that goes through all the different strategies that you can use. Brandon: 10:17 Yeah, absolutely. It sounds like at some point you got really far in the deprivation, a sort of the pendulum swung pretty far that way, but what’s that moment when you kind of realize, hey, you know, I’ve got a lot more control over this and my options than I previously had? And then if you’re at that stage and you have a bunch of money and you don’t want to deal with it, then you can hire somebody to deal with it for you and that’s actually something I’ve just recently did. Let's talk about your next project. Enter your email address to follow this blog and receive notifications of new posts by email. I appreciat e i t . Brandon: 27:47  But I think the spending side of the equation is really where you would want to start because it’s like if you’re hemorrhaging money on things that don’t really improve your life, then that’s an easy first place to start trimming and trying to optimize. Brandon: 29:34 Like I still wanted to do something and when it comes to investing, not doing something is usually the best call. MILLENNIAL MONEY IS A PART OF THE MOTLEY FOOL NETWORK, A DIVISION OF THE MOTLEY FOOL.©1995-2021 THE MOTLEY FOOL. Today we’re joined by a friend of the BiggerPockets podcast network, Brandon “The Mad Fientist”. Maybe because I have that option. Because yeah, once you get there, maybe you’re spending is cut in half because you realize all the stuff you’re spending on didn’t matter so then you worked longer than you needed to or maybe you start spending more because you realize you deprived yourself over the last few years of stuff that really did make you happy. Because if, if I’d walked into my boss’s office because I was able to work one day a week from home, but like working anymore, it was like, oh no, that’s against company policy. Brandon:  25:04 You’re seeing all these obviously like all the television shows and everything on the TV is also you’re comparing yourself to. This is the encouragement I needed to keep saving. Grant: 20:50 Yeah, I agree with you. Brandon: 33:28 It shouldn’t take too much time initially because if you’re currently working and you have a high income and you’re looking to retire early, then obviously the thing that you’re gonna want to do now is just lower that taxable income as much as you can and that’s quite simple through just like taking advantage of your 401k. Advanced Strategies for Pursuing Financial Independence - http://www.madfientist.com Is it aligned with your values? Happy Saturday! But I’m still only like really coming to grips with it now. It’s your path and there’s so many different ways to become FI. (You can watch the video here.) ( Log Out /  Like focus on optimizing for your current situation, then hopefully you’ll be happy and you’ll be doing work towards what you want to be doing anyway. It’s like when you stop for a minute and you actually, whether it’s people watching or you know, just when you’re able to get some distance from that rat race, for lack of a better word, you start to be able to reflect back on it and see, or at least me personally, just see how much people are kind of struggling and you realize, you know, I realized just how much I was struggling when I was in it and I think, you know, you can only do so much sort of decompression and soul searching, you know, in a weekend or in, you know, a couple of weeks of vacation a year. Grant: 38:26  One of the things I realized I was looking for a word. They seem so, you know, I want to outsource that or I don’t want to think about that. So it’s, it’s awesome man. So it was like, alright, well what do I do now? So there are challenges like I said, but I, I couldn’t recommend it enough. Grant:18:21 You know, we’re taught to continue to go up the career ladder, get a new job, and if the book does one thing, I hope it just wakes people up to the fact that you can step off that roller coaster kind of whenever you want. or. Brandon delights in reading and digesting complicated tax literature and programs, and translating it into easily understandable English. Email *. Brandon is the host of the Mad FIentist podcast and author at MadFIentist.com where he talks and writes about financial independence, these are his good things. Do you feel that in a way? I was like, what is this? So yeah, it’s been a rollercoaster ride and like I’ve chatted to our mutual friend Vicki Robin about things like that and I’m like just in, she helped like try to give me pointers on how to figure out what is important and where, where I should go from here. And yeah, it was only like after two years of that that my wife was like, what is happening here? That’s a good way to describe it. First Name. It’s the government wants you to pay the minimum that you’re required to pay. Brandon: 45:45  No, my pleasure, man. Evil Mad Scientist Laboratories Making the world a better place, one Evil Mad Scientist at a time. You just have to keep testing it out. You can sign up to. His favorite sections of the tax code are, of course, those that have to do with retirement. Brandon: 36:47  It’s being able to do anything that I want and not really answering to anyone else. At the end of the month, take a look at where your money went and ask yourself for every item on the list, “if giving this up meant I could quit my job tomorrow, would I give it up?” If you answer yes, seriously consider giving it up because it’s obviously not as important to you as your freedom is. And when I was doing the research I realized, wait a second, like early retirees are so different from the normal work until you’re 65 employee. On Mad Fientist, Brandon offers a free, downloadable Excel spreadsheet to help others calculate when they can afford to retire. Rework by Jason Fried and David Heinemeier Hansson. But I was slightly jealous of like past me and pretty much 95 percent of the population and I’m like, wow, they’re just so busy they don’t have to face these tough questions and think about these big existential issues. Brandon walks us through advanced retire… Today we’re joined by a friend of the BiggerPockets podcast network, Brandon “The Mad Fientist”. While these strategies may sound intense at first, they’re quite simple in practice, as Brandon shows us! It’s like whether it’s get to a number, get to a level of career or you know, it’s so much easier to chase this external thing, whether it’s a promotion or a job or a higher number. Brandon: 11:01 So I feel like there’s definitely not enough time. One of the things I’ve realized for me is that happiness is no longer the goal in a way, and that I find that I’m growing more as I dive into some of those things that I’ve always felt uncomfortable with about myself and leaning into some of those things. If you have one at work, if you have a 403b, that’s also a great one. But, but yeah, not caring so much about the money I guess just allows me to not worry about that and just not care. So like bedtime was always the worst because I was like, I gotta go to sleep now and like when I’d wake up I’d be super excited. But again, it’s always just an experiment. And this was, this was a thing that I didn’t expect. And I’ve been reunited with my podcasting microphone, so hopefully, I’m sounding better than I have over the last few episodes. Berufserfahrung, Kontaktdaten, Portfolio und weitere Infos: Erfahr mehr – oder kontaktier Brandon Wolf direkt bei XING. So, you know, we’re so lucky that we’re able to have the time and space to think about these things and I hope that people out there, you know, FI, a lot of what’s shared about FI, uh, and a lot of what’s written about FIRE is, you know, it’s all about optimization, optimization, optimization, and I just, I really feel that at least I’ve grown the most when I’ve made mistakes and I got this email from a reader who is like, you know, they felt so guilty because they were saving money and now they’re not and now they’re off track. Website. He books airfare with frequent-flyer miles. Like I’m saying yes to all this stuff. And, and uh, yeah, it’s a beautiful thing. Join the Mad Fientist, Mr. Money Mustache, Paula Pant from Afford Anything, and Doug Nordman from The Military Guide for a live Q&A from Camp Mustache! The book is based on a true story about an ex-addict who escaped from prison in Australia and then fled to India. My wife Jill and I just got back from your 3-month trip around the world. And you know, we don’t have to dive into that. There’s a, you know, it just goes on like there’s so much opportunity and yeah, obviously there are still problems like health care cost are increasing and formal education costs are increasing and things like that. Thanks for sharing. Americans in particular, I don’t know they feel like they deserve the best and they’re so…like we said before, I think a lot of people are so disconnected from what actually makes them happy so they’re just spending on things that don’t make them happy and then that’s just trapping them in, in this unhappiness where they have to work really hard to maintain it just because, you know, credit is easier to get now than it has probably ever been so people are screwing their future selves over by spending what they can’t afford just to, to keep up this lifestyle. And the fees and the cost involved would be insane. in Your 30s with Brandon, the Mad Fientist (Transcript) PT: Brandon, welcome to t he show. Ahhhh … I’m currently putting money into a “sinking fund” every month, hoping to buy a MacBook when my laptop PC bites the dust. ( Log Out /  Yeah. Mad Fientist. And one of the things I think I wish people allowed themselves kind of more space to grow and not be so worried necessarily about hitting a perfect number. Here is the link to the reset of the video so you can watch the replay. A great to-do list app that allows you to easily sync your to-do lists between all of your devices. The finance industry sells a level of precision that I just personally think is really unrealistic. How much time, like, how many hours do you think of research it would take to get the basics to where you’re gonna you know, you’re going to be able to get some savings because this sounds to someone, it’s just new. I’ve actually just been using my … Get Access! There’s far fewer gatekeepers these days. You should try to keep track of everything you spend money on for a single month. Brandon: 01:14 Yeah, it’s, it’s been a long process and I definitely wouldn’t consider myself there. Get free access to Grant's best tips along with exclusive videos, never-released podcast episodes, wealth-building how-to's, time-saving calculators, mind-blowing courses, and way more. Brandon: 38:47 Right? I mean, man, you sound really happy. Brandon studies fience, or the science behind financial independence. Uh, I’m actually in a, in a very similar position myself where, you know, I’ve been out of the corporate world now for almost 11 months and I’m at a point where I want to keep growing the blog. Brandon, the Mad Fientist. It’s like yeah, we were eating out a lot more but it got less special. And I feel one of the things I’ve started to recognize, and I’ve never seen this before, that, you know, a lot of people are just, they’re asleep. And so yeah. I would definitely say that, um, you know, incomes are very high. http://store.apple.com/us/browse/home/specialdeals/mac, Lee Garrett – Author, Blogger, Project Manager, Taylor Pearson – Creator, Collector, Author, Aaron Wolfson – Writer, Reader, Coder, Thinker, Melinda Massie – Professional Organizer, Entrepreneur, and Writer, Ruwan Meepagala – Writer, Creativity Coach, Graham Hunt – Spanish Real-Estate Entrepreneur, Adam Kuban – former food blogger, Pizza Guy, Tim Prebble – Sound Designer and Composer, Brandon Epstein – Founder of Entrepreneur Fitness, Michael Raphael – Sound Effects Recordist, Joanna Castle Miller – Writer and Producer. Like I didn’t literally recognize the feeling and I realized it was the first time in my life that I was actually at peace. It was like I wasn’t going to touch it. It should have been that relationship between money, happiness, and like overall life purpose, and just trying to experiment with that, optimize and yeah, not putting off that happiness for some arbitrary number in a bank account that really doesn’t matter at the end of the day because it’s hard to conceptualize money in the bank anyway. But now we can just invest in every business in the world. What are those few steps to take someone from that consumerist mindset to, hey, you know, money can actually give me a lot more control and a lot more freedom in my life? When I first thought, all right, I’m going to pursue financial independence. Matt and Andrew are joined by Brandon from MadFientist.com to talk about staying motivated in their online businesses. Brandon walks us through advanced retirement account strategies you may have heard of, such as the Backdoor Roth, Roth Conversion Ladder, and the coveted Mega Backdoor Roth. But once she said it, it was like, Oh wow, yeah, we are unhappy and we, we just decided to move back to Scotland, which is where she was from and just start over really just like, okay, like get out of the woods, start being around people that we love and like spending time around and stop just focusing on money so much which was, which was my problem. Grant: 35:18 So looking back on your FI journey, besides the deprivation, is there anything that you would have done differently now that you know so much about this? And it’s legal. Whereas what I did was like I completely ignored the other two, focused solely on the money and then I got the money part of it sorted out and then I had these other two things where I was like, well Jeez, I have no idea what I’m doing here and that is not good for being in that position, but it’s also not good for happiness throughout the journey. So. But with that being said, one of the things that you said when I was talking to you and interviewing you for the book is that it’s never been easier in the United States to become FI. I’m learning a lot about myself and life and one of the missions of the book was Financial Freedom is clearly to share and I really hope it wakes people up just to that idea that money is infinite and time is not in a lot of people that are just sitting in their desk or they’re on their way to work listening to this or they’re at home kind of decompressing and I think a lot of people feel like they’ve got to stay on the ride until the end, if that makes sense? Why are so many people still stuck in that rut? Why It's Never Been Easier To Reach FI w/ Brandon @MadFientist Just like you, I was sitting in Cornwall, England for a little bit of time and I was sitting just looking at the water and I felt really weird. Change ), You are commenting using your Facebook account. So when I started Mad Fientist I thought I was going to be like this amazing investor, like, oh, I do a bunch of research, write a bunch of articles about it and be this incredible investor and that’s how I would hit financial independence sooner. For funding that uh, it was a true story about an ex-addict who escaped from prison in and. In increased happiness say that, um, you know, actually this is just this... Good PC for half the price the livestream had audio issues so we restarted the event issue... Brandon built financial independence in the woods really he was the first few months after leaving job! Join over 100,000 others on the Mad Fientist: hey, do you think the rate... Number in the most accessible way: saving and investing half of his income me that,... Things related to early retirement, my pleasure, man true honor to have brandon on exact... Saved and invested more money t recommend it enough and receive notifications New! 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