{"id":101217,"date":"2018-08-06T00:02:34","date_gmt":"2018-08-06T06:02:34","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/renewsblog\/?p=101217"},"modified":"2023-04-26T05:30:32","modified_gmt":"2023-04-26T11:30:32","slug":"biggerpockets-money-podcast-32-financial-freedom-through-saving-investing-and-a-small-real-estate-portfolio","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/biggerpockets-money-podcast-32-financial-freedom-through-saving-investing-and-a-small-real-estate-portfolio","title":{"rendered":"Financial Freedom Through Small Life Changes and a Modest Real Estate Portfolio"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Today we sit down with <strong>Mr. and Mrs. Planting our Pennies<\/strong>, or Mr. and Mrs. <strong>PoP<\/strong> for short. Mr. PoP never wanted to be anchored to an inflexible job. Mrs. PoP never wanted to be financially insecure. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">A reward trip to Hawaii after a good sales year at his job led Mr. PoP to the internet where he found <a href=\"http:\/\/earlyretirementextreme.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Early Retirement Extreme<\/a> and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrmoneymustache.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mr. Money Mustache<\/a>. Mrs. PoP ran the numbers and discovered that their target number for a mini-retirement really wasn\u2019t that hard to reach. A few more calculations showed her they could work slightly longer and quit working their traditional jobs forever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">This episode truly showcases that anyone can achieve financial freedom. Small tweaks to your spending can yield huge rewards fairly quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p><span style=\"font-weight: 400;\">Wondering if you can reach financial freedom? This episode will show you how. <\/span><\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biggerpockets-money-podcast\/id1330225136\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">Click here<\/a>\u00a0to listen on iTunes.<\/p>\n<h2>Listen to the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" frameborder=\"0\" height=\"200\" scrolling=\"no\" src=\"https:\/\/playlist.megaphone.fm?e=BIGPOC5525415151&#038;light=false\" width=\"100%\"><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Read the Transcript Here<\/h2>\n<div style=\"overflow-y: scroll; max-height: 400px; background: #eee; padding: 20px; border: 1px solid #ddd;\">\n<p>\u00a0<i>Welcome to the BiggerPockets Money Podcast show number 32.<\/i><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Where we interview Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>I ran a spreadsheet and I was like wait a second baby, if we keep doing this for I don&#8217;t know three or four more years it couldn&#8217;t be just boat for a couple of years we could be like on a boat forever. What do you think?<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Yes, that was a pretty easy sell so.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Yes.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Basically we picked it up rapidly. We did the 4% rule. You know we became part of that fi community when we hit that $300,000 back in I don&#8217;t know 2013- 2014 somewhere.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Probably 2014, yes.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>A long time ago and basically we\u2019re set for life now.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>It&#8217;s time for a new American dream. One that doesn&#8217;t involve working in a cubicle for 40 years, barely scraping by. Whether you&#8217;re looking to get your financial house in order, invest the money you already have or discover new paths for wealth creation. You&#8217;re in the right place. This show is for anyone who has money or wants more. This is the BiggerPockets Money Podcast.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott: <\/b>How&#8217;s it going everybody, I\u2019m Scott Trench. I&#8217;m here with my cohost Ms. Mindy Jensen. How are you doing today Mindy?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Scott, I am having just another fantastic day. How are you doing today?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I&#8217;m doing great this was a very fun interview with Mr. and Mrs. PoP, short for Planting Our Pennies.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, I have known the PoPs for about five years. As always I met them at FinCon, the financial conference that we attend every year and I just really love their down-to-earth nature.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, I thought they had a fantastic approach to this and we\u2019re both kind of starting very kind of ordinary position you know and change their ways to pursue financial independence aggressively.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes and what I like is I like how she said, \u201cI never wanted to be financially insecure.\u201d He said, \u201cI never wanted to have this traditional work till your 80 job.\u201d Those are kind of contradictory. If you don&#8217;t want to be financially insecure then you need to have a job forever and I like how they found a way to make it work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, I mean it was just like a fantastic, I think largely repeatable approach to financial independence one where Mr. PoP was not exactly having a superstar career going into 2008- 2009 and he was able then to kind of jumpstart things and make them work. I mean he was saying he couldn&#8217;t get a job at JCPenney, but he could you know he was able to launch into a sales career and begin to build from there in I really impressive way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, I&#8217;m not going to give it away, but listen to what his paycheck was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> At one point he got a paycheck that was let&#8217;s just say not small.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> It was more than his annual salary the year before.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes. For one paycheck.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That&#8217;s amazing and yes like you said this is relatable to anybody can do this and that&#8217;s what they said over and over again. Anybody can do this. There is not a big secret to this. It is not rocket science.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, love it well should we go ahead and introduce them and bring them in?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> We should, but first we should hear from today&#8217;s sponsor.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Today&#8217;s sponsor is FreshBooks. If you&#8217;re an entrepreneur who&#8217;s not on top of your business financials, you need to get a good dose of FreshBooks in your life. FreshBooks is the ridiculously easy cloud accounting software made specifically for small business owners who need to find a better way to deal with their paperwork. It takes literally about 30 seconds to create and send a polished professional looking invoice and with two clicks FreshBooks can set you up to receive payments online. FreshBooks can even show you whether or not a client has looked at the invoice you\u2019ve emailed. For a 30 day unrestricted free trial go to FreshBooks.com\/BPMoney and enter BiggerPockets Money in the how did you hear about us section.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay huge thanks to today sponsor. Let&#8217;s bring in Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies. Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies welcome to the BiggerPockets Money podcast. How&#8217;s it going?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Good thanks for having us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Hey how are you doing guys? It&#8217;s an honor to be here.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Oh it&#8217;s I&#8217;m so excited to talk to you guys today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, likewise. Where do you kind of consider the beginning of your journey with money in general?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Well I would say we both grew up very differently with money and kind of wanted different things out of money. I always wanted financial security and Mr. PoP over here was much more about flexible work environments and jobs.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes so from like day one, my first job was at Blockbuster and as soon as I figured I could get out of working I thought that would be absolutely fantastic. I&#8217;ve been always wanting freedom. That&#8217;s been the kind of guiding path for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> You didn&#8217;t see a lot of long-term job stability a Blockbuster?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> No, I was not smart to see Netflix coming down the path, but I knew. I mean the people, the people that I looked up to most even at that age they were all entrepreneurs, solo-preneurs, real estate developers, and people like that. You know they weren&#8217;t grinding away the 9-to-5 and so I just didn&#8217;t have the kind of role model that had that kind of job and I never really desired it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Okay so what were the kind of resources you were starting your career with then when you had that first job at Blockbuster? Were you starting from scratch? Did you save up when you were a kid or through college or what was kind of your starting position there?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Wells so Blockbuster was when Mr. PoP was in a high school. I kind of consider our joint starting together and we got married in 2009 so we also live in South West Florida so I don&#8217;t know if you remember anything about 2008 \u2013 2009 in Southwest Florida, but you know real estate was crashing, great recession, a financial apocalypse. It was looking a little bit grim. I had a good solid job with a small company that was local. Mr. PoP didn&#8217;t have a job, but we still, we got married. We bought a house and got a cat kind of all within the span of about four months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It was a good four months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It was a good four months. Yes, but at that point we basically had one good job between us and a net worth of about $50,000 to our names.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, it&#8217;s not like we started off from a great place. Like my wife said I didn&#8217;t have a job when we got married. My first job was working for minimum wage. My second job after that, after I got married was selling phones in a kiosk because I was annoying guys and say hey kid you want a case for your iPhone? Totally me so it&#8217;s not like I had great work prospects. I graduated college with a philosophy degree so we really did start from just about Ground Zero, but I think we kind of knew, we always knew kind of where we wanted to end up.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Let me correct you in your story. You started with $50,000 in net worth. That&#8217;s a little bit more than most people start with. Being positive even a dollar is a lot more than some people start with so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You are still pretty well off even if you were the annoying sales phone guy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, we were a couple years out of college at that point and we before the great recession hit we had both had decent jobs for a couple of years and even though we weren\u2019t married we were living on separate coasts in Florida we were both saving up money because we knew we probably wanted to buy a house together. That was kind of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I mean savings really was critical so even before we were married I had a job working in a retail setting for Apple computer back then, $40,000 per year and I was still trying to save you know a hundred dollars a month, $200 a month, $300 a month so to the marriage I think I brought maybe $10 \u2013 $20,000 and Bridget bought a little bit more than that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I got a really big bonus payout from a job that I quit right before the \u2013 right before Lehman Brothers fell. I quit my job in the finance industry.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> A good time to go out, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Got a really big bonus payout check and then quit my job and I&#8217;ve never gotten a bonus payout check that big. Again, but that was really kind of the start of our nest egg, but before that I was working like 80 hour weeks so I kind of feel like I earned that money too.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, seriously. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Well got you so then so that&#8217;s how you got kind of got into that position of having about $50 K and it sounds like this point where you have that $50 K is kind of where you consider you\u2019re starting, the start of your journey in earnest is that correct?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I think we kind of joke about it, but it&#8217;s because it&#8217;s when we became a team. We officially kind of joined together and then it was the two of us so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, and it happened really quickly too because right around that time we started thinking okay what do we want the future to look like and then we kind of stumbled across the Fi community.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, we got married on a boat, a catamaran.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> We did.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> The idea of kind of sailing away into the sunset has kind of been part of our I don&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Part of our vision since day one.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, marital DNA since day one, no. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You said that you stumbled across Fi, how did you do that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, this whole thing is my fault actually as it turns out so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> One of the jobs that I had after the cell phone kiosk I got picked up by a technology company into their sales department. If you&#8217;re good at it and I was good at it you go on these pretty cool trips so they would send you to Hawaii if you had a good year. Hanging on Hawaii, not working for a couple of days, had the email turned off. I thought boy how can I make this happen more frequently? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">How can I really make this happen you know for months at a time? How do I get that kind of flexibility and I remember I had a Blackberry back then and I was actually on the North Shore of Hawaii surfing around with my Blackberry. I found two sites, Early-Retirement Extreme, Jacob Lund Fisker\u2019s site and then also Mr. Money Mustache. I think that would&#8217;ve been 20 \u2013 early 2012.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that was 2012 so I met up with him on the beach a little while later and he was like how would you feel if we started saving 50% of our income. I was like say what?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> No, no it wasn&#8217;t say what. It was you\u2019re absolutely nuts. There&#8217;s no way we&#8217;re ever going to be able to do that. That&#8217;s what it was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Well I mean it&#8217;s kind of fitting, the Early Retirement Extreme Mr. Money Mustache personas I guess to be discovering them on your Blackberry in 2012 so kudos to you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Seriously I was hanging on to that thing because I was too cheap to buy a new phone and I think I had some kind of discounted plan, but I was they were going to pry it from my cold dead hands.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, from the days when he was selling cell phones his plan was actually really cheap.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes that&#8217;s right yes yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We had kept it. We had kept it on the hopes that they didn&#8217;t notice he wasn&#8217;t still selling cell phones.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> They didn&#8217;t. It was nice. They kept me on.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> What was that conversation like and then what were the changes that you made following that to begin kind of moving more aggressively towards this.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Did you tell her that you wanted to save 50% of your income because then you don&#8217;t want to work anymore and you just want to hang out in Hawaii beaches.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Kind of yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Well I would say not quite. Originally he was like how about just getting a boat and sailing away for a few years. I was like okay. I&#8217;m the numbers person. I&#8217;m like okay. We need to have enough money to buy the boat. We need to have enough money to fund our 401(k)s and our IRAs when we\u2019re gone because you know we can&#8217;t let savings lie just because we\u2019re on vacation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I love that the best.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> She goes into like dream crushing mode. She&#8217;s like, \u201cNo, no, no, no, no you don&#8217;t understand we got all of these expenses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We need to have living expenses. We need to have all these things so this is the number and I don&#8217;t know. It was like a couple hundred thousand dollars or something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I think it was probably $300,000, but that was super valuable because after you have a goal like that okay when I have $300,000 you can kind of start backing out of it. Okay what do we have to make per year? What does our savings rate have to look like? How do we construct this life so we can actually accomplish that goal? <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That was our initial goal sailboat sabbatical for a couple of years and that kind of stuff. I think the actions that we immediately tried to take I was already, I was in a good company and sales is really really lucrative. It is a grind, but anybody out there who had graduated with a humanities degree like me I heavily recommend sales. I know it&#8217;s difficult. I know that it&#8217;s not for everybody. I&#8217;m an introverted philosophy major. If I can be successful in sales and get to Fi through it anybody can. The world needs good salespeople so that\u2019s something I did. I got better at my job. I increase my earnings power and we kind of our expenses just around where they were.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, yes, yes we always kind of aim to spend in the $50,000 range and that was from when we first got married. That was within our budget then and we just never really increased it that much. We sometimes change what we spent on. I started bike commuting different items like that, but we didn&#8217;t really increase the core expenses.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I think that one of the early things that we did that still pays dividends is we never linked spending money with happiness. As soon you link spending money with happiness you are going straight downhill and it&#8217;s not going to end up well, but if you never make that link in your mind you&#8217;re going to be in a better spot I think for the rest of your life. I think that\u2019s a big trick for us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That&#8217;s really brilliant. Okay so let&#8217;s go back to this introverted philosophy major.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Successful salesperson.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Do you have any tips for people who want to become a successful salesperson? Is there a book that you read or a lake course that you took or did you just say I&#8217;m going to do it because I don&#8217;t want to work forever.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I mean it&#8217;s practice. The nice thing about sales, it&#8217;s a meritocracy. It really really is and it&#8217;s very very easy to get your foot in the door so initially I had up to no sales experience. This was in 2008 or nine when nobody was hiring. I got rejected for folding shirts at JCPenney. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I got rejected for absolutely everything. The only people who were hiring was basically the cell phone job and they were like yes, we need people to you know be in our stores and push our product and this is your these are your metrics. Unless we hit these five metrics we\u2019re going to take away I think I could lose three quarters of the money that I made that month unless I hit five different metrics, which I don&#8217;t remember anymore. It&#8217;s a grind. It&#8217;s metrics driven, but it is incredibly lucrative and it will teach you how to be really tough in your career.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Were they Blackberry cases are iPhone cases?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, so that was totally one of them. I had to do the cases, the screen protectors, the insurance plans. I mean everything, data plans back then, but what happened was I was working a Saturday night shift that I didn&#8217;t want to be there for and a recruiter came in from a technology company essentially. He said, \u201cOh I&#8217;m looking for a Blackberry.\u201d He was looking for people who would be good salespeople for the technology company. He eventually brought me on, big long process through recruiting to get in to this technology company, but it was because I had had success at this lower level, at the retail level they were able to give me a shot essentially. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">From there you know after you\u2019re inside technology sales kind of the world is your oyster. You can be, you know you can handle existing accounts. You can be a business developer. You can jump to even larger, more complicated sales and it was just been a fantastic thing for me so I highly recommend it. It breaks my heart for somebody to say I have an English degree and I&#8217;ll never be able to catch Fi because I have to work at Starbucks. It&#8217;s absolutely heartbreaking because if you have the skills to you know memorized Shakespeare, you know all those neurolinguistic connections, you have the skills to be successful in high dollar sales.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> One thing that I find interesting about sales is it seems like the opportunity become good at sales almost in a way is exempt like people that have a good career, $50,000 \u2013 $60,000 \u2013 $70,000 a year as an analyst or something like that or you know marketing, those types of careers. It&#8217;s really tough to go in and then go into sales where your income could be way less.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Or way greater, but for you you know you start you\u2019re selling cell phones so of course an opportunity to make more sales income is going to be an obvious advantage. Do you see any merit to that thought process that I&#8217;m going through here and how would you kind of?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Encourage someone who&#8217;s trying to move faster and looking to expand their income who\u2019s already making a middle to upper middle class income?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I look at it from my perspective. We had my income and everything that Mr. PoP made was gravy. Like we could live off of mine and everything that he made was gravy so he could just go out and be risky with his career and do whatever it took.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I think that the person, the advice that I would give the person making $50,000, I mean look I&#8217;m not an expert on marketing. I&#8217;m not an expert in very many things, but really if they did want to get into sales, they&#8217;re essentially scared of losing what they have.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Got you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> A $50,000 job is a $50,000 job. That&#8217;s a great thing, but basically you can&#8217;t let that fear hold you back. Sales is lumpy return. I definitely had some months and quarters where I made absolutely nothing, but I remember the first paycheck that I got, the first December after working a full year for this job. Just $35,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> What?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> That&#8217;s what I made the entire last year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You got one paycheck for $35,000? How do I stop being a salesperson?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It was pretty sweet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Here&#8217;s the thing. I mean it was a grind guys, but look our Fi path wouldn&#8217;t have been possible without that so I&#8217;m a big fan.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Well and let&#8217;s point out though that Mrs. PoP you&#8217;re kind of supporting this to a degree in the sense that you know Mr. PoP you could go ahead and play to win. I used this phrase last week to describe an investing approach, but basically you had no downside. You could have made nothing and you guys would\u2019ve gotten by or you could have made a ton. You know the base salary wasn&#8217;t really that important. It was the maximum, highest odds potential that you could achieve through your career.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s a critical point for us because yes, Mrs. PoP has been bringing in I think. In sales I topped out of about $115, $115 I made that for a number of years. Mrs. PoP was making I think $90 for a number of years so we had that baseline salary, but I think it&#8217;s important because there&#8217;s a bunch of people out there that can&#8217;t be computer coders, that aren&#8217;t going to be data scientists are good with words essentially. I&#8217;m still in favor of that career path and honestly guys my base salary it was still $45,000 a year when I started. I think it was up to 65 when I left so again it&#8217;s a tough mentally tough sort of career, but man for getting the Fi if you don&#8217;t have the ability to become an engineer, computer coder, I&#8217;m a big fan of it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> No, I had a very similar experience with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Really.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> My transition here at BiggerPockets. I was working as a financial analyst making less than $50,000 a year and then I took a slight pay cut to come to BiggerPockets, but there was an opportunity to sell and make that extra income in that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> That really was a big catalyst in my income front to get me to do that and it was because I could live completely off the base salary and then everything else was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Bonus on top of that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, the entrepreneurship thing, it was always super super attractive to me. I think that if I had seen an opportunity for it, I think I would&#8217;ve jumped, but yes really similar. It is a meritocracy. You eat what you kill. It&#8217;s very exciting for that reason.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Mrs. PoP what was going on in your career during this period?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> My career has actually been really boring by comparison except for that big bonus payout I took in 2008 before jumping ship. I&#8217;ve been with the same small company, small privately held company for coming up on ten years so I&#8217;ve been in more or less the same role. My income has gone up a little bit. It&#8217;s been steady and I\u2019ve really like I said, I&#8217;m the financial security one. It&#8217;s been more than enough for me. I really enjoy the work. It&#8217;s intellectually challenging so even though I\u2019ve interviewed other places and kind of looked at moving on, I haven&#8217;t yet so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I think personality wise and talents wise, I think Mrs. PoP falls more into the computer scientists, data scientists, computer coder, engineer type of mind. The super super calm in the Fi sphere.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s probably fair.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It sounds like you started with around this $50K in net worth. How are you investing this income as it was going up and coming into your lives?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We started with a real estate and the main reason we started with real estate is because it was dirt cheap where we lived when we got married.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We bought our house that was $131,000. We\u2019re a couple miles from the beach in a non-HOA community, smallest house in the nicest neighborhood. It&#8217;s really lovely I swear. Then we brought a rental duplex and after that the next year we bought a saltwater lot, but by then prices had started to get to what we thought were expensive and so we kind of transitioned to paying off debt from real estate and then investing more in index funds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I think that we\u2019re pretty we try to be opportunistic and we try to be able to have the ability to kind of look at different investments and kind of say okay which one are we going to go with now? You know we definitely looked at real estate as cheap back then. It was 2008 &#8211; 2009. It was a great opportunity back then, but we pretty rapidly switched into just super for not long. You know Vanguard 401(k)s.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay. I like that you said opportunistic and I think that one of the keys that I get throughout all of the interviews that we have done is that people take advantage of what is presented to them and I don&#8217;t think that opportunistic is really the right word. It has kind of negative connotations, but you&#8217;re taking advantage of what was there. There were people who were leaving real estate in droves in 2008 and 2009, which is why you were able to get such smoking hot deals. Can we talk about those deals for a little bit?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Of course.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, sure.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay first of all what is a saltwater lot? I live in landlocked Colorado and I haven&#8217;t heard this term.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Let us tell you. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> So okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> This sounds like it&#8217;s got a good story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Saltwater lot basically our lot it&#8217;s an empty residential lot. It used to be part of a lot that had a tear down house on it so its own residential, its own single family, but what&#8217;s cool about this lot is if you are a boater then it is a 10 minute commute to open water. That&#8217;s really big deal because for people that live on canals and stuff, you can have an hour or more commute. To get out to where you want to go fishing and spend your day. This one is unique because it&#8217;s near town. It&#8217;s not far away, but it still got a very short boater&#8217;s commute, which is why we think long-term it&#8217;s going to be a very good investment.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> One of the things that we like about that investment is because of different regulations and zoning laws. In Florida, you&#8217;re not allowed to create anymore essentially waterfront lots. There&#8217;s no more of them and we think that you know that one is going to still appreciate for a while yet the area that it&#8217;s in isn&#8217;t particularly Populated let. Now there still are a couple of other empty lots, but as those lots get you know soaked up by this great gray wave of retirees coming down to Florida you know it will continue to increase in value. We like the demographics of it. We understand the demographics of that area and we also understand some of the laws that kind of make that a valuable sort of property.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Do people drive their boats to your lot and then put them in the water there and you charge them to do that? Is that how you&#8217;re generating cash flow or is this more of a speculative, this piece of land is going to be valuable for the reasons you just stated.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes it&#8217;s pure speculation.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We don&#8217;t have anything where you can put your boat in. You can take from the gulf and get it to our lot, but you couldn&#8217;t put your boat in at our lot unless it was small like a kayak that you could.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, you basically. It&#8217;s on a canal so you tie the boat up where the lot is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I see.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay, I was going to ask how do you access the water. It is technically a waterfront lot and that it has.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Boating access.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so what did you pay for this saltwater lot?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> About $80 grand.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> What do you think it&#8217;s currently valued at?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Our guess is right now probably a little under two.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> There have been some that sold in that range and right now some are asking closer to three and they&#8217;re not getting it so there are lots that don&#8217;t turn over very often, but when they do four-story McMansions go up so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> People are kind of willing to pay a little bit of money for them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes and the reason why we bought that at the same time, that was after we bought our first duplex so we had a little more money to invest. We thought well we could either buy another duplex or we can buy the saltwater lot and we kind of went back and forth. I was pretty sick of mowing the lawn at the duplex at that point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We were also pooped.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Of remodeling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> We did a little bit of remodeling with the duplex. We said well let&#8217;s just do the lot. I don&#8217;t know. It&#8217;s probably not going to be as good of an investment as the duplex. We thought it was going to be better, but honestly a couple of reasons, a couple of things have happened with the local economy and the local school. The college has expanded really really rapidly near our duplex so rents are strong and the valuations on that have went up faster than we expected.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Let&#8217;s talk about those, that primary residence and duplex then. How did you get into those two properties?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Our house, Mr PoP, he went and he vacationed in Mexico because like we said freedom, and he really enjoys freedom so he went on a couple month vacation in Mexico and he was like keep looking for houses while I&#8217;m gone and let me know if you find anything. About a week before I was supposed to fly down there for us to elope because that&#8217;s where we eloped. I went to see two houses with a realtor that we knew and trusted. One was on the beach which was thought where we thought we wanted to end up because that you know the cachet it sounds nice right. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">I live on the beach even though it wasn&#8217;t beachfront it was still on the island they call the beach. Then I saw this other one that&#8217;s a couple miles inland and didn&#8217;t expect to like it, but fell in love. Fell in love with the neighborhood. Fell in love with the size of the house. It&#8217;s small, but none too small. It had a Lakeview out the back. The only downside was that it had a pool and we didn&#8217;t really want a pool so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes it is so the criteria for that house I mean smallest house, nicest neighborhood we could afford. We really took that to heart. I think it&#8217;s 1100 square feet, single car garage. That&#8217;s why I\u2019m doomed to ever having a second car or anything like that, but it has been a really good house for us. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">When you buy a small house like that, the rest of your expenses tend to be lower as well. If you do rehab it, it&#8217;s going to be less square footage to rehab. Your heating bills are is going to be lower. Your cooling bills are always going to be lower and you can&#8217;t fit that much stuff in a smaller house. It was a good decision for us and the location was really good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Awesome I think those are all really good points like you have a nice big house, you have to fill it with nice big things and.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Pretty much so that&#8217;s been a good, that&#8217;s been a good choice for us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes and we\u2019ve really, we&#8217;ve done remodeling, but we haven&#8217;t really expanded the footprint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> This was not really an investment. This was an affordable way to live in a nice house, but not something intended to produce investment income for your portfolio.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, initially when we had gone house shopping the first one we put an offer in was a triplex. We didn&#8217;t end up getting it. It was going to be about a mile away from our house where it ended up so we knew the town, we knew the general area. The triplex was similar to, I call it similar to what we ended up with. It sold for in the 170s range and that was above what we thought our price point was, but it was a very similar size house on top, 1100 square feet with two units on the bottom. One was a studio and one was a 1 &#8211; 1. We didn&#8217;t end up getting that, but we did end up with an 1100 square foot on a lake. The other one was on a lake too and we ended up with two rental units in our duplex so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Together we bought.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Pretty close.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> The duplex.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> And our house for about $181 which is about $10 grand more than what we would&#8217;ve gotten, but we spread the purchases over about a year and half which gave us more stability in getting into them and feeling comfortable with them financially and we also don&#8217;t have to live on top of our renters.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I mean it all kind of fits together because by minimizing our housing expenses then we\u2019re basically putting that money into different kinds of investments. One hand definitely shakes the other.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so you said that the triplex was going to be $171. How much did you pay for your primary residence and how much was your duplex?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes so our primary residence was $131 and Our duplex was $50,000.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Yes, nice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> In hindsight we should have done everything we could to buy like as many of those as we could, but we didn&#8217;t.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, it was weird we were against basically. We were leveraged as far as we were comfortable with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I think we did a good thing there, but after having an experience like that it kind of turns you into a vulture investor because you&#8217;re like I made little bit of money back then, but man if this thing happens again. If you know the world stop spinning again I will just be able to make a killing this time. It kind of changes your investing mindset.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes so I want to go back and just repeat what you said. You are leveraged as far as you were comfortable with. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> There are so many stories that I hear about people especially from this timeframe who lost everything because they were leveraged to the hilt and then when it came time to pay their mortgages. They couldn&#8217;t do it because they had nothing in. You know there was no breathing room so when they needed breathing room they just choked.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I think living where we lived, we saw it firsthand you know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It was absolutely brutal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It was brutal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I mean you would see at the end of every single month there would be huge, basically everybody\u2019s belongings would be on the street corner because people were getting evicted. People were having to move out of the rental unit because the actual owner was getting evicted. People lost their jobs. Anybody in the construction industry, everything just stopped. It was very very impactful to us and so when I say we were leveraged as far as we thought we wanted to be at what we were comfortable with we paid off the $50K loan within 18 months.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, 18 to 24 months something like that. I mean there were so many foreclosures that banks weren\u2019t securing them properly. There were squatters. I mean realtors weren\u2019t even meeting you out at these properties.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Our realtor was like okay you guys just go ahead and check out the house. That backdoor\u2019s probably broken into by this point and let me know if you&#8217;re interested in putting in an offer. That&#8217;s what we did. We would just like I would yell, \u201cHey Taxman. Anybody home?\u201d To make sure there was no squatters in the place before going in. Like it was really really. It was like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Seeing all of that firsthand we never wanted to over extend.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> What sort of leverage did you have? Did you put 20% down on your house or did you put more than 20% down on your primary residence?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We put 20% down on our house and then in order to get the duplex we actually, traditional financing wasn&#8217;t moving fast enough at that point. We were very lucky that Mr. PoP&#8217;s parents had enough money that they could loan us $50,000. They loaned us $50,000. We actually drew up a note. It had a balloon payment, and interest due every six months. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It was a fair interest rate. It was about the same as what we were paying on our primary mortgage at the time, 5% and after we bought the duplex in order to get the lot about a year later we did a cash out refi on the duplex. We pulled out another about $40,000 and used additional cash that we accumulated to get the lot. At Our maximum debt we had our mortgage. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">We had a $50,000 loan to Mr. PoP&#8217;s parents and we had about a $40,000 home equity line of credit against the duplex. That for us was a lot of debt. It was over $200,000 worth of debt and so at that point, at that high point that was around when we really started working together financially and that was around when that Hawaii trip was. Within a year and a half from that Hawaii trip we had paid off the HELOC that was our first priority because it had the highest interest rate. The second priority was the loan to his parents because owing family is hard even though they never held it over us and we just didn&#8217;t want it to be weird at all so we paid it off as soon as we could.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I don&#8217;t regret borrowing money from family and we did pay them a fair interest rate . You know a guaranteed five and half percent back in 2012. Things were still pretty shaky back then. Nobody knew which way the market was going or anything so it worked out for both parties. I&#8217;m glad I did it and I&#8217;m glad I paid it off rapidly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> How did you get a HELOC on the property if it already had this debt against it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> The $50,000 note, dollar note wasn&#8217;t recorded against the land technically it was just a personal note.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Oh nice.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> That was how we were able to get the HELOC against the duplex in order to get enough cash to buy the lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so is that does that encompass all of your real estate holdings? Is that your real estate portfolio?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that\u2019s it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that\u2019s it. we haven&#8217;t bought anything since 2011.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> 2012, the lot. No you&#8217;re right 2011. Oh man.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> 2011 in southwest Florida. It has just been on a very very fast trajectory. I love the demographics of the area, but we&#8217;ve been you know concentrating basically on our jobs and just socking it away into the market.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so I heard Mrs. PoP say index funds. Do you have any individual stocks or is it all in index funds?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We have three shares of Berkshire Hathaway.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> That is more than enough to enable us to go to the annual meeting every year, which is something we&#8217;ve been doing for several years now and really enjoy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> That&#8217;s the only individual stock we hold. Other than that it&#8217;s just index funds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> That probably says a lot about our investing styles and how we pursue the whole Fi thing guys. I mean we just have made things as boring as possible. If things are simple then it&#8217;s much easier to achieve. We don&#8217;t try to over complicate it. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">That means we have you know frees up headspace for other stuff like reading books and listening to music and traveling around. I mean you really do have a limited amount of headspace. I was listening to Jay O\u2019Collins on your show and he said that investing was one of the few things that where you don&#8217;t work as hard the results are better. It&#8217;s probably the only thing in the world that I think that\u2019s the case so when I see something like that I&#8217;ll definitely take the easy path on that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I think it&#8217;s a great philosophy and I think that what it does is it allows you particular Mr. PoP to spend your time at work maximizing your income and focus most of your professional effort there where they actually can produce big results for you in terms of sales. Is that fair?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that&#8217;s 100% like when I was a sales dog it&#8217;s an all encompassing sort of role. You are in it to win it. You know the rewards are going to be outsized if you really nail it so yes it does definitely pay to spend that extra time and energy on your job in that case.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so would you like to correct Scott. He said this gives you more time to focus on your work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Oh well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> What\u2019s that oh no?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> No, would you like to correct Scott?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Oh he&#8217;s a great guy. What?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> No, no, he just said that you can now focus more on your work. What have you been doing lately?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> You don&#8217;t have work anymore dummy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Oh yes, I quit a month ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I see where this is going.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> We didn&#8217;t cover that. Yes, I don&#8217;t work anymore.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Mr. Pop quit his job about a month ago and he&#8217;s very happy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I quit my job about a month ago.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> He&#8217;s very relaxed.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, Scott. Scott said that leaves you more time to focus on work. I&#8217;m like no. He doesn&#8217;t have a job.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Well so does that mean that you hit your $300,000 savings number?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We actually hit that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> About 2014 and at that point I of course I&#8217;m the numbers geek. I ran a spreadsheet and I was like wait a second baby if we keep doing this for I don&#8217;t know three or four more your years it could be just boat for a couple years. We could be like on a boat forever what do you think?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that was a pretty easy sell.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Basically we figured out pretty rapidly. We did the 4% rule. You know we became part of that Fi community. We hit that $300,000 back in I don&#8217;t know 2013 \u2013 2014.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Probably 2014, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> A long time ago and basically we\u2019re set for life now. It&#8217;s not that we\u2019re never going to work again. I am going to continue to build stuff and some of it is going to make money, but I just don&#8217;t have to be a slave to my job the way it was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> That&#8217;s awesome congratulations.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Did you hear that they said they\u2019re set for life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Well thank you. Oh set for life. Set for life.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> What a plug.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> That&#8217;s good book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Okay so you bought these three piece of real estate, but then seems like really your journey was more influenced by just career, savings, and investing in index funds to kind of finish it out for the last five \u2013 six years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Oh we&#8217;ve seen good appreciation so the duplex we bought for $50. It&#8217;s probably up around anywhere from $2 \u2013 $225 now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> The lot is up to maybe I don&#8217;t know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> High hundreds.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> High hundreds yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> The house itself I mean we count all this in the net worth. We bought the house for $140 or something like that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> $131. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> $131. It&#8217;s probably up to $300 now so you know that&#8217;s a significant portion of our net worth, but above and beyond that you know it&#8217;s like I tell everybody it&#8217;s about your savings right. It&#8217;s about your savings right point-blank. It&#8217;s not about the amount of money you make. It&#8217;s about that savings rate so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so let&#8217;s look at your housing costs right now. You have a fairly low mortgage so I am assuming you also have a low mortgage payment. What does your duplex bring in versus what are you spending for? Do you have any mortgage on the duplex anymore?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> No, no we don&#8217;t have any mortgage on the duplex.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay so does the duplex rent cover your own mortgage?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Actually yes I never looked at it that way.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It does. Yes, okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Then so then that\u2019s like that&#8217;s kind of a wash.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, it&#8217;s great.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Then you&#8217;re just working to pay your bills.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I mean it. Here&#8217;s the thing. I mean I&#8217;m there&#8217;s a bunch of different ways to do this math and God knows we have a monster spreadsheet that nobody wants to get into.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I can share it with you, Mindy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> That we can.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> If you want sometimes. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, it\u2019s a really cool spreadsheet, but there&#8217;s so many different ways to calculate what is pretty simple, just the 4% rule. Bottom line you know our assets are such that we\u2019re living off of about 4% and that&#8217;s what it is so yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You know I&#8217;m glad you said that because it is so simple. You look at this 4% rule or the Trinity study, which is basically the same thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> It&#8217;s not that hard. You think you need $10 million to retire and you might if you spend I don&#8217;t know do the math really quick, Mrs. PoP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> $400,000 a year.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> If you spend $400,000 a year then you do need $10 million to retire, but that&#8217;s also I mean if you&#8217;re spending $400,000 lets sure hope that you&#8217;re making more than $400,000 so it&#8217;s still achievable no matter how much you\u2019re spending. You just need to multiply it by 25 times.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> The other thing is I can probably have a lot more fun on a hundred thousand dollars per year than they are at $400,000 per year. I bet.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Did you, I assume that since you guys are spreadsheet folks did you like model this out a few years ago and were you able to beat your forecast in terms of reaching your $300,000 number and then Fi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes so I modeled it out and basically we beat it on several different measures. We beat it on income. We beat it on market returns because market returns have been higher and we beat it on real estate returns although those aren&#8217;t really part of our kind of cash flowy model that I have for our early retirement spreadsheet, but when we started beating it by so much on income we kind of lose in pursestrings a little bit and we did two big spend items the last few years of our financial journey that if we were like strictly racing to the finish line we wouldn&#8217;t have. We did a giant home remodel where we modernized our 1985 house and made it look not so 1985. We spent about $30 grand doing that and Mr. PoP got the car of his dreams a little more than a year ago. That was also in the same order of magnitude there.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that was like $40,000. I think, yes go ahead.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> What kind of car is your car of dreams?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s the official car of the frugal Fi community. It&#8217;s an Acura SNX.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh my gosh.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> From 1982.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s in 1992 Honda. It&#8217;s totally frugal.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Everybody that I tell will be like I drive I \u201892 Honda why?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Mindy also has one of these.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I have a \u201891 Honda.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I&#8217;ve heard. I&#8217;ve heard. Yes \u201891 Honda. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I took a picture of the dashboard for somebody. I was playing a joke on someone and they&#8217;re like oh that&#8217;s so cool. You have a tape deck in your car. I&#8217;m like yes it&#8217;s not a frugal car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, yes. It&#8217;s funny. I think that so part of the psychology something you mentioned Scott that I want to go back to. Part of the psychology of this is this is a marathon. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">It&#8217;s not a sprint right and there&#8217;s going to be times where you don&#8217;t achieve your goals. A little bit of luck at our back and some hard work and we hit a bunch of our metrics early, but it&#8217;s we didn&#8217;t always hit all of our metrics earlier. We did have some setbacks and stuff like that. It&#8217;s really really important especially when you&#8217;re starting out to not judge yourself harshly about that because nobody&#8217;s perfect and you\u2019re going to have to be in this thing for a while so when somebody is like, \u201cHey how do I get started with this? Do I need a budget? Do I need this? Do I need that?\u201d <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The first thing I tell them is don&#8217;t put a budget in place until you just track your spends, track your expenses for a number of months. Just track it. Don&#8217;t judge yourself. Don&#8217;t judge your significant other. Just figure out what you&#8217;re spending because combined with the goal in your head that you have. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">You know get in a boat, never work again, whatever it might be. Your spending is going to lower automatically so I say don&#8217;t put a budget together right away. Just figure out how much you spend and you start to adjust your spending to get to your goals fairly quickly so be prepared with the for what happens when you don&#8217;t hit all of your numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I think that&#8217;s fantastic advice and I think, but I was kind of getting that with asking you guys about your forecast. Whether you beat it or not is yes there\u2019s challenges and setbacks on there, but it also seems that a remarkable number of people set these plans to move towards Fi and then once they get up \u2013 once you see people starting to hit that 30% \u2013 40% \u2013 50% savings rate. There seems to be a tendency to far exceed the expectations that you model out because people begin getting lucky. They can take an entrepreneurial challenge or in your case go get that job that might pay a lot of money. It might pay nothing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> It works out or an investment might take off in a way that was unexpected. It seems like that\u2019s like what you guys did is you guys put in your model. You modeled out conservatively and then you were able to have luck and opportunity present themselves in such a way to accelerate your progress far faster than you planned.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It also allowed us to not feel the need to blow it out of the water. We had the model and even under the model we were working like four \u2013 fourish more years. That&#8217;s not that long. Like it&#8217;s just not. Four years versus 40 I&#8217;m sorry it&#8217;s just not that long.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> When we had this conservative model when Mr. PoP was like well do I need to go management track? Management track at his company it was terrible. It was so stressful I didn&#8217;t want him there. He didn&#8217;t want to be there and so yes he could have made 50 or 60 grand more a year if he had gone to management track, but together we looked at it and said we don&#8217;t need that. It&#8217;s going to max cut a year off of this. It&#8217;s not worth it to have three miserable years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Versus we know what we\u2019re doing now can keep us pretty happy.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s only four years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s weird because the 30% \u2013 40% \u2013 50% savings rate Scott like it&#8217;s beneficial immediately like even if you are not in the place of quitting your job. Just having the extra money in your back pocket and knowing that if you lose one income who cares. If you lose two incomes who cares because you can survive for however long on what you have. It starts paying dividends really really quickly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh I love it. That&#8217;s like my kind of the way I think about money or at least especially starting out is in terms of this runway of how long you can last without money and the goal is to get it infinite right before just Fi.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Oh yes. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> When you get to that savings rate and especially the way you guys were doing it I mean that was just the amount of time you could survive without an income just probably skyrocketed over every month so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> No, you\u2019re right.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Where are you headed? Mrs. PoP used to work, do you have an end timeframe? You have like a quitting date or I mean not everybody hates their job. I really like mine. I&#8217;m not quitting anytime soon.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I like my job, but I am not averse to making demands for more flexibility. As you Mindy know I made a kind of demand to my boss this spring where I said I&#8217;m going to work remote in Colorado this summer. How do you feel about that? It wasn&#8217;t really a question so don&#8217;t get too surprised if I start doing a lot more of that or just ask to move to a consulting world because if they want to throw some money at me to work for them a couple of days a month, 10 days a month, I&#8217;m cool with that.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, I think that look work is I think work is part of human nature. If you have what it takes to put together you know one point however many million dollars you&#8217;re probably not the kind of person who&#8217;s just going to do nothing for the rest of their life and there are some really good office jobs out there. There&#8217;s some really good super flexible jobs out there, entrepreneurial stuff and there&#8217;s all kinds of interesting things to do you know Fi or Fu. It just means that you don&#8217;t have to do any one thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Love it and that benefit as you were mentioning that comes immediately after you make these changes and start saving money right because that flex\u2014up the option to ask for those things comes up like. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Suppose the things are really bad and really inflexible for you could have made that demand and then gone to the next job.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Totally.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> At a slightly lower rate and gotten that benefit even sooner, but I mean.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> At some point I did do that so in my career I started on sales and I didn&#8217;t stay there. I did it for four years and then I jumped into sales training. Basically, it was the same pay for a much much better job. I didn&#8217;t have to keep chasing the dollar signs all the way up. I could basically kind I don&#8217;t know. It wasn&#8217;t like I was taking time off my job, but certainly moving into something that was much more relaxing because I already had you know a lot of money at my back.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Love it. Anything else that we should be asking you about prior to moving into the Famous Four?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I don&#8217;t think. No you guys covered it. Nailed it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><i>Hey everybody I&#8217;m really sorry to interrupt the podcast, but I have news that I cannot wait to share. We have just added a significant amount of perks to our Pro membership. We\u2019ve negotiated discounts for a variety of services including various discounts on closing costs from several lenders, monthly savings on land lording tools and even a discount for converting your retirement account to a way to fund your real estate investments check out these perks at BiggerPockets.com\/Perks\/Pro and we\u2019re not done. We\u2019re negotiating even more discounts to make the Pro membership even more valuable to you.<\/i><\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Well this is new Famous Four. These are the same four questions that we ask every single guest.<span class=\"Apple-converted-space\">\u00a0 <\/span>There&#8217;s actually five.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Because that&#8217;s how you make a Famous Four. The first question is what is your favorite finance book?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We&#8217;ve got to do a little bit of a shout out to Mr. PoP&#8217;s mom. On the blog we call her Mama PoP.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> She is our lovely mother-in-law, but in our junior year of college we had been dating for like a month or two at that point and I see Mr. PoP sitting there on his bed reading <i>Millionaire Next Door<\/i>. I\u2019m like what\u2019s that? He&#8217;s like it&#8217;s actually a really good book. You should read it after me and I did and.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> This is what dating was like for us by the way. Hey do you want to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> This is our first date.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> You should check out this book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I can relate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I can relate.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, yes seriously. Shout out to mom hi mom. Thanks for everything, but yes she gave me that book millionaire next door and it&#8217;s almost it\u2019s like a quaint book now because there\u2019s such better stuff out there around Fi. It was the first book to show that regular people could save large sums of money and I think wealth didn&#8217;t look like what people thought it looked like right. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">The millionaires that were described in that book, they were people who drove older cars. They were people who were wearing you know regular clothes. They were people who you know you didn&#8217;t have to be a famous actor. You didn\u2019t have to be a famous athlete or you know personality or whatever. You could do this. Anybody could do this and I think that was something that I really took to heart.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That&#8217;s a great book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, it really is.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes with data-driven approach and a lot of great anecdotes with I don&#8217;t know, a lot of at that time surprising findings. I guess they&#8217;re not surprising to us.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes in the Fi community now a days, but.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Now that you&#8217;ve got the book.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> 20 years later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> 20 years later yes. I think that his daughter is coming out with another one. I think that he passed away five or six years ago, but I think his daughter is still publishing content in that vein. I think she&#8217;s coming out with a new one soon. I could be wrong though.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Ooh that would be interesting.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Awesome.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, it will be.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Alright what was your biggest money mistake?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Cars. Any one of the cars that I have owned would qualify as my biggest money mistake taken as a body of work they are incredibly destructive to wealth. I mean it&#8217;s just there is no.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> He does love them though.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I absolutely love them. Yes, there&#8217;s no cheap way to own the kind of cars that I like and that&#8217;s kind of one of those things that I probably will continue to bring in money to pursue my passions and I think the vehicles are going to be one of the passions, but yes, that&#8217;s probably mine.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> It sounds like you made your recent purchase from a position of financial strength there so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I totally did yes. It was really really difficult because drawing out $40,000 to spend on what&#8217;s probably going to be a depreciating asset. That&#8217;s everything that we did not do. Yes, Mindy is shaking her head because owns the same kind of car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You know what&#8217;s going on. That&#8217;s just that one car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes yes okay. It was really really tough for me to do and what I thought was actually about my great uncle who always wanted a Mercedes Gullwing the one they had back in the \u201850s. He basically put that purchase off and put that purchase off and put that purchase off until he was actually too old to get in one. That&#8217;s finally why he didn&#8217;t buy it. I thought man, he regretted that until the day that he passed away. I&#8217;m not going to let that happen to me so so yes. I got it. Certainly no no regrets.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I&#8217;m not a car person. I&#8217;m a bike person so I get the difference between like a good bike and a not so good bike.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> It&#8217;s very different in rideability.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> What is so great about an NSX that makes it so popular amongst I don&#8217;t know at least the people that I associate with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> They\u2019re so beautiful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I was going to say there\u2019s one in the parking lot. You can go in a ride in it. Yes, Scott. It\u2019s a car.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, I drove mine in today.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s a car that Honda created to beat Ferrari to beat Lamborghini to beat companies like that and he did. For a company like Honda that everybody thinks of as oh he make your nice reliable civics to kind of upend the automotive world. It was really really impressive. The engineering, way ahead of its time. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">There are some really famous phrase personalities that are associated with it and for me what finally did it was the group of people that owned them tend to be really really down to earth cool people. I looked at the Porsche forums and it was weird. I looked at a lot of different cars, but I kind of fit into into the group too and I think it&#8217;s part of what did it for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I think it&#8217;s all a bunch of people my age who saw them in high school and is like I want to own that so bad.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes. They started off at like $60,000 so you could get into the supercar at like an almost normal price. I&#8217;ll take you for a drive. You&#8217;ll figure it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It also helps that for non-drivers at low RPM Scott they drive like a Civic. I drive more like a granny in the low RPMs and they are not very hard to drive at all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh so I would enjoy it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Absolutely. Oh good good. Have Mindy take you for a ride.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Can you drive a stick?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> No.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay then I will be the driver.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I\u2019m a millennial I don&#8217;t drive stick.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> You could probably learn.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> What is your best piece of advice for people who are just starting out?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I would say find the partner who and this is a little hard to say as opposed to spell out. Find someone who complements you and doesn&#8217;t complement you. Complements like flattery that&#8217;s awesome. What you really want is someone who is complementary who fills in your gaps. Who is good where you\u2019re not. Whose strengths are your weaknesses. That I think is that&#8217;s the best part about our partnership. He&#8217;s good when I&#8217;m not.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, and vice versa. I think for me so for people who don&#8217;t have the engineering type of mind. They&#8217;re not going to become computer coders. I mentioned this earlier sales. It was absolutely a lifesaver for me and I think just again when you&#8217;re starting out just track your income. Don&#8217;t beat yourself up if you blow a budget or something like that. This is a marathon so just concentrate on the tracking and kind of everything else follows from there. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I love that. We keep hearing budgeting and tracking your income, but I really think that tracking your income is the one take away like if you&#8217;re just starting and you haven&#8217;t done.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Like that comes up so frequently. We hear it almost every week in some capacity or another. The budget not you know optional. Some people live by budgets. Some people like I don&#8217;t have a budget, but I track my spending.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> You can&#8217;t even begin moving in the right direction if you don&#8217;t know where your dollars are going.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> This thing has to be fun. Like you have to enjoy the ride even if you really really double down on this it&#8217;s going to take you at least five years to achieve kind of ERE, early retirement extreme type lifestyle. Five years is way too long to be miserable. You have to maintain, you have to be happy. You absolutely have to be happy and like fighting a budget every single month it just would have driven both of us nuts, but the tracking was really really useful.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, no that is absolutely correct and I don&#8217;t have a budget either, but by tracking my spending I can see you know if I&#8217;m starting to veer off course. Oh I guess I shouldn&#8217;t go my huge one is going to the grocery store so I guess I just shouldn&#8217;t go to the grocery store for a while. We are going to shop out of the pantry and eat out of the pantry until we get that back on track and it&#8217;s you know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Even if you&#8217;re not budgeting you&#8217;re still tracking it and that&#8217;s nobody knows where their money is going I mean unless you have some sort of.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Savant brain and even then you cannot remember every single purchase and.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Mindy not to interrupt in this day and age there&#8217;s no there&#8217;s almost no excuse not to track because you&#8217;ve got things like minute. You&#8217;ve got things like personal capital. A colleague of mine in 2008 was like hey there&#8217;s this cool thing called Mint. You should check it out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Mint had already been out to for years at that point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> No, it would have been out for. It was still in beta.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Was it? Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, it was late beta, but I mean like we have had. We had a 10 plus year history of our spending on Mint because it&#8217;s just a no brainer.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I think well it might be a no-brainer, but I could see why people would be afraid to and that&#8217;s why I say hey that&#8217;s kind of like a judgment free zone right. Do not judge yourself around what you see at first because if you judge yourself it&#8217;s going to cause you know mental angst basically. Blah I don&#8217;t like this Fi thing. I don&#8217;t like the frugality thing. Lay off it. Make sure your partner lays off it too because that kind of stuff makes the overall path much harder to much harder to follow.<br \/>\n<b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, that\u2019s some new advice that we haven&#8217;t heard yet on the show is don&#8217;t judge yourself. That&#8217;s I think that&#8217;s a really great piece of advice. I&#8217;ve never not said. I&#8217;ve never said not to judge yourself. I have always recommended to judge herself very hard. You know, but you can still look at your spending and ask yourself does this align with my values? Is spending all of this money at the grocery store, the gas station or wherever it&#8217;s going.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Is that going to get me to the Fi path that I so desperately want? Yes it is. No, it&#8217;s not. I need to spend the gas money because I have to go into work. Okay well maybe I can move closer. Maybe I can ride my bike or maybe I can carpool or there&#8217;s a lot of ways around this, but if you don&#8217;t know where it&#8217;s going how can you fix it?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes you know did that spent dollar bring me happiness? Right and I think that&#8217;s where your money or your life kind of thing, but basically until you know where your dollars are being spent on you\u2019re never able to ask yourself that question.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, I love what you just said Mrs. PoP as well just that there&#8217;s no excuse. It&#8217;s so easy. You just literally plug into Mint and every dollar like I don&#8217;t spend that much cash, but when I do I list it in like the fun or other category of my budget over all.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> It&#8217;s just every expense is tracked except for maybe a hundred dollars every couple of months when I pull out cash so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> I mean it also gets smarter the more you use it. Like you know you&#8217;re like oh you&#8217;re writing a check for this amount every month. Like do you always want to categorize that as this? Why yes I do. It&#8217;s the exact same check I write every month. Please take care of that mental space for me.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes and Mr. PoP mentioned that not everybody wants to put all of their financial information into the Internet because maybe somebody could take it whatever. You can do this on a piece of paper. I have a notebook. Right on my island right as I walk in the door because that visual is what I need to remind me to write down all of my purchases. I saved all my receipts. I stack them up and I don&#8217;t go more than two days without writing it down because if I do then I get you know oh two days now it&#8217;s three days. Now it&#8217;s a month. Now it&#8217;s and I\u2019ve forgotten to track my spending for a while.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> To someone who&#8217;s desperately afraid of not wanting to put it into some sort of Internet cloud-based system so I have done a lot of research on security in the past. We have very secure passwords, but it is something I&#8217;m cognizant enough, but I also know I am so much more likely to catch fraud if I got all of my accounts in one spot where I can check them regularly.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, that&#8217;s a great point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Like.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That&#8217;s a huge point.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> If have to sign into each of them individually I might not look at one account for I don&#8217;t know a month until I do or you know monthly updates at the end of the month and the fraud could have been sitting there the whole time. Whereas if it&#8217;s in Mint I can pull it up on my phone and I&#8217;m usually in Mint you know a couple times a week when I have a minute just making sure everything is getting categorized correctly so I&#8217;ll catch it like that. Instead of letting it go for as much as a month or more.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Well let me validate your point. My husband actually does go into mint every single day and. Well you&#8217;ve met him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I do too. I go into Mint every single day.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay then I won&#8217;t make fun of him.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> He goes in every single day and one day he&#8217;s in there. He\u2019s like did you put an ad in Auto Trader? I\u2019m like really?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Oh wow.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> No, I didn&#8217;t put an ad in Auto Trader. He calls up. Somebody had somehow acquired our credit card number. You just cancel it and there&#8217;s one fraudulent charge. There is not 100 and yes you are not responsible for credit cards. You know credit card purchases, but somebody has your card they can really make your life difficult.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Agree.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Then yes then you do pay more attention right after you find the fraud. Okay I&#8217;m sorry Scott. Now it&#8217;s your favorite question. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh yes my. What&#8217;s your favorite joke to tell at parties?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Okay so this isn\u2019t really a party joke. We mentioned a few years ago we did some pretty hard-core renovations on our house and part of that we built all new kitchen cabinets. We actually handcrafted the butcher plot countertop that went into our kitchen and so this was a joke that my colleague he would ask me regularly when we were in the process of building our counter and installing it. He would say, \u201cWere you a counterfeiter this weekend?\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> No because we have Mint.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Boo. DIY. DIY.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I liked it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> There you go. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> It&#8217;s an accounting and finance joke. I assume that your colleague is an accounting and finance person.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> No, it&#8217;s a countertop joke.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes. It&#8217;s also a counter top joke.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Have you fit your countertop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Have you fit your countertop?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> It&#8217;s a counterfeiter. Okay.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay, I didn&#8217;t get that accounting part.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Like counterfeit.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> It was both.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It was both. One above.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay where can people find out more about you MrandMrsPlantingOurPennies.com.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Nailed it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Exactly. That would be the spot to go to.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes, www.PlantingOurPennies.com. There is if anybody wants to go there I think that they should probably check out our income and balance sheet reports because it really just tells the story for five \u2013 seven years now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, since 2012 we.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Have basically published monthly income and balance sheet statements on our blog. It kind of just shows what we were earning, spending, and how our investments were growing over our entire financial independence trajectory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> If somebody just needs to see how this is actually done, that&#8217;s probably a good place to send them.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, seven years is a really great chunk of time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, I think it&#8217;s great and I think that one of the things that\u2019s so nice about you know most of the people that we interview are not anonymous on the show they\u2019re you know. With you guys.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> You guys because you\u2019re anonymous I presume you\u2019re able to share it all of this right down to the details so people can dive in and see those numbers.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, if we hadn\u2019t been anonymous we would not have had that comfort level with putting these numbers out there because I mean.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> This was still a weird thing.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Like the whole Fi concept is way more popular in 10 years. I hope everybody is knowledgeable about it and it\u2019s a part of many people&#8217;s lives, but when we started it was really really strange. It&#8217;s more popular now and it just wasn&#8217;t something that I wanted to worry about. You know is my boss going to maybe not give me as good of a lead set because I don&#8217;t have a lot of money. Do they wonder if I&#8217;m hungry as I was? I just didn&#8217;t want to have worry about those questions.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You know another reason that people blog anonymously is because they don&#8217;t want people asking them for money. Mr. Waffles on Wednesday when he won that car on the <i>Price is Right<\/i> somebody asked him if they could have it. He&#8217;s like well.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Are you serious?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I just won this. I didn&#8217;t win it to give to you. Like why would you even ask that?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> That&#8217;s good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That was like. That was this one instance.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes I just you know and even without that like hey you guys have put in years and years of hard work to build what I presume is a 1 million plus-ish portfolio like that&#8217;s yours. You did that to achieve your dreams and live your dream life and enjoy your early retirement and quit your job four weeks ago. That&#8217;s and it&#8217;s not like this was like a bunch of luck or a bunch of good you know this was.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Eight years.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> We did have some luck though.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> I was going to say there&#8217;s always some luck in there yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Everyone has everyone has luck, but it&#8217;s not just like you were handed this. This was a you know.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Largely driven by career success and savings rate and.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes. Good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> I think that there&#8217;s yes that there&#8217;s a good reason not to necessarily share all the stuff with the world if you&#8217;re not looking to have people asking you to borrow lots of money.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Can I have the car you just won?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> That&#8217;s pretty good.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That was so ridiculous. Okay Mr. and Mrs. PoP thank you so much for taking time out of your very busy days of doing nothing now that you\u2019re retired to come down and chat with us. I really appreciate your time.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> It&#8217;s an honor to be here guys. Thank you so much for having us. We really really appreciate it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Yes, thanks Mindy. Thanks Scott.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> You&#8217;re welcome okay. We&#8217;ll see you later.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mr. PoP:<\/b> See you.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mrs. PoP:<\/b> Bye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Bye.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> All right that was Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies. Also known as Mr. and Mrs. PoP. short for Planting Our Pennies. No one everyone knows that. That&#8217;s okay. I&#8217;ll tell you anyways. I thought that was a great show. That was a lot of fun.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I thought that was a fantastic show. I love them. They are so nice and fun and they mentioned that they go to the Berkshire Hathaway annual meeting every year. We actually meet them there and have a nice weekend with them just walking around doing all of the crazy Berkshire Hathaway things that they have available. It&#8217;s a great weekend in Omaha.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, they had an extensive I think four year interview process with Mindy prior to coming on this episode of the show.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes, if you&#8217;re interested in being a guest on the BiggerPockets Money podcast it might not take you four years and several trips to Omaha, Nebraska in May to get on this show. You can send me an email at money@biggerpockets.com and tell me your story.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, one thing that they talked about in this episode that I want to call attention to before we close out is that they post and have their net worth tracked. I think income and expenses at least on their website. There is a directory, which we will link to in the show notes here BiggerPockets.com\/MoneyShow32 over at Rockstar Finance that tracks the net worth of many different bloggers. I think there&#8217;s like 450 plus bloggers that regularly post their net worth to the Internet and you can kind of follow their journey. <\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Why this might be really helpful is go check out Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies at PlantingOurPennys.com, but also check out this directory because you might be able to find somebody who is in your position or is in a position that&#8217;s really relatable to you and see how they kind of got from where you are today to where they are now. You can see this at every stage for basically any financial journey. I think the lowest net worth there is you know $-800,000 in net worth. Two doctors and there&#8217;s like $600 or something very. Extremely into debt, yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> I&#8217;m scrolling.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes and then there&#8217;s a.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> That\u2019s a lot.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Somebody with over $10 million in net worth so if you&#8217;re in that range you might find some value from this directory.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay there are 614 as of today there are 614 people who are on this list and they range from $-500,000 at a very aptly named blog Deeply in Debt all the way up to a $12,600,200. I don&#8217;t know why they.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> $12.6 million.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> $12.6 million. Thank you. I don&#8217;t know why they put the $200 in there from the wealthy accounted and there&#8217;s everything in between. There&#8217;s $5 million, $3 million, $1 million. There&#8217;s people who are hundred thousandaires and 10,000 aires.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> There&#8217;s people who have negative and I think the negative is really important. If you&#8217;re not starting from a position of positive it might be difficult to read the guy who&#8217;s got $12 million, but it&#8217;s not so difficult to read Burke does. Emily Burke has a $-3,967 net worth. Then there&#8217;s the guy with one dollar and positive net worth. Go Frog Dancer from Burning Desire for F1ire.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Oh I got to check that one out. That&#8217;s going to be so fun to watch them go from I presume zero now to positive.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes so.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Work.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> It doesn&#8217;t matter where your state is unless your over $500,000 in debt, but I bet you could learn from that anyway. It looks like there&#8217;s a huge range of people that you can find to connect with.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes and our goal here on this show is to help you find stories and situations that you can relate so that you can accelerate your progress whether it&#8217;s getting out of debt or working towards all out to financial independence and this is a resource that I think will really benefit you if you&#8217;re looking to find some folks that you can relate to that maybe went through exactly the same or very closely similar circumstances to what you&#8217;re going through right now.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Right this is wow. I have not been on this in a really long time. This is fantastic.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, I just I recalled it earlier when they mentioned that they were tracking their net worth and I thought that call this out as a resource for everyone to check out.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Right oh yes and we should also get back to the topic at hand. They tracked their spending for seven years. They have seven years worth of in and out from one person on their website. I think that&#8217;s really fantastic and if you want to see what this journey looks like from the beginning to pretty much the end. I mean he has retired. He doesn&#8217;t have a job anymore. Go to and we will link to this in the show notes. I&#8217;m not exactly sure what their link is. PlantingOurPennies.com.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Yes, if you want to look up that directory you can just type in Rockstar Finance blogger net worth into Google and you&#8217;ll find that. We\u2019ll also link to it in the show notes. The directory is the URL is kind of complicated to read out here online.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Yes and we will link to the Planting Our Pennies income statements. Their income and balance sheet for I think they have a big page that lists them all. Awesome okay Scott shall we get out of here?<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Scott:<\/b> Let&#8217;s do it.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\"><b>Mindy:<\/b> Okay. From episode 32 of the BiggerPockets Money show with Mr. and Mrs. Planting Our Pennies. This is Mindy Jensen over and out. <\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<h2>Watch the Podcast Here<\/h2>\n<p><iframe loading=\"lazy\" title=\"Financial Freedom Through Small Life Changes and a Modest Real Estate Portfolio | BP Money 32\" width=\"640\" height=\"360\" src=\"https:\/\/www.youtube.com\/embed\/aT14SZjz1oA?feature=oembed\" frameborder=\"0\" allow=\"accelerometer; autoplay; clipboard-write; encrypted-media; gyroscope; picture-in-picture; web-share\" referrerpolicy=\"strict-origin-when-cross-origin\" allowfullscreen><\/iframe><\/p>\n<h2>Help Us Out!<\/h2>\n<p>Help us reach new listeners on\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/itunes.apple.com\/us\/podcast\/biggerpockets-money-podcast\/id1330225136\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">iTunes<\/a>\u00a0by leaving us a rating and review! It takes just 30 seconds.\u00a0Thanks! We really appreciate it!<\/p>\n<h2>Podcast Sponsor<\/h2>\n<p><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignright size-medium wp-image-74647\" src=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2015\/08\/freshlogo-300x225.png\" alt=\"\" width=\"300\" height=\"225\" title=\"\">The all-new\u00a0<strong>FreshBooks<\/strong>\u00a0is accounting software that makes running your small business easy, fast and secure. Spend less time on accounting and more time doing the work you love.<\/p>\n<p>For a 30-day unrestricted trial, go to\u00a0<a href=\"http:\/\/freshbooks.com\/bpmoney\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener\">FreshBooks.com\/bpmoney<\/a><\/p>\n<h2>In This Episode We Cover:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>The beginning of Mr. and Mrs. PoP&#8217;s <strong>money journey<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>How they stumbled across <strong>financial independence\u00a0<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The changes they made moving toward <strong>financial independence<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Mr. PoP&#8217;s tips for people who want to become <strong>successful salespersons<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Their advice for people who want to move faster and <strong>expand their income<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The <strong>paycheck<\/strong> Mr. PoP got<\/li>\n<li>Mrs. PoP&#8217;s <strong>career<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Investing their income in <strong>real estate and index funds<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>The reason they started <strong>investing<\/strong> in real estate<\/li>\n<li>What <strong>saltwater front lot<\/strong> is<\/li>\n<li>How they got their<strong> properties<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Their<strong> housing costs<\/strong><\/li>\n<li>Modeling out their <strong>spreadsheet<\/strong><\/li>\n<li><strong>And SO much more!<\/strong><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Links from the Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/forums\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BiggerPockets Forums<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/finconexpo.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">FinCon<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/www.berkshirehathaway.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Berkshire Hathaway<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/rockstarfinance.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Rockstar Finance<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.plantingourpennies.com\/plantingourpenniesnetworth\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Planting Our Pennies (Income Statement and Balance Sheet)\u00a0<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/burningdesireforfire.wordpress.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Burning Desire for FIRE<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"http:\/\/earlyretirementextreme.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Early Retirement Extreme<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mrmoneymustache.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mr. Money Mustache<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.mint.com\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Mint<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/renewsblog\/biggerpockets-money-podcast-20-the-simple-path-to-wealth-index-funds-explained-with-jl-collins\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BiggerPockets Money Podcast 20: The Simple Path to Wealth\u2014Index Funds Explained with JL Collins<\/a><\/li>\n<li><a href=\"\/renewsblog\/biggerpockets-money-podcast-07-breakfast-food-motivated-financial-freedom-waffles-wednesday\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">BiggerPockets Money Podcast 07: How Breakfast Food Motivated Financial Freedom with Mr. and Mrs. Waffles on Wednesday<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Books Mentioned in this Show<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/setforlife\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Set For Life<\/em><\/a> by Scott Trench<\/li>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/amzn.to\/2O8mcWd\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\"><em>Millionaire Next Door<\/em><\/a> by Thomas J. Stanley and William D. Danko<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Tweetable Topics:<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li>&#8220;As soon as you link spending money with happiness, you are going straight downhill and it is not gonna end up well.&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22As%20soon%20as%20you%20link%20spending%20money%20with%20happiness,%20you%20are%20going%20straight%20downhill%20and%20it%20is%20not%20gonna%20end%20up%20well.%22%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2032%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow32%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(Tweet This!)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;If things are simple then it is much easier to achieve.&#8221;\u00a0<a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22If%20things%20are%20simple%20then%20it%20is%20much%20easier%20to%20achieve.%22%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2032%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow32%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(Tweet This!)<\/a><\/li>\n<li>&#8220;Don&#8217;t judge yourself.\u201d <a href=\"https:\/\/twitter.com\/home?status=%22Don&#039;t%20judge%20yourself.%E2%80%9D%20BP%20Money%20Podcast%2032%20biggerpockets.com\/moneyshow32%20%40biggerpockets\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">(Tweet This!)<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<h2>Connect with Mr. and Mrs. PoP<\/h2>\n<ul>\n<li><a href=\"https:\/\/www.plantingourpennies.com\/hello-bigger-pockets-money-listeners\/\" target=\"_blank\" rel=\"noopener noreferrer\">Planting Our Pennies<\/a><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Today we sit down with Mr. and Mrs. Planting our Pennies, or Mr. and Mrs. PoP for short. Mr. PoP never wanted to be anchored to an inflexible job. Mrs. [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":353007,"featured_media":101288,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6473],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-101217","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-biggerpocketsmoney"],"acf":[],"comment_count":0,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101217","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/353007"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=101217"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/101217\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/101288"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=101217"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=101217"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.biggerpockets.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=101217"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}