In this episode, Jacob Wade shares his journey of leaving a high-paying corporate job and embracing full-time travel for financial freedom. He delves into the importance of understanding investing strategies and becoming an empowered investor, advocating for financial literacy and transparency. 

Listen to the podcast episode here!

Jacob Wade sat down with me to share his story of going from a high-paying corporate job to a mental breakdown and travelling the country for two-plus years with his family. His friends thought he was crazy for leaving that job. 

But this journey is what led him to currently helping young families work towards their financial freedom, understanding how to budget and finding ways to invest in their future. Now in this episode, we’re talking about life as a family traveling in an RV some simple concepts around family budgeting and finance, and the concept of time freedom.

I’m excited to share this episode with you because it’s packed with value. So get your pen and paper ready to take some notes. Now share this episode with a friend who’s searching for financial freedom. Let’s jump right in. Jacob. Welcome to the podcast.

Thanks for having me.

Man, I’m excited to chat with you. We’ve had a couple of good conversations already. But I want to start with your life in the RV. How was that?

I guess I lived in an RV for a couple of years. 

But I feel that’s the trendy thing a lot of people are doing it. , let me say this. We did it before it was cool. Okay. This was prior pioneer lockdowns, everybody wanted to get out of the house this was 2018 when he was just starting to ramp up pioneers. I  that term. Now, I mean, let me I gotta rewind to getting into the RV. 

Cool, because getting into it was the reason we did all the things we did. So if you’re wanting to  2016, I’ve finally gotten a job in sales. I’d worked my way up through it. I was a contractor over at Microsoft for a long time from Washington State. 

So Microsoft’s headquarters is there. And we were contracted into that. And I was just kind of floundering and trying to find my place. And then eventually I got into sales and sales were great. And a fantastic job. 

But it said, Oh, we require a little bit of travel with a little bit of travel turned into a lot of travel. And then I became an account executive and managed five different states. So now, I was travelling, a massive, massive amount. And so at the same time, we had kids out. So we had a kid who was six, or sorry, it was five, three and newborn.

That’s when I got that promotion to account executive. And all of a sudden, I was gone Tuesday at 6 am to the airport. And then it came back basically Thursday at 10 pm. And so my wife was a single mom. And I was in high-pressure sales. I didn’t understand this.  I have to figure it out. techy stuff. Let me come up with solutions.  

I had done it at Microsoft at a high level. So I’m, Cool, I can do go do this for T Mobile and bowling for all these big companies in the Northwest. And my clients love that. But as soon as I became the sales guy, not the sales engineer, all of a sudden, it was numbers, weekly numbers just massive pressure. , from the executive team.  

I wasn’t quite used to that. So I was learning outside sales and high-level sales. At the same time, I was travelling a ton. And they just led to, a mental breakdown. To the point where I got home and one time I walked in the door, and didn’t say a word I just laid on the floor and stared at the ceiling for three hours straight.  kids jumping all over me the type of thing. 

I’ll be unresponsive. My wife was, Okay, kids, let’s go to bed, daddy’s tired or whatever. And then we’re just, This isn’t working.  what did we do? And I guess it could have got a different job. But there were a bunch of other factors going on. 

That was why we were so unsettled. And we’re, what are we doing? At the same time, we read this web, there was a blog, and we were kind of following this weekly blog back when blogs were cool. That’s how old I am. 

Back when you read blogs and social media, but they were documenting the journey, they and they took their kids on a one-year RV trip. Because for him, he was my daughters are almost teenagers. I want to spend this time with them. 

I was, man, it would be so cool. If we could just disappear for a year. I was, There’s no way we can’t do that. , you need to be financially independent. You have to have millions of bucks or patents, passive income. 

We weren’t there. I was making great money, but I had to go to that job to make it happen. And after the mental breakdown, it was, Okay, we got to figure something out. 

I can’t remember exactly what sparked it. But I got to the point where basically, I was home one night, my wife was just in the shower or something I  kicked in the door of the bathroom and she was, wait, what’s, what are you doing?  

I’m, Honey, we’re gone. 12 months we’re out here. I’m quitting. Shut the door. She was, Wait, hold on a second. Was she working at that time?

No? So I’ve been a stay-at-home mom for almost 13 years now. Okay. 12 and a half years or so. So now that was it. And I was  She was, okay, that she’s a crazy person that would love to just, travel the world and never quit type of thing. 

So she was, Cool, let’s do it. I don’t care, throw it all away, she was ready. But she’s, how are we going to do that? We’re no that does that possible. And so what that came up with was, I was trying to figure it out, too. 

And I was, Well, I don’t want to, we didn’t have a ton in savings necessarily. , we had a good-sized emergency fund, but that can’t get us a year. And after the mental breakdown, I just had some clarity. And then I ran a bunch of numbers. I was waiting a minute. We’ve been diligently investing for about 11 years, and I realized we had broken the six-figure mark in our investment portfolio. She doesn’t mind me sharing that we’re not, we’re not going to show you every little detail. But, that’s a big part of our stories.  once I figured that out.  

I said, Well if I don’t put another penny in the stock market, but a time where retirement age,  we’ll have the millions we need to retire it’s already going to be there because we laid this financial foundation. . As soon as I  ran that. And I ran that equation,  three times, wait a minute, is this real? Is this real? And I’m holy crap, we can be done. 

So that unlocked the ability to go, let’s sell the house and just use home equity to take a year off doesn’t matter.  it didn’t matter at that point. And so that’s what we did. We in she said, Not 12 months, how about on our 10th wedding anniversary, you got seven months, let’s go. 

So we had an unfinished house or we were in the middle of remodelling, so we had to finish the remodel, I had to buy an RV, had to remodel the RV, discovered mold in the RV had to renovate, repair all of that stuff. And then get everything roadworthy. 

We had to get a vehicle that could tow the thing. And oh, by the way, we had three kids at the, that was still travelling. It was it was still working at that point. Absolutely. , it wasn’t up until a month before we left. Okay, um, so when July 7, I put in my, or whatever is before that till July 7, that was my last day. Okay. And then we left on August 17. 

Okay, and so it was insane. But we were so committed, as soon as the idea was, wait, we can do this. There was no question of, are you sure it was just when? , how fast can we get to this?

So actually doing it meant, Okay, our retirement is set,  I can leave this job. I don’t. And now I just gotta figure out how to support the family for that period of 12 months, whatever it is. So we decided to do one year on the road. We bought our house in 2010, in Seattle. And so we sold it in 2018. And they did well, obviously, looking back, man, that would have been good. But, this level of freedom for us in this adventure. 

So we’re good equity, we’d have enough to travel for a year and then come back and probably get back into the market. And two and a half years later, we finally stopped travelling. And that’s just kind of how it works. Because as soon as you get out there and take some of that freedom, you’re, how do I ever, ever go back to what normal is it was crazy.  We hit our first national park, from Washington State, we went east and we went over to Montana. 

We did eight days at Yellowstone. And it just changed everything.  we had all these plans. And we had a big map where, can you do all this stuff? We rerouted everything to just hit every possible national park out there because it just changed us on a soul level. It was crazy. 

So all of that big intro to answer your original question is what was it living in a 300 square-foot RV with a family of five? It was honestly no big deal, which was insane to think about because a lot of people are we ran into a lot of people on the road. It was just two people. And they’re, oh, we got a 45-foot bus. Because we can’t be in cramped quarters. And we’re, oh, well, we got a smaller RV than you and five people. The key was is the RV was just a vehicle to freedom. figuratively and it opened up the ability to explore and so it wasn’t about the RV itself it was about getting there to whatever destination wanted to get to and then getting outside so we lived basically outside the kids so you got somewhere get out go play in the dirt whatever doesn’t matter they just gonna touch grass get outside right and then we planned all of our days around let’s go hike let’s go see this thing was and then we had family all over the country. 

So we got to connect with some family that we didn’t cool see, but the logistics of the actual RV was it’s a big hallway. The kitchen and dining room had a slide-out thing so we could function out but, we stepped over each other. There was a master bedroom with the door up front and then the kids had a bunk room in the back. 

But we sold 90% of everything we owned and put a small amount in storage. And we never felt lacking, which sounds crazy. Because I know that people are men,  if I had a family of 520 500 square feet doesn’t seem big. Right? And how do we fill our stuff? 

We need a two car garage and a storage unit. I get it. But as soon as you Embrace that minimalism and realize all we need is what we need. And it’s way less than we thought. , it changed everything. Awesome.

Where did this idea come from to travel and live in an RV? Did you ever have that thought before? Or was it just you came across it reading the blog?

Came across it on the internet. I’ve never told anything in my life until I told that RV away from our house. I had never talked about how I’ve never driven a big truck or anything that. And we had never RV stayed in an RV,  literally, a foreign concept. Wow. 

So we did do a trial run on our actual 10th anniversary of August 2, because we wanted to leave on a second. But we weren’t quite done with the house things. So we did a couple of nights to kind of just figure it out. And that was a whole disaster. We didn’t have time to get into the power plug was broken. And so then we had no power. And  I had to rewire the power plug as soon as we arrived. But then our dog was sick. And it was crazy. 

But basically, here’s the thing, when you have a dream that big, the obstacles that fall in front of you don’t seem a big deal, even if to most people, they’re insane. We had so many obstacles on the way out the door trying to get done those seven months to get out the door that we had friends tell us they were, we don’t think you’re supposed to do this. 

We feel God’s telling you to not do this, because of all these insane things happening to stop you from going. And we were just, No, this is what we’re supposed to do. And so every obstacle that came across the way, discovering mould, three weeks before we had to leave, we’d rip it out and rebuild an entire RV wall, which usually you take in and you wait six months, and it costs  510 grand, we just did it. And, my wife has an amazing family. 

Her brother’s very, very handy and in construction. And, help us with that together. But we were, it wasn’t an OMG I don’t know what to do. It was How do we get from here to here? How do we solve this problem? This reverse engineer and make it happen? So there was, it was just we ran across that blog about a year prior. We were, this is cool. This is a really fun idea. And then we just that just kind of sat there in our heads. And then one day, it just was, that’s doing

And it’s amazing, how many how many situations or times we stopped doing something because of an obstacle or whatever, right? Because we let that get in our way and deter us from actually living the life that we truly want to live.

100% , crazy.

So let’s talk about what you’re doing now. And then I want you to,  what does financial freedom mean to you?

So what’s interesting is my background is very weird. , I don’t have a traditional background in college, a community college dropout, just kind of didn’t have a direction. And I was doing, met my future wife. And a lot of things change. A big thing for me was I became a Christian when I was 19. 

So that was a big piece of my life change. And then as far as professionally, I went to sound school. So I went to the Art Institute of Seattle, and I learned how to run a recording studio and record albums and stuff, but then it didn’t pay very well. So I didn’t get a job in sound. I volunteered at my church. I ran live sound for a venue for a while. But I ended up working at a company that installed high-end home theatres,  waterfront houses half a million-dollar home theatre type thing. 

So I did that. And then I ended up getting into Microsoft because my buddy worked there. And so Microsoft has 10,000 Plus conference rooms and all of this equipment. So we serviced it and okay helped people with that kind of thing. Fast forward, I ramped up and learned how to do design. So I ended up designing conference rooms or Microsoft’s,  an AV kind of solutions architect type. And then eventually, after doing a very large project, for one of those AV companies, I went to be the sales engineer. 

So unrelated. This is all 100% unrelated to what you do now. But what happened was is, before I’d done all these promotions, we were young and broke, and we bought a house in 2010. That was more than we could afford. It was we could afford it together. But we knew my wife was eventually going to be at home. Well, boom, boom, boom, got pregnant, right after we bought the house? 

So we’re, oh, well, okay, I guess we can’t count on your income, because we just knew that was gonna be the case. And so I ended up getting three jobs. One of those jobs was being an enrolled agent. I studied for years passed all the exams and became a tax professional. And so I worked for a small CPA firm preparing taxes. 

At the same time, I started running a financial website because I got really into budgeting. After all, we had to, because we had, money. , so I did the Dave Ramsey thing and we learned a lot about budgeting and then I started helping other people do it and started coaching them through this 

and I ran the website until about 2016. So for about five years, I was an enrolled agent and ran the financial website on the side of my IT job. And I was just really passionate about it. 

And then I learned a lot about financial independence and the investing thing, which again, eventually unlocked our ability, to take off. I parked that website in 2016 and gave it up. But, when we hit the road, we did one year, we did a one-year lap, we did 25 states,  15, national parks, it was crazy. 

And we’re, okay, I guess we’re done. But something is that it was, we can’t, we can’t feel done.  we still had some savings that were blown through savings. But I was, what if I booted up my online business again? , I love that. , if I could turn that into a thing, it’d be cool. So I tried to become some kind of Instagram influencer. That failed. But my wife ran the account. 

We had really good engagement and helping people just answer financial questions while we were on the road and the recurring theme was okay, well, what about investing?

How do you invest, in financial freedom? 

So, because I was focused on budgeting, that’s what I used to do. But I was the thing that moved the needle was understanding how investing works in demystifying all of it, because there’s just so much garbage out there 90% of it, you should probably ignore. And so then through that, and a couple of code, group coaching programs, I started to develop what now is my freedom investing program.

So the idea is, is trying to get people to that same type of place where they’ve invested enough they’ve gotten, they know exactly what their enough number is, and where then it can just carry them into retirement age, and then they can pursue their passion, or something else, right. So gotta put food on the table. But it just puts a lot more pressure on people once they know where they need to get to and how it all works. But it also goes even deeper to unpack.  

Investing is all the types of assets out there, how to build a portfolio, asset allocation, taxes, right, all the things a financial planner would probably talk to you about, but I do it from sort of an educational and coaching role. Because I don’t want to touch people’s money invested for them, and then charge them for that. 

Because long term that could, that could hurt their retirement. But if they become an empowered investor, and they become their financial advisor, and then they know how to invest and build a plan, it unlocks so much more. So it took me about five years to build that knowledge and the confidence to do it myself. And then I’ve been doing it for quite a few years. And then I’ve walked people through sort of, a version of this, but it’s fully built out now. And so I do money coaching is what I call it, I’m not a “financial adviser” but I don’t have the letters after my name anymore. I’m not even an enrolled agent anymore.  

I feel that frees me up to give more direct unbiased advice. That’s not heavily regulated. And it’s more of, here’s what works in the real world. And then here’s how you can apply these things and build your sort of custom financial plan. 

So I, I love doing it. And my entire goal is to just get as many people through the program as possible to get them to the place where they can unlock different levels of freedom, because there’s, there’s multiple, you don’t have to just get to, oh, I got a million bucks in the bank, or I’ve got, whatever. There are levels to this game. 

So I walk them through those, I call them the six levels of financial independence. But I don’t know that my favourite part is when people unlock one of those levels. And they’re dude, I have no idea. You don’t have to think about that anymore. It’s awesome.

I think it’s cool, too, that you’re empowering the people to make their own decisions right. You’re just educating them instead of just saying, Okay, you want to retire by this age, you should invest in these accounts. Let me let me do that for you. Right, exactly. 

Now and then they don’t have any idea of, what’s going on, you’re just relaying information. Now you’re educating them, allowing them to make the correct decisions for them. 

Well, I think any good professional should teach their clients to help them feel empowered to make informed decisions. Sure, when you take the information out of their hands and just say no, I got it. You’re fully dependent on you which in some business models,  that’s kind of they’re trying to do that. But I’m not saying the financial advice industry needs to go away. I just think that there is unfortunately enough that I tread lightly on this. 

There’s enough sort of pulling the wool over people’s eyes and taking the power out of their hands and not doing what’s necessarily best for them, even if they are a “fiduciary”  that that word just doesn’t hold a lot of weight anymore. And I’ve talked to former financial planners that it’s just, it’s not designed to 100% help the clients. 

So I go, Okay, well, what if the client learned all the things they should have learned in high school and college about finances and the way the world works? And how does investing work? And then if they’re now fully empowered to make those decisions themselves? 

Then if they do, go hire a financial advisor, which is fine, right? They’re fully informed. I know a bunch about cars now because I want to work on cars all the time. But then I can have a real honest, good conversation with the mechanic to know that I’m getting exactly what I need. 

The research piece, I  to know what’s going on so that I can have an intelligent conversation with those people. So again, they can take what they learn and the program and then just go execute that thing. And they will be 99.9% on their way to full financial independence. That doesn’t mean they shouldn’t consult with a financial advisor. But I tell them in what capacity to do that how to protect themselves, all that stuff, too. But, man, there’s something for me about empowering people to make awesome decisions. Because when you own it, and then you do the thing. 

It’s kind of  DIY, right? We do your own. We did a kitchen remodel. The only thing we did not do was the countertops. We had somebody come in and cut the granite and do all that. We found some old cabinets, and we put those in with my brother-in-law and framed everything out. And we did the painting and the tile and, pulled new appliances in the plumbing. It was crazy. 

But man, I felt so amazing after it not just saving a bunch of money, but looking and being, Look what we did. We do that thing. Did that to enjoy that. So I want that same feeling for people with their money.

That’s cool. And I would agree, I think there’s there’s some, not everybody wants to do that to do their kitchen remodel or whatever. But  I think it feels good, right? For the people that do want that experience and the knowledge to be able to do something that.  it’s, it’s not it’s life-changing? Right? 

It’s hard to understate the impact of knowing how to invest properly, which is crazy that it’s not,  taught to everybody, know, why don’t why are we not learning this?

You don’t want me to answer that question that gets way into conspiracy. We’ll talk later about that. 

It’s not advantageous for some very large industries, for sure. The financial industry, for people to be fully educated on how this stuff works. And it’s a lot easier than most people think to write. It’s so much simpler, a big part of it is just literally understanding the 90% of the crap that you can throw away, and understanding the 10% you need to keep, and then focusing on consistency. And that’s pretty much it. 

But mixing those things up can unfortunately have long-term consequences. Because we’re talking about money, money touches, every part of our life  And money, money is going to affect you throughout your entire life. And in so the decisions you make around money are going to be made for the next 50 60 70 years. 

And those compounds. And so making the right decisions to compound for the next 50-6070 years can be insane, right? , an exponential curve of compound interest and compound growth vs poor decisions that can compound in the other way. And so that’s why to me, it’s so impactful to get people. 

My focus is on people who are professionals anywhere from 20 to 40, who make decent money and want to make sure they’re maximizing and optimizing it,  let me let me point this money in the right direction, so that it becomes, right now I’m doing a lot of the heavy lifting, but eventually my money will be able to lift more than me. 

Then eventually my money puts food on the table when I no longer can, until I die. That’s literally how money works. And so if I can help them, grab that stream,  they’re, you’re putting so much effort into college and growth and learning and then 40 plus hours into your job for 40 years, you’re putting hundreds of 1000s of hours out there to what, to hopefully direct that money in a place that builds a level of freedom and so not only I want to build it so that their money takes care of them forever, but they can enjoy a ton of it along the way. 

So it’s you can get your cake and eat it too type of thing so it reminds me of when we talked before the Rich Dad Poor Dad mindset the nine to five and then you retire and then you can travel and do all that stuff. Right? 

Right instead, there’s another way to do that. 

A more enjoyable, graceful way to do that. So, what does financial freedom mean to you?  how do you define financial freedom?

Financial freedom is a very broad term. Again,  I said earlier, there’s kind of levels of it to me. , and I guess I can just explain those levels. But if I wanted to sum it up Financial Freedom is the ability to make your own decisions. When it comes to money. It’s a plethora, an abundance of freedom to make the decisions you want to make. It’s also a security. 

If you have those two things in place, the more that you pursue the freedom to make decisions that you want to make, instead of being dictated to by your financial situation, the more freedom you have. And so, we were able to do something crazy, because I understood how investing how money works. And so that, to me, was a massive unlock of financial freedom that I would never have had if I didn’t know what I was doing if I buried myself in debt, and all these other things, and I just wasn’t invested that type of thing. 

So when I talk about sort of the six levels of financial freedom, or the six levels because ultimately, you want to be what’s called financial independence. 

What that means is you are independent of your job, you don’t have to show up and go to work for money, because your money works enough for you to pay all of your needs and your wants. And so that’s the ultimate goal. And there’s, there’s a big movement around retiring early, they call it the fire movement. So it’s being financially independent and retiring early fire. 

I’m not necessarily saying that’s the path for everyone, because usually you have to have a decent income and save half your income or more for, 15 and 20 years. , so it’s a big sacrifice, they sacrifice for a good chunk of time, and you still have to live on that smaller amount for a longer time. There’s a ton of people that’s great for so it’s awesome. Mine is let’s, let’s have those incremental levels until you become financially independent. 

So really level one is just financial awareness. There’s so the sort of any of my, I’ve done multiple types of programs, but the start of any program is I do a full financial audit, meaning people self-reflect and look at literally every dollar and cent that’s going out the door. , over the last 90 days, and then they categorize it all and go okay, here’s literally where my money’s been going. , here’s where you can quickly look and go. 

Okay, I’ve been overspending on. And usually, it’s the same things, subscriptions, restaurants, random shopping, amazon.com. , that’s pretty much what it is, right? But, whatever that is, you look at it and go, 

Okay, that’s not necessarily the one where I want my money to go, and then have them audit every transaction and put a priority level next to it, and then go, okay, is this necessary? There’s something I want, and I would be miserable without it. Is this something I could take or leave? 

Is this something? Why did I spend this money?  

And so once they go through that, I have done it. Again, I’ve got all these tools in here. But basically, they can look and go, Okay, here’s a big chunk that I looked at my spending, and I said to myself, or with my spouse, we said, drop, let’s drop this completely. And then they can quickly go boom, why would you say three 500 bucks a month? That is and now they can redirect it toward the important things, right? And so level one is just being aware of your money, most people couldn’t tell you what they spent last month. 

And that’s, that’s okay, that’s very, very normal. But once you become aware, all of a sudden, your brain on in the background, it’s kind of the reticular activating system thing, you start to see ways to save, or you’re oh man, we’re about to spend money on this thing that we didn’t. And so your brain goes bad, and it redirects you to something better. 

So all of a sudden, even just in level one and financial awareness, you’re starting to solve problems and move yourself in the right direction, your brain is now wired to move you toward your actual financial goals. And then step two is just having a month of expenses in the bank. 

Again, that’s it seems a very small step. But if you can get to the point where you have a month of expenses set aside, that means the day one of the next month, all your bills are already paid, and everything’s done. And you can automate everything you can, you can move all of your bills to the front of the month, and have everything paid for. And then all you have left in your budget is the regular spending stuff. And so that takes a huge weight off of people’s shoulders. 

As I’ve walked people through this program, they go, Oh, I don’t have to think about when stuff is due. And when my money’s coming in or out or any of that stuff. It’s just fully automated and I don’t have to think about it. So that’s sort of level two is just,  it’s no longer taking up brain space. And then level three is just being fully high-interest debt-free. 

And what I mean by high interest is whatever the prevailing interest rate is, right now, I think the Feds got it up to five and a half percent or whatever.  if you’re even if you’re double that, it’s it’s considered high interest. 

So anything 10% Plus, knocking those things out can free up a ton of freedom and cashflow because if you’re in debt, basically one you’re sort of stealing from your future self, car loans and I know there are business use cases and there are specific things around I’m not fully dogging on those but I’m just saying the egregious use of car loans that were car payment, the two-income households, the $2,000, car payments, along with high-interest credit card debt or personal loans or financing the TV or whatever all those things add up. 

All of a sudden, now your decisions are made for you, you’re, Oh, we would love to go on a vacation, but I have $2,200 a month in debt servicing. That’s not even my mortgage. And so when you start to pick those apart, and then you go, Okay, let’s knock these things out one by one and take those down. And then you choose, I’m going to live a debt-free lifestyle. And, again, it’s a difficult choice, and there are productive uses of debt. 

I’m not I’m not against that, right? But on a personal level, if you can do that, you now have just way more freedom of choice, which again, for me, financial freedom is just that freedom of choice. So having those couple of levels in place is massive. 

Then we kind of leapfrog the next three steps, it’s once you get a year of savings, either in the bank or invested. There’s just something about knowing that if I could find zero way to make income for 12 months, we would still have a roof over our heads and food on the table. The lights? Just there’s something about  I sleep better at night, as soon as once I hit that point. 

I think they’re saying that being able to say that changes you. 

In again, even if it’s kind of locked away in some investment accounts. Right, right. I don’t have to go beg, borrow and steal, to make the next payment or whatever it is. That’s, that’s a big freedom. And then the big one for me. 

And the one that, to me is the biggest level of freedom. It’s called Coast FYI. It’s, again, kind of defined by this whole fire movement, financial independence, people termed it coast, FYI, meaning if I never put into the opinion, I can coast into retirement, as long as I have my bills paid no big deal. , I’ll have enough. I call it cruise control, which is kind of the term that we use when we’re on the road is, finally savessave enoughcontrol button, we pand ut ourand  feet up. Now we know that we can just relax, go with the flow, and everything is taken care of. 

It’’s just a math equation. Again, this is something I built out in my program of financial independence and hitting that Coast fit number and your financial independence number, all that stuff, just a math equation based on safe withdrawal rates. And I’m not gonna get into super details here. But the idea is, there are different levels to it based on what your ultimate retirement number is. And then you just reverse engineer back. 

I remember is this where I’m at today? And a lot of people are a lot closer than they think. But people have been putting money in the 401k and getting that match for 1015 years, they might be there already. I’ve had somebody go through my program, and they ran all their numbers. We did everything inside and out. 

What do you mean? I don’t have to invest anything else? What does that feel like? He’s a dude, I can add this addition to my house and, go do some more things with my family. Because he was very focused on basically he was very frugal and all that stuff. 

And now it’s just this crazy weight off my shoulders knowing I took care of my future self. ,  it’s done. Even though, I gotta work and all this stuff. But he just gives me this freedom to go pursue the things that I’ve been kind of putting off.

Just enjoy life a little bit more. Right? Which is the ultimate and now that was the thing that allowed me to go okay, well, we can use this home equity and  I’m “paper shooting” myself in the foot. Every real estate investor out there, everybody listens to the podcast as a real estate investor goes, dude, you yd the goose with the golden egg. 

Why did you do that?  

That is my “worst financial decision” as far as my net worth goes. But as far as life’s worth goes, right,  crap, dude, right? It’s infinity, you can’t measure there. And so that’s why that’s my, my entire program leads up to that point with the goal of them ultimately becoming the sixth level of financial, financial independence, which is being fully independent, not having to ever answer to anybody or work ever again. 

That’s the long-term goal. So that’s sort of the long-winded answer of, what financial freedom means to me and how it works practically.

I love that. The first time I  heard or kind of, came across that concept of financial independence, financial freedom, was I was listening to a podcast by Rob Dyrdek. And he talks about that, where he’s, his investments in real estate, pay for his lifestyle. 

Whatever lifestyle he wants to live covers everything. So he gets monthly money coming in from his investments. And then you can go do whatever crazy thing that he wants to do, or start a new business or whatever it is, invest in this and to me, that’s gonna be when you get there, that’s the goal, right? To have that. That’s the ultimate is where your passive income pays for your lifestyle. Period. 

So I’ve been around this for a long enough time. When I started pursuing that I got to the point, I think we saved 35, maybe 40% of our income because we had a great income. And then I was burnt out. I had a mental breakdown. 

Man, I can’t come Timmy This was another thing he was  12 years I was on track. Okay, well, he is fully financially independent and I can’t do this. That’s why I was can I find an early exit and I did. And that’s what the cost if I concept allowed me to do, but it frees me up to start a business I did, right? It frees me up to not have to go back to that crazy job because I gotta cover all this stuff and save so much. 

When it’s, I can breathe, I have more flexibility. The funny thing is, ultimately the business I’m building will most likely earn where that was going to go anyway. And while having freedom,  I’d work at home with my family this morning, we went to a concert downtown and Tampa for the kids. 

I’m not trying to say that from, I mean, I know that that is very blessed to be able to do that type of thing. But understanding all of these concepts allowed me to make those types of choices, right and not, nuke my financial future while doing this,  I call it yellow with the seatbelt. Have fun, you only go do the thing. But let’s make sure you have some bumper lanes in place.

What is one last question here for you? But what is for the people that you’ve worked with? What’s one thing that people struggle with the most? Or before they work with you? What’s the one thing they have a hard time with?

Clarity. People don’t know what it is they don’t know about, or where they’re going. And so clarity on one where the heck is my money eating, going? And when I did that first exercise, I had people send me a message saying do you don’t want to throw up after looking at my numbers? And I’m, I get it. Because I did the same thing to myself. 

I go and we’ve had seasons, I’m not saying that, , I’m some budgeting robot,  I flex with life. And we’ve gotten a lot of flexibility in what’s going on. And that’s the name of the game. But that’s clarity on, oh, my gosh, I had no idea that was even happening. So it’s eye-opening. 

Then clarity on, oh, investing is way simpler than I thought. And I can take these steps forward. And now I have sort of a roadmap, right? And that’s, that’s, that’s my ultimate brand roadmap money, which ties into our travels. But it’s when you have a roadmap. 

Oh, I know where the end destination is. And now I have the stops I want to make along the way, those are the levels of financial independence. And then your budgeting your money plan is the GPS that tells you the turn-by-turn directions to get to each of those destinations. 

So once I give people that clarity they go, oh, so I just have to execute on this plan and that’s it. Just do the thing. There’s always room to pivot there’s flexibility in here. We build all that stuff in. And so as soon as people have clarity, and I know for me, as a business owner shows, I have clarity on something, it’s just off to the races. 

I was just gonna say that, reminds me of,  operating a business, right? Once I have, if I know exactly the roadmap or the steps that I need to get there. I’ve been that last couple of years of, okay, here’s my goal in five years. What do I need to do that? Then, that’s, that’s been a huge help to the day-to-day stuff. Right? And so same thing with financial independence. I love that.

I mean, you got to reverse engineer and you’re going after, right? So you start with the end in mind, and you work your way backwards. And now you have the step-by-step plan to get there, then you just execute, 

And then there’s no more decision-making. It’s indecision that gets people to the place where they’re, I’m 55. And I don’t have much put away I’ve had a lot of people reach out to me in that that case, and  I do the best I can to give him some guidance. 

That’s why I’m trying to reach people slightly earlier because the impact can be much bigger. I’m not saying that everybody needs help. But, man, if you’re listening to this, and you’re under 40, you have such an insane opportunity. right. 

If you can get to the place where I think it’s something  500 bucks a month for 10 years, in the right investments will get you to 100 grand. That’s it.  Just automate that and forget about it, and 10 years of undergrad. 

Then that 100 grand over the next 30 years will grow to a million bucks, or I think up to 1.3 million, depending on your investments. , passively if you never put another penny. , that’s crazy. That is insane to think about. And those numbers don’t even feel like reality. But that’s just how the math works. And if you look at historical stock market returns in the last 100 years. 

That’s just how it works. And so, it’s sort of this proven, simple path to get there. But the other piece is, hey, how do I ignore all the other stuff and the temptations of, all these other distractions that want to, try to make you gamble on the stock market or get into crypto or do whatever. Now, let’s say I don’t own crypto, I do. 

But there’s just so much distraction out there that people go, there’s too many options, indecision, I don’t do anything because I don’t have clarity. And then you don’t get anywhere and then five years down the road. You’re man, I should do something. 

And they’re, great, it just keeps going. You kick the can so far because retirement seems so far away, and then it becomes almost too late.  

Well, I appreciate you doing this. I’m excited to work with you as well. I know we’ve talked about working together for a little bit. Yep, I think you can help impact a lot of people who are listening to the podcast and people that you’re going to come across in the future, too. 

So I appreciate you doing what you do, and how can people get a hold of you and get more info on your course and what you’re doing?

So you could just find me on all the socials and stuff, I don’t do a ton on Instagram, Facebook, that kind of thing. Mostly, I’m active on YouTube Then if there are interested people, so my program is not open right now, it’s sort of a closed-down program. 

But if you’re interested, if you’re, sounds like I kind of need that roadmap, I would love that step-by-step. And for Jake to kind of hand-walk me through some of these pieces. So I have that clarity. So now I can just execute the plan for the next 30 years, and I have to worry about it. I do have an application that you can come through. 

We can just have a chat, right, this is a free discovery call, we get to chat and see where you’re at. So we just gotta roadmap money.com/apply You can just fill out that form and get connected with me. And I would love to talk to you to figure out where your situation is to see if my program is the right solution. Or if I have other solutions, and places to point you on and get people moving in the right direction. Because ultimately, I want to help as many people as possible. 

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