Choosefi | Financial Independence Podcast For The Stealth Wealth Community

"When you are financially whole in the way I'll teach you to be, you won't have to live in fear. You'll have a plan for each area of your finances so that they are constantly working on your behalf". — Tiffany Aliche America's favorite budget expert, Tiffany Aliche joins us to discuss her new book, Get Good With Money. Financial fear can come from financial trauma and drama. When you know that the money you are making isn't quite enough for the things that you absolutely need, or you can foresee a future when your finances will not be okay, most of us carry that fear secretly and with a sense of shame. Tiffany wants her community of more than 500,000 Dreamcatchers to release that shame, focus on solutions, and create plans that actually work. According to Tiffany, wealth is more than just money in the bank. It's really a mindset, which is the building block of personal finance. People often chase an end goal without a foundation to ensure they will still be okay if something were to happen. Tiffany's teachin

Winter is over, spring is here, and Brad and Jonathan have hosted their fifth live event on Stereo! With the new season and sense of hope, people are beginning to think more about traveling and travel rewards points. Start thinking about a trip you want to take and join us on Stereo next week for a live group travel rewards coaching call with Brad. The focus of this episode is college. How can you do college for less or do you even need to go to college at all? After more than 400 episodes, optimization tactics related to college have popped up frequently. What has changed for 2021, what are the best practices, and what should you be thinking about? In the FI community, we take a step back, see the world for what it truly is, and look at a problem a little bit differently. Society tells us that college is on the path to success, but knowing what we know now, there may be another way or a way to improve the ROI of going to college. Back a generation or so ago, it wasn't uncommon for a college student to be

Do you have a budding entrepreneur at home? Help them bring their business ideas to life, learn the value of money, and gain future-proof skills. About a year ago, Rob Phelan, launched The Simple StartUp workbook and live coaching series aimed at helping kids aged 10-18 develop their first business idea. This episode will highlight lessons learned from his program. The Simple StartUp has given Brad a language to talk with his own girls about business and entrepreneurship. His daughter, Molly, has grasped the concept of affiliate marketing and how it might help her Gardening Gals business. Molly and her friend are now making slime and thinking about the costs of each component in the slime like little businesswomen. Rob says even if she doesn't become an entrepreneur, she is learning personal finance skills, problem-solving, how to break down costs, and return on investment. These are conversations every parent can be having with their child as we are all customers of different businesses. Rob has put toget

After four weeks of hosting the live weekly show via Stereo, Brad and Jonathan continue to refine the format and come up with ideas for improving the experience. Jonathan needs some specialized dental work performed and the dentist he found is out-of-network. Insurance isn't going to cover much in this situation, but thankfully, it doesn't put him in financial straits. As they reminisce about being children of the 80s, Brad and Jonathan come to the conclusion that time moves on and the rulebook changes. If you are stuck in a world that doesn't exist, you aren't going to be successful. Be aware that things change and be open-minded. Google is coming out with its own certificate programs in project management, data analytics, and user experience design through Coursera what will cost most around $250. Google is partnering with 130 other companies to partner with them to hire the graduates of these programs. In past decades, a college degree may have mattered, but in 2020, employers are looking for what can you

Diania Merriam is the Chief Economeist behind the EconoMe conference, a two-day event at the University of Cincinnati whose roots are in the FIRE movement. In 2019, Diania was preparing for the launch of EconoMe in the spring of 2020. She could not have anticipated the risk of a global pandemic impacting her conference, but it was successfully held on March 7, 2020, just before the event location's shut down. The 2020 event hosted 250 attendees and nine expert speakers. After putting 20 months of work into the conference, Diania was gratified to hear that 90% of participants loved the event and would recommend it to a friend. Getting together as a community is something that has been missed in the financial independence community over the last year. While some may label the movement as a cult, that is s misconception. Like many others in the financial independence community, Diania felt the need to share content to make it accessible and help those receptive to the message get their financial houses in ord

It's the third edition of ChooseFI's live and interactive show via Stereo. You can submit a question, feedback, or comment, and find out how to join us for the live event by visiting ChooseFI.com/live. Brad and Jonathan are getting high on life. Not only have Brad's daughters started back at in-person school, but he and Laura were also able to attend a Crossfit class together. Meanwhile, Jonathan is successfully combating fatigue by getting the right amount of sleep, cutting out caffeine, and maintaining high hydration levels with juices. In an ongoing effort to get 1% better, Brad recently reviewed his credit card bills. He found a $50 recurring charge for his daughter's saxophone rental and decided to buy it for $500 rather than continue incurring the rental fee. He suggests doing this twice a year and asking if those recurring charges are continuing to serve you. Jonathan recently canceled his Netflix subscription and wonders if there is a way to the effort of it and streamline our finances. In a hypothet

Jonathan checks back in with Corinne from the Households of FI series to look at her numbers, goals, and map out a FI plan. Financial independence is not about having the most money. In the pursuit of FI, the math is simple, but the math will change depending on your goals. It's important to start with understanding what you want your ideal day to look like. Following Corinne's last coaching session with Jillian, she learned how to build good habits and strategies to get closer to the goals she wants. One of the strategies she's using is her phone to set reminders for the goals she wants to achieve. The reminders hold her accountable without her having to remember everything. Jonathan pointed out one of the great pieces of advice from the episode with Jillian was her advice to explore the goals you find yourself resisting giving even two minutes to. What is it in your subconscious that is sabotaging your goals? Corinne is on track to become a partner at her firm but that comes with a lot of expectations. In

In the second episode in the series of taking the show live online via the Stereo app, listeners ask questions and interact during a replay of this live podcast from Tuesday evening. Experimenting with this new show format, Brad and Jonathan are adding to their talents stack and themselves getting better through the often mentioned concept of the aggregation of marginal gains. Unfortunately, just because you make progress in an area, it doesn't always mean you hold on to those gains. While your finances can be put on autopilot, physical and mental health are areas prone to backsliding. Take a little time for self-care. While reaching financial independence isn't as simple as packing your lunch every day, it can be symbolic of the transformation to a mindset to take care of all the small things. It's that effort, in the aggregate, that gives you the space to increase your savings rate, optimize investments, and earn market gains. Brad has been trying to apply the concept to his health, which has also required

We are checking back in with Vivan from our Households of FI series who has been paired with mentor, Tae from Financial Tortoise, to go over strategies, best practices, and considerations for multiple generations living under one roof. In many Asian cultures, adult children are responsible for taking care of and being financially responsible for aging parents while also raising their own children, often referred to as the Sandwich Generation. Whether or not being financially responsible for parents is part of your culture, caring for or assisting them to make decisions as they age may be in your future. Tae writes from the perspective of the Sandwich Generation on his blog, Financial Tortoise. Living with him and his wife are his two kids and both of his parents. During the last 10 years in this living arrangement, he's paid off $105,000 in student loans and is pursuing financial independence. Vivian has been fighting breast cancer while dealing with a separation and child custody battle. She also has her mo

What are you getting hung up on with relationships and money? We continue the conversation in Part 2 of the Relationships and Money series with Jillian Johnsrud. Although March is finally here and the sunshine is motivating Jonathan to push away the processed carbs in favor of broccoli and hummus, Richmond's recent ice storms had Brad using his stash of travel rewards for the first time in over a year. Travel rewards come in handy at home too. After losing power from the storm, Brad called up a local Hyatt to see if they had power and was able to use 5,000 with Hyatt to book a room, and quickly move his family out of a cold home for the night. If he had been short on Hyatt points, he could have quickly transferred Chase Ultimate Rewards points over to cover the rate. Even if you aren't ready to travel now, plan ahead and start stockpiling travel rewards points now so you have them once you do want to travel again. Take the travel course at ChooseFI.com/travel to learn how. The next roundup episodes will feat

Money is one of the top three things people struggle to communicate with, falling right below sex and above our reasons and motivations for work. In her coaching practice, Jillian finds clients will be very open in one-on-one sessions, but when working with couples, it becomes much more uncomfortable. Jillian believes this discomfort is because discussions of things like sex and money happened behind closed doors and weren't modeled for us growing up. In response to a call put out for questions in Brad's FI Weekly newsletter, listeners submitted their questions for Jillian about relationships and money. The first comes from Jonesy who had a question about keeping the lines of communication open about money with a significant other when they are at different stages. He is working and beginning to build his portfolio and savings, while his significant other is still in school and struggling to make ends meet. Jillian suggests first trying to find common ground to discuss money. You can start with telling your

It's ChooseFI's first live radio show! Recorded live on Tuesdays at 7:30 pm Eastern using an app called Stereo, the live shows will be replayed for the Friday Roundup episode. The topic of this interactive live show is: "What is stopping you from reaching financial independence?". Lorraine has a question about allocation and investing in one of Vanguard's funds like VTI or VTSAX but the answer is situation-dependent. It's important o know the investing timeline Lorraine is looking at, but hopefully, it's investing for the long-term. Investing for the long-term provides for the highest likelihood of success. However, it's money needed for something critical like an emergency fund, maybe consider keeping what you need in a savings account and investing the rest. Other factors to consider are risk tolerance, net worth, job security, and whether you have an emergency fund. How sacred you were in March is a good indicator of your risk tolerance. The right allocation will allow you to sleep at night, be confiden

We are checking back in with our Households of FI family, Martin and Ayesha, who have been paired with mentors, Julien and Kiersten of Rich and Regular. Kiersten and Julien live in Atlanta and started working toward FIRE before they married five to six years ago and have paid off $200,o00 in debt, including their mortgage. They now share their journey on their blog rich & REGULAR. Ayesha and Martin live in Chicago and found ChooseFI in January 2020 and jumped in with both feet. Martin is a natural saver and had been a positive financial influence on Ayesha before finding FI so they had done a decent job managing their money. Martin was researching dividend investing after it was recommended by Ayesha's uncle who retired at 55. Ayesha felt like her aunt and uncle had the most fabulous retirement life she'd ever seen. Thanks to his example over the last 25 years, their goal is to get to where he is. Julien had a similar retirement role model in his life. A close family friend was a Registered Nurse who ret

What You'll Get Out Of Today's Show If you are willing to look outside your comfort zone, grab good information, and take action on it, you can change your life in a matter of weeks or months. One of the hardest-hit industries during the pandemic has been hospitality. Working in that industry, Anita was looking down a long dark tunnel before stumbling upon the FI community. When Anita found ChooseFI in August, she jumped right in, taking action and interacting with Brad through the FI Weekly and submitting her frugal wins of the week. By listening to the podcast, Anita heard about Jonathan starting up the Talent Stacker podcast and the program he put together with Bradley Rice on Salesforce career development. Anita gave it a shot and her results blew Jonathan and Bradley's mind. The results Anita has had are not an outlier. It's what others are also seeing every single week. Back in the spring of 2019, Bradley was on the show to talk about Salesforce and living a life by design. After Bradley discussed earn

We are circling back to check in with our Households of FI families. First up are Matt and Megan, our international, dual military couple. Having a military pension is like having multiple lottery tickets. You have both healthcare and an inflation-fighting pension, but how many of these lottery tickets do you need to really crush this game? Naval service is Doug Nordman's family business. In addition to his own 20 years of service in the Navy, his wife almost had 20 years of active duty service in the Navy before finishing her career in the Reserves. And then their daughter joined the Navy on an ROTC scholarship and married a Naval Officer. While dual-military couples are a small demographic that hasn't been extensively studied, Doug says even if they earn just one pension, they will likely have more money than they need for the rest of their lives just because of the pension and healthcare. Matt says the US military pension system is much more simple than for the UK's Royal Navy. He and Megan are working t

This Friday's episode continues with the theme of looking back at how our perspective has changed since the show began. What has changed, have we pivoted, and what do we feel more confident about now than we did then? Last Friday Brad shared the saga of trying to find out how much a CT scan was going to cost him. In response to the story, members of the community reached out with their ideas for saving on the cost. One listener shared a link for MDsave.com, a company that contracts with different healthcare providers to provide very specific pricing for a number of healthcare-related services and procedures that you pay in advance for. Using the CPT code for his procedure, Brad discovered there were no providers in his area, but there was a good number in Charlottesville about an hour away. Had he used this website, he could have paid under $300 for his CT scan. Without using it, his insurance company was billed $2,083. For prescription drug needs, there is a similar website called GoodRX.com The healthcare

Amanda Holden's approach to educating others includes laughter and shenanigans to democratize information and get it to stick. Amanda worked in corporate America at an investment management firm, but helping rich men get richer wasn't her calling. She hated the job and decided to establish a set of rules that we allow her to quit in six months and go travel. She chose to supplement her bare-bones spending by living off the excess of others. That including asking for leftover uneaten lunches which earned her the nickname, Dumpster Dog. Pulling burritos out of the trash and drastically cutting her spending worked. Amanda's savings enabled her to leave the job she hated and travel for a year. Dumpster Doggy has now become her identity, showing others how they can make it work even if they don't have a lot. Being privileged enough to live in one of the wealthiest countries in the world also means that we take it for granted and are surrounded by vast amounts of waste. Are we throwing so much away that we are sab

Wondering what happened with GameStop and confused about what a short squeeze is? The complexity of this kind of trading is far from the simple strategy of buy and hold investing. Even for those who have no plans to jump on bandwagon, it's good to understand exactly what is going on. We can learn what's happening, how it works, and move intelligently forward. In an effort to understand systems, Brad has been having a maddening healthcare experience. He needs a CT scan but hasn't been able to find out what the base cost will be. The negotiated cost won't be known until after the procedure so Brad won't know how much it will cost him until then. At a macro level, the stock market has had a fairly smooth move up and to the right for the past 10 years or so. For investors, it's been somewhat predictable, at least until this last week when GameStop stock began to skyrocket. There are aspects of the stock market the average investor doesn't see. Hedge funds are participating with huge amounts of money in layers

M1 Finance transformed Jonathan's ideas about how simple complexity could be and has quickly become his favorite investing platform, especially for taxable accounts. Brian Barnes investing story begins at the age of 10 when his parents exposed him to trading stock in a brokerage account with Ameritrade. He was captivated by the notion of investing and the intellectual puzzle of how a company was doing. His parents laid a general foundation of financial independence and security. Once basics were covered, they placed value on putting money someplace where it could accrue value, compound, and become ownership is something valuable. Getting started at the tail end of the Dot Com bust, it was a great time to be buying when prices were low and companies were valued cheaply. Brian says there is a big difference between traders and investors. Traders speculate on price and try to make money on short-term movements. Investors buy ownership in companies, asset classes, or industries to accrue value over long periods