vtsax and chill what is it and why it's likely the best strategy for you to Achieve Financial Independence we discuss this and much more with the Godfather of fi here we go welcome to the forget about money podcast where we encourage you to take action today so that you can focus on what matters most to you today we've got none other than the Godfather of fi himself he is the author of three extreme successful Finance books one of which can be considered the foundational text of the financial Independence Community I'm honored to have you here JL welcome hey David it's an honor to be here I appreciate the invitation and it's fun to finally uh actually chat with you and and see you we've had so much communication and over the years but this first time as you mentioned that we've actually spoken first off I want to thank you for what you you have brought to me I was one of those guys that I was probably inclined more than the next like learn about money stuff early on I remember reading Rich Dad Poor Dad when I was 18 or 19 I remember reading Rick Edelman books and the Susie Orman books all of that when I was fairly young late teens early 20s and yet I still felt that there was something kind of in congruent like that didn't really connect the dots for me understand investing I understand the terminology but how did it actually apply to my life how could that actually intersect to how I'm living my life and what my financial goals are and in around I think 2015 Steve and my brother turned me on to Mr Money Mustache in the financial Independence community and that's the first time that I actually had a goal post because up to that point you just heard invest 10 to 15% of your money until you're 65 and then you can go play golf every day well that didn't really mean a whole lot to me so I really appreciated the financial Independence Community because they said no there's a number and this is how you figure it out 4% rule all of that and you finally had a very specific goal post and right after that I think you published simple path the wealth in 2016 is that correct yes and right after that that book hit the shelves and basically took the World by storm or at least the financial World by storm always ranking up in the you know top three or top five of Finance books every time I go to the Amazon page that lists the top selling Finance books and it's also the single book that I have gifted the most to people who I think need to get into a more solid Financial footing for themselves and their families so I appreciate it uh and thank you so much for sharing that information and that information may have been out there but the way you message it and it may not have been out there to be honest with you because I've never heard it before the book but the way way you message it the way your voice for one thing in that audiobook was pretty amazing and most people right now as they're hearing this they going to hear your voice they're going to be also impressed that was just nicing on the cake but uh thank you very much for the for the impact that you've made not just on me but people that I know personally and then all of those people out there thousands of people that I don't know personally but I know that you've helped so thank you for that well I what a what a kind introduction thank you David you know it's uh the simple path to wealth is has exceeded far beyond my expectations and it took me three years uh from beginning to to publication to get it done and mostly because I I would throw it down and discuss because writing a book is so much work and you have no idea if anybody's G to care right and you know I I I put it away for months at the I mean the actual work of the book probably only took a year but it took me three years because i' you know step away from it for months at a time before I drag myself to the table so I I was hoping it would be modestly successful and worth the effort I remember early on when it was first published and it was selling a few copies I I did a rough calculation I I sort of figured about how many hours over that three years that I put into it and how much money it had made at that point and I figured you know I'd been better served working at McDonald's but at this point know I've been better served having WR written the book it's it's yeah again beyond my wildest expectations and the core of the book is that Building Wealth does not have to be complicated and in most cases you're going to be better off just going the simple route can you describe what that simple route is yeah so first of all not only does it not have to be complicated but the more complicated it is by definition almost the less effective it will so that's counterintuitive I think for most people who first hearing about this because if you turn on CNBC or any of the financial news channels or for that matter if you read a lot of the stuff written about investing it seems incredibly complex and that's because what those guys are talking about is in fact incredibly complex I mean notoriously complex there was you know during the debacle in in ' 0809 you know it came out that Wall Street had created these derivatives that even they didn't understand so anybody listening to this who says wait a minute you know everything that I've ever heard makes investing sound complex well you're right you know everything you ever heard probably does that's the bad news the good news is none of that stuff matters you know if you think about it as a huge banquet table filled with every kind of exotic thing you can imagine well you know those things are complex and difficult to make but in the tiny little corner of that table maybe there's the real basic foods that your body really needs and thrives on actually that will make you healthier so you can put your arm on that table and sweep all that other stuff onto the floor and focus on those really basic things that actually will make you healthier it's the same thing with investing all of that complex stuff you hear about you don't have to pay any attention to the only thing that really matters if you want to build wealth are lowcost broad-based index funds the one I prefer is vtsax and what is a lowcost broad market index fund so Jack Bogle who is the guy who who started Vanguard back in 1975 is the guy who first sort of came up with this idea that instead of trying to pick individual stocks that might outperform all the other individual stocks you could choose you would be better off simply buying all of the stocks in an index so an index can be almost anything but when I say broad-based I'm talking about something that follows say the S&P 500 which are the 500 largest companies uh in the United States or my preference is what's called a total stock market fund that's what vtsax is and if you invest in vtsax you're investing in virtually every publicly traded company in the United States and that means that everybody in those companies is working to make you richer it's a very strong position to be in you know the number of stocks that represents varies because stocks come on the index and they fall off the index but it's roughly about 4,000 stocks so very broad uh diversification so that's a basic Index Fund so the argument that like say somebody just sees one ticker symbol and that's vtsax when we're used to seeing ticker symbols for individual companies it's not the same it's a lot of companies not just you know one specific sector or one specific company so the argument at least you might think just one ticker symbol you're only investing in one thing but you're actually extremely diverse your your portfolio is very diverse because it's across 4,000 plus stocks correct correct so both things are true right you are if you invest in VT vtsax and that by the way is not the only total stock market fund out there it's the one that Vanguard uh puts out and I'm a fan of Vanguard so that's the reason I choose it if you invest in vtsax you are buying one fund or one uh ETF which would be vti is the same portfolio but as you point out you are you are then the owner of about 4,000 different companies within that one fund that's dramatically different than just buying a single stock and you also alluded to the fact that that you know indexing has become so popular that now there are indexes for sectors so you can buy an index for precious metals and Index Fund for precious metals or for technology or for financial uh companies I I'm not recommending those either because I want that broad base and the reason I want the broad base is its self- cleansing everything else you buy if you buy an individual stock even if you if you buy a stock that you think is going to be great and in fact turns out to perform well for you you always have to in the back of your mind be asking how long is that going to last because companies have life cycles sometimes you know like Sears they can last for over 100 years before they implode as Sears dead because Walmart and then Amazon came came along and ate its lunch sometimes they don't last nearly as long F most often they don't last nearly as long as that so you always have to be wondering how long is this if if if you were skilled enough lucky enough to choose a winner how long am I going to be willing to hold it if you own vtsax as an example you never have to worry about that I'm never going to sell my shares other than maybe a few to live on in in my retirement because it has the quality of being self-cleansing and what that means is that the companies that perform well rise to the top and it's cap weighted so the more successful a company is the more of it I'm going to own in the fund that's a good thing some people point it out as a flaw or a bug for me it's a feature I want to own more of the most successful companies by the same token those companies that are fading that are are not succeeding for whatever reason maybe they're mismanaged maybe their life cycle is just coming to an end they drift off the index and I don't have to guess as to which companies are going to be the ones rising to the top and which ones are going to fade that happens automatically for me in that self- cleansing process so I never have to think about ever selling it or timing it and trying to time things is is poison to your results over time those are very accurate words I remember when I was in my mid 20s mid to late 20s I'm a smart guy like I said I read all these books I know what I'm doing right so I get in there and I remember I bought some leveraged gold minor ETFs oh my anytime you say like any one of those separately is probably not great either just gold or anything leveraged but I did and I did I was doing it inside my Roth and then my my brother did my taxes the next year he said that's pretty impressive I'm like what I lost $30,000 he's like yeah yeah had seems like you probably had to work pretty hard to lose that much money so didn't work out well for me and you managed to lose it in a vehicle where you couldn't take the tax deduction for the capital was right right so but uh and I'd like to say I learned the error of my ways but there was a few more missteps even after uh you know as far as like my attempts at Market timing thinking I'm a smarter than the market it has never worked out not once don't don't feel bad i' I've made all the same kinds of mistakes and I probably made them for more years and more repeatedly than you have so yeah I I feel your pain and and sometimes I wonder do you have to go through that that pain that process yourself to learn this or more hopefully and you know I kind of hope that somebody will pick up the simple path to wealth and maybe my other books and not have to make those same mistakes that you and I made and they can just start prospering right away right but I don't know that that's possible because the lure of of choosing stocks and thinking you can outperform and and uh what have you is just so strong and of course it's so aggressively promoted because the people selling these things make a ton of money by virtue of convincing you that you ought to buy them uh and even more recently you've got the Robin Hood apps and you've got oh yeah the you know it's just and then you've got all the subgroups so people you know working together to try to time the market and yeah buy this or that and crypto and you know catching the w of the trend lines and all of those things that can be exciting but it's probably not going to make you successful if you look at the stats in the most cases you're going up losing money yeah it can certainly be exciting but one of my key tenants is I don't expect my money to entertain me or provide excitement in my life all I expect my money to do is work for me is to make more money and I think the more different things you ask your money to do for you the less well it will do any one of those things so always kind of cringe a little bit when people say oh you know I'm investing in this because it's exciting and or I'm going to set a certain part of my money you know for entertainment for investing entertainment I'm like I find other ways to entertain yourself I mean don't expect your money to entertain you you know at least that's my philosophy I just want my money working for me so if if you if timing the market or stock picking generally results in losses what kind of market returns can we expect with the vtsax and chill strategy well so first of all I timing you know timing the market and picking individual stocks doesn't necessarily result in losses so one of my dirty little secrets is I actually achieved Financial Independence back when I was about 40 years old which is more years ago than I comfortably want to look at by being a stock picker or by extension picking actively managed funds that were run by stock Pickers so that's difficult and you know you a lot of people do in fact lose significant money in trying to do it but it can be done and I did it with moderate success so it's not that it can't work and that indexing you know it's not like that's a bad thing that never works and indexing is a good thing that that works it's in my experience at least picking individual stocks was effective it did work it got me to be Financial financially independent and that's one of the reasons it took me a long time personally to embrace indexing is because what what I was doing was working but what I finally realized is that it was a whole lot more effort on my part to get those results and those results were not as strong as the simple indexing that took no effort at all and once that got through my thick skull that I could get better results for not only less effort but virtually no effort well then indexing became a no-brainer but I'm a I'm a slow learner so that's the first thing to appreciate that that when you're having these conversations you're going to you're going to talk to people say I'm doing fine picking individual stocks and in fact they might be uh but with a whole lot more effort and probably overtime less good results so when I was writing the simple path to wealth uh which again as you as you mentioned I published in 2016 so I was kind of you know doing the final revisions of it in 2015 and I thought you know uh there part of it part of the stuff I talk about in there is historic returns uh and so I was looking at the returns of the S&P 500 Index because vtsax doesn't go back to 1975 which is I wanted that 40-year period because 1975 is the year that Jack Bogle brought out the first Index Fund which was an S&P 500 fund also happened to be the year that I started investing myself so that 40-year period from 1975 to 2015 I thought was a nice long period And I I had the historical numbers for the S&P 500 fund I thought I I know what those are and talk about it in the book well when I ran the numbers the return was just over 12% a year and that's a stunningly large number and a number that I was not comfortable putting in the book because I didn't want people to think you could expect to get 12% a year right because that's you know I I don't I don't think you should count on getting 12% a year and yet for 40 years that was the actual return and to be clear this was not some idilic 40-year period in fact I wrote a post on the blog after the the book came out called um time machine and the expected return of stocks or something along those lines it's one of my favorite posts and the concede in there is you're sitting around with a bunch of your friends in 1975 saying hey you know this guy Jack Bogle just brought out this Index Fund I wonder how things are going to work out for it and I raise my hand and I say well I can actually answer that question because I just got back from 2015 in my time machine and I can tell you EX actly what's happened in that 40-year period and what happened is you had in the 70s High inflation you know stag flation you had business week coming out with a cover that said the death of equities you know you had a nice full run in the 80s and then you had Black Monday in 87 biggest single day percentage drop in the market in history bigger even than anything in the Great Depression and then you had the tech collapse in 08 in the end of the 90s '99 2000 and then of course she had the debacle in in 070809 uh not to mention you know the the attack on the Twin Towers the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq that dragged on and draining money and treasure and and you had all these terrible things that happened in that 40-year period and and in my blog post everybody sitting around the campfire saying well you know clearly I'm not going to be investing in stocks for the next 40 years this that's awful and of course the punchline is that yeah and in spite of all those things stocks went up just shy of 12% a year now also to be clear there's probably not a single year where stocks actually went up 12% you know there are years where it goes up much more dramatically than that and then of course there years where it goes down dramatically as we mentioned with the you know the collapse in 87 and and around 2000 and again in 0809 so it's a volatile ride but averaged out it was kind of a stunning number so if somebody's listening to this and they're wondering what kind of return they can expect uh if they do decide to invest in a broad market lowcost index fund is it fair to say that they will they can expect for their planning purposes between 8 and 11% on average what are your thoughts on that what what would be a good planning assumption I think when you when you go back like a hundred years the the Market does something like 10 11% over time but again remembering that there are extended periods of time where it's down and so it's a very it's a very volatile ride I I I don't think about it in terms of of what my expected total return is going to be I I kind of like what's come to be known as the 4% rule which I think of more as a guideline and that suggests that if you're living on your portfolio you can comfortably withdraw 4% a year to live on adjust it for inflation and the portfolio will have enough left behind to continue to grow outpace inflation and and last for an extended period of time the Trinity study looks at 30-year periods of time and and that works at 96% of the time that at the end of 30 years you still have some money most of the time interestingly enough your money's grown to extraordinary portions so it's not something you want to set on autopilot you want to pay attention because if the stock market winds happen to go against you especially early on In Living on a portfolio you're going to have to adjust your spending accordingly because you don't want to you don't want to be in that 4% of the time that runs out of money but also as I say much more frequently your portfolio is going to grow dramatically and you don't want to miss out on having the opportunity to enjoy that money as the years roll on so 4% is a good guideline it it it sort of uh implies that you're going to get about an8 plus perc return over time and I think that's a reasonable way to think about it what are your thoughts about as you get older or closer to retirement age and reducing the amount that you have in stocks and increasing the amount that you have in bonds is that something you personally adhere to or advocate for others so I I don't think of it the answer the basic answer is yes but I don't think of it so much in terms of age right so the traditional way of thinking about this stuff is that you're going to you're going to come out of school you're going to get a job you're going to work for 40 odd years you're going to retire at 65 and and so traditionally people say as you get older you want to add more bonds which are a conservative uh balance to the stock portfolio uh the thing you have to understand is that bonds smooth the ride uh but they don't have the engine of growth that you want for your portfolio to last and and uh and to continue so you you always going to want to own a pretty good slug of of stocks my way of thinking because in this financial Independence community that I rate for there are a lot of people who retire much earlier than the traditional age so I look at it and I say when you're working and you're earning income as my daughter is for instance I'm going to want to be 100% in vtsax which is to say 100% of stocks that's considered very aggressive because if you're striving for financial Independence you are going to be taking a fairly large percentage of your income and putting it in your Investments and that means that whenever the market drops which is a perfectly normal part of the process should never be upsetting to you should never be surprising when the market Market drops you're taking advantage of that because that amount of money that you're putting in say every month you're buying those shares now on sale that's a good thing and that's the tool that Smooths the ride for you the volatility of stocks turns that volatility into an advantage for you now if you stop working you're probably going to want something to take the place of that cash flow out of your earned income right because you don't have earned income anymore and that's that's the the bonds can play so you add bonds to the portfolio that stabilizes the volatility of stocks a little bit also provides some dry powder to take advantage of when the market drops and you can shift some of that Bond money into stocks at those bargain prices but that might happen in this community when you're 30 you might step away from your job and add bonds and then maybe when you're 35 you say you know what I've started this little business and it's doing well prospering or I started this new career or I went back to my old career whatever when you have income flowing again then you probably want to shift out of the the bonds and back into 100% stocks so I think of it as the wealth accumulation stage when you're working and you have cash flow and the wealth preservation stage when you're living on the portfolio and that informs whether or not to add bonds yeah I like that idea I had not thought of you know traditionally you think about bonds is like mitigating the downside risk mhm and evening it out the ride but practically and I never even thought about you know what if you get a side hustle that gets more income or you go back to work right or something else that actually does mitigate that downside risk so then you've taken that risk out mostly or at least the response to that downside risk is is accounted for so yeah thanks for sharing that that's something new in my thinking that i' had never considered before when about thinking about the stock Bond allocation as you age so or as life circum circumstances you know change right right so yeah um when you were preparing and writing for the simple path to wealth did did this was this an epiphany moment for you at some point that said wait why am I doing it this way because of this was it something you academically studied and then the the light switch came on or is it something that you became uh familiar with through your own experiences and your own invest so if you're talking about the the philosophy the investment approach in the simple path to wealth yes yeah that was that was something that evolved over time uh you know I mentioned that that I started investing in 1975 which coincidentally was the same year that Jack Bogle introduced the first Index Fund the S&P 500 Index Fund I didn't know that at the time I I I wish I had known it at the time and more importantly I wish I had been watching wise enough at the time to embrace it because the path would have been a lot easier for me and and a lot more lucrative but I didn't know it and I would not have embraced it at the time even if I had and the reason I know that is 10 years later uh is when I did learn about the existence of these things called index funds and and I just refused to accept accept it even then and as I alluded to earlier part of it was I was doing okay picking individual stocks and picking actively managed funds and it's kind of a hard psychological thing to wrap your head around if you're into this stuff because you know when somebody says as index investing does that you'll get a better result just buying everything well at least I was saying to myself well no that don't make sense all I have to do is just avoid the bad companies and I'll outperform the index you know or just focus on the good companies and I'll outperform the index well of course the problem is sometimes those bad companies are tomorrow's exciting turnaround stories and sometimes today's good companies are the ones that are just on their way down so it turns out that it's extraordinarily difficult to actually choose winners and losers especially over time that was Jack bogle's brilliant insight and of course when he first launched these things people mocked him especially people in the business for two reasons one it went countered everything they thought they knew but the other thing is they recognize this was a real threat to their income because they made money selling these active things to to investors like us you know um the guy who ran Fidelity Investments at the time uh ran a series of ads this is in the 1970s crawling indexing unamerican right and Jack Bogle to his great credit had the ads framed and mounted in his office but now is were you know 40 plus years on there's been enormous amounts of research done on the effectiveness of indexing and the message is clear indexing is in fact the superior way to invest and outperforming the index especially over time is is vanishingly difficult and so some of the things that make vtsax and other funds like it a good thing to invest in we've already talked about diversification we talked about the market returns but additionally to that these especially when compared to actively managed funds is lower fees lower taxes because there's fewer taxable events inside the fund itself because they're not being traded as often because basically a buy and hold until a stock falls out of that particular uh index fund and compounding which is can be for any Sound Investment and then the philosophy that you really Embrace is Simplicity and I think as I've gotten older Simplicity has taken more of a Forefront in my own life not just in investing but in life in general and if you can simplify what is traditionally deemed something either scary or complex like money then I think that's a huge win and it's a big part of our Lives whether you can say money buys happiness or doesn't buy happiness and all of those things but it definitely if you don't have money you're going to have some challenges that you probably would rather not face so if you can take that money piece of the pie make it simple and which you have and then people take those actions let takes for example if I'm listening to this and I've got a I work for a company and they got 401k and I don't really know what I'm invested in I just signed up whenever I went to HR upon being hired did my 3% or whatever it is maybe I don't even know what my company matches up to so I've got some homework to do but part of that homework should be take a look at what funds are offered and now if after hearing this I'm like okay I'm looking for vtsax where is it if it's not there as far as one of my investing options in your opinion what do I do then well so you covered a lot of ground there um so so backing up a little bit uh you know to your point about fees and you know the other characteristics of of something like vtsax uh fees are Critical Jack Bogle has a great line uh uh where he says you know performance comes and goes but fees are forever and fees are an enormous drag on your investment return over time they are critical they can Sound small if if somebody says oh I'm only charging you one or two perc a year people tend they oh that's not much but combo compounded over time that's huge and those were the kinds of fees that were typical in actively managed funds because of the competitive pressure from indexing those fees have come down but they could still be you know 1% or 75% something like vtsax is 0.3% I mean it's almost non-existent and that makes an incredible difference uh in your performance and then you mentioned you know tax efficiency uh you know if you're holding these things in a 401k or an IRA it doesn't matter so much but in an active in a in a taxable account where you're trading well every time you trade a stock it's a taxable event and makes your tax return a lot more complicated but also that's that continual drag as taxes come out of out of your returns and as you alluded to an actively managed fund of course is doing that trading within the fund and typically at the end of the year in those funds you will get what's called a capital gains distribution which is a taxable event so indexing is much more tax efficient so those are all important advantages of of indexing but going back to to your last point if you're looking at your 401k you know how do you find the right fund and what I tell people to do and this ties into the fee question is you should have a list of all the different funds that are available in your 401k and there should be a column that lists the expense ratio the ER which is the annual fee the fund charges right and so when I say an actively managed fund might have a expense ratio of 1% that's where you'll find it so if you take your finger on that column and you run it down you start looking for the smallest number on there you know you start looking for something that's instead of being you know 1.05% is 05% or 0.3% you you look for those really low numbers and that will be a good indicator that those are the index funds and then you can zero and in on them and you want to find a broad based on so something that follows the index five the S&P 500 Index is a good one or something that follows the total stock market index most commonly and I think this is changing but most commonly you'd find an S&P 500 Index Fund in a 401k and those are fine they they're they're great I mean there's you don't have to obsess about not having a total stock market fund if you have access to that yeah traditionally I believe the S&P and the VTS ex they they pretty much move on lock step is that correct they track very very closely yeah and Jack Bogle himself held the S&P 500 fund his entire life he's passed away now so I have a slight preference for the total stock market because it includes some small cap and and midcap stocks but because these things are cap weighted which means the bigger the company the larger percentage uh of the fund it represents you know the the uh vtsax is about 80 maybe even 85% the S&P 500 so there's yeah they're very very close and they track very closely and I think just another boat of confidence for indexing is you know Warren Buffett I believe I might get this wrong but I think Warren Buffett said when he dies his net worth should just go straight to an S&P 500 for his family what he does leave to his family I know he's going to give a lot of it away yeah but he does if even Warren Buffett the best investor in history can say S&P 500 Index Fund is the way to go then I think it's probably good for the rest of us you know that that's that is a striking you're correct about that and specifically he says you'll put 90% in an S&P 500 uh index fund and he recommends vanguards and the other 10% in in cash cash equivalence and what's really interesting to me is he doesn't recommend birkshire Hathaway and you know Berkshire hathway has been an extraordinary uh performer I I I haven't looked at the numbers recently as it's gotten so large it's become more and more difficult for it to outperform the market but for a long time it outperformed the market one of the very few that that do but that's not what he's recommending and speculating here I think there's two reasons for that one is that it's gotten so large outperformance by his own admission if you read his uh letters to investors his annual letter you know it becomes harder and harder hard toperform when you have that much money to deploy so that's probably one reason but the other reason and he talks a lot about the very competent management team that's in behind him you know he and Charlie Munger built that company Charlie has already passed away Warren's In His 90s and I think there's an emission that you know Charlie and Warren had the magic fairy dust that it takes to outperform the market and there's no guarantee as competent as the team that they put together have that same magic and it is almost magic because it's so difficult to outperform and particularly difficult again if you're trying to deploy huge amounts of money as perire at this point is so it's it's striking to me that that's his recommendation and it's a great one and it's one that served you and me and U many many many uh as far as the index fund investing very well so the source of inspiration for your simple path to wealth book was for for you writing to your daughter to teach her how to manage money at the time that you wrote this book she she's in her 30s now is that right yeah she she was in college at the time okay so she was a young adult at the time and but before she was a young adult I mean you you didn't just like said like you said you didn't just flip a switch and this book was birthed you know so you had time and she and of course you were you raised her so during uh during that time between birth and 20 you this is something that you were at least somewhat passionate about over that time and as a parent you're like this this isn't some important stuff here and I want to impart some of this wisdom on my child so that they maybe have a a leg up in the world as they Venture into adulthood how did that process go and how did that result in you actually writing this book yeah so my my friend Christy Shen who who wrote the book quit like a millionaire and uh she and her husband Bryce have a Blog called uh Millennial Revolution she has a great line which I'm probably going to butcher but it's something the effective if you understand money uh life is really easy if you don't understand money life is dramatically hard right and I think there's a lot of Truth in that and of course like every parent I want my kid to have the best possible life but that led me to make a critical mistake of pushing this stuff way too hard way way too young right and I managed to turn her off to All Things financial and that was terrifying to me because again if you don't understand money life is in our modern world is very hard uh my wife used to tell me you know she's absorbing more than she lets you know and it I've come to realize that's true but I didn't know that at the time and so um in 2011 I started to think you know I better she's not listening to me I better start getting some of this stuff down on paper so that when I'm dead and gone if she's ever willing to hear it it's available to her so I started I started doing that I started writing essentially letters to her about this stuff and a friend of mine I sh I shared it with a friend and he said this is pretty interesting you ought to put this on a Blog well at that point I'd heard of blogs I kind of vaguely knew what they were i' never actually looked at one I joked that the first blog post I ever read was the first one I wrote but what appealed to me was not building a Blog audience but this seemed like a great way to Archive the information to make it easily available so I created my blog JL Collins nh.com and archive this information and I started writing a series of posts about it and that was kind of the beginning and then I discovered that there were other people writing about this stuff and like Mr Money Mustache and uh there's the one that was before him um your Early Retirement Extreme uh you know which led me to Mr money mustach and I so suddenly there was this whole community of people out there talking about things along these lines that was of Interest so so I started the blog in 2011 and then my reader I started develop this readership which amazed me I it was never a goal and I never expected it but suddenly I had this readership that was commenting on my work and asking questions and so then that gave me I'd say oh yeah I you know I should write about that too so that that would be uh another post so I now have the core of the blog is What's called the stock series which is about 35 posts and that's about half of the content of the blog maybe a little less well when I first came up with that idea of doing a stock series it's only the first five in there that I had in mind I mean the rest of them kind of grew organic uh and then around 2013 uh I I began to realize that I I had the material here for a book and that maybe I ought to take this material and and create something that was a little more concise a little better organized you know because the blog again had kind of grown organically and and Polished the writing a little bit and that's that's essentially what the simple path to wealth is uh and as I as we talked about earlier it's it's the response to it been far beyond anything I anticipated but this was all you know this was all came out of this desire to have this information available to my daughter in fact she likes to tease me now she says you know Dad if I'd listen to you when I was young there'd be no blog there'd be no books and David wouldn't want want interview you you know so here we are so I I owe it all to the little girl who wouldn't listen no all of our kids we they have their own personalities and un unique things about them and dispositions towards certain subjects over others can you provide any guidance to parents out there who want to impart some of this wisdom on their children you know I as you as you may have guessed from the story I just told I mean my track record in doing this is not particularly successful now I'm relieved to say that my daughter who's about to turn 32 is on the simple path to wealth and she's embraced the concepts uh but that came later in life so I guess my first piece of advice would be don't push it too hard too young but the other thing is as my wife observed you know she's absorbing more than I realized even though there was a big part of her that didn't didn't want to hear it so don't be afraid to talk about it right don't push it to our but don't be afraid to talk about it and the last thing I say is they pay much more attention to what we do do than what we say and we have always lived a modest life we've always put a premium on spending our money on the stuff that was most important to us and the single most important thing was buying our freedom there's nothing that money can buy as far as I'm concerned that is more valuable than than my freedom you know owning my own time and I think she saw that and uh and that made a difference where on the Spectrum do you fall as far as actually helping your children build wealth for example I have a daughter she's 20 about to be 21 when she turned 15 well before she turned 15 I had an ugma account uniform gift to minor act or an utma same thing right and I began contributing to that for her and in this particular account the day that she turns 18 or I have zero impact on this account whatsoever legally it it it basically completely becomes 100% hers to manage or to spend as she sees fit and then and when she turned 15 and becoming uh the a W2 employee she then qualified to start a WTH for herself and I I supported her in that and for parents out there who want who have the means who have already who are either well on their way to reaching their financial Independence number or who have already achieved it and want to provide there clearly some pros and cons in that as life unfolds but what is your instinct or and you could share what you did or didn't do uh if you're comfortable with that but how much especially for those of us who might be a little bit a who might be able to how much literal money do you give your kids and then at What stages you know it's it's an interesting question so first of all I I love the Roth idea and so one of the things we did when our daughter started working in high school and she started having earned income is introduced her to the idea of having a a Roth account and I would fund it so in order to have a Roth you have to have earned income right so I couldn't you can't fund it before they they have a job although if you have a business you know some people imp quote unquote employ their kids at a very young age you know they have logs and their kid becomes a model at two years old you know whatever but for our daughter it was when she started waitressing and and making money that way and and so I would put i' put up the money for the Roth you know with whatever she she earned when she was young so that that was the first start of it so I'm certainly not opposed to doing that but I also at one of our shiaka events shakas were events that I ran for about 10 years where took small groups of people uh to cool places to hang out and for a week and talk about this stuff um I had a conversation with some people at one of those events and and about uh inheritance and you know my daughter was still young I mean she she's still around you know late teens maybe early 20s and I wasn't certain as to how responsible yet she'd be with money and I said you know if unless I become convinced that that she can handle it that she will be responsible about money I'm I'm not going to leave her money because doing that you leaving money to somebody who is irresponsible with it is harmful for them I mean it can lead to very disastrous consequences so better leave them nothing at all well the good news is that she turns out to be very responsible with money but the more interesting news about that is that because she's responsible with money she doesn't need my money right she's got her own money she's building her own wealth so the irony is it's kind of a catch 22 right I wouldn't give her any money unless she was responsible for it but because she's responsible for it she doesn't need my money so that's kind of that's kind of where we are the other thing I will I will comment about is there's a book that's pretty popular out at the moment called die with zero uh I have mixed feelings about the book quite honestly there's there are some parts of it that I think provide appallingly bad advice but there's some excellent parts of it and one of the excellent parts or one of the excellent points that the author makes is that if you're going to leave money uh to your children don't wait until you're dead because if you wait till you're dead in assuming you have a long healthy life you're going to be 90 and your kids are going to be 60 and they're not really going to have any use for your money so if you're going to do it you know start shifting some money over to them when they are young enough that maybe they need to down payment for a house or that kind of thing but what I've learned is if you raise your kids well and you teach them about this stuff they're not going to need your money and you know if for whatever reason they're not responsible with money you don't want to leave the money so there's do with that what you will that's kind of a great irony no I like that perspective because as much as we love our children we don't know what really what kind of adults they're going to right grow into uh and as as weird as that as to say we like to think we have all of the influence like 100% of influence of how our children turn out we're good parents and we're doing all the right things and but we just don't know how it's going to turn out so you know one of the things that that I always uh that I believe and that I that I would say to my daughter when she was older uh and could appreciate it is I will always love you unconditionally there is nothing you can do to change that I will always love you unconditionally because you are my daughter whether I like you or not is up to you and I think there's a distinction and as it turns out we're very fortunate because we love our daughter unconditionally but we also like her she's also a good person that we enjoy spending time with and fortunately she feels the same way about us but that was up to her you know it's very possible that she could have grown and a lot of kids do grow into people that you not don't necessarily like so I think you should always love them unconditionally but whether you like them or not is up to them yeah so if someone's listening to this and they're a parent or or they're not a parent yet and they're in a position where they're growing into adulthood or have a job they might be thinking oh these two guys are decent financial means lucky for kids everything's great but we all have to start somewhere like I didn't grow up with money at all and I'm not sure your history but I did not our family did not have much at all and one way to get there is by following the principles that you Advocate the simple path to we taking action automating your contributions to index funds out of your checking account or your paycheck to your 401k and so for somebody who's listening to that and say well that must be nice these two guys are and their kids but I think the power of that is like who the information is there you can make the difference in your life for yourself and for your kids should you decide to do that and you just have to take the action and it takes just a first few steps of learning in your book simple path to wealth oh by the way did you know simple path to wealth I've just noticed it recently spw is like or SP2 W I think is you're now you're you have your own ticker symbol for your book and people's writing blogs and things like that did you notice that no I didn't I I referred to to it is sp spw which is some people you know add all the the articles in the simple bath to wealth which just looks cumbersome to me so I I always call it SP spw you just wanted your own ticker symbol that's what it is no k no I didn't know that that's kind of actually that'd be pretty cool if somebody started an index fund with that as the ticker symbol that'd be pretty cool maybe you can reach out to your friends over at Vanguard and and do that suggestion yeah yeah I do want to mention that we were very Pro Vanguard I have Vanguard funds you advocate for those as well do but but I will say if you're listening to this and and either you don't have Vanguard offered in your 401k or you already have a Fidelity account or any other brokerage account look for like Investments and a quick Google search of what is the Fidelity equivalent of vtsax will get you we'll get you what you want exactly so you don't have to be in vtsax uh but it is it's more of a philosophy is of using the broad market lowcost index fund strategy and almost every if not every fund family has those kinds of funds for your Investments if you find that that they're un you're like say Fidelity and your user interface is much nicer than vanguards uh which is one of my few complaints about Vanguard is their user interface is not very intuitive at all uh their websites come or some but you got to memorize like where Where The drop- Down menus are that you regularly go uh in a Vanguard if you're listening to this please fix it I know I'm not the first one to to make this comment to you formally uh but if if you're listening to this and you're saying okay I already have a Fidelity account there are equivalents and a quick Google search will get you there just make sure you're looking at expense ratios and ERS or merss and but it's it's not hard to find yeah which you're I mean I I'll second that you know a what you're looking for is either an S&P 500 Index Fund or a total stock market index fund and an S&P 500 Index Fund is essentially the same whether you're buying fidelities version or vanguards or Schwabs or whatever and the same thing with the total stock market so that's the litmus test like you I have a preference for Vanguard for reasons we can delve into and also like you uh I am not happy with their website and they revamped it maybe a year ago a little maybe a year and a half ago now and in the process made in my opinion much more cumbersome and you know I there there's a without going into the weeds I mean you know if I want to look at my activity in a specific Fund in my portfolio at Vanguard I have had to call them at least half a dozen times to walk me through the process which they have done and and I will give Vanguard props that that their their reps are great they're very patient in in walking me through it but you shouldn't have to do you know I'm a reasonably bright guy it is so it is so counterintuitive that I have to be reminded over and over again how the hell do I get to where I want to be and and I always when I get these these people on the line and they're always very very nice and very very helpful but I I always complain bitterly and and they're like yeah we hear it all the time so not a strong I mean Vanguard has some work to do and they made it worse not better with their last revamp and I have never used Fidelity but I do understand that their interface is is good so if you're at Fidelity and you're fan there's no reason necessarily to change um but the reason I like Vanguard is the whole idea of indexing and low cost is hardwired into the Vanguard DNA companies like Fidelity have been dragged Kicking and Screaming into it by the competitive pressures that frankly Vanguard brought to the market market so I I want to be invested with a company where this is not something they've been forced to do but something that's that's hardwired into their DNA and I'm willing to put up with the with a cumbersome website to do that but yeah it's it's an issue it is an issue and you you think in a world today where apps and user experience is like number one on probably every programming team's like priority list it's just misses the mark but your Investments are still there it's with a good company and if you're and I would I would encourage anybody who is a Vanguard investor to whine and complain about this issue because you know I I think the Reps tell me that they're hearing it a lot and so hopefully it'll it'll sink into the powers that be well Vanguard and Broad market index fund investing aside for a moment you are a writer the simple path to wealth spw is not your only book since then you have published two more books and I part of my income is from rental properties and I'm grateful for that however in HDs side I might have done it a little bit differently can you tell us about your second book and what the gist of that book is and how real estate should or shouldn't be a part of one's portfolio uh like you when I was younger I I fooled around with investment real estate for a while and and and had some Success With It uh until I reached the conclusion it was way too much like work for my personal tastes but the very first piece of real estate I ever bought was a condo in Chicago that I bought to live in that morphed into an investment because I couldn't sell it when I wanted to move on and suffice to say it was an unmitigated disaster uh cost me a lot of angst at the time and a lot of money at the time and it's not not large amounts of money now but it certainly was then so the good news is I got a book out of it it's very short it's very cleverly Illustrated I found a wonderful illustrator and it's called how I lost money in real estate before it was fashionable and it is the tragic comic story of my my Chicago condo which I can finally after all these years laugh about you know this was something I bought in the late 1970s um uh but it's an entertaining story and I think it's a cautionary tale for anybody who is thinking about buying their first piece of real estate Andor investing in real estate because there's so many books out there that make it sound like it's an easy simple way to get wealthy and it certainly is a way to get wealthy but it's like any other business you had better know what you're doing if you expect to get those kinds of results and I think a lot of people including me back in the day when I bought this have no idea what they were doing and uh it just it leads into uh all kinds of disasters which that that book talks about and which I I can now laugh at but they weren't funny for me at the time one of them and I think maybe this will be shocking to people is when I was trying to get rid of this condo the condo Market in Chicago in the day had gotten so bad that I couldn't get a broker to take the listing now when you think about that when you know a broker it doesn't cost broker anything to take a listing and on the off chance SS they get paid even if they do no work on it things were so bad in those days that they wouldn't even take the listing to offer it for sale and I think sometimes in this more robust Economic Times we live in people don't appreciate that that too can happen so that's the that that's the second book how I lost money in real estate before was fashionable it's a short fun cleverly Illustrated and I can say that cuz I didn't do the illustrations book did you only have one investment property in your past other than a primary residence no no after after I uh uh after the condo I went on and and did a little more in real estate and that because I learned some better lessons with the condo I I I did I did better and I I you know I made some money but again it's a lot of work and one of the things you know in I was in Chicago at the time and part of the reason I stepped away from it is I moved away from Chicago and I didn't want to be a long-distance landlord although with the technology these days I guess that's a lot easier to do um but the other reason is you know when you're a landlord at least in those days you you get to know other landlords you know other people are investing in property as you're you know looking at properties and and doing and you're finding people that and there was no internet in those days so if you were going to learn about this you had to find people who were doing it that that would talk to you and I'd sit around with these these guys and and the conversations would always turned to these nightmare tenants you know who just not only didn't pay the rent but absolutely destroyed the place that they were living in and I had never had the experience of of having one of those tenants but I'd sit there and I'd listen to these people and and I'd and I'd say you know I'm not I'm not smarter than these people particularly not about real estate I'm certainly not as experienced as they are and so the only reason I haven't had this horrible experience in my life isn't because I'm doing something right it's just my bad luck hasn't turned up yet and I thought you know it's a lot of work and I I just I don't want to someday if I keep doing this I'll have that nightmare tenant and I don't I don't want to live through that so that's when I decided to sell things off and and and I've never regretted it moving on yeah it's interesting because I I think sometimes it also matters where you're at in life and and your current net worth of like where do you think real estate might be a good investment or not for example uh at my Peak I own seven rental properties yeah and Middle Georgia and all probably lower they were not expensive properties I live in San Diego now I could probably buy all of my properties for the price of one house here and they were good rentals I mean yes very bumpy it is not Passive by any means so if you're if you if you hear that rental real estate is passive it is not it's work and it's a headache and it takes mental bandwidth but it could be worth it and for me I thought it was worth it as I was going through it even with the ups and downs uh because my idea was that it's like a hedge against inflation rents will go up um I did not but my properties did not appreciate as much as some people want them to appreciate when they buy their rental properties right um and I was military so I knew I was going to get a pension those those kind of things so it sort of fit however looking back I since sold four of those properties so now I only own three because I'm want simple right and in the idea of simple why not just start that at the beginning and just funnel all that into index funds and if I had a crystal ball and I knew the market was going to be what it was over the last decade that's exactly what I should have done uh and and yeah and and maybe I should have just done it anyway uh you know knowing what I know now because it's simple and I may sell the other ones in the future um because I don't want to continue dealing with those issues it doesn't fit into my lifestyle right now I'm already retired I'm Financial independent I'm on the other side of the country um I don't have problems managing the properties from a distance but it's just one more thing you have to worry about when you want to worry about other things yeah being in the in the financial Independence Community I've gotten to know a lot of Real Estate Investors who have done it Su like you have done it successfully and and uh and a lot of them are going to continue to do it because they just they it's what they love to do and that's great but there are a lot of them who are like you who have had a good run have made it work but are kind of deciding you know I I just I just don't want to put in the effort anymore and there's kind of a nice transition into index investing from real estate investing if you want to do it you know you can you can start taking that cash flow and and buying your index funds you can as you sell off properties you can you can transfer that money so you know it's it's a it's it's if when you're young and aggressive and taking those risks it's probably not a bad thing to do provided that you take the time to learn how to do it properly as you did and as I eventually did but but uh but yeah I mean it's looking back on it it's it's way too much like work for my taste let's get to your most recent book it's Pathfinders it was released last year in 2023 I actually have that one on my on my desk here you've got it there and I've got it on my phone and my Audible app I've been listening to it yeah what I really liked about this book is it's a series of stories real life stories right of people who have discovered the simple path to wealth and or solid F core principles adopted those principles and made a change in many cases very drastic change in their life for the better and one one problem that I see as someone who is in the financial Independence Community who's a huge advocate is how do you message Financial Independence to the masses so that it seems relatable attainable and a realistic approach for someone who doesn't know anything about financial Independence many times my push back is not my push back what I get as push back is well I don't make enough money there's no way I can do it I've got all these bills I've got debt and one of your stories and Pathfinders really stood out and it's from Joe and Ally Olen who were both Educators in the Pacific Northwest I I believe they had modest incomes of I believe at no point did they each earn more than4 $4,000 a year for their base salaries and right around the time that they were 30 they became millionaires because they followed your advice so I that's a story that I now as someone who I I've had a decent income throughout my career as military officer and I've got a penion so I my story also doesn't relate to the masses but for those people who say I don't make enough money well here's a prime example of how two people who combined did not make more than $100,000 a year did it by the age of 30 or right around the age of 30 so that's inspirational and it shows that it can be done not just a blanket I can't do it because dot dot dot and in your accumulation of these stories are there is there any particular story that stood out to you as inspiring or surprising so you know this the story you selected is a great example of one of the reasons that I'm excited about this book because within about six months of the simple path to wealth coming out I started hearing from people who'd read it and talking about how they took the principles in it and and were applying them to their own lives and these stories were coming from all over the world and in many ways the simple path to wealth was written for one person it was written for my daughter who was in the United States an American at the very beginning of her journey and I was hearing stories from people taking the principles in the book from other parts of the world I was hearing from people who were much older and further along in their Journeys and maybe they had debt to unwind or maybe they had Investments that were not well considered to unwind and all these kinds of things so I've Pathfinders is a book uh it was published last fall on on October 31st took two years uh to do it but it's a book that I I've wanted to do for years to share those stories for a lot of the reasons that you you mentioned is that the push back against the idea of pursuing Financial Independence most commonly is well that's great if you're if you're a high-tech engineer and you're making six figures but it doesn't apply to the rest of us and that always frustrated me because in the real world when i' go to shiaka or or I I'd go to conferences and I'd meet people in the FI community that was not the profile you know the profile was incredibly diverse I mean diverse in in income uh levels if diverse in any way you could think of it racially uh sexual orientation age education you know it was this incredibly diverse community of people who just said you know I'm going to go out and do this and Pathfinders reflects that and so there are a lot of stories in there like the ones you allude to I there's a story in there from a guy who was a a migrant uh vegetable picker you know as a kid he was picking asparagus and you know he's building a a he's got a a multi hundred, thousand net worth at this point and and growing there's a story from someone who talks about how when they were a kid the people had flush toilets were the rich people so foll the simple path to wealth becoming financially independent is not just for Highly Educated highly compensated people in fact um in some ways it's almost harder for them because they get get caught up in lifestyle inflation and they spend every dime that they make uh so those are the kinds of stories that I love about I think Pathfinders in many ways is the better introduction to this idea of pursuing Financial Independence than the simple path to wealth itself you know early on somebody asked me in an interview you know do you have to read the simple path to wealth first and I said no I mean you can you can read either one first it doesn't matter but the more I thought about that the more I I've come to think that you're better off if this is all new to you reading Pathfinders first in reading these stories and really in understanding how doable it is you know how how accessible it is regardless of where you're coming from certainly anybody who is able to listen to our conversation is able to pursue uh Financial Independence so and then if you read the stories and and you're inspired then the simple path to wealth is sort of the the you know how to actually do it the howto manual and on how to pursue this but Pathfinder sort of shares with you how accessible it is and what a big difference it's made in people's lives who who choose to to get on this path so I like it the two most striking stories to me um that were so unexpected is there's a story in there from a guy in Ukraine who not only is pursuing the simple path to wealth himself but he has a a podcast in Ukraine talking uh in Ukrainian talking to to other ukrainians well this is a country that's being invaded that's at War so you know when I hear people say oh you know it sounds good but you know I'd have to give up my two least luxury cars and like well okay maybe you're not quite motivated enough there's also Al a story in there from a guy in Russia who's pursuing the simple path to wealth this this is the country that's doing the invading that has massive economic sanctions lodged against it uh he's still figuring out a way so I mean those were the two most surprising stories to me but yeah and and then of course there are the more typical you know there's a story of a of a couple in from Ohio that that were high-tech engineers they went to Silicon Valley they figured out a way to live inexpensively relatively anyway in Silicon Valley while they were making the big bucks and after a few years they moved back to Ohio where the cost of living was a lot lower where their family was retired so you know certainly if you have a job like that and you play your cards right you have some advantages that's so there stories like that in there too but yeah it's really accessible to anybody and I think that's the power of the book and the stories are just fun to read too yeah I like that because again I haven't thought about the order that you read the two books in but one of the most important things for people on their financial Independence Journey or who are debating on whether they're going to start a financial Independence journey is what's your why and these stories share the why of so many people yes and you can with stories as stories tend to do they get a response from us and we buy in and we there's a believability and a relatability and if in this book there's so many stories you if you find relatability to yourself between yourself and any one of these stories then you might be able to see a y of five for yourself and that's what's going to get you through the Journey you have to have that clear Wii additionally I think to help people overcome that you know I I don't make enough money or this or this circumstance is not me and I can't never do that because of X Y or Z okay great well let's compare your current habits right now at 23 or 33 or 43 and what do you think is going to happen what trend lines have you had in your last decade let's assume those same trend lines continue is that what you want 10 years from now if it's not then do something about it yeah do something different and do something different you may not get to$ 3.26 million your F number but having 300,000 in a checken account is better than having a negative 300 check in your in your checking account or you know a debt of $300,000 which is where you're going to end up maybe if you keep doing what you're doing so no matter what whether it's you officially reach Financial Independence or not it's still a better path than what most people are probably on right now and they can improve their lot in life I I think it's import the great point and and I think it's important to realize that this is not an onoff switch right it's not like you start at zero and nothing happens until you reach that magical I'm now financially independent number the moment you start you're a little bit stronger than you were the day before it's kind of like going to the gym right you're not going to bench press 300 pounds the first day but the moment you go you're a little bit stronger than you were the day before and as you said you know not only are you better off with 300,000 in your bank account you're better off with $300 in your bank account than nothing or 3,000 every every step makes you a little bit stronger and then because of compounding those steps begin accumulating because when you're first beginning you know it's all your effort to come up with the money to put into those accounts but over time that money is now working for you and at some point there will be enough money there where it's the money itself is actually making more money for you than what you're contributing and that's a that's a magical thing to watch happen and every step of the way you get stronger and even you know even if you're 60 or or you know why not be stronger a decade from now even if you're 70 you might not be technically Financial independent but you're going to be stronger than you were one of my favorite quotes but the quote is if you Leo brunette he was a big Ad Agency guy back in the 60s started an ad agency uh Leo Brett's quote is if you reach for a star you might not get one but you won't come up with a handful of mud either and so I say reach for the star you know reach for financial Independence and you may not get there but you won't come up with a handful of mud either yeah that's a good one I know we've been talking about money for over an hour and because of what we do in our space it's easy to assume that that's what we're really passionate about and that's what we spend most of our time doing but you're not only the author of three books but you're also the author of sci-fi stories so would you like to share your favorite sci-fi story that you have written and tell us where we can read more I think you're referring to to my other blog uranium C and that's that's kind of never been publicized uh it's it's a WordPress blog it doesn't get much traffic I haven't done anything on it for a number of years um but it was kind of fun and it got a reason for the few people who read it it it it it got a good response it was interesting um at one point this is a number of years ago I think it was on on Reddit a conversation started where uh this woman said something to the effect of you know I I I've read the simple path to wealth and and JL Collins and.com and I I really like his investing approach it makes a whole lot of sense for me but then I found this other blog that he's written this uranium C thing and this guy's out of his mind he's clearly crazy you know he's and and so can I trust his investment advice and then a debate erupted as it tends to do in in Reddit was some people saying well yeah what you're reading on uranium C is clearly nuts but that doesn't mean is investment device is bad and then other people saying what you're reading on uranium C is fiction uh you know but and I'll leave people to decide for themselves all right well I'm gonna I'm gonna get that link and I'm G to put it in the YouTube description notes so that fans of yours yeah can search it out and get that traffic up and maybe inspire you to continue writing it brought you Joy at one point right well yeah it was it was it was fun and I think it's it's an important story that needs to be told because most people don't realize you know it answer it answers the question you know there there's the question out there of of you know where are the aliens you know why don't why don't we see the aliens and and you know for anybody who's in in interested in this there's the idea that there's filters that civilizations uh collapse before they become Interstellar Travelers and what have you but that in fact is not the reason well I like that Cliffhanger now we got to go check it out figure out what the real reason is now so now the readership of that blog will go from from one a month to maybe to two maybe maybe one a week there you go oh this been great uh so you've got where are you right now in the world I'm in Florida Florida yeah where I didn't know you lived in Florida well I don't live in Florida we we spent last winter in Florida and and uh yeah we like the complex we were renting in last winter so we we bought a condo here and so now we uh the plan is to spend Winters in Florida yeah you're not from Georgia so not too far no not from I'm very familiar in Florida and Savannah at this point oh beautiful another great place one of the few real estate one of the few real estate markets that's actually doing pretty good right now yeah Savannah's beautiful place yeah well we had never been until she moved there and now of course we've been many times in you have to buy a second condo yeah that's not gonna happen J thank you so very much for spending your time with me today and I think it's going to bring a lot of value to those who find this on YouTube or wherever they listen to it I I know you have touched the lives of many in a very positive way and a not only a life-changing way but a generational changing way and I will be forever grateful for that and I look forward to when you and I can actually meet face to face maybe at a lake somewhere or in Florida or Savannah or when you come out to San Diego I'll I'll be a great host for you yeah I'm looking forward to that as well uh hanging out in the real world together and this has been a blast thanks so much for inviting me to on to the show all right you're very welcome and thank you again and thank you all for listening to the [Music] [Applause] [Music] podcast