Our Powers Combined: From Burnout to CoastFI Ep. 1

[00:00:11] Welcome to CoastFI Couple, a podcast where love meets financial independence. I'm Matt.

[00:00:16] And I'm Jana. Join us every other week as we dive into the world of CoastFI and share smart money tips for couples.

[00:00:21] We're going to be talking all about how to strengthen your bond and your relationship and bringing closer to financial independence.

[00:00:26] One episode at a time.

[00:00:28] Cool.

[00:00:28] We have a podcast.

[00:00:30] Welcome to the CoastFI Couples Podcast.

[00:00:31] This is a bi-weekly podcast where we talk about money, relationships, and share financial tips.

[00:00:37] Exactly right. Yeah. Money and relationships.

[00:00:41] And our relationship with it.

[00:00:43] Yeah. Yeah. So we've been on this journey for how long now?

[00:00:46] It's hard to say. I think that we've always been FI-minded, financially independent minded, probably since before we got married. So 11 years-ish.

[00:00:57] Definitely. So the FI, let's define FI real quickly because this is the first episode.

[00:01:02] We should probably also introduce ourselves.

[00:01:05] We should introduce ourselves. Let's start there.

[00:01:06] Okay. That's Matt.

[00:01:07] Okay. So I'm Matt.

[00:01:10] I'm Jana.

[00:01:10] And my lovely wife, Jana.

[00:01:11] So we've decided to create this podcast as a, as a testament to what we've built in this, this venture through CoastFI and we'll define what CoastFI is.

[00:01:23] Um, but more as a way to explain it to other couples who are trying to do the same thing, or at least look at a different approach of how to reach, uh, financial independence, uh, in a way that is, uh, peaceful, respectful, attainable, attainable, and to ultimately avoid burnout.

[00:01:56] Yeah.

[00:02:15] Which we'll talk a lot about, uh, uh, because it happened to me.

[00:02:17] I like to also say, and a lot of people in the fire movement say that it also stands for financial independence, recreational employment.

[00:02:24] Um, and CoastFI is a subset within the financial movement that basically it is getting to a point in your financial independence journey where you have saved up enough in your investments that you no longer have to continue to save.

[00:02:41] You just have to cover your annual expenses.

[00:02:44] And we'll talk about the logistics on how to actually achieve CoastFI and, um, some tips and tricks and things like that along the way.

[00:02:52] Yeah.

[00:02:54] So I want to start off with when I found fire movement, it was back in 2016 ish, I think maybe even a little bit earlier than that.

[00:03:03] And fire initially was essentially eat nothing but peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and, and get as much money as you can saved up in your investment accounts, like your 401ks and your Roth IRAs as quickly as possible.

[00:03:18] Because the goal for fire initially was to retire as early as possible.

[00:03:23] So standard retirement age is 60, right?

[00:03:27] So all of your Roth IRAs, uh, click over at 59 and a half.

[00:03:31] And so that's considered standard retirement age, but the fire community realized that it's just a math game.

[00:03:37] And the faster you can compile as much as you can, the faster your compounding interest takes over.

[00:03:44] And so people were retiring at 50, at 40, at 30.

[00:03:50] And when I found the movement, it was, it was during a time where I didn't know what I wanted to do with my life.

[00:03:58] And the jobs that I had worked so far were not fun, um, very stressful.

[00:04:04] And so without a clearer path, this was the only way that I found out of the rat wheel.

[00:04:10] And it wasn't, so I was head down working long hours as hard as I possibly could saving every penny that I found on the street.

[00:04:19] And it was that way for years.

[00:04:23] So 2016, you know, I think about that time we had just had our last baby.

[00:04:29] Yeah.

[00:04:30] And Matt found the fire movement and came home all excited.

[00:04:34] He's always been the finance nerd.

[00:04:36] Um, we've always been really aligned on our finances, which has been a great foundation for our marriage.

[00:04:42] Um, but we had just had a baby.

[00:04:46] So, you know, the idea of eating peanut butter and jelly sandwiches and saving every penny we could find in the street just wasn't something that was my top priority.

[00:04:57] And, um, I think that I wasn't receptive at the time.

[00:05:03] Rightfully so.

[00:05:04] I went too fast.

[00:05:05] Yeah.

[00:05:06] Um, but we already had a pretty great foundation for the way that we communicated about money and the way we budgeted together.

[00:05:15] And so we were able to sort of build off of that.

[00:05:19] And although I was quote unquote, the free spirit and you were more of the financial nerd, we still did it together.

[00:05:27] We were still in the boat together, but you were really much more driving the ship.

[00:05:31] It's changed.

[00:05:32] It has.

[00:05:33] It has.

[00:05:34] Um, I, I became much more of a financial nerd probably, I don't know, two or three years ago.

[00:05:42] And, um, the shift has been really, really fun.

[00:05:46] The build has been really fun.

[00:05:47] And I think that's how we found Coast Fi honestly, because you're just so head down dedicated that you have this concept of fire being the end goal.

[00:05:57] And that was the goal.

[00:05:58] Your head was down.

[00:05:59] You weren't going to look up until we had reached that goal, but you reached this level of burnout along the way.

[00:06:05] That was just not sustainable.

[00:06:06] And once I started understanding the language of fire, the financial independent movement, and started learning about all the different, I like to call them sort of levels of fire within the staircase.

[00:06:22] Yes.

[00:06:22] The staircase, um, which is, is it Coast Fi, Barista Fi, Lean Fi, Fire, Chubby Fi, and then Fat Fire.

[00:06:35] And we can talk about all of those, um, on the podcast.

[00:06:38] But I figured out that Coast Fi was at least a goal post.

[00:06:44] Maybe not our end goal, but a goal post, which meant, hey, yes, we are, you know, we have big shovel jobs, high earning jobs, and we are saving as much as possible.

[00:06:55] And we are keeping our expenses low and not participating in lifestyle creep and just being frugal so we can have that high savings rate so we can reach fire as fast as possible, which was still going to be what?

[00:07:08] 14, 15 years away.

[00:07:10] But this level of burnout was just not sustainable for us to continue head down, uber dedication like that for such a long time.

[00:07:17] I think one thing that I want to cover in this podcast as we're starting this adventure off is your journey on this because you're the reason.

[00:07:25] We coast fired.

[00:07:26] That we coast fired.

[00:07:27] Exactly.

[00:07:27] Well, I think I helped us with the pivot, with the pivot of it.

[00:07:32] Yeah.

[00:07:33] But it was also the journey as a couple because I was, I came at this the wrong approach.

[00:07:39] And it was, it was Yana that helped me stop and smell the roses.

[00:07:45] And I'm much, I'm a much better person now because of it.

[00:07:49] Right.

[00:07:49] I actually enjoy my life.

[00:07:51] You're welcome.

[00:07:51] Yeah, exactly.

[00:07:53] So, so I think that throughout this, you know, podcast series, I I'd love to interview you through this process too.

[00:08:01] Is that not, this is what we're doing, but we're going to tell the audience kind of your story as well as mine.

[00:08:07] Yeah.

[00:08:07] But it's, it's really a two part story.

[00:08:10] It's a two part story.

[00:08:11] And, and through this podcast, not only are you going to talk about just our experiences, but we'll also be interviewing people in the fire community or people that are like-minded or other friends, other friends.

[00:08:24] Yeah.

[00:08:24] Uh, that, uh, have experienced the climb to financial independence, uh, that are also trying to do it themselves.

[00:08:32] And it's not a one size fit all.

[00:08:34] Uh, we, before we started this podcast, sat down and thought about a, you know, what would be the best way to explain this to somebody who's never heard of this before?

[00:08:46] Just getting started, just learning about the financial independence movement, or if this is your first time being introduced to financial independence, retire early or financial independence, recreational employment.

[00:08:56] I really love the idea of this podcast being a vehicle for people to learn about it and to feel like they can actually apply some tools and strategies to build up their own financial literacy, communicate with their partner.

[00:09:11] Um, if you are in a partnership, engaged, married, any of those things, communication is so important and building those blocks, those little building, putting those building blocks together in the beginning is, is pivotal.

[00:09:24] Yeah.

[00:09:25] Um, so I definitely want to include some strategies there as well.

[00:09:30] Um, yeah.

[00:09:32] The more that Jan and I simplify and automate our finances, the happier we became.

[00:09:37] And this is the single greatest finance budgeting tool that's come out in recent times.

[00:09:43] It's called cube money and it's changing the way couples implement financial health.

[00:09:50] We're investors in this company.

[00:09:51] We have exclusively been using cube money to do our own personal budgets since 2020.

[00:09:58] And it's so simple that even our kids are now using it.

[00:10:02] Cube has developed and patented a technology they call default zero.

[00:10:06] And it requires a category to be open from your personal budget before you can spend with the card.

[00:10:13] And then once you spend, it deducts it all in real time.

[00:10:18] This single feature has made cube the safest card in the world to use.

[00:10:24] If you drop it, it always has a zero balance on it.

[00:10:27] Unless you open the budgeting app.

[00:10:29] It's been extremely handy for us.

[00:10:31] And it saved us actually several instances of fraud.

[00:10:34] And we're never going to go back.

[00:10:36] Cube is perfect for families too, because they've got shared spending categories that allow you to spend in real time from them.

[00:10:44] And everyone else in the family can see the updated balance.

[00:10:47] It's essentially making it a hundred percent foolproof to always stick to our budget.

[00:10:51] And that has actually been the case.

[00:10:54] We have not overspent from our budget since we started cube.

[00:10:58] And it's amazing.

[00:10:59] This is the tool that helped us get a handle on our family spending and made our journey to coastify so much easier.

[00:11:07] So if you're ready to take your budget to the next level where you truly can automate it, you truly set it and forget it, then you're in luck.

[00:11:15] Because cube money is offering an exclusive deal just for our listeners.

[00:11:19] Go to cube money.com.

[00:11:21] That's Q-U-B-E money.com.

[00:11:23] And at checkout, use the code COAST.

[00:11:26] You can try the premium or the family membership for free.

[00:11:30] And again, we highly recommend it.

[00:11:33] It's a personal endorsement.

[00:11:34] We know that if you use the program, it'll work for you.

[00:11:38] Enjoy.

[00:11:38] I would like to spend half of this podcast talking about the relationship side of it.

[00:11:44] Yes.

[00:11:44] Because you can do this journey alone.

[00:11:48] You could probably do it faster.

[00:11:51] But it won't be as enjoyable as building a partnership along the way.

[00:11:56] Or a community.

[00:11:57] Or a community.

[00:11:58] You know, one of the best things about the FIRE community is just the people.

[00:12:05] I mean, and that's why I'm so excited to have some interviews and have people in the studio and, you know, just really talk with some of these people that are in the community.

[00:12:16] We have some amazing friends, some amazing leaders that are just so knowledgeable on specific topics.

[00:12:24] There's definitely a lot to learn, but everybody knows a little bit about something.

[00:12:30] And you can kind of take some tools and strategies bit by bit and apply it to your specific situation because everybody's situation is different.

[00:12:39] Yeah.

[00:12:41] Do you want to talk a little bit about how you found Coast FIRE?

[00:12:46] Um, so I think I started getting excited about FIRE when we were running the numbers together.

[00:13:00] You know, we're always sitting down and doing budgets together.

[00:13:04] And you would say this thing all the time.

[00:13:06] It's just a numbers game.

[00:13:07] It's just a numbers game.

[00:13:08] And it used to just like irk me.

[00:13:11] Drive you nuts.

[00:13:12] It did.

[00:13:12] It did.

[00:13:13] It really did.

[00:13:13] Yeah.

[00:13:14] But eventually, especially once we started using some better budgeting tools, I realized it all really is just a numbers game.

[00:13:21] And if I know and understand our numbers, our investments, our income, our, you know, our projection for our taxes, our expenses for the year.

[00:13:35] If I really know what our numbers are, then I can have control over them and I can have a direct impact on the trajectory of our lives, which was really exciting.

[00:13:46] And so I was looking at FIRE and trying to understand why you were so jazzed about it all the time.

[00:13:56] And it was exciting, but it was still really far away.

[00:14:00] Yeah.

[00:14:00] And it was hard to be excited for the 60-year-old me that's going to have it all.

[00:14:05] You know, I remember us having a conversation.

[00:14:06] We're like, look at what we're going to have when we're 65.

[00:14:09] I'm like, I'm so excited for them because they're going to be two different people.

[00:14:13] But, you know, reading a little bit more about the FIRE community and having a better understanding of the different levels of FIRE, the different versions of FIRE and learning about Coast FIRE, I found a Coast FIRE calculator.

[00:14:26] I found the, I think the Wallet Burst calculator.

[00:14:28] The Wallet Burst calculator.

[00:14:30] Coast FIRE calculator is my favorite.

[00:14:31] And we'll make sure to include links and resources and show notes.

[00:14:34] But I remember one time I was really so excited about this Coast FIRE calculator.

[00:14:46] I think it was in bed.

[00:14:47] It was like 3.30 in the morning or something.

[00:14:49] So I want to also just pause for a moment because your journey to find this was a long one.

[00:14:56] And I think a lot of our listeners are probably in a similar situation where we first started, where you have one person who is maybe too amped up about this movement and the other person who just is so sick of hearing about it.

[00:15:09] Or maybe indifferent.

[00:15:10] Or indifferent.

[00:15:11] Or they're just tired of the person's energy for it and they kind of want to like hide or shy away from it because they might not understand it fully.

[00:15:18] Yes.

[00:15:19] Or they just are sick of the other person, you know, bringing it up all the time.

[00:15:24] I definitely think that my initial hesitation was because I didn't really understand.

[00:15:29] There's a lot of language and lingo that I didn't know.

[00:15:33] And it felt overwhelming.

[00:15:34] You know, we'd get into a conversation about something and it felt like you were worlds ahead on just the language of FIRE.

[00:15:44] So it was hard for me to keep up.

[00:15:46] So I would just get burnt out really quickly on trying to be excited.

[00:15:50] It's hard to be excited about something when you don't fluently speak the language.

[00:15:52] But over time, I learned, you know, kind of tangentially through you, you know, you would share podcasts with me and articles and stuff.

[00:16:02] But eventually I did learn.

[00:16:05] And eventually I was able to start sort of applying the different tools and principles to our own situation, like the COSTFI calculator, you know.

[00:16:13] And yeah, it took years.

[00:16:15] I think we were, what, seven years into our marriage before I started genuinely getting excited.

[00:16:20] Not that we weren't budging together.

[00:16:22] Yeah.

[00:16:23] So this is the beauty, I think, of our communication style is although you might not have been on the same excitement level I was,

[00:16:33] you still understood the importance of communication.

[00:16:38] And you helped me realize that I needed to slow down too.

[00:16:42] So it was a really good balance.

[00:16:44] What was probably the most touching gesture, I think, in our marriage, at least in the beginning, was the engagement gift.

[00:16:53] Can you talk about that?

[00:16:54] Yes. So when Matt and I got engaged, I knew that building a financial foundation and partnership together was really important to him.

[00:17:05] It was important to me too, but I knew that that was something that was going to be really, really important.

[00:17:11] And I didn't have a whole lot of financial literacy.

[00:17:14] I wasn't raised with it.

[00:17:15] I just didn't have the tenants in the same way that you had sort of built up for yourself, you know, the years before we had even met.

[00:17:24] And so as an engagement gift, I signed us up for the Dave Ramsey Financial Peace University, the one where you actually go to the classes.

[00:17:33] Yeah.

[00:17:34] And it was what, a six-week course, I think?

[00:17:35] It was a six-week course.

[00:17:36] And this was so out of the blue, which was really neat because it showed me right then and there how committed you were to making us work, right?

[00:17:48] And so that was a very touching gift.

[00:17:51] And I'll always remember this.

[00:17:52] But for many listeners who are not familiar with Dave Ramsey real quickly, like whether you like him or not in terms of his personality,

[00:18:00] he's got a really great program to establish a foundation of financial health, which is being debt-free, having an emergency fund, maybe saving for kids' colleges.

[00:18:14] And then...

[00:18:14] I think the biggest thing, though, was leaning on your partner for financial accountability in a way that is communicative and healthy.

[00:18:25] It really helped sort of fast track the way we talked about money.

[00:18:30] You know, I think we both very purposefully didn't want money to be a contentious aspect of our marriage and relationship, even when it was hard, even when money was really tight.

[00:18:43] And Matt was pushing for a higher savings rate.

[00:18:45] And I was like, but we have a baby and I want to buy 16 new outfits that we don't need, right?

[00:18:48] Like we would have, we would maybe not agree, but still really try to be on the same page as much as possible.

[00:18:55] And I think a lot of that is, is I contribute that to what we learned with Dave Ramsey because of the baby step method and just really learning how to budget together and things like that.

[00:19:06] It was a good start.

[00:19:07] It was a good jumping off place if you're just getting started.

[00:19:10] And I definitely want to share some, some tools and resources like that.

[00:19:14] Yeah.

[00:19:14] In the next episode, we'll talk about the tools we used to establish a good foundation.

[00:19:19] Yes.

[00:19:20] So excited about that one too.

[00:19:22] Yes.

[00:19:22] But my favorite tool for CoastFi was the Wallopers calculator.

[00:19:27] So back to my 3.30 in the morning story.

[00:19:30] Yes.

[00:19:30] Sorry.

[00:19:30] Continue.

[00:19:33] How I found CoastFi, right?

[00:19:36] And like got the itch, the bug, like the nerd bug that you had had for years that I was like, he, he, he's obsessed.

[00:19:46] You were obsessed.

[00:19:47] Checking personal capital every day.

[00:19:49] Every day.

[00:19:50] But it was like linked to my phone number.

[00:19:51] So I would get a notification every single time.

[00:19:54] I would be at work and I'd be getting these notifications and you were checking our investment, our worth portfolio.

[00:19:59] And I'm like, I'm texting you the notification.

[00:20:01] I'm just like, oh, it's like the third time today.

[00:20:04] And I knew that meant that you were burnt out with your job.

[00:20:06] Yeah.

[00:20:07] It was like an indicator that you were feeling stressed.

[00:20:09] So it was like, I would sometimes correlate.

[00:20:11] Okay.

[00:20:12] We got the note.

[00:20:12] I got the notification six times a day.

[00:20:14] So it's a really high stress day.

[00:20:16] It's a tough day.

[00:20:16] It's a tough day.

[00:20:18] But when I found Wallopers, the CoastFi Wallopers calculator, it was, it had to be, like I said, 3.30 in the morning and I'm running the numbers.

[00:20:27] I'm putting our, you know, our investable assets in there and the number of years until, you know, we want to actually fully retire and like playing around with the different settings.

[00:20:37] And I realized, oh, we're actually going to hit CoastFi in a year or so.

[00:20:42] Wow.

[00:20:43] And it wasn't our goal.

[00:20:45] No.

[00:20:46] Fire was still our goal.

[00:20:47] But the difference between trying to reach fire and trying to reach CoastFi, with fire, you have to save up enough in your investable assets to where you can live off of the, a percentage of the interest and your portfolio will still grow.

[00:20:59] With CoastFi, you just have to save up enough to where when you do retire, it's going to be later on, say, you know, 55, 60, 65.

[00:21:07] It's not going to be right now.

[00:21:11] That you don't have to invest anymore.

[00:21:14] You stop investing and the compound interest grows.

[00:21:16] So that way when you get to that age, you have enough to retire.

[00:21:19] And in between hitting CoastFi and actually retiring, all you have to do is cover your annual expenses.

[00:21:26] You don't have to continue saving like crazy.

[00:21:27] So that means that you can leave your high stress job, kind of take the pressure off, enjoy life a little bit.

[00:21:33] So I, when I first found CoastFi, I thought, awesome.

[00:21:37] We don't have to save anymore.

[00:21:38] So, you know, your high shuffle job and my job combined, our powers combined, we can, you know, get some nicer things.

[00:21:46] We can maybe renovate the bathroom or whatever.

[00:21:48] And then when we did get to CoastFi, I didn't want to do any of those things.

[00:21:52] I just wanted, it didn't matter about, you know, having more stuff.

[00:21:55] No, I didn't want lifestyle grief.

[00:21:57] I just wanted no stress jobs.

[00:21:59] And the time back.

[00:22:00] And the time back.

[00:22:01] Yeah.

[00:22:01] And so once I put those two things together, I was up in the middle of the night playing with this calculator.

[00:22:06] And I remember one time you rolled over and you're like, what are you doing?

[00:22:10] What was I doing, Matt?

[00:22:11] You were on that CoastFi calculator.

[00:22:13] I was obsessing.

[00:22:15] To build the next 10 years of our lives.

[00:22:16] I started obsessing and I would not shut up about it.

[00:22:18] I became the nerd.

[00:22:19] You became the nerd for this process.

[00:22:21] It's been amazing.

[00:22:22] And there have been times when you are tired of me talking about it, which I never thought would happen.

[00:22:25] I never thought that that would happen.

[00:22:27] I didn't definitely think that either.

[00:22:28] Yeah.

[00:22:29] I thought, you know, our dates and we can talk about this during next episode, but our dates were always about, you know, trying to be on the same page.

[00:22:40] And budgets came up a lot.

[00:22:41] Wait, are you talking about our actual dates or our budget dates?

[00:22:44] Those are, I think, one in the same.

[00:22:46] Okay.

[00:22:46] True.

[00:22:47] But yeah.

[00:22:48] How about this?

[00:22:48] How about, let's wrap up this episode.

[00:22:50] Okay.

[00:22:51] And next episode, we'll talk about the tools and the tips and the tricks and things that we've collected and learned along the way to share with the audience and listeners.

[00:23:00] And we'll start off with what a budget date actually is.

[00:23:04] Yeah.

[00:23:04] We'll talk about budget dates.

[00:23:05] I can't wait to show off some of my favorite budgeting tools and net worth tracking apps.

[00:23:11] I think that will be fun for me.

[00:23:14] Yeah.

[00:23:14] We're excited to have the people on the show here listening and have you part of this journey with us.

[00:23:20] It's going to be a good ride.

[00:23:22] Thanks for joining.

[00:23:23] Thanks.

[00:23:23] Signing off.