Q & A – Two Sides of FI

July 3, 2023July 3, 2023

Ask an Early Retiree Anything! Live Q&A with Jason from Two Sides of FI

Are you on the FIRE path or interested in learning more about early retirement? Three years ago I retired from my career at age 47 after reaching financial independence the prior year. This video is from a livestream where community members had the opportunity to ask me questions about what my experience has been like. Thanks to all who joined!

Don’t miss the extensive show notes below, which list all the episodes and resources discussed in the episode.

Show notes may be found below the video

Show Notes

Essential Background:

Here are links to the episodes Jason talked about in the show. In many cases these point to show notes, which contain not only the episode video itself, but also a variety of associated content meant to help support the content. Check them out!

Eric and Jason have been friends for a long time – over 37 years as this episode was recorded. For more background on their upbringing, their relationship, and their FI paths, you’ll definitely want to watch these two early episodes: Our Financial Past and Our FIRE Present and Two Careers, Two Paths to Financial Independence.
“How Not to FIRE” was an early two-part series we did based on Reddit tales of FIRE regret: How NOT to FIRE – (Pre-FI/RE) and Retired Early and I Hated It : How NOT to FIRE (Post-FI/RE)
Several questions about financial advisors came up on the livestream. To learn about Jason’s decision to part ways with his advisors, see Breaking Up With My Financial Advisor? For those interested in consulting with a fee-only advisor as Eric and Jason did, check out We Each Hired a Flat Fee Financial Advisor. Was It Worth It?
Jason referenced his conversation with Eric about their respective quarterly planning processes. Find that here: Our Net Worth Is Up! Sharing Our Financial Review Process
It was no surprise that withdrawal strategies came up several times in the chat today. For one-stop shopping on all things relating to Karsten Jeske, the SWR Toolbox, Fritz Gilbert, bucket strategies, and more – you simply have to see What’s Wrong With This Popular Retirement Strategy? It’s a comprehensive landing page!
For practical help with modeling your own safe withdrawal rate plan, don’t miss our very popular three-part tutorial series on the SWR Toolbox. You can find them all here.
Healthcare costs are one of the biggest concerns for US retirees, whether on a FIRE path or a more traditional one. We mostly talked about Affordable Healthcare Act (ACA) plans today, which is a central focus of Don’t Let the Cost of Healthcare Break Your Early Retirement Plan. On that page you’ll also find a link to our earlier episode on healthcare, which is more broadly focused: Healthcare is my Second Highest Cost in Early Retirement.
Jason referenced his first year post-RE milestone Two Sides of FI episode today. Watch this episode to find out What I Learned in My First Year of “Early Retirement.
Asset allocation is a topic that has come up often on Two Sides of FI – and our portfolios have indeed changed over time. For more on our history there, don’t miss our two-part series from 2021. The show notes for “Getting Your FIRE Asset Allocation Right. Here’s Ours (Part 1)” are a great collection of resources on this topic; and here’s Part 2: “Comparing our FIRE Portfolios + Asset Allocations”
For more on asset allocation decisions, don’t miss how Eric decided to move from a 100% stock allocation and added bonds to his portfolio. We have a two-part series: “I Rebalanced My FI/RE Portfolio and I Hate It!” (Part 1) and “Buying Bonds. Still Not Convinced I’m Doing the Right Thing!” (Part 2). As you’ll note, this decision was made prior to the market downturn in 2022. As a bonus, check out the conversation with Eric + his wife Laura, “FI-nancial Decisions – Transitioning to FI with Laura + Eric”, for a behind the scenes look at how they decided on their revised asset allocation.
Relating to asset allocation, rebalancing, and several other topics we hit on in this episode, Jason and Eric talked about the former’s Investment Policy Statement (IPS) in Is This a Part of Your FIRE Plan?
Many seem to agree that our two-part series where we discuss our FIRE paths with our spouses, Lorri and Laura, is essential content. Check it out here: Part 1 and Part 2.
We previously released a (non-live) Q&A episode to celebrate our 50th episode milestone. If you haven’t seen it yet, check out You Asked, We Answered. FIRE Q&A.

Resources Mentioned:

Still haven’t subscribed to our YouTube channel or want to share an easy link with people you know? Here it is! Click it, say yes, and you’re in! Easy, peasy.

In this episode we talked about the new Two Sides of FI Discord server. If you’re not familiar, this is an instant messaging social network. It’s totally open, free of charge, and is anonymous as you’d like. This makes it a safe space to talk about financial topics you might otherwise be sensitive about sharing. Come check it out and see if it fits your interests!

Did you know Jason resumed blogging? To be notified of his future posts, please consider subscribing here. He’s also archived his old blog, which documents the first 1.5 years after he retired from his career, and started even before Two Sides of FI began. Get more information on those archived posts here.

In this episode, Jason mentioned Empower (formerly Personal Capital) for summarizing his portfolio performance as a part of rebalancing. Both him and Eric really like this free tool for tracking investment accounts, understanding asset allocation + rebalancing opportunities, and monitoring net worth. Empower employs a simple account linking process to make it a more automated experience. Give it a try risk-free! (affiliate link; free program )

Do you have a copy of our free Rebalancing Calculator? This simple tool can help you make your own decisions about buying and selling in order to rebalance your portfolio. If you’d like something more DIY, this is a calculator you should consider.

In case you missed the link above, our popular three-part tutorial series on the Safe Withdrawal Rate (SWR) Toolbox can be found here.

The Retirement Income Style Awareness (RISA) is a tool by Wade Pfau (mentioned today) and the team at Retirement Researcher. It came from research performed on individual styles, risk tolerance, and other factors, and is aimed at deriving a personal retirement income strategy. Fritz Gilbert at Retirement Manifesto posted a nice write up on this last year, which we’d recommend. If you’re interested in learning more about this assessment, check out Wade’s book: “Retirement Planning Guidebook: Navigating the Important Decisions for Retirement Success”.

Die with Zero: Getting All You Can from Your Money and Your Life by Bill Perkins, is discussed often in the FIRE community – so no surprise it came up in this episode. It’s intended as a “practical guide on how to get the most out of your money—and out of your life”. If you like the aim of prioritizing memorable experiences far ahead of simply accumulating money for later in life, you’ll definitely want to check it out.

You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.

November 20, 2022November 20, 2022

You Asked, We Answered. FIRE Q&A

Answering your financial independence, retire early (FIRE) questions, including the one we’re asked most often. This special Ask Us Anything format commemorates the 50th episode of Two Sides of FI. THANK YOU to all who submitted questions and for your continued support of the show!

Show notes may be found below the video

Show Notes

First, THANK YOU so much again for all your support of Two Sides of FI. We’d never have achieved this 50 episode milestone without all the engagement and encouragement we receive from you, our community. We truly appreciate you and are thankful for your constant support.

We are often asked how to support + promote the show. Here are three simple ideas which we humbly suggest: 1) Share a link to our channel with people who you think can benefit – via social media, 1:1, or however works for you. 2) Use the ‘like’ feature on videos and subscribe (click here!) to the channel. The YouTube algorithm sees these signals as indications of merit, and they play a vital role in helping to promote our content. 3) Consider rating + reviewing the podcast – even if you always watch it on YouTube. Apple Podcasts is the most important tool out there to drive visibility on the audio format. We get thousands of podcast downloads each month yet have <80 total reviews at the time this episode went live. Thank you!

Essential Background:

Our first episode, “Our Financial Past and our FIRE Present – Two Sides of FI“ is where it all began for the show. 50 episodes later, there certainly have been plenty of changes – and improvements (particularly on Jason’s side of the screen, as he likes to point out). This episode is the best place to learn about our financial backgrounds a bit better.
“So, What’s Your Financial Independence (FI) Number?“ was one of our early popular – and controversial videos. We’ve got a long history with this question, and you won’t want to miss the end of today’s episode to hear our current thoughts on it. But this earlier installment sets the stage for this essential question + many FIRE fundamentals.
We’ve actually done another Q&A episode: “Answering Your Financial Independence Questions”. In this video, we tackled topics including changing withdrawal rates, our FI numbers, redefining identity in early retirement, rental real estate, and more.
In today’s episode we referenced a fun experiment, captured in “We Each Hired a Flat Fee Financial Advisor. Was it Worth It?”. Prior to this video, we each hired the same fee-only, advice-only advisor to evaluate our portfolios and answer our questions. We then shared how we found this advisor, what the process was like, the specific questions + answers we had, and who we believe could benefit from such a service.
Safe Withdrawal Rate has been an ongoing topic for us on 2SFI, and naturally it came up here as well. Did you know we spoke with SWR expert, Karsten Jeske? To see that episode, our follow-up conversation, and get the best collection of all the resources we have on this topic (including the free SWR Toolbox), you’ll want to see this show notes page.

As a complement to Two Sides of FI, Jason’s milestones blog posts are perhaps the easiest way to understand what his journey has been like since retiring early. In these articles, he discusses candidly what he’s felt, experienced, and achieved in the 2+ years since he left his career behind. If there’s a specific topic you’re seeking, don’t miss this list of all his blog posts to date.

Top Five Regrets of the Dying: A Life Transformed by the Dearly Departing is a book by Bronnie Ware that we mentioned in this episode. It originally started as a blog post, outlining the most common regrets that the people she had supported through palliative care had expressed. The post quickly blew up and was viewed by more than three million readers worldwide in its first year. Bronnie subsequently wrote this fascinating and meaningful book capturing all that she learned.

CoastFI came up in a question we addressed in this video. This is a term used to describe someone who isn’t yet FI but has already put in the necessary effort to mathematically achieve that goal without further contributions. Did you know we talked with someone on this topic in an podcast-only episode last year? If you missed it then, you’ll definitely want to check out A CoastFI Path to Financial Security: An Interview with Catherine.

Eric has talked about his “Possible Futures” Notion page in several episodes to date. Here is a screenshot of the kind of information he and Laura track here

In today’s episode, we shared footage of what Eric’s filming setup looks like. For the full details on the equipment he uses, check out this page.

By his own description, Jason’s filming setup is more “bespoke”. They say a picture is worth a thousand words:

You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.

September 20, 2021September 27, 2023

Answering Your Financial Independence Questions

You asked, we answered. Bringing the Two Sides of FI together to discuss changing withdrawal rates, Jason and Eric’s own FI numbers, redefining identity in early retirement, rental real estate, and more.

Want your question featured on an upcoming show? Drop a comment on the video or reach out on our contact page.

Show Notes

Given the diversity of topics and tools discussed in this episode, it was challenging to go into much depth on any one of them. We’ve shared more information below on several of these items so that you can get the full details on each.

Our FIRE numbers: We only briefly touched on this topic in this episode, but we’ve actually done an in-depth two-part series in the past. “So, What’s Your FI Number? Sharing Ours Here” is the first, and addresses the question of how to determine how much you need to achieve financial independence. We decoded the math used to calculate our own FI targets, talked about the different flavors of FIRE, and shared where our numbers fall on the FIRE spectrum. The second part of this series, “Discussing our FI Numbers : Changing our Minds, Talking to Family”, goes a step further. There we talked about how our early FI goals and calculations underestimated today’s needs. We then went beyond the math of financial independence to discuss the psychological aspects, including important conversations we had along the way with family and friends.
Modeling your FI plan’s success: In this episode we showed some examples of modeling using cFIREsim, one of our favorite tools for examining the likelihood of your assets lasting the duration of your retirement timeline. This is a commonly used and highly regarded tol among the FIRE community. Newretirement.com is another great site (with both free and subscription options) that provides similar functionality, while including more in depth planning options. Both can be found on the Tools section of our Resources page.
Modeling rent vs. buy decisions: While this wasn’t a major topic in this show, it is a question that comes up often both pre-FIRE and when thinking about modeling housing costs post-FIRE. It’s easy to model scenarios using the Rent vs. Buy calculator at SmartAsset.com.

You can find information on the tools we mention in each episode along with additional information in the Resources section of this site.