124R | Your Blueprint To Financial Independence

Brad and Jonathan discuss the release date of a ChooseFI book, finding the best auto insurance rates, and Lynn Frair’s path to FI.

ChooseFI: Your Blueprint To Financial Independence

The ChooseFI: Your Blueprint to Financial Independence will be released on October 1, 2019. The goal of the book is to outline options for your path FI. Everyone’s journey will be different because the concept of FI is really based on choosing your own adventure. However, there are common threads between all of the success stories. We pull that together so that you can make your own journey a successful one.

Changing the narritive that guides your life then using this new framework to guide your future financial decisions makes Financial Independence achieveable to virtually anyone who chooses to pursue it.

Everyone has their own journey and Chris does an amazing job of recognizing that. With the individual stories from guests, he was able to pull together a blueprint that anyone can learn from at any stage in their journey.

In an article on Can I Retire Yet, Chris talks about why he thinks the book is important. With mainstream media attention on FIRE, it is easy to focus on the strange anecdotes. However, that is not what FIRE is about. Instead, it is able finding value in your life and finding the strength to ignore the rules that society has imposed on us.

When you make your choices based on what you value, then you may be able to add millions of dollars and years of freedom to your life.

It’s not about being a penny pincher or a miser, its about getting value out of your life.

When you make the choice to pursue FI, it might be simple. However, continually making choices that put you on the path to FI are not easy. We hope that the information in this book will help you to optimize your path to FI.

Where To Get Your Copy

Please go ahead and preorder your copy of the book here. With your preorder, you will gain access to exclusive content. Plus, you get to enjoy the book as soon as its out!

How To Get The Best Auto Insurance Rates

Compare.com is an easy way to save money on your car insurance. It eliminates the need to find several different quotes. Just fill out your information one time and Compare.com will find multiple car insurance quotes for you in seconds.

Brad found an opportunity that could save him around 40%. Definitely worth checking out!

Alignment of incentives is key to successfully finding financial deals that work for you. Compare.com works in your favor because they would gain from you switching to a plan that costs you less.

Lynn Frair And Her Path To FI

Lynn Frair and her husband were able to leave full-time work when she reached the ripe old age of 37. Her milestone received some attention in the Wall Street Journal, “How to Thrive in Early Retirement.” At the time of her retirement, she was not aware of the financial independence movement. However, she quickly connected with a trip to Camp Mustache after being compared by a coworker to Mr. Money Mustache.

Where She Started

Back in the day, a 12-year-old Lynn decided that she wanted to pay for college herself. She had a limiting belief that she was not the smartest cookie, but ended up investing her money based on an Albert Einstein quote. Already, Lynn was ahead of her age group.

Once she decided to invest, she took a bus to a “women in business” conference and stood up and asked “At age 12 what should she do with her money?” With the answer of stocks and real estate, she headed over to the bank to start investing in low-cost mutual funds. She also earned a bond as a prize from an essay, writing contest that proved to her that you could buy something in the present that will be worth in the future if you allow it to grow.

Although most 12-year-olds are not ready for the message of investing, she was someone that always planned for the future. Early on, she learned the concept of delayed gratification. Many do not learn this until later, if ever.

College And Beyond

Before college, she started taking college credit classes to get started. With that base, she was able to graduate with a pre-med degree even though she took a year and a half off to travel. Once she graduated, she did a cost-benefit analysis and decided that medical school would not give her the life she wanted.

For the time being, she decided to work for a pharmacy in a leadership position. This gave her the time to think about her future. Once she thought about it, she decided to go into nursing.

Prior to graduation, she approached the manager of an ICU. She asked for a list of things to do before graduation next year in order to land a job in the ICU as a recent graduate. Over the course of the year, she completed the list and then came back to the hiring manager. She got the position as a daytime ICU nurse! That is one way to get a job in your field, just ask what the hiring manager wants from new applicants before you apply. Make that connection and put in the effort, you might be surprised how well it may work out.

That may seem like the end of the story. A bundle of investments from childhood and a solid career as an ICU nurse led to her financial independence. Unfortunately, that was not the case.

Challenges

After working as an ICU nurse for about a year, Lynn started to notice she was very dizzy and her hearing wasn’t right. At first, doctors said it was nothing. However, after scans, doctors found a brain tumor.

Of course, it was an incredibly expensive and physically taxing recovery process, including relearning how to walk, was a setback. Not only were their savings wiped out, but also Lynn was not up to returning to the demanding job of an ICU nurse.

She still wanted to stay in healthcare so she found an admin position in home health that lead to a role in hospice.

When you are truly genuine and kind to people, you never really know how that will be paid forward into the future.

Eventually, she was made the manager of the entire facility. She was referred to the management role by a woman who had worked as a janitor with Lynn in the ICU. They had become friends and now that woman worked directly with the facility management and recommended Lynn for the job. With the trust of staff based on her genuine kindness, she was able to find ways to help improve people’s quality of life in their final days.

Reaching FI In Eight Years

After her recovery from the brain tumor at 29, Lynn was able to rechannel her efforts towards investing and rebuilding her savings. Even in an HCOL with 2 kids, she was able to reach FI with her husband. Now, she just works 22 weeks out of the year.

Without the FI community’s guidance, Lynn was able to reach FI goals on her own. She did not keep track of her savings rate, but she did ensure that they lived beneath their means. Neither her or her husband have extremely high incomes, but they made it work anyways. With those savings, she invested strictly in low-cost index funds. She kept investing through the dips and that really catapulted them to success.

In just 8 short years, the couple was able to leave full-time work in pursuit of a life filled with travel and indoor bouncy house parties with their kids.

How To Connect With Lynn

You can reach her through her new website, Nurse Numbers. And be sure to check out her very first article: How I Was Arrested By The Early Retirement Police

The Hot Seat

Favorite blog: Paula Pant’s Afford Anything

Favorite article: 20 Brutal Truths about Life that No One Wants to Admit

Favorite life hack: Having an indoor bouncy house for kids. When the seams come apart, just sew it back together with dental floss!

Biggest financial mistake. Going to a private college for her pre-med degree.

Advice you would give your younger self: Try to relax and enjoy where you are now.

Bonus! What is the purchase you’ve made over the last 12 months that has brought the most value to your life? The indoor bouncy castle

Bounceland Bounce House Castle W/Hoop Inflatable Bouncer

We have found this to be a wonderful investment if you have younger children, a perfect way to entertain, get them exercise and wear them out. It can be used also for smaller birthday parties.

We use it indoor in our loft which has a carpeted floor. When the weather is better, we also use it outdoor and hook up a sprinkler above the slide portion which makes it like a water slide.

Remember the dental floss trick! A couple of minutes with a study needle and dental floss and you are back in jumping action!

-Lynn Frair

Related Episodes: