43. Kristy Shen and Erin on Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE)

"Stop Working, Start Living". Those powerful words grace the cover of the life-changing book "Quit Like a Millionaire", expertly written by Kristy Shen and Bryce Leung. What I love about Kristy and Bryce's work, beyond all of the insightful financial stuff, is how it challenges us to think differently and question everything. When I talk to people about their dreams, the topic of financial independence often comes up. While money doesn’t bring you fulfillment, it can bring a form of freedom that you can leverage to live life to its fullest and spend your time the way you want to. If you're dreaming of bringing more financial freedom into your life, then this week's episode is for you! In it, I have the opportunity to chat with Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE) guru Kristy Shen about all kinds of freedom - financial freedom, time freedom, freedom from stuff and location freedom. In our conversation, we touch on strategies such as optimization, the rule of 150 and geographic arbitrage. Then we go deeper to talk about how overcoming the mental hurdles of rewiring your brain, redefining your identity and letting go of outdated views of financial security is often the most challenging part of settling into a financially independent lifestyle. We discuss all that has happened in the 10 years since Kristy retired at the tender age of 31 (economic changes, a global pandemic, having a child) and Kristy shares what she's learned about FIRE since writing the book - primarily a beautiful, complex landscape of gray that exists beyond (and in complement to) the number crunching and black and white analysis. Finally, we talk about how to build "CRAP" (creativity, resilience, adaptability and perseverance) skills in our kids and we bond over our mutual love affair with playgrounds. Of course, we also build Kristy's equation: 7S + 3WR + 4o + 7fr + 2fa + 1s + T