Brought to you by the EveryDollar app. Start budgeting for free today. So I currently have three jobs. I spend more than a couple hours a day working.
And I save and invest about half my income, so I'm saving about $100,000 a year. So financially, we're sound, but it comes at a cost. So I'm not spending enough time with my children, and my health is deteriorating. Well, I'm not dying, but it's impacting many people.
How much do you have in savings and your investments? Yeah, so I've been having three jobs for about five years now, going into six years. So you put a half million dollars away? Yeah, exactly.
With that money, I bought four homes. One primary residence and three single family homes, and I'm renting all that right now. Okay, and what are the three single family homes worth? Roughly, on average, about $600,000.
Each? And I bought it for about, yeah, correct. Okay, so the three rental properties are worth $1.8 million, and they're paid for? No, no, no, no, no.
I have about 40% equity on each house. Oh, so you still have debt on them. Okay. Correct.
Okay, so when it comes to equity, I have about $1.3 million in all those four houses. Gotcha. And I have about $350,000 in savings. So what's your question?
Yeah, so I just turned three, and I've been happy so far, but I just turned 40 this year. And since then, I've been thinking about a lot of stuff, like, am I doing a different thing? And initially, I thought, I'm being directed for the family, but I'm starting to think about myself, too. I think I'm just kind of going through the middle of prices.
But also, so when I think about quitting those two jobs, the thought of living paycheck to paycheck terrifies me. Well, you're not living paycheck to paycheck. You're putting $100,000 away. Quitting two jobs is not going to make you paycheck to paycheck.
You're so exaggerating that. Well, if I, after I put other, like, next hour, 401k, and IRA, I'm not going to be saving any money at all. Oh. In most cases.
So back off of your investing. You only got $2 million. You're not living paycheck to paycheck. That's a bogus emotional response.
Why are you afraid to just sit at home with your family, dude? Yeah. Why? Why?
Well, initially, I was part of, like, fire movement, but I'm thinking a lot of things can happen in the future. So I feel like... You know, fire movement burned down. Did you notice?
It burned to the ground. It burned around people's ears because they were trying to do something that wasn't sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable. What you're doing is not sustainable.
You didn't build a life. Here's what I promise you, dude. I agree with your brain. When you're 50, you can hand the kids a key to a rental house.
I promise you they would have exchanged it for time with their dad. And by the way, that's a false dichotomy because you work hard. You're still going to be able to offer your kids a pretty extraordinary life financially. And you get to spend time with your kids.
I think you're scared to go home and build a family. Am I wrong? Well, are you afraid to admit that the fire thing you bought into sucked? And also, I think it has to do with my ego.
Okay, I have a lot of that. If you have four houses worth $1.3 million, your debt worth is $2 million and you're 40 years old. Ding, ding. You got the bell.
You're on the bell. You're done. If you don't do anything else, you're going to be worth $20 million at $65. If you just let the investments that you have grow, that's all.
There's no need to panic here. And by the way, people working and enjoying their work and going to work and having meaning, as long as they're able, it's not bad. I intend to be on this microphone until I don't make sense. Now, I don't want to be one of those guys that doesn't make sense.
We've seen those and they're dangerous. But yeah. So anyway, yeah, we need to get off at that point. But no, dude.
Yeah, your brain is telling you what to do. You already know what to do. All I'm telling you is your emotions are exaggerating that you're going to be starving to death or something and living paycheck to paycheck. Not even close.
Here's an idea. Quit. And if a year from now you think you're going to be homeless or something, go back to work. Three different jobs.
You can get those jobs right back. Those kinds of jobs are always waiting. How much of this stress is, because I've never lived this life, you keep telling yourself with your neocortex, your thinking part of your brain, I'm worth $1.3 million. I'm worth $1.3 million.
But your amygdala, the threat detection part of your brain says, you still owe $900,000 on these four houses. You still owe money. You still owe money. And every month, no matter what your net worth is, how much money you have coming in, your brain knows you're still on the hook for all these properties.
That's got to weigh you down, doesn't it? That's probably part of it. But I think he's been running at breakneck speed. He didn't even notice that part.
That's my opinion. He's just exactly right. I think he's just... No, he was trying to run.
He thought there was an end game. Tell me about FIRE. FIRE is the retire young. The retire at 40.
I'm not at work again. And the numbers don't work. It doesn't, you people. And because the problem with money, when you view money that way, is money is a bully in the schoolyard.
As soon as you say, hit me in the nose, you step back. If you cross this line, I'm going to hit you. You step across the line, you step back and cross another line. If you cross this line, then I'm going to hit you.
Once you get on that treadmill, you can't catch a carrot. It's impossible to catch. And so if you could maintain godliness with contentment and say, okay, I'm going to live a lifestyle of $50,000 a year income, then you can build a big enough nest egg to quit. But something about our psychology won't let us do it.
We start out with that, and that's the math. But then by the time we get used to living on a $150,000 lifestyle, then I've got to go back to a $50,000 lifestyle to quit, which is exactly what he's saying. He's saying, I'm going to be paycheck. He's not even close to paycheck to paycheck, but he's going to have to cut his lifestyle.
He's going to have to drop his investing from $100,000 a year contribution. That was in addition to maxing out everything else. Yeah. So he can still max out everything.
And you can't do $100,000 extra. Extra. And that's paycheck to paycheck. That's not paycheck to paycheck.
There's also this, you get to be $40,000,000, and you thought it was going to feel a different way. That's true. You thought it was going to be a billion. You thought you were going to do nothing, and doing nothing will kill you.
One of the things I had outlined with all these little communists that are coming out of college, I have to explain to them that a billionaire is not the same thing as a millionaire. A millionaire, a billion is a thousand million. Billionaires have four houses, a jet, and seven cars. Millionaires have two used Camrys and one house.
And it's paid for, and they have $800,000 in their 401k. Okay, that's a millionaire. But a billionaire is a thousand million. And people emotionally have these two things confused.
They think of some rap artist or whatever in a private jet, which they don't even know. It's a charter. But I mean, they think it's like, oh, that's how, you don't live like that with a $3,000,000 net worth. You know, stupid jet would be more than that.
Much less, you know, the whole, I mean, it's just like, so that's not how it works. It's the emotions of, when I get to be a millionaire, I'm going to be a billionaire. No, you're not. You're going to be a millionaire.
Two used Camrys. And it's still a good thing. And a lot of laughter in your home. Ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding, ding.
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