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Alright, folks well welcome to Investing for Beginners podcast I’m David Ahern, and we have Andrew Sather with us tonight we’re going to do a little something different off our normal beaten path.

We’re going to interview someone tonight; we have a guest with us tonight who has found success with finding freedom from money, and his name is Justin.

• You can retire early if you plan and stick to your plan
• You don’t need to make seven figures to retire early
• The 4% rule and how it is your friend
• Patience is a virtue in the stock market
• Being frugal and enjoying the simple things can lead to lifelong happiness

We’re just going to go ahead and chat a little bit so without any further ado Justin could you give us a brief synopsis of your life up to this point tell us how you got where you are.

Justin: Yeah, sure thing, so I’m Justin I retired at 33 four years ago almost to the day. I used to work as an engineer here in Raleigh North Carolina about ten years right out of college. Started working and you know to save my money invested it bought a pretty basic house here in Raleigh and just did not upgrade the house didn’t upgrade the cars until after I retired. I married my wife is also retired now she just she retired in her 30s, and she’s just crossed another big milestone birthday. So I’m not going to say how old she is but probably best yeah she might if she listens to this but she probably will she’ll probably do some, so she’s 29 again. We also have three children age in12 and five, and as a few days from now, they will get all three in school all day, so it’s a big transition period for us to have some free time during the school week and yeah that’s that’s pretty much you know me in a nutshell.

Andrew: nice I love it. I’d like what your typical day sounds like because I a lot of us who are listening to the podcast. We see financial freedom as kind of the ultimate goal and that all mean different things, for different people. You know what’s there’s a lot of work a lot of discipline and a lot of saving and investing. And so you know why should we go through all that and what kind of things can we look forward to if we do finally achieve financial freedom.

Justin: yeah sure I guess the at the big picture level there’s sort of a bipolar lifestyle I’m living during the school year when our kids are in school from roughly September through the end of May early June about nine months per year they’re in school. And, so we’re here in Raleigh NorthCarolina I’ve taken an easy kind of slow pace of life lots of relaxation. Simple stuff around town and then the another part of our lifestyle personality is a big summer trip.

We’ll go somewhere big for the summer this year we went to Europe for nine weeks. in the past, we’ve gone to Mexico for seven weeks a road trip across the US and Canada for three weeks three and a half weeks. We did that kind of trip twice in the past few years, so you know summertime big trip.

School year more laid-back local stuff around town on a daily basis it varies every single day between I might have some volunteer stuff at one of their school’s other stuff in the community. I have to go on you know going out for a walk going out for a hike around here somewhere in a nearby park walking down to the grocery store. You know getting coffee with a friend or somebody new that I’ve met hanging out people on the weekends having dinner parties over here having people over for you know pizza and beer kind of stuff.

I enjoy video games, and Netflix is another pastime of mine. I also enjoy my hammock with a goodbook, it really depends today we spent several hours at a Children’s Museum in the middle of the day on a Thursday. Okay had to keep straight what’s the weekend.

But yeah so it varies a lot. Yesterday we played tennis for 30 minutes and-and walks around the park for a while and just at a nice easy, relaxing day. It’s good weather right now in August so starting to get you know more outdoor time here in NorthCarolina.

It’s hot during the summer but very nice August September yes so basically whatever you want whenever you feel like it. Yeah, it’s you know it’s not I don’t have a fixed rigid schedule or anything, but it’s just you know I do have a Google Calendar soI have stuff that I have planned on my calendar.

But you know a busy day for me is one or two things on my calendar. Most days are zero or one things which are you know makes me perfectly happy to not have a lot of structure for the day.

Andrew: that’s cool so let’s talk about a little bit how that is possible because you know some people might be like or do I need to have do I need to be a billionaire like Warren Buffett to have this kind of a lifestyle. You have your blog route of good calm, and you talk about the 4% rule I’ve talked about that on my blog as well. But we haven’t covered that much on the podcast, so can you talk a little bit about the 4% rule and how that empowers you to be able to live this kind of lifestyles.

Justin: certainly yeah it’d be nice to have a billion or several billion dollars like WarrenBuffett and a lot of other very very wealthy people out there. I don’t think it’s necessary for a lot of people if you have a paid off house plus million two million dollars. you could live pretty well on that and then just talk about the 4% rule.

so the 4% rulein a nutshell is you take whatever youryour investment portfolio is, and you can pull about 4% of that out per year and live on it the rule itself says 30 years. But if you take 4% or a little bit and you’re a little bit flexible with how much you pull out exactly you can live on it indefinitely forever throwing some social security at age 67.

Even if it’s a little bit reduced from what they promise us right now and it’s you know it’s it’s pretty much four percent it’s what you can pull out essentially indefinitely with a very small chance of exhausting your investment portfolio.

So in practical numbers let’s talk numbers demo this means if you have a 1 million dollar portfolio you can pull out about $40,000 per year if you have two million dollars you can pull out eighty thousand dollars per year.

You can also do kind of look at the reverse way if you figure out how much you plan on spending in retirement or early retirement take that number and multiply it by 25 times and you’ll come up with some money that you need to save up.

you know your target savings amount to have in your portfolio so if you want to have if you want to spend sixty thousand dollars per year. that’s the kind of lifestyle that you want to afford sixty thousand times25 is 1.5 million I hope I’m around.

The math on that so 1.5 million is what you need if you spent a few thousand per year you can go the other way to4% of 1.5 million gets you back to60,000. So then kind of you knows to figure out how much money do you need using that 4% rule or the inverse five-time expenses and. And it’s it’s a general rule of thumb kind of a planning rule planning tool to use at a big picture level.

When you get down to it depends on asset allocation and exactly what your investment expenses are. And you got to consider things like big-ticket item expenses, college, and house replacement.

Our place in your budget you guys think about how old are you exactly do you have a pension and are you going to get Social Security. Are you even in theUnited States, you know is this applicable lots of lots of moving parts and variables there. But that 4% rule is a pretty good starting point for planning purpose now is that as a four%sell-off of the portfolio is it 4% in dividends is there a mix pretty much from any source and-and usually people would spend the dividends first.

You know right now you ‘re probably getting two percent or so from like a diversified equities portfolio with a few bonds in there to two and a half percent. So you might pull two or two-and-a-half percent from your dividends and interest and then you might sell the other one and a half to two percent to make up that total four percent.

There will be some that that four percent rule does include selling some of the principal. You know a very small amount we’re talking one or two percent here. Not a lot but the idea is that over the over the long term your principal will grow enough to offset those sales of principal.

You know there’s a chance that thirty-four years out you may end up with less than you started with or even five or ten years out. Let’s be honest, but the idea is still that if you’re only pulling out four percent. You have a very small chance of exhausting that portfolio down to zero dollars.

Because you ‘re keeping most of the portfolio intact a lot of it’s still making gains. And in most years its ability to at least keep up with if not outpace how much you’retaking out.

Justin: yeah that’s pretty much the idea just you know if you go back and look at historically what has the equities market in the United States returned over the past 150 years the numbers are up they’re probably out of nine ten percent nominal returns six to seven percent real returns it’s probably pretty accurate.

Yeah, the idea is if you’re getting at least six percent real returns, and you’re only pulling out four percent per year. Not only are you going to be able to do your portfolio will survive, but you’re also going to expect a little bit of growth each year.

You know and that median portfolio result, if we have very average very media and stock market returns for the next thirty years life is you know the life is never average. You’re always going to have some extremes, and that’s that that below median result we have really bad stock market returns for 30 years that’s when you ‘re going to potentially deplete your portfolio, come pretty close to it did you kind of a worst case scenario worst-case historical scenario

Andrew: Yeah I mean I think we’ve seen in Japan they had like a 20-year thing that they still haven’t covered from their kind of valuation bubble back at that time was historical in the sense we’ve never seen prices that high, so I mean again it’s debatable.

Nobody here has a crystal ball we don’t know what the long-term future of the stock market here in US, looks like like you said even you know you always want to think about the worst-case but keeping them up with the trends of what we’ve seen over the last hundred years there’s a good chance that you’ll at least keep up with that pace and just to be clear when Justin’stalking about six percent return that adjusted for inflation. So usually you ‘ll see you know like ten percent average returns once inflation kind of eats into a little bit then that’s where the six to seven percent comes from.

So when you reached this point where you went from working and investing to now okay now I’m sitting and reaping the fruits of my financial freedom did you change your portfolio at all was something you’d gradually kind of moved assets around over time how did you approach the difference between before and after.

Justin: yeah so I pretty much kept the same asset allocation in the past four years since I retired. I did make some small tweaks to the asset allocation in the past eight months really at the beginning of 2017, just wanted to get a little bit more conservative.

I was pretty much 100% equities throughout the end of 2016 to 2017, and just you know kind of that gut instinct. Seems like the markets kind of at a high valuation right now. I didn’t have a lot I had maybe $40,000 in cash enough to live off of you maybe two years with dividends included but not a ton of fixed income or cash.

I just figured you know recessions come every three five six seven eight years Imean they happen periodically economic cycle and we haven’t had one for a while, so I just decided to get a little bit more conservative. Shifted to about ten percent of my total investment assets are now in bonds or money market short-term, short-term funds.

I’ve got probably about one hundred and fifty thousand now in between bonds and cash. This you know just like a big wide load against that next big stock market crash if it happens. This your kind of cash for us we’re not spending a whole lot of money our houses paid off.

We pay very little in taxes, so you know this kind of money is enough plus the dividends come from the portfolio easily to provide for four or five years of living expenses maybe even more. If we you know for trying to conserve and save money and not spend a whole lot, but you know it’s a nice feeling to know we can go to sleep and if the stock market crashes overnight in Asia. We wake up here and you know theDow is cut in half, and the SP is back at twelve hundred or whatever.

Yeah, it’s going to is you know it’s going to be scary for other people. For us it’s going to be well, we still got five years of relatively stable short-term bonds cash kind of stuff laying around. You know to check it check back in with me in five years and let’s see how we’re doing, but most of these economic cycles they go down it goes back up, and it’s it’s usually less than five years.

Andrew: so I ‘m imagining you land on your hammock seem like an alert on your phone and then just throwing the phone back down and being like yeah going back to whatever you’re doing.

Justin: yeah well I had my phone sits by the charger all day probably less than in front of the computer. I’m not going to see that I’m not going to see the update, so I probably find out about it that evening or if somebody maybe calls my wife might check or me Facebook or Twitter or something and see it and let me know. But yeah so yeah it gave me a good be like I just totally missed that day’s excitement we just lost $800,000 in the market.

But you know it could happen it’s a risk that you take and it very well there’s you know I’m thinking of investing here for six more decades so it would not be surprised if something like that happened in the next six decades it happened.

Wow, it’s probably almost 30 years exactly by the time this goes live back in October of 1987 23% loss and one day I believe recovered for the most part within I think a year or two maybe even less time. Though you know there have been very ugly bloody days in the market even in recent history I mean I was seven at a time 97 you know yeah there could be blood in the streets and might not even know it until after it’s done.

It’s an interesting detail that can maybe be overlooked if you ‘re not paying attention how you know the stereotype is when you hit 65 there’s these target funds and these asset allocation plans that financial planners would like to do and they’ll shift a lot of people’s portfolios into bonds.

But you know if you understand the history of what the stock market has done historically understand what drives the stock market understand that economy is naturally you know contract. And expanded that these cycles are just a part of it then I feel like you can have the kind of confidence that Justin has to be like you know what I’m still keeping a lot a big chunk of my portfolio on the market even though I’ve already hit my goal.

Which might even unlock greater potential for even higher incomes down the line or just a much longer time period of where your nest egg. just you know before you’re able to live off that nest egg, and I think you know I ‘m sure some of that has to do with your age now, but there’s a certain confidence in a certain being able to sleep at night where you’re able to turn off all the noise. And the fuss is coming from people who get scared when the economy goes down because you have this information base.

I feel like just from talking to you in this short time you can tell you’ve internalized how the market works at least to a basic extent to know that I’m in it for the long-term losses might happen. But they’re going to be temporary, and this is the best way to number one keep my capital intact as long as possible. Number two even see it grow further even though you’ve already hit your goal.

Justin: yeah absolutely and that’s you know long-term I’m fighting against inflation more so than temporary stockmarket Corrections or crashes. Because I don’t want to happen is what I ‘ve seen happen to you know some older people elderly people, and by the time they’re there 70 or 80, and they’ve got their treasury our US treasury savings bonds they cash in.

And you know eight a hundred bucks a month was a lot of income to plan on back in 1987 or 1965or whatever you know, and they said when they bought all these things when they were working. And now you know in 2017$800 a month or $1,000 a month just isn’t that much to live on and but because they did not account for inflation.

And so I think inflation is a bigger concern of mine it’s been very tame very modest and all of my adult life all of my teenage years and everything so I’ve never known high inflation in the United States Imean I’ve seen it overseas plenty. And historically seen it plenty from you know Argentina, Germany, I mean tons of examples are in the world of high inflation. But just in the US, it’s been very tame lately.

I think nobody talks about living through or investing in a high inflationary environment. I don’t think about a lot other than just equities will probably do okay because earnings will you know you’re gonna sell products for more money if they’reinflated costs and your end up returning that money to them to the stocks at the higher amount of earnings.

I think stocks are good for longterm growth in inflation earing environment but. Yeah, it being able having that you are now having the right kind of asset allocation to let you sleep at night is even more so as you go into early retirement or regular retirement because you’re less more reliant on your portfolio as the sole means of support unless you have you know.

Unless you’re67 you’re getting Social Security unless you have a pension or some other kinds of you know some income stream so yeah for me you know I got a little bit more conservative as I saw the market go up and think it’s a good time to have a little cash reserve. Hey, you what’s the best way to get started in the market.

Andrew: I like hearing other people’s kind of how they got into the whole investing thing personally I remember reading “Rich Dad Poor Dad” by Robert Kiyosaki back when I was I don’t know if I was like still in high school or early college. I just somehow had that book, and I read it, and I was like wow and then later on when that when I started my job, started my career and started talking to some-workers about finances.

That’s when I picked up the kind of bug about learning about investing personal finance financial freedom all those types of things.

How did you get into Iknow you’re a member of the fire community how did you kind of stumble into it if you did.

Justin: yeah I’m yes I guess I started out even you know growing up 10, 11, 12 years old my dad watched the nightly business Report on a PBS. You know every night or the videotape and watch it later, and so I saw the stock market tickers. The Dow Jones Industrial Average and I can’t remember the name of the old guy that I think he’s passed away now, but there’s an old guy on there that would always you know read out the news and kind of a droll, boring voice.

So I was familiar with stocks as a concept but didn’t know what they were so you know in high school through college. I learned more about what is stock what you know these things, so it’s just a claim on the underlying earnings of a company.

If you have an index fund, it’s a claim on underlying earnings of dozens of hundreds or thousands of companies, and when you pull it down to those simple units, that’s sort of where I was. Like oh you know so I can be a business owner just by clicking a few buttons and giving a little bit of money I could buy small units these businesses.

This is pretty cool you know I’m raising this fits me perfectly, and so I started out investing very poorly during college during the dot-com boom and then the bust made a whole lot and then lost pretty much everything I invested scholarship money and lost most of the land, so I lost about $10,000 very cheap tuition to the college of investing. In hindsight so I quickly found mutual funds that were diversified.

Learned about risk pretty early on learned about margin and invested and the risks of margin investing which I do not do recommend. It’s so anyway that was that was kind of my comeuppance calm boom and bust.

I started working and soon after I started working that when I found this whole low-cost passive index funds, Vanguard index funds kind of thing from the fire community and switched over from a full cost expensive brokerage firm over to Vanguard and been chugging along ever since.

Andrew: that’s cool soI kicked you down, and you’re like it’s cool I’m going to get back up. That kind of how I am with the golf game except I haven’t improved mine yet.

Justin: yeah just I gave up golf, I sold my clubs at least didn’t give investing

Andrew: so you have this cool article it’s called zero the millionaire in ten years and you kind of tracked your whole journey.

And what I liked about it was you know I all the time I’m pounding the table, oh no it seems like every podcast episode about how you don’t need to have a six-figure income. You don’t need to you know to be a doctor or a lawyer to make a lot of money in the stock market.

I always put numbers down you know do these hypotheticals of if you just put a little bit every single month dollar cost average diversify always pounding the table about that.

You’ve done it and what I liked how you told how you’ve never gone over a hundred thousand dollars in your income. So can you talk about that a little bit and how even though you then have like a crazy high one-percent income you still were able to become a millionaire in a very short amount of time?

Justin: yeah sure so just as background I started working in 2004 made 48,000fresh out of school as an engineer. Pretty average typical salary as a private engineering consultant. I worked hard didn’t work too hard bumped up that salary to 69 thousand times 2013 rolled around.

Though I grew my income by about twenty thousand twenty-one thousand dollars you know, I was earning 69 thousand dollars as an engineer with ten years of experience you know not a particularly outstanding salary civil engineer.

So either lower than average but not particularly outstanding salary my wife had it kind of a similar trajectory ended up making think seventy-one thousand at a financial firm here in Raleigh when she quit working in 2015-2016. So you know we both capped out around $70,000 pretty average normal salaries for people to have ten years of experience and a college degree, and you know in a relatively decent or decent field of the professional field, but yeah not a ton of money.

How do we do it?

Took advantage of all those tax savings accounts tax-deferred savings accounts our employer 401k’s, health savings account we set up IRAs for ourselves on the side through Vanguard. Kept dumping the money as much as we could maxing out those accounts taking all those sweet tax deductions.

We say we paid very little in taxes and we had three kids so that obviously saves us many thousands of dollars in taxes but you know we’re working making gross salaries of 100, and you know hundred thousand two hundred forty thousand most of our adult careers. Combined incomes I should say household income, so you know pretty good salaries for folks out there but not great.

But because we contributed so much money to our 401ks IRAs I had a 457 for a few years when I worked for the state. We ‘re just we know we’re putting in fifty-sixty seventy thousand dollars a year and these tax-deferred accounts maybe not seventy kinds of not have to add it up but don’t know ever stated here. But you know putting in many many tens of thousands of dollars in these tax-deferred accounts partly because we kept our expenses low.

But also we’re saving I think I calculate will be saved $22,000 in taxes from making all these tax-deferred contributions into our counts. So just you know Uncle Sam’sgiving us a twenty-two thousand dollar paycheck just for doing what he wants us to do say for our retirement.

So that yeah per year you know what at peak earnings you know we were saving about twenty-two thousand dollars versus if we just didn’t do any tax-smart tax-heavy stuff. You know we just were just learning the money and keeping it all in cash and not doing any IRA full in case stuff. So you know a huge benefit twenty-two thousand per year in tax savings dumping all that right back into our investments, and that keeps that money keeps growing mostly tax-free.

Yeah here so you know it’s compounded his taxes saving a ton of money great stockmarket from 2009 up through 2013 when I retired and then the past few years have been pretty good too. So yeah I mean it but you know the great stock market is not within your control saving a significant portion of your paycheck that’s within your control. You know not spending all of your raise or bonus when you get it that is within your control. Making you know making those smart choices in life on housing transportation those are those choices are within your control.

Andrew: so you focus on the things you can control and then don’t worry too much about timing the market and trying to you know wait till it goes down or figure out exactly when it’s going to peak or you know is it high now should I just wait to invest until it drops.

That’s kind of you know if you wait for to invest, there’s a good chance the money gonna disappear somewhere else. and I love on your on your article here you have all the numbers out of what your salary was how much you add it to your401 K and what the values were at each year from 2004 to 2014.

I want to get into the lifestyle choices in a minute, but I like how you have the year 2008 you so 2007 your portfolio was worth three hundred seventy-one thousand and then 2008 you added another seventy-three thousand.

But your portfolio dropped so three or four thousand so yeah I mean tough, tough to see at the time. I’m sure adding seventy-three thousand and also watching your portfolio drop by that seventy thousand did you feel like giving up at that time when because I’m assuming you were tracking it then.

Justin: yeah we were tracking it you know on a monthly basis, and yeah I looked at the stock market pretty often just because it’s always on the news, and you’d see it, but I didn’t ever get worried about it we both kept our jobs during the recession.

And my firm was laid off half their half their staff. So I was expecting to get laid off at some point but happened to make it through unscathed. Other than temporary 6% take that I think for everybody. But you know if the most part we both had jobs we’re living on one income had two incomes the problem I knew at that point you know it back in O9, and I knew this was a buying opportunity of a lifetime just ridiculously stupid cheap investments just unbelievable prices for every company in the economy pretty much.

So I’m going bankrupt most did not most are doing very very well now eight seven eight nine years later, and I just didn’t expect the world to collapse at that point. And I didn’t I mean you know there was some obviously very tough financial times, and for a lot of people and some people still, you know the door is hurting.

But you know I I knew at some point the economy was going to bounce back someplace would return to profitability at some point. It’s an economic cycle we had really good years leading up to 2007, and then it just fell apart.

But yeah I mean it was you know it was interesting watching you know every month and twenty thirty thousand dollars disappear, and it was just consistent whereas like every quarter you’re now you’re down. I think there was 18 months in a row or at least six quarters in a row where we were down quarter after quarter after quarter we’re calling money. Or you know we’re putting in twenty thousand dollars a quarter and lose you know internet with twenty thousand dollars less than we started with so losing thirty or forty thousand dollars in a quarter. And just you know just ugly you know for a long, long time people at work were just you know they were they were selling outgoing all cash convinced it was you know the panic was going to happen anytime.

Worried about you know they’re talking about taking money out of the\bank not trusting banks are not trusting FDIC insurance and so it’s hard to describe how you know how chaotic it was at the time for some people.

You know for some people’s perceptions of it and it felt like it was that bad personally. But you know again we were comfortable living on one salary, and we had two salaries, and so we had a wide margin of safety. If one of us did get let go from you know just a million month after a month I’m sure it helps to have that safety net where you know that you can still live, and you know if the bank doesn’t give you your money you have an emergency fund of some kind.

I think it you know we haven’t seen something like that happened in a while obviously almost ten eleven years everybody’s talking about when are the ones the market going to crash next you know.

I think one good idea besides the this instead of looking at the portfolio value try to look at how many share accumulating and understand that the values temporary while those shares are real and those are assets that you ‘re picking up. Instead of focusing so much ooh man I’m throwing money into the fire and then shifting that mindset away from that. Yeah, I think I think focusing on that and thinking about the positive of you know the next big correction your example of some shares if prices get cut in half well every hundred dollars you ‘re putting into the market price get cut in half. Every $100 you put in there it’s going to buy twice as many shares, so but you know you’re getting everything for half off or you’re getting everything you’re getting twice as much twice as many investments as you are today.

And some stuff got cut by more than half some index funds you know they lost two-thirds of the value emerging markets small-cap stuff international stuff. So I’llget International losing to two-thirds of the value possibly more so you ‘re buying you know you’re buying the bottom.

You’re buying three times as many shares as you are today sort of you know the top of the market so far don’t know how much further it’ll go up.

Andrew: yeah good points, so I think a big thing here too is obviously you want to keep expenses down and that helps to funnel money into the retirement account.

You also live in North Carolina which I made a move almost two years ago, and there are a big difference and the kind of opportunity it gives you to be able to you know to pay off your home early and-and have this lower cost of living. Where you know the difference, but the difference in price that you’re paying on the home can just go straight to retire. Make out and quickly compound over time in the market and you mentioned some other things.

You said something about automobiles what their other big decisions like that you made that you think tilted then the needle and made a big impact on you is.

Justin: I think housing and cars are probably the two biggest expenses most people face and you know both of those two spending areas we spent a relatively modest amount between the house we paid, one hundred and ten thousand dollars for it.

I was a little bit of a fixer-upper back in 2003, but you know hundred ten thousand dollars, and we paid it off a couple of years ago, but you know not too hard to pay off a hundred and ten thousand dollar mortgage over ten or fifteen years.

Nothing like trying to pay off a half million or a million dollar mortgage if you’re living in a high cost of living area. Or you know for this similar house in the area what it probably would be is such a con value.

You know this house we live in would easily be one or two million dollars probably cars. Yeah, we actually bought brand-new cars back during college and drove those things there’s a Honda’s course run overthrow. Those for 16 years never never replaced them my wife mentioned upgrading it and mentioning you know she had the oldest car in the parking lot at one point but you know they’re all still working, and she’s not working so I just reminded her that yes you could get a new car. We can afford it we have a passion for it.

But it’s a trade-off between you know are you going to enjoy that new car versus are you are going to enjoy not having to go to work every day. So yeah so we upgraded well upgraded toa minivan this year and actually dropped from two cars to one because you know we’re not working so we-we got a nice you know a nicer newer vehicle but it went from two cars to one so really it was not a lot of a couple of thousand dollars out of pocket to upgrade to a bigger in mister car

Andrew: that’s cool yeah I mean you know we could beat the car discussion down to death with depreciation and interest rate interest payments and everything like that. So just an ear online you’re a truth of good calm you know what-what you got going online what are you doing these days and if people are interested in learning more about you what where should they go?

Justin: yeah probably the best place to go is the blog root ofgood.com I have a facebook page and a Twitter page I update to my frequently. There’s an email subscription button on the blog as well and an RSS feed if you if you use Feedly one of those services. So you can get updates yeah well I mean I post been kind of slow in posting stuff lately. I’ve just been busy with the family and having fun. I’m hoping to get back to a little bit more regular posting now that all my kids will be in school and I ‘ll have some more unstructured free time to play at the keyboard.

So you know what you’ll find the blog is I put out a monthly update on my life my journey my experience is the fun I’m having while we’re spending money on the kind of sneak peek at our financial picture any money moves which our portfolio moves. Which is pretty infrequent so that part’s kind of boarding but.

And then there’s lots of articles and the archives from Roth IRAconversion ladder the four percent rule Obamacare the Affordable Care. At understanding the the-the subsidy cliff you know how that fits into early retirement lots of social security you know how is that how does that work for early retirees you’re going to get more than you think you will know they’re just a lot of good articles there to help people that are thinking about early retirement. Or you know that might surprise them that there are a lot of assumptions about early retirement or what you know what you’re going to sacrifice to get there. Like SocialSecurity what you might not get well you’re are going to get pretty good in Social Security.

So yeah just a good resource if you want to stop on by and say comment on the articles please and yeah that’s where I’m at on the web rootofgood.com

Andrew: sweet and I know where you live too so if I ever run into you at marbles.

Dave: I appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. I learned a lot today I think I know Andrew did too, so it was a lot of fun for us

Justin: good to hear

Dave: yeah all right folks well that’s going to wrap it up for us tonight I hope you enjoyed our conversation with Justin tonight. I know that I certainly learned a lot and I think Andrew did too, and it was very very entertaining, and he’s a smart guy, and he’s done a lot of-of great things.

I applaud Justin for taking the time to talk to us today, and I appreciate I hope you guys got some inspiration from what he was doing. He knows a lot of things that he was talking about or a lot of the same ideas the Andrew , and I am talking about, and it is possible I think that’what I took away from our conversation today.

Justin, I want to thank you again for talking to us today, and folks if you have any questions look for rootofgood.com that’s where Justin is, and he’s got a lot of great resources and a lot of great things that can help you with a lot of different ideas about retirement.

So without any further ado we’re going to go ahead and sign off you guys have a great week and invest with a margin of safety emphasis of safety, and we will talk to you guys next week you have a good one.