FIRE Success Story: Taking the Trip of a Lifestyle at Age 29

[00:00:00] Eric Brotman: Welcome to Don’t Retire… Graduate!: The podcast that teaches you how to advance into retirement rather than retreating. I’m your host and valedictorian Eric Brotman. And today we have guests from Florida, Stephen and Lauren Keys, who are 31 year old retirees. Yes. I said that out loud, 31 year old retirees.

And they’ve been retired for some time. So we’re going to learn the secret, not only to an early retirement, but what I expect is a happy and successful one. So Steven and Lauren, welcome to the show.

[00:00:31] Lauren Keys: Thanks for having us.

[00:00:32] Steven Keys: Thanks.

[00:00:33] Eric Brotman: This is a new concept for me. I understand and have read about the fire movement, but you’re living it. Can you tell us a little bit about your background and why you decided to do this and then we can get into the hows.

[00:00:46] Steven Keys: Yeah, so basically I have been a teacher throughout my career, so my first like real full-time job was high school teacher and ended up getting into, uh, tutoring. I have always taught physics. Yeah. So I, I really enjoy, I guess, teaching people things. And so, uh, as we started to learn, you know, more for ourselves about like financial topics and learn about this whole financial independence thing, you know, we started saving lots of money by cutting our expenses down and, and eventually we reached this stage of sort of early retirement. And we were actually on a roadtrip in 2019, where we visited every national park in the United States. And we had this idea to start a blog and teach other people about all the financial stuff that had gotten us to that point. And so that’s how Trip of a Lifestyle was born.

[00:01:45] Lauren Keys: Yeah and, um, you know, for us, we found out about this kind of concept of financial independence and the possibility of it being done on a relatively short timeframe kind of shortly after college. And I think that really helped us kind of accelerate into that process we’ll call it. That method because we were already kind of living somewhat frugally. We, without much sacrifice, we were enjoying our college lifestyle. We didn’t really see a need to upgrade our Ikea furniture if it was functioning well for us.

And so, you know, it, it made sense to kind of keep these low living expenses, especially since we were so happy doing so. And that really changed the course of our lives. I feel like being able to learn about this stuff so early on. And so we decided and we started our blog that we would also focus on, you know, that kind of first job you get that if you take the right steps early on, it’s so much easier than having to kind of maybe undo some decision-making along the way that’s a little harder to get out of.

[00:02:51] Eric Brotman: So were you able to graduate from college without student loans?

[00:02:56] Lauren Keys: Yes.

[00:02:57] Eric Brotman: Okay. So that, and, and that plays a major role because we see young people coming out of school with five figure and sometimes even six figure loans. That’s like starting your journey in a hole instead of starting on the ground. Um, so it’s nice that you were able to do that. Now uh, you’ve been very transparent on your blog and I did check it out. I think it’s, it’s terrific. And you were transparent with your investment portfolio, with your asset base. And I want to dispel the myth that everyone who wants to retire as early as you have, like lives in a shoe box, you guys have a nice home and are managing to live very comfortably in it, despite the fact that you’re not punching a full-time clock anymore. So can you talk a little bit about that?

[00:03:38] Steven Keys: Yeah. Before I go into that, I would, I would love to go back for a second and talk about the student loan thing, because I do think it’s an important point that you bring up. Like we both graduated debt-free and it definitely hurts if you don’t, but I, I want to sort of also dispel the idea that, you know, it makes it impossible. I don’t like for people to be discouraged by their student loans. So like, one thing that I do like to put into context for people is at our first sort of full-time jobs out of college, where, where we were making, we actually were starting under 40 grand a year each.

[00:04:16] Lauren Keys: He was a public school teacher. I was doing some marketing, but making a little less actually.

[00:04:20] Steven Keys: In those first two years, we actually saved over a hundred thousand dollars just on those salaries together. And so, you know, the way I like to think about it is if we had graduated. With a combined, you know, six figure sum like a hundred thousand dollars in student loans, sure. We wouldn’t have been able to save up an additional a hundred thousand dollars, but we could have paid off the entire balance of a six-figure student loan in just two years. So it definitely sets you back. There’s no doubt about it, but I try to make sure that people don’t get too discouraged by that idea because student loans are so common.

[00:04:59] Eric Brotman: They are common. And I thank you for sharing that because you’re right. It is not a, it’s not a life sentence. It’s just a, it’s just a more difficult starting point. So good. You’re absolutely right, Steven. So let’s talk about the house because I read on your blog that your, your home has appreciated in value, like so much real estate has and, and now it’s become a disproportionate piece of your balance sheet, but I guess in a wonderful way, because we always like when, when assets appreciate. How, how did you manage to afford to pay cash for a house at the same time, as, um, as you were using your portfolio to live on? That.. I I’m having a difficult time understanding the math and I, and I do math for a living. Though I’m not a physicist. I don’t know where the wrench will land. If you drop it from a helicopter and that kind of stuff.

[00:05:48] Steven Keys: Sure. We’ve actually paid cash for our condos twice. Um, actually the first one was just after the hundred thousand dollars sort of savings sprint way back when, um, and those were during our full-time working years. So we, we had just kept saving, throwing money into stock market index funds. We ended up with enough money to pay cash for a house and have plenty leftover. That that condo was only $71,000 back in 2016, pretty modest place. And so that just kind of eliminated our rent and helped us keep saving even faster and faster after that.

But I think to your question about, Hey, you know, how did you take all these assets out of the market when you’re living off your portfolio and you’re in like, quote unquote, retirement? Uh, so yeah, that’s kinda, kinda sorta how it went this last time. So we, in 2020, we paid $204,000 for a beach condo, which is where we’re talking to you from right now.

And it was definitely like a luxury purchase and not something we, we needed. We were pretty happy with that other place, but we turned that one into a rental. So part of the math behind that is, you know, we paid $204,000 for this beach condo. But in exchange for that, we then freed up our old condo, which was probably valued a little over a hundred grand at the time to become a rental property.

So if you think about it, that’s really only equivalent to taking about a hundred thousand dollars out of the market because you’re buying a 200,000 dollar place. You’re then turning a $100,000 place into an income producing investment. So that’s part of the math there. The other part of math is that, uh, we are actually not living off of our portfolio even in retirement.

And that’s one of the things that we really try to stress to people is if you, uh, save up enough money that you theoretically could retire and never work another day in your life when you’re 30 years old, the chances that you’re actually going to follow through with that are virtually zero, because when you’re, you know, 30 or 40 or however old you are when you retire early, you probably still have a lot of interests and a lot of energy and a lot of those interests and that energy are going to incidentally make you money cause there’s just so many different ways to make money. So like, for example, for me, I mean, I mentioned before teaching has kind of been my passion and so I actually still do a little bit of physics tutoring for the company that I used to work for just on a freelance basis. And one thing we’ve kind of learned from doing a little bit of freelance work during retirement is that you’re not so afraid to charge more money for your services because you’re really not worried about having a stable income or even whether, you know, potential clients even say yes to you or not. So we have this article on our blog called part-time work pays more than full-time work and the kind of concept behind it is once you decide to cut your hours down to very little and you don’t care if you get any hours, you can raise your price of greatly and your per hour rate of just skyrockets. And so that’s kind of happened to me personally to the point where I hardly work at all and I actually am. I’m making enough money now, uh, to still support our entire lifestyle without touching our portfolio just incidentally. So it’s kind of weird how that stuff works out.

[00:09:26] Eric Brotman: Well, that, that speaks to an abundance mentality rather than a scarcity one, which is wonderful.

And I do think you become more in demand when you limit your supply. So some of that’s economics. Now you mentioned having enough money to make work optional and the, the math you use is almost exactly what we suggest, uh, at our office, which is about 25 times the annual living expenses or 25 times your gross income net of your savings rate.

Is that a fair, a fair assessment?

[00:09:58] Steven Keys: 25 times your expected expenses? Yeah. Uh, I’m sorry. I may have misunderstood you there. I thought you said something about 20, 25 times your income.

[00:10:10] Eric Brotman: Well, 25 times your income, less your savings rate. So in other words, what you’re spending, because if you’re not spending it, you’re saving it.

So yes, so I’ve netted out. So if you, if you make a hundred thousand dollars a year and you put away $40,000 a year, you’re living on 60. 60 is what you need to replace. And you’re using a 25 times multiple. So 25 times $60,000 would be that, that nest egg that would then allow you to live on that in an indefinite way.

And then of course you have to keep up with inflation, which, you know, you’ve shared your, your allocation, that it includes, uh, stock funds. It includes bond funds and includes some alternatives. Uh, and then of course it includes your rental condo. May I ask what you rent the condo for?

[00:10:50] Steven Keys: Yeah. That rental I think the current we’re currently getting 1360 a month for it.

[00:10:58] Lauren Keys: It’s a three-two.

[00:10:59] Eric Brotman: Okay. The 1360 a month that you’re, that you’re renting the condo, then you you’re paying the condo fees, the taxes and periodic repairs, I presume, but it’s very profitable based on its current value. That’s a really nice rate of return.

[00:11:13] Steven Keys: Yeah. It’s been a really successful rental property.

[00:11:17] Eric Brotman: Okay. Uh, and then you, you manage your own, your own portfolio, your own equities and bonds and, and for the most part, you’re allowing the index to do the work you’re you’re, um, you’re using, I think Vanguard primarily, uh, and just allowing the index to do the work, which is of course a broad and, and low cost way. How are you choosing your alternatives? How do you come up with those investment ideas?

[00:11:39] Steven Keys: Honestly, it’s the alternative investments are something that we try not to focus much on, um, in what we say publicly or what we put on our blog, because frankly, like the truth is they’re very tiny piece of our portfolio and they’re sort of just for fun. Um, whereas what we really advocate for are those low cost index funds that you mentioned. Those vast bulk of our portfolio. Yeah. And you mentioned Vanguard and you’re correct that the funds were mainly invested in our Vanguard funds, but we’re not married to Vanguard really in any way. Yeah. There there’s, there’s tons of funds that have the same holdings from other companies with similar expenses, um, that do the same thing.

So really if you’re at a different brokerage and you want to trade, uh, other index funds uh, we just recommend personally cap weighted, total market funds.

[00:12:33] Eric Brotman: Got it. And, and Steven, you’re doing some freelance tutoring. Lauren, what’s keeping you busy?

[00:12:39] Lauren Keys: Mostly, I would say, uh, working on the blog, to be honest at this point, um, I do a little bit of social media management for an organization that like I personally know the, the owners of founders. Yeah. But that doesn’t really take much of my time. Much of what I’m doing. I would say I’m very much seated into a comfortable day-to-day like retirement lifestyle I feel like at this point. I have put more of a focus on the things that I enjoy. So reading more, um, I enjoy painting. And so I’ve been trying to get better at watercolor, but really, I mean, in terms of what I translate my work life skill set into has been more, um, with the blog.

My background is in marketing and journalism, so it translates pretty nicely to managing the blog and all of our social channels and things like that.

[00:13:33] Eric Brotman: So one of the things that we talked to pre-retirees about, and that frightens people, I think a lot of the time is the idea that without working for an employer, you have to come up with your own employee benefits.

Essentially you have to find your own health insurance and your own disability and life insurance and your own retirement accounts and so forth. How did you go about that at such a young age? I know you’ve mentioned that you’re doing some IRAs and Roth IRAs and a lot of non-qualified. Um, but you also mentioned that you have an HSA account.

So are you doing, how are you doing your own, your own benefit work?

[00:14:06] Steven Keys: Uh, we just buy a high deductible health care plan off of healthcare.gov, you know, just through the marketplace. And so we, we chose one that’s HSA eligible because the tax benefits of the HSA are really good.

[00:14:21] Eric Brotman: Yes, they are. Well, I love the HSA.

[00:14:23] Lauren Keys: We’re both healthy young adults, so we don’t have, um, you know, any kind of, uh, chronic illnesses or anything at this point to really be concerned with. We pay a lot for this healthcare plan, but you know, the parts of it that we use are the annual wellness visit.

[00:14:43] Eric Brotman: That’s a blessing. Sure.

[00:14:45] Steven Keys: Our view of health insurance and really, uh, of all types of insurance is that you should really only buy the absolute least amount of insurance that you can get away with and how to determine that is the amount of insurance that, you know, insures you against catastrophe against something that would be truly devastating to you. So health insurance is really important and we’re big advocates of people having health insurance, but you don’t really need much more than a high deductible plan once you’ve accumulated assets, you know, that are at a level that you could retire off of because, you know, even a high deductible plan it’s only, I think our ours is like roughly, like, I think it’s like 6,300 a person. And then that times two is the max out of pocket for both of us combined per year. So while that’s a lot of money, you know, that’s like, wow, if something really bad happened to both of us at the same time, that’d be, you know, $12,000 in a year, right out of pocket.

That would suck, but, uh, you know, we have that kind of money on hand at all times, you know, multiple times that amount of money. So for someone who’s in that type of position, the high deductible plan works really well. And the premiums are a lot lower as a result.

[00:16:04] Eric Brotman: So I like your philosophy and actually one of the things that we normally espouse is that you’re only buying insurance to pass risks you can’t bear.

So, you know, you use the term catastrophic. The reason to have insurance is if, is if, um, the absence of insurance could sink your ship. Um, and if, if that’s not the case, like for example, um, a lot of young people really have to have disability insurance and the reason they have to is because if their paycheck stopped, they’re in deep trouble.

Well, you guys are in a situation where presumably that’s irrelevant to you. So I assume that’s an expense. You’re not undertaking. Is that a fair statement?

[00:16:43] Steven Keys: Yeah, it is. So we don’t have any disability insurance

[00:16:46] Lauren Keys: or life insurance. We don’t have dependents.

[00:16:48] Steven Keys: Yeah. Yeah. So there’s a lot of insurance that we skipped. So I mean, taking them one by one disability, uh, you know, we skipped that because as you mentioned, you know, in theory, we could live off our portfolio. Now, I mean, in fairness, you know, if we became disabled and had a chronic illness that was triggering our full insurance deductible every year for the rest of our lives, you know, we might be in trouble, but that’s where you have uh, social security also kicks in for disability. Uh, you know, maybe not at the level that you would love to have, but it exists.

Right. And in terms of life insurance, yeah. As Lauren mentioned, we don’t have any dependents and we don’t consider one another to be dependents either since, you know, again, we have the portfolio to fall back on. And I think honestly, a lot of young couples kind of worry too much about that one as well, because in most cases, you know, today, Both members of a couple are working.

And so even if one person were to become disabled or to die or something like that, the other person usually is quite capable of taking care of themselves. So even if you don’t have like a retirement level, a nest egg, you know, a lot of times life insurance is less, less necessary than people think it is.

But think if you have a big family and low savings, Uh, you probably want to take a look at term life insurance.

[00:18:13] Lauren Keys: And I think for us to, you know, we started out savings so much so quickly, or, or what it felt like that we, in two years, as we mentioned before, we had several years of living expenses saved up.

And so I think for us, we never really had to even question like, what would happen if, you know, we were down on our luck or something, you know, like we. We’re never in a, we never really had a time period that felt other than in college, I guess, um, where it felt like if we didn’t have an income coming in, we would be, you know, for any amount of time it would be detrimental to us, I feel like we’ve had, we’ve quickly grew a savings buffer so that we didn’t have to experience that. I guess

[00:19:01] Eric Brotman: I, I find this really intriguing because so many families, so many couples struggle so much with just basic savings and basic spending control. And it sounds like you have incredible discipline.

Were you raised with that kind of financial discipline or did you really did one of you stumbled upon that and you just decided to do it? How. How did you get that bug so to speak?

[00:19:25] Lauren Keys: So for me, I grew up kind of on a a lower middle-class both my parents were had sometimes irregular income. And so I kind of saw firsthand what it looks like when you don’t plan ahead, so to speak.

And I think that really stuck with me and I, I put myself through college. I, um, I know we didn’t really mention that earlier other than that, we, Steve and I both graduated debt free, but I worked all through college and paid my way with scholarships and the money I made waiting tables and so I think that experience as a, you know, growing up and then through college just kind of made me naturally frugal and naturally a saver.

I think that those kinds of experiences kind of put things into perspective for you and. That you kind of want to get to a place where you feel stable and comfortable, like as quickly as possible. It also, you know, through college, trying to keep my expenses low, you know, I still enjoyed my life. I still had fun.

I still found ways to. Do things and expensively, you know, we, we went to college at the university of Florida. So it’s in north central Florida. There’s all kinds of nature to explore and enjoy on a pretty cheap experiences. Um, parks are relatively inexpensive to go to. Um, and I think that that kind of proves the idea that like, you don’t need to spend a lot of money to enjoy your life.

And so that kind of worked really well with the kind of frugality that. Trying to live. We also, when we kind of discovered financial independence and set that goal for ourselves, we started tracking our net worth every month. And that really kind of gamified the experience for us. Every month we sat down and looked at our accounts and we’re like, okay, we got to save this much this month.

You know, we’re this much closer to our goal. And it was exciting and fun. And every dollar we didn’t spend meant that it went toward this bigger goal. That was like really exciting. Right. So I, I think that was what shifted that perspective for us into, we want to save money and there’s like a reason for it. And we’re excited about that.

[00:21:31] Eric Brotman: So can I ask of all 70 national parks? What was your favorite and why?

[00:21:38] Lauren Keys: So we actually have a ranked list of our favorite national parks on our website, because it is a question that, you know, people want to know, but death valley national park was ended up being our absolute favorite park.

In 2019, we went to all of them in the seven months kind of road trip, sprint to all of them. And, um, it was just an incredible experience. We were there. I believe it was. Either late January, early February, maybe. And so the weather was really nice during the day, a little cool at night. And we were like the only ones there.

Um, we just had a really unique stargazing experience at Badwater basin. There’s just a lot of really cool stuff. You’re kind of in the middle of nowhere out there. And that ended up being our absolute favorite.

[00:22:23] Eric Brotman: So going to the national parks is a bucket list item for a fair number of people. I know folks who have wanted that and, you know, they’re in their fifties and sixties trying to figure out how they’re going to do it.

And you guys just did it, which I think is amazing. Um, and I, and I love that and I will check that out on the blog. I want, I would like to read about it. I have been to very few, although I did love Yellowstone. I don’t know if that’s the, uh, where that ranked on your list, but it was a very cool experience for me.

[00:22:52] Lauren Keys: It’s pretty high, pretty high.

[00:22:53] Eric Brotman: I mean, it’s, it’s, it’s an amazing place and I could have spent a lot more time there and I, I, you know, I’m a sucker for Jackson hole anyway, so I love it out that way. Let’s talk about the blog a little bit because, you know, I checked it out and I was looking at, at some of the financial tips that you’re providing, but there’s also a whole lot about, uh, about travel.

So w you know, what are you, what are you hoping to accomplish with the blog and what do you love about it? And what, why should people check it out?

[00:23:19] Steven Keys: Yeah. Uh, so we like to think of our blog as a happiness blog. Uh, the, the sort of goal in writing it is to help people gain some freedom and autonomy over their lives and to be happier long-term as a result, I think that, you know, we’ve just seen a lot of, of our peers and, and complete strangers and people on TV and whatever.

Uh, just fall into sort of the strap of over consumption. Cause you know, we’re sort of all bombarded with like marketing all day, every day. And we’re told to that the solution to all our problems is a product that you can buy. And so we kind of just discovered through this whole like deliberately being frugal thing for financial independence, we discovered that like, you know, money can buy stuff and that’s cool.

But the other thing that it can buy is freedom, you know, freedom from having to work your whole life for a paycheck and the freedom to say no to things that you don’t want to do. And it can just make you a lot happier every single day. So, you know, we talk about travel on the blog because really just cause we love it and it’s fun.

And we like spending time outdoors. But, you know, it’s just another example of a way that you can enjoy life without spending a lot of money and without over consuming and without committing yourself to, to having to work every day forever. So we try to give examples of, of ways that you can have fun and really enjoy your life and be happy with low spending.

Um, so that’s part of the travel aspect, but as you mentioned, I’d say probably over 75% of the blog is really just straight up financial content. Um, so how to be frugal, like getting into the specifics of like, how are we saving 60 to 80% of our income when we were only making 40 grand a year, 50 grand a year?

[00:25:20] Lauren Keys: How to increase your income, things like that.

[00:25:23] Steven Keys: Yeah. And then there’s lots on investing.

[00:25:27] Eric Brotman: Well, you guys have obviously struck something pretty magical here and I, and I’m, I can sense just how happy and comfortable you are. And it’s so nice because, uh, you know, unfortunately doing what we do for a living, uh, we see a lot of people who are under financial stress quite a lot.

Whether it’s early in their lives and it’s debt related, or whether it’s something medical or whether it’s job loss or whether it’s just, uh, you know, trying to, trying to make ends meet. And I think a lot of people chase their income. They, they expand their lifestyle to fit their income, almost like you would speed up a treadmill and it keeps getting steeper and faster and more difficult and more stressful.

Uh, and I think you’ve dispelled the myth that that’s the only way to do this. In fact, I, I think you’ve sort of blown that out of the water. So I, I love this and I am going to read more on your blog and I would like folks to check you out. Before I let you tell folks where to find you, we need an extra credit assignment.

And quite frankly, you’ve given us so much wisdom today and so many ideas and things that I fright, I frankly am struggling to understand how you put away 60% or 80% of what you make when we’re sort of trying to encourage people to get to 15 or 20 or 25. So, um, what would the extra credit assignment for our listeners be?

What would that one takeaway be that folks would take with them today?

[00:26:42] Steven Keys: Well, we have a page on our blog called the financial roadmap that kind of spells out how we got from basically before graduating college all the way to retirement in detail, how other people can do it too. It’s a hundred percent free. We don’t charge for any of the content on our blog. So my favorite extra credit assignment would be go check out that financial roadmap.

[00:27:06] Eric Brotman: Okay. And do I dare ask the two of you what you want to be when you grow up? That’s a loaded question. Cause it sounds like, you know, all of us think we’re there, but what’s what’s ahead? What do you want to be when you grow up?

[00:27:18] Steven Keys: For me. I mean, I, I wanna, I want to be a smarter slash better version of myself every day. I I’m trying to continue growing now that I have the freedom to grow in the areas that I want to, instead of having to be focused on one specific task at work.

[00:27:38] Lauren Keys: Yeah. I’d say that rings pretty true for me as well.

I feel like, you know, particularly because I was. More in the mindset of kind of chasing this level of stability throughout my working years, I don’t feel like I really gave myself the space to explore, um, my interests and hobbies and things. And, you know, like I lost track of reading, like in school I enjoyed reading and like I’m finally now making use of my local library and being able to really become, like Steven said a better, a better version of myself that doesn’t take this free time and we’ll call it for granted and really put it to use to become better. You know, we have more time to go to the gym. We have more time to read. We have more time for our hobbies, painting photography. And, you know, I think kind of inspired by Steven. I’ve really enjoyed helping people with our blog.

You know, we have pretty active social channels that, you know, people reach out to us on and say like, this was really helpful. And, you know, Comments like that, that really mean a lot for someone who’s like slightly less comfortable being in front of people as Steven is, um, coming from his teaching background.

And so I think that has also challenged me to grow. And I’m, I’m really enjoying that journey.

[00:28:56] Eric Brotman: Well, this has been fun. It’s been inspiring. It’s been educational and I would like our listeners to check out your blog and, uh, and your resources, where can folks find you? What’s the best way?

[00:29:07] Lauren Keys: So we are a trip of a lifestyle.com and you can find us as triple a lifestyle on a Facebook.

Instagram tick talk YouTube and we’re T O lifestyle on Twitter because we’re one character too long.

[00:29:24] Eric Brotman: Very, very good. Stephen Lauren, I wish you continued happiness and success. I have no doubt that they’re intertwined and that you’re doing that. And thank you for being a guest on don’t retire graduates.

Thank you. That’s great. I’d like to thank all of you for listening. If you like, what you hear, please subscribe and rate our podcast on Spotify or wherever you listen to your favorite shows. Please also check out our books, workbooks and online financial literacy resources at brotmanmedia.com. We’ll be back next week with another installment of office hours and in two weeks with another engaging guest.

For now, this is your host, Eric Brotman reminding you don’t retire. Graduate!

[00:30:02] Narrator: From this day forward, let us begin changing the way we view retirement. Today, I implore you: don’t retire. Graduate! Visit our website at brotanmedia.com to subscribe and please like us and post comments on social media.

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