Are Mini-Retirements Worth It?

Foreign. Welcome to the new retirement podcast. Today we're going to be talking with Jillian Johnsrud, who is a writer, blogger, course teacher, podcaster, and speaker about mini retirements, passive income, lifestyle, design, fire, and her life in Montana. So Jillian lives in Kalispell, Montana, with her husband and five kids, a mix of adopted and biological kids, and she achieved financial independence at age 32. Congratulations. And in the past 16 years, she's traveled to 27 countries and taken five mini retirements, ranging from one month to two and a half years. So I asked Jillian to come on our show so we could talk about mini retirements and her life. And I think our audience can learn a lot from her journey. And so I'm super excited that you could join us. Jillian, welcome to the show.

Thank you so much for having me.

Yeah, I appreciate you making the time. So we always like to start with kind of people's story and kind of a little history of how you got to this point. And I know your journeys, unlike kind of many of the folks we've had on here that are more traditional finance folks. But it's really interesting. So just would love to kind of hear in your own words, kind of how you got here so far.

Growing up, we didn't have a lot of money. I grew up probably really close to the poverty line, and honestly, our household was a little. A little chaotic. There were definitely some challenges. And at some point I realized, money gives you options. Money gives you more choices and more freedom, and. And in that season of life, I was like, we definitely need some better choices here. So I just started, man, like, building a rocket in the basement. Like, I just started saving $5 or $20, like, bit by bit, trying to stockpile some choices, some different options for me.

And what age was this? This was like, in high school.

In junior high. Yeah, in junior high, it kind of. We'd gotten to the point where I asked my mom to actually move out with us and move out of the house. And she just. She was very pragmatic and said, jillian, I can't. I can't afford to raise three kids on my own. Like, I'm sorry, this is. We're stuck. And I just. I just broke down. Like, I just went upstairs and I cried hot tears. But I realized if we had more money, we would have a different option. And more money, as in, like, a couple thousand dollars could have made the difference. And it just was. It was really. It lit that fire of, like, oh, here's one way that we can get some more options to have More agency in our life. So that it was. It was an inspiring moment for me, even though I didn't have a lot of great options to do everything I could to create more options.

And how did you. So you're. I mean, this started really young for you. Did you just come to this on your own in terms of, like, learning about money and how to save it? And, I mean, I guess you educated yourself, but did anyone else give you kind of a clue about this, or you just kind of figured it out because of your situation?

So I had no idea. In high school, I knew nothing about personal finance, so I was just like, money equals options. So I just saved money, and I was super intimidated by all things banking. I remember when I first finally had to go and, like, set up a savings account. I almost had a panic attack. Just walking into a bank felt scary, and it felt like judgment, and I didn't feel like I belonged. So I was late to that game. And when I was 19, this is just after we got married, I bought my very first personal finance book. And growing up, the message and kind of the culture of my family was that reading is for lazy people who don't want to do real work. Like, if you want to work hard, don't read books, because that's what lazy people do. And I was like, well, I don't want to be a lazy person. Like, I know my path out of here is gonna be a lot of hard work. So, like, I really wanted to push away from anything that would, like, put me under that umbrella. And so when I bought this first book, a family member was actually with me, and it was $17, which was so much money. And she was like, why are you wasting your money on this? Like, this is a horrible idea. Don't do it. But I just. There was something in me that I was like, oh, I think there's something in here. And I read that first book, and it was just this aha moment of, oh, my gosh. For, like, $17, or I later learned, a library card, you can unlock all of the experience and all of the knowledge of people far more successful, far smarter than me. And so I started reading a book a week, every week on every topic. I would just go through the library, side to side in the nonfiction section, and grab books. And I've continued that for 15 years.

Yeah, that's awesome. I saw something on Twitter recently. Someone was saying that every wise person that this person had met is always a voracious reader. You really can't be wise unless you commit to ongoing, well, reading and lifelong learning. Well, it's super awesome that you learn that lesson young and you're for yourself in an environment where it wasn't promoted. And that, that is tough and obviously life changing for you. Right. You've changed your whole trajectory. I mean, how many years ago? So, so this is like 19 years. You know, 19 is like, you know, whatever, 13, 14, I don't know. I don't know exactly how old you are, but like around that range. Right. So your life has changed dramatically.

I'm 37.

Okay.

So 18 years.

18 years ago. Okay. But yeah, you know, it's like. And as we get into this, you know, and as people check you out, they'll see all that you've accomplished. So congratulations on going from, you know, essentially zero or negative. Right. Because no one's kind of pushing you to do this to where you are today. So, you know, and also one other quick aside, there's a young woman I interviewed and wrote about who's in our hometown, Robin Brie. This is about 18 months ago. And she had. There's some similar shades of you and her. And so what struck me as I, I learned about her, she was staying with some friends and she was like 18, she had saved a hundred thousand dollars. And I was like, okay, I'm like, who does this? And you know, and she wasn't gifted to her. You know, she didn't have wealthy parents. She had a kind of a, you know, her household wasn't, you know, it wasn't perfect per se. But you know, she had been cranking, working as a waitress, babysitting, you know, working and also volunteering at the old folks home. Like not making money, but just putting her. So. But it was basically this tremendous amount of work over probably, yeah, seven years. But before she was, you know, starting it when she was like 11 or 12, and then figuring out then she was just starting to think about, oh, I can invest. And she went to talk to like Merrill lynch, and they were like, what? And then I was telling her, hey, you know, you gotta be thoughtful about who you give your money to, because these guys, you know, you have firms like Vanguard that have super low fees and you have other firms that might have much higher fees. And if you don't look at those fees can make a tremendous difference in the trajectory of your money. But that, you know, I'll send you the story afterwards, but she should probably talk to you. She'd probably learn a lot and probably pretty good for her to talk to you. So. All right, well, look, yeah, I appreciate the background. And then. So now, today, what's a day in the life like for you today?

Yeah. So we became financially independent when I was 32. It was like. It was actually almost, I think, five years ago next month that we had. We had a little bit of a come to Jesus moment because we had one biological kiddo at home. We had just. We'd been foster parents for three, and they just asked us to adopt our three kiddos. And then the next week, we found out we were pregnant, and I had a little bit of a mommy meltdown. Like, things were so hard and so busy at home, and my minivan was so full. I was like, how are we going to add a baby to this? We already feel like we're barely keeping our nose above the water. And so we kind of ran the numbers again. I was like, we need to look at this. And I said, you know, I think we're really close, actually. If we make a few adjustments, I think that we could make this work. So we decided to start by taking a year off and just testing it out. Testing it out emotionally. Testing out the whole early retirement thing, and if nothing else, just resting, getting caught up on things. We had had a really busy couple. And, yeah, one year kind of turned to two, and two turned to three, and it's been four and a half years now.

Nice. That's amazing. So you're. I mean, that's kind of such a different perspective than. Or experience than most people have, because most parents, you know, you're like, okay, I'm having a kid. It's just. Well, it is busy no matter what, because you're parenting, but you're also like, I got to make more money. I got to pay for all this stuff. Right. I'm not. Not that I. I'm going to take a year off and maybe two and a half years. Right. So that's incredible. And what was your big takeaway from that experience? I guess that it's doable that you could do it. Were there any other huge takeaways after kind of having that break or that mini retirement?

Well, we had taken a couple different mini retirements. It was something that we had talked about the very first year we were married. This idea of taking a break, taking a sabbatical, and stepping away for a while. And when we first got married, it seemed like a crazy idea. Like, I didn't know anyone who did that. It wasn't part of our current culture, but we had started just being intentional about it and kind of planning for it and saving money for it. And when opportunities arose, we would just lean in and say, hey, this. We've been presented this opportunity of being between jobs or moving or being able to take a couple months off from work. And we were mentally and emotionally prepared to do that, but also financially prepared. So this one was just kind of. It was just our longest. Our longest one yet. And truth be told, my husband had. After we found out we were pregnant, he offered to work part time for his company just to create some more flexibility. And they weren't having it. So we said, okay, then we'll just leave.

Wow. Yeah. Well, it's good. It's awesome to have the power to say that. I'll walk away. I remember someone told me the, you know, the fu. I won't explain use the word, but, like, having fu money makes a huge difference. And I think about that all the time. I tell my kids that, you know, you want to have. Save enough money so that you can have agency and control over your life. And it also sounds like you have. Well, I know from your work, you can work kind of where you want, when you want. So you can also. I mean, at least as for some of the work writing and stuff like that, you can take a break and then come back. I think for a lot of folks, I think, I mean, so let's dive into mini retirements because it's something I'm actually really interested in. And I like the. I love the idea of it. I just wonder how, like, when I think about. I'm like, it sounds great, but the idea of, you know, hey, I've got my whole career and now I'm gonna take a break for six months. And I could see most companies being like, well, you know, responding like your husband's company, like, that doesn't work for us. So, you know, you know, then you're kind of like at a, you know, a deadlock with them. What do you see the folks you talk to? How do they. How do they navigate that?

I think it's a lot more intimidating than that. Reality plays out from my experience because I walked a lot of people through this process. About 50% of employers, especially for in demand, high need, high value employees, are very willing to be flexible because they really don't want to lose that person. And we think that. We like to think that we're so irreplaceable and like, our work is so significant. But companies are accustomed to letting people leave for a time. Like, we do have maternity leave, where employees step out and then they step back in and the team figures it out and life moves on. So they're capable of doing it. It's just a little bit of a pain in the butt for them. And it's just if you bring more value than it's a hassle to like replace you. I would say half the time employers are pretty flexible. And the other half the time it's usually an organization thing. And the organization, whether they could or couldn't, just doesn't like the idea. But what I found oftentimes when people step away from their work, one of the tips that I suggest is if you are honestly quitting, usually you send out an email to your professional network saying, I'm no longer with this company. If you need anything, this is your new point of contact person. But to send out in that letter, I'm going to be taking a break to focus on this cool, exciting thing that you have planned, whatever that is. But I'm so excited to, you know, work with you all professionally in the future. And then to a smaller group of people that you're really close to, you send out another email that says, you know, I'm really excited about this break. I'm excited about whatever it is, writing this book or taking this trip or whatever you're doing. But if you happen to hear of anything that comes up, feel free to reach out. Because I do, I do really love my career. And I would say in that group, like 80 or 90% of people who do have a strong network, who do have some professional friends, because you're kind of top of mind and because you seem to them especially extremely available, whether you are or not, you're like, no, I'm hiking in Peru right now. I'm not extremely available. But employees have this thing like, if you're not working, you're available. I find people get so many job offers and they get more interesting job offers. They get things that kind of like, I feel like they almost come out of those boardroom meetings where they're like, man, we have this project, like, who could handle this? It's a little different, It's a little unique. And then the person who receives your email goes, you know what? I think I might know someone. He's off hiking in Peru right now, but he would be perfect for this.

Yeah, it's interesting. I think that's a great way to frame it up. And yeah, thinking of it like childcare leave or kind of built in things that we do, or sabbaticals. I mean, a lot of firms do offer sabbaticals. I don't, you know, I, I do think it's, it is on the employee to kind of go and seek that out because the employer is not like championing that. Hey, it's Jillian. It's time to, why don't you go take your four year sabbatical and take six months off and go, or three months off and go to Peru. But yeah, it's also interesting to hear your insight about how to engage with your network and what might happen. And I totally hear that, I totally believe that. And that's kind of how I behave when I hear someone's doing something or they're like, oh, what's happening? When there's movement, it's like if you know they're good, you want to reach out to them, engage them. So that's cool.

And you stay top of mind. And I encourage people to reach out depending how long you're going to be gone, like every three months, just be more connected with your professional network. And because this should be planned, if you're planning it out three months or six months, like engage more with your professional network up into that point, just be more active.

So, you know, before I move on from many retirements, just can you share a little bit about kind of how people get ready financially? You know, because that's like a big, like, what's the process and what, are there any benchmarks or things that you need to have set aside or how you think about it?

Yeah, I mean, there's a lot of different ways to structure it and it means a lot of different things to people. So my basic definition is anytime that you step away from kind of your 9 to 5 to focus on something that matters to you. So this might even be, you might just be able to get a month or sometimes between jobs you'll have like a two month gap. If you're going to spend that time focusing on something that matters to you, like, that's a great opportunity that oftentimes can end up just being wasted with us, like lounging around the house, feeling depressed and frustrated, applying for jobs when you could be out doing something cool. Which honestly I think is more compelling. When you start to interview and you're explaining those career breaks, if you're like, yeah, I wrote a book during that time, or I bicycled through Croatia for those three months. Not like I was in my underwear on my couch binging, Netflix, being depressed, no one was calling me, so it's that. And each mini retirement therefore has very different types of cost. So you have to be able to cover your living expenses because you're not going to be working and that might be through. If you have rentals that could help or, or sometimes people just save up the money. You know, for a lot of people, if they're spending $50,000 a year, you know, they might only need 4,000amonth. So the living expenses, it's like 12 grand for three months. It's not an astronomical amount of money to set aside. And then you need the money to pay for whatever you're doing in addition on that mini retirement because you do want to be able to do something that's important to you. And I love many retirements and that so many things in our life are seasonal and they have an expiration date. I think that's one of the biggest downfalls with traditional retirement is that you can't save it all up until you're 65. Like some of these things, it's just going to pass you by and you can't replicate that at 70. Even if you wanted to, even if you had the time and the resources to, you know, things with things with your kids or things with your family, it might be, it might be in the next five years or it's not going to happen. So taking the time to do that and whatever that might cost, whether, you know, writing a book might not be very expensive taking, you know, we did a 10 week trip 2 years ago now and we took all of our kids through 10 national parks in 10 weeks. This was an experience that had an expiration date. Like I could already feel my kids were kind of at that ages where like not having wifi and TV and friends for 10 weeks straight and just roughing it was a little bit like, this is cool, but like is the campground gonna have WI fi?

Right, Totally.

So we wanted to do that while we could. Because I'm not going to be able to wait 10 years. I wait 10 years, it's gone.

Right. I think that's a super important point. I mean I try to make this point with people in our community and ones that I talk to, especially with traditional retirement. So, you know, people are many of our users, they've been planning and saving and our average user has saved a million dollars. Right. So they're definitely at the high end of the mass affluent group. And the data shows that people that have money when they retire, they have more money when they pass away. So they still live frugally. They're very often deferring things. I think a lot of people are always like, oh, I can do this when I'm 70 or when I'm 75. You know, the reality is you may not be here when that time rolls around, or you might have a blown knee or someone got sick and suddenly you're not doing it. So do you keep like a. It's like, you know, we talk about this bucket list idea, but, like, kind of a list of, like, things I want to do and, like, time frames. They could happen. That. That could be pretty powerful mechanic. I could see it for someone like, hey, I do want to go hike Peru. Well, that has to happen before I'm 55 or 60, because it's not going to happen. It's much less likely to happen later.

Yeah, we plot out a lot of kind of those bigger goals or those bigger dreams and just try to find, like, what season does it fit best in? But also, like, is there an expiration date? And I think especially, you know, we're at the. We're kind of in our late 30s, early 40s, so we're at that stage where the time is kind of running out with our parents. Like, if we're going to do big experiences with them, if we're going to have a lot of time with them, like, we probably shouldn't put it off for the next 10 or 20 years. You know, that season is kind of important. So we are prioritizing that. And our kids are kind of young. We're at 4 to 12 right now. So we're prioritizing those things. But knowing that other things in life have their own season. And especially with. Not that I'm against buying stuff, but you can buy stuff at any age. Like, you can buy the Lamborghini just as easy at 70 as you do 35. Like, you just hand them money and they hand you keys. There is no expiration date to buying cool stuff. They're very happy to sell it to you. But some of these other things, like, you kind of do it now or you miss the boat and you can't replicate that. And I love financial planning tools like your guys is because you can see, well, what if we did spend 12,000 to take the time off and we spent another 15,000 to go do this thing? How does that change our outcome when we're 90, to take $30,000 out now? And often it's just a little tiny blip in the picture. So I always encourage people, especially, you know, if I'm working with them one on one. Look at that number before and after when you're 85. Okay, so you're going to end up with like three and a half million. Or if you do all of these cool, amazing experiences, maybe you end up with two and a half million at 90. What value does that extra million have at 90? Because it probably has some sort of value. And what value do these current experiences have? And which one do you value more? Like, weigh it out. And with financial planning software you can do that.

It's actually great to hear you describe it this way. It's so funny because we're so in the weeds with kind of what we do. We very often people are like, oh, well, can I retire at 60 or 55? And I think a lot of our users are thinking about kind of the downside risk versus the upside potential. So just hearing your frame it of like, well, okay, you should create a scenario where you do go on eight trips over the next 20 years or whatever, 15 years, you know, or whatever the number is 10 trips over 15 years, you know, and you have those great experience and what does that really cost you? What's, what's the, what's the actual exposure? And I totally agree with you, you know, what's the difference? I mean, if you, you know, are going to have money or maybe a little bit less, but have all this whole experience and better relationships with your family and then what's, what's the, you know, that's a, that's a great way to frame it. So I appreciate you sharing how you think about that. So that's super helpful. I want to move on to kind of. Yeah, you do so much work around lifestyle design, but yeah, this your story leading up to it because. So, I mean, it is amazing. Listen to you. So you're born kind of less wealthy. People aren't focused on learning from books. You kind of discover that you want. There's all this control and agency that comes from money. You get busy yourself, get yourself to a point where you start to see how it works. You can start to kind of create opportunities for your own family, like your mother, whether or not they want to take advantage of it, you know. And then so from 19 to 32, when you get financially independent, you're working, investing, but you've also got children, I mean, you know, and clearly thinking about your whole life, right, and where you want to get to because you're taking these many retirements. How did that evolve? I mean, there's obviously a ton packed in there, but like how you got to. You kind of went from these points and how your thinking evolved and your own behavior and everything else would just love to hear that.

Yeah, I think we were always really intentional to make sure that we were doing the things that matter to us. Partly because we never like combined. Our income was never over six figures. And so when we first started, my big audacious goal was that we could retire at 60. That was the dream. So I knew that we couldn't. Where sometimes other early retirees do plan to, like, I'm going to retire by 35 and then also have lots of time to do all this, I didn't think I would. So, like, if we're going to do this stuff, we got to do it now, financially independent or not. So we really prioritized doing the things that matter to us. And honestly for us, that was. I really wanted to adopt. That was like a first date question with my husband. How do you feel about adoption? I really wanted to travel. I really wanted to pay cash for a house. Those were some of my biggest crazy dreams. So that meant not doing a whole bunch of other stuff. That meant making a lot of other trade offs during our 20s to prioritize the couple things that really, really mattered. And it felt unreasonable. But those were kind of our goals and our dreams. So our 20s looked like that it was just this very lopsided of putting a lot of time and energy towards the things that we really, really cared about and no resources to anything else. You know, I think it's sometimes like it appears like I want less than the average person, but the reality is like I just wanted a lot more. I wanted a lot more than the current culture said that I could have. And I was. I just couldn't care about all of the other things. Like I couldn't care about wearing designer clothes. I couldn't care about having my hair professionally colored. I couldn't care about like buying the nicest car because I cared so much about this other stuff.

Yeah, no, it's. It's tough to do that because we're so bombarded by, you know, this marketing stuff that's like, hey, and kind of assumptions about how life should be. You know, you should go to a big school and get a ton of student debt. I mean, you look at the student debt levels in this country and it's enormous. But you could go to community college for almost nothing for two years and then transfer to like in California. I'm talking my kids about this all the time. You know, you could go to a local school for two years and then transfer as long as your grades are good enough to a. UC and a UC is next to impossible. To get into now, just coming out of high school and then like, yeah. Buying cars and everything else. So it's. When you. When you're talking, it reminds me of, like, you know, when you're trying to do big things, like the jar with the rocks. If you want to put the big rocks in, you want to get. Fill those up, you got to put the big rocks in, and then you dump all the sand in afterwards. Right. You got to stay focused on those big things. So that's awesome.

We just did. Without the sand. You were just like, we'll just be sand free.

More focus. Yeah. Yeah. That's awesome, though. But then you get. You kind of got to this point where, yeah, you could be like, okay, I don't have a BMW, but I can do whatever I want at 32 with a family, which is. And I've been. And I've been traveling around and kind of doing some other big things on the way.

Yeah. And it was. I mean, it is tough to have that pushback. I love the quote from the Mary Oliver poem. She says, tell me what you plan to do with your one wild and precious life. And I love that so much because I think that success is one knowing what you want to do with your one wild and precious life and then getting that thing. So if I look at what is a successful person, that's it. They knew what they wanted and they got the thing that they wanted. And I had a conversation at one of my jobs, just casually with a co worker. We were talking. I was talking about me and my brother, and I was like, yeah, I mean, we're both. We're both kind of successful, just like, in our own ways. And she looked at me and she goes, how would you consider yourself successful? And I was like, oh, I get it. I get the confusion. Because her rules were like, you have a really big, expensive house and you wear luxury clothes and you have a super expensive car, and you get a really prestigious degree and you work a really glamorous job. And I didn't have any of those things because those were never the things that I wanted. I had gotten exactly what I wanted. We had traveled to 27 countries. We had paid cash for a house. We had been able to adopt four kids, and we were two years from financial independence. Like, I knew what I wanted, and I got my dream. I just didn't get her dream.

Yeah. What kind of company and job was that when that happened?

Super glamorous. No, I did commission sales for furniture. So we just worked at a furniture store and we sold furniture. So just a very normal kind of everyday job. All of. Actually I would say all of my jobs were very normal, somewhat non glamorous but interesting. And there's so many different ways to get where you want to go. I think that's, especially in the current culture, we have to push back against. There's one formula to get where you want to go because now there's a lot of different ones and there's a lot that you can accomplish by just reading a book a week.

Sure. So on this journey from 19 to 32, you're, you know, you have these kind of normal jobs. Did you have this vision for where. I mean. Well, you did. I mean you're doing these things and you're, I guess you were, you're, you're bringing in your kind of financial independence state. Yeah, it's. Sorry. When I'm thinking about your situation, it's like so unusual for people to kind of completely take themselves out of the existing social framework. Like, here's what we're looking at, but I'm looking at it from over here, like sideways, and I see it completely differently than you do.

Yeah, well, it was, I think part of that was the reality. Like this framework wasn't going to work for me. Like I wasn't going to be able to do that path. And so I just had to make something else up. Like, okay, if this isn't accessible, what else can I do? And I think it comes back to that agency, like, what choices do I have and how can I make the absolute most of every choice? And you know, I know a lot of people who went to great schools and spent four years of their life like in the best education systems and then never read another book, never went to another conference, never did a personal development retreat, like never hired a coach. They were like, I'm going to drop 200 grand and then I'm out. And that's one way to do it. But there are, there are other paths.

Right. Did you. So on the lifestyle design side, did you, you're reading books. Did you kind of got these big goals? Did you kind of develop a plan that you followed or some have a journal? I mean, were there some other mechanics that you're using to say okay, because I know, I mean, one of the things I want to. By the way, folks listening, you should go to jillianjohnsrude.com intentional because she has a lot of amazing content around this. But I'd just love to hear you kind of describe how you manage this process and evolved it for staying on track and working through this.

Yeah. There's four tools that I kind of recommend to people for honestly, not just making progress on your goals, but getting outside your comfort zone, because that's where all the growth happens is when we step outside of our comfort zone. So the first one is kind of your intuition. I always start there with people. What do you already know? What do you already believe? What do you already know that you want to do? And how do you think you would get there? A lot of people, a lot of that is in them if they just take the time to ask the question and to think through it. But then the second one, I am a big fan of just studying and learning whether. And now we have so many resources between books and blogs. There are so many ways that we can access this information if we're just intentional. The third one, though, and this is something that my dad told me, I was probably 7, and he said, jillian, you have this opportunity that you might never have at any other point in your life, and that's that people won't notice you, and they won't think that you're paying attention because you're a kid. And like no other time, people will invite you into their homes, into their lives, into their businesses. And they won't pretend. They won't filter information because they don't think you're paying attention. So pay close, close attention. And I was like, I'm going to be a super spy. And I really started just studying people. How do they talk to each other? How do they communicate? How do they resolve conflict? How do they organize their lives? But now we have the Internet. And it's amazing because podcasts, someone's literally listening with earbuds into our private conversation about our lives. So now we all have that opportunity to just observe. Observe people that are interesting to you, that are inspiring to you, that some part of what they're doing resonates, and just figure out, how did they get here? How do they think about things? How do they look at things? How do they organize their lives? It's such an incredible opportunity. And then ask experts. Just ask people. I think that's. I always say it last because it's the most intimidating. But having a conversation with someone who has experience or who has knowledge is the fastest way to make progress. It doesn't have to be the most expert y expert. They just have to know, like, a little. They should be a little bit farther than you are. Just know a little bit more. And having, like, investing in those relationships in that Community, whether it's events or masterminds or groups or friend circles or book clubs or just any places that you could just ask someone, because people who have the knowledge and the experience, like, it's really simple and straightforward to them, you know, there is a well worn path. There are people who've gone before you and who aren't overwhelmed or intimidated. Just ask them, huh? How do you do that? How do you set up an investment account? And if you know that, you're like, oh, it's easy, you just do this, this and this.

Right? That's awesome. Yeah, I think, and I think podcasts, I mean, I've been, you know, we obviously do this, but also been listening to more and more, and I grew. It's. It's amazing because you can find these topics or people that are super interesting and just hear their pretty much unfiltered thoughts about things and get some great insight that, you know, you didn't happen to be walking alongside them whenever they were doing this, having this discussion, but they're having a super interesting discussion. You're able to learn a lot. And I think it's also back in the tradition of storytelling, which is kind of gotten lost in our culture, but maybe is coming back through this medium where hearing stories and what people's personal experiences are and how that affected them, it's powerful. And back to your story about your co worker and the furniture shop. On the one hand you're like, okay, I'm looking at this person. I totally see it differently. But on the other hand, you can also feel like, wow, this person's really judging me. And there's this emotional reaction. And does that make, does that compel you to, like, drive change? But then also, do you think, you know, I really should be helping this person because maybe I can help them reframe how they think about it. Like, there's all these kind of insights you can get from these stories. By the way, what happened with the furniture co worker? How's her life going versus yours?

Well, and I think that's the thing, like knowing what you want out of life and getting it. And I don't have any judgment if I hope people want different things than me. Like, it would be extraordinarily boring if everyone wanted to do exactly what I've done. So I want people to just know what they want out of life and get it, whatever that is. And I think there's so much beauty in the diversity of our goals and our dreams and our ambitions. As long as you're not hurting Other people, I don't think that there's bad ones out there. To each their own. And so, yeah, I don't mind whatever people want, but I just. I push back against defaulting to someone else's dream and defaulting to someone else's life and their goals if it's not yours. And even if that's your parents, even if that's your family, like, even for my own kids, I don't want to orchestrate their whole life. I want them to live their life and their passion and their goals. Even if I don't understand, even if I don't like it, even if I disagree, I want them to have the confidence to step out and to each find their own path.

Right. Well, I think that's back to the most important thing, which is how do you get to this clarity about what you want? I see many people don't know what they want, or it's buried in the noise, like they're busy. I gotta make money. I gotta pay for this. I gotta do that. The things they have to do tactically, day to day, to get through their lives. And then only at certain points. Maybe when you're younger, you go to college or you're thinking about your first job, or you have a kid or you retire, there are these life points where maybe you take a moment to step back. I've talked to J.D. roth, who is our first podcast. He's all about purpose, which I think is a great thing to be about. But, yeah, are there tools that you use or how did you think about it when you had these goals? How do you arrive at them?

Yeah, I think figuring that out, like I said, I like to start with intuition, like, what do you already know? And for a lot of people, it's just giving themselves the time and the space to ask the questions. Even when I work with clients, one on one, I have them. Do I have four focus questions that they do before our first meeting? And they might have felt like, I don't even know what I want. I feel so confused and overwhelmed. But, like, they do good work. Like, they send me the sheets and it's like 80% there. But most people just don't take the time or they don't know what questions to ask. So, like my free Intentional Living course, it's just 10 questions. It's like a video and a worksheet each day, just to take 10 or 20 minutes a day and sit down and just ask yourself the question. Because I find once we open that mental loop asking the question, our mind and our subconscious will slowly try to close that loop. But often we're just never presented with a question. And so I start there and I really lean heavy on observation. Look out at what other people are doing, what resonates with you, what inspires you, what feels exciting. And oftentimes in the kind of purpose discussion, we get stuck because we start at the very end, like, what's my purpose? What's my passion? I always start with what are you curious about? Curious is the first step. It doesn't have to be your life work. What are you curious about? And usually people are curious about a number of things. And if you aren't, just walk around the library, walk around life, ask people, watch a TV show about it. But curious moves into interested. And that's like a little bit smaller of a list. Like, what are you interested? And then interested kind of moves into more passionate as you become more and more invested. And passion eventually becomes part of your identity. Like, there's a couple and that's like a short list. For most people, that's like less than five things that they're like, this is who I am. This is how I would introduce myself. Whether it's like I'm a boat maker or I'm a gardener or, you know, there's typically a short list. But don't try to like start with the short list of what's your passion identity in life. Just, just start with like, what are you curious about?

That's awesome. So I can find. If I want to go take or anyone wants to go to this, they can go to jillianjohnsruode.com intentional or can they also find it on Montana Money Adventures as well?

I have rebranded my name now just me.

Fine.

Yeah.

Formerly Montana money adventures. Now jillianjohnsrud.com oh my whole.

Actually in my. I have a podcast called Everyday Courage and the whole first season was really about like New Year's and life planning. So season one, which is like 11 episodes would be. If you're. If you're interested in that, like, that's a good. We're kind of diving deep into those kinds of topics. If podcasts are more your jam then videos and worksheets, and I know that.

You'Re doing that with choose a 5. Why did you choose to work with them versus totally standalone?

I'm really interested in creating things. I'm not super. I love ideas. I'm not super interested in the technical aspects. And I'm sure as you know, podcasting is a lot of work. And then I just have an amazing team. But for me, in this stage of life, I am financially independent. And so I kind of just do the things that I really want to do. I do the things that I'm really passionate about and I'm excited and seem meaningful and seem fun. And we kind of take it year by year. You know, what are those things that are expiring that maybe need to happen this year if we're going to do them? What works best for our kids, what works best for us? What are we interested in? And yeah, each year is kind of different.

Right? That's cool. And it sounds like you obviously have a great balance between your family and your work in terms of. And I see, you know, I get the sense of your family and the trajectory there and what you're doing there for your work. You know, obviously you could, you're, you're building your own brand and getting lots of exposure. I mean, I can see why it's great to talk to you and kind of hear your story and how, how you think about things, which is quite different than many people we talk to. But do you have like a long term vision for, hey, this is where, where I want, you know, my work to be in five years or 10 years. Are you kind of taking that day by day or year by year?

You know, I was growing up. Part of, kind of what makes sense of the journey is when I was, when I was about eight, every day I used to come home from school, I grab a pop Tart, I would sit at my kitchen table in front of the tv and I watched Oprah every day for a decade. And she was like the one voice that was speaking a very different message into my life. Like that there's hope. One, there's hope. It doesn't matter what's happened up until this point. It doesn't matter what story you were born into. There is hope. And that you have agency. Like you have the ability to make changes and reshape the trajectory of your life. And I had kind of like call it like stage one dreams, which I thought, honestly, I thought it would take like 50 years to get those done. And it just happened to take 13. And so now it's kind of, it's, it's stage two of. She has this amazing quote that I really love. Because sometimes, sometimes when you come out of one situation, there's always those people and those voices that are kind of like, who do you think you are? Well, aren't you a little full of yourself? Like, aren't you getting a little big for your britches. Like, don't you remember where you came from? Don't you? And she said that in kind of response to that. Like, aren't you a little full of yourself? She said, I want to be so full that I'm overflowing without pride or arrogance, but with generosity for others. And that's kind of my season of life. Like, I want to overflow without pride or arrogance, but, like, just out of generosity for others. And if I can give them a little bit of hope and show them that they have more agency, then they believe, like, that's what I'm going to do for the rest of my life. And that might look a lot of different ways. I love keynote speaking. I love coaching. I love my podcast. I love writing. The medium I'm not super concerned about, but that's kind of the driving force.

That's awesome. I was actually going to say Oprah, and then I was like, well, maybe that's a little too ambitious.

I love Oprah.

Yeah, no, I love Oprah.

In my mind, I call her Auntie Oprah because, like, I think that's what an aunt is. They're just. They're a person who has, like, no obligation to you, but they just show up out of generosity, out of love, like, to, like, add a little bit of, like, joy and encouragement to your life. And that's 100% what Oprah was for me. She was like the aunt that I never had that just showed up in my house every day and was like, hey, this is a cool person. You should know. Or, this is a cool book. Here's what they talked about. Or here's an inspiring story I heard.

Yeah, no, it's good. I mean, she's incredible. She's accomplished so much in her life and continues to do great stuff. I mean, she's like Madonna. She's had this, like, people are having these incredibly long Rolling stones. They're still going. And super influential. So that's cool. All right, this has been great. I want to ask you a couple of pragmatic questions just about the financial side of it, since our users are always interested in, like, okay, how does this person actually get independent by 32? What did with, you know, a bunch of kids? What does that look like? Can you share just a little bit about, like, I don't, you know, kind of how you think about expenses, how you think about investing, budgeting, stuff like that?

Yeah. So we have our kind of passive income is broken into three buckets. My husband has a military pension, which also gives us Health care, which is like such a. A mental. It's still expensive, but it's like, such a mental relief that that box is checked. So that's about a third. That's just under, like, 1500amonth. And then we have rental properties, which it varies depending how much we want to do, but they average about 1200 to, like, 1,700amonth. And then we have investments which are currently. Shoot, we just. I don't know. We just had the market drop, so probably around, like, 300. So we could pull, I guess. What is that, 12,000? Yeah. So about 1,000 bucks a month. I think like 8,000 from there. And those three sources of income cover all of our expenses. Our expenses tend to average about 2 to 3,000amonth, so we can typically live off of two of the three. Yeah, so it gives a little bit of. A little bit of flexibility, a little bit of stability. And we don't have a ton of expenses because we were able to pay cash for our house, and we have student loan debt. Like, we don't have all these other debts. And most of our, like, most of our joy and most of our kind of fun comes from things that aren't necessarily expensive. Like, we live right outside Glacier National Park. So, like, we live in kind of, like vacation land. So we're just outside all the time, and we hike. We actually have a piece of vacation property that we set up our camper on all summer, and that's right by a river. So, like, we have a morning campfire every morning, and we go swimming in the river, and we go hiking, and we do a lot of travel. Like, we're gonna go to Arizona for a few weeks and take our camper. And it's amazing just to have that flexibility. But I find a lot of people isn't necessarily, like, when they do kind of that Intentional living series. One of the questions I ask is, how much? In your ideal day, in your ideal year, how much does this cost? And for most people, the biggest cost is time. Kind of like us, they want to wake up and drink a cup of coffee and maybe read the paper or go. I love to go sit out in my garden and read a book and go to the gym and meet up with some friends. That's what makes life feel rich and meaningful. Oftentimes they have less luxury items or expensive things. Sometimes I think we lean towards luxury to alleviate the pain and frustration in our daily life. And if you can just take that pain and frustration out. We actually just want to spend time with friends and Family and do fun, interesting adventures.

Totally. Yeah. It's. It's amazing to hear about kind of your expense rate. I mean, just to. I'm going to juxtapose it. So in the town I live in. This is going to sound ridiculous. The average household spends 13 or $14,000 a month living here. It's just incredible. So it's, I mean, I'm not like, I, when I learned that number, I was like, that sounds crazy. I mean, this is California, Coastal California. But, you know, it does get. It can get insane in certain parts of the country. I mean, well, in Bay Area is like insane. Particularly insane. Right. You can go to many areas and buy a house for $100,000 and, you know, life is very different. But yeah, like, I think for many folks, if they went through the exercise of like, hey, you know what, I'm going to try to not spend any money this month or I spend as little as possible. It's pretty illuminating to say, you know, let's go to the library. You know, let's, you know, we're not going to go to a bunch of movies or concerts or go to the warriors games. I mean, not that I'm doing all those things, but like. Or people are doing those things, but like, just try to, yeah. Go hiking. We, our family spends a lot of time hiking and surfing. You know, those are mountain biking. Those are, you know, relatively low cost things. Or I mean, they're outside of the equipment, they're free. But yeah, you can get a lot of. I mean, that's. You're right. That's where people are happiest. It's like their relationships, their friends, their family having some time, being outside. Yeah, sure, you can go park yourself on a beach somewhere for 500, 600 bucks a day or something like that. But I don't know if that necessarily makes you happier. Okay, well, that's cool. It's good to hear about how you're doing it and congratulations on. I do think, I mean, I think the one huge takeaway for us is also, it's like the expense side is just such a huge lever. You got to really look at expenses first, get control of those, and then that makes everything else much more doable so you can save money, get your investments going and all the rest of it. All right, so this is great as we wrap up any kind of like for you, kind of key influencers or resources that you think you find or you think our audience might find really helpful. I mean, obviously we'll send them to your site so they can check out your stuff and your podcast, Everyday Courage. But any other people that you think would be good for our folks to check out or sites?

So many people.

There's too many, right?

I think it's just important to find the people that resonate with you and to keep being a constant student. I lean really heavy on that observation. What are people doing out there in my community nationally? That's interesting to me. That's compelling. I try to be a constantly curious person and just be curious about a lot of different things. So whatever kind of area you might be interested in, I would just recommend being curious about that. Who's doing that? Who's doing that in blogs? Who's doing it online, on Instagram, in your community? Just go out, check it out.

Yeah. All right. Well, I'm sure they can find a lot on your site. Okay, well, this is good. So I'm just going to wrap it up. So thanks, Gillian, for being on our show and thanks, Dato Robeson for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening? Thank you for listening. Hopefully you found this useful. I hope you go check out jillianjohnsrude.com and then also the same site, Intentional. Check out the podcast Everyday Courage, which I'll definitely be doing. On our side, our goal is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so they can make the most of their money and time. And you can also find us at our site or our Facebook group or on Twitter. And I think for both of us, reviews are always good for Jillian's podcast and for mine. We'll definitely read them, use the feedback to make it better. So thanks, everyone and have a great day.