Scott Rieckens: Playing with FIRE

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Welcome to the new retirement podcast. Today we're going to be talking with Scott Riekens, a two time Emmy nominated filmmaker and fire enthusiast, about his new documentary, Playing with Fire. Scott got inspired to pursue fire financial independence retirement early after listening to Mr. Money Mustache on Tim Ferriss. But then he got a little crazy and decided to upend his family's life in sunny San Diego and make a movie about what it actually takes to pursue fire. And he's coming to us from Bend, Oregon. Scott, welcome to our show. It's great to have you join us.

Thanks, Stephen. It's a pleasure to be here.

Yeah, I appreciate your time. It's been great getting to know you over the past year and kind of hearing your story for our listeners. I actually have seen the movie and met up with Scott face to face a few months ago when he was out touring. We'll talk more about his movie in a second. But before we do that, Scott, I just wanted, I was wondering if you could kind of share your background a little bit about how you grew up and kind of like what your life was like leading up until you learned about fire.

Yeah, I was born and raised a Navy brat, so I traveled around quite a bit. I think I moved something like 12 times by the time I got to high school. But my entire family is actually from a small town in Iowa and so we would go back there often and then we ended up moving back there. After stints on the east coast, west coast, Hawaii, Puerto Rico, I ended up moving to a small town in Iowa for high school. So of all the culture shocks, that was probably the biggest. But I loved it back there and ended up going to college at the University of Iowa, then found my way back out west where I started my career and ended up meeting my wife out there and we settled in San Diego where I was born and where my dad worked for many, many years. And that was my life leading up to fire.

Nice. How old were you when you moved back out to California?

I was right out of college, so 22, 23, something like that.

Got it. So then you spent 10 plus years living in California?

Actually, I ended up moving up to Reno for four or five years, living with my now wife Taylor, who went to college there. And so we had met through work and I ended up moving out there and enjoyed the Sierra Nevada mountain ranges. And then we ended up getting out of Reno. When the crash happened, it really affected Nevada hard and we were looking for better job opportunities. So we decided to relocate to San Diego.

Nice. Well, Reno is Having a little bit of a resurgence right now. I know that it's becoming a little bit of a hotter city as people bounce out of California. And I think some companies are going there too because of the tax arbitrage that's available with no state income taxes in Nevada. And now you live in Bend, right?

Correct? Yes. And the Cascades now.

Yeah. So can you kind of share a little bit like how much your life has changed in the past couple of years kind of leading up to fire and now what it's like having made all these changes?

Yeah, My life is 180 from two years ago. You know, living in San Diego. There was a lot of stress and it was a lot of gears grind.

And trying to figure out how to.

How to live with this increasing cost of living and all the traffic and everything we were dealing with. It just didn't feel like the life we wanted to live. And then when I found this fire thing, my entire life changes changed. And now living in Bend, we have completely redesigned our life where we're spending a lot more time thinking about how we can focus on that which makes us the happiest. It used to be if you're working, Taylor's a commission based worker and everything that I do on a daily basis directly affects my ability to earn. If there's no end in sight, then.

We'Re just working as hard as we can, as often as we can.

And now that we have these measurements that we can put into place, if Taylor's feeling really stressed and the there's a lot going on outside of work, she can take a look, pause at that and say, do I really need to keep grinding out right this minute or can I take a quick break for myself and be a little more balanced? And so we're finding more balance on a work front, on a social front. And because of that, it's just kind.

Of expanded.

Our purview to self care and focusing on the things that matter the most as opposed to just constantly grinding, working and feeling stressed. We've opened ourselves up to have the space to, you know, think about our friends, think about our family, think about ourselves and, and kind of, you know, correct course a bit.

Yeah, it's, it's interesting listening to you and just as a quick aside on this, I think this is a problem that's, I don't know, it's not entirely unique to California, but you see it in these high cost living areas where it does start to feel unattainable for certain people. And it's a, it's a semi generational problem. I just posted this on our Facebook group where, you know, it was a story about there's going to be 21 million baby boomers selling their houses over the next, you know, 10, 15 years. And what's that going to look like? How's that going to affect the market? And you know, the boomers have a ton of money, especially in California, Right. In their houses. And, and on the other hand, you've got kind of millennials that are up and coming or younger folks that they're like, this is, I can't afford this. I can't spend in San Diego what, you know, million and a half bucks to buy a house or something like that. It's just, or I can do it, but then I'm completely chained to my house and I'll have to be grinding for, you know, 30 years to pay it off. But it does feel like there's a disconnect and, you know, it's in it and it's, it doesn't feel like it's sustainable. You know, it's going to have to correct. Either housing prices have to come down or, you know, or people are going to do what you're doing, which is move to different places, which will bring housing prices down because there'll be less demand. But you know, I feel your pain because I mean, I see it out here with, with folks, if they aren't able to buy a house in a certain kind of window, I guess then it feels like they can't do it and then they leave.

Yeah. It's not like homeownership is the end all be all, but rent prices are also extremely high and then it starts to feel like the equation's off. Right?

Right. Yeah.

Regardless of if homeownership is the pinnacle. Trying to get away from that discussion and just saying as a signifier, I can't afford to live here. I can't even buy a modest two bedroom house as a 30 something with a promising career. Something's wrong, right?

Well, you're seeing this geo arbitrage relocating for much better costs happening inside the US and also around the world. You've got countries like Italy and Japan where they have declining populations because they have low birth rates. And in Italy you can buy a house in some of these nice places that you'd go on vacation for like a dollar. You have to commit to spending part of the year there and commit to rehabbing a little bit. But you can get, you know, that kind of asset somewhere else too, if you're willing to think more widely about where you're gonna go.

Yeah. And that's ultimately what I think where the Beauty of Fire really exists is, you know, the more you dive into it, the more you understand. It's really like a system of optimization and opening up your mind to all possibilities. With this goal in mind of reaching financial independence, all of a sudden you can look and say, well, I don't have to follow the status. And then you research it and it's never built up with the remote. We're all more connected than ever. So things are changing before our eyes. Technological advancement curve is going strong right now. I think it's time for all of us to take a look at that and say, what does the next 5, 10, 15 years look like? And if in that range, you're also implementing really sound financial decisions where you're getting your costs down as far as your happiness levels will allow, that's kind of like a suit of armor heading into an uncertain future, right?

Yeah. One of the things I really like about fire and the way it's positioned. I read this in the Choose a Fire site. You know, if you can buy into kind of a 10 to 15 year window, then a lot becomes doable. So. And you know, 15 years sounds like a long time. Ten years, you know, it's not, I mean, it's, you know, it's, it's a chunk of time. But if you knew at the other end of that that, hey, you'd have complete control over your life or a really high degree of control over your life, you know, you might be. Want to start, you know, methodically making the changes that are required to let you achieve financial independence. You know, if you're 50 and you want to retire at 65, even if you're not ready yet, or even if you're at zero, you know, people who are 30, you know, and want to retire 45 are showing that it's doable or, you know, and so you could do it too, because you'll have the advantage of Social Security and Medicare and things like that, which all should materially help kind of traditional retirement folks. So, you know, before I move on to the movie, I had a couple other questions. So, like, what would you say the best and worst parts are of your new, you know, super fire life or focus on fire life?

Yeah, I mean, the best part is the sense of freedom that washed over us pretty, pretty quickly. And that was, you know, due to the fact that we finally had an emergency fund set up.

For the first time in our lives.

We Felt like we had a great plan that was thoroughly vetted. That may not be the most optimized plan in the entire universe, but it seems like a very low risk, high reward, low stress investment strategy. All of a sudden we have financial literacy. All of a sudden, money is not driving us. We see money as a tool, and that is so empowering. After living for decades under this stress and this fear of, am I making enough? Am I doing the right things? What's all this for? That veil has lifted, and it's allowed us to think more about our relationships and our health and all these other things I mentioned earlier. So that's by far been the most rewarding and the best part of all this. That doesn't come without a lot of work.

I don't know if it's. I don't know if I have, like, the worst.

I don't know if that's the right framing. But, you know, some of these decisions that we've made have been challenging to work through. And a lot of it's about unpacking what we had already learned or created habits around. And that's been difficult at times. And I think there are still times where Taylor and I don't necessarily see eye to eye on a purchasing decision or any kind of financial decision. And we have to work through that. And that can be difficult sometimes when.

One of the things about fire is.

It kind of makes the future path a lot clearer. And so it can actually, in a weird way, inversely make it even more frustrating when you're not on the same page, because it feels like you have such a clear vision. Right. That all of a sudden, if there is a disagreement, it's like, well, what do you mean? Of course we're doing this because of this. And so sometimes, let's say Taylor's like, yeah, I just don't care about that today. And that can be frustrating for me, let's say, or vice versa with her. I'm sure she could tell you a lot of stories around that same vein with me. But, yeah, I think it's just kind of becoming accustomed and a little more comfortable with the new norm, with the new status quo.

Yeah. And I think that idea of a clear vision is great, and I definitely see that in the community, the fire community. You know, I think one thing to be thoughtful about as you get closer to financial independence is making sure that you have those things thought through about what you'll do after you. After you achieve that. Because I do think there's some people that are like, they're so focused on the journey and like, well, the goal. And they're having kind of fun on the journey because it's measurable. And you're like, okay, I'm making progress. My money's piling up. My costs are going down. I can see I'm on my way. But then when they get there, they're like, okay, I'm financially independent. I have to do anything anymore. Okay, what am I going to do next? It's a good thing.

I think that's a really important point to make. I was really fortunate. One of the first people that we interviewed with the movie was Vicki Robin. And I asked her, you've been watching people take this sort of challenge on and achieving this. What's something we want to be considerate of? What should we avoid? What's your one piece of advice you could give us? She didn't even think about it. She said, you need to start living your Phi lifestyle now. And what she's saying is, start practicing in what you're planning for the future today. Because otherwise, how she put it was, phi is like a cliff, and if you don't learn to fly, then you'll never jump. And I do see that in the forums where people go, and not just in the forums, but in real life where people get closer and closer to that phi date, and then they start scrutinizing whether they've really made it to phi or not.

Should I work a couple more years?

Am I ready yet? And I empathize with that. I can imagine that being somewhat of an existential crisis. You've got this entire. Your entire life, your entire adult life, as you've known it, has been around this security of having a job and having income coming in that you feel like you're in control of, and suddenly you're going to just stop all of that and trust the system. So I can appreciate where that would be worrisome, but I think it might even from what I can tell, it's sort of the wrong focus. What you should be focusing on is.

How are you going to spend your time afterwards?

And the likelihood of you not earning.

Another dime for the rest of your.

Life is typically really low. If you have the discipline to tenacity, ambition and intelligence to pursue a fire lifestyle, there's a good chance you've got a lot more to give. And out of that, you could probably become compensated at some point. So I don't really. I love the idea of reaching a fi goal as a way to frame decisions around money over the next Decade.

Or however long it takes us to reach that.

But I'm less concerned about reaching the.

Fi date and more concerned about how.

Am I planning to spend, really, the rest of my life? What's important to me, what should my personal mission statement be, and why am I here and what am I going to work on? That's the kind of stuff that we think about now. It's not like we're perfect or we have all those answers, and that can constantly change and shift. And there's still days that we have doubt and fear and all these other things. But I just feel really blessed that I was able to go through this sort of boot camp of fire, through this project, and learn those types of valuable lessons that I'm assuming will really pay dividends for us in the long run. And by design, those lessons, thank goodness we had the cameras rolling. We're able to share those lessons with other people who may not even be considering some of those big pieces already. Pursuing a fire lifestyle, but also, even more importantly, trying to use a medium that's really easy to digest and getting.

It out to people who haven't even.

Heard of this yet. You know, that's been sort of something that's been driving me for a few years, is I found this accidentally. So anything I can do to help serve, paying it forward and, you know, find other ways to hit people across the. Across the face. Like I was, you know, punched by Mr. Money Mustache. Anyway, you know, we tried to. Sorry, editor. Scratched that.

But what you're, I think, for so many people, means the world. So. And you do see that with people that are either fi or on their way, they're really confronting these questions now.

Right.

Which is a great and very different way of thinking about your life.

Yeah. And, you know, when you're getting started in your career and you're making 30, $40,000 a year, you know, below the average salary, and you're trying to get going. These things we're talking about right now probably aren't necessarily. There's a chance that they're not hitting home, that they're not connecting, because it's difficult to see that future when you are still within that veil of financial insecurity. But I think what's beautiful about fire is these principles are really going to serve anyone. If you can really scrutinize what makes you happy, scrutinize what you really need to sustain your life and be diligent about that, and then have the discipline to stick with that eventually. Eventually you can work hard enough. There are so many ways to earn money now that you don't even really need qualification for. And increasing your income, increasing your income just to the point where you can get to the. When you can get to a situation where you can earn more than you need to live, then all of a sudden that FIRE lifestyle starts implementing and that compound interest takes over, and then that security we're talking about can take hold. And the minute that takes hold, you don't have to wait until you reach fi. That can happen pretty quickly. And all of a sudden you do have that mental space to consider what you really want to do with your time. And obviously, you still may have a decade's worth of work ahead of you to reach fi. And some people may not connect with this idea of, oh, you know, oh, right, we're just supposed to live our FI lifestyle. I'm just supposed to go volunteer at things. What about continuing to earn money? And the idea is that you just try to design your life so that you're focusing on the things that are bringing you happiness. You're focusing on the things that you.

Wish you were spending your time on.

Make sure you start spending your time on those things now with any spare.

Time you might have.

And that will improve your life. Whether, you know, whether it's a 10 year journey for you, whether it's a 20 year journey, small, you know, small changes that improve your life are worthwhile.

Yeah, totally. It's. It's about, I think, finding your calling. Right. There's people that have jobs and some people doing stuff. I forget the exact kind of like levels here. But, you know, there's. There's working for money and there's working for things that you think have some meaning. And then there's, there's working on, you know, the idea that you have a calling in your life, that there's a purpose for what you're doing that resonates with you and you see, helps the world. So it's cool that FI is helping more people hook up with that or think about it.

I agree.

All right, so I want to dive into your movie. But before we get going, just for our listeners, I did see this movie live in San Francisco with an audience when Scott was touring it and then heard him talk afterwards. And afterwards he was nice enough to join me for a beer, which was good. Um, and you know, one, the movie is really good. It's, it's entertaining, it's very educational. It's totally worth watching. And you can find it on lots of different streaming services now. Itunes, Amazon, Netflix, and things like that.

Not Netflix.

Oh, not. Not Netflix. Sorry. Maybe one day. And then, you know, you'll see some of the changes that Scott goes through and his family take on when they do this, which I'll start listing off. But then, Scott, I would love to hear you kind of elaborate on what those big things like mechanical things that you do are. So I know you decided to pursue this. You know, you decided to leave your regular job and move and dump some of the expenses. But can you kind of take our listeners through, you know, is there a kind of a high level checklist to think about when you're going after this?

Absolutely. I mean, the movie is kind of predicated around the big three. Housing, cars and food. And you know, those are the three things that if you go, if you press hard on trying to decrease those costs in your life, you can have the biggest effects. So that's kind of what we. When we designed our fire journey, it was actually prior to the idea of creating a documentary and following our specific journey. So this was not made for the movie. This was just what we had planned to do. We knew that living in San Diego, it would still be possible to pursue fire, but it would most likely take a lot longer and we'd have a lot more. We'd have a lot more vying for our attention. It would be more difficult because there's so many amazing things to discover and, and enjoy and partake in in a place like San Diego that it feels like you constantly have these temptations. For us, it was like, okay, we do love it here. This is a great place. But there are other places that are great and they cost a lot less. And if we can redesign our work situation to be able to live in a different place than that might make sense for us. And after a lot of scrutinizing on that decision, we decided to go check out some places and see what fit. Because we figured if those places don't fit and we don't enjoy that, we can always come back. It'll still be there. Right? And so that was housing and then vehicles. If we were going to make that big move, well, why not try to design a new life where we would spend a lot less time in a car? That was something we were really sort of passionate about, to be honest. Not only from an environmental standpoint and a cost savings standpoint, but from just a stress level standpoint. I'm so tired of being in traffic and defensive driving like every morning. And honestly, our life expectancy is lowered too by being in that vehicle, they're dangerous. And so I liked the idea of being a one car family, if possible, and using that car as minimally as we possibly could. And so that's another piece of the journey that you watch through the film. And then our food habits were out of control. We were spending a lot of money eating out because we felt so stressed and we felt like we didn't have the time. And we really liked really good food, which is everywhere in San Diego. That was a trifecta of issues for us. We were spending, I think, something like $2,000 a month on food on average. And that's just outrageous. But it was so easy a couple times a week to say, let's go out to eat. I think we just kept our heads in the sand that every time we went out to eat, a couple drinks, an appetizer, we really needed to scrutinize that. And we knew that would be something that we would need to change our habits on significantly and find ways to enjoy eating in a little more. So those were some tactical things that you watched through the film that really significantly decreased our costs. We felt like if we could pay more attention to self care and spend more time with our daughter and our family and our friends, that we'd be significantly happier just by doing that. And if we stop spending money on these things that don't actually bring us that much happiness, the byproduct of that is having a lot more security, which will then in turn increase our happiness even more. It was a proposition to Taylor that she really couldn't say no to. And while I was going through that, I felt the same way. I had my doubts and concerns too. But there were so many pieces to this that I could not argue with. The logic was so strong and sound. And through that logic it actually challenged us to think more about our own happiness and, and what we're doing here and all that stuff that we were talking about earlier. We ended up doing personal mission statements. We write in a book every year for our anniversary and we've included new questions to answer on an annual basis to stay in check with what's most important to us and to share that information with Jovi down the road. These things are invaluable to our long term sustaining, you know, potential for happiness. So.

Well, it's, I think your movie does a great job of making it very real for, for people. So, you know, the, like, there was a scene, I think when you're, you know, you're getting rid of the BMW and like you're Buying this used Honda or something, and you're like, I think Taylor's like, do I really want that? You know, this is. God, you know, this is a big change. But, you know, you. It. You know, it's not that big a deal. You kind of get over this stuff, and then, hey, you know, a car is a car, and you want to drive less. And by the way, it costs a kajillion dollars less not to have this big debt hanging over your head that you're making payments on. You're not really thinking about.

Yeah, I tell you what, Taylor, she really didn't want to get that Honda. She really didn't want to get rid of her BMW. And to this day, she still kind of looks at that car and just looks at me and blinks real slow and then gets in it. I mean, it has not changed. It's so funny. But at the end of the day, I can get her to admit that she realizes that that's silly and that it really doesn't matter. But those, you know, those things still, they have power over us, and they don't just go away overnight. So, yeah, I hope that comes across in the movie. But she. But she also, like, she's like the reluctant fire person. You know, she. She understands all the merits, the logic makes sense. She knows it's the right decision, but that doesn't make it super fun or something she would tell everyone to go do right off the bat. But that said, like I said, I can get her to admit that this is all worth it and she's happy we're doing it.

I think it makes it much more real because you're a total enthusiast. You're like, yeah, let's do this. And she's like, all right. You know, I mean, it's a huge step to say, hey, let's. Let's leave our community, right? Let's leave sunny San Diego. Let's drop the expensive car. And there are so many things in our lives that, I mean, we're all raised, you know, watching these car ads and, you know, being told, here's what success looks like. And it's hard to. For many of you folks, to kind of get outside of that, because we've been kind of raised in this framework.

Yeah, we're susceptible to, like, 10,000 ads a day or something like that on average. I mean, we have no hope. You know, it's like, it's not even our fault. And so, you know, I think it's so important for us to unplug from that for a minute and really think about, you know, what's really important to you and ask those questions. Like, I had never asked myself, what are the top five things that make me happy on a weekly basis.

I'd never even asked myself that.

I just intuitively assumed that I knew what those things were. But if you really asked me, I'd have to sit there and think about it. That's not something we do every day. That's not something that we have implemented into our daily society. We don't wake up and think about gratitude. We don't wake up and think about what are the few things that I can accomplish today that will make me say, today was a good day. Instead, we just get up and we continue with the grind. And, you know, we have a. You know, we go from A to B and we come back from B to A and it's, you know, the whole process is there. And, you know, it's very easy to get caught up in that machine. And, you know, that's the rat race, right?

Yep. Yeah. Now, I remember being a consultant in my 20s, and sometimes we would ask ourselves this question. There's. Because there's a bunch of us that were kind of coming through the same age, and we're traveling on the world, which is cool, but we're working really long hours, which is grind. And, you know, like, why are we doing this? You know? And then since I became an entrepreneur and kind of started doing my own stuff, I never asked myself this question anymore. And I see the same thing in the fire community. It's like people get, you know, this vision of what they're going to do, and they think about it and then they. They get very into it. And as long as they have that clear vision, they are not spending cycles wondering what the point is anymore. Yeah.

And I think when you start the whole journey out, the construct is such that it's focused on money. And that's such an easy answer. What are you doing this for?

Well, I'm trying to earn more money.

I need money to live. I need money to. It starts off with, I need money to live. And then it becomes, well, now I have money to live, so now I need money to do fancier things.

And, well, now what if I can make so much money that I can buy that fancy house or get that.

Yacht or fly in a private jet? There's always that thing that you could potentially have that you don't have. And that can be a really great, easy excuse to convince yourself that you're doing XYZ for These reasons.

I think after a while you kind.

Of get tired of those reasons.

You don't care about that stuff as much.

And that's kind of where I, I found myself.

When I found this fire movement, it.

Was just like, no, none of that.

Stuff really matters to me, but what am I doing and how do I fix this?

I didn't know. And it was. Thank goodness I found this framework because all of a sudden I was like, if you can get your fiscal health.

In order, then you have the time and space to figure that out for yourself.

Yeah. So far the whole fire thing has been blogs first, then podcasts and shout out to the guys at Choose Fi who've probably done the best job there. But, you know, it's become a come a big thing that way. But you're the first that I know of. Right. Person that's, I mean, definitely the first that's made a whole movie about it. But kind of doing it and making it much more real in that, in this medium. Do you think it's going to have a huge or are you seeing it have a big impact? I mean, no, you're just are getting rolling with kind of a wider release. But any thoughts on what you're hearing back?

Yeah, I mean, first of all, huge shout out to all the bloggers and podcasters who came before this film. I mean, this film wouldn't have happened without that and their influence and expertise. The choose five guys, Vicky, Robin, Pete, Mr. Money, Mustache, Mad Fientist, Paula Pant, I mean, the list goes on and on. These people are heroes in my book. And Steven, the work that you guys are doing@newretirement.com, all these amazing tools. I think JD Roth wrote that you have the best tools on the market right now. There's a lot of great work happening around this community. I don't suppose that we've done something that's more impactful than that work that's come before us. All I know is that I came out of a world of video production. I knew how to orchestrate a huge production like this. I had done one before and done, you know, countless TV shows and commercials and whatnot. It's all kind of the same, just, you know, at various varying scales. And I was so fortunate to have connected with all the people I have through this journey. Our director, Travis Shakespeare, had this idea a year prior to me and fortunately for me, he had to shelf the idea for a while because his job had taken over for a while and he was just taking it back off the shelf and dusting it off when he heard me on the choose five podcast talking about doing this documentary. And thank goodness he reached out and we partnered up. And so many of those podcasters and bloggers have been incredibly generous with their time and have come to the table to share their ideas with us in this movie. And honestly, they've shared so much sense, too. I mean, they've shown up to the screenings that we did across the country, They've helped promote the film, and now that we have it digital, we're just starting to see how this could potentially help facilitate fire to become even more a part of the Zeitgeist, get it out there even more. And possibly, as Travis says, often, we're trying to start a financial revolution here. This film is, from what we can tell, and please, if anyone knows different.

Please let us know. But we're pretty sure we just made.

The film, first and only documentary about personal finance, and hopefully we did so in a way that's fairly entertaining and not as dry as that might sound. And the feedback so far has been resoundingly positive. Thank goodness. Not thank goodness for our egos, but thank goodness for that effort that's been put out by so many. And also thank goodness because to have something like this, I think of it like I was scratching my own itch with this thing. And if I remember, early on in my journey was so dogmatic about fire and this whole thing, I wanted to share it with everyone, especially people I knew who were stressed with money or having any kind of issues with money. But it's not easy to talk about. You know, it's not easy to just level with people.

It's kind of like, you know, religion, politics, money.

Right? These are things you avoid in conversations. So our hope was that we could make something that would make the Fire community proud, but that it would really open people's eyes who haven't heard about fire yet and make it feel like something they would be challenged to consider and to be intrigued enough to look into it further.

And then there's this treasure trove of.

Resources out there beyond this film, that can help facilitate a better life. And so that's our hope with it. And I can't be more pleased with the current reception. We hit number two on the documentary charts on itunes. We need to continue a sustained, successful run on digital because that will really get the attention of the streaming sites. And I think that's where we might actually see a big. A big shift in people's awareness of this and hopefully their inception of this Framework.

Yeah. Well, it feels like anything is possible. I mean, the story is good. I think the characters are good. It's interesting, and it's also very approachable. It was great to just see from your family's perspective, not just your immediate family, I mean, your wife and daughter and stuff, but like your parents and stuff like that. The people that you're traveling around meeting, you know, they're like regular people, but, you know, they're taking. You're doing some pretty interesting stuff and you're taking on this topic that, yeah, few people talk about. So that was great.

Well, thank you. I appreciate that. Yeah, it's been. It's been a true joy of our life to spend the last two years with everyone in this fire community and also with our family and getting. Getting closer with them and understanding, you know, what makes them tick and what makes them happy and learning more about where our values came from and how those values were driving our money decisions. Just wildly eye opening. I kind of had this sense when I learned that we would be in front of the camera a lot more than we had originally planned. Obviously, I was nervous, but also I'd been behind the camera for so long that I kind of felt like, well, there's probably going to be a level of acting involved in this and this will be really interesting. And it turns out as soon as the cameras would roll, I don't know what this is about, but it had this really interesting effect, especially on my family, where they would just get super honest. And I had a conversation with my dad in the film that is the most we've ever talked about money, and.

That was like, the most. I felt so incredibly supported by him in this with doing all of this.

And I didn't even think to ask.

Him about that prior.

And so we had just a really wonderful, valuable conversation. And I remember going into that conversation being nervous, like, what's he going to say? How's this going to go? It ended up being incredible. And that happened so many times. So, yeah, we felt really lucky that we felt like we were kind of putting some magic in the bottle quite a bit when we were filming and. And I'm really proud of the team and the effort that was put in. And it feels good. And, you know, the movie seems to be relating to people and being received well, so we're very blessed.

Awesome. Any cast fan favorites?

What do you mean?

Well, are there any people that are, like, where one member of your cast is getting more fan support than others?

Oh, I see.

I think it's. I Am hearing a lot that people are really, really stoked on Brandon's line.

Early on in the film where he says, isn't it better to be rich.

Than to look rich? And I'm seeing that one getting reposted a lot.

I see a lot of people really.

Resonating with Christy Shen. She's got some great one liners in the film, but yeah, I mean, those.

Are a couple that have kind of been trickling in. But you know, we've only been live.

Now for six days, so.

Yeah, so I'm sure those, those things will continue to trickle in.

I mean, another thing that I tend.

To see a lot is people are.

Really fascinated by the age at which our fire heroes actually hit financial independence. Because we put that in their, in their subtitles.

Right.

Or I'm sorry, in their lower thirds. Just to kind of continue to reiterate and reinforce how potent this framework can be. But it is pretty stark when you see Vicki looking young and spry. I think she's in her late 60s, early 70s, and she retired somewhere around 30 and that's sustained now for four decades. That's pretty incredible.

Yeah. I was talking with Doug Nordman from the Military Guide, and yeah, you know, he retired in his early 40s and he's been retired for 17 years. Yeah, I just did a podcast with, you know, Retirement Manifesto, Fritz Gilbert and Early Retirement Now, Carsten and Chris Mamula over at Can I Retire Yet? And they've all been, they've all hit fi about a year ago and have different flavors. Fat fire, lean fire, all these different things. But, you know, they've learned a lot in their first year. But then I was like, oh, yeah, well, Doug Norman, he's been going 17 years and Vicky's been going for 40 years.

Yeah, Doug is awesome.

We actually.

We met in Hawaii and.

Filmed for the movie together.

And he's just a wonderful human. It's so unfortunate we weren't able to fit that interview into the film. It just didn't quite fit with that whole section. But he's so generous and I've, I've been so fortunate to spend a lot of time with him and that guy is truly living, you know, he is living that retired lifestyle in a great way. I, I definitely admire him and, and look up to him. So.

Yeah, yeah, yeah, he's out. He's living in Hawaii, surfing every day. So I don't think exactly. He's fine.

Yep.

Yeah. So, yeah. By the way, I thought your father did a great job. It was interesting and I Don't know if this is in the movie, but you. I think you told me separately or I don't know if or not, but like he was in charge of training all the Navy SEALs or something like that. That was his job.

Yeah, he was the head of training for Spec War towards the end of his career. Yeah, for quite a while.

So, yeah, that seems like a super intense job. But he seemed like a pretty relaxed person. Not, you know, what was there anything, like, special about? I mean, besides traveling over the place. But do you feel like you. He did things in a different way when you were growing up?

Well, that's a big question.

He was certainly insanely stressed when he was at that job. I remember he was coming home with migraines and whatnot. Towards the end, retirement was really critical for his health. And what you see now in the film is a guy who's retired to, you know, back to his, his, his roots and where he grew up, back in this small town in Iowa. And he absolutely loves it there. So you see that calm guy that's working on a fence line and keeping the brush clear, and that's his best life. Like, that's what he wants to do.

He loves it.

And you can see, you can see how fulfilling it is for him. And it's kind of a joy. It's a joy for me to go back and participate in that when I get to go home. But it wasn't always like that. And, you know, and he found that financial security through 30 years of hard work in the Navy and securing, you know, one of the only solid pensions left in this world.

Right.

But I remember growing up, my dad had a healthy fear of money and he, he would be much more comfortable keeping his head in the sand and letting mom run that side of the house. He kind of looked at it like he would go out, he would go get it, he'd bring it home and expect her to put it away and be careful with it, you know. So I grew up with that same sort of healthy fear of money. And that manifested itself a little differently for me where I didn't join the military and I didn't have that sense of security and guarantee of a consistent paycheck and a pension. So I took the entrepreneur route and said, that's not the way I want to live. I want to secure myself hard and fast because I don't want what I grew up with, with that. So that definitely drove my decision making early on. The problem was I didn't have any foundation behind that. That was just A feeling, you know, until I found fire that. That I was able to. To really live that. That out. But yeah, I mean, I was so blessed to live in a strong household.

With parents who loved me and, you.

Know, they raised me well. And I learned a lot of fantastic values from my dad and discipline and respect and all these things that they hold very, very dear.

Yeah, it's awesome. I think it's interesting when you dig into people and learn about their history, and it does. These things do echo through the generation. So I think people that do make good choices and take the time to get educated and hopefully raise kids that are thoughtful about money and the environment and all that stuff, it'll pay dividends. Not just, you know, in the very near future, but also in future generations.

Yeah, that's a big driver for Taylor and I is second generation Phi, and the Choose Phi guys talk about that all the time. I love that they focus on that. But that's a huge driver for Taylor and I is knowing that, you know, we have this precious life in our hands, our little daughter, and we want to make sure that she just, you know, that we can provide as much opportunity as we can for her to have her be able to focus on living her best life and her happiest life and not having to necessarily worry about money, but to know it and understand it and respect it. So we feel like this is giving future generations that opportunity.

Right, that's cool. All right, so any huge lessons from the experience that you would kind of hit in terms of, you know, just learning about five, but also making the movie and this change in your life, Any kind of top few things that you would call out to folks?

I would say that some of the biggest lessons we've learned is that balance is really important.

You know, we went all out when.

We started, and I actually would recommend considering that framework, you know, when we.

Had so much to shed, we had.

So many bad habits to reverse, that it was good for us to sort of take this thing to the extreme and see how it felt. Because then we were able to pull back from the extreme and land in a place that was, you know, for all intents and purposes, still extreme. To save 50% of our income was an extreme shift, but coming back from 70, I think we hit like 76 or 78% at our. @ our best, you know, and that was. We pushed it too.

Far. We.

Were. We were unhappy, you know, pushing it that far. And so to come back to 50 felt like we landed in a good spot. Whereas if we had Never tried to hit 50. If we just tried to implement small changes to continue to increase our savings rate, we may never have hit.

50. So I.

Do. I do appreciate that. That strategy, and I would recommend people kind of just pull the band.

Aid.

Off, knowing that you can always fall back to bad habits if it gets too hard. But I do recommend that. But I also recommend trying to keep balance in mind, because we've gotten off balance many, many times over the last couple years, going way too far with this thing. And this project has sort of taken on a life of its own. And it's really been. It's been a true joy to work on this, but it's also been a really, really extensive drain on our time and our health and our relationship and everything. My family's been so involved with all this. I mean, we did that screening tour for four months on the road, and we needed to lean on my mom and Taylor's parents to really come through and watch our child and travel around with us so that we could still see her and still do this. So it's great that it's important work and it's feeding us on that front, but we've been out of balance many times. So I think balance is a big lesson we've learned, is that I think people need to keep that in focus, especially when deciding to pursue.

Fi. Yeah, that's awesome. Those are great. Quick personal aside, I was visiting my son at his first year of college, and he's like, hey, I'm trying keto. And I'm like, all right, that sounds unhealthy. And then I was hanging out with him, and then by the end of the week, and I'm like, all right, I'm gonna try keto. And. Which is a way of basically eating zero carbs. So I was like, all right, here we go. And we. We go shopping. He's. And there's all these. Also these strips that you can pee on to see if you're in keto. Anyway, so he's like, all right, no carbs. And that means, like, absolutely nothing. So you can't even eat, like, fruits and vegetables. I mean, many kinds of. Most kinds of fruit you can't eat. You're basically eating, like, meat, cheese, and then certain leafy vegetables. And I made it 48 hours. And then I got. I started. I couldn't sleep. I'm getting headaches. I'm, like, getting sick. And. And then I. You know, I dialed it back. But it was interesting to try going all in on something like that. Anyway, I Think the idea of experimentation in your life is important and to keep doing it like, so this is this huge experiment you've run in your life. But whatever it is, if it's, if it's diet, if it's exercise, you know, if it's changing your money habits, you know, try these things and see what happens. And then, yeah, it can be cool to kind of go all in on something even if it is going to be painful because you can back off of that, that change if you need.

To. Yeah. Like you, you don't. In that, in that example, you don't technically know what the keto diet could do for you. Right. You haven't really gone through it, but you went extreme to start and it didn't quite.

Fit. But it's good that you tried.

It. I think there's a lot of parallels there with financial independence. I mean, you could start dipping your toes in this and something might stick, something might not. But if you don't get that instant gratification or if it hurts in the beginning, you may not continue with it. So I think it's more about shifting your mentality. And I think if you had to implement keto for health reasons, it might be a lot different than if you hear it casually and then just decide to go along with the flow to see what it's like.

Right? Yep, exactly. And you know, I think a low carb, like I kind of dialed back to kind of like a semi, less carbohydrates, which I think is better for people longer.

Term. I would.

Recommend. There's a new documentary out called Game Changers on Netflix and a couple of my friends were actually advisors, scientific advisors on this, on this film, been deeply involved in it. It's about this plant based diet movement that's happening and centers around like elite athletes breaking records at crazy ages because they change their diet. It's really fascinating. I would highly recommend that if you're interested in looking at your diet choices. But yeah, we watched that and committed, I committed myself to going to a plant based diet just recently after watching that, at least through 2020. But after doing this for about three weeks, I can pretty confidently say that this is now a new norm for me because of the positive effects that I've had. So. Okay, yeah, anyway, I would check that out. Game Changers, Arnold Schwarzenegger's in it. I think James Cameron was a producer on it. It's a quality.

Film. All right, I'll definitely check it out. I'll also send my 15 year old to check it out because he's been talking about a plant based diet and he's an athlete, so. So, yeah. So, okay. As we wrap up, I just wanted to kind of get. I know that you've been thinking now that you've done the movie, you're also thinking about other things in TV and stuff like that and podcasts. What's next for you? What are the next big things you're gonna be working on in the next year or.

Two? Yeah, well, you know, first and foremost, we're supporting the film. There's a lot of work yet to do to continue to grow that. I am in the early stages of producing a podcast. We've got a couple episodes in the bank and we're continuing to build that a bit, figure that out. But I'm really excited about that. I'm doing that along with a friend of mine here in Bend who has reached fi and is sort of living that life that we're talking about. He's facilitating communities, giving back. He's thinking about others. He's got a lot of balance in his life. He's a good, you know, he's someone who's been there, done that and. Yeah, and I think we just enjoy it. We're having fun doing it. So that's gonna be cool. I'm excited about the podcast and then, yeah, we might have an opportunity to produce a TV show. We're working on that now and pitching that around. TV's difficult, you know, you never know. But I'm excited to see what happens there and then I'm leaving myself open to opportunities, hopefully within this framework. I'm so excited about FHIR and its potential. We've talked a lot about its potential today and yeah, I've just been ideating and thinking about that. We're talking about building a framework that maybe we could take out to corporations as sort of a benefits package. Teaching your employees about financial independence and building research and frameworks around the idea that this could actually improve output and efficiency and ideas and everything around a business, empowering your workforce to basically live their best.

Life. Those things.

Are. I think that you can find glimmers of those in things like Google. Doesn't Google.

Have.

A. They have a certain percentage of their time that they're allowed to use to projects that they care.

About. Well, they had the 20% time. I don't know if they're still doing it, but that used to be a thing where one in five days they could do whatever the heck they.

Wanted. Right, right. And use the company's.

Resources. To.

Do.

So.

Yeah. And then I've seen a lot of research out there now about going to a four day work week and yeah, engagement and productivity is improving when you do that. So, you know, these ideas of finding more balance for people, they're very exciting. So, yeah, that's kind of what's.

Next. That's awesome. It's good to hear about. Well, and are you looking at YouTube at.

All? Yeah, yeah, we've taken a lot of the footage that we got through the process of filming. We had something like 36 terabytes of footage, something like 100 hours. So we've taken some of those, the best hits out of there and edited them down and we'll be releasing that over the next year on YouTube and yeah, potentially creating a series if we can find the right feel and fit. I could totally see that being a part of our strategy to get the message.

Out. Yeah, YouTube's a pretty. I mean, we're not doing it, but I've heard from folks in the FI community that, you know, it's a really powerful medium for them today. But that's super.

Fast. You can even want to more creative on this, this framework. I think that would be.

Wonderful. Yeah, that'd be awesome. All right, well, look, Scott, this has been great. You know, just as we wrap up any kind of. I mean, we called out a lot of the FI folks that are on your movie, but any great resources or communities that, you know, you want to call.

Out. Well, of course. Newretirement.com.

Right? Yeah.

Thanks. Yeah, of course. I mean, you know, yeah, I would say anyone on our cast page, I would highly recommend checking them out. There's. There's kind of something for everyone. You've got NORDS is the military guide. If you're, you know, if you have any experience in the military, he's a great resource. Go Curry cracker. Those guys are awesome for geo arbitrage and tax optimization. Kristi Shen over at Millennial Revolution. Her and Bryce are doing great.

Work.

J.D. roth is just. He's just such a consistent writer who just puts out the. I love his writing, I love his work. PT over at fincon. Those guys are just running one heck of a conference and it's a great place to meet people. And speaking of that, campfi with Stephen, you know, those guys are putting together meetups all over the country. Chautauqua. Ian Bryce and J.L. collins and Allen and Katie Donegan are running just an excellent retreat on an international level with Chautauqua. I love Carl, Mr. 1500. That guy just puts a smile on my face every day. He's got his little dinosaurs and he's quirky and.

Awesome. I love.

Him. Rich and regular Julian and Kirsten. They are incredible thinkers and talking about really important things around race and social economic issues. They're somebody to watch choose by, of course. J.L. collins. The simple Path to wealth is like my.

Bible.

Paula. Brandon, I could go.

On. Come.

On. Yeah, no, it's a pretty. It's a pretty big. Well, it's a. It's a definitely very interesting community and with a lot of different perspectives. I'm hoping to get JL Collins on the podcast. I talked to him a few years ago, and then I'm trying to reconnect. We're starting to reconnect right now, so hopefully he'll come on because he's done. His simple path to wealth is, you know, so core to what a lot of people are doing in terms of investing and just keeping it basic and low cost. You know, it does not have to be complicated. Okay, cool. Well, so, Scott, thanks for being on our show. And Dotto Robison, thanks for being our sound engineer. Anyone listening? Thanks for listening. Hopefully you found this useful. Our goal at New Retirement is to help anyone plan and manage their retirement so they can make the most of their money and time. And if you made it this far, I hope that you check out the site PlayingWithFire Co or you can just Google Playing with Fire, the documentary, and you can see what Scott's got out there and all the resources that he's pointing to. Also, you're welcome to check out our site@newretirement.com where you can build your own plan for free or take advantage of some of our advanced tools. We also run a private Facebook group which is growing pretty quickly, where you can follow us ewretirement on Twitter. And then finally, we are trying to build the audience for this podcast and I know Scott is doing the same thing for his movie. So if you check out either please leave a review on itunes or whichever streaming service we'd really appreciate it. And we read them all. I'm sure Scott does too. And we're working on improving everything. Okay? So thanks again and have a great.