FIRE Community Guest Interview #21 – Young Retired Couple Have Mastered The FIRE Lifestyle

Hey hey – we’re back! Here we are again with our next installment of the FIRE Community Guest Interview Series!  

For anyone new here, this interview series will cover people within the FIRE community who are on their way to becoming financially independent, have already reached financial independence, or who have retired early. If you are reading this and you are financially independent, retired early, or close to reaching these major financial milestones, please reach out to the Modern Fimily! You can check out the previous FIRE Community Guest Interviews here.

Today, we have the pleasure of having Lauren join us from my home state of Florida!  Lauren, and her husband Steven, are the brains behind the amazing blog Trip of a Lifestyle. They were able to retire by 29 (that is not a typo!) while making middle class incomes. 

I first heard about them on a ChooseFI podcast that they were interviewed on a few years ago and our thoughts align so much with theirs.  We also are fellow UF alum – go Gators! 😉 I love how they value travel and have made so many incredible trips a reality at such a young age.  They are very aware of their spending and provide some really interesting money savings hacks.  

I hope you appreciate these responses as much as I do and hope you can relate to these guest interviews in some sense to see that there is no cookie-cutter way to FI. If you have any follow up questions or would like to get in touch with Lauren and Steven, please see the last question of the interview to see all the ways you can contact them.  And of course, please comment below as well! Without further ado, take it away Lauren!

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1. Can you give us a little background of who you are, what you do, and how you became interested in personal finance? How did you discover the idea of financial independence?

I’m Lauren! My husband Steven and I run the personal finance and travel blog Trip Of A Lifestyle. We started learning about and working toward financial independence right after college. Around eight years later, we were able to walk away from full-time work forever.

Getting started at a young age was powerful for us, which is why we try to encourage young people to get started on the path to financial independence as early as possible. But it’s important to have fun as you work toward your goals. Our way of doing that has been to take multi-month travel sabbaticals, each with a net cost of around $0, in between the years we buckle down and save.

2. When in your journey did you realize financial independence was actually possible?  Was that the original goal at the beginning?

Two years after we graduated from college and started working at our first full-time jobs, we had saved and invested over $100,000, and neither of us made more than a teacher’s salary. That huge milestone really proved to us that what we were doing was working. By keeping our household expenses super low, we felt very in control of our circumstances, and that helped empower us to dream big.

But those two years also took a toll on us. In addition to our jobs and side gigs, we were also planning our own wedding. So, when we got married, we decided to reward all our hard work with a really good vacation — a honeymoon in Hawaii. The only thing is, we didn’t want to spend a few of the precious thousands we had just worked so hard to save on a two-week trip. It seemed dumb.

That’s when we decided to take six months off to move to Hawaii instead. We rented an apartment instead of staying in hotels, bought a used car for cash instead of getting a daily rental, and practiced a ton of other lifestyle optimizations that wound up making our vacation more like our usual frugal life.

Because we engineered it to be affordable, we didn’t need to work more than 10 hours a week to cover all of our bills. That trip allowed us to sort of dry run early retirement and gave us the experience we needed to further cement our FIRE plans.

3. To help put things into context, what is your savings rate, FIRE goal, how many hours a week do you work, etc?  How long have you been working towards financial independence, and where are you today? 

When we were working full-time, we saved (and invested) something like 60-85% of our after-tax incomes consistently. We did that for about 8 years, minus a year or so of extended travel breaks. During that period, our annual spending for two was between $18k and $24k most of the time.

At this point, we’ve reached FIRE, but it doesn’t really matter as much to us any more because we’ve realized that we’ll probably never actually need to live off of our portfolio. We’ve considered ourselves to be “semi-retired” since age 29, but we’ve kept a very small amount of freelance work which keeps our portfolio growing instead of shrinking.

Since we don’t have employer-provided health insurance any more, our household spending for two today is more like $25-30k per year when we’re at home, and pretty close to the same while traveling.

4. Do you feel deprived?  Do you feel like you are sacrificing and missing out on life?  How would you say your mindset has shifted throughout your FI journey?

We never felt like we were sacrificing fun on our path to FIRE. I think starting on our FI journey early kept us from falling victim to lifestyle inflation, which is where I think a lot of “FOMO” comes from. It’s easy to be happy living like a college kid when you just keep doing that right out of college instead of trying to cut your expenses back later.

We were fine with our furniture from college, so we didn’t feel the need to upgrade (don’t worry, we did get rid of our futon though). We also baked in plenty of affordable travel, like our graduation road trip from Florida to Alaska and back, our Hawaii honeymoon, and our more recent, seven-month National Park adventure.

That’s a big part of our story and what we try to get more people to understand: your journey to financial independence doesn’t have to be a long grind that denies every pleasure. We advocate for taking breaks when you need them, but it’s important to find ways to keep them from breaking the bank, too.

Ideally, every dollar you save and invest makes you feel that much more free. That mindset shift empowers you to take control over your life and make choices for your own best interest — whether that’s asking for a raise, leaving a toxic workplace, going on a long trip, or starting a business.

5. What do you spend your money on and what don’t you spend your money on? What brings you happiness and joy? How much money do these things cost?

I would say we get most of our joy from things that cost next-to-nothing. Walking on the beach, going to a park, riding our bikes, and just generally getting some fresh air and exercise. We’re huge advocates of the great outdoors as the ultimate theme park.

We also love a good road trip, and our van was one of the things we’ve splurged on in more recent years. We bought a 2013 Nissan NV200 and converted it into a camper for the National Parks trip we did in 2019, but we’ve kept it to continue to travel affordably throughout North America.

Since graduating college, we’ve always shared a single car between us, and we’ve always bought used cars somewhere in the $2,000 – $6,000 range. This van, while used, was the most expensive vehicle we’ve ever purchased at $12,300. But it’s still our only vehicle.

Another thing we pay for is a Planet Fitness membership, especially if we’re traveling. It’s about $25/month for one person, but it allows access to any location in the country — and a guest pass each visit at no extra cost. So, we essentially get two memberships for the price of one, allowing us to work out — and shower — anywhere in the country. This is one of our biggest travel hacks when we’re camping in our van, which is basically just big enough for us and our bed.

6. Do you use a budget?  Do you track your expenses? Do you track your net worth? If so, how often do you update these?

We’ve actually never budgeted, but we do track our net worth monthly. I think it’s a better, more holistic lens to look through, and tracking your net worth naturally encourages maximization of saving, whereas budgeting tends to be more about keeping saving/spending constant.

7. As a FI member living in the US, are there any pros to living in America specifically that have helped you along your journey?  Conversely, any cons?  

I think we’ve been lucky to live in a country that allows us to set our own price for what we’re worth as employees. Looking at employment as a voluntary business transaction means I can do what’s best for me, just as my employer tries to do what’s best for them. If those positions don’t align, we don’t do business. It’s pretty powerful, and it’s helped me take a stronger stance in my negotiations.

Aside from the freedom to do business as we choose, I think the United States just has a big economy that’s full of widely varying opportunities. There are plenty of other countries I could say these same things about too, but I do count myself lucky to live in the US.

8. What is your investment strategy? Do you invest in index funds, dividend stocks, real estate, other businesses, etc.?  Has your investment strategy changed over the years? 

Most of our investments are broadly diversified, total stock and bond market index funds. When we moved to the beach last year, we kept our previous condo as a rental. Since we paid for both condos in cash, we’re a little more real estate heavy than we originally intended, but we’re still happy with the mix.

9. Do you take advantage of tax-advantaged accounts offered to you?  If so, which ones and how so?  Do you have a game plan to be able to withdraw from these funds when the time comes? 

We both max out IRAs and HSAs each year, but we’ve never maxed out any other tax-advantaged accounts. We’ve retired from full-time work, so we don’t have access to any employer-sponsored plans, like a 401k, any more (which we used to contribute to in order to claim an employer match).

We’ve always parked a large chunk of our savings in a taxable brokerage account because we knew we’d be retiring early and potentially wanting access to our portfolio before age 59.5. That account is what’s allowed us to pay cash for our homes.

We also went hard on Roth IRAs when we were younger, and it’s nice to know that the contributions from those (but not the gains) can be tapped penalty-free at any time. We’ve never done it though.

10. Speaking of withdrawals, what is the withdrawal rate you plan to use when you withdraw from your portfolio?  Are you a fan of the “4% rule” or something else?  Why?

Our FI goal has always been loosely based on the 4% rule, but we have no need to withdraw from our portfolio at this time. Ultimately, we’ve found that our specific FIRE number doesn’t really matter to us any more, since our expenses are so low that just a tiny amount of fun freelance work covers them more than 100%. But if we were forced to live off of our portfolio, we’d limit withdrawals to 4% or less annually.

11. As an American couple pursuing FI, what are your post-FIRE thoughts/plans regarding health coverage?  As a reference, what do you currently pay annually or monthly for health related costs (be it insurance, co-pays, deductibles, etc.)? What do you estimate your post-FIRE health costs to be per year?

Our general strategy is to buy as little insurance as possible in all areas of life, self-insuring what you can afford to. Unfortunately, healthcare is not something we can fully self-insure.

We currently have a high-deductible health care plan through healthcare.gov, and we pair it with an HSA. We’re still young and healthy, with no chronic or ongoing illnesses, so we likely won’t make changes to that for a while. Our annual physicals are included, but not much else. The coverage is there for catastrophic issues like a cancer diagnosis. We’re on the hook for anything less than ~$13,000 each year. The premium is something like $580/mo for the two of us at the moment (ouch), but we will probably get a significant subsidy due to lower income this year.

12. If you could go back in time and change things, what would you have done differently?

I would have liked to know about index funds and investing sooner. We started investing shortly after college graduation, but we’d have been in a position to do a little bit of investing before that, if we had known how.

13. Has discovering financial independence changed how you view your job and life overall? 

Financial independence (and the increasing freedom achieved while working toward that goal) allowed me to take control over my life and its trajectory. I didn’t always know it was exactly what I needed, but it was.

14. Have you come out of the FIRE closet yet? Meaning, do your friends, family, co-workers etc. know about your financial independence goals?  If so, how did you bring it up and what were their reactions?  If not, why not?  Why do you struggle with this conversation and why do you feel that money is such a taboo topic?  

I guess everyone knows now that we blog about financial independence, but I don’t know that everyone’s really accepted the truth of it all.

I also think some people read about what we’ve done and think “that’s great for them,” but I don’t know that they believe it could be possible for themselves. We’re trying to change some minds and lives. That’s why we write the blog.

15. What pieces of advice would you suggest to someone who is just starting out or someone who is working toward reaching financial independence? 

Be obsessed with learning. Knowledge pays dividends throughout your entire life, so frontload a lot of your learning, and never stop doing it.

16. What does the word ‘success’ mean to you?

The best kind of success is being happy with both your results and the process of achieving those results.

17. Are there any books, blogs, or podcasts that you would recommend for our readers to check out?

I’m probably a bit biased, but I certainly think you should give our Financial Roadmap a read if you’d like to reach FIRE in the funnest way possible. The blog that helped us the most on our own journey was Mr. Money Mustache. And if you’d like to learn about investing through books, we recommend The Simple Path to Wealth and A Random Walk Down Wall Street.

18. How can people get in contact with you? 

Website: https://www.tripofalifestyle.com/

Facebook: Trip Of A Lifestyle

Instagram: @TripOfALifestyle

Twitter: @TOALifestyle

YouTube: Trip Of A Lifestyle

TikTok: @TripOfALifestyle

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Come on, so good! Here are some of our key take-aways from this interview:

• Their story epitomizes why learning about personal finance, and in particular FIRE, at a young age is SO powerful.  They were able to keep lifestyle inflation at bay which greatly supercharged their timeline as they likely did not need as big of an FI number vs if they had discovered FIRE 15 years later once the big house, nice car, fancy this and that became the norm.
• Loveeee how they hacked their Hawaii honeymoon.  So many people assume a longer trip = more expensive.  We too love the concept of slow travel where you can likely see way more for the same price, if not less, over the course of a month+ than what a typical 2 week vacation would cost.
• Another vote for free entertainment.  For us, its going for a walk, building a snowman, going sledding, checking out a new hike, doing an outdoor scavenger hunt, swimming in the creek, looking at bugs, etc.  These things can last hours and provide a ton of entertainment for little kiddos.
• Hands down my favourite hack of theirs was hearing the Planet Fitness shower hack while listening to their ChooseFI interview.  After I heard that, they gained mad respect from me haha.  $25/month to have access to showers (and workouts) all across the country – genius!  So many people would instead upgrade their van to have a shower which would be way more $$! Totally using this shower hack if/when we travel around the States.  
• I hope Lauren’s response to post-FIRE health coverage plans/costs makes some Canadians reading thankful to be living up here!  The high deductible plans in the States are no joke.  Of course, hopefully you never have to spend up to your deductible in a year but it’s something that should be considered for every American FIRE seeker out there.
• I love how they are able to keep their expenses low which allows them to do some fun part time freelance gigs to cover their entire expenses for the year so they’re sitting at a 0% withdrawal rate.  I’d also like to highlight that all profits earned from their blog are donated to charity which I find very admirable.
• We too write our blog to help people figure out the mindset shift.  I’m sure many readers think “there’s no way we can do what they did” when hearing either of our stories but hopefully you can make some tweaks to your lifestyle to improve your financial situation.
• Love your take on the meaning of success 🙂

Thank you again Lauren and Steven for being a part of our FIRE Community Guest Interview Series, appreciate it! In next month’s interview, we’re back in Canada with Sandy Yong – author of The Money Master – to share her story as well as provide a free book giveaway! 

Did you enjoy this interview? Any thoughts or additional questions for Lauren and Steven? Please let us know in the comments below 🙂 Thanks for tuning in and check back next month for the next interview.

We love highlighting other members of the FI community. Please contact us if you’d like to be a part of the FIRE Community Guest Interview series and we’ll see if we’re a good fit!

And in case you wanted to read the previous interviews that make up our FIRE Community Guest Interview Series, here you go!

• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 1 – Empowerment Through FIRE
• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 2 – We Quit Our Jobs To Retire Early & Travel The World
• FIRE Community Guest Interview # 3 – Dividend Investor Reached FI By Living An Intentional Life
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #4 – Pursuing FIRE With Multiple Passive Income Streams in Australia
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #5 – Driving to FIRE Through RV Living
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #6 – From High School Drop Out to Retired at 35
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #7 – Medical Professional Family With 3 Kiddos In The Pursuit of FIRE 
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #8 – Calculated Engineer Family Utilizing Geo-Arbitrage to Reach FI
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #9 – Lessons from a Fimigrant – Let Experience Be Your Teacher
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #10 – From Entrepreneur Making $36,000 to Multi-Millionaire In His 30s
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #11 – Hybrid Dividend and Index Investor Who’s Mastering the FI Mindset
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #12 – Proving Financial Independence Is Possible With Kids In A High Cost of Living Area
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #13 – Making An Impact On The Way To FI
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #14 – Badass Momma Knows Her Worth And Became A Millionaire At 36
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #15 – PhD Couple Reached FI at 40
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #16 – Mindful Minimalist Family
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #17 – FIWOOT: Financial Independence Work On Own Terms
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #18 – French Expats Growing Their Real Estate Empire in the US and France
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #19: Money Savvy Teacher With 9 Properties
• FIRE Community Guest Interview #20: Canadian Expat Supercharging His Family’s Path to FI In the Middle East

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