Lessons from the Chautauqua

If I’ve learned one thing dur­ing my 25 years on this Earth, it’s that peo­ple are full of advice.

Some of that advice is ter­ri­ble. Some isn’t real­ly applic­a­ble to your life.

How­ev­er, oth­er tid­bits offered by peo­ple have the poten­tial to change your entire life. That was the case at the Chau­tauqua last week. There was an incred­i­bly diverse group of peo­ple tossed togeth­er, rang­ing from refugees of war to your typ­i­cal small town Amer­i­can. Every­one had at least one thing in com­mon though, and that was each of them had been 25 at some point (rang­ing from fair­ly recent­ly to um.… awhile ago). There were 3 moments of advice that stand out very clear­ly to me from the rest of the week.

The first moment came when I was on the bus seat­ed next to Jim Collins, the mas­ter­mind behind the excel­lent FI blog jlcollinsnh. We were chat­ting about var­i­ous top­ics like how did I get intro­duced to the FI con­cept, how did I hear about the Chau­tauqua, why I want­ed to go on it, how I start­ed blog­ging and then more per­son­al top­ics like dat­ing and how my moth­er felt about me fly­ing halfway around the world to meet up with a bunch of strangers from the inter­net. He under­stood both sides of that issue, as some­one who has trav­eled around the world and as the father of a daugh­ter who went to join the Peace Corps. He told me, “I try not to let my fear get in the way of her spread­ing her wings.” For some rea­son, that struck me as par­tic­u­lar­ly insight­ful, and I’m writ­ing down in the hopes that I remem­ber that for the future should I ever have kids. He had lots of oth­er great advice to offer as well (even if he did make fun of me for being dis­tract­ed by a cow. You’d think some­one from the Mid­west would­n’t get excit­ed by a cow, but it’s not every­day you see one on a leash being walked next to a major highway!)

The sec­ond moment came on the last day. I was cir­cu­lat­ing around the group say­ing my good­byes when one of them pulled me to the side. He told me (and I’m para­phras­ing here) that if I ever have a moment of self-doubt, I should know he does­n’t have any doubt in me what­so­ev­er. He was­n’t the only one to tell me some­thing like that either. To be sur­round­ed by such a sup­port­ive and encour­ag­ing group of peo­ple for an entire week.….. I don’t know if I can describe the impact it had on me. It was lit­er­al­ly life chang­ing though. This group of peo­ple bare­ly knew me and could see the poten­tial I have, and here I am just rest­ing on my haunch­es and squan­der­ing it. It was rather hum­bling to know they have more faith in my abil­i­ties than I do (some­times).

The third moment came over a series of offi­cial and unof­fi­cial 1–0n‑1 meet­ings. Part of the allure of the Chau­tauqua for me was get­ting to meet with one of the speak­ers: Pete from Mr. Mon­ey Mus­tache, Jim Collins (the same one men­tioned above), Paula Pant from the Afford Any­thing blog and Cheryl Reed, our love­ly host from Above the Clouds retreats. I was lucky enough to get my offi­cial 1‑on‑1 with Pete. I was par­tic­u­lar­ly inter­est­ed in hav­ing a meet­ing with him, since he’s the rea­son I start­ed on my FI jour­ney back in col­lege. I viewed this as kind of a test. I’ve been absorb­ing all the infor­ma­tion he and the oth­er blog­gers have been putting out, and try­ing to put it into prac­tice. I’m very pleased to report I passed the test with fly­ing col­ors! Pete thought all of my finan­cial stuff looked great (and in some cas­es was set up slight­ly bet­ter than his stuff).

We then spent the rest of the meet­ing con­sid­er­ing what I could do next. Yes, I have a great job. But, do I real­ly want to coast into ear­ly retire­ment in 10 years after suf­fer­ing through jobs I don’t like and that don’t engage me? Or do I want to put some hus­tle into my life and break free ear­li­er? That hus­tle could take many dif­fer­ent forms. I could get a bet­ter job- they do exist!- or I could ven­ture out on my own doing my own thing. Thus far, I’ve been focused on the Ear­ly Retire­ment part of FIRE, and I think it’s time to shift that into more of a focus on Finan­cial Inde­pen­dence. I have the basic finan­cial foot­print in place for ER, and now it’s time to branch out into explor­ing FI.

I also took advan­tage of Paula’s gen­eros­i­ty and had a mini 1‑on‑1 with her. She was very enthu­si­as­tic, encour­ag­ing, sup­port­ing and all those oth­er adjec­tives once she heard my details and rough plan. Before, my plan was to rent until the end of my cur­rent posi­tion, then either move to a new place and rent or stay in place and buy a place. She encour­aged me to not wait and start now. Yes, I will have some minor fees and costs incurred, but the pay­out will be worth it in the long run.

Now, since I have access to a VA loan thanks to my time in the mil­i­tary, I will be buy­ing a duplex or triplex! This requires I cut back some on my aggres­sive 401k sav­ings for a bit so I can have some cash on hand for a down­pay­ment and any repairs/upgrades I might need/want to make. I can then spend the next chunk of time get­ting renters, find­ing my team of con­trac­tors and oth­er­wise set­tling into the life of a land­lord. Even if I do end up mov­ing some­where else (say Thai­land or Aus­tralia), I’ll have this pas­sive income in addi­tion to my reg­u­lar pay­check from my day job. My expens­es are fair­ly low, so it’s not that far of a stretch to say it’d be pos­si­ble to live off the rental income and straight up bank my pay­check every month. Obvi­ous­ly, this depends on a num­ber of fac­tors, like my mort­gage, rental income and any expens­es that pop up, but I’m con­fi­dent with Paula’s guid­ance I’ll be able to make wise deci­sions and get off to a good start.

I went to Ecuador look­ing for a kick in the pants and I think it’s safe to say I got that and more! From rec­om­men­da­tions on the best men’s trav­el under­ware to seri­ous life advice, I got it all. I’m incred­i­bly grate­ful I got this oppor­tu­ni­ty, and will most def­i­nite­ly keep every­one updat­ed on my progress!

Have you had any major inspi­ra­tions in your path to FI?