Kristy Shen on Financial Independence, Retire Early (FIRE)

00:59
Erin
I can still remember tuning into Kristy’s voice, listening to her share her remarkable story while gazing out the spacious windshield of our rented Class C rig at the breathtaking view of the northern shore of Lake Superior. It was auditory and visual awe combined. I’ll always recall how at that moment, after months of stifling quarantine in our house, I felt so free. When it comes to finding fulfillment and freedom, the topic of financial independence often comes up. It’s true that money can’t buy happiness. It’s also true that money can be leveraged to create more opportunities to spend your time the way you want to. And that doesn’t mean becoming a billionaire. Kristy and Bryce’s book introduced us to the FIRE movement – Financial Independence Retire Early.

01:48
Erin
Josh and I spent evenings on that trip sitting by the campfire after the kids had gone to bed, mapping out our strategy for more financial independence, time independence and location independence in the coming years. By the time our trip was over and our wheels rolled up at the end of our driveway, we had a plan and a fire – pun intended in our bellies. So for that reason, I am thrilled to be talking today with the incredible Kristy shenanigans. Kristy and her husband Bryce used a set of financial strategies to build a seven figure portfolio and retire at the tender age of 31. They have since spent the last decade traveling the world and beginning the journey of raising their son. 

02:34
Erin
Kristy and Bryce’s book Quit Like a Millionaire is a step by step guide to early retirement filled with practical tips and tricks that anyone can use in their journey to financial freedom. You can also find them on millennial-revolution.com . What I love about their work, beyond all the financial stuff, is how it challenges us to think differently and question everything. I can’t wait to dive in. Welcome, Kristy. 

02:59
Kristy
Hi, Erin. Thanks so much for having me. 

03:02
Erin
So let’s start with some of the basics. What is FIRE and how did you use that approach in your own life? 

03:09
Kristy
So FIRE stands for Financial Independence Retire Early. It’s the concept that if you build a portfolio big enough that throws off enough passive income that can cover your day to day expenses, you no longer need to work. Work then becomes a choice rather than something you have to slog through. If you love your job, you can continue working, but if you don’t, then go ahead and find your passion. Go ahead and spend time with your family and your loved ones and you’re free to do whatever it is that you want to do with your life. 

03:39
Erin
That sounds pretty amazing, but I’m wondering what kind of mental constructs did you have to overcome to be able to start that journey? I mean, there must be things that are holding us back. You know, when we think about conventional living, when we think about an average person heading to an office for a 9 to 5 job that maybe they don’t even like. Like what are some of the things that we have to change in our mindset to be able to be open to what you’re talking about? 

04:11
Kristy
The biggest one that I had to overcome was the blueprint that our parents and the previous generation had given us, which was basically go to school, get a good job, buy a house, work until you’re 65 and retire. That’s kind of the blueprint to successful life, to adulting. And if you don’t follow this script, then you’re going to be an immature child forever and you’re going to fail at adulting. And what is the point of living? The problem with this script is that it may have worked for our parents way back when things were completely different. When tuition wasn’t so crazy that you would be in massive amounts of debt after graduating, it would be much easier to find a job. 

04:50
Kristy
Jobs in which they had pensions in which you could work until you’re 65 and not get laid off actually existed and you could actually afford to buy a house. Those are all things that are no longer true in today’s society. So following that blueprint no longer makes sense because the world has changed, so you actually have to change with it. But I had a lot of insecurity deviating from this blueprint. And one of the biggest reasons is as part of my culture, buying a house was considered the safest thing. It was, it was almost sacrilegious to not buy a house. Because my parents came from like the background of poverty and they escaped a totalitarian government. So to them, investing in the stock market is like one of the dumbest things you could ever do. It’s throwing your money away. 

05:35
Kristy
It’s not tangible like a house. You can’t physically touch it. It’s not like gold in which you can, you know, look at the gold bars in front of you. So trying to fight not just the blueprint that my parents gave me, but that mindset that they gave me, which is, we came from a poverty background. You can’t not buy a house. It’s the safest thing ever. Why are you doing this risky thing? Just getting over that mental hurdle was probably one of the most difficult things. And also it’s kind of coming to terms with your identity. Like, who am I as a person if I don’t have this job anymore, who am I? My culture says I should buy a house. My culture says I should listen to my parents. 

06:10
Kristy
All of these things that are built in to your identity has to be thrown away. So you kind of have this like little bit of a identity crisis and you try to figure out, what am I going to do next if I’m not an engineer, if I’m not my job, if I’m not listening to my parents, if I’m not following the blueprint, who am I? So it’s really self discovery and then kind of starting over from that perspective. 

06:32
Erin
Yeah. Oh, I love that. There’s so much there that I think we can all relate to. You know, when I think about the kind of traveling that you guys do now, even some of the traveling that our family is able to. Twenty years ago, the construct was that you had to slog it out till you were 65 to earn it. And I’m going to use that in quotes because it really felt like if you thought about doing anything like that before you had earned it, then you were being irresponsible or that it just wasn’t possible that your head was in the clouds. And clearly you guys are an example that it is possible. 

07:11
Kristy
The funny thing is that whole mentality of you didn’t earn it until you work, until you’re 65. The thing is, they didn’t even consider that’s not a choice. I mean, for the previous generation, if they hadn’t had to look for a job in the last 20 years, they wouldn’t have realized that people could get laid off every five years, never mind thinking about what’s going to happen in the next 25 years, it may not even be your choice to work until you’re 65 or not. Things are just not as stable as they used to be and there’s a lot more competition and then AI is coming to replace your job, there’s outsourcing, all these threats that they may not have had to face. 

07:44
Kristy
So that whole idea of you need to work until you’re 65, otherwise you haven’t made it may not be your choice. So to take the old advice and try to apply it to the current situation without making any changes and just blindly following it has shown that it just, it doesn’t work. Sometimes it’s just not even our choice. 

08:02
Erin
Yeah, you talk about how it’s not how much money you make, it’s about how much you save. What are some of the tricks people can use to save faster or live leaner? 

08:13
Kristy
I like the word to optimize rather than to save better. Because what happens is save has this connotation for a lot of people that it’s about deprivation or it’s about like, okay, so I’m going to sacrifice now so that I can get to this magical FI number so that I can sacrifice forever and live on rice and beans and cat food. And that’s not what it’s about. It’s actually about optimizing. Sometimes it actually makes sense to spend more money if it’s saving you money in the long run. For example, if you’re buying things that actually last and are high quality, you might only have to buy it once and then it’ll last you for 10 years versus buying the cheapest absolute minimum cost object and then that thing breaks within six months. Now you have to buy it every six months. 

08:56
Kristy
So it’s actually costing you many times how much you would have spent if you bought the more expensive thing to begin with. So that’s why I’d say it’s more about optimizing cost and not about cutting it or making a bare minimum or so much about saving. It’s about how do you make all these dollars that you spend so much of your life energy earning? How do you get the most return for that? How do you spend on things that actually make sense to you and then cut everything that doesn’t matter in your life and then make a life that is towards maximum happiness rather than minimizing cost. 

09:30
Erin
Okay, so I’m so glad you brought that up because this was my next question for you as well. One of the things I write about with the fulfillment equation is the realization that time is our most precious asset. Would you agree with that? 

09:45
Kristy
Absolutely. One of the things that taught us that lesson, at first we thought we understood that time was the most important thing just because we realized were trading so much of our time for a job that may not be stable for employers that are definitely not going to take care of us if we get old and if we get sick. But that lesson actually really hit home during the pandemic. So what happened was we were in Bali at the time and things were starting to close down. And it was around that time that we discovered that my husband’s dad, my father in law, was diagnosed with stage four brain cancer. It was a very bad prognosis and that he only had a 5% chance of survival for the next five years. 

10:23
Kristy
And so what we did was we dropped everything and we flew back to take care of him. And it’s been a, like ever since 2020. It’s been a very rough couple of years in that like when you’re taking care of someone and they’re in that situation, it’s really for the long run. Like you. At the very end, we were basically doing 24/7 shifts with my husband’s siblings and just being that we could be around all the time just in case he fell or just in case like anything happened to him. And it was just so hard watching someone who was so fit and having like, he basically kicked our butts multiple times in so many different sports. In golf, in tennis, in badminton, you name it. 

11:03
Kristy
He was so healthy to go from that to like us having to do shifts to really just help him go to the bathroom and feed him and all these things. And that’s when it really hit home how important time is. Because you know, like FIRE is not about anti work. It’s not about, okay, we’re just going to stop working and like, we hate our jobs or whatever. It’s about once you have enough money and you have bought your time back, then stop working. Because at that point, the time that is most precious for us specifically was time spent with my father in law in his final days. Because once that time is gone, you will never get it back and there’s nothing that we can do to bring him back. 

11:38
Kristy
And you know, all the money in the world would not have bought you that time. And that’s when we realized that the time you spend with the people you love, that’s the most valuable time. And there’s no amount of money that could ever buy that time back. 

11:53
Erin
That’s really helpful And I bring this up because one of the things that maybe I wanted to get your insight on is, you know, if somebody’s going hardcore FIRE, then it seems like they’re essentially making sacrifices on their time in the present in order to have an abundance of time freedom in the future. So how does one find the balance to make that trade off worth it? 

12:17
Kristy
I think it’s a mistake to only care about FIRE and to not think about what else is important in your life. In order to find that balance, I think you really have to align your priorities with how you want to be able to spend your time. So it was actually very ironic that at the time that were losing my father in law, I was also pregnant with my son. So it was this weird circle of life in which we basically like the day that I went to my father’s funeral was my due date, and then I basically gave birth like two days later. And then my husband was learning how to. He basically lost his dad, but he was also learning how to be a dad at the same time for the first time. 

12:51
Kristy
And yeah, so that makes me realize that, you know, now I have abundance of time to spend with my son, but if I had him before I became FI, like, would I give up my time watching him grow up just to like get to FIRE as soon as possible? And I don’t think that’s worth it. You know, it’s important to get to FI, but not at the. At the cost of your time with your family, not definitely not at the cost of your health, because that’s another thing you can never buy. 

13:18
Kristy
So it really should be evaluating at what is the cost of that and are you willing to give that up at the time that when were trying to drive towards FIRE as quickly as possible, were young and were in our 30s and were just trying to like, the time that I was trading off was, you know, time that I could have put towards my hobbies, time that I could have put towards my passion, which I was able to delay until later on. But would I have been willing to sacrifice my time with my father in law in order to like put more money towards FIRE rather than spend time to be with him? No, that’s not worth it. 

13:49
Kristy
So the most important thing to find that balance is to evaluate what is the cost of that time and whether you’re willing to make that sacrifice. 

13:57
Erin
Yeah, so it sounds like there are degrees of gray in there where it’s not so binary, where you’re like fully FIRE, you’re fully on fire or nothing, right? 

14:06
Kristy
Yeah, exactly. It’s not. You get this badge, it’s like, okay, if you don’t get to FI, then you don’t get this magical badge and then we’re all not going to be friends with you. And you’re not part of the cool fire club. No, there’s no such thing. It’s just, even if you get to partial FI, like that just gives you a lot of freedom to be able to. Maybe you can choose a job that’s not as stressful. Maybe you go and go down to part time. There’s a lot of ways to – lifestyle design so that you can pick what is the best option for you. It doesn’t. It’s not black and white. Absolutely not black and white. 

14:35
Kristy
And I feel like a lot of people in the FIRE space, myself included, get stuck in this like black and white thinking, which happens as a result of just following that kind of blueprint in life, which is like, you gotta check off this checkbox and adulting. You gotta get the job, you gotta get the degree, you gotta get the house you’ve got, like, when you start checking checkboxes, it teaches your brain to think very black and white. And also when you start working right, you. Do you have the job? Do you not have the job? You have these tasks to complete for the day. Did you complete it? Did you not complete it? It’s very black and white thinking. And that is how we get stuck into thinking. Like, are we FI or not FI? I have succeeded or I have failed. 

15:11
Kristy
But like you said, there’s multiple different shades of gray. It’s. I may not be pursuing FIRE. I might be pursuing partial FIRE. I might be pursuing, you know, more financial freedom in that I have enough living expenses to last for the next six months. I don’t have to worry about emergencies. That gives me a lot of room to breathe. And I can take a job that’s less risky and a job that I actually enjoy more with less money because I don’t have to worry about this emergency funds or I don’t have to worry about a massive mortgage over my head. There’s many different ways to reach the financial freedom. And it doesn’t have to be all or nothing. It doesn’t have to be 100% getting to FI. 

15:48
Erin
I wish I had read this book in my 20s, but it didn’t exist. So I read it in my 40s and I, I was curious about now that it’s been 10 years, now that you’ve aged, you’ve had a child how is your thinking evolved to now? And you know, if you were to start at this point in your life, what would look different? 

16:08
Kristy
I think basically as you age, things will change in your life that you’re not expecting. So I would say be more flexible about what you’re going to change in your life and then don’t be so again, it’s the black and white thinking that has hurt me in the past, that when I was younger, I just didn’t understand. I was very intense about everything and it’s either success or failure. And I think that looking back in my 40s and having a child, I think of thinking more in terms of grades would help me a lot, like relax a lot more and not be so intense about things. I don’t regret what I did in order to get to FI, but I think for other people, you know, they don’t have to be as extreme and they don’t have to be an intense. 

16:49
Kristy
And I think accepting the different shades of gray will give you a lot less anxiety and will let you plan your life a lot better. 

16:56
Erin
So here’s a particular area where maybe we can explore a little bit of gray. You do a lot of math in the book, which I really appreciated because I love math and I really loved how when you were curious about something, you would analyze the numbers and just get in there. In fact, Josh and I will still say to each other like, oh, we need to math it up, which is like the clean version of what you say. I just love that phrase. So one of the calculations that you do really presents a powerful perspective on homeownership. And I guess my question is, have the calculations changed in all the years since you did them? Because the housing market has been very strong in the last 10 years. 

17:42
Erin
And I guess the follow up question is if somebody hasn’t bought a house yet, they can look at that kind of analysis and maybe make a choice. If you’re already a homeowner, has anyone ever asked you to do the calculation on whether or not it’s a good idea to get out or whether the costs of getting out override any benefit that you described in that homeownership argument? 

18:08
Kristy
It’s interesting, actually. After I had my son, I have had a lot of readers write in about their family situation. I think before they would ask me, but not to this extent, because they’re like, okay, now that you’ve been through it, now that you have a family, are you more pro housing now? Can you look at my situation and then try to figure out what I should prioritize in that case and just seeing it from a parental lens, whereas before I was seeing it from like a individual’s lens. So there have been people that have written in. In which it is mathematically related. Like, they might have a child that has. They’re like neurodivergent. 

18:41
Kristy
So in that situation, they didn’t do it from a mathematical point of view, but keeping the house made sense from a lifestyle point of view because for the sake of their child’s health and sanity, because they make a lot of noise and just because their surroundings needs to be a certain way, it absolutely made sense for them. So that’s another area where it’s gray in which their family situation is not mathematically the choice that they made is more like for the safety and sanity for their child and their family. And I absolutely agree with that choice for that particular situation. I also had a lot of people ask me, now that you have a son, are you very pro housing now? Like, do you get a lot of flack from other parents that. 

19:20
Kristy
Or even your own parents are like, you’re not giving him a forever home. Like, how dare you do that as a parent? Like, are you depriving him of stability? I see. I hear that a lot. Are you depriving him of stability? 

19:32
Erin
He’s like, just. Just to pause for a minute. He’s like one? 

19:36
Kristy
Yeah, he’s just a little over one. 

19:38
Erin
Yeah. 

19:39
Kristy
Yeah. So they asked that now from me, coming from a parental point of view. And what’s interesting is that I do see their point of view more as a parent that it might be. They might be more attracted to home ownership, where it’s like, much easier to be a nomadic person and to live in rentals when you don’t have a child that you have to worry about. Okay, how long is it going to take me to move? It’s really exhausting being a parent. Yeah, I totally get all that. I still think the math makes sense because as a parent now, I see how much extra time I have if I do the math correctly. And I can leave a lot of the stuff to my landlord that I don’t have to do it myself. 

20:18
Kristy
I actually see that I have a lot more quality time with my son, whereas I see a lot of my friends that are like, when they do have to deal with a lot of home ownership issues, it’s just constant. It’s like either they have to fix the fence or there’s maintenance issues, or dealing with their neighbors or their interest rates have gone up, they have to renew their mortgages and just more financial strain. So I’m still team renter despite, like having a child. And I still agree that the math that we did in the book, the rule of 150, where you take the cost of what it would cost you monthly if you were to buy a house using a mortgage calculator and you multiply by 1.5 because it’s going to add about 50% of additional costs. 

20:58
Kristy
Home ownership costs like insurance, property taxes, maintenance, mortgage interest, all that stuff adds a lot of extra costs that people don’t see when they’re first time buyers. They just want to sign the dotted line and then call themselves a homeowner and check off that adulting checkbox. It still makes sense to do the math and figure out how much of all those additional overhead costs will, you know, how much it will set you back and then do that math. But I will say that it definitely, in situations in which the reader has written in and for the sake of your health and your child’s health and your safety, like, never, ever compromise that for math because once again, like your health, you will never be able to buy that back no matter how much money you save. 

21:41
Kristy
So I definitely think there’s shades of gray when it comes to that, depending on your personal family situation. But I’m still very much team rent and I still think you should definitely do the math because it’s just debilitating when people don’t understand how much ownership costs there are after they sign on the dotted line. And it’s good to go in with both eyes open and if you see that and you still agree that this is the best choice for your family, you know, like, good for you. You do, you boo. Like it makes sense for you, go ahead and do that. But it has to be an intentional choice, not just a choice. Without knowing any of the numbers and just listening to everyone else say, like, oh, you know, you’re depriving your child of stability, you better buy a house. 

22:18
Kristy
Or like, you’re missing out on the housing market. These are all emotional decisions and you don’t want to get sucked into a bad situation and then have to pay for it financially, which will cost you a lot of time with your child and it will cause a lot of strain with your family, which I don’t think is worth it. 

22:34
Erin
Yeah, I would like to be team renter just like you. We have a house already, so I think for us the task is to map it up in terms of does it make sense to keep it? Or maybe we start to look at it from an investment point of view and it becomes more of a rental or that sort of thing. So work to be done there. One thing that somebody shared with me once, because our family does a lot of traveling, that I really appreciated around the stability piece was that kids can get stability from lots of different places. And for us, the tightness of our family unit. And they were saying, you know, you and your husband’s relationship, like, these are the things that can provide stability for kids. So it doesn’t always have to be the house. 

23:19
Erin
I wanted to ask you about. I noticed all of the case studies on your website where people have written in asking you to analyze their financial situation. And I was. Was wondering, what are some of the common themes that you hear from people? What are, what are the things that they’re wanting in their life and what are their common fears? 

23:41
Kristy
Okay, so from the reader cases, it seems like a lot of people are really afraid of taking that leap. Like, even if the numbers work out, there’s this mental hurdle that they have to get over. It’s like this wall that’s like, okay, after I get to FI, then I quit my job and then I be a bum and I have no identity and all my other friends are working, so what do I do? It’s a lot of this. Like, even if they can understand the math, it’s really like a mental hurdle and an identity crisis that they’re having that, like, they don’t know what to do with themselves after FIRE. And as a result, a lot of people just kind of dismiss it outright. Like, after they try to do the FI thing for a while, they’re like, okay, well, this is hard. 

24:23
Kristy
And also, I don’t really know what I’m going to do with myself afterwards. So why not just keep working and then not really think about it, just like the status quo goal rather than taking the leap. And I think a lot of that also has to do with community. If you’re surrounded by a lot of people who are very pro, you know, working and like, climbing the corporate ladder, and then they have like, their big house that they’re showing off to everyone, you kind of get sucked into that. That mentality, right? Because everybody’s starting to have, like, contests about, like, my backyard’s bigger than your backyard, how much are you making per year? And what is my job title? And it’s very easy to get suckered into that bubble. 

24:59
Kristy
And I think it’s kind of hard for me to just tell people like, it’s going to be okay after Fi. You’re going to find a community. You’re going to be like you. You will have to do some self discovery to figure out what it is in retirement that you want to do and whether you want to keep working or you want to bring like how do you want to lifestyle design your life after FI. But I really cannot get rid of that fear unless they actually go through it. It’s kind of like if you’re afraid of flying and you’ve never flown before and you just don’t want to get on that flight and you just. 

25:27
Kristy
No amount of other people trying to calm you down and no amount of them giving you pep talks will help until you actually get on the plane and if everything goes smoothly and you’re like, oh, I just kind of made this up in my head and I built everything up to be so scary and it turns out to be just fine. It’s not nearly as bad as I think it is. They have to actually go through the process of doing it to be able to feel what it’s like to be FI. 

25:49
Kristy
I think actually pandemic kind of gave some people a preview because some people, they never considered that they would be able to work from home because their job is one of these that you have to come and show your set face in the office otherwise we’re all going to forget you and what’s the point of you being there? But then out of necessity, because the Pandemic, they actually had a little taste of what it’s like to be FI and what it’s like to actually have more flexibility that you’re not stuck commuting to work every day. 

26:13
Kristy
And I think after the Pandemic, people are actually a lot more receptive towards financial independence and then what their life is going to look like after FI because they got a little taste of not being stuck in traffic for two hours a day and being able to work in their pajamas and be able to walk the dog and be able to spend time with their, like maybe spend more time with their husband, you know, to bring their kids back from daycare and not be so frazzled. And I think that little spark showed them what it would be like without all the scary things that they’ve built up in their head. So I think after people started to come a bit more down, calm down and be more flexible towards like lifestyle design and FIRE. 

26:52
Erin
I wanted to ask you about geographical arbitrage. Can you explain this to us? 

26:58
Kristy
Okay, so geographic arbitrage is the idea that you earn money in a country with a very strong currency. So, for example, U.S. Canada, England, places in which the, like, let’s say the euro, the pound, the dollar, all of those, if you like, after you finish working and you take that, or you can even do this while you’re working, you take that money and you spend it in a place in which the currency is weak, for example, the Thai baht or the Polish Zvati or the Malaysian Ringgit. And then all of a sudden your money becomes so much more valuable, and then you basically are giving yourself a promotion without actually going through the work of giving yourself a promotion because you’re taking the money and you’re just. It goes so much further in another country. 

27:40
Kristy
An example of geographic arbitrage is this couple that I met when we were traveling in Vietnam, and they were from Australia and they were working stressful IT jobs prior to retiring. The husband was so stressed that he actually had triple bypass surgery. And yeah, he was actually showing me the scar on his chest. Very intense. Yeah, it was very intense. And then he said after he moved to Vietnam, they basically started a spa. And then they, like, they were like the number four spa in all of Vietnam. So they did really well. And then he was saying that his stress level went down significantly. And also the money that he saved in Australia went so far in Vietnam that like, whenever people ask him, like, when are you coming home? When are you coming home, Australia? And he’s like, why would we come home? 

28:24
Kristy
Like, we keep struggling to get ahead back home when we can just move to Vietnam and already be ahead. Right. So just by relocation, he’s already, like, basically shortened his time to retirement by 20 years because of how little he’s spending. And the thing that’s interesting is that a lot of people get scared of like, oh, but, you know, I don’t want to go to places I’ve never been. Like, what if Vietnam is, like, really scary and I don’t know anyone there and how am I going to get around? And they don’t speak the language and it’s really not that scary at all. A lot of the times the weather is better, the food is better, and you get a lot more. 

28:56
Kristy
Like, you basically increase your lifestyle and you actually improve your life, but you don’t really know it because a lot of people are scared of places they’ve never been to. And that’s another thing. Speaking of the pandemic, making people less afraid of what it’s like to become FI because they tried to work from, they were able to get a taste of working from home. The pandemic also made it more mainstream for geographic arbitrage and people who are digital nomads. That was actually a fringe idea. When we started traveling back in 2015, people were like digital nomads. Does that mean you’re going to go, you’re going to quit your job, try to like ride a scooter in Thailand, then run out of money and then come back and then beg for your job back from the state. That’s how they thought digital nomads were. 

29:36
Kristy
They’re like, oh, you okay, you’re going to be gone for 10 years, lose all your money and then come back. But then after the pandemic, completely different mind shift. Like when you actually say, oh, I’m a digital nomad or I walk work online, people do not even bat an eye. They’re just like, okay. They just immediately accept that. And not only that, when 2015 there was zero digital nomad visas. You’d have to do like some sort of like visa run in which in Thailand like at every 90 days you have to exit the country and then go back in and get a different stamp and then like, you know, move around the different Southeast Asian countries. But now I think last time I counted like over 50 digital nomad visas all around the world. 

30:10
Kristy
And places that like are even traditionally have been very anti immigration like Japan. Japan created a digital nomad visa. So this has become a lot more mainstream because of the concept of geographic arbitrage, because people can actually now work from home as a result of the pandemic. So then people don’t have to live in that expensive city where they’re earning the big bucks in the strong currency. Now they can move to like I was talking to this couple actually this is exactly related to this story is that so recently we just came back from a trip in Europe and on the way there we met a digital nomad family and they were actually moving to Croatia. They’re from the States. She works online for an NGO. 

30:50
Kristy
I think she’s a developer and she was moving to Croatia so that she could earn US dollars and then spend in Croatia because the cost of living is much less expensive there. And she was moving her I think two year old son with her. So that’s an example. Like we’re very seldom to meet a family like that back in 2015, but in 2024 there’s lots of families out there and it’s easier than ever to get a digital nomad visa. And she was telling me how she was looking into like, digital nomad visas in Portugal, Spain, Croatia, like all over the place because she’s trying to eventually get a passport. 

31:23
Erin
Wow. I was looking at the list recently of the countries who have this program, and like you’re saying, I couldn’t believe it. Like, it was almost every country I could think of, certainly every country that I would care to go and explore at this point. And yeah, like, I had no idea five years ago that this was even an option for people. And now it’s so easy. It’s. It’s just there ready for you if you’re interested in it. 

31:50
Kristy
Oh, yeah. It’s like whole world of opportunities that you can take advantage of that gets you to FI faster. That wasn’t there before. 

31:58
Erin
I wanted to read a quote from your book. I love this one. You say, around that time I started to notice a strange pattern among my friends and family. The more stuff people owned, the unhappier and more stressed they tended to be. Conversely, the less stuff people owned, the more they spent on experiences like travel or learning new skills, the happier and more content they were. So because this is a podcast about fulfillment and because we talk about how stuff depreciates and experiences appreciate over time, I was wondering if you could tell me more about that. 

32:38
Kristy
Yeah, I think that’s even like back then I was thinking about it from just like a traveling point of view, but I think that’s actually been magnified now. After what we’ve been through with giving birth and like my father in law, the things that we remember the most is the last moments we had with him and the experiences and the time that we spend with him. Like, we don’t remember the like Christmas presents he gave us or the Christmas presents we gave him or like, you know, like what stuff that we’ve accumulated around the house. Like, none of those things really matter at the end of the day. At the end of the day, it’s. You are a series of memories. You are a series of life events, and you are a series of moments that you spend with the people that you love. 

33:15
Kristy
And the more stuff you have, the more money you have to spend to maintain those things. And that money is not free. That money you have to trade for with your time at work. And also I think one of the things that I learned from traveling is how happy you can be with as little as possible. Like, I’m sure you’ve had that experience where living out of an RV, you have to be a lot more cognizant about what to bring in, what not to bring, and the priorities. Prioritize what’s important, what’s not important. And then once you actually get on the road, like, at first, you’re, like, so attached to all these things that was. That was us when we were traveling for the first time around the world. I’m like, I can’t get rid of any of this stuff. 

33:52
Kristy
I need all these things to live. And then I, like, eventually I forced myself to, like, just put things away in, like, five or six boxes and then, like, just have live out of two backpacks. But then when I came back after a year later, I didn’t remember what was in those four boxes, but I was so attached to them at the time. So I think travel actually teaches you. What is actually important, what’s not, because it forces you to prioritize what you can bring and what you can bring versus if you just stay in one place, you just mindlessly accumulate just because you have so much space and you have the ability to put it, like, wherever you want and the ability to just, like, you know, hit up Amazon and then order a whole bunch of stuff. 

34:30
Kristy
So over time, I have realized the value of experiences and the value of memories versus stuff, like, which just weighs me down and ends up spending way too much money maintaining it. 

34:42
Erin
Yeah, I always find that it’s so much easier when we get back from an RV trip to declutter the house or to say goodbye to things that, you know, I wasn’t sure about before we left. Like, we get back, and it’s just like, what is all of this? Do we need this? And, like, why is there so much space here as well? Like this? We don’t need all of this. So, yeah, my last question for you was to say you had a challenging childhood would be an understatement. And you. You talk about it in your book. It’s, you know, just remarkable what you’ve been through as somebody who grew up in privilege. Honestly, Kristy, like, it’s so powerful to read your story, your dad’s story, and then think about what it took to overcome those things. 

35:31
Erin
You talk about how poverty taught you four vital skills that. That you call crap, which I love. So it’s creativity, resilience, adaptability, and perseverance. Now that you’re a parent, I feel like you’ll be able to answer this question perhaps even better than you could have 10 years ago. For our kids that are growing up in an environment of privilege. Do you have any ideas on how we can teach them these skills without the associated trauma? 

36:02
Kristy
Oh, my God, my son is totally going to be one of those kids that I hate that is going to be like, oh, my God, you’re this privileged kid. You have all these things and why you always complain. Oh, my God, I hate my own son. It’s probably going to be like that. I honestly, like, I have no idea. Like, right at this moment, I have no idea how to teach him those skills because now that he has, like, his life is so much easier than what it was for me. And, like, compared to my parents, my life was, like, on easy street, right? So every generation has it easier. And how do I. How do I prevent him from doing that thing? That’s the stereotype of wealth only lasts three generations in which it just keeps. 

36:40
Kristy
It gets easier for them, and then they just don’t know the value of money. I have some ideas. I have yet to implement them because we all know when it’s like, you know, you read a parenting book and you read advice and you’re like, this is great on paper. And then we actually try to do it’s just complete mess because kids are just chaotic, and you just have no idea. I have an idea that I’m going to try to. If he wants something, I’m going to try to get him to earn it, and then I might do a match in order to get him there rather than just like, okay, here, I’ll just buy it for you. Again, easier said than done. Like, who knows what’s going to happen when he starts having a meltdown? And I’m like, too tired? 

37:13
Kristy
I’m like, oh, my God, just take it. I don’t care. Just take it. Right? Who knows what’s going to happen in reality versus what’s in my head? But yes, that’s definitely something that we are going to have to figure out some. Some tricks for and some ideas for how to teach him not to do that. I really would like to bring him back to my village in China, and show him the medical waste heap that I used to dig through to find toys. I think that would be really fun. I want to just take him to a squat toilet and then just be like, this is the bathroom. Yeah, have at it. And there’s no running water. Good luck. And just see what he does. Right. 

37:48
Kristy
But the funny thing is, I think my village has probably developed so much that I don’t think they have that problem anymore. They actually do have running water and they have Internet now, so. So I’m gonna have to figure out how to, like, make him want to work for it, rather than just me, like, forcing him to do it. Because whenever I force him to do it’s just. He’s gonna do it when I’m watching him. And then afterwards, he’s just not gonna do that anymore. So it’s gonna be a journey trying to help him understand what is financial responsibility when you don’t have that burden on your shoulders. 

38:18
Erin
Yeah, I’m always looking for these kinds of ideas, too. I mean, I feel like the closest we’ve come is our kids enjoy going to overnight camp. And so as they get older, they can participate in, you know, these. These trips where they’re, like, out in the woods for, like, five days or a week, and. And the closest I’ve come is when they get back from that, and they’re like, you know, I had to poop in a hole. And it’s like, you can see they’ve kind of got this glint in their eye, like they went through something that was a little hard for them. 

38:47
Kristy
That’s good. Yeah, I like that idea. I’m thinking we need more of that. Yeah, definitely. That idea. That survival, you know, like, you gotta do some, like, wilderness survival. This is what it’s like when you don’t have all these conveniences. 

38:58
Erin
That’s right. 

38:59
Kristy
Like, it was that simple. Yeah. 

39:00
Erin
Those leaves weren’t three ply. 

39:02
Kristy
Right. Like, exactly. Exactly. There you go. 

39:06
Erin
Let’s build your equation. So this is all about being intentional, about how we spend our time. And if we were to transport back to the Kristy of 25 years old, your equation might look something like. And we won’t build it, but I’m going to guess it might look something like if you have a block of time for about an hour in the day, a typical day might have been 10 hours of working, maybe, and maybe more. And, you know, maybe you squeeze in an hour at the gym or something, and maybe there’s some TV in there. As you’ve been able to become more intentional with your time, more deliberate, take control of your time again. We’re going to build your equation of today. And that equation of today may not be your equation 10 years from now, and that’s absolutely fine. 

39:58
Erin
But to start off, we’re going to think about what are the ways that you like to spend your time in a given week, and maybe we can just start by identifying those. 

40:08
Kristy
Okay. So I would say before having my son, the things that I like to spend time on was, you know, going to escape rooms with friends, going to Southeast Asia, getting massages, climbing mountains, swimming, all sorts of adventurous things. The things that I like to do now is just sleep. Like I just need sleep. Please give me sleep, sleep, sleep. That’s like my number one thing is just getting enough sleep. I would also say, I think just getting outdoors and basically trying to get my son to run off his energy and then for me to like just have an easier time after he’s run off that energy so that parenting would be easier. And what I find was actually helpful, like travel, weirdly enough, actually made me less tired for some reason is. 

40:51
Kristy
Oh, it’s because when went to Spain you could kind of see the cultural differences between like what they value as a society and like how they do things differently from here. So for example, Spain is very pro family and they also prioritize pedestrians and cyclists over cars. So it’s very easy to get a lot. I don’t have to worry about driving, I don’t have to worry about slow public transportation. Public transportation is very ubiquitous. It’s very easy. It runs on time, it’s accessible, it’s really easy to get around without having to drive. And then there’s playgrounds. There is as many playgrounds as there are stop signs in North America. 

41:29
Erin
I read your blog post about this and this part really resonated with me because I was like, oh, she’s talking about how many playgrounds they have and how awesome they are. Honestly, sometimes we’ll go on these like two month RV trips and we just end up joking. It’s like playgrounds across America because it’s just every playground is new and exciting and you know what, it’s free. 

41:49
Kristy
So. Yep. Yeah, yeah. I’ve never noticed this many playgrounds in my entire life until after I became parent. And then I was like, oh, thank God there’s a playground. 

41:57
Erin
Right? 

41:58
Kristy
So yeah, so I think like how I spend time now as a parent is just kind of looking at different cultures and how they do things differently in order to like just take bits and pieces from different cultures to make my life easier as a parent. 

42:12
Erin
Yes. Would you say that? I mean, it seems like writing would be a part of your week. 

42:17
Kristy
Yes, writing is definitely part of it. I was a little worried that I wouldn’t have any time to write after my son was born. But this is just goes to show that if you prioritize something, you will find time. I don’t know if you have ever seen that I think it was like a TED Talk in which they’re talking about, like, how to split up your time. And they had a jar, and then they had, like, some big rocks, and then they had some sand and, like, little pebbles, and they’re like, okay, how do you fit all this stuff into this small jar? And then it’s like, order of operations is really important. If you just jam the sand in and you just throw the rocks, and everything’s already piled to the top, and you have no space for anything else. 

42:51
Kristy
But first you put the big rocks in first, and then you put the little petals, and at the end, then you fill it in with the sand and, like, the liquid. Right? And then by prioritizing what’s more important, then you can fit everything in, which is exactly what happened as a parent. Like, because I prioritize writing, I would be, like, writing while I was breastfeeding him when he’s taking a nap. I would be writing, like, I didn’t. I never missed a blog schedule, even when I was having really bad morning sickness and I had jet lag when I was pregnant, because that was really important to me. So it’s like, whatever is important to you, even if you don’t have the time, you will prioritize that thing and it will get done, versus, like, if you’re not. 

43:27
Kristy
Let’s say, like, you’re not into exercise, and you’re like, after I become FI. Why I’m gonna have so much time to exercise? You’re not gonna exercise. It doesn’t matter if you have one hour in the day versus you have 24 hours in the day. If you don’t like it, you don’t want to prioritize it. It’s never gonna get done no matter how much time you have. So writing is a big part of it. And we, like me and my husband, definitely go out of our way to make sure that we put that as part of our day. We take turns watching our son so that the other person has a consecutive amount of time to write. Because you can’t really write piecemeal. Like, when you need to concentrate on something and you need to do research. Research, yes. 

43:59
Kristy
So writing is a big part of it. Arranging our day around that. Like, now it’s about how to continue having that identity. Because a lot of parents also lose their identity after having their kids because you’re like, oh, my God, like, everything has to be prioritized to my kid. And then there are some days in which he’s with the grandparent and then we are ourselves again for two days. And then I’m like, wow, I was a person before you. I had all these like, priorities and things that I wanted to do for myself. And all these things that you kind of lose after you become a parent. It’s really important to like identify those pieces of you. That’s really important. And then prioritize that rather than like just do the martyr thing, which is like my kids and nothing else matters. 

44:37
Kristy
And like, I’m no longer a person. I’m just here to serve you and I’m just your mom. 

44:42
Erin
Yeah. Because they’ll eventually go.. 

44:46
Kristy
And you don’t have a purpose again. 

44:48
Erin
Yeah. So other than writing, what are your other big rocks? 

44:52
Kristy
I would say let’s see. I think getting out into nature is really important. I find that like pandemic was so hard just because we’re all locked inside and there’s just. You’re not getting that fresh air. And nature is very healing and being able to go on hikes and being able to just like breathe fresh air and then just getting out into nature is very important part of my day. And if I’m stuck inside for too many days and I don’t have that reprieve and that like that forest bathing kind of concept where you like, you go into nature and let it heal you and let it re-energize, that’s a really big part of my day. 

45:27
Erin
I know every week is different, but on average, like how many times a week would you say you like to get outdoors? 

45:32
Kristy
I think at least four out of seven days. 

45:36
Erin
Okay. How many times a week would you do your writing? 

45:39
Kristy
Probably at least three times a week. 

45:42
Erin
It sounds like you get a fairly decent sized block for that. 

45:45
Kristy
Yes. Yes. 

45:45
Erin
You guys are tag teaming. 

45:47
Kristy
Yeah, exactly. The chunks, like hourly chunks here and there. 

45:50
Erin
Yeah. 

45:50
Kristy
I tried to Write in like 5 minute increments at one point because I was like feeding my son so often that I was like, okay, I’ll just do it in between like pumps and stuff. That did not work. Just wrote a bunch of gibberish that I just like, I don’t even remember what I wrote. Yeah. So it had to be like consecutive like periods in which I could actually focus. I think another thing that’s important that I didn’t realize was how important friendships are. Like how important it is to keep those friendships after you have a child because it is easy to kind of like drift away from friends that are choosing to be child free or let’s say like friends that have way more kids than you. They don’t have as much time. 

46:26
Kristy
Like to keep those friendships and to prioritize them makes a huge difference because it also keeps that part of your identity alive. Like that’s that person you were before you gave birth to this thing that now you’re, you know, a servant to 24/7. You need to have that friendship. You need to have those adult conversations to remind you of who you are before they were born. So we do prioritize friendships and we go out of our way to see them even though it’s a lot more difficult because before we could just like jet off anywhere to see our friends, like, oh yeah, I’ll just meet you in like Thailand, I’ll just like meet you in Singapore where that’s no longer the case. Now we have to be like, okay, what does your schedule look like? 

47:05
Kristy
We can’t do a crazy flight with him, but then we can do somewhere closer to South America like where you are. You can be anywhere near South America or like the Caribbean. So like we still have to work it out. But definitely maintaining friendships has been a very big part of our lives and we try to keep that as one of our big rocks as well. 

47:21
Erin
How many touch points in a week would you say on average? I know every week looks a little different for you. 

47:26
Kristy
I think we talk to our friends pretty much every day. Like different sets of friends. Yeah, that’s great. Like, and it goes. Yeah, it kind of cycles around like different friendships. But pretty much we talk to at least one group of friends every day. 

47:38
Erin
Do you want to include quality time with your son? I imagine that you spend a fair amount of time doing that by choice. 

47:47
Kristy
I think that’s probably like not by choice. It’s is just all the time. Basically I’m on call 24/7. There’s no break. That’s the thing of being a parent. There’s no HR to talk to, there’s no break, there’s no sick days, there’s no holidays. Quality time with your son is not really a choice. It just happens. But I’m very blessed in that as a result of becoming FI and being able to spend time with him, I’m able to get a front seat to his childhood and basically every single second of it. Sometimes it’s a little too much and I’m just like, you need to go to your grandparents house. I’ve just had enough so I can’t take this anymore. But like most of the time it’s amazing. And a lot of people tell me like, I know it’s really exhausting. 

48:24
Kristy
The first year is the most difficult, but like, treasure it because it’s going to go by so fast, in the blink of an eye and they’re going to be like a five year old and then you’re going to be like, where did my baby go? I actually don’t feel that. I actually feel like I’m getting every single second of his life and I’m seeing that, like, I’m able to get this front seat, this amazing front seat to all his milestones. Like, as the days go by, I don’t feel like they’re fast at all. And I feel like I’m not missing out on any of his milestones and I’m able to spend as much time as I want with him. 

48:52
Erin
So why don’t we give you, we’ll give you a big block of that each day. 

48:56
Kristy
Yeah, that’s probably the most actually of all the things I prioritize, that’s the thing that I spend the most time just watching his milestones is my number one. 

49:06
Erin
So, so far we’ve got seven big blocks with your son. Three big blocks for work, four for outdoors, and seven for friends. 

49:17
Kristy
That sounds good. Yeah. 

49:18
Erin
Anything else we’re missing? 

49:20
Kristy
I guess finances, like doing nerdy, doing nerdy mathy things. Like whether it’s looking at other people’s finances, looking at our finances, doing financial reviews. I find that is really important to do financial reviews with your partner. Especially when you have kids. It’s just so hard to find the time. But it’s very important that, to make sure you’re on the same page. Because sometimes you drift and sometimes your priorities change. When you have a kid and, or like whatever life event happens, your priorities change and you need to check in with your partner to make sure you’re on the same page. So that’s what we do. Like, we’re still like, okay, are we still aligned on our expenses for this year? Are we still aligned on where we want the portfolio to go? Are we still happy with our allocations? 

50:02
Kristy
Do we want to make any changes? What do you want to go? How are we feeling about this going forward? We always check in with each other. We do quarterly reviews and I find that’s really important. Like we find a babysitter or we ask our parents for help to take him for a bit so that we have that concentrated amount of time so that we can focus on finances and make sure we’re on the same page. 

50:22
Erin
How many blocks a week would you give that. 

50:24
Kristy
It’s pretty passive because having a portfolio is way more passive than like if it was actively managed or we had like real estate investments. So I would say maximum, like maybe a couple of hours a week. Like two to three hours a week maximum. 

50:39
Erin
Perfect. I don’t know if you have the luxury of this with having a little one, but did you want to include something with you and Bryce? Do you still find a way to make time together in a week or is that kind of through the other things that we’ve already described? 

50:54
Kristy
Yeah, we definitely have couple time maybe once a week or once every two weeks. Approximately. Yeah. Just to do things that we used to do before having him like go out for a movie together or go to it. It’s very nerdy like to go to escape rooms a lot. It’s like no sporty stuff. It’s all just escape rooms. What else do we like to do? Yeah, like go out for a nice dinner. Just things that. Things that like we deliberately go out of our way to pick stuff that is not child friendly. Because it’s like, okay, if we like if we don’t find a babysitter, like this would not be enjoyable. After we find a babysitter. That’s the only thing that’s enjoyable. Let’s try to do that. 

51:31
Kristy
Let’s go to a fancy restaurant because otherwise it would just be throwing food everywhere and nobody would enjoy it. Pick those things. Pick as many child unfriendly things as possible when we have our date nights. 

51:41
Erin
Amazing. Okay, so we’ve got seven big blocks with your son. Three big blocks for writing, four outdoors plus seven friendships plus two financial analysis plus couple time. Oh, and maybe we should put a travel piece. I’m just going to put that like a bit big tea because I know that when you’re traveling you’re probably doing a lot of that. 

52:05
Kristy
Yeah, it’s kind of a part of our lives actually. The travel part. Yeah. Because right now we’re kind of doing more of a semi nomadic like home base and then travel outside of it. But if we go back to nomadic, then travel just becomes our regular life. Like we do. We wouldn’t do fast travel. We do like you know, at least a month in a place or several months in a place. 

52:26
Erin
Yeah. 

52:26
Kristy
So I think travel has just. Travel is just part of our lives. Like just living in a different place and exploring playgrounds in Spain. Like that’s just everyday living. 

52:34
Erin
Yeah, it’s the way you live. I love It, Yeah, it’s very different. 

52:38
Kristy
From like how I used to think about travel. Like when I was working. It’s like, okay, I have my two week of vacations a year and then that’s like travel separated from everything else. Right. You still have the rent back home. You still have like all your expenses back home. And then you just go for two weeks and you turn off your brain. Everybody else cooks for you and you go to a resort or whatever, but it’s never part of your life. It’s like this escape and then back to reality versus now it’s more like that’s integrated as part of your life where it’s like, well, you can like write from anywhere and then you. It’s really easy to keep in touch with family and it’s really easy for him to make friends anywhere in the world. So then travel just becomes everyday living. 

53:15
Kristy
It’s just part of your lifestyle. 

53:17
Erin
Yeah, I talk a lot about something I call life travel. And that’s exactly what you’re describing. It’s, you know, living and schooling and working while also traveling and. And that’s new to us too in adopting that. But it kind of comes from this recognition that I just love immersing myself in a place. And it’s really hard to do that when you’re only there for a short amount of time and you’re trying to hit up all of those like bucket list check marks that everyone told you have to see when you’re there. Like, I love actually immersing myself and discovering all of the things that people don’t talk about. Like those hidden gems. 

53:54
Kristy
Those are the best parts of travel for sure. 

53:56
Erin
Yeah. 

53:57
Kristy
How does your family come to a consensus about where to go? Because I’m sure like everybody has different personalities. They all have different ideas of like, what they like and what. Like, how do you come to a consensus? 

54:07
Erin
Yeah, with RVing, we have taken a big trip south. We’ve done a big one east. I’m planning a big one west. You know, there’s actually, I’m sure, endless trips that you could do within North America, but we’re starting to think a little bit more abroad. And we’ve lived in Costa Rica for a month at a time once last year, again coming up shortly. So that’s been kind of a foray into something maybe outside of the RV travel. To be honest with you. So far it’s been a lot of the parents deciding, like myself and my husband, because the kids were smaller, but as they’re getting older, they’re starting to come up with ideas and put forward suggestions. But you know, we haven’t hit a point yet where people have conflicting requests. So we’ll have to see what happens when that comes about. 

54:57
Erin
But so far so good. 

54:58
Kristy
Now that you mentioned that, I just actually that just like basically made me remember something because when you were saying like, how do you make them be responsible for finances if they’re just like privileged and they don’t have to worry about it. Yeah. Because you’re saying that your kids are actually like more grown up now and they actually like have ideas of where to go. One idea that I had that was really good from one my FI friends, one of my FIRE friends is that he lets his older kid plan where they’re gonna go. He’s also like traveling an RV with his family of three and he left the eldest one like he gives them a bucket of money for their budget. It’s like, okay, so we’re gonna go to a place that you decide for the next month. 

55:34
Kristy
You decide the accommodations for all of us, you decide the food, everything. Here’s how much money you have. Go at it. Wow. I was like, that’s really clever because then they are, that’s their responsibility and they can actually see the fruits of their labor when they actually like where their family is going to live, like what and what they’re going to end up doing. And they have to make it fit within that budget because it’s not endless amounts of money that they can just print and they can just ask their parents for more money once that bucket runs out. So it gives them responsibility, but they also feel like it’s the fruit of their labor because they actually like remember. And then everybody has that experience and it’s like memories that they get to share for the rest of their lives. 

56:09
Kristy
So I was like, well, that’s really clever. Like he just lets his daughter plan the trip. 

56:14
Erin
I love that. I’m going totally try that. At least with the two bigger ones. Maybe with the, maybe with the eight year old too. Just for fun. I want to. 

56:21
Kristy
That would be so cool. Yeah, let me know how that goes. I want to know how that goes. Because if that goes well, I’m going to try that myself. I like, I want to see what your experience is and like, does that actually teach them responsibility and like what their experience is? 

56:32
Erin
Yeah, yeah, I’ll let you know if they come back with all the most expensive things. 

56:38
Kristy
They’re like, they’re just like, we bought four Teslas and decided not to go on a trip. Yeah, that was not the, that was totally not the experiment that we were supposed to be doing. 

56:47
Erin
We’re going to Disney World for two months. Awesome. So let’s just wrap it up with a few rapid fire questions. You ready? Yeah, go ahead, finish the sentence. Fulfillment is. 

57:04
Kristy
Choosing what you want to do with your life. 

57:06
Erin
Give me an example of a small moment of joy you had in the last 24 hours. 

57:12
Kristy
My son napping and then me being able to nap at the same time. 

57:16
Erin
That’s good. What is a book you read or podcast you listened to that changed the way you think? 

57:24
Kristy
Oh, actually there’s a recent one called Precious Little Sleep that was actually very useful because it was talking about sleep training. And I’ve actually read quite a few books and they were not quite speaking to me that this one was written by a person with a finance background. So it was very systematic and she went through all the different techniques that you could have and, like, what to watch out for in terms of sleep training. And we actually tried it on our son and it worked. 

57:49
Erin
Oh, nice. There, I see a sleep theme in, like. 

57:54
Kristy
Yeah, definitely a sleep theme. Yeah, that’s a big one. 

57:56
Erin
What about from a financial perspective? Like, if you take yourself back to around the time that you were discovering fire, was there something in particular that you read or listened to that started you down this path? 

58:12
Kristy
Oh, yes, definitely. Mr. Money Mustache was a very big one because his. Well, it wasn’t so many books at the time. Like, J.L. Collins eventually published a book. It’s like J.L. Collins blog. And Pete’s blog was like the Gospel of Fire at the time because there was no books. It was just like consuming blogs from a handful of bloggers. And most of them were American. So I wasn’t even sure if this was doable if you weren’t American at the time. So I, I, I would say at the time, blogs were the only thing that I could really use to get on this path because it was just so new that hadn’t really been done before. Yeah. So I say Pete and JL Collins are the two blogs that really got me on this path. There was very few books to actually read about it. 

58:51
Erin
Yeah. In one sentence, what does freedom look like to you? 

58:56
Kristy
Freedom is the ability to spend time with the ones you love. 

59:01
Erin
What is the coolest place you visited? Or if that’s too hard to answer because you’ve been like, pretty much everywhere, what is one place you visited that exceeded your expectations? 

59:11
Kristy
Okay, so I think the one recent one that really blew me away was that it was actually really bad and then became really good, which is what I was saying with the gray, right? The areas of gray where you change as a person because you have different stages in life. And sometimes the coolest, Your least cool place could become your coolest place. I will say Barcelona, because Barcelona was one of my least favorite places. Because as a couple, when we went there, it was just overrun with tourists, and they really hated tourists. Like, they would go out of their way to shortchange you or just like, they just had this attitude that was just like, please go home. Like, we. We have way too many tourists. It’s way too popular. You’re getting in the way of the locals. You’re displacing us from Airbnb. 

59:51
Kristy
We just hate all of you. Please go home. That. That was the attitude that I got. But now, yes, that was. That was my impression of Barcelona. But now it’s a complete opposite. Now it’s like, one of my favorite places. Because going there as a parent, 100%, like, 180 from before, it’s, like, amazing, to the point where I’m like, can. Can we please move here? I went from like, I can’t stand Barcelona and they hate us to can we please move here? Because everyone is so nice to my son and they love children so much. They want to go out of their way to help you as a parent, which is totally different from North America, which is like, North American way is like, okay, we want to judge you. You better be breastfeeding. 

01:00:28
Kristy
Oh, you’re recovering from a C section, and you haven’t slept in three days. Well, it doesn’t matter. Go home and take care of your kid. No one’s going to help you. And you better do these 10 things that we told you as, or you’re a bad parent. But in Barcelona, it was complete opposite. It’s like, oh, you want to go to the bar, you want to go grocery shopping, you want to go this really cool maze on the top of the hill. Here is a playground. Here’s multiple playgrounds so that you can get on with your day doing whatever you. You. You want to do. And we’re going to help you. And your kid can run around. It’s going to be totally free. There’s also these, like, Lutecas, which are toy libraries, which are indoor playgrounds. I kid you not. It was €12. 

01:01:03
Kristy
It was, like, so cheap for the entire day. And it was open from 8am to 7pm I could not believe it. So I’m like, it’s. It’s. They’re trying to save you as much money as possible. They’re trying to reduce your stress as a parent. Their playgrounds are amazing. 

01:01:19
Erin
It’s all about the playgrounds, right? 

01:01:20
Kristy
Yes, it’s all about the playgrounds. I’m just like, this makes my life so much easier as a parent. And then it went from. So Barcelona went from one of my least favorite places, one of my favorite places, to the point where I want to move there. So you never know with life. That’s why we got to be living in the gray and not the black and white, because it could totally go 180 and you don’t expect it later on in a different stage of your life. 

01:01:39
Erin
I love that city redeemed itself for you. What is something you do regularly to fill your own cup? 

01:01:47
Kristy
Spend time with friends. 

01:01:49
Erin
Nice. Kristy, thank you so much for being here today. I have learned so much from you through your book, through your website. A lot of it in the financial realm. But like I said at the beginning, I think what I have also learned from you is this ability to not accept these things that were told or even just to recognize that we have these constructs in our head that may not be true. And this ability to question everything and not just to push back on it, but to actually follow that through with your analysis and mapping it up and digging in to find the evidence to ultimately find the gray. I love that we talked about that today, too. Thank you so much for being here. This has been such a pleasure. 

01:02:37
Kristy
Thank you so much. Erin. Thank you so much for having me. Had a great discussion. 
01:02:42
Erin
If you like this podcast and want to support it, tell a friend about it. You can also connect with Fulfillment Equation through Instagram or Facebook for updates on new episodes, daily doses of joy and fun travel tips. And if you are really into it, feel free to join the Fulfillment Equation community through the website at fulfillmentequation.com where you will get a weekly email with insider information and free resources to help you build more fulfillment into your own life. I hope you enjoyed the episode today. There’s more to come this season, so stay tuned.

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