155: Retired at 35: How Robert from Stop Ironing Shirts Achieved FI Even During The Great Recession

BiggerPockets Money Podcast

BiggerPockets

Investing, Education, Business

4.6 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 14 December 2020

⏱️ 68 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Robert from Stop Ironing Shirts has had quite a lucrative career path. Starting out as a bank teller in college, he learnt that he really enjoyed math that had dollar signs attached to the numbers. From there, he launched his career forward, first as a commercial banker, and later becoming a well-paid top executive.

While he had a great job and a partner who was also bringing in a solid paycheck every month, he slowly started to get tired of the corporate bureaucracy, politics, location dependency, and long hours.

Robert has made some mistakes on his path to early retirement. He lost money on a few real` estate deals and he even bought a brand new car (gasp!). null of this stopped him from still living below his means, siphoning off a large portion of his income for investments, and capitalizing on special programs such as the 409a plan.

Robert now lives life on his schedule. Whether that be spending copious amounts of time shopping at Costco or surfing at the beach, Robert has a life where he decides what he wants to do, everyday. Thankfully, it didn’t take him 30+ years of working to get there!

In This Episode We Cover

The importance of choosing a highly lucrative skill set
How to fight lifestyle creep, even when you’re making serious money
The real cost of a daily commute
How he recovered from real estate losses in 2009 (and after)
The psychological difficulties many face when retiring early
What a 409a plan is (and how high-earners can take advantage of it)
How much cash should be in reserves for financial independence
And So Much More!

Links from the Show

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Transcript

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0:00.0	Welcome to the Bigger Pog its Money Podcast, number 155, where we interview Robert from Stop
0:05.2	Earning Shirts and hear what life is like as an early retiree.
0:35.1	And for folks that can combine two or three of those things together, they'll do really
0:39.1	well.
0:40.1	Hello, hello, hello, my name is Mindy Jensen and with me as always is my fabulous
0:44.3	perspective on life co-host Scott Trech.
0:47.5	Thank you Mindy, always a new wrinkle with these introductions.
0:51.8	Scott and I are here to make financial independence less scary, less just for somebody else, and
0:56.4	show you that by following the proven path, you can put yourself on the road to early financial
1:00.6	freedom and get money out of the way so you can leave your best life.
1:04.6	That's right, whether you want to retire early and travel the world, go on to make big
1:07.6	time investments and ask it's like real estate or start your own business, we'll help you
1:11.0	build a position, keep a pool of watching yourself towards those dreams.
1:17.6	Scott, I'm super excited to have Robert on the show today because he is post financial
1:32.7	independence post retire early and it's really interesting to talk to somebody who has that
1:38.8	perspective.
1:39.8	Oh, here's what I thought it was going to be and then here's what it actually is.
1:42.8	Yep, I think it's always great to interview folks that have gone through it.
1:47.2	I think the challenge is you learn a lot from the money stories and the periods of getting
1:52.5	started.
1:53.5	You learn a lot from folks who are in that grind of multiple years of going from that
1:59.3	first 100,000 to close to that million mark and then there's another inflection point
	...

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