Hello and welcome to Choose a Phi. Today in the show, we have a good friend Cody Garrett, who's a CFP and has been on the show numerous times. And we're going to talk about and hopefully really put to bed this concept of the middle class trap. I think it's something that has come to the forefront in the Phi community this year in 2025. And I think there's just a lot of myths surrounding it. I think personally that it really

doesn't exist other than in our minds. But that's an important place for it to exist. But I think

the beautiful part about FI and the FI community is we all come together to help each other and to

educate and to support. And I think hopefully that's what Cody and I are trying to do today is to look at what is

supposedly a trap and say, no, no, no, not only is it not a trap.

This is the path to five.

This is winning.

But if you're scared, if you're worried in your brain, which is very legitimate, then I

think this is going to be an episode

that really speaks to you because Cody sets up four really interesting case studies where we just

go through the numbers. And of course, numbers aren't always persuasive when you're talking about

something psychological. But I think in this case, it does a really wonderful job where we can just take a deep breath and say,

okay, if this almost most simplistic way or the worst case way of withdrawing money from our accounts

actually works and works wonderfully, then oh, what if I look at all these other really advanced

five strategies? That to me is the cool part about this. And Cody talks about

the eight core realities on the psychological side of this middle class trap and maybe why people

feel like there's a trap. I think this is a really important one. I wouldn't be spending so

much time on this on the podcast recently. We just did it episode 543 and now we're at it again just a short while later.

If I didn't think this is important, not because I think it's something that we should be worried about,

but because I think that the Path to Phi works as well today as it ever has, and we all need to

understand that and know that you're not trapped you are

crushing the game and I think that is the beautiful part about being in this community so with that

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