Today's guests discovered the fire movement seven years ago and has been methodically building towards financial independence and is now just four years away.

Cody is going to break down the strategies, mindset shifts, and practical steps that have kept him on track towards early retirement.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to the Bigger Pockets Money podcast.

My name is Mindy Jensen, and with me as always is my advice-only co-host, Scott Trench.

Thanks, many.

Great to be here, dispensing free only, financial advice for entertainment purposes only, of course.

We are so excited to be joined by Cody Garrett today.

You may recognize his name because he is very active in our Bigger Pockets Money Facebook group community.

He is a frequent guest on ChooseFI and in the ChooseFI Facebook group.

He's a musician turned financial planner at Measure Twice Financial.

And we're going to hear his spy story today and then end our conversation talking about portfolio theory, which you'll definitely want to stick around for. Cody, welcome to Bigger Pockets Money. Thank you, thank you. So glad to be here. It's always fun talking with my fellow nerds in the five community. So Mindy and Scott, you might not know this, but you are one of the first podcast I ever listened to in this space as a professional musician. It was you. It was Joshua Sheets

from Radical Personal Finance, Choose FI, your mad scientist. You are in the core. You were in the

core for back in 2018 when I first started listening to podcasts at two times speed.

Well, thank you for listening and thank you for making it come full circle and coming on the

show today. In terms of musician turned financial planner, that's like left brain and right brain sort of thing. So are you like whole-brained? Yes, I call it left brain creative, which means I'm an analytical data-oriented person, but I'm always working in creative fields, right, which have variants and like, you know, which adds the fun, right? So it's not just the black and white spreadsheets, but like, how can we add? I literally have a trademark keep finance personal, even now as a financial planner where it's all about, hey, how can I take all this quantitative stuff, but actually like put in the qualitative side. So I love being a left brain creative. And a lot of people say, oh, moving from music to money, that must have been, that must have been very difficult, but it was actually something that I felt like a natural transition for me. And what kind of musician were you? The one who tried to get paid. No, the one who actually charged money. I was a professional musician from 2008 to 2018. So give an example of like a date, you know, like a week in the life of Cody back in,

let's say, you know, before I became a financial planner. I was a full-time contemporary music

director at a church. Like in one month, I was working full-time as a music director at a church.

I played 31 Broadway shows in one month on stage with full wig and all that, all that crazy

stuff. I also did wedding gigs, music camps, being a church director,

also a contractor ranger.

So I worked for Motown Gospel back in the day.

So I love anything with a good bass line and a beat,

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