How to Build (and Enjoy) Your “Dream” Life in Early Retirement | Life After FIRE

BiggerPockets Money Podcast

BiggerPockets

Investing, Education, Business

4.6 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 2 May 2025

⏱️ 28 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

What if you reached financial independence…before knowing what it was? That’s what happened to Chris Rusin. After discovering the FIRE movement and stumbling across Mindy and Carl’s blog, he realized he was already at his goal. Then, early retirement unlocked a new life full of wild adventures, creative rebirth, and deeper purpose! Welcome back to the BiggerPockets Money podcast! Chris had been hustling, saving money, and chasing financial freedom for years before experiencing a big wake-up call. He encountered a half-billionaire who, despite “having it all,” was deeply unhappy and filled with regret. That moment sparked a shift—not toward more money, but toward more meaning. Since then, Chris has dived for treasure with Navy SEALs, unearthed dinosaur fossils, and much more—all before turning 50! But he’s also faced his fair share of fear and uncertainty. After receiving a cancer diagnosis and losing his voice to chemotherapy, he made a promise: if his voice came back, he’d finally record the album he’d dreamed of making. And he did. Stick around till the very end to hear the “world premiere” of Chris’ brand-new song! In This Episode We Cover What really happens after you achieve financial independence Designing your “dream” life once you reach early retirement How to maintain a sense of purpose after retiring from your nine-to-five The secret to weathering major portfolio swings in retirement A BiggerPockets-exclusive live rendition of Chris’ brand-new song And So Much More! Check out more resources from this show on ⁠⁠BiggerPockets.com⁠⁠ and ⁠⁠https://www.biggerpockets.com/blog/money-636 Interested in learning more about today’s sponsors or becoming a BiggerPockets partner yourself? Email ⁠⁠[email protected] Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Today we are talking to one of the most boring men in the world, Chris Russon.
0:05.7	Chris dove for treasure with Navy seals in the Florida Keys.
0:09.8	He helped discover one of the largest Torosaurus specimens ever found,
0:14.2	searched for the Ghost of Tom Petty with Carl, wrote a screenplay,
0:17.7	just released an album, and survived a deadly disease.
0:20.7	And he's not even 50 yet.
0:27.8	Hi there, I'm Mindy Jensen.
0:29.5	And I'm Carl Jensen.
0:30.7	And this is the Mindy.
0:31.8	And Carl.
0:32.6	On Life After Fy Show, where we talk about what happens after you reach financial independence.
0:36.8	Why do we call this show Life After Fire? Because we're talking about and talking to people who are living their best
0:42.1	life after reaching FI. Let's start out with the most interesting part, his FI journey. Chris,
0:48.5	tell us when you discovered the concept of financial independence. Yeah, first of all, thanks.
0:53.8	Thanks for having me on.
0:54.8	It's really fun to be here. Yeah. So to answer your question, when did I first find out about
0:58.9	FI? It was after I was already FI. And so I had kind of been thinking about these concepts.
1:08.7	I thought I'd come up with something brand new, and then I started
1:12.3	Googling around. And I actually found Carl's blog first, 1,500 days. And then I found out, hey,
1:22.6	he lives no more than, you know, less than 100 miles from my house. And so does this guy,
1:27.9	Mr. Money Mustache. And from there, Carl and I ended up, I reached out, I emailed, and amazingly he
1:34.9	responded. And we met up for a beer at a brewery. Yeah, and the rest is history. And so I didn't,
	...

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