This is not your traditional episode and I'm going to be talking about me. It feels even gross kind of saying that because you're like, what are you going to talk about yourself? But I get asked a lot about why did you start this podcast? What was it that prompted this kind of holistic approach designed for an early retirement? How did you meet up with your partner James and grow route to where it's been. And so today is about me.

I can tell a lot of you that you are not going to need to listen to this episode if you are the type of person who's like, just give me the content. How much do I convert? And I need to know about that five year rule and the tax can harvesting. How do I optimize that? You can, and I invite you to, if you are that person, nothing good or bad

about that. But if you are that person, please go look at those episodes. I do not want you listening

to content that does not engage you. This is for those that want to understand me and why I started

this podcast and what prompted everything that's going on. So I'm going to talk about how I met my partner

James and the approach to planning and kind of why I even do this today and how it all went down.

So today, once again, not your traditional episode, but I'm asked this frequently because you

guys are all very nice people that ask about me. And it's fun when I get to talk to people.

And a lot of the emails I get,

as you can imagine, are yes, should I do a 15 year or a 30 year mortgage? Should I implement conversions if I'm 57 or should I do health care subsidies? And then sometimes I'll get questions like, hey, you bought a soccer team. Why did you do that? And the fact that you said your dad's, You and your brother bought this sauna, but it didn't make sense.

Like, why financially would you do that? And the fact that you said your dad's, you and your brother bought this sauna, but it didn't make sense.

Like, why financially would you do that? And so I want to allude to more of the stories that I talk about often and provide more color.

So like I said, it even feels gross being like, here we go, episode about me. It's like, now, I just want you guys to know where i came from so the podcast

where i want to start the podcast wasn't me going oh my gosh yeah i woke up and everyone needs to know

here's how you optimize that's not how it went down so i went to and i won't give you that you know

i was born in this hospital not doing any of that i promise i'm not going to put you guys to sleep

this is designed for you to understand why i am giving you the type of guidance I am. So I went to

the University of Puget Sound, which is in Tacoma in Washington State. And I went there because

it's one of the few schools that said, we will let you play soccer here. And I love soccer to an unhealthy degree, just like I love finances to an unhealthy degree. Those are my things that I'm okay with. I, like many of you know, you send me an email, but hey, here's my approach or here's what I'm thinking. I might get back to you on a Sunday. And it's not because I feel like I have to. I just like it. And I think it's hard to be good at anything if you don't like it. So I'm good at soccer because I like it a lot. People used to say, you're so diligent with your training in college. And I didn't get a lot of playing time. I didn't like my coach. And that's actually inspired me to do a lot of what I do today.

But they say, you're so disciplined. I go, no, I just like doing it. Like, yeah, but you're always putting more reps in and doing more practice. I go, it's just fun. There's zero diligence about this that makes me go, you know, I'm going to do this to improve me as a player. And I really wasn't. I was going, I have a lot of fun kicking this ball,

getting the ball, and kicking it again, like an absurd amount of fun. And people just couldn't

understand that. So then I was like, you know what, maybe I want to be a professional soccer player.

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