The Third Option Between Working and Retiring

Afford Anything

Paula Pant | Cumulus Podcast Network

Investing, Business, Entrepreneurship

4.6 • 3.4K Ratings

🗓️ 26 September 2025

⏱️ 73 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

#646: Picture this: your 11-year-old son comes home from a friend's house and asks why you don't have a basketball court in your basement like his buddy's family. Instead of just saying "we can't afford it," you explain that having one would mean dad goes back to working 60-hour weeks and traveling constantly. Your son thinks for a moment and says, "No thanks, I'd rather spend time with you." Andy Hill found himself having exactly this conversation with his son — and it perfectly captures the philosophy that led him and his wife to redesign their entire approach to work and family life. By age 40, Andy and his wife Nicole had built a $500,000 investment portfolio and paid off their house completely. But instead of continuing the corporate grind toward traditional retirement, they made a radical choice: They both switched to part-time work, roughly 20 to 25 hours per week each. Andy joins us to share a 10-step plan for anyone who wants to also switch to a model in which BOTH parents work part-time. We discuss the concept of Coast FIRE – the point where you've invested enough that your money will grow to a comfortable retirement without any additional contributions. Think of it as eliminating your biggest monthly "bill" – retirement savings. Once Andy and his wife hit this milestone, they could afford to earn less and live more. The conversation covers Andy's 10-step framework for achieving this lifestyle, from dreaming about what you actually want to eliminating debt to building what he calls "FU money" — the cash cushion that gives you confidence to make bold career moves. Resources mentioned: Andy Hill's book on Amazon: Own Your Time Marriage, Kids, and Money Podcast (4:01) Why the shift(5:35) What their life looks like now (9:08) Why extremes didn’t work for Andy and Nicole (14:45) Step 1 Dream and define your ideal life (18:21) Step 2 Commit to living without high-interest debt (20:38) Step 3 Protect your family (insurance, estate plan, emergency fund) (27:04) Step 4 Invest to reach Coast FIRE (30:29) Step 5 Pay off your home (or optimize if renting (36:21) Step 6 Stockpile FU money (47:53) Step 7 Design a three-day workweek (57:02) Step 8 Plan your intentional four-day weekend (1:02:39) Step 9 Simplify to avoid lifestyle creep (1:08:56) Step 10 Teach your kids the path to time freedom Share this episode with a friend, colleagues, or with your neighbor with the tricked-out basement : https://affordanything.com/episode646 Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	Imagine this. You're 40 years old. You've built a $500,000 investment portfolio and you've paid off your home.
0:08.4	Now, you could grind it out for a few more years and then take a total early retirement, but you decide not to.
0:15.1	Instead, you choose a balanced path. You see, most of us in the financial independence community are familiar
0:22.4	with the classic framework of early retirement in which you work full-time, you save aggressively,
0:29.0	and then you hit that magic number, that fire number, in which you can retire completely.
0:35.5	It's an all-or-nothing approach. You're either working or you're not.
0:39.3	And so the notion of early retirement holds to the cliff framework of traditional retirement.
0:44.9	You're working, working, working, and then boom, now you're retired. Early retirement simply moves
0:51.0	forward that date to a younger age, but it holds to the binary of full-time work
0:56.8	until you hit the point of full-time retirement. What if there's a middle path? What if you could
1:02.8	taper into retirement rather than hit a cliff? Today's guest, Andy Hill, built that life for himself and his family. By the age of 40, he and his
1:14.4	wife had built a $500,000 investment portfolio and had paid off their house. But instead of
1:20.3	continuing on an aggressive path towards full early retirement, they made a different choice.
1:26.1	They decided that they would both transition
1:28.9	to part-time work. And this decision allowed them to become equal partners in parenting to their
1:35.8	two kids, which Andy describes in our upcoming interview as absolutely transformative for their
1:42.1	family dynamic. With both parents working part-time, both parents could be present for school pickups, for one-on-one time with the kids, and for those small daily moments of quality time that matter most.
1:56.4	In our upcoming conversation, Andy walks through his 10-step framework for how you can do the same.
2:04.5	Welcome to the Afford Anything podcast, the show that knows you can afford anything, not everything.
2:09.3	This show covers five pillars, financial psychology, increasing your income, investing, real estate and entrepreneurship.
2:14.6	It's double-eye fire.
2:16.1	Today, we're talking about moving beyond the
	...

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